The Blindboy Podcast - Brutus Flute

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

How US border control is creating a Panopticon. Also, Barack Obamas deep space 9 fanfiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you Brisbane chin pinchers, you joyful pricks wandering aimlessly around your hot city with its fruit bats that hang off the bridge and lizards in parks and massive spiders pinching each other's chins and putting it on the internet for others to watch. and putting it on the internet for others to watch. How are you getting on? Welcome to episode 90 of the Blind Boy Podcast. 90 episodes, that is correct. If you're one of the many new listeners,

go back and listen to other episodes. You don't necessarily have to go back to the very start, some people do, but the podcasts are non-sequential, so I'd suggest just get into the podcast by, revisit some of the early episodes, pick one at random if you like, or start from the very start, because there is, I'm just realising with this podcast, I don't really know what the podcast is about it's not a podcast that's easy to explain so the best thing to do is just listen to listen to some of it

you know I'm a busy busy boy this week very busy boy I've been fucking busy for the past two months I'm never allowing myself to get this busy again, to put it into perspective, I'm at the finishing stages of a television program and a book, right, I have no business doing both of those things at the same time, but I did, because just I don't know I don't turn down work I'm just like if work

comes in I remind myself of a time when I didn't have work available so I just go fuck it yeah yeah I'll do a tv series and a book at the same time fuck that so it's uh stressful isn't the word just i don't have any leisure time at all i'm actually recording this podcast now i'm recording this at two in the morning um so that's how busy i was today but today i had a meeting with my my book editor my first proper meeting about the the first draft and it went fantastically um so i'm very very happy with that san francisco are after banning e-cigarettes which i just saw on the internet today um if you'd be listening to the podcast you'll know that two weeks ago I was in San Francisco

I recorded the podcast from a street corner there and yeah the lunatics they're after banning e-cigarettes they're the first city in the world to ban e-cigarettes so it's going to come into effect in 2020

like firstly when I was in San Francisco it's really weird I haven't experienced it, I knew California, in particular, are strange about cigarettes, okay, California have always been quite pioneering in the demonization of cigarettes, and fair play to them, you know, but I wasn't expecting, so I, you know, I ended up buying a box of fags over there because i was on the lash and the next day i was like walking down the road and because i had a hangover i decided i'm going to light a cigarette and it was me walking down the street and there was this

woman coming up and she must have been 40 feet away and she saw me with the cigarette and started passive aggressively coughing and then I noticed other people doing it and then and this was the maddest thing I saw this this lad walking down the street in San Francisco and he was holding his cigarette

the way that you'd hold a joint if you were 14. Like, you know if you're 14 and you're smoking a joint, like, you don't want anyone to see it. You don't want, like, an adult to see it, and you certainly don't want to get caught by the guards. So you hold the joint in your palm so that it's essentially hidden by your fingers. I saw a grown man in San Francisco doing that it's essentially hidden by your fingers i saw a grown man in san francisco

doing that with a cigarette so cigarettes are really demonized then i was vaping and another person passive-aggressively coughed at me from across the road because i was fucking vaping so there's a cultural thing with the demonization of smoke or vapor that exits people's lungs in San Francisco. And it has been solidified today because they're banning e-cigarettes. They're rationale and they're kind of half right. In America, there are these e-cigarettes called Jules, J-U-U-L. there are these e-cigarettes called Jules J-U-U-L and

they're very much they say they're not targeted at children but they kind of are right, first off in America most of the people who are vaping these Jules are teenagers right, and a Jule is

it doesn't look like a vape that I know, it kind of, it almost looks like a USB stick, right, and you don't put fluid into it, you buy Juul cartridges, so it's quite expensive, but these Juuls are fetishized very much by young teenagers in America it's the new cool thing is the Juul and at the end of the day like I vape I don't experience any adverse health effects but at the end of the day there's nicotine in it

and I vape because I'm addicted to nicotine so I don't agree with 14 year olds vaping and getting addicted to nicotine that's no crack so in America they're marketing sweet flavoured jewels. To children. So this is being used as the rationale now. And it was voted into effect.

Fucking e-cigarettes are banned. In San Francisco. From 2020. You can't buy them. You won't be allowed to buy them in a shop. So all the vape businesses. In San Francisco are going to close. You won't be allowed to buy them in a shop. So all the vape businesses in San Francisco are going to close. You won't be able to buy them in a shop.

And you can't even buy them online. So I don't know what that means for someone using a vape in public in San Fran in 2020. But their attitude towards cannabis then is completely different. In California, cannabis is is legal and what you find there is most people in america they don't smoke joints they because it's legal now what's very very popular is is vaping weed and not even vaping as in not even buying weed but like they sell little cartridges of weed fluid and people smoke that and it smells like weed and it gets you stoned when i was in bars in san fran that's what people were doing you'd smell weed in there but they were vaping it so that remains legal so yeah that's that's two crazy things that happened before.

Another thing I narrowly missed when I went to America, and this is really fucking freaky shit. So, when you go to America, right, you have to apply for your travel visa, your ESTA, which is just a simple, anyone who's gone to America knows, it's a simple online form, it's 15 quid, you send it off and then it comes back in two days later after they do a little background check on you. So in the ESTA form that I filled out, at the bottom of it there was an optional section that said provide us with your current social media handles and any emails that you have used so i was like why the fuck would i do that yanks why the fuck would i give you my social media handles and any email i've ever had why would i do that so I chose to untick the box because it was optional the day after I arrived in America that policy became mandatory so now anyone who is going to America no matter who the

fuck you are if you want to get a visa just to go on holidays in America you are legally obliged to give them your Facebook address your Twitter address your Instagram your current email and any other social media that you once had okay and if you don't then you're lying so if you if you decide to pretend that you don't have twitter or pretend that you don't have facebook like you're now lying to get into a country and if they catch you that's it you're banned forever the other thing too is like so what what they'll actually do with it is and this is all because of trump so you apply for your s that, you put in your Twitter, your Facebook, so they're going to run a background check on your social media before you're allowed into America, right?

So that means, like for me, I'm fucked, right? I am, if they ask me for my social media handles, I'm just going to have to go yeah rubber bandits on twitter like I'm a left wing kind of commentator you know I'm not particularly kind to Donald Trump I'm

quite the yanks would consider me a fucking real lefty socialist so if they go through my if I want to go to America and they go through my twitter handles i'm just gonna have a huge big red flag beside my name because it's like this guy's coming in here he's got a twitter account with 200 000 followers and here's a bunch of shit he said about trump then they go onto my youtube and we made a song about trump like two years ago called Donald in the Distance so I have no doubt that

that is enough whereby when I go to America and I go to immigration like I've got a big red flag above my head and they're going to take me into that um secondary screening as they call it and I've got friends who've been through like I don't know if you've been through secondary screening in US immigration I I've have I been secondary screened I have no no I've been through secondary screening in u.s immigration i i've have i been secondary screened i have no no i've never been secondary screened i've been grilled and i've been asked questions a lot but i've never been taken aside separately into that other room one friend of mine was because it was quite fucking so a buddy of mine who's a metal or he loves his heavy metal he

well he's head to toe on tattoos as well and this was before tattoos were cool this was before like everyone started getting full sleeve tattoos so he was head to toe with tattoos on his face as well and he's Irish so I think he had one or two shamrock tattoos

now in Ireland a shamrock tattoo literally just means I'm Irish here's my shamrock tattoo in America if you have a shamrock tattoo that means Aryan Brotherhood simple as that you were in a prison gang that's what a shamrock tattoo means there but it was about 2006

and my buddy was going to America for a little holiday and there's a heavy metal band 2006 and my buddy was going to America for a little holiday and there's a heavy metal band are they, what type of metal are they, they'd be hardcore metal and the band is from Los Angeles and the band is called

Terror, so my buddy head to toe in fucking tattoos decides to go to America right, about 5 years after 9-11, wearing a t-shirt that says terror so he got secondary screened he was dragged away to another room where some humorless uh yanks with buzz cut hairdos um repeatedly asked him the question sir do you plan on bringing terror to the united states and he was just going no terror are a band that i listen to and i now realize how foolish it was of

me to wear a t-shirt that says terror so they let him in but yeah i i don't think i kind of don't want to go back to America now I know that if they have my social media handles and they see here's this fella and he's got hundreds of thousands of followers

and he's said a bunch of shit about Trump that's just going to fucking put a red flag over my head and I'm going to get grilled and i'm gonna get there's a load of like i was really only reading last week about a journalist an american citizen who came back from mexico and he got a six hour grilling in um at u.s immigration where they just literally went through his phone his his laptop, his personal photos. Like once you go into secondary fucking screening.

You're 100% at the discretion of those border agents. You know, you're at their, there's nothing you can do. It's like they decide whether you get into the country or not. And once, it's a real grey area where you don't essentially have rights. Like this journalist was in secondary screening. it's a real grey area where you don't essentially have rights, like this journalist was in secondary screening and he was like, I'm here four hours, can I see a lawyer?

but the lads are like, well you're not actually under arrest so you're not really entitled to a lawyer and then he's like, well can I go? and they're like, well no, you're being detained, we decide whether you get into the country, so it's this real weird grey area where you just have to grin and bear it and he just said six hours of lads going through every one of his private photographs his notes intimate

fucking stuff about personal things about his own life and if he says no then he's not getting back into america even though he's a u.s citizen and there were times where so he's sitting across on the desk and he's looking at this border officer in the airport looking through his laptop and he doesn't know what the officer is looking at and he's looking through his private stuff. And every so often, the officer would pull a strange face at whatever was on the laptop. And this then naturally made the journalist go, oh God, what the fuck is he looking at? You know, what private thing in my life? What photograph do I have? What intimate thought that i write down in a notebook what is making this man uh show disgust or confusion on his face so naturally

then this made the journalist as a human kind of get up and try and walk towards the laptop and the fucking the border officer started screaming at him get away don't reach for my firearm which is the scariest thing you can ever fucking hear don't reach for my firearm do you know what that means he's kind of entrapping the journalist so

yeah I don't fancy that I do think because I have a lot of followers if I go to fucking America I'm just going to get that secondary screening bullshit they can also they take your phone apart even if they don't arrest you for anything

even if there's nothing like if you've done nothing wrong I'd say like simply being critical of Trump is enough for them to like they can do whatever they want if if within their discretion they decide that you are somebody who at least needs to be watched for the safety of the united states they can do whatever the fuck they want so what they do is they take your iPhone apart. And there's some type of serial code there.

And they take a note of that serial code. And it effectively means that you can be tracked. Forever I think. It's very fucked up. Very very fucked up. So. And I don't know. Like what's. Like I know anyone listening to this now, most people, most people are going to go,

I don't want anyone who can, has the right to go through my entire phone, emails, texts, WhatsApp, whatever. They are fully entitled to do that once you are in the border you have no rights to stop them and most people don't even want that it's not even about like oh i don't want them to see that it's like it's a complete um it's an invasion of privacy and intimacy someone's phone where you speak to people where you speak to your friends that has to be considered as a kind of an intimate extension of yourself where you're allowed a degree of privacy like imagine some i don't know some fucking asshole like the thing is as well with these since Trump came in like I've

heard that they deliberately choose and they pitch the job of border security to pretty nasty people that's what I've heard that because it's gotten so anti-immigration and so especially hostile since

trump is in power the type of people that are being hired for this job tend to be quite authoritarian angry people and that's who they want and that's who they choose because like border u.s border agents are are they're pretty aggressive anyway it's it is frightening when you go for like i've never met a friendly one ever like i remember when we were over doing gigs we'd gone to the u.s it was a bandits gig and we'd gotten a serious fucking grilling and it was very unpleasant and it wasn't nice uh it made you feel just unwelcome and it's not nice that the tone that they use isn't nice and it's not a nice thing to experience. And then a month later we were gigging in Canada and the Canadian fella at the border just asked us, what are you doing here?

And we just said, we're the Rubber Bandits. So the Canadian fella literally goes, oh okay, Rubber okay rubber bandits types it into youtube and starts roaring his ass laughing and then ushers us into his country so that was the difference between canada and the us but this new fucking us business where they're allowed to go through your fucking mobile phone that is not uh the us does not seem like a particularly inviting place for me now do you know what I mean and like what what about the you know where does irony come into it like there's a lot of people on Twitter who would be you know left-leaning and things like that but you know they will openly identify as communist on Twitter, as is their right.

But, you know, you do have people who straight up, it's like they've read their fucking books and it's like, no, I'm a communist. I'm full on communist. But then there's an awful lot of other people, which I think is the majority, where, you know, there's Twitter communism or internet communism. There's a lot of people who have, you know, the Soviet sickle in their names on Twitter or on their bios. And their identification with communism is, you know, they are left-leaning. They would probably really identify more as Marxist. You know, they are left-leaning. They would probably really identify more as Marxist,

but their use of communist iconography and things like that, it's much more related to meme culture. They're not full-on fucking Stalin, Lenin, Russian communism. You know what I mean Cold War Communism they're just like they're left wing and they are fetishising in a way communist iconography for it's mimetic value

and ironic humour on Twitter and what that carries as a cultural currency on Twitter, there's a lot of people like that in Ireland alone, loads, on Twitter. There's a lot of people like that. In Ireland alone. Loads. Especially students. It's a thing.

Like. What does that person do? If some Chad. In US customs is going. What's with all the communism on your fucking Twitter profile. You see a lot of people using. Again. For. You know. Internet. Ironic. Humor. Value. um you see a lot of people using again for you know the internet ironic humor value you'll see people talking for the guillotine you know

the guillotine is used an awful lot as a a memetic kind of phrase on Twitter people will say you know even about our own Irish politicians if the politicians will say are behaving in a very right wing fashion towards housing or things like that, people will ironically say on Twitter, give them the guillotine.

They don't literally mean chop the politician's head off, but within contemporary internet speak and meme culture to say the guillotine or communism it's just it's the extreme way that the internet wants you to speak but the person doesn't literally mean that and it's a codified language whereby other people within the community understand that if you say uh send such and such politician to the guillotine most people know they don't literally mean that what they mean is if this was in the Russian revolution this is the shit that would give that person the guillotine

but what they really mean is I don't like this person's policies it's making me so angry that I will ironically and performatively express my internet communism by saying I want this person beheaded and you will have certain people who go straight up going no I actually want them

beheaded but that tends to be the minority but these conversations are now going to have to happen with US fucking border security with some Chad, some American Chad who just hears the word fucking communism like I've a load of fucking you know they're Chad, some American Chad who just hears the word fucking communism like I have a load of fucking

you know they're gonna go right rubber bandits, why have you got a song called Up The Ra why do you have a song here with a load of views and the song appears to be espousing in quite positive terms the designated terrorist organisation, the IRA

why do you have this song um why do you have a load of videos where you're dressed up as the IRA why do you have so many tweets about the IRA and then I'm gonna try and have to have the conversation of well no when I say up the rah in that song it doesn't literally mean up the rah. What it is, is actually, it's kind of an iconic or an ironic juxtaposition of the power of that word and what it means to me as someone who kind of grew up after the Good Friday Agreement. I'm playing with the subtext of the word. I mean, specifically when I, you know, when the song says up the ra, I'm actually, I'm interrogating the meaning of that phrase as

it related to me as a young person who grew up in limerick who wasn't affected by the troubles as such and how up the rat in limerick when i was a teenager it was it it said more about masculinity and being hard and how you'd say up the rat and it would somehow mix in with Tupac it would mix in with Bob Marley and that's what I'm interested in and it's it's actually not even related to be honest to the IRA it's it's a different thing it's many layers of meaning within a culture relating to that phrase in fact if you direct your attention sir to the lyrics at the end of the song you'll notice that I say

that Quentin Tarantino, Dr. Dre and Uma Thurman are in the IRA they're not in the IRA I have no evidence to suggest that they are I also say here in this lyric that I want to chase the English queen around the field with dog shit on the end of a golf club and I use it with several layers of irony for the purpose of humor I don't know can

I effectively communicate that in secondary screening to a fucking border control officer from the US who doesn't understand or have access to the the semiotics and like I don't want to be explaining fucking post-modernism and then he goes let's look through your searches and he looks through my Google searches

and I'm someone who's very passionate about Irish history my grandad was in the IRA and I end up just looking like I'm in the RA and I don't have a defence I'm trying to say well no I'm looking like I'm in the RA and I don't have a defence. I'm trying to say well no I'm not I'm not in the RA and I'm not supporting the RA but why do you have this song called Up the RA and all these videos which you dressed as the RA and then all this search history

of you reading about the RA. I'm confused sir they're a designated terrorist organisation I don't want that conversation and that is now a conversation that could very well happen because of the social media screening and a little disclaimer as well because I don't want to be receiving angry emails from every single art college student in Ireland saying like, excuse me blind boy, but just because I use communist memes,

or because I have a sickle in my biography, that I'm not a communist, I am an actual communist. I believe you, fair play, I'm not calling bullshit on it, but what I'm talking about is if we'll say your fucking profile photo is you at a Christmas party wearing a red

jumper that says all I want for Christmas is the means of production with a big red Soviet sickle wearing a jumper that was made in Bangladesh in a sweatshop if that's the case I'm going to assume that your interaction with communism is for its memetic humour value on the internet.

There's a lot of that going on, that's what I'm talking about. Communist merchandise is, you know, it's a thing, it's quite popular. Jumpers, t-shirts with soviet iconography and people buy these things in fact i remember there was one facebook page at christmas and they were selling tons of communist merchandise in particular communist christmas jumpers and i i went onto their page specifically to ask where are your christmas jumpers made because i knew by the look of them they were cheap i fucking knew they probably were getting these from cheap labor and i asked where do you source your christmas jumpers i was blocked from the page so that's the thing that's happening. So anyone who's interacting with communism in that way,

where they're simultaneously wearing communist merchandise that might be made in sweatshops, you have to just assume that that person is either ignorant or really ironically performatively using communism for purely memetic value if you're an actual communist then i'm not calling bullshit on that i believe you and there are actual communists who also interact with the meme culture back to the u.s immigration issue and and me personally now as well and this this is just me being paranoid but it's also something i have to seriously entertain what frightens me specifically about that prospect right so number one like i think because

you know they would go through my social media handles and they would just go this guy's got a lot of followers right so that that's because that's we say x an exception for someone to rock up with half a million Facebook followers, 200,000 Twitter. That is exceptional enough to warrant, I think, secondary screening because you stick out like a sore thumb. So it's enough for them to go, right, what's the crack here? This is a person of influence. What is the nature of their influence and does it threaten the United States

that's what they'd say and I'm dragged into secondary screening right here is this is my fear what if so I'm dragged into secondary screening and there's some like I said any of my

experiences with US border agents have never been pleasant I have always encountered them to be very intimidating Like I said, any of my experiences with US border agents have never been pleasant. I have always encountered them to be very intimidating, not particularly nice, and a definite, I've always encountered a sense of sadism. of the border officer having a contemptuous pleasure in the power that they have and seeing the person

squirm, I've always gotten that vibe because of the way that they ask friendly questions in an aggressive way you know they'll come straight in with with something really aggressive such as um oh you're irish i see you're gonna you're gonna go you're gonna do a lot of drinking you're

gonna get drunk yeah but they'd say it like that it's not that funny paddywhackery thing it's it's they're almost trying to trigger you. They're deliberately saying. Oh you're going to get drunk. Passive aggressive stuff. I've always had that. So I can't imagine. What. I don't know. A fucking black or a brown person.

Has to put up with Jesus Christ. If I'm getting it. But. Here's my thing. So. Let's just say I'm brought into fucking secondary screening and there's this us agent going through my phone what if like they're just like a jealous contemptuous person and they look on my phone and they go who the fuck is this cunt with 200 000 followers on twitter who's this prick bet you he thinks he's great and then if he wanted that he could just open

my fucking twitter and delete my account you know on my phone I would have to provide them with actual access to go into these accounts on my phone that my fucking career depends upon

do you know what if they were like, oh he's a podcaster, and then they open up my laptop, and they log into Acast, and they just decide in that moment, as a personal thing, as a power thing, as a contempt thing, as someone who enjoys that type of power, they might just go, ah, the blind boy podcast, what's this? Okay, I'm in the dashboard of this now. I'm going to delete all these episodes. I think I'll just delete the blind boy account and eradicate this podcast and then just say, whoops, that was an accident. Like, that's a genuine fear that I have. I'm handing a person the power to do that if they want, and I have to hand them that power.

And what is stopping that person just being that malicious that they would just go, yeah, I'm going to delete their Twitter. 200,000 followers, bet they think they're great. Gone. Done. And then they go, sorry, what an accident, take it up with the US government, and like I said, that could mean being really paranoid, but that's a genuine fear I have, when I hand over my phone to someone like that, I'm handing them over the potential ability to really fucking ruin my career

if someone deleted like my all my podcasts which they could do if they had like had the laptop open and five minutes to do it or they could delete my twitter and then it's gone I'm giving someone that power and why would I do that and I don't think there would be any repercussions if that happened they'd just simply say I was exercising my right and my duty to protect the United States by analysing this person's social media

I was looking in at their account and I pressed a few things and then I accidentally deleted it and I'm really sorry and there's nothing I can do but I acted in the best interest of my country like what am I going to do oh sue him but it's like essentially it could be gone

I don't know but that makes me not want to go to America put it that way it's a frightening prospect and I say this as well like you know I'm saying that because that that's my personal fear and i'm being honest about it i i do say it with the acknowledgement of of

my privilege like you know my fear is oh jesus what if they deleted this podcast that would really hurt my career and my ability to earn a living but like you know if i was a person from i don't know yemen you know like i i i don't go into u.s customs i don't fear for my physical or personal safety i think you know my irishness and the fact that I'm Western keeps me safe from that. But someone from fucking Yemen. Someone from Afghanistan. You know they're worrying about is the wrong answer here just going to land me in Guantanamo. So I do say this with an awareness of my privilege around it you know.

So as not to come across as fucking. Oh God help poor old blind boy in his it you know so as not to come across as fucking oh god help poor old blind boy and his podcast you know I'm just self disclosing there I'm off to Canada next week I'm in Toronto and in Vancouver there's two live podcast gigs they sold out ages ago and we're doing two rubber

bandits gigs so I had planned on going to canada i i penciled it in in my diary as first week of july because back then i was thinking oh yeah i'm gonna have the book will be fucking done tv series will be done i'm gonna go over with mr chrome and dj willie or dj and we're gonna to have crack in Toronto and in Vancouver. It's not looking like that this time now. The two boys will have crack. They're going to have a fucking unbelievable time.

I won't. I'm going to be editing my book, possibly doing voiceovers for the BBC programme in my hotel room and also I'd love to do a podcast in Canada like I did in San Francisco where I recorded on the side of the street to get that nice I think I'll go for that I'm going to do the when the opportunity arises I'm going to try and do the kind of travel podcast type of thing where we've got that lovely ambience so i am looking forward to that but i don't think i'm going to be going on the lash with the boys which is

disappointing so chrome and dj william dj they will most definitely be partying and having crack but i'm going to be mr work unfortunately and yeah I don't even think I can chance going on the lash because I can't risk a hangover I'm gonna have to be doing the gig going home to bed getting up working really fucking hard so that that's a bit that's disappointing that is disappointing I have to say all right I haven't gone near the ocarina pause now, and I should have done it earlier, I'd say, but I was hooked into a bit of a rant. Okay, here's the ocarina pause. It's a Spanish clay whistle, because there may be an advert played.

I'll keep it low-fee. Sometimes this ocarina can be very harsh on the ears. On April 5th You must be very careful, Margaret It's a girl Witness the birth Bad things will start to happen Evil things of evil It's all for you

No, no, don't The first omen I believe the girl is to be the mother Mother of what? Is the most terrifying 666 believe the girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying six six six it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only in theaters april 5th rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can

also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. That was the Ocarina Pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. If you like the podcast, if you're listening for free um if you want to you can give me the equivalent of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month by going to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast that's where i earn a living it's where i earn an income it's what keeps me doing this podcast every week if you become a patron of this you are having a huge positive impact on my life and I

thank you so much so if you can afford it please consider it alright and also subscribe to the podcast and do you know what I've realised I've been telling people to subscribe to this fucking podcast on iTunes

for ages and iTunes I think iTunes has been gone off iPhones for about six months so iTunes doesn't exist anymore on phones

so if you have an iPhone if you're an Apple phone subscribe to this on the podcast app on your Apple phone if you're Android

Spotify Acast whatever leave a review of the podcast like it all that carry on alright that all helps yart Acast, whatever. Leave a review of the podcast. Like it. All that carry on, alright? That all helps.

Yart. You know, I genuinely, this week, I had not intended to end up speaking about the customs and immigration thing like this. That was supposed to be a brief introduction to this week's podcast where I was going to

I was going to answer more of your to this week's podcast where i was going to i was going to answer more of your questions this week because people were asking uh can you answer more questions so i was going to do that but i ended up on this whole rant and what what i'm realizing as i'm speaking about this situation with u.s immigration and needing to provide all your social media shit when you sign your ESTA form from now on what it's making me realise is that the Trump administration

and the border control that he's overseeing what they've actually done they've created what's called a panopticon and a panopticon is it's it's a type of it's a kind of a physical prison design but it's also a concept it's around i think it was the 18th or 19th century late industrial revolution when cities became overcrowded

and crime became a thing, this is something I spoke about on a previous podcast, when cities became large and with the industrial revolution crime became a big problem in society, so prisons became a thing and

they were putting people into prison, there was more and more prisoners so there was this fella Jeremy Bentham was his name he was like a philosopher, social reformer bit of an odd bastard to be honest but Jeremy Bentham he invented

a form of prison design which is still used today and this design of prison was known as pan optic on which means pan means all and optic on it means look so i think i would imagine it means all seeing so what a panoptic prison was and what they are is what they found with prisons that have all these prisoners in in a prison but they couldn't there was riots there was uh you know dissent in prisons and they needed that and prison guards weren't safe they needed to have prison guards watching the prisoners at all time so jeremy bentham came up with this idea which it was a means of control which is kind of psychotic and fucked up in a way so a panoptic

prison the panopticon is imagine a prison that's kind of circular right and in the center in the center of all the cells in the main floor there's one guard tower okay and basically the prisoners can't see the guard in the guard tower but the guard can see the prisoners whenever he whenever they want so what it does is the panopticon purpose of the panopticon is the prisoners never know if they're being watched or not the prison is Kilmainham jail was designed by Jeremy Bentham to be a panopticon so it means that you can fit all these prisoners like the inside of a barrel imagine all the cells are on the walls of this barrel and right down the center is a rod and on that rod there is a single guard. And that guard can look 360 degrees all around them.

But the prisoners do not know if the guard is looking at them. So what this did and what Bentham's purpose was with the Panopticon is you have a prison population who they never know if they're being watched or not. So they basically behave as if they are being watched. So it controlled their behavior. So prisoners basically said, well, I'm not going to misbehave because I can't tell if the guard is looking at me or not. And he might as well be.

So I'm going to behave as if he is. And it kind of reformed how prisoners behaved because they're just like, well, I'm being watched anyway. I'm not going to fuck around. It just won't bother. But it's also kind of, there's something about it a bit unsettling as well. Bentham was a lunatic. Jeremy Bentham, when he died, he put into his will that he would leave his vast fortune to some hospital but only if

they mummified his corpse right stuffed his corpse and left his dead fucking body at the head of the table of the board of directors in this hospital so if the hospital did this if they put his body in the on the fucking director's table and they would have meetings every day with a dead body at the end of the table, then he would leave his fortune. And they did. And Jeremy Bentham's corpse

was at the top of this hospital table for fucking years. In the 1920s, someone stole his head. You can go back to the hospital now and his body is in a glass case sitting on a chair it's not at the head of the table anymore so that's the type of lunatic you're dealing with there so he invented this panopticon that's what the us are doing that's what this is so most people i know listening to this podcast now they i guarantee you feel deeply uneasy at the prospect of going to the united states because it means that you know

you have to give them your facebook address your email address any email you used to have if you're caught lying there you go never allowed into the place again that's that's scamming immigration because of what we know with the relationship between the u.s government and we'll say the social media companies what was it called spectrum was it that big thing that edward snowden leaked but basically where google facebook were sharing data with the u.s government so if you give the the if your if your email goes onto your esta form they're going to run that through their system probably through this big data thing and they'll be able to see your internet search history they'll be able to like we we if you have a g, that means you're using Google Chrome. There's no escape in it, basically.

Right? So, this is why it's a panopticon. If you now are planning to go to America, any time in the future, and you know that you're going to have to submit your social media, you will now adjust your behaviour. Alright? We are fully entitled to criticize donald trump we're fully entitled if we want to be communists on twitter i'm entitled to make satirical songs about the fucking rah but now all of us are going to think twice about expressing our enacting our freedom to

criticize power we're going to think twice about it because we'll go nah how do i explain that to the fucking border security if they bring me in for secondary screening and how is this going to look that's a panopticon you don't know whether you're being watched or not so you adjust your behavior to accommodate and behave as if you are being watched anyway and what that does is it stops dissent do you know um and most people like no one's scared of like it this is what's fucked up about it most people when you say to them you know your data is being watched most people are kind of law-abiding and aren't really doing anything illegal and they just say well i have nothing to fucking hide right this is different because no one's scared of you know if i go to the us they'll they'll find out something illegal that's only a minority of people are worried about that what everyday people are going to be worried about is our phones are intimate our phones are about intimacy and dignity like i said this account of this american journalist two weeks ago who was brought in

for secondary screening when he returned from Mexico what triggered the guards is that they're going right here's an investigative journalist he's down in Mexico I think they were concerned that he was investigating the the human rights abuses that are going on right now at the US border in Mexico and what they're doing to poor fucking immigrants and children and I think the ice agents were paranoid that this journalist was investigating that so they figured fuck it i don't care if he's a u.s citizen we have the right because he's at the border to pull him in and to do whatever the fuck we want if we deem it to be within the interest of national security and that's what

they did so they subjected him to like they didn he wasn't, he knew he'd committed no crime. He had done nothing illegal. He wasn't afraid of going to jail. What they did is he felt humiliated. They went through photographs of his family. They went through hours and hours, text messages of him and his girlfriend him and his mother stuff that is private between you and another person that you are fully entitled to have as private our smartphones are like i said they're intimate and they're dignified and we should be

entitled to having the dignity of our private fucking personal conversations that have nothing to do with breaking laws they should be ours between the consent that you have between you and the person you're talking to and it's a humiliation thing it's a breaking of boundaries you don't want some like i don't know not even like i mean there's the obvious one of people have naked photographs of themselves intimate photographs of themselves on their phones 100 their entitlement it's normal it's healthy so there's going to be people shaking in their fucking boots going i don't want some man looking at my nudes and he has full permission and consent to do this while he is if i'm in secondary screening right so i know there's people worried about that Not even that. Just simply the invasive, strange violation of personal intimacy. That's a stranger viewing a private personal conversation between you and someone who's close to you.

People who are in relationships. They have arguments over text. You know, they work out some of the things they have arguments over text. You know, they work out some of the things in their relationships over text. They have heated arguments. Like, this is highly fucking private and they are entitled to look fucking through that. 100% entitled.

And when they bring people in for secondary screening, as this journalist was saying I can't think of his fucking name or the article that I read it but that's what they did it was the humiliation he experienced reading messages between him and his man him and his girlfriend looking at photographs of his family

stuff that's his content that he produces because he doesn't believe anybody else will ever look at it or need to and the entitlement to look at it and that's what he was subjected to and I think that's what fucking freaks most people out and

I think what it is is just this growing policy of American isolationism, it's the Trump government going we don't want you I don't give a fuck if you're a tourist don't come here fuck off and most people will go yeah i don't i don't care it's i know las vegas is a load of crack but it's not that much fucking crack it's it's it's a closing of the borders through ideological means to create the panopticon. And that's just us who aren't US citizens.

So I think if you're not a US citizen, you know, when you apply for your ESTA, you have to give your social media details on the form. I think US citizens, they don't have to provide, they don't, well, they wouldn't have to sign a form, first of all, because they're citizens. They just have their passports but they're fully entitled at their discretion to bring in any u.s citizen they want and look through their phones and laptops for whatever reason with no explanation and then let them go free you know and it's the abuse of fucking power and you have to think of the the type of person who is then scouted for this job like if i it would make me feel deeply deeply uncomfortable to go through someone's private messages to view stuff that isn't from my eyes and to do it in the presence of the person and knowing how uncomfortable it makes them feel i that would make me feel terrible and i think it would make most people feel terrible if there's something at a very human

level about boundaries and respect that just the normal response to that is to feel a little bit queasy you know to invade a stranger's privacy like that or someone you knew to go I'm gonna look through all these messages that you just had there with your friend about a bunch of private shit that's none of my business that makes me queasy so in order to get this job you have to be fucking totally cool with it

not only cool with it you have to seek it out so it serves sadists, people who get off on power and probably people who who get off on power and probably people who fucking get off on sexual power because

like are you telling me that there's not going to be some fucking agent who's bored and he's there at security and a woman comes up and he goes, I like the look of her. Let's have a look through her phone. I wonder what photograph she has in there.

Like that has to happen. And all that person has to do is just say, I had reason to believe. Whatever suspicion, I just had reason to believe. And I had a look and that's fine. I let them go. It turned out I was wrong, but I had reason to believe that's fine i let them go it turned out i was wrong but i had reason to believe that i was suspicious and the other thing it does too for u.s citizens again in terms of the panopticon like the u.s city like it's it's it serves the narcissism of donald trump donald trump's biggest biggest fear is is

being criticized that's what he hates more than fucking anything he cannot handle any degree of criticism he is obsessed with criticism he is obsessed with people who talk shit about him online now americans who leave their country and come back have to worry about will they pick me out will they go through my phone and will they find the trump tweets and if they find the tweets where they're anti-trump they're not going to get arrested they're entitled to do it they have freedom of speech to do it but the agents are also entitled to essentially harass them invade their privacy subject them to humiliation and if they choose like they did with uh this journalist I just I pulled it up here because I've been talking about this article too fucking much and I haven't told you what it is the article is on a website called

The Intercept, The Intercept were I think they were the people that Edward Snowden contacted with the leaked files, Intercept are pretty good and so The Intercept and the name of the article is I'm a journalist but I didn't fully realise the terrible power of US border

officials until they violated my rights and privacy, it's a long name for a fucking article but it's a shocking read but yeah so US citizens are now fearful of random subjection to humiliation invasion of privacy

and also like they did to this journalist tracking they take a serial number from the inside of your phone and this effectively means you can be tracked at any time and i don't know the ins and outs of it but it doesn't just stop with that phone it can continue on leading to you being tracked forever and they can have access to your data and all this stuff that they can do if they believe that you are someone who deserves to be

flagged and they don't have to fucking account for any of this shit that's the thing all this started with george bush and his patriot act shit after 9-11 the stripping away of basic human rights if national security is deemed to be at risk and that's where the NSA program came from it's where PRISM came from basically that the protection of the US homeland security comes first and that comes first and privacy and dignity comes second so therefore the government is allowed to have access to all your data and whatever they want in the US it's fucked up

and it's a panopticon so I suppose that's what this week's fucking podcast was about because I'm after talking about it for an hour even though I had no intention of that being the thing but I guess it was something that was just on my fucking mind and I had enough to. I cared about it enough to talk about it for an hour.

Um. Before I go. I'll answer. I'll answer one question anyway. If there's time for a second one. I will fucking answer it. Alright. Paddy asks.

What is on your mind? Um. Well. All that shit there for the last. 60 minutes was on my mind there Paddy but I'll tell you what I was thinking about earlier em there's this

bizarre connection between Barack Obama and Star Trek right now I've I don't have much interest in Star Trek I never really got into it but this weird thing emerged on the internet today. And it's a theory about Obama's presidency and Star Trek, basically.

So what it said is that there was loads of different Star Trek series, right? Now, what interests me is not this specific story but it's this Star Trek story as it relates to Obama and a second one so the theory is that Star Trek Voyager it came out in the 90s it was a pile of shit people didn't really

like it okay but it was about to get cancelled and then they brought in this actress Jerry Ryan and she played an android or a cyborg called Seven of Nine. And when Geri Ryan came on the show, she was very good looking, whatever, she was a great actress. The ratings went through the roof and as a result, it kept getting commissioned. This Star Trek Voyager got commissioned for several seasons because of the character seven of nine and the actress jerry ryan who played her and anyway so she was so busy uh playing this part on deep on on fucking star trek voyager

jerry ryan the actress was she was so busy with this role that it interfered with her marriage, right? It ended up fucking up her marriage with her husband, Jack Ryan. And as a result of that, their marriage, it ended in divorce in 1999, right? But Jack Ryan was a Republican nominee. He was a Republican,

he was a senator, a nominee to be a senator in Illinois and during the campaign, right Jack Ryan's divorce settlement and things to do with his divorce ended up leaking into the public

and it caused, and things to do with his sex life, it caused a scandal, right, and this scandal basically caused him to pull out of the race but because he dropped out of the race it left a space open for a young politician who was just kind of on the scene barack obama and he won that senate seat with a landslide but basically the reason barack obama had the opportunity to become a senator in in and i in 2004 when he was only would have been in his early 30s the reason that happened was because jack ryan had to pull out of the race because specifically because of his divorce with jerry ryan who played seven of nine in star

trek voyager so therefore the star trek voyager can be seen as directly responsible for the rise of barack obama now that came out today and people are talking about on the internet i've the only reason i'm mentioning that is i remember and i can't find any fucking evidence for it on the internet anymore for some reason but barack obama is is a known star trek fan and i remember when he first came on the scene in 2008. Apparently Barack Obama. He used to write Star Trek Deep Space Nine fan fiction. Barack Obama in his spare time. Used to write episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

And apparently that was so strange and odd that the CIA or whoever wiped any evidence of first off any of the fan fiction that Barack Obama wrote about Deep Space Nine and from what I can see it's either that or the Mandela Effect. I clearly, clearly remember about 2008, 2009, reading about Barack Obama writing Star Trek Deep Space Nine fan fiction and me finding that weird and hilarious. And now when I search for it online, I can't find any evidence of it. I can find, there is evidence thatama is a known trekkie he is a known huge fan of star trek but any indication that he used to write star trek deep space nine

fan fiction that's gone and so is the fan fiction so i think yeah I think it was taken down it was taken off the internet by either the Democrats or the CIA because it was just too weird for the time I mean now it would be fucking fine because you've got Trump who has you know

multiple allegations of sexual assault against him that no one seems to give a fuck about but back then in 2008 i guess a president taking time out to write star trek fiction is just a little bit too strange for him to be president richie asks what do you think of euthanasia um i'm i'm a i i support euthanasia I absolutely support euthanasia I do think it's a bit silly that it's illegal people should be entitled

to terminate their fucking life if they're seriously people who are fucking seriously ill people who get diagnosed with cancer people who don't have anything to live for should be entitled to

make a dignified choice about their own body to terminate their life if that's what they want to do I think that I'm okay with that it's none of my fucking business I often don't see the point of that's business i often don't see the point of that's not fair not don't see the point that that's a bit i don't mean it that way what i mean is i struggle with i struggle to understand the purpose of someone having to suffer just because okay i struggle to understand why as a society

we have to just go that person is going to lead a very very miserable existence until they die naturally okay and a lot of the time too look I ask people who work in palliative care some time some palliative care is almost euthanasia to an extent you know they will you can tell like

they'd administer like an awful lot of opioids they'll stop feeding the person food. I think some palliative care is about reducing suffering and accelerating death, but it's not full-on euthanasia. I don't want to get into it because there's a whole other thing with how do you deem whether a person is able to consent to their own euthanasia that's a separate podcast but in general i believe people should have the right to die with dignity and to die without fucking going through unnecessary misery and

pain if that's where they want to fight if that's how they want to fucking do it, I don't see a problem with that, you know, I think it's humane to offer people that agency, alright, God bless, I'm fucking wrecked, it's half three here when I'm recording this,

because I spent the whole day, like I said, working with my editor, and then I had to do a bit of writing so i'm running off my feet i have to be up straight in the morning again for tomorrow i'm up doing writing in the morning and then i'm off to london to work with bbc so busy bye right have a good one bye Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so so rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first

ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.