It Could Happen Here Weekly 22

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 packaged 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 gonna be nothing new here for you. But you
can make your own decisions. It's Oregon. You don't get

(00:27):
to consent. That's how you open up the podcast. That's right, baby,
look up one party consent laws for recording recording. Um,
this is it could happen here a podcast about when
you can legally record people without their consent. Hint always
in the state of Oregon. Um, I'm Robert Evans. We're

(00:51):
talking about bad things, good things, things that are good
and bad, all that stuff. Who what do we you
know what? You know what we should talk about? You
know what no one has talked about ever on the
internet lately. Josephine Robinette Rogan. Oh, I've never heard of him.

(01:13):
What does he do well? He has a podcast? If
you heard a podcast, Garrison, I'm unfamiliar, but just I'll
just go with it. Yeah. Well, it's like the radio,
but easier to spread disinformation, um and also sexier for
reasons that are hard to explain. Uh. And Joe Rogan

(01:33):
gets on his podcast and he says a lot of
stuff that people think is bad, and then everybody gets
angry at him, and then he makes more money. And
today we're going to talk about how maybe we could
handle this problem differently, maybe we could not do the
same thing over and over and there's quite a different result. Yeah,
and upfront, obviously we're talking about him. We're trying to

(01:54):
talk less about specifically what he said and more about
kind of the problem he represents in the ways in
which there was sponses people have aren't having the results
they desire. We're gonna avoid using his name in the
title of the episode or the description because that doesn't
feed into the algorithm kind of in the same way.
But yeah, Garrison, you want to kick us off here. Yeah,
I've been watching the Rogan thing online and be getting

(02:16):
kind of frustrated because of the way the discourse is going,
and it's just repeating the same loops that we see
every few months and nothing really changes. And Regan just
gets more popular, so earlier this month or like a
middle of I guess it was closer to like January. UM,
there was like a group of like two dred seventy doctors,
healthcare workers, UM and scientists who are campaigning for Spotify

(02:39):
to adopt a missuformation policy. UM. This was prompted by
a few episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast that we've
already actually talked about, UM about Dr Robert Malone and
someone else who said some stupid things about the pandemic. UM.
So I write when when I when we talked about

(02:59):
these eisodes this last time, I tried to actually talk
about what these doctors were doing and let not focus
on Rogan himself, but specifically what these doctors were doing
and their ideology, because I didn't want to add to
the whole Rogan side of the discourse. UM. And you know,
for for this, for this, like a letter that that
these doctors sent to Spotify, if they were not really

(03:20):
advocating for Rogan to be removed from the platform, UM
or even for episodes to be removed, just to have
Spotify clarify their guidelines regarding medical misinformation, because you know,
and it's important to note that Joe Rogan has a
exclusivity contract with Spotify. He does not work for them,
but Rogan gets paid a lot of money to get

(03:42):
his podcast only published on Spotify's feed. So it's it's
not it's it's it's it's like a it's a it's
a weird kind of set up, and it can give
a lot of like gray area for like, does Spotify
count that's as publisher or not. You're like, well, not really,
because they could he could also just end that contract
and post to this podcast everywhere. Um, I mean I

(04:02):
think it would take there. There's probably some sort of
exclusive time limit on the exclusivity agreement, etcetera. Um, because
it it is, it is mixed because they did recently
when it came out that he said the inn word
a whole bunch of times, Spotify removed those episodes. So
there's a degree to which they they have acted as
a publisher. Yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff to
kind of talk about this on the So the letter

(04:25):
gwent kind of viral and it prompted this whole kind
of thing in the middle of January, but like deleting
your Spotify subscription and then we had musicians, most uh,
most popularly, Neil Young decides to remove all their music
from the Spotify platform, um as like a performative thing,
being like, Okay, if Spotify is gonna host all this
medical misinformation, we're going to remove this as protest. Now.

(04:48):
Of course, Neil Young then just signed an exclusivity deal
with Amazon, so oh great, cool. We yes, episode the
Bastion of moral purity. Yeah, and they're not. I mean,
I think they are probably pay a better rate because
Spotify is pretty much at the bottom to musicians, but
I don't think it's good. Um, I think Napster actually

(05:08):
has the best rate, doesn't the best rate, which I
mean also, if you want to be actually moral, just
just just use band camp. But I mean I use
Spotify because it's really easy, and that's why Spotify works.
It's because it's super it is. It is a well
made product. That does not mean it's an ethical product,
but it does. It does the thing that it's supposed
to do quite well. So so yeah, it basically We've

(05:29):
had endless discourse since then about Joe Rogan about Spotify
is the platform, talking about how bad Spotify is, which yes,
it is bad, talking about how you know how bad
Joe Rogan is. And you know the thing is, Joe
Rogan already had the most popular podcast in the world
his exclusivity deal with Spotify, and he's currently estimated to
bring in eleven million listeners per episode of his podcast. Yeah,

(05:50):
for for some reference, UM, Behind the Bastards is one
of the largest podcasts out there. Um, and he's on
average something like ten times our traffic. Uh. Like it's
and it's not, He's not. He's not just the most
popular podcast. He helped invent what podcasting podcast? He was
one of the first, and like he had a foundational

(06:10):
role in how the entire industry works. Since this letter
and since he's episodes, there's been a whole lot of
discourse around if Spotify should remove Joe Rogan from the platform, Um,
if they should cancel his deal. You know, a lot
of people calling on Spotify to do that. A lot
of people are calling on Spotify to remove certain episodes,
and Spotify has not been teen too so like, but
let's and I know, Joe Rogan himself did actually authorize

(06:32):
the removal of a certain amount of episodes, which for
reasons we'll talk about later. Um, but what's all this
discourse and outrage and articles and tweets actually doing to
Spotify into Rogan? Okay? In my opinion, kind of the
end result is actually very similar to all of the
free advertising that companies get whenever they make awoke statement
that infuriate, that infuriates the actionary right, you know, resulting

(06:54):
in throwing your kel out your window, flushing your Gillette
blade down the toilet, and burning your nikes. And it's
even widely speculated and kind of like a known fact
that companies will use progressive statements and policies to drum
up this outrage um to give their company and product
tons of free advertising and just to get the brand
name itself in the side consumers heads. And this is

(07:15):
definitely happening. Was was Rogan and Spotify in terms of
outrage being used as advertising. It may not be intentional,
but that is what the result is. Yeah, And I
mean it's very uh. It's it's both sides like to
make fun of the other for doing this, like folks
on the left like to make fun of their right
when they're when they're breaking their carriggs or whatever. Um,

(07:38):
But you know, it happens. It's equally profitable for both sides.
You just do the opposite, you know, you have someone
come on and talk about how they're a truth teller
being canceled, and they get a bunch of attention money
and and it works equally well both ways, pretty much. Yeah,
So with Spotify and Rogan in the news every day
for the past like three weeks, the the the end

(08:01):
is that like the fact that it's just that people
are hearing these names in their head more often, and
they're probably subconsciously gonna use Spotify more often because you know,
despite a few people that might cancel their subscriptions, the
net effect will be more listeners who seem to Spotify
because there because the name is in my subconscious it's
it's it's in there. And all the effect it's gonna
have on Rogan is giving him a way more publicity

(08:23):
to attract new listeners, and and it's listeners who themselves
are like attracted to unconventional ideas outside the mainstream, and
his more passive listeners are gonna like double down on
him because there's gonna be like the backfire effect, so
they will like feel defensive and then become more of
a fan of his. Because he's seen as a cultural outsider,
even though he's not an outsider. He is the mainstream,
he's the biggest podcaster in the world, but he's seen

(08:45):
as a cultural outsider. So you know, he like brings
on guests who say things that they're not supposed to say.
You know, so, who's actually going to be convinced by
all this outrage to not listen to Rogan via pointing
out all the wrong things he's said and all the
slurs he's used, Like, is that really going to stop
fans from listening to Joe Rogan. It's the same thing
really pointing out that Donald Trump illegally took classified documents.

(09:08):
It's like, yeah, I mean that's fucked up and ship,
but like he's never going to get charged with crimes
and none of his supporters care. You're the only people
who are angry about this, and it doesn't matter because
the people you vote for aren't going to punish him,
So like, just you know, chill out a little bit.
It's like all of the outrage is simply inflating the
importance of jo Rogan on like an entire cultural level.

(09:31):
It's that he's becoming he's becoming more important to his fans,
more important to his haters, and more important to himself
and Spotify as an asset because he generates a lot
of exclusive listeners and news coverage and buzz around the
Spotify brand. And it's important to talk about like so
you have broadly speaking within the field of entertainment, like

(09:52):
digital entertainment in particular, you have like two ways that
you can grow your audience. One of them is organic growth,
which is know, I listened to Garrison's podcast, I like it.
I tell a friend about Garrison's podcast. They like it.
They tell a friend about Garrett that that's like organic,
you know, it's very natural. That's purely the kind of
quality of the content UM reaching people. And then there

(10:14):
is in organic growth, which is can be the result
of like ad campaigns can be the result of UM
an algorithm. Often in today we're talking about like oh,
Twitter or Facebook prioritizes this kind of content. So like
something article on bright Barred about black on white crime
that would have been read ten thousand times ten years
ago gets read a million times because it spreads well
on this platform for reasons that aren't organic UM. And

(10:39):
with Joe Rogan, one of the reasons why because we
can talk about like d platforming, if you want to
talk about like Alex Jones for example, or Meloianopolis, good
case that d platforming really reduced both of their reaches. Now,
Milo uh pretty much wiped out as a person who
mattered in terms of the dispoce thank christ. Alex Jones
less so. Um, it definitely hurt his busines this and

(11:00):
it reduced his reach. But by the time Facebook and
Twitter and whatnot started throttling him, he he had already
inorganically increased his reach enough that like he's able to,
he had he had a large a large enough audience
to stay somewhat relevant and keep going. The thing about
Joe Rogan is he did not get famous and popular
in organically. I'm sure there was some degree of that

(11:21):
on like social media, but most of his growth before that.
Like people like him, Like whatever you think of him,
he's a good broadcaster. That's That's the thing. Even though,
like you know, for all this research, I don't like him.
He says horrible things, But you know, I was watching
I watched all of like Rogan's like um, like uh
Instagram videos he made like a few ten minute things
talking about the outrage, and it's it sucks because when

(11:43):
you listen to him, he's like a really good talker.
He's very good at what he does. Yeah, he's very
good at like generating sympathy and generating like good card
Like It's it sucks because yeah, I wanted to like
hate this person, but I'm like listening to him talking
about this issue like oh wow, yeah, like you actually
have a decent grasp of what's going on here. UM,
And that's he is, not he part of he gets

(12:05):
some of his money from playing like a dumb, chill
stoner dude, but he's not dumb. He's definitely a stoner.
He's not a dumb man. He's very intell. He's very
good at what he does. UM. One of the things
we don't kind of talk about enough when we talk
about media that I think is important to note is
that UM being likable in a professional sense is a skill.

(12:26):
And it's a skill like any technical skill. It's like
knowing how to how to how to farm or weld. UM.
It is a thing that you build on over time.
It is a thing that UM takes a lot of
trial and error and a lot of education to get right. Uh,
it is a thing that Joe Rogan has been doing
for longer than a significant chunk of the people on

(12:47):
this show, including Garrison, have been alive. Uh. It's like
like I've been like this is this is more or
less been my job for like thirteen or fourteen years,
and it is like a skill that you build and
the thing that he is really good at is making
but want to listen to him. And so if you
were to say, kick him out of Spotify tomorrow, yeah,
it's it's entirely possible that his that that would increase

(13:09):
the number of people who when there's there's a case
to be made that Spotify has limited his maximum audience,
limiting him to Spotify as opposed to if he was
just any app he wanted to be on, maybe it'd
be twenty million, you know, listening to every exactly. Yes,
Like even if did even a Spotify did drop him
because of all these you know, outrage you know, and
all the tweets and all of the petitions, even if

(13:31):
they did drop him, he would probably not only gain
more listeners due to the outrage porn and and free
speech advocates, but also with his exclusivity ending help his
podcast will just be available and more platforms and more
people who will to listen to him, like really easily.
So yeah, he's only going to grow if people get
what they want. And like that makes you think, like this,

(13:52):
this outrage isn't actually meant to get the Joe Rogan
Joe Rogan problem taking care of, Like it's this, This
actually isn't about stop being misinformation. It's this, This isn't
actually about having they're being less fans of Joe Rogan.
All those outrages about making you feel better because you
feel like you're doing something right, Like bad thing is

(14:12):
happening in the world, and it's easier to pretend like
your actions are hurting it than it is to accept that,
like maybe there's nothing I can do about this right now. Yeah,
it would be a really nice world if the Cho
Rogan problem could be solved so easily by Spotify dropping
his exclusivity deal, right, that would that would be great,
But that's not the world we live in. And tricking

(14:33):
yourself into thinking that is just kind of delusional. Um,
And like yeah, it makes you feel better, but like
that's not actually helping because like, yeah, we can obviously
compare this to other like D platforming campaigns with people
for like Alex Jones. But you know, Jones was way
more niche and way more extreme around the time of
his like D platforming campaign, and his campaign wasn't about
ending exclusivity deals. It was about getting him off of

(14:55):
popular platforms altogether. And that's not happening with Joe Rogan
because Joe Logan isn't saying the things that are going
to get him booted from platforms. He's smart, he knows
what he can and cannot say. He's not He's not
dumb enough to get banned from these platforms, right and also,
you know he's a giant financial asset, so they wouldn't
bend him anyway. But like he's he's what he's doing
is bringing on people who say horrible things to continue

(15:19):
a cultural conversation, which gets him in the headlines and
gives a platform like Spotify a whole bunch of room
to cry free speech and get away with it. Removing
Alex Jones could be seen as like a monetary decision
in and of itself, because it is actually removing liability.
But this is this isn't really the case for Rogan. Yeah,
and he's um, yeah, it's just not. One of the

(15:40):
problems is that this kind of does fly in the
face of a lot of what people want to think.
And I don't want to be making the case that
it's as black and white it is, because, for example,
I'm not saying that it was bad for someone to
go through the effort of finding and pointing out, Hey,
there's like seventy episodes where Joe Rogan drops the inn word,
um and getting those polls. I don't think that I

(16:00):
think that that was broadly speaking, a productive thing. But
keeping Joe Rogan at the forefront of the outrage cycle
is doing nothing but printing money for the guy. And
that's that's not an easy thing to deal with because
it's like, do you want me to just like stay
quiet in the face of injustice? And it's like, no,
that's not what I want you to do. But I

(16:21):
do want you to recognize that there are times in
ways of speaking up that are just yes, putting putting
gasoline on an injustice fire. It's it's important to remember
that d platform ng is just a tactic, and and
single tactics aren't always effective in every situation. That's what
makes them a tactic, right, Like, in order for a
tactic to work, you need to understand the scenario that's

(16:43):
are applying the tactic to and seeing if that tactic
achieves the goal. And if it doesn't, great, But if
it doesn't, you need to choose other tactic and stop
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
a new result. And this is one of those situations
where like when you bring up, hey, maybe nothing might
be the best thing, at least for for most people
specifically to do. Like the thing that gets brought up

(17:03):
is like, well do you not want me to uh?
Or like, well, what do you suggest I do? Like
you know, you're saying I shouldn't do this, but you're
not telling me what to do. And it's like, well,
it's like if somebody gets shot in the leg and
one person has a tourniquet and the other person has
a bunch of razor blades that they want to throw
in their eyes, and it's like, well, what do you
want me to do? All I have is these razor blades.

(17:24):
This is the only other thing I can do? Then
just stand by and do nothing. And it's like, well,
in this case, doing nothing is the best thing to do,
because it's it's not that's not going to help the problems.
Boycotts of this scale kind of only tend to benefit
brands and businesses, right like, because if if if the
brand of business is a person is smaller in more
niche like and say like Alex Jones or Richard Spencer,

(17:45):
right then yes, these tactics about boycotts can really work
to push things out of the cultural like market and
also in some cases in terms of businesses like the
literal market. But when you're dealing with things like Target, Nike,
and Joe Rogan, that's not the case because those brands
are way too big. Any any you know, any conservative
boycott against Target isn't going to have that effect. It

(18:06):
will probably make weird liberals be like, oh, I'm gonna
go to Target now because the conservatives don't want me to.
It's so like it's I don't It's not it's it's like,
it's the problem is It's like Joe Rogan himself isn't
really the problem either. You know, a lot of the
problem can be seen more as like content algorithms that
boost and reward misinformation and disinformation and conspiracism, and that's

(18:28):
more of like an actual issue at hand here. Joe
Rogan is just a business. That's how he hears about
a lot of these people. Yeah, I go viral somewhere else.
And in a lot of cases it's an inorganic thing
that brings them in front of them. It's some fucking
algorithm that and and that is a case where you
can target and work on deep exact form and it
can be more productive that that. That was, That was
what that was what I was getting again, It's like

(18:48):
Joe Joe Rogan himself was just a visible outgrowth of
the core problem. And the core problem is these things
getting onto his show in the first place. So yeah,
we can't stop his show, but maybe we should do
more work to prevent to like figure out ways to
do you know, start using these tactics to prevent algorithms
from boosting these things so that Jojo can sees them
and then and then invites them on. And yeah, that's

(19:10):
a lot more work than just being angry at Spotify.
And yet maybe it will actually do something. And one
thing that can do something is with spot and it
won't work if it's just Spotify. But I am one
of those people who thinks that maybe it's not the
worst thing if things like Spotify are seen as publishers
and thus when they spread misinformation that leads to disastrous

(19:31):
health consequences, UM, they can be held liable. Right. Uh,
that's not the worst possible change, although it is a
problematic one. I don't want to like boil that down
to a simple question, but I think that's an avenue
that should be explored, because I don't see that there's
a lot of difference in Spotify choosing to let something
go to air or The New York Times printing misinformation. UM.

(19:55):
And in fact, Spotify is going to reach more people
because nobody cares what The New York Times says anymore. Yeah,
so Spotify. The Spotify CEO did kind of address the
ongoing controversy around the you know, internal publishing stuff and
how they view medical misinformation. UM. They did adopt a
clarified policy that prohibits content that promotes dangerous, false, or

(20:16):
dangerous deceptive medical information which may cause offline harm or
pose a direct threat to public health. UM. And then
the post also announced that a Spotify would add content
advisories to any content related to COVID on the platform,
Twitter and Instagram have Um No, it's not, it's not.
It's not. Actually it's not. But if you have the operation,

(20:38):
if you can again, if there is like an actual
dollar consequence to companies that aired massive disinformation, um, then
you're not without sort of making Joe Rogan the focus.
You can make it so that the people that he
actually is accountable to, which is the people who make
him give him the money that he gets, how a

(21:00):
vested interest in tamping down on the worst excesses that
he's responsible for, Like that might have an impact. I
don't know, Like part of the problem is that. And
one thing we should acknowledge here when we're talking about
like what would work better than what's being done, This
is a pretty new problem. Versions of it have existed before,
but without the Internet and without podcasts being what they are,

(21:22):
this is a pretty new thing to be dealing with.
And I'm not I don't I'm not saying like this
is here's the obvious solution to this, But I think
we are trying to point out, like what folks are
doing doesn't work. The tactics being applied are not effective,
and we should be exploring other opportunities to mitigate this harm.
That are not well, I guess it's time to delete
another app and post about it on Twitter. Yeah. I

(21:46):
think I think this is especially a thing with like
because like one of the other things that that's been
popping up as broken's like weapons great transphobia. So yeah, jeesus,
and that's that stuff us is horrifying. Like the racism
is also like really bad. He's extremely sexist. But it's
like I think misogynists racist all there's a lot of

(22:07):
money and being that dude. Yeah, well, and I think
this is sort of you know, this, this is you know,
this is an inherent problem for the left because fighting
it like this this kind of sort of like shock
truck information stuff works better like that that rage economy
works better for the right thing does for the left.

(22:28):
And I think in some ways that means like you
have to fight them in other spaces, like you know,
you you can't just like keep throwing yourself. It's the
same thing with like so why why why you don't
have just like one line where you just run into
a bunch of cops over and overget in one spot, right, like,
but we have certainly try. Yeah. Yeah, it's like some
folks gave the old college, the old college. Yeah, like

(22:51):
you know, it's like in some in some sense, yeah,
like it's it's it's it's it's hard to be too
hard on these on people who doing this, and it's
like I think they're doing the right thing. But it's
like you have to you have to pick your battles.
And you know, if if you're taking a fight that's fair,
like that's a that's a bad fight, that is a
bad fight for you. You you you need you need
to be fighting them in different spheres. You need to

(23:14):
be you know, I mean, working for example, on stuff
like tech regulation, like you like working on you know,
unionizing these places, right like fighting purely finding them in
information space, we will lose every time. The advantage that
we have is that we also do other things. And
it's it's you know, we're we're going to keep losing
hearing if you know, if we keep fighting them in

(23:36):
exactly the same way here, we're going to keep losing.
So we have to you know, like we we we
we we have to fight in other places. And that's
hard and it sucks because you know, this is such
a misspart of just what reality is now is you know,
yelling people online, but like, you have to stop doing
that because it's not not not. The problem is that

(24:00):
we've all gotten fucking caught for quite some time in
this escalating culture war, and it's not. It's not a
battleground that can be entirely ignored because when you kind
of seed ground them, they create conspiracy theories about trans
people attacking kids that lead to them murdering people in
the streets, or they spread conspiracy theories about masks that

(24:21):
lead to them occupying Ottawa. Um. So it can't. The
culture war battleground cannot be ignored. But at the end
of the day, what we should rather than just like
seeking new ways to engage with it, because the more
you engage with it, and it is sometime necessary to
engage with but the more you engage with it, the
stronger you make this whole thing and the heavier it
lies on all of us like a cloud. And in

(24:44):
the only real way to actually win in the long
run is to find a way to get off of that,
to get out of this like this fucking treadmill of
bullshit that has become everything all consuming, and it's it's
in a lot of people best interest for it to
stay all consuming um and I there's a there's a

(25:05):
lot that's going on here, because it's not I think
sometimes when you criticize people for the actions they take
in situations like this, they kind of interpreted as you saying, well,
like you're stupid and you fucked up and never should
have liked done this, and and the way I think
of it as more like this is a we have
found ourselves trapped in a really messy situation and no

(25:27):
one has figured out how to get out. So it's
not a situation of like people are are dumb for
having done something that's not effective. It's a situation of
we are all trying to figure out what works in
this new world we have kind of somewhat accidentally somewhat
purposefully built for ourselves, and it is important to have
humility and be willing to accept it, like, you know what,

(25:49):
that's not working and we have to stop doing the
thing that's not working, rather than you know, treat it
as if it's sort of a moral failing that something
we we we tried was not effective. The last thing
is it's like, really, it's it's not just the non effectiveness,
but also the the idea that the fact that this
outrage is said, just a constant is just a constant

(26:11):
free bannerad for Spotify every everywhere online is like also
not great. So it's not it's not even not not
even just not effective. But you're just giving a corporation
tons of free press. And maybe we can reframe the
way we approach these things so that we don't do that,
because in the end, that's just kind of adding to
promoting the misinformation. That's kind of that's all that's kind

(26:33):
of really doing. And it's not, that's not nearly as
you know, impactful as you know, just Rogan doing it himself,
but it's still is it still is a contributing factor
and and and it it does contribute to the backfire
effect of people who listen to his podcast. Maybe people
who like don't even but they're still gonna get defensive
over him because they're seeing this attack on him. And
even though he's even though he is a huge figure,

(26:55):
he's seen as an outsider. So that that really does
contribute to that back backfire fact thing of getting people
more and more vested in him as a content creator.
But yeah, it's really dumb, But the thing we need
to deal with it it's it's a version of the
lesson people still didn't learn with Trump, which is that like,
you can't you can't beat these people by dunking on them.

(27:18):
It doesn't matter that Joe Rogan said something dumb. It
doesn't matter that Joe Rogan is inconsistent, it doesn't matter
that like Joe Rogan has tells lies or whatever. That's
not going to change anybody's mind about the dude, because
it's not about Joe Rogan. They don't support him because
they love They support him as much as anything. The
people who are at least engaging, primarily online about it,

(27:40):
Most of his fans are just don't think about any
of this because they're not as online as the rest
of us. But the people who are kind of engaging
with this and helping to fuel the culture war side
of this thing, they don't care there this This isn't
about his inherent characteristics. This is about it's a chance
to dunk on the enemy. Um, So you're not going

(28:00):
to convince them of anything ever. That's all I had
to say on this. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, because again,
I really I really resisted writing this episode for a
long time because I didn't want to add to the
Rogan discourse. But after a while, the Rogan discourse itself
became worth talking about. How we talk so because it

(28:22):
is more of a meta angle, like, okay, that is
actually worth talking about. But yeah, I am so tired
of hearing, watching, and seeing the words still Rogan. Yeah,
I'm exhausted by it. I hate that. Like it's a
bigger story in the United States than the gigantic war
that might break out in Eastern Europe. Um, it's it's

(28:44):
just just a very frustrating time and the only way
to win this particular game is not to play. Um.
So that's that's why we're doing this. We're not going
to stick his name in the description or the episode title.
Um yeah it is. You know. The title we were
working with this under that we're not going to use

(29:04):
so as to not feed into the algorithm was Joe
Rogan the Egregor And that is really how I think
about it. If you if you haven't listened to our
episode on the book about the Flat Earth, book on
Behind the Bastards that talks about as Um and eggs,
it's basically a god that is made up by the
kind of directed thoughts of a population of people. Yeah,

(29:25):
it's like a costalt deity that exists, like this thought
form that if people put energy into it, it almost
gains its own it's it's own like um um independence
from the people that that like burst it, even though
it is just like a thought form and it because
it was just an idea or presence, and now it
basically is its own god that's self sustaining and it

(29:47):
can impact the world. Yeah, global capital is an egregor
And and the more that people kind of feed into
the discourse around Joe Rogan, the more he turns into
one kind of outside of his own actions, he this
idea of him has an influence on everything around us.
And boy, we don't need that, do we certainly did not.

(30:10):
Just said we just put that one down, right, try
something else. Yeah, let's throw a brick at your sheriff instead.
This will go better for you. I mean sure, sure, Chris, Yeah, Chris,
Chris said it, not me. Yeah, I mean obviously in
Minecraft he said bricks. It's fine. Robert Robert, Robert Robert.

(30:32):
It's not Minecraft anymore. It's the roadblocks the Feds cracked
in Minecraft. Yeah, you're right, it's going to take weeks
for them, for them to their computers to realize what
roadblocks is. The look was a story I think I
saw on Twitter about like like some yeah, so some
some kids who actually legitimately got arrested in Brushford, like
blowing up a building in Minecraft, so like like literally

(30:54):
so we live in h yeah and instead again it's
roadblocks where nothing bad happens. Nothing bad happens, all right,
everybody get on roadblocks, um and don't talk about Joe Royan,
and don't talk about Joe Rogan. Hundreds of truckers continue

(31:26):
to rule least and with wards joining the movement. With
each passing city, feelings towards vaccine mandates have heightened. Advocate
civil war. If people don't want to stand up, we
got guns. We'll stand up and we'll bring them off.
Sucking a guys, let's get pumped for this. Let's go
to fucking Ottawa. Let's I want to see one of
those truckers. I wouldn't probably not not known our guys obviously,

(31:48):
but I would like to see our own January six event.
See some of those truckers plow right through that sixteen
football ye, welcome to It could happen here or in
this case, it did happen here, slashes still happening here,

(32:11):
and uh the here in this case being Canada in
recent weeks. The idea of only a few thousand people
totally choking a major city, holding it hostage to bargain
for political demands, while overwhelming and getting a foot up
on law enforcement, taking over and shutting down a sizeable
portion of a popular metropolitan area and simultaneously blocking off

(32:33):
supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international border crossings is
exactly the kind of thing this podcast has been talking
about for years as a potential anti government resistance tactic
that could become more common as political tensions rise in
North America. Specifically, a few weeks ago, when the so
called Trucker Convoy was still its planning stages, I wasn't

(32:55):
super eager to cover it on the pod. Actually, I
assumed it would be a flop and just another dumb
anti COVID protest in a long line of anti COVID
protests happening in Canada. Flash forward to me at the
end of January, and it became apparent that I was
sorely mistaken and this thing was shaping up to be
a significant factor in Canada's political ecosystem going forward. In

(33:18):
my haste to catch up to the moment, I recorded
two episodes with the wonderful journalist Dan Cullen, explaining the
situation as it was at the prospective times of recording.
But as the tensions in Ottawa and all across Canada
arose and the situation gained more and more complexity, I
decided that the convoy and subsequent blockades required a more

(33:39):
researched and scripted deep dive. The more I dug into
the situation, the more it seems to embody the exact
thing I was warning about in my two previous scripted
episodes about Canada and the far right, titled Canadian Fascism A.
The apologies for the title, but you can find those
if you scroll through the could Happen Here feed. Don't
think they came out around November ish. What I wanted

(34:03):
to get across in those episodes is that Canada is
often seen as an escape from the more divisive, violent,
and fascist elements of US politics and culture. But just
like climate change, capitalism, or any other enveloping force cough cough,
hyper objects cough cough, fascism and the slide towards it

(34:24):
can never be truly escaped right. There is no other,
there is no away, and it's especially hard to see
it when it's growing on the back of your own head,
primarily through Islamophobia. Far right ethno nationalist tendencies have been
bubbling under the surface of Canada for a long while,
and since Trudeau has taken office in twenty fifteen, there

(34:46):
has been a perfect politically allowed boogeyman to blame every
problem onto That can include everything from Trudeau was taking
away our oil and gas jobs, or Trudeau is bringing
in Muslim terrorists to Canada, uh, or Trudeau is starving
your children through health mandates. Canadian right wing protests has
been steadily growing the past five years. There's been multiple

(35:10):
flare ups of far right rhetoric with the Canadian Yellow Vests,
the Westerns that protesced we Exit or Western Exit movement,
and the pseudo fascist People's Party of Canada. The incorporation
of pandemic conspiracies and anti vaccine sentiments into the already
disaffected rural Canadian right wingers starting and continuing to the present,

(35:32):
has accelerated not only the conspiratorial fall right rhetoric among
conservative voters, but also what is seen as a valid
political action in those people's eyes. But before we get
into how the convoy started with anger concerning COVID nineteen
health man dates and misinformation concerning empty store shelves, we
have to first go back in time to even before

(35:54):
the COVID nineteen virus was a blip on anyone's radar.
In February, the Canadian Yellow Vests organized something called the
United We Roll Convoy. The result was around a hundred
seventy trucks driving cross country through the more liberal East
to Ottawa. The result was around a hundred seventy trucks

(36:15):
driving from the West cross country to the more liberal
East and eventually to Ottawa. The goal was to represent
the concerns of disenfranchised oil and gas workers in the
Western provinces and their opposition to propose environmental and new
energy policies. Yellow Vests Canada was largely founded by individuals
already associated with Canada's far right, which at the time

(36:37):
was primarily united through anti Muslim racism and m phobia.
Inspired by the French Heelovest movement, they copied their aesthetics
and adopted new grievances and reactionary matoric and we get
them a much larger audience. By the time United We
Roll arrived in Ottawa, the media started to catch on
to the more problematic elements about their organization, Neo Nazi

(36:59):
faith goal each spoke on a stage, many members of
hate groups responded in attendance, and with the numbers so low,
it made their more extreme participants stick out. Instead of
focusing the message on oil and gas as they claim
to represent Western alienation from a distant liberal Ottawa, some
of its participants seemed more interested in protesting Ottawa's immigration

(37:20):
policies than arguing for specific fixes for Alberta's oil patch. Plus,
if you peeked inside any Canadian yellow vest Facebook group,
you would be flooded with hundreds of examples of explicit
anti Muslim racism and calls for a Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau's arrest and execution, a theme that remains common among

(37:40):
COVID conspiracy demonstrations today. But at the end of it,
United We Roll was widely considered a bust, with only
a few hundred participants in Ottawa and despite raising almost
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the organizers failed to
exclose how much of that money was actually spent on
convoy expenses like gas and food. Afterwards, the Yellowest Canada

(38:01):
movement started to kind and die out, though some holdouts
kept smaller demonstrations going for months, particularly in the conservative
oil province of Alberta. But to us now United we
Rule can be seen as a small test run for
the current situation. In fact, it shares many of the
same organizers and even the same promotional materials, except this

(38:22):
time they have the added weight of many more people
radicalized into conspiracism throughout the pandemic, and much more funding.
So with that in mind, let's dive into the components
of the initial organizing effort. On January two, go fund
me account was set up for a so called trucker
convoy ahead of the January fifteenth adoption of the mandate

(38:45):
requiring all cross border transportation drivers to be fully vaccinated
against COVID nineteen. Vaccine mandates in Canada have been in
effect since October for ship crews, railways, and airline workers,
but effective January, the federal government expanded the requirement to
truck drivers returning from the States and those who will
remain unvaccinated will not be able to enter Canada without quarantine.

(39:09):
One week later, a reciprocal policy went into effect in
the United States for Canadian truckers crossing into their border,
which means going forward you cannot really cross the border
at all, well remaining unvaccinated. At this point in mid January,
a majority of Canadians still broadly supported health mandates aimed
at limiting the spread of COVID, but a big part
of the early propaganda push for the convoy was photos

(39:31):
alleged to have been from current Canadian grocery stores which
they were not, with barren empty shelves. The idea was
that COVID restrictions were already severely impacting the supply line,
and any additional mandates would begin to start with the
population and effectively shut down international trade. Put a note
in this idea, by the way, it will come up later.

(39:52):
Ideas for another truck convoy like United Wi Roll have
been tossed around for a while online, and with this
new mandate on truckers andvaccines, a time presented itself to
give the convoy idea another go. In the early convoy
organizing they were primarily four familiar far right faces who
working together to set things up, none of whom are

(40:14):
truck drivers. By the way, the originally listed organizers on
the go fund me page were Tomorrow Lich and b. J. Ditcher,
Both have notable experience with far right organizing. Tamaraw Litch
was born in my home province of Saskatchewan, but now
hails from the town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she
served as an organizer for Yellow Vests Canada, a regional

(40:36):
coordinator for the separatist Western Exit or Wexit movement in Alberta,
and now the secretary for the Maverick Party, another far
right extreme acceparatist movement and fringe political party. Litch started
attending and boosting yellow Vest events starting in and her
social media posts from around the time show in one
moment calling out some hateful rhetoric from within the movement,

(40:58):
while also posting islamophobe articles of her own and conspiracies
about the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada. A few days
after the go fund me was created, Benjamin B. J. Ditcher,
one time Conservative Party of Canada candidate, People's Party of
Canada booster and co founder of a Canadian far right
podcast network, appeared as a cool organizer on the go

(41:21):
fund me page twenty nineteen, he claimed that Islamist entryism
is rotting away our society like syphilis. Benjamin Ditcher was
also one of the first people to give a speech
at the first proto Fascist People's Party of Canada conference
in Quebec, saying that the Conservative Party of Canada is
suffering from the stench of cultural relativism and political Islam

(41:43):
and a whole bunch of stuff you know in that
general vein. James Botter was another one of the four
key organizers of the Trucker convoy to Ottawa. Botter is
an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed Q and on
and called COVID the biggest political scam in history. He's
also a former activist with the Yellow Vests Canada and
United we Roll. Barter's main project, however, is running the

(42:06):
Canada Unity website, which is one of the original nexus
points for organizing and spreading word about this convoy. The
group contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under
Canada's constitution, the Nuremberg Code, and a host of other
international conventions. Boter has long been a fringe figure, but
his movements started picking up steam and support as announcements

(42:29):
and continuations of restrictions aimed at curbing COVID nineteen spread
have continued. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to
be a sympathetic cause on Facebook and attracted an array
of fellow travelers. The last big major player is Patrick King,
another former Yellow vestor one time major figure in the

(42:49):
Wexit movement as well as United we Roll. On January two,
pet King hosted a live stream for James Botter to
promote the Canada Unity website and to announce it as
the official page for the Freedom Trucker Convoy, or as
they called it, Operation Bear. Hug King is a conspiracy

(43:10):
theorist and popular streamer that attracts the audience farther right
than Canada's usual conservatives. Kings made headlines for drumming up
fear and then following through with his supporters with violence
at rally's put on by BLM and Antifa. King is
also known for spreading what are basically neo Nazi talking points.
And I'm just going to quote from an article by

(43:31):
the Canadian Anti Hate Network here because they did a
great job tracking his past extremism quote. In the past,
King has gone on record about his feelings on the
Anglo Saxon replacement that plans to quote flood Canada with
refugees and subvert the education system, which is a thin
rebranding of the Great Replacement theory touted by Ethno nationalists.

(43:54):
At other points, King is expressed overtly racist and anti
Semitic statements. In the twenty nineteen stream about the then
upcoming federal election, King complained that he had to leave
the movement due to their lack of success, saying, quote
the election a wo't matter unless you want to change
your national language to Chinese or Mandarin or Hebrew. He
then went on to compare Chinese names to the sound

(44:14):
of change falling downstairs. He has publicly distorted facts, but
the Holocaust of form of Holocaust denial, saying I do
know that the Holocaust was reduced to one point five
million and not the six million that it was said
to be. He then invoked the anti Semitic conspiracy theory
that Jewish people are secretly in control of world governance, media,
and finances, saying, quote the questions that have been asked

(44:38):
several times to the a d L and to the
Jewish government and communities. We have Jewish world bankers who
are dictating our government policies and controlling our politicians unquote.
So yeah. Considering King's history of saying blatantly fascist things,
some organizers and convoy supporters tried to distance King from

(44:59):
the Freedom Convoy movement to not damage the initial fundraising effort.
The controversy around King resulted in a statement being released
onto the fundraising page saying King is not and has
never been affiliate with our movement, nor has he been
a part of our great team of volunteers. The update
was afterwards deleted, and then King claimed in a video

(45:21):
that the statement was a public relations move because he
was being attacked online. For a while, King was still
listed as the Northern Alberta contact for the Western portion
of the convoy. So those are the four people that
laid the organizing groundwork, that spawned this entire thing and
put it into motion. But what made this convoy different

(45:41):
from United We Roll One point, oh, is the almost
two years of COVID isolation, which has given ample time
for groups like the Yellow Vests and extreme Far right
groups to completely fold into the rapidly growing anti vax
and COVID conspiracy movement in Canada, and along with that,
using people's seething hatred of Justin Trudeau to radicalize thousands
of thousands of people online to getting them more comfortable

(46:04):
with the idea of participating in political protest. It's really
important to mention that the protests are not organized by
Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers. The largest trucking
unions have come out against the protests and they do
not appear to reflect the values of most Canadians or
most Canadian truckers. More than of the Canadian public is vaccinated,

(46:25):
including almost of truckers, according to Canada's Minister of Transport.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance issued a statement saying it does
not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roads,
highways or bridges. The Canadian Trucking Alliance president said in
a joint statement with the Ministers of Labor and Transport
that the Government of Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance

(46:46):
both agree that vaccination, used in combination with preventative health measures,
is the most effective tool to reduce the risk of
COVID nineteen for Canadians and to protect public health. According
to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the mandate could impact around
twelve to sixteen thousand Canadian commercial drivers, which is just
about ten to fifteen percent of the industry's cross border

(47:08):
drivers during the pandemic. Repeated polls have shown that a
majority of Canadians support public health measures to contain the pandemic,
but the number of Canadians who would like to see
restrictions end has risen in recent weeks. With owner crown
cases on the decline, some provinces are starting to remove
restrictions and requirements. The public sentiment appears to be moving

(47:30):
in the direction of opening up communities. Throughout the last
two weeks of January, the number of Canadians saying that
they would like to see restrictions end has risen by
fifteen percentage points to a majority of fifty percent. Demonstrations
have found a way to tap into pandemic fatigue among
conservatives across the country. After months of lockdown, more than

(47:51):
two thirds of Canadians have said they have very little
in common with how the Autaowa protesters see things, but
say that they have a lot in common, according to
a recent survey connected by a Canadian research firm. Though
the idea of vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers kind of
prompted what turned into this convoy, very quickly became a
general battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole and

(48:14):
the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unlike twenty nineteen
United we Roll, the Freedom Convoy against health mandates was
able to successfully capitalize on Western feelings of neglect and
isolation from the ruling liberal elite in the East and
in the capital of Ottawa. The right ingredients at the
right time flung the Trucker Freedom Convoy into the conservative zeitgeist.

(48:35):
The original and go fund me page, set up on
January fourteenth to financially support convoy participants, was able to
raise ten million dollars in just under three weeks. As
the truck convoy idea picked up steam, The first expected
wave of attendees were planned to arrive in Ottawa on Saturday,
January twenty ninth. Vehicles started rolling in a few days prior,

(48:57):
throughout Thursday and the Friday night before the big day.
On the twenty nine, and as Saturday the twenty nine came,
the numbers of trucks and protest participants greatly exceeded the
initial expected numbers that I and many other people had figured,
while obviously falling short of the heavily marked fifty thousand
truckers prediction made by some convoy supporters. While writing these episodes,

(49:19):
I talked with Paul, a citizen of Ovadawa who's been
living inside the occupied zone since the twenty ninth of January,
and this is what he had to say about expectations
leading up to the convoys arrival. There was at least
a week of lead up where we it was about
all we heard about. So from when they sort of
declared their intention to come down to when they started
rallying in BC and you know, in the west and

(49:41):
coming across Um, there was an anticipation that something was
going to happen. And you know, people around here because
like where I'm sitting right now is less than a
kilometer from Parliament Hill and directly in between two of
the streets that they've blocked off sort of on the
way into town. You know, we were nervous, but we

(50:03):
kind of were just sort of assuming it was gonna
be a one day affair. It was gonna be small
at first, but then you heard I mean, nobody believed
the fifty trucks and that like that was it. I mean,
to put in perspective, the numbers that they were claiming
were on their way here, UM are larger than the
entire population of the city by like a couple hundred

(50:24):
thousand people, so that that didn't seem likely. But you know,
when we were hearing the thirty to forty thousand, when
we heard about multiple convoys with you know, a hundred
to two hundred trucks like that was when it was like, Okay,
this isn't gonna be great. So people started arriving on
what Friday, Saturday. The first group started rolling to town

(50:48):
on Thursday night. UM. They were they were small in numbers.
They didn't really start blocking anything off because they just
weren't enough of them. So, but you could hear the
horns starting on Thursday night, UM, and I think a
lot of some of them were going into hotels. UM.
They were smaller groups too, mostly from sort of local groups. UM.
And then around ten or eleven in the morning on Friday, UM,

(51:12):
we started hearing reports at Kingston, which is about an
hour issue away, an hour and a half um that
there was a group moving out of there. So around
one o'clock in the afternoon Friday, the first group started
to arrive and started to congregate downtown. And one of
the things about Ottawa is um it's a lot, like
a lot of big downtowns, it's a lot of one
way streets. So the moment you get the trucks starting

(51:33):
to get into the intersections or near intersections, you're blocking
off all passage in certain directions. So they started blocking
off the northbound really quickly, just because that's where how
they were coming in UM. And there's only like three
gas stations downtown as well, which is it kind of
plays a big factor in the route that they took.
So they all passed by, especially the passenger cars that
were running mow Um passed by and through that way.

(51:56):
And yeah, by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon,
every anything south of Summerset, which is about a kilometer
and a half from Parliament, was pretty much jammed at
that point. As Saturday night came, much of the group,
supporters and truckers alike spent that time partying late into
the night as heavily backed up traffic continued to effectively

(52:17):
shut down roads and large areas of the city around
Parliament Throughout the weekend. Businesses in the surrounding areas that
did not close ahead of the protest were swarmed by customers,
many refusing to wear masks. A local Homa shelter and
soup kitchen was harassed by Convoy participants who were turned
away from restaurants after refusing to wear a mask. A

(52:38):
large number of the convoy attendees surrounded the shelter, demanding
to be fed by the facility staff. According to the
shelters president, convoy participants assaulted a client of the shelter
and her old racial slurs at a security guard who
attempted to intervene. Workers and volunteers at the shelter noted
that parked vehicles blocked the shelter, making it difficult for
aliences to reach the facility and for staff to assist

(53:00):
munity members in need. A home in the downtown area
was pelted with rocks and snow, as well as vandalized
with human feces, all for showing a Pride flag in
their window. The operations commander for the Ottawa Paramedic Service
said that an ambulance was pelted with rocks and paramedics
checking the damage were called racial slurs by convoy participants.
Ottawa Paramedics have since requested police escorts, citing safety concerns.

(53:23):
More public backlash was prompted after reports surface of a
monument dedicated to commemorating Terry Fox being covered in protest
signs and being staged to hold an upside down Canadian flag.
No restroom made Saturday night related to the convoy, but
as the convoy stuck around even past the weekend, there
was this growing feeling of downtown residents that they've been

(53:43):
abandoned by the city and law enforcement, with the whole
situation and response to the situation making them afraid to
leave their homes. I asked Paul what his experience on
the first weekend of the occupation was and the general
feeling in the area of downtown Ottawa. And you were
living like right in the middle of this. How much
has this affected like your day to day life and all,

(54:04):
like your neighbors and stuff, like what what what are
you able to do and not do? At this point? Well,
it's the weekend was it was especially bad, and we're
all kind of bracing for what this weekend is going
to be because that's when you had just you know,
there were between somewhere between ten and fifteen eighteen thousand
people as the estimates I've heard, um all crowding downtown

(54:25):
in the streets. So at that point, I mean that
was when the police we're telling people not to wear
a mask out, um because you know, you're kind of
putting yourself at risk, uh, because it'll be targeted for violence. Yeah.
So I mean I was like basically anytime I've left
the house. So we have a mask mandate still in
effect in Ottawa, so you have to wear them indoors

(54:46):
pretty much everywhere. Um. So I have to wear at
my building, I have to wear at the convenience store.
If I'm gonna go go buy say, you know, pack
of cigarettes, I'm not going to take it off. It's
a thirty second walk. And so that was that. The
harassment around that started on Friday, UM, and and it
just became anyone who was going about that didn't look
like they were part of it, UM started getting hassled. UM.

(55:08):
Other people I know who live in the area, especially women,
UM have been targeted a great deal. Um, anyone who's
part of, you know, the LGBTQ community has been it's
it's not really just it's just not safe to be
out on the streets and it's not really safe to
show that you don't support what they're doing. At points
since the convoy started arriving in Ottawa, the extreme elements

(55:30):
of the protest have been pretty visible. Among the thousands
of attendees were recognizable members of white nationalists, hate groups
you know, not seeing Confederate flags were seen flying. Two
and on logos were emblazoned on trucks and sides, and
stickers were pasted on telephone pools around the occupied area
baring Trudeau's face reading wanted for crimes against humanity, the
official line from original convoy organizers minus Pat King, of course, however,

(55:56):
has tried to remain focused. In a Facebook live broadcast,
James Under of Canada Unity instructed his supporters to stop
talking about the vaccine and instead stick the messages of freedom.
The goal of adopting a more restricted and relatable protest
cause is to hopefully jump up more widespread support and validity,
and it initially worked in some ways and not in others.

(56:17):
Numerous members of the Conservative Party have come out to
meet protesters, especially throughout the first few days now. Former
Conservative Party leader Eron O'Toole met with convoy participants, albeit
away from the main protest site. Both People's Party of
Canada leader Maxie and Bernair and Ontario Member of Provincial
Parliament and leader of the de facto Ontario arm of

(56:38):
the PPC, Randy Healer, who has made many recent and
semitic comments, both gave speeches on Saturday the twenty nine
in front of the Parliament building. People like Elon Musk
and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy, and Fox
News has been endlessly broadcasting glowing updates of the convoy
since its arrival in Ottawa. According to the convoy participants

(56:59):
and organizers, they are vowing to camp out in front
of the Parliament until their demands of dropping all COVID
nineteen health measures are met. While stated grievances can be
broader and more vast on the ground, the current memorandum
of understanding posted on the Canada Unity website, which collected
over thirty signatures, served as a sort of bargaining pitch

(57:19):
between the convoy and the Canadian government. The Memorandum of Understanding,
or the m o U, calls on Canada's appointing senators
and Canada's Governor General, the representative of Queen Elizabeth, the
second in Canada's constitutional monarchy, to abolish all COVID nineteen
related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers whose employment

(57:41):
was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get their jobs back.
James Potter, the guy who runs Canada Unity, insisted to
his followers that the m o U would force the
government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections if enough
people signed. Another Canada Unity organizer went further, saying it
would require the Senate to after the Prime Minister for

(58:01):
corruption and fascism, which, of course there's no legal basis
for any of these claims around the m o you,
but you know that doesn't really matter in the end,
because people still believe it, so it's going to have
an impact on what they do. The more controversial Pat
King laid out an alternative, however, a more direct plan
of action to the occupiers. In a January Facebook livestream,

(58:23):
King said that what we want to focus on is
our politicians, their houses, their locations. If political pressure doesn't work,
blocking major supply chains will be later on. So more
more on that idea later. After the first weekend of
protests kind of turned occupations, go fund me released a
reported one million dollars of the total ten million raised

(58:44):
for the convoy. As the end of the weekend approached,
many convoy participants who rolled into the nation's capital began
heading home and the highways on Sunday night saw no
shortage of vehicles heading away from Ottawa with their approtest
signs and flags still in tow, but plenty of people
stuck around to continue the fight. Thousands and thousands of

(59:05):
people and hundreds of vehicles, including a fleet of semitrucks,
commercial vehicles, r V campers, and regular cars were more
than enough to keep the roads in a large portion
of Ottawa around Parliament effectively shut down. I can't help
but draw comparisons to the fear mongering narrative of bus
fulls of Antifa, you know, protesters coming from out of

(59:25):
town into places they don't live, terrorizing locals, shutting down cities.
You know. The other comparison is to like the chop
where the chas in Seattle was taking over a large
portion of the city, and how that was so vilified. Except,
you know, this is so much bigger and impactful than
anything so called Antifa or the Black Lives Matter protests
have ever done, especially in Canada, in terms of actually

(59:49):
impacting the functionality of a city and restricting the local, national,
and international capitalist trade. The Freedom Convoy has done everything
and more its proponents warned that Antifa was going to
do to Canada. Obviously, part of the reason the Convoy
protest was able to get to this point is not
just because of its large size, but also the initial

(01:00:11):
hands off approach by police that allowed the Convoy participants
the opportunity to get a strong foothold within the city.
The difference in initial law enforcement reaction to the protest
Convoy made up of largely you know, conservative, middle class
white Canadians, compared to other protests like you know, the
Black Lives Better protests, or say the RCMPS typical response

(01:00:32):
to First Nations protests and blockings defending their land. The
comparisons cannot be over analyzed. You know, the latter two
forms of protest I mentioned actually do challenge societal power
structures that prop up White Canada, while as this Convoy
protest does not and instead plays into those very power structures.
That dynamic played a major role into how the police

(01:00:54):
handled or didn't handle the first few days of the protest,
in which during those early days the convoy attendees were
free to build infrastructure that resulted in the protest escalating
into a full scale occupation. The Monday after the first
initial weekend, the city's mayor, Jim Watson, declared a state
of emergency, but at that point Attawa Police thought it

(01:01:15):
was already too late for the protest to be ended
by sheer force without vastly increasing the likelihood of severe
damage and life threatening outcomes to the convoy participants, police officers,
and regular citizens of Ottawa. On February twod Ottawa Police
Chief Peter Slowly explicitly said that there may not be
a police solution to ending the convoy and occupation. There

(01:01:38):
are similar demonstrations taking place in many other parts of
this country, indeed many other parts around this continent in
the world. What happens here effects there, What happens there
affects here. We have seen in the last twenty four
hours attempts by other police and other jurisdictions to do
just what you have suggested. They were not effective and

(01:02:01):
they created additional safety issues, potential life threatening safety issues.
I have great compassion for those that have been significantly affected,
if not traumatized, and we know criminally victimized. We will
do everything we can to hold those who have done
that to account. Will continue arresting and charging people as

(01:02:22):
we have been. But any action taken without understanding the
totality of the context, the totality of the risk, would
be irresponsible. You're trying to be responsible, lawful, ethical, and measured.
My last comment when I wrapped up, I'll share again now.

(01:02:44):
The longer this goes on, the more I am convinced
there may not be a police solution to this demonstration.
There are police chiefs commissioners across this country that are
dealing with demonstrations that are starting underway and significantly advanced.
This is a national issue, not an Autawa issue from

(01:03:07):
the start. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been playing down
the notion of a military response to the ongoing Ottawa protest.
During the first week, he said that sending in troops
is not in the cards. Right now. On the February two,
the Automa police chiefs said that all options are on
the table, including eventually calling in the military, but one
must be very very cautious about deploying troops in Canadian

(01:03:28):
soil in such cases. Trudeau said that a news conference
in in the February that it's not something that anyone
should enter into lightly, with police basically leaving the Ottawa
residents who live near and within the Convoy occupation to
fend for themselves. I was curious what sorts of things
the local community might be doing to live around this massive,
conspiracy filled group of reactionary out of town campers. What

(01:03:52):
sort of things have the has the community been doing
to kind of help survive this this Like has there
been like talide projects in the neighborhood to help support
other neighbors, you know that that sort of thing there
have Um it's actually been kind of wonderful the way
the community has been coming together, especially after two years
of pandemic, where we've all been kind of like Ottawa
and Ontario have been one of the more restricted jurisdictions

(01:04:15):
in North America. UM. I mean, and I say this
as a restaurant manager, like in my opinion rightly, so,
like it's about keeping people safe, and we've done a
fairly good job of that by and large. But the
thing is that, you know, our community hasn't felt a
lot like a community in a while, and this week,
I mean one of the few positives has been UM
both individuals and organizations. So I mean, Rose and some

(01:04:38):
of the other organizations that we mentioned on Friday have
done a great job. There's also been some really really
great organic organizing coming out of UM some activists as
well as just people in the community. So there's a
a few discord servers set up right now. So there's
been a huge issue with people, people with disabilities and
the elderly getting groceries because deliveries aren't possible downtown UM.
So it started on Twitter, UM, but there's been an

(01:05:01):
organization set up to help people get those groceries. Whether
it's a cost issue or just a physical delivery issue.
We're ensured people are ensuring that that's happening UM as
of today. UM there's gonna be a safe Walks program. UM.
There's well there's two. There's one on discord where it's
people offering to you know, make sure that you can
get through the space safe. Today though, um, in a

(01:05:22):
positive and more passive sense, we kind of started taking
the streets back. So um, we had about four or
five groups of people ranging from ten to fifty just
just walking the streets and not not confronting anybody, not
getting getting into any direct engagement, just going out to
show that we can still walk on our streets and
letting our you know, our our neighbors know that we

(01:05:43):
can actually be together and you know, stand up just
to be together, which is something that I think a
lot of people have lost over the last week. I mean,
like the fact that that's even a big step is
showing how tired the situation is. The fact that just
get to that point were walking around in a group
where you feel safe is like a big thing that Yeah,

(01:06:06):
that's like a really interesting and horrible indicator of what
the mood has been like there for people like living
in this area. That is. Yeah, that is a big
part of it. And it's something that was actually talked
about a lot today, which was how refreshing it was
to be able to do it, but also that it
shouldn't feel radical to take a safe walk in your community,
but it somehow did um and it speaks a lot

(01:06:29):
to the feelings the lack of safety or the loss
of you know, safety in this community and has been
pretty immense. I should mention that another community led efforts
to deal with the occupation is the ram Ranch Resistance,
a loosely organized counter movement to the Chuck Our Convoy
that started with people joining the convoys online communications channels

(01:06:51):
and blasting the homo erotic country song ram Ranch. The
song is by a Canadian artist and features some flawless
lyrics like eighteen naked cowboys wanting to be fucked, cowboys
in the showers at ram Ranch on their knees wanting
to suck cowboy cox. Ram Ranch really rocks. The result

(01:07:11):
is not only making the Convoy folks uncomfortable because gay,
but also it is hijacking and making their online communications
channels kind of useless for any non cowboy cock sucking
political organizing efforts. Disruptive resistance to the Convoys online communications
is not just limited to the ram Ranch song, however,

(01:07:31):
other vulgar songs have also been introduced into the chats
as well. I'm gonna just kind of give you a
brief look at what it's like inside these chats, right, Yeah,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna role play it. The
ram Ranch guys are finally gone. It's about freaking time.
I've had to shut that stuff off. One person has
heard saying and a clip from a chat, immediately followed

(01:07:52):
by a robotic voice saying, welcome to the come zone.
Only come inside anime girls, quivering clip, double jointed pussy
fresh balls. Since then, the movement has taken on as
something of a life of its own. The ram Ranch
Resistance hashtag has been used as a way for people
to share information regarding the convoy, and Welcome to the
ram Ranch signs have been popping up at convoy counter

(01:08:13):
protests around the country. Another ram rancher created the website
ram Ranch dot c a linking to downtown organizations that
have been impacted by the trucker convoy, as well as
charities aiding indigenous people's As the convoy settled in, it
appeared at the demonstrators and the government had reached a
sort of stalemate. Currently, there are more than four hundred

(01:08:35):
trucks parked downtown and Ottawa Police say that they can't
move them because the too operators with city contracts are
refusing to help, making matters only more difficult. Police say
that families with children are sleeping in approximately a quarter
of those trucks. To get an idea of what some
Attawa residents who live within the occupied zone see in

(01:08:56):
terms of a potential end in sight, I posed Paul
this question, how do you even see the situation resolving
at this point? Like, do do you think they're like
the truckers and the people who are in the city
are gonna are gonna back down and leave eventually or
like or do you think they have to be forced out?
Like what do you see kind of an end to
this at this point? Well, it's at this point. Probably

(01:09:19):
one of the hardest things to admit is that I don't. Um,
the hardest core that are here are committed, and they
have a significant amount of funding behind them. And the
thing is that you know, with an occupation protests, they
if you don't nip it in the bud, it's snowballs
and gathers momentum for a while. Um, And I mean
eventually they either peter out or they have to be removed.

(01:09:40):
And this one is still snowballing. Um, We've seen some
more extreme elements come into the city this week. Um
yesterday Romana did Dulo, the human on Queen of Canada
arrived in birthday Brent the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill,
which whatever you think about the Canadian flag, and it's
simple us a similar propression. Um you know, that's not

(01:10:03):
a great look for them. But the other side of
it is is that this is a woman with seventy
followers who you know, has called for the mass execution
of her enemies, and you know, is currently parked in
or Winnebago two and a half blocks from my house
right now, um so, and with a bunch of her
followers down with her. And so they're committed. They know.

(01:10:26):
They don't know that I did occupy a lot of
years ago, and the question that people asked us, and
sometimes it was the police, was what gets you out
of the park. And in a weird way, there's a
parallel here, which is that the hardest answer with occupy
was always kind of like everything is kind of fucked,
So how do we fix everything? That's the discussion we

(01:10:48):
should be having. So in this case, to these people,
in their worldview, everything is kind of fucked, and there's
no answer that you can give those kind of people
in negotiations. The police right now are not looking at
removal as a serious option, I don't think, or if
they are, they haven't figured out how to get to
that place yet. And one of the weird things about

(01:11:10):
Ottawa is is that technically in various spaces because the
way it's designated, there's a whole mishmash of jurisdictions between
the various police agencies. So like again with occupy that
we picked the park, like the park that was occupied
was partially picked because it was on like this weird
jurisdictional black hole where it was hard to figure out

(01:11:32):
who the cops were at, who should police it were,
um so, And they've ended up in the same park
where they now have like fifty five cylinders appropane sitting
about five yards from the Department of National Defense. So it's, uh,
it's tricky to figure out how you how you get
get out of that because all it's going to take
is one of them with something in their cab and
it's done. Yep, ye. Well, do you have any hope

(01:11:56):
for anything? Do you have any indicators for how it
can turn out? Well? I mean in terms of the occupation.
I mean, we'll see how it goes. Um maybe there
can become some kind of modus vivendi between them and
the rest of the city. I don't know how that happens,
but maybe there can be, but I don't know. It's
the only silver lining I see right now is you know,

(01:12:19):
the walk that I was on earlier today and the
chat that I was having with other people in the
community and the discord server and everywhere else, like, this
is a really strong community that cares a great deal
about itself and sometimes needed to be needs to be
reminded of that. And uh, I think this is an
opportunity for that to happen. Then I think that that's
the positive that can come out, is that we will

(01:12:39):
take care of ourselves and we'll take care of each other.
And that's you know what, what more can you ask
where I guess out of this. Reports of assaults perpetrated
by members of the Convoy protest have been steadily ruling
in the past few weeks, not to mention the seemingly
constant presence of honking in the downtown area that's been
affecting residents every day and even into the night. I

(01:13:00):
will offer you this short sample to help complete the
picture of what it's like both indoors and outdoors in
downtown Ottawa. So apologies about that. Yeah, that was pretty

(01:13:25):
bad and as annoying and frustrating as it may be.
Before I close out part one, I'm going to play
some audio from one of the truckers or you know,
just convoy participants as he addresses fellow convoy ors on
why it's good and in fact revolutionary to hunk horns
late into the night. I think it gives you some
valuable insight into how these people frame their actions in

(01:13:47):
their own heads. And you know, it will give you
an opportunity to hear some of these convoy people directly.
So here we go. Yeah, let's go on. There's quiet
when I got here, but now they're starting to bring
this tournament some noise. Now, I get it. I saw
some comments saying that you want to go from nine
to five and you want to turn your horns off,
and you want to you know, be respectful and play

(01:14:08):
the optics war. And you've done You've done all the map, man,
I get it. I we've done everything. Every piece of
garbage has been picked up. Statistically, there is no crime.
And when I mean statistically, if you have some drunk
guy acted, you know, silly on one street quickly gets
you know, talk to and then the Patriots taken back
to his car and maybe there was some incident of mission.
I've heard reports of anti for throwing rocks and trucks,

(01:14:31):
tag and stuff. They're the ones committing the crime. But
other than that, this has been the most well to
have revolution on earth. And now the big complaint is
can you get them to only blow their horns between
nine and five? I'm sorry, what has compliant got you
guys so far? What is just little by little? Oh?
Just do this? Yeah, just just don't peep your horns

(01:14:51):
between nine and five. That's all we're gonna ask. Then
were two masks, then just go right back to square one.
How about you put your blame right where it belongs,
right in the eye of Sauron And that's who we
handle this with and every mandate. We're not allowed to
exist in society. I'm not allowed to go to a movie,
I'm not allowed to go to a restaurant. I'm not
allowed to leave the country. You can't even leave you

(01:15:15):
can't travel on planes, you can't do anything that Trudeau
can get his fingers on to discriminate against us in society. Meanwhile,
he'll blame us for side effects of his guinea pigs.
It's an insane world, and you've complied long enough, guys,
and the madness in the horn stop. But I am
in no place to go tell these guys, oh excuse me?

(01:15:36):
Can you turn your horn off? Can you get used
to complying again? We want freedom. We're not asking for
anything unreasonable, and we're doing it on your behalf. The
least you can do is turn off your televisions and
stop letting their horrible objections to this revolution, and they're
horrible false flags and whatever else they bring. I'm sorry
about the noise complaints. Now, are you sorry about banishing

(01:15:56):
me from society and treating me like I'm some sort
of letter because I want to keep my immune system intach. Sorry, guys,
the horns stand. Stuff it up your ass. Anyone that
has a problem with loud noises, we have a problem
be advanished from society. Apologies for that, But now I
hope you have a better understanding of the type of

(01:16:18):
conspiratorial thinking among the people in this convoy and the
importance this whole thing means to them. So with this,
that wraps up my part one of my deep dive
into the Canadian Freedom Convoy. In the next episode, we'll
get into the border blockades both in Alberta and the
Ambassador Bridge which is preventing some international trade. We'll get

(01:16:40):
into some of the smaller protests and attempted occupations in
other cities across Canada, and how the situation is evolving
in Ottawa and what types of long term political ramifications
this protest and any attempt to suppress it will have.
So with that, see you on the other side, welcome

(01:17:12):
to it could happen here, And the second part of
my little mini series going into the occupation and blockade
protests all across Canada that's been happening the past three weeks.
For part two, we'll be starting off with a change
of scenery. Instead of the loud, cramped streets of Data

(01:17:33):
and Ottawa and the castle like Parliament building, will be
taking a detour to the snow covered prairies and oil
fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially arrived in
Ottawa on January, smaller protests against health mandates were also
happening across the entire country. One of these mini protests

(01:17:54):
was happening in the small city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta,
but unlike a majority of other non Ottawa protests, the
one based around left Bridge didn't turn out to be
a simple weekend of fair. With hundreds of vehicles, including
some semi trucks, RVs and farm tractors all gathered together.

(01:18:14):
It was decided to take part in a little mini
convoy of their own, but instead of going to a
capital building, they rolled towards the international border crossing used
by truckers in the area. I was able to interview
gen a left Bridge local who also happens to work
near the area of the Alberta border blockade, and they

(01:18:36):
kind of gathered in left Bridge here and took off
about four thirty in the morning, and so they made
it down to the village of coots Um, which is
essentially right on the border, is the last stop before
you hit the border at Coots Alberta, sweet Grass, Montana.
And they blocked off the highway completely heading both northbound

(01:19:00):
and southbound, and they've been camped out since. So it's
my understanding that at that point in time throughout you know,
day one, two and three of their protest, UM, there
was no getting in or out out of the village
of Coops, which is it is a small village about
two d and fifty residents UM. And it was so

(01:19:23):
bad that not even emergency services could get through, UM
again blocking both lanes of the highway in either direction
in the ditches UM and just weren't letting up. And
so are they even driving anywhere? Or is it are
they just like camped there, just camped out there, parked UM.

(01:19:44):
And of course you know there's people that will drive
down to the border and participate for a couple hours
and you know, turn around and go home kind of thing.
But there is that core group UM, the majority of
which are actually farmers bringing down like their tractors, and
of course there is UM some semitruck drivers who are

(01:20:04):
all a part of it and just not allowing anyone
to get through on either side, so you know, holding
up a lot of a lot of our supplies, a
lot of our UM food and things like that. At first,
local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade, I guess,
hoping to see if the people would just get tired

(01:20:25):
of camping out in the cold and then you know,
go home. But after a few days that possibility seemed
less and less likely. Then when the RCMP did start
to get more actively involved with kind of managing the blockade,
albeit you know, with a very gentle hand and extremely
start contrast to how our CMP handles blockades, you know,

(01:20:46):
defending indigenous land. But at that point it was already
kind of too late, and the pacified police action only
spread the protests efforts. On day four of the blockade
at the border um, the RCMP had kind of moved
in a little bit to try to break it up.
So some of the the protesters had kind of broken

(01:21:08):
off and decided to blockade's mother areas. So there was
a blockade that happened on Highway three just outside of
the town of Fort McLeod, on the way to the
town of Brockett, which would be on the Blood Reserve
here in Alberta. UM. They blockaded the highway and wouldn't
let anyone through, and then they set up another blockade

(01:21:29):
um on Highway twenty three, which of course would be
the the next north south route. Given that Highway three
was now blocked off, the Highway three going to Highway two. Um.
So they've blocked off Highway twenty three. Um at there's
a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of in the
middle of nowhere in the highway at the village of Nobleford, sorry,

(01:21:51):
town of Nobleford, and they set up a blockade at
the roundabout as well. Wouldn't let anyone come in north
south east west, didn't matter. Uh So that was Tuesday. Tuesday,
highways to UH four and three. Yeah, effectively shutting down,
and they kind of like travel for like food and

(01:22:12):
supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly. Yeah. Like,
there was a lot of chatter on social media. Um,
we have a local Facebook group for road conditions, and
there was a lot of chatter, you know, where do
we go, how do we get around this? What back roads?
Should I take? Secondary highways? That sort of thing. And thankfully,

(01:22:33):
you know, there was still I suppose some ways to
get around it. The RCMP we're kind of setting up
detours and things like that, but those main routes were blockaded,
um on Tuesday, which would have been I guess what
days that February one. The static highway blockades preventing traffic
in all four directions were mostly a one day affair.

(01:22:56):
The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into
the main blockade at the border near Coots, with some
folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts you know,
on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the
roads by staying parked people in vehicles kept a slow
loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog

(01:23:17):
up travel. And then like the contingent at closer to
the border has been more consistent, you would say, yeah, definitely,
the contingent at the border on highway for like I said,
at Coots, Alberta, they've been set up all the way
through since the twenty nine UM. There has been days
where the tensions are definitely very high where those protesters

(01:23:39):
are saying we will not leave until UM or we
won't even come to the negotiating table until these restrictions
are gone, like we won't even attempt and so the
RCMP have been kind of in negotiations with them over
the last few days. There's been a couple of times
where they they had resolution to open up lanes of

(01:24:02):
travel to get some of these trucks with goods through
Um and of course there's been people stuck in their
cars as well for quite a few days without food.
At that point, UM the protesters originally had come to
an agreement with the RCNP to let some people through
and then turn around and decided, well, we don't really
want to. So that was kind of ongoing from I'm

(01:24:25):
going to suggest up until about second UM. On the
second the RCMP had set up a roadblock at the
town of Milk River to uh, I guess, dissuade the
the locals from coming out and adding to the congestion
and adding to the problems. And at one point UM

(01:24:47):
there was a group of people and videos are on TikTok,
they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter, where people are blasting
through the barricades, going through the ditch, going through the median,
just bypassing it completely to get down to the convoy protest.
As I record this, the border crossing port of entry

(01:25:10):
near the town of Coots has been largely impassable for
over two weeks. It's a major trade hub where millions
of dollars worth of agricultural products like meat and feed
trade hands each day. The first day had hundreds of
vehicles participating in blocking access to the trade route along
highway for but after a week of blockading the Alberta,

(01:25:33):
Montana border crossing, around eighty big rigs continued to remain
along the highway for a majority of the time. Since
the twenty nine of January, vehicle access has been either
completely stopped to and from the border or at least
substantially slowed down. The occasional day where vehicles are being
let through on one lane of traffic has an estimated

(01:25:53):
seven hours of stall time order to get through just
that tiny area of road. The blockade of that International
report of entry at Coots and the only seven commercial
land crossing in Alberta is a direct threat to the
economic well being of growers, producers, manufacturers, and many other
businesses that rely on the movement of both raw materials

(01:26:14):
and finished goods in and out along the can m
X corridor end quote. Lewington has warned that manufacturing plants
in the region will be forced to either reduce or
cancel production as their supplies run out and they're unable
to get their goods to international markets. This is something
farmers and food producers are dealing with as well as

(01:26:36):
agricultural experts are one of the region's main economic drivers.
In the left Bridge metropolitan area exported nearly one point
eight billion dollars worth of goods, around eighty percent of
which went to the United States. A vast majority of
these exports went through this Coots border crossing. That means
for the city of lefth Bridge alone, they're facing a

(01:26:57):
roughly three million dollar a day impact on the economic
damage based on the road and rail travel that must
move through that port of entry. The impact is of
course four or five times larger than if you consider
the movement of other Alberta goods in and out of
that same North South corridor. It's only more ironic and
frustrating considering that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade,

(01:27:20):
you know, costing millions dollars in losses each and every day,
is exactly the sort of thing that these same conservatives
would complain that BLM or Antifa would do, you know, like,
in terms of anti capitalist action, this is actually more
successful in causing damage to capital than really anything I've
seen the Canadian left do in recent memory. Now, obviously

(01:27:40):
police response to a left wing protest, you know, doing
similar tactics would probably greatly differ, you know, Plus the
fact that these people are participating in these blockades are
the same types of people that talk about their desire
to run down protesters in trucks, you know, whenever there's
marching in the street or an indigenous road blockade to
an new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of the police inability,

(01:28:04):
whether by choice or imagination, to handle the situation, and
considering both the conspiracy fueled political issues around masks of
vaccines and health man dates and the growing economic problems
the blockade is causing, it's not super surprising that the
Conservative government of Alberta began the process of removing health
mandates as the protests striked on. And unfortunately, it seems

(01:28:26):
like the province is listening and they're taking it seriously.
I know. Um last night our premier had gone on
Facebook Live and had an ounce that come Monday, the
caucus will vote as to whether or not to scrap
it um, which would mean that, like I said, now
there's no longer that requirement to access some of these

(01:28:47):
these services from private businesses. And then ultimately that would
lead us back into our letter rip model that we
had last summer. The Monday vote came in the next day,
February eighth. Alberta Premiere and premiers are like the you
know equivalent of governors for the states, but Alberta Premiere
Jason Kenny announced that the provinces so called COVID nineteen

(01:29:10):
vaccine passport program would end immediately, explaining that the restriction
program had served its purpose, but it is no longer
needed since Alberta has passed the peak of omercron infections
about three weeks ago. Capacity limits were also next Tuesday
night for venues with capacity limits under five hundred, including
libraries and places of worship. An effect of this past Sunday, February,

(01:29:32):
the province will also no longer require masking for children
and youth in schools and for any Alberton's aged twelve
and under in any setting. There is a second phase
for Alberta's COVID restriction removal plan. On March one. The
province is set to remove any remaining restrictions, including the
indoor mask mandate, work from home requirements, any remaining capacity limits,

(01:29:53):
and limits on social gatherings and screenings for youth activities.
Jason Kenny did deny that the move has has anything
to do with the protests from those you know demanding
the repeal of vaccine mandates of all types across the country,
including the blockade that the government had condemned illegal at
the Coots border crossing, saying, quote, none of that has
anything to do with a few trucks participating at the

(01:30:15):
Coots border crossing. Um, who added that keeping previous rules
in place would invite widespread non compliance for no purpose,
saying why keep this going on for a few days
when we know that in many areas were already having
non compliance problems. So yeah, Um, of course, the demonstrations
have continued despite Alberta dropping multiple health measures and agreeing

(01:30:38):
to a demand made by a lot of the anti
mandate protesters, which implies that this protest is about much
more than simple COVID health measures. Right. It points to
the movement being more about taking political power and forcing
everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial and alienated understanding
of the world. As someone who's like living in Alberta,

(01:30:59):
which is, you know, one of the more conservative provinces
of Canada, Um, how much do you see this kind
of this kind of you know, spontaneous revolt and resistance
to be actually tied to the health man dates and
how much do you see it? It's more like a
revolt around like Trudeau and Canada's like Canada's like um

(01:31:20):
veneer of liberalism like like like how like how much
do you did you see? It's more like a urban
rule divide thing that's now just getting pushed into the
spotlight because of covid um or do you think it
really is way more about covid itself? Um, I think
that the pandemic has definitely had a role to play
in sparking a lot of this this fearer and this uh,

(01:31:43):
this disconnect, But the seeds have been sown for many years,
through many successive provincial governments and and much rhetoric that um,
the West has always been ignored by the East, by
our politic institutions in the East, namely Otto our federal government,

(01:32:03):
the seat of our federal government in favor of you know,
Ontario and Quebec and what they want to Alberton's have
always seen themselves with a bit of a martyr complex
where we are the economic powerhouse of the country, but
we are the ugly stepchild and we are ignored in
favor of the wonderful children in the East. And so

(01:32:28):
that that disconnect and that divide has always been there,
and the pandemic has been the catalyst. Um. And of course,
you know, whenever there is a federal Liberal party that's
in in power, the conservatives feel the Conservatives in Alberta
and in the West they feel even more disenfranchised. They

(01:32:50):
feel that this this government doesn't hear them, they don't
listen to them, they don't you know, follow the whims
of you know, the died in the world conservatives. And
so that rhetoric has built and built and built over
the years, um. And it's all tied into other things
as well. It's tied into the economic policies and the
policies of the liberal government with in regards to climate

(01:33:15):
change and carbon tax and how how that's been hitting
um Albertan's you know, they our province is very heavily
dependent upon the oil and gas sector and it always
has been for the last I'm gonna suggest fifty six years.
And so when they see things like in Autumna, where

(01:33:38):
they're talking about climate change and they're talking about you know,
green energy, it makes these conservatives angry because this has
been our bread and butter for years. This is what's
fed our families. They don't recognize that, you know, this
is this is the path forward. All they hear is
we don't want you, we don't want your jobs, we

(01:33:59):
don't want your products. And they're angry and this has
been the catalyst now where they're just fed up. They're
up with with not being heard. Unfortunately, all that built
up anger and resentment towards the government and its leadership
is ending up being taken out against just any symbol

(01:34:20):
of liberalism, not really the government directly. You know. Within
this worldview, homophobic attacks can be then thought up as
this weird form of punching up because gainness is associated
with liberalism, so it's seen as almost this system of power,
even though it's that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of
weird backwards thing where you can view like attacking progressive

(01:34:44):
things as an attack on the system. So that means
like being racist or being homophobic, is this rebellion against
you know, the system itself, even though it just ties
into all those same systemic issues. Just the other day
in edmund And there was a business owner, uh, a
hair salon owner, who's been very outspoken about this Freedom

(01:35:08):
Convoy and about how she doesn't agree with their messaging
and their their ideas, and she was actually hunted down
on social media, um, hunted down in person. They found her,
someone found her her business, went to her business and
confronted her and assaulted her UM at her business, all

(01:35:29):
because she uh does not support the convoy, and apparently
this individual did. UM. You know, we definitely, we definitely
see here that UM. The feeling is is that if
you are a liberal in Alberta, this is not the
place for you. UM. You know, if you if you

(01:35:52):
believe in you know, equal rights for everyone, this is
not the place for you. If you believe in the
rights of marginalized and minority communities, this is not the
place for you. And we I've seen that, you know,
and taking part in various protests I suppose that could

(01:36:12):
be branded as liberal protests, like the Black Lives Matter
protests and um, the protests and rallies that were held
in support of the indigenous communities last summer upon you know,
the news that kind of shook the world regarding um
graves at residential schools, and you know, you see it

(01:36:35):
with the indigenous communities that protests pipelines on their traditional
lands and they block you know, railways, and the same
people that are screaming for jail time and for violence
and and police intervention on these various protests are the
same people that are taking part in a convoy. Protesters

(01:36:57):
at the Cootes border crossing will now be charged or
mind according to the province and the RCMP. R CMP
Deputy Chief Curtis is A Blocky said in a news
conference during the start out the second week of the
Alberta border blockade that police are actively working to diffuse
situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta, but
are trying to do so peacefully, saying, make no mistake,

(01:37:19):
there are criminal activities taking place at these protest sites
that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen
activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having
a very negative effect on Alberton's who live in the area.
He then pointed to you know, dwindling numbers involving the
blockade from a high of around two fifty vehicles to
begin with two around fifty vehicles last Tuesday afternoon. As

(01:37:43):
a success of their efforts to this point. But you
know this isn't convinced everyone, since the blockade is still happening.
So Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called
the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in
the demonstration can be charged under several different federal and
provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic

(01:38:06):
Safety Act, and the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which
was enacted right in the middle of during the international
George Floyd uprising and the certain rail blockades in Canada.
I'm going to go into many tangent here just because
of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law
enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out
significant monetary fines and extra jail time for actions deemed

(01:38:30):
to interfere with so called essential infrastructure quote unquote. The
stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges
for quote, damage or interference caused by blockades, protests, or
similar activities that can cause significant public safety, social, economic,
and environmental consequences. The Act builds on existing trespassing laws

(01:38:52):
to create offenses for trespassing on destroying, damaging, and obstructing
the use or operation of any essential infrastructure, also under
the banner of essential infrastructure that includes public and private property.
By the way, the bill was obviously aimed at left
wing protest and specifically equal defense and environmental protest and
or sabotage, as the first two things defined as essential

(01:39:15):
infrastructure in the bill are quote, pipelines and related infrastructure
and oil and gas production and refinery sites. So yeah.
There's also been pressure from government officials to include forfeiture
property in the commission of crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act.
RCMP Deputy chiefs the blockys that charges will be coming

(01:39:35):
for those taking part in the protest and could be
as simple as the way they are illegally parked on
the highway. He didn't note that the RCMP has attempted
to hire local towing companies to move the trucks and
other equipment off the road, but have been unable to
do so, with the companies citing concerns over damaged their
business long term or just safety issues in general. This

(01:39:57):
has also been a huge factor in attempts to deal
with the auto occupation. Zablocki said that there are concerns
over safety and violence in response to the more aggressive
approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the main
action law enforcement has taken to dissuay people from blocking
the border is just giving out tickets and fines for
illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenny said that he is supportive

(01:40:18):
of our CMP handling this as they see fit through
the means that they already have, and has been supportive
of using the you know, pretty horribly authoritarian Critical Infrastructure
Defense Act, saying quote, last year we passed the Defense
of Critical Infrastructure Act, which gives police enormous powers and
various defines the penalties, including the power of imprisonment. We

(01:40:41):
have made it clear to the RCMP, who is our
provincial policing service, that they can and should use all
of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid situation,
and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades and protests across the country
this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave, while also passing
the buck on any blame, saying quote, I want to

(01:41:04):
remind everybody that politicians don't direct police departments to enforce
the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around revoking licenses
and criminal records for those continuing to protest, saying everything
is on the table because this unlawful blockade has to
end and will end. The blockade at the Cootes border

(01:41:24):
crossing is not the only convoy aligned protest in Alberta.
There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city
in Calgary. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees says that
frontline healthcare workers, patients and people living around the Sheldon
Camere Health Center have dealt with protests for weeks, but

(01:41:44):
things have only gotten worse since the truck convoy hit
the news. The vice president of the Alberta Union for
Provincial Employees said that protesters have blocked the ambulance bain,
they have harassed workers and patients as they come to
and from the center. They've banged on the windows of
the facility and upset people inside, and they have blocked
the roads around the center. Moving on to the province

(01:42:07):
of British Columbia, as the second weekend of protest was
set to descend on Vancouver the weekend of February five,
in preparation fearing attacks would be carried out against healthcare
workers like they have in the past. Vancouver's to health
authorities issued internal ms telling health workers to hide indoors
as the convoy pass through the city and to quote

(01:42:28):
refrain from wearing scrubs and or your ID badge outside
the hospital during the demonstration. If you do encounter any protesters,
please do not engage with them or respond to their questions,
and please do not ask protesters to put on a
face mask. Similarly, ahead of a protest in Toronto, the
Toronto Police sent letters to hospitals advising their workers to

(01:42:48):
not wear any clothing or markings that identified them as
working in healthcare, fearing attacks by protesters. As the second
wave of the convoy arrived during the second weekend of
the occupation in Ottawa, some of the on the ground
organizational structure started to morphin evolves. The police estimated around
this time that five thousand people were still protesting in

(01:43:10):
Ottawa and around one thousand vehicles were clogging the streets
during the second week of protests. In an effort to
improve optics, considering the four original organizers explicit connections to
the far right, a new lead organizational, public relations and
bargaining team was assembled for the group, calling themselves the
Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo leadership team consists of Daniel Bulford,

(01:43:35):
a former RCMP officer who was on the Prime Minister's
security detail. He quit last year after refusing to get
the vaccine and is now the convoy's head of security.
Tom Quicken, former military intelligence officer who also worked with
the RCMP and was considered one of the country's top
counter terrorism experts. And Tom Marazo, an ex military officer who,

(01:43:58):
according to his linked in profile, served in the Canadian
Armed Forces for twenty five years and ours as a
freelance software developer. And just side note in terms of
you know, police and former military participating in the protests,
there was an organization full of retired police that endorsed
the convoy a few weeks ago and said that they

(01:44:19):
have people on the ground there and just got announced
as as I'm recording this, that two members of Canada's
military counter terrorism unit is under investigation for allegedly taking
part in the Ottawa Convoy protests. So yeah, that's fun.
The occupation has been getting more and more organized on

(01:44:40):
the ground the past two weeks and has been able
to keep one step ahead of any action taken against
police against the occupation. Even just what the convoy participants
have physically built is impressive. Less than a week after
the convoy arrived, you started to see wooden structures being
built around the roads and a growing stockp all of
propane and diesel fuel. There is an impressive amount of

(01:45:04):
tents and wind structures used for kitchens that local organizers
have set up, and a whole supply chain has sprung
up across the city to keep these people fed, working
and protesting. I'm now going to quote a good article
in the CBC by Judy Trend quote. The group is
set up not only near the Parliament in Ottawa, but
they have also built two encampment areas where they carry

(01:45:26):
out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting has painted a
picture that these areas are far more organized than widely thought.
The group is also trying out new tactics, such as
attempting to clog up traffic at the Ottawa Airport. Other
tactics like swatting have been reported as well. Ottawa Police
say they're aware of a concerned effort to flood our

(01:45:46):
nine one and non emergency police reporting lines, tweeting that
this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined to not
be outdone by their fellow protesters in the West, after
the second wave arrived, the members of the Ottawa Convoy
organized away for the Convoy occupation to stay, but also
put up a border crossing blockade of their own. Starting Sunday,

(01:46:11):
February six, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario,
to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow of auto parts and
other products between the two countries. While this protest has
been conducted more by pickup trucks than big rigs, it
has been holding up the lanes. The bridge is the
busiest US Canada border crossing and the key cog in

(01:46:34):
both the US and Canadian economies, as it carries around
twenty five percent of trade between the two countries. The
effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly. The bridge
regularly carries around three hundred sixty million dollars a day
in two way cargoes, but traffic is limited by its
nineteen nine physical footprint. There's just two lanes each way

(01:46:56):
with no shoulders and antiquated customs boots, with the northern
side just emptying out into the city streets. The bumper
to bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides the
border to shut down or scale back production. The halting
of trade has bottlenecked automaker Ford's ability to get parts
from the US to its Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville.

(01:47:20):
Ford to shut down the doors of its Windsor plan
and reduced the work schedule in Oakville. Ford set in
a statement, the interruption on the Detroit Windsor Bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities,
and companies on both sides of the border. We hope
the situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread
impact on all automakers in the US and Canada. Automaker

(01:47:42):
Toyota said that it's three D plants in Ontario closed
for the rest of the week because of parts shortages,
and production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky more
On the U s side of things, GM, Jeep, and
Honda all had hours cut and assembly lines shut down
own at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor

(01:48:04):
Gretchen Whittemore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the stand off,
saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines and that is unacceptable.
The federal Public Safety Minister has said that the Royal
Canadian amount of police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor,
Ottawa and to Coots, Alberta, where the other border blockade
is happening. With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor

(01:48:27):
Drew Dilkins announced that the city would seek a court
injunction to end the occupation, saying that the economic harm
is just not sustainable and it must come to an end.
On Thursday, February tenth, the Biden administration urged Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau's government on Thursday to use its federal powers
to end the truck blockade at the other side of

(01:48:47):
the Detroit border. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
products have been held back for days as fifty to
sixty vehicles and around a hundred anti mandate protesters camp
out on the main road that leads on and off
the bridge. And yes, it is ironic that the same
people who are trying to sell Canadians fake stories about
failing supply lines and empty shelves are now causing those

(01:49:09):
supply lines to fail and causing those shelves to go empty.
The irony is not lost on me, but it may
be lost on the convoy participants. Throughout running these episodes,
I was fortunate enough to get to talk to multiple
people who have been on the ground in downtown Ottawa.
One such of these people's is Peter Smith, an investigative
journalist for the Canadian Anti Hate Network. We recorded our

(01:49:32):
conversation and I'm going to include some audio clips throughout
the rest of the episode. We started off by discussing
what made this protest movement pop off in this specific
time and place. I do you think it was maybe
capitalizing on a moment, but also a fair amount of luck.
You know, since two thousand nine, the same organizers have
attempted to put together other convoys, you know, generally never

(01:49:55):
rising to the amount of attention that they had in
two thousand nine. Um. You know, this convoy was also
planned long before they specifically started focusing on truckers, and
then it was it was a galvanizing issue. It resonated
with people who are frustrated with the Trudeau government, um,

(01:50:17):
and just they're they're handling of of health measures as
well as just became a like a vehicle for expressing
their general dissatisfaction with their own provinises, like most of
our health mandates are provincial, like the Alberta government is
handing down what's happening in Alberta. Um, so it's it's
not just it's not just a federal issue, but coming

(01:50:41):
down here and occupying the streets of Ottawa and that
now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities. Um.
You know, ones like Winnipeg gets significantly less attention, but
are incredibly disruptive locally, um and in some cases more
kind of inceniary than the one that we have out here,
where you know, participants and organizers are desperately trying to

(01:51:03):
clamp down on on any individuals who's engaging and harassment
or uh well or is more common blaming it on
liberal plants. Um. Yeah, it just it became this kind
of expression of all of the frustration and very quickly
drew attention even from people who've been dismissive of it
very early on because of some of the organizers. Um.

(01:51:26):
Once it really started to galvanate, galvanized attention and of
course money, Uh, people couldn't couldn't stay away. I mean
to the point that we even have mainstream conservative politicians
now getting on board with it, including the man who's
very likely to be the future leader of the Conservative
Party here. I mean, we're in a very unique moment um,

(01:51:49):
you know, are our far right and kind of conspiracy
culture in Canada has also been getting better at organizing
over the course of the pandemic. Wants to get like
all major cities have and many small towns continue to
have anti mandate um anti lockdown protests. We usually refer
to them as the COVID conspiracy movement, just because of
how and heavily heavily informed it is by conspiratorial thinking. Um.

(01:52:15):
So it's it's like you had a large amount of
people kind of spending the past two years and like
a on the ground boot camp of how to organize
within these cities and how to get people's attention. And
of course, like like a lot of the far right here,
it fragmented. There was a lot of infighting, um and
then you know, once there became a central point that
was was galvanizing a lot of attention, it started receiving

(01:52:37):
international attention. You know, there's been some questions about the
source of some of the money, but certainly the initial
totals seemed to be organically Canadian. Yeah. Um, it just
became too big to fall apart essentially, at least at
this point. Um. There has been some spats of infighting,
but mostly you know, the most polarized and figures are

(01:53:01):
either just keeping their head down or in some cases
even choosing to stay away from the main events so
as not to be a distraction. Um. There's a lot.
One of the lines I see a lot is like,
this is the moment, this is for all the marvels. Um.
So there's a huge amount of importance being placed on that.
What actually happens, like whether they're able to paint what

(01:53:24):
we've the like the actual rolling back of banddates that
we were already starting to see before the convoy began,
um as some type of victory for them, um, or
if this leads to further disillusionment. You know, we don't
really know at this point, but I think this moment
is going to be a propaganda tool, um, and kind

(01:53:45):
of a a point of I think it's gonna be
a propaganda tool and like a point of motivation for
a long time from your like both on the ground
stuff and just from monitoring stuff online. What do you
think like the actual actionable intention was once they arrived
in Ottawa, Like, do you think they had a clear

(01:54:07):
plan of what to do or was it more like
let's go here and then we'll figure things out. Well,
initially there there was a manum. Initially there was a
memorandum of understanding which laid out kind of the points
of what the inditial organizers were hoping to accomplish, something
they call the Operation bay or hug Um, which includes

(01:54:29):
having the Governor General and our Senate, both of whom
are unelected, uh dissolved parliament and reform the government immediately
after we had a federal election. Um. Since then, the
message has evolved like they're trying to stay very very
like on script with this just being about freedom, um,

(01:54:52):
this just being about mandates. You know, initially there was
a lot of attempts to even get people to stop
mentioning the vaccine. Of those seems to kind of fallen
by the wayside, especially when you start looking at the speakers.
It is interesting to kind of wonder what the actual
goal is there. They've started meeting with public officials, you know,

(01:55:14):
there is some type of negotiation going on. Um. Obstensively,
the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted
on people on truckers who are unvaccinated returning from the US.
You know, the obvious thing is the point out that
the US still has a very similar policy in reverse
again here would have no impact um on their ability

(01:55:36):
to to avoid this quarantine. But um, it seems like
the goals are fairly murky, and that's almost deliberate because
then they can declare victory kind of when it suits them.
Ambiguity around protest goals, demands, and purpose itself can be
a useful tactic. The Crime Think zine slash article titled

(01:55:58):
why we Don't make Demands makes such a case. I
don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend
you give the article a look if you're interested in
this train of thought as an intentional tactic. But on
the flip side, you know, vague and direction list protest
without much of a focus on a specific goal can
also cause protests to peter out without having any lasting

(01:56:18):
impact on the world. A discussion worth having is how
the individual people that make up the convay participants have
been convinced to take part in an occupation protest, and
how what is considered valid political action has broadened in
their own heads if they're the ones doing the action,
of course, because from their point of view, since they

(01:56:39):
are doing it, the cause must be valid and therefore
the action is justified. In we have the wetsuin rail blockades,
um that was put on by various members of our
first nations, and then people who supported them, you know,
the same politicians they're meeting, um when the truckers embracing them, uh,

(01:57:00):
saying that our current prime ministers demonizing them um by
kind of casting them as under desirables. We're we're you know,
we're actively calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists
who are disrupting our economy. Um. Obviously, in the context
of the pandemic pandemic that's very different because there has
been kind of mass disruption too to our economy. But

(01:57:25):
this kind of picking and choosing, of of suiting the
narrative to court far eight voters seems to be popular.
You know how Conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type.
Right Conservatives are supposed to be the type of people
who drive by the protest and yell, get a job,
They're not the ones who are out in the streets picketing.
But first of all, that's not really true. Historically, in

(01:57:48):
just the past one years, there's always been conservative protests
for you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have
been much better at organizing off the street for their
political policies, specifically around like abortion or Christian dominionism, anti
queer legislation, or recent stuff around anti CRT and just

(01:58:09):
the mainstream racism denial that's been propagated through media. But
even if there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging
the gap of what is seen as valid political action
in the minds of these convoy attendees did still take
place over just the past few years, just the past
two years, specifically, there's been so much conservative protests around COVID.

(01:58:33):
A whole bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest
probably five years ago would have never seen themselves going
to protest in the Canadian capital, Right Like, if you
told them a few years ago that you're gonna drive
all these kilometers to the Parliament to camp out in
the cold for weeks to protest against the government and
its rules for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in

(01:58:55):
a century. They would have probably laughed out of the room.
So what is the logical agression of conservative people who generally,
you know, look down on any type of protest, especially
occupy style protests to the point where they are driving
all the way to the capital to camp outside the building,
to Hong Korn's day and night. A lot of that
political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic,

(01:59:16):
to the social isolation and the great opportunity for the
fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered. Over the
course of the pandemic, there's been this huge blending of
rhetoric online and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization
of the other side. Increasingly less and less criticism against
the current government is less based on its policy and

(01:59:38):
more based on its figurehead and the image of Trudeau
as a globalist politics as opposition to whatever Trudeaux and
the Liberals are doing. The result of that is just
a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to keep
always being antagonistic and always being contrarian no matter what
the opposition actually does. The thing is a lot of

(01:59:59):
the people who used to just be kind of more
general conservatives. As they get radicalized online and get caught
up with farther right and extremest elements, most of them
still view themselves as like the norm. They don't think
they've politically changed the past five years, but if you
look at their rhetoric and actions, they definitely have kind

(02:00:19):
of substantially, But they still view themselves the same way
they would when they were voting. Forced to even harper,
Unless you're a self described extremist, you typically view everything
that you do and say as normal and reasonable. Like you,
you are the actual normal. Everyone else is shifted either
way relative to you. During our talk, I asked investigative

(02:00:41):
journalist Peter Smith on his opinions about what sorts of
political and social factors have allowed the occupation and blockades
to have enough numbers to last and continue on so long. Um.
Kind of having spent a lot of time on the
ground at the Ottawa convoy just talking to people as
like as a normal guy without my press hat on. Um,

(02:01:03):
it does seem like when there's a lot of owner
operators there, like when it comes to the trucks themselves. Um,
these people are the business owners um or like very close,
like they're kind of independent contractors exactly. Um. I think
there was a report that came out showing a survey
that done that like roughly half of the people there

(02:01:25):
were unemployed. UM. So like the financial promise of all
the money raised may have been a big draw. Like
not to say that these people don't legitimately believe the
reasons absolutely, um, but it created an incentive. UM. But
then having roughly half of them, you know, still having jobs,
you know, it comes down to a little bit more

(02:01:46):
than just money, Like it's about actual belief, actual ideology. UM.
But it is interesting for a large amount of people
who are extremely worried about supply lines about people having
enough food initially um to kind of creating this self
fulfilling prophecy where where that seems to be the main
tactic is just to grind as much to a halt

(02:02:08):
as they can, using as much as many people as
they can muster. And then just the kind of general
hands off approach that law enforcement is taking with them,
um has allowed them to organize better, to evolve their
tactics to be more effective. UM. Like I certainly don't
think a policing solution is is what's going to solve this?

(02:02:30):
And you know, there's a lot of calls for that,
which is I think just going to result in a
lot of people getting hurt in the street. Um. But
but yeah, like it is interesting that how it kind
of it came from the West mostly and then landed
in Ottawa and then kind of spread out from there
once people realized it was effective, once people realized, you know,

(02:02:53):
there was there was safety in these numbers. Um, it's
it's drawn, it's drawn so many people to it. It's
it's honestly shock. It's it has been shocking, truly how
quickly it is spread and how effective it has been.
It's not January six in the sense that like people
are running around Parliament and like trying to find you know,

(02:03:14):
every liberal politician, but in the sense that it's a
large amount of people motivated by conspiracy. Yeah, and that's
where I view the parallel and because they and honestly,
the the actual sincerity of it poses more of a
political threat than the animosity of January six. Um, in
terms of like long term, like actual social change and

(02:03:35):
using this type of like occupation as a tactic, the
more sincere you are the more of an actual political
threat you can be in the long term, because yeah,
if they start, if they storm Parliament, then I'll get
shut down in a day and then they will be
demonized and then then the problem is over, um at
least at least in the short term. Right. Um. But
if you actually like do this sincerely and actually get

(02:03:56):
people to buckle under pressure, then that's like actual successful politics.
Like that is you're you're actually doing politics objectively. Well, um,
and that's more interesting to point out. The problem isn't protesting,
Like protesting as a concept isn't the issue. The problem
isn't even blockade. No, the problem is not blockades either. Yeah,

(02:04:17):
all these things are just tactics, and tactics are value neutral. Um.
Usually you know, it's until you can take a genocide
when it's usually that's a kind of kind of kind
of a downer generally. Um. But in generally I kind
of you put protest tactics as more value neutral. It's
about kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and

(02:04:38):
what they want the results to be. And even still,
you know, some of the some of the points they
have are not completely invalid um. But once it gets
caught up in a cultural war kind of mindset. It's
like you have to oppose it just because they're on
the other side. Um So I kind of want to
talk about like the reasons why they are actually kind

(02:05:00):
enough bad like like for like on like a very
sincere way, but then also kind of point out some
things that are like yeah, maybe the scene, these are
things we should consider and it shouldn't take this type
of occupation to have us reconsider some of these rules
and regulations. Yeah, like completely, Like I think there's no
issue with having being uncomfortable with mandates, um like, even

(02:05:23):
if you feel they're necessary, like being uncomfortable with the
amount of state power that is being accumulated. Um. You know,
in Canada, you know there have been sweeping changes to
the way that we live our lives. Like I know
that that's been universal. Um but there there is not
a province that hasn't really suffered, like hasn't really impacted

(02:05:45):
people's lives dealing with COVID um. And you know, this
is this is one of the biggest issues when trying
to point out disparate responses in policing. Um. Well, it's like, oh,
it's like so we should treat the convoy participants like
they treated everybody else, and it's it's like no, like like,

(02:06:06):
you know, the the police chief of Ottawa got a
lot of ship for saying he doesn't think there's a
policing solution, and it's like, I do agree with the
criticism of him, because he has attempted to kick responsibility
to just about every other level of government available. Um,
but dragging people out, like towing their vehicles and taking
away their livelihood and dragging a lot of people out

(02:06:28):
into the street and then into jail is not gonna
resolve these issues now, and if anything, it could could
bring more support. Like again, there was another report today
that I think it's of people who have camped out
have children with them, Like, you know, this is gonna
be an incredibly traumatic experience. It's gonna help radicalize more people,

(02:06:51):
and it's gonna lend credence to their cause if they
just go in and bust heads. And it's like if
the main focus of this convoy had been ento where
we have an incredibly aggressive police force when it comes
to like homeless encampments for instance, Um, you know, I
think the result could have been very different. Yeah, and

(02:07:14):
then because a lot of stuff around the question of
governments and stuff. Yeah, it's it's the type of things
I can agree with with like right wing libertarians, is, yeah,
you do have a lot of points I can simplize
with around the state and around control, but the way
you address them don't actually address the underlying power structures

(02:07:35):
which give the state legitimacy in the first place. Yeah. Absolutely,
And the world that you kind of want in the
end is still a world full of hierarchies, just hierarchies
that make your life easier and skew and your favor
just like asking for two unelected bodies to reoplate replace
your democratically elected government. It's like, yeah, we had ten

(02:07:57):
years of Stephen Harper, Like, um, people were unhappy and
extremely critical of that government from the center and from
the left, But you know, there wasn't this kind of
broad support for the idea that that government was illegitimate,
which is I think what we see mostly today, which
is the most disturbing and kind of anti democratic part

(02:08:18):
of the whole pot. Yeah, and that's the kind of
on the last thing I want to talk about is like,
what do you see like eventually people will go home
either out of exhaustion, it'll maybe fizzle away, like like
the protests in Portland did. Maybe they'll eventually police will
kind of clear out small sections of like wh who knows,
But like, this is not going knock one here, but

(02:08:42):
this this isn't gonna last like a year, right, It's not.
It's not gonna like that. I don't think they're gonna
have thousands of people came out in front of the
government forever. Um So what but what are the actual
lumb term political ramifications of this, because we already saw
the leader of the Conservative Party step down. Um, So
like I want to talk but like specifically with the
guy who's probably more most likely to take his place.

(02:09:04):
How this just does kind of play into the more
negative aspects of the convoy, is like how they're going
to use this as a political symbol and a political
tool to push for policies and forms the government and
actions that will end up hurting a lot of of
and will uphorting a lot of people. Um in terms
of you know, how how it's going to be used

(02:09:24):
in propaganda and rhetoric. Yeah, well, certainly if we have um,
you know, strong legal ramifications put in place that make
it easier for provinces, the federal government whatever to crackdown
on on protests in general, which I think is something
that might be very attractive to our card and government. Um.

(02:09:47):
You know that's going to have obviously very far reaching effects.
You know. One of our opposition parties, um, which is
you know, generally further to the left than than the Liberals,
the n d P UM, their leader was proposing ways
to stop foreign funding from coming in to supplied to
the protests. Um. You know, once again, we we had

(02:10:07):
protests a couple of years ago by indigenous people and
people who support indigenous movements. Um. You know that that
raised money using the same platforms and the same methods.
You know. So I worry about like one of the
legal ramifications like to just this this idea, like if
the government does crack down very hard, this idea of

(02:10:29):
real grievance and alienation that the West has already been
struggling with. Like we've had a real renewed separatist movement,
not from Quebec um where it's generally been the most successful,
but from the Western provinces, you know, not not really
getting close to obtaining any real political power, but you know,
kind of steadily gaining support, pulling a showing that, Yeah,

(02:10:53):
there is a real feeling of Western alienation, that they
don't feel represented, and you know a lot of the
ways our government are set up actually makes that true. Um. Yeah. Ultimately,
as people I think become more and more disenfranchised, Um,
when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas

(02:11:15):
of oppression, um, you're gonna have a real hardening. And
since the government in power is a progressive one is
or at least one that espouses you know, tries tries
to reach for progressive values, you know, there's a good
chance that those issues are gonna get caught up with
what is just like a quote unquote leftist agenda, Whereas

(02:11:37):
up until probably a decade ago, those things were very
much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were
embraced by both sides. Um. The current candidate for leadership,
he hasn't been he hasn't won the seat in the
the Conservative Party yet, but Pierre Pouliver has kind of
always flirted to some degree with far right talking points

(02:12:01):
like I don't I I specialize in hey groups, I
don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism. Um.
But even by kind of members of the very far
right who often have turned against the Conservative Party over
the course of the pandemic. He's often referred to as
the adult in the room. Um. And while still a politician,

(02:12:22):
kind of their best bet for getting someone in office
that they would actually like to see in power. Um,
which could I mean could be interesting to see how
they if they will be continued support for the PPC
and two to four years um. But yeah, I just
think there there is a real hardening of the right.

(02:12:42):
And it's not like the Overton window is shifting. It's
just like it's getting wider, like more and more is
being incorporated, as opposed to be just going in one
direction or another. That disenfranchisement is a driving factor. Like
they view this populist kind of uprising or up swelling
um that they're seeing now as a function of democracy

(02:13:05):
or like part of how democracy is supposed to function.
So again, like if if you talk to them, they
will quite earnestly say many of them anyway, we'll quite
earnestly say it like this is about freedom, is about
having my voice heard. Yeah, but without a lot of
thought about how that will actually functioned in a broader scale.

(02:13:27):
I mean that just plays into like alienation as like
a general concepts, right, Like we're so disconnected from everything
about our lives, disconnected from you know, the way we work,
disconnected from our interactions with other people, between, disconnected from
like you know, money, our food, you know, it's all
the stuff, and like disconnected from politics. Is that the
only way that you can actually something that feels real,

(02:13:48):
the only thing that actually feels like reality, is going
to do this thing in person because everything else is
so disjointed. Um, it's the there is so much of
that space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing
that is. It leaves you wanting something which you don't
know quite what. So yeah, you're going to drive to
Ottawa because that feels so much more real. That feels

(02:14:09):
like actual politics, and it kind of it is like
that's like that's that's that's always when it feels like
when you're when you're like when you're when you're protesting,
it's like, yeah, I'm actually doing politics now, because that's
how everything gets set up is by that type of
like you know, getting people on the ground, and it's
it's such a more personal way to engage than you know,
putting a no into a box every two to four years,

(02:14:32):
like yeah, I I imagine it does feel substantive. And
then I mean voting power is centered in our urban
centers as well, so there is there is a real
disconnect with the representation that that rural people again Western
the Western provinces received. I now want to specifically talk
about police response and the way needs this occupation and

(02:14:55):
blockades being handled will affect the political organizing in the future.
I think initially the majority of police concerns and what
they were actually focused on responding to was fears around
the convoy storming Parliament or if the convoys were going
to do something exceedingly violent, which I don't think was
necessarily the convoy's actionable objective from the beginning, if you

(02:15:18):
listen to what they were actually saying, it will it
was more about choking out the city and applying pressure
on government officials. But the initial non violence, coupled with
the shield of being conservative, white and middle class whom
you know, the police are less likely to react as
brutally to allowed time for the infrastructure to rise. That
let the protests turn into a full scale occupation of

(02:15:39):
a North American city. The first real action police took
against the occupation was on the evening of Sunday, February six,
demonstrators were gathering for dinner than dozens of officers in
riot gear carrying munitions launchers raided a camp after footage
of stockpiles and gas cans went viral days previous, in

(02:16:00):
an attempt to cut the supply route. Police say they
seized around three thousand and seven hundred liters of fuel
and two vehicles, including a diesel tank, but within hours
of the raid, protesters from the camp broadcast reassurance to
their supporters and continue to organize just goodalizing smarter tactics.
The day after the police raid, protesters continued to deliver

(02:16:23):
fuel to downtown truckers as they executed a coordinated effort
to exhaust police resources. Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans,
some empty, some not, just right past officers who mostly
stood watched as hundreds of people trolled them with decoy
cans while others smuggled in more fuel within the safety
of the large crowd right in the middle of the day.

(02:16:45):
Ottawa Police Deputy Chief Steve Bell said the demonstrators were
filling cast cans with water to distract officers attempting to
subvert their efforts, and that one officer was swarmed by
the crowd while trying to confiscate fuel. To date, police
have made around thirty arrests and issued thousands of tickets,
launched more than eighty criminal investigations, and four hundred plus

(02:17:08):
hate incidents are also being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter
slowly said that the force would turn up the heat
as the police started to crack down on anyone bringing
material aid such as fuel to protesters. Police is mentled
a protest camp near the Redeau Canal downtown and a
fuel operation on the Coventry Road east of the Core,

(02:17:29):
but some trucks and demonstrators continued to occupy downtown streets
and the staging area on Coventry. Police say that they
need an additional eighteen hundred more reinforcements from federal and
provincial governments to help end the crisis. The entire Ottawa
Police Force numbers only twelve hundred, but it's been supplemented

(02:17:51):
with several hundred officers from the Ontario Provisional Police and
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as local police
forces elsewhere in Ontario over the past few weeks. Near
the end of the second week of occupation, dug Ford,
the Premier of Ontario, declared a state of emergency for
the entire province, warning protesters demanding an end to pandemic

(02:18:12):
restrictions that if they do not disband, there will be
consequences and they will be severe. He said that those
who continue to impede the movement of people and goods
could face fines of up to one hundred thousand Canadian dollars,
up to a year in prison, and the revocation of
their driver's license. During the cold morning of Sunday, February,

(02:18:33):
police largely cleared the portion of the self styled freedom
of Convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge US Canada border crossing
on the road between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. The clearing
marked a week since the border blockade had begun. Police
made several arrests and towed vehicles in connection to the
demonstration that had disrupted traffic and the flow of goods.

(02:18:56):
After law enforcement enforced the injunction enacted two days prior or,
ring truckers and our supporters to leave anticketed and towed vehicles.
A defined core of some two dozen protesters had remained
on foot as temperatures dropped below freezing, but around nine
thirty local time, police had mostly cleared the streets to
the bridge and were deployed around the area. It was unclear, however,

(02:19:18):
how large police presidents would remain to prevent vehicles and
demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile, in the capital of Ottawa,
police grappled with an influx of anti government and anti
vaccine mandate demonstrators for a third straight weekend. Despite both
local and provincial officials declaring states of emergency, law enforcement
appeared to be unsuccessful in attempts to get the Freedom

(02:19:40):
Convoy protesters to leave by threatening them with fines, prison time,
and loss of their licenses. Police have not made any
large effort to asrupt to the convoys in Ottawa, similar
to what they did on Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Ottawa
police say that over four thousand demonstrators were in this
city throughout the day. However, on Monday, February fourteenth, police

(02:20:03):
action was taken against the blockade at the Coots border
crossing that had shut down cross border travel. For almost
three weeks. The RCNP said in a press release early
Monday morning that they became aware of a small organized
group within the larger protest at Coots, which led to
eleven arrests. They say that they hit information that the
group had access to a cash of firearms and ammunition

(02:20:25):
in three trailers. During the raid, officers seized long guns, handguns,
multiple sets of body armor, a machete, and a large
commantity of ammunition and some high capacity magazines. Later that day,
to other arrests were made in connection to the blockade.
Following the police raid and the thirteen arrests, some other

(02:20:46):
organizers of the protest said a decision was reached voluntarily
to leave the Coots area. Around Tuesday morning. The organizers
made a statement saying, quote, we were infiltrated by an
extreme element. Our objective was to be here piece really
to keep that message going. We want to peacefully leave
Coots and return to our families. As of Tuesday, both

(02:21:09):
the border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit and
the Coot Sport of entry to Montana are open once again,
as the border opened back up in Coots. The previous blockade,
protesters and police embraced each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile,
on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergency's Act

(02:21:30):
for the first time in Canadian history to give the
federal government and police extra powers to handle the ongoing
blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures
were taking today will help get the situation under control.
The police will be given more tools to restore order

(02:21:51):
in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities,
such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the
Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability
to impose fines or imprisonment. The government will designate secure

(02:22:13):
and protect places and infrastructure that are critical to our
economy and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We
cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.
The Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make

(02:22:35):
sure essential services are rendered, for example, in order to
tow vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be
authorized or directed to render essential services to help address
the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of

(02:22:56):
property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, will enable
the RCMP to enforce municipal by laws and provincial offenses
were required. This is what the Emergencies Act does. The
Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act in the

(02:23:19):
nineteen eighties, defines a national emergency as a temporary, urgent,
and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health, or
safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature
as to extend the capacity of authority of a province
to deal with it. The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies

(02:23:39):
Act gives police quote more tools to restore order in
places where public assembly is constitute illegal and dangerous activities,
such as blockades and occupations. According to Trudeau, but the
thing is police already had all the tools they needed.
The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal, They just
didn't want to enforce it. You can look at how

(02:24:01):
the coots, protesters and the police are hugging right. This
isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All this
does is set a terrible precedent for using this type
of extra power in the future to respond to protests.
Because the cops are still going to take a very
gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical
action against the Ottawa occupation while using the extra powers

(02:24:24):
of the Emergencies Act. The Finance Minister of Canada also
announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing
of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding and also
extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowd
funds for criminal acts, including legal protests. As part of

(02:24:45):
invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions. First,
we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti money laudering,
laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding
platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes

(02:25:07):
cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms
and some of the payment service providers they use are
not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist

(02:25:29):
Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated
to report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center
of Canada or FINTRACK. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms
and the payment service providers they use must register with fintrack,

(02:25:53):
and they must report large and suspicious transactions to fintrack
h This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms
receive illicit funds, increase the quality and quantity of intelligence
received by fintrack, and make more information available to support

(02:26:16):
investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind
of all the information I have at the time of recording.
So now I'm going to talk more about the potential
political effects that this protest could have, not just on Canada,
but also in how we view protest in general. So
the actual result of liberal media framing this type of

(02:26:39):
protest as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal
police actions against massive, mostly non violent, and tactically smart
protests to be more normalized across Canada, and extremely brutal
police response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled
against a protest made up of these conservatives, but will

(02:27:01):
absolutely happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially
if they use occupy style tactics. The more powers police
obtain and the legal precedents that are set well of
long lasting implications with legal consequences that will always come
down harder on the left than they do on the right.
Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative

(02:27:24):
so called freedom protest, but then we'll use it as
a justification to grab greater resources and power and use
this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future.
If liberals can widely celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns
of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families,

(02:27:45):
calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise, and cheering on
as police steal property of the protesters despite what the
majority of these protesters are doing, just being kind of
camping onside of a street. Think of all of the
ways that consent it can be manufactured to clamped down
on any future large scale protest, especially when the movement
isn't made up of a bunch of regular white people

(02:28:07):
and their kids, and instead of actually challenges the underlying
power structures that prop up white Canada, instead of just
reinforcing it like the Convoy does. I have a similar
issue around all of the hubbub around the fundraisers right.
Restricting where crowdfunded resources can come from will only result
in future political social justice causes to be negatively impacted,

(02:28:30):
whether that be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from
out of country. On February ten, the Canadian federal government
effectively shut down the Freedom Convoys Gives end Go fundraiser,
making it illegal for the funds to be used in
any way. Government's setting the precedent for shutting down protest
crowdfunding is not a good thing now. Any future of

(02:28:52):
protest bail funds and crowdfunding for the set In blockade
will always be in jeopardy, and by no means saying
that action against a generally hateful, anti democratic, and dangerously
conspiratorial protest isn't justified, but just when governments start using
it as reasons for more power and creating new precedents

(02:29:12):
for years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars
and fines for an occupation. Protest like that shouldn't be
cheered on because those things will only come back to
bite progressive causes a lot harder than they will be
used against the conservative convoyers. There has increasingly been attempts
at counter protesting the Ottawa Convoy and the various Convoy

(02:29:34):
inspired protests around the country. Many of which faced harsher
police response than any of the convert protests have up
until this point, but those community led counterprotesting efforts are vital.
The ram Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing. On Sunday night,
the u r L for the Gifts Send Go fundraiser
was hacked by activists who redirected the page to a

(02:29:55):
video of the frozen song let It Go, accompanying a
manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the Convoy. And that's great,
and that is wonderful counter protesting. That is very in
terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising efforts for
basically pseudo fascist you know, anti anti democratic conspiracy lad movement.

(02:30:16):
That's great, right, And this was hours after it was
officially confirmed to via data leaks that around fifty percent
of gibsend Go donations for the Convoy came from the
United States, around came from Canada, and then two percent
came from the UK. Although I think it's worth mentioning
that for the initial ten million dollar go fund me,
we only have confirmation that around thirty three thou dollars

(02:30:40):
came from the United States. To understand how the Convoy
flash blockade is working. It's useful to get away from
painting all the participants themselves as extremists, because the fact
that regular Canadian right wingers are what's making this possible
has a whole bunch of other implications that people aren't
really talking about. I'm seeing a lot of Canadians who

(02:31:02):
are just really upset about how the convoys affecting cities
and the country as a whole, which, you know, reasonable,
I am, it is a thing to be upset about.
But then just jumping to insist that it must be inorganic,
I think is kind of faulty. Focusing instead on theories
around foreign influences and ashtarf organizing elements of which have

(02:31:23):
been present, sure, but also the impact in which is
I think kind of been overblown. But even if those
things are completely true and major factors, that still overlooks
the fact that there are thousands of real Canadians from
around the country camped up in Ottawa, and the majority
of those Canadians sitting in the streets are not Nazis

(02:31:43):
right or really even extremists, and most of those people
are not receiving personal funding from dark money billionaires. They
consider themselves regular, working class, freedom loving Canadians. It's much
harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of participants that
have slid further to the right over the past two
years due to rampant online misinformation coupled with ineffectual government

(02:32:06):
support during the pandemic. It's easy to point to so
called organizers who are definitely more fashion, large scale sketchy donations,
and far right media figures who are trying to jump
support for the convoy. But those things alone don't get
many of thousands and thousands of people and their kids
to drive across country for a cause that they earnestly

(02:32:26):
believe in the years of political alienation and disenfrantisement that
caused that to happen is a lot harder to solve
than just cracking down on organizers and donations. Watching homegrown
reactionary street politics that one day can grow into an
actual far right, populist and fascist movement is a lot
more frightening than the idea of overseas astroturft organizing. Not

(02:32:50):
that those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm just
trying to make a good point here. Despite cries to
make this, Canada's January six in a way, the convoys
more effective than January six in terms of the evolution
of valid political action. It's pushed the boundary on what
is deemed as acceptable and even possible for large scale

(02:33:10):
occupations and supply line blockades. In the major North American
urban setting, people who would never consider themselves militant are
now involved in multiple border crossing blockades. That's cost hundreds
of millions of dollars, and to get to this point,
so many things need to happen. COVID isolation offered fertile

(02:33:31):
ground for people's politics to unknowing these slide more to
the extreme, the many in person connections that help prevent
people from falling prey to conspiratorial thinking ceased to exist.
General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion of liberalism
and elitism has been steadily growing since, and all that
mounted up frustration is now being released, and as a result,

(02:33:53):
the invisible Overton window of acceptable political action has shifted
right in regular conservatives. My means, and a movement like
this is hard to dissolve. Police actions have the chance
of escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness to protest,
and even if more mandates get removed. That doesn't mean

(02:34:13):
the protests will stop either. Removing the Alberta mandates didn't
stop the Coots border blockade, for instance, because you know,
even if all the mandates in Canada get rescinded, which
whish they won't and whish they shouldn't, but even if
they did, that would still leave the US's Vaccine Board
requirements which are preventing on vaccinated truckers from entering the
States anyway. Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian

(02:34:37):
convoy have broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy
and blocking inspired protests in New Zealand have led to
frequent clashes with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building. For
the past two weeks, French protesters formed their own Freedom
Convoy against the government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on
the Shawn's Aliz in Paris on February second, where protesters

(02:35:00):
were met by seven thousand police members and tear gas.
Unlike Canada, where the government failed to stop a blockade
at the U S border, French authorities got way ahead
of this protest by stopping at least five hundred vehicles
before they even got to Paris. Only a few dissent
cars made it to the Schanz al Liz and the
police ticketed three hundred protesters who were present at the demonstration.

(02:35:23):
Protests against government coronavirus restrictions have cut on in Europe
and other parts of the world in recent days, but
they remained more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy
of about five hundred vehicles, mostly from France, who are
borrowed from entering Brussels of just a few days ago,
leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a
city square instead. Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked

(02:35:46):
access to the seat of the Netherlands government in the
Hague on February twelve, And of course many political figures
in the US are really trying to get a convoy
esque protest kicked off here. In the United States, Tucker
Carlson and Fox News in general has covered the convoy NonStop,
giving it tons and tons of support. Tucker has said

(02:36:08):
that the Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful
human rights protestant in a generation. Senator Rand Paul So
that he hopes the truckers come to America and specifically
two clog up cities. At least nine members of Congress,
all Republicans, have all publicized their support for the convoy
participants on Twitter. Self appointed organizers for a US based

(02:36:30):
convoy have found quick support from conservative outlets. US convoy
organizer Brian Brace has been making the rounds on Fox
News sitting Down with Carlson, as well as the networks
Fox and Friends Morning Show. Brace says that he hoped
to organize a cross country convoy from California to Washington,
d C starting around March fourth. Routes to converge on

(02:36:54):
d C from across the country are being planned, while
the group's telegram channel was actively soliciting volunteers and donations
of items like tents, generators, and p A systems. I
kind of hope people on the left can look at
the tactics being used in Canada, some that have worked
and some that have faltered. But in terms of like
anti capitalist action, you can't do much better than causing

(02:37:17):
hundreds and millions of dollars and losses to international trade
between two of the biggest countries in the world. Right now,
no protest movement can be replicated, But any movement can
be analyzed and that can inform how folks approach future
movements as they spontaneously arise, and I, at the very
least help you have a better idea now of how

(02:37:39):
only a few thousand people can totally choke out a
major city, because we've talked about this possibility before. You know,
a group of people overwhelming local law enforcement and taking
over and shutting down a sizeable portion of a popular
metropolitan area, not to mention simultaneously blocking off supply lines,
trade routes, and international border crossings. The evolution of these

(02:37:59):
medium scale anti government resistance tactics is something we all
should be paying attention to as the political tensions continue
to rise right outside our doorstep, because it's always too
late when you realize the calls coming from inside the house.

(02:38:30):
What's incapable of being racist? People joking about Canadians can't
do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada? Or
the Princisi could happen here the French. We can be
racist against the French. Yeah, speaking of speaking that makes
Quebec angrier. But like speaking of racism, Chris, what's our

(02:38:53):
topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why I hate
the cops. Hell. Yeah, specifically it is about is about
Chicago Police Department and the many, many, many, many many
crimes they have committed. Uh, we're gonna talk about well, okay.
To lead us in to explain what we're doing here today,
I'm going to read a quote from from the late

(02:39:14):
anthropologist David Grabery from this book The Democracy Project. For
my own part. I find what I call the rape
torture and Murder test very useful. It's quite simple when
presented with the political entity of some kind or another,
whether a government, a social movement, a guerilla army, or
really any other organized group, and trying to decide whether
they deserve condemnation or support. First ask do they commit

(02:39:37):
or do they order others to commit acts of rape,
torture or murder. It seems a self evident question. But again,
it's surprising how rarely, or better, how selectively it is applied.
Or perhaps it might seem surprising until one starts applying
it and discovers conventional wisdom. When many will political issues
instantly turned upside down. In two thousand six, for example,
most people in the United States read about the Mexican

(02:39:59):
government sending federal troops to quell a popular revolt initiated
by a teachers union against notoriously corrupt governor in the
southern state of Wahaka. In the US media, this was
universally presented as a good thing, a restoration of order.
The rebels, after all, were violent, having thrown rocks and
Molotov cocktails, even if they only threw them at heavily
armed police, causing no serious injuries. No one, to my knowledge,

(02:40:20):
has ever suggested that the rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither,
as anyone who knows anything about the events in questions
seriously contested the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican
government had raped, tortured, and murdered quite a number of
people in suppressing the rebellion. Yet somehow such acts, unlike
the rebels stone throwing, cannot be described as violent at all,
let alone as rape, torture, or murder, but only appear,

(02:40:41):
if at all, as accusations of human rights violations, or
in some similarly bloodless legalistic language. Yeah, and that that's
the framework that I want to take the Chicago Police
Department so people can understand why and how and just
just sort of get people can get a taste of

(02:41:03):
of the sheer horror that anti police organizers and just
like regular people in Chicago are fighting every day because
Chicago Police Department fails the rape torture murder test again
and again and again and again. And so we are
going to tell four stories of torture, rape, and murder
by the Chicago Police Department. That seems fun. It's gonna

(02:41:25):
be great. Happy pants on, kids, go for a cruise,
you know, take the top down. Um, it's it's time
for a good old fest. So our our first story
of torture, rape and murder by the CPD is the
story of Chicago's infamous torture ring, led by a man

(02:41:45):
named John Burch. Yeah. Now, John Bird has been a
military police sergeant working at a pow camp in Vietnam.
So so immediately you have a guy who's not only
a troop cop, but he's he's he's a troop cop
while he was a troop and then he becomes a
cop and you know, nothing, nothing good can possibly come

(02:42:07):
from that. And the other thing and nothing good can
possibly come from is the fact that while Burge was
in Vietnam, the US was doing some just really six
ships of Viennamese prisoners, including rape, getting rape, rape with
hard objects, and rape followed by murder. Uh. The electric
shock called the Bell telephone hour rendered by attaching wires
to the genitals and keep your keep that one in mind.

(02:42:27):
We have not seen the last of that. Uh. And
rape using eels and snakes, as we have talked about
on bastards of it before. Um. They're also like they're
also a huge water boarding fans. So this this is,
this is the environment that Burge is sort of you know,
being trained as a copy in right, He's he's one
of those these these PRW camps and he gets the
purple heart for his service. Now when when he comes

(02:42:48):
back to the US and he becomes a cop, and
within about three years Burge and his white cop buddy
start just absolutely beating the crap out of black suspects. UM.
One of these prisoners, a man named Anthony Holmes, was
repeatedly tortured with electric shocks and almost suffocated a death
of a bag put over his head. Holmes was tortured

(02:43:10):
so badly he literally thought he was going to die,
so he confessed to a crime he didn't commit. And
spent thirty years in prison. Yeah. I actually interviewed one
of the people tortured by Burge who was had his
testicles electrocuted. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna get into that. But yeah,
it's it's it's horrible. It's it's pretty the worst things
I've ever read. Uh. Yeah, And Holmes, this case is

(02:43:34):
particularly grim because so he tells his lawyers that he's
been tortured, and his lawyers don't believe him, and so
you know, he yeah, he he wented to spending thirty
years in prison that he didn't do Um those shocks.
Yeah yeah, so okay, So that they have this box, right,

(02:43:56):
it's his box as a handcret generator. Burge calls at
the end word box. Uh. And he just attaches people's
like it's just attaches it to people. I wonder what,
Oh yeah, no, it's he's all of these people are
so indescribably racist. It's like, yeah, he he just like

(02:44:17):
he keeps this box like on his desk at at
the Chicago Police Department. Like it's just on his desk
at work. Um. Now. The other thing is notable about
this is that he he and the people around him
would call just electrocuting people by touching alligator lamps of
them and putting nine thousand two under vaults into them.
They called it the Vietnamese treatment because I guess what
he learned this in Vietnam. Um. Now Burge is so

(02:44:38):
called Midnight Crew, had had an incredibly high rate of
solving crimes, and he has an incredibly high rate of
quote unquote solving crimes because he's just torturing random black
people until they confess um. And you know, it's it's
it's not like people don't know he's doing this. There's
there's a detective in the seventies who like walks in
on Burde torturing a guy, and he goes through superiors
and it's like Burgess, Burgess torturing these people, and that

(02:45:00):
detective gets reprimanded and were reprimanded for like reporting the
torture and transferred to another area. So Burde gets promoted
to sergeant in nineteen seventy seven and then again to
lieutenant in nineteen eighty, and he gets he gets put
in charge of the newly formed violent Crimes unit, and
from from from this position, his rate of terror intensifies,
and so so in nineteen eight two, someone shoots two

(02:45:24):
white cops. And you know, this is one of one
of the sort of classic police things. Anytime a cop
dies the the see the police department just goes fucking ballistic.
Yeah yeah. And and in this case with with with
Burge in charge, he basically turns the entire South Side
into what can only be described as a fascist police state. Um,

(02:45:46):
here's this is. This is from the Chicago police torture scandal,
illegal and political history. In in Cuney's Law Review, police
kicked down doors and terrorized scores of African Americans. And
what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push Push and Raynald Robinson
if the Afro American policely condemned as quote martial law
that smacked of Nazi Germany. Thirteen witnesses were smothered with

(02:46:08):
bags and threatened with bolt cutters and Burgeoness detectives took
several young men who they wrongly suspected to be the
killers to police headqure horders and tortured them. And I
mean they're just like you know that they're buzzing down
people's doors or dragging people away out in the middle
of the night. They do this for about five days before,
they arrest two brothers and who again had nothing to
do with this. They just decided that these two were

(02:46:29):
the guys and tortured just the absolute shit out of him. Um.
One of the brothers, Andrew Wilson. But before birds even
gets there, because this is the everything about birds. It's
not just birds, right, like everyone he's like around him,
he is also a torturer. It's just birds sort of,
you know, but birds the guy like directing a lot
of it. So even before he gets there, yea, like

(02:46:50):
Wilson gets like he's burden with a cigarette lighter. He
gets strangled with the bag over his head again, and
they just like beat him a bunch of times. And
then it gets even worse. Um Burgs like, you know,
but birds, that's the thing where where he likes he
straps him to the to the electric box, right, but
he also straps him against the radiator. And you know
these are like old Chicago steam radiators, right, if you touch,

(02:47:13):
if you like touch them even briefly, you get burned.
And so yeah, he straps into a radiator and every
time he like gets shocked, he jerks back into the radiator.
It gets burned. Yeah, I have a friend who get
a second degree burned dripped from like briefly touching one
of those things. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's basically it's
basically tying someone to an oven that's turns. Yeah, I
mean it's it is breasttaking in humanity on a scale

(02:47:39):
that is yeah, um pop esque. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's it's real. It's real. Cops shit. Um, it's for sure,
real cop shit. Yeah. So here here, here's an interview,
uh with Wilson. There's an extractive one from from the
book Writings from the World of Policing. Wilson said that

(02:48:00):
Bird cranked the generator, sending nine thousand, two hundred volts
of electricity into his body. He put it on my fingers,
Wilson explained, one of the clamps on one finger and
one of the other finger, and then he kept cranking
it and cranking it. And I was hollering and screaming.
I was calling for help. My teeth was grinding, flickering
in my head. Pain. It hurts, Wilson continued, But it
stays in your head. Okay, it stays in your head,

(02:48:21):
and it grinds your teeth. It grinds constantly, grinds constantly.
The pain just stays in your head and your teeth
cut constantly. Grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and
grinds and grinds. Now Wilson, They do this to Wilson
for like a day, and he doesn't confess. He he
refuses to confess because he didn't do it, and so

(02:48:43):
he goes to like they bring him in front of
a family prosecutor and Wilson tells the prosecutor that he's
being tortured, and you know, it's incredibly obvious he's being tortured,
like there's just there's marxal Lover's body, like his his
face is destroyed. And the prosecutor sends him back to Bird,
who tortures him more. And but by the time the

(02:49:04):
Burge is done with him, Wilson is so visibly fucked
up that the police lock up keeper like takes a
look at it, like takes one look at him and goes,
I'm not going to be a part of this and
refuses to put him in lock up cook Cook County Jails,
Like Director of Medical Services UM sends a letter going
like this man was tortured to the police. We found
a human being. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and it's

(02:49:26):
like every one once every like, I don't know, maybe
like a hundred pages of reading about this, you find
one person who is a normal human being. Unfortunately, the
state's attorney, instead of prosecuting Burge for again attaching attaching
a man's balls to a hand create generator and then
electrocuting him. Uh, the state prosecutor and the police superintendent

(02:49:47):
both publicly congratulate Birds for his work. Yeah, and Andrew Wilson,
mean while died in prison in two thousand seven, because
this world is just the worst. Yeah. Now, you might
be asking yourself, how does he get away with this?

(02:50:07):
And the answer is that the CPD is complicit in
burges torture at literally every level. Every attempt to stop
Burge is derailed directly by the departments. And not only
is he not stopped, he's repeatedly praised and promoted for
his actions. And yeah, I mean that's how it goes. Yep,
It's it's great, it's it's it's an institutionalized system of torture,

(02:50:31):
rape and murder. That yeah, it's like that we have
us a little abbo grade right at home, but yeah,
I don't worry. Well, well, I guess we won't actually
get to with grades specifically, but I can, I can do,
I can I can do an upgrade tie in at
the end of this part. So the CPD has something
they call the Code of Silence, and we'll talk about

(02:50:52):
this more later, but basically, the core of the code
of Silence is that just no matter what crimes, what atrocities,
which is in him in Pig Horrors, you see cops
committing you, stay silent. Now this code you know, it's
it's it's a code that everyone sort of knows right
in the police, but it's also directly enforced um and
and it's enforced by the stuff Burge would you do,

(02:51:14):
like just to other cops, Like he would do things
like if there was a cop who was like unhappy
with him, he would like walk up behind them when
they're opening a file cabinet and point a gun at
their head and then go like bang and then do
this like a thing that I can really only describe
as a supervillain monologue about how like the projects are
a dangerous place, maybe you're gonna turn up dead. It's

(02:51:34):
he also he has these street files that he keeps
on like other cops families so that if another cop
like goes after him, he can have their family arrested
and then plant evidence on them. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
It's it's like, you know, like in a certain like
he's doing this to other cops, and it's like, well, okay,

(02:51:55):
like you know what, like what what possible? Like system
of of of accountability quote on court or police reform
is like ever going to do anything to a guy
who will just do this two cops like and you know,
with the CPD actively backing him, there's there's nothing that
can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's
persistent rumors that Burge as a klansmen um I I

(02:52:18):
couldn't find like firm confirmation of it. He's he's certainly
racist enough, but but I think, yeah, but like why
would he why would he spend like That's that feels
like almost he would be like why would I waste
my time doing that like talking about being racist when
I can go out and torture people because I'm a
racist every day? Like the clan already got it going on. Yeah,

(02:52:38):
And I think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial.
He is a member of the Chicago Police Department and
organization is systematic racial terror, the likes of which the
modern clan can only dream of. Yeah that's whatever. Yeah, Yeah,
it's like who cares he's he's he's jumped burge. Honestly,
if he were spending time at clan matings at least
he wouldn't be torturing people during the time. Yeah, it's yeah,

(02:53:02):
love love your police. When if he was a klansman
that might have been slightly better. I mean, that's the
big thing with like this type of like liberal response
to the type of extremism. It's like they only view
it as a problem if you're like explicitly part of this,
you know, Like it's like very obvious to everyone white
nationalist group. Right, they can watch a cop do all

(02:53:23):
these horrible things. It's fine because that's just a cop.
But if he's a clan member, then that's a problem.
Like they can excuse all this horrible torture and not
really be concerned about it. But if but if he
had a robots closet, then it's suddenly this big issue.
It's like, no, like the issue is that he was
doing all this torture anyway, and he doesn't like this.

(02:53:43):
You don't need to focus on like just the like
just that identity, like that weird identity aspect of it. Yeah,
the the clan is old enough, and where's a uniform
that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes is it as racist?
And though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more

(02:54:04):
of a threat in terms of racism than the clan today,
uh and was at that point in time. But you know,
they're the cops. And if you're a suburban white liberal,
they're there too, you know, help help keep your lawn
safe or whatever. Um, So you don't you don't see
them as the same inherently racial organization exactly, even though
they are. Yeah, and even though I mean they're dragging

(02:54:25):
people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them,
like this is you know, this is this something also
that I was very annoyed about when I was reading
this was like you read a lot of this stuff
and then and you'll you'll get descriptions of it that
are like, ah, this is something that like only happens
in the pressure regimes like Kazakhstan, and it's like, have
you read anything about picture of the US like this

(02:54:46):
is like yeah, like we we have the officers over
to other countries that often teach their police how to
do ship like this that happens. But when you were
describing a whole bunch of stuff in the past, like
you know, twenty minutes, I was thinking in my head
and like, oh, yeah, this is just like stormtrooper ship.
But the thing is, it isn't like this just is

(02:55:06):
cops shit, and like, like the thing like the fact
that like elevating it in my brain to it being
like something other than cops is incorrect. You know, like
this just is police stuff. It's not it's not necessarily
stormtrooper ship. It's just is police ship. And the fact
that those things are so synonymous that should be the
part that's actually like upsetting is that yeah, it's actually

(02:55:27):
there is really no difference and you shouldn't necessarily resort
to calling it stormtrooper stuff because it is just what
the police do all the time. There's this whole model
you see people talking about it where they talk about
like like the police are using unnecessary force and like
they're there there there's like a certain threshold where if
you go past it, like you know, sort of like

(02:55:48):
like even you know, like I'm Gonna'm gonna read like
that Birch has a lot of like when he winds
up in court, like the judges look at this and
the are like, oh my god, this is unacceptable. How
could this have happened? And you know, you get some
good descriptions of it. I'm gonna this is a district
judge court describing what Burge is doing. In the early eighties,
there existed, in two in the City of Chicago, a
de facto policy practice and or customer of Chicago police

(02:56:10):
officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment against persons who they
alleged had killed or injured a fellow officer. This revenge
and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting, and or executing
such a person for the purpose of inflicting pain, to
injury and punishment on that person, and also for the
purpose of forcing that person to make it. Coupled tory
statements exculpatory yeahculptor yeah, inculpatory yeah yeah yeah. You know,

(02:56:38):
and you you get stuff like there's there's there's an
FBI report than from the Chagol Tepem. I'm going to
read because it's he left one bullet in the center
and the cylinder and spun it. A report quoted the
inmate is saying about Burge in the nineteen incident. He
then said, you talk, will blow your black EXPELTI presumably

(02:56:59):
the end word brains out. Bergs then got up from
his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the muzzle
of the revolver against the center of the inmate's forehead
and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and placed
it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again. So, yeah,
he's just playing Russian Roulette with people. Like he's playing it.

(02:57:21):
I don't I don't think. Yeah, yeah, well he's pulling
up one in the sixth chance of murdering them. They
are in terror. Uh. There's also a lot of like
he does like you sexually abuses people. He like after testicles. Yeah,
he he like he electrocuted Like well, I mean he's

(02:57:43):
also like is like like basically like raping people. Um,
he like electrocut is a thirteen year old child. And
you know this is like it's it's it's just so
bleak that like, I mean, there's so there's a very
famous art club about this by Chicago Journalist's called the
House of Screams. But you know, like like Burge isn't

(02:58:05):
the only guy doing this, Like one of his loyalists
is lieutenant, Like is a guy named Byron. He's like
in charge of the midnight shift at that the area
true violent crimes. And they become known internally as burgess
ask kickers at the A team because this is just
who these people are culturally, and yeah, sure sure, but yeah, um,

(02:58:28):
these guys start uh like putting like guns and prisoners mouths.
But they have one thing where they they stick a
shotgun in a guy's mouth and they pull the trigger
and it's not loaded. But there's like they keep doing
this thing. Yeah, it's it's that is by the way,
illegal in international law, like internationally, that is a war
crime if you're military to specifically, fake executions are a

(02:58:51):
type of torture and a a war crime under international
law based on treaties the United States is signed. Yeah,
and and Byron also so if he does that a lot,
and then that same guy, the same guy the shotgun
thing too, he apparently didn't have the box, so he
stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a cattle
prod And this is the guy who Lorry Lightfoot sent

(02:59:11):
her number two lawyer to defend in court by arguing
the torture it never happens. Yeah, that's that's that's that's ability. Yep,
that's the mayor of my city now life Lightfoot. Light
Foot is on the record as saying that birds tortured
over a hundred people. But once it came to you know,
actually putting up or shutting up, she just goes to

(02:59:33):
back for the cops. And if this happens in Chicago,
just so many times with people who used to be
like who you know who who in the moment you're like, oh,
bird did torture. We need to reform the police. And
it's you know, the when they get into power, they
do this stuff. I mean there there's there's a bunch
of like incredibly weird stuff that happens here. Like so
that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals at one point

(02:59:55):
saul A like they saw a case over whether one
and dollar settlement with a torture victim was fair and
christ Yeah, in court it's like you read the transcas
and it's like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of
like a state's argument I've ever seen, Like they're they're,

(03:00:16):
they're just like in court asking them like okay, like
we're we're, we're This person's judge is supposed to have
like known in court that he was also torturing other people,
and like it's you know, the courts just like you know,
they're turning them apart. And then when it comes time
to decide the case, uh, the court tosses the case
out inside with the state. Wow. Yeah, I don't know

(03:00:39):
what's going on there. It's awful. Yep, this topic. I
mean that that is the thing about the way the
whole system works, which is that, you know, the police
do horrific things. In Chicago, they torture, in Los Angeles,
they have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of
different horrible ship the police do. And then at some

(03:00:59):
point point the FBI and the Justice Department come in
and they provide incredibly They send in very talented investigators
who produced incredibly detailed lists of all of the things
that are being done. And then the court says, well,
but nobody's gonna get punished, or maybe this one guy
will get punished and then we'll go on back to
doing things and that the system is supposed to work,

(03:01:20):
although we're we're going to read a story about the
FBI not doing that in the next episode. So yeah, yeah,
I mean they don't know. We don't always get a report. Yeah,
I just I have become increased, Like it's very frustrating
because having these FBI reports on police abuses um is
useful again for talking to liberals because they tend to
trust the FBI. But it's also like, boy, I've read

(03:01:42):
a lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police
departments are, and it seems like nothing ever gets done.
Like it seems like they just write a thing saying yeah,
it's bad, and then everything continues forever and it's you know,
this this case, Like so the reason we even know
any of this is through what I like, what I
will say, like the a genuinely heroic, decades long campaign

(03:02:06):
run by the People's Law Office on behalf of birde
victims and these people, like they say people's lives like
that there are people who birdge tortured, who ended up
on death row for it, and you know, like this
stuff is so bad that when it comes out, the
Supreme Court does a ruling on it, and it like
establishes new precedents for like how people can prove they've
been tortured. Like you know, it's so bad that like

(03:02:27):
Illinois stops running the death pet like we had the
death penalty and like we still tend to get ethic
have it, but like we just stopped doing it, Like
we stopped we stopped executing people because like a Republican governor,
like on air, gave a giant thing about how this
system was broken and like this is this is John Ryan, right,
like this is a man who like he he is

(03:02:50):
like this is a man who was corrupted by the
standards of of of an Illinois politician. And even he
like on the air, is like yeah, this is like
you know that this is this is broken. He he
pardons some Burge victims and in nine three, faced with
just irrefutable evidence of torture and ruling multiple higher ports
higher courts, the Police Board finally released a report, although

(03:03:13):
the report also doesn't call it torture and is a
disaster that they finally have Burge fired and some of
his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for
fifteen months, but Burge isn't prosecuted for, you know, the
crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until
two after the victims literally go to the United Nations

(03:03:34):
with a campaign and go in front of the United
Nations and talk about how they are being systemically tortured
by the Chicago Police Department. But of course by two ten,
the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out,
so uh, he winds up going to jail for three
stations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of the ones
we should have a cap Yeah, definitely. It's great. It's
it's it's a great system. Um. And I'm going to

(03:03:54):
read something from the Chocolate Tribune that was a description
of of this. Uh quote. While the jury was out, Burge,
still unrepentant, allegedly asked the courtroom reserve or whether you
thought the jury would quote believe a bunch of n words. Wow, dye,
it's good. Burge Bridge tortured at least a hundred and
twenty five people. That's almost certainly an under account. Undred

(03:04:16):
twenty five is the number of people who we have
who have come forward. A lot of those people probably
have like people he tortured have probably died by now. Um, yeah,
I mean yeah, you'll never will never get an accurate
account of all the people who were Yeah, and and
Burge died a freeman and has never served a day
for his actual crimes. Now, Burge and his crew are

(03:04:37):
the most famous of the eighties and seventies and eighties torturers,
but they're by no means the only one. And we're
gonna talk about one more in this torture section. Uh
if you did you know Richard Zuli? Mm hmm okay,
so yeah, Zuli's Zulie is the one that people tend
not to know. M Zuli was also a Vietnam War vet.
He becomes a detective in nine. Um, what's interesting about him?

(03:04:59):
Zuli is never part of Burgess Candre Right Burgess Cadres
working out Verrea too. They're on the south Side. They're
in an overwhelmingly black part of the south Side. Zuli
works in areas three and six on the north side.
You know what what what what I want need to
mention off the bat is that Zuli is no less
racist than Burge is. He wants to rested a black
dude for just like having a car and wearing a

(03:05:19):
watch and like like those are both felonies in the
city of Chicago. Right, well, if you famously never know
what time it is because you're a law abiding citizen. Yeah,
well law abidings isn't. And also don't be black while
doing this because yeah, he throws him in a cell. Yeah,
well it gets it gets you. Zuli screaming no end

(03:05:41):
word is supposed to live like this? Oh boy, oh boy,
it's you know we we people like talk about cops
doing stuff for that reason, but it's it's, you know,
they're so racist. Just get a direct quote. Yeah, Like
I can't emphasize it, Like they're just they're so racist.

(03:06:03):
It's like ingrained into the d like the cop d NA. Yeah,
they're just saying the loud part loud. Yeah, like they're
just scribby like that. We're going to do with One
of the things in the next episode is the cops
will just drive around like blasting the end. We're out
of their out of their like cops stereos because Christ. Yeah, now,
Zuli in a lot of ways is a more modern
torture than birdges. You know, bird is very big on

(03:06:25):
your like overt physical violence, right, you're beating. Your execution
is suffocation. The problem with these techniques from a torture
of perspectives that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And you know,
this is how birde goes down, right, It's it's too
obvious what he's doing. There are people who can just
like show up to a court and be like, hey,
look at my neck, like here are all these burns.
Zuli is much smarter about it. Um, you know she

(03:06:46):
I mean, she does some beatings because cops are literally
animals and are incapable of resisting the urge to beat
the living share of anyone who falls into their grasp.
But you know, mostly what he does is he does
things like he'll just shackle so much to a wall
for twenty four hours, and you know, and he'll be like, okay,
like I'm gonna shock you to this wall and until
you sign this confession, I won't let you leave. And
also you can't talk to anyone. You can't talk to

(03:07:06):
you lawyer, you can't talk to h like, you can't
talk to your family. And in the next episode we're
say this, this this is how modern CPD torture works, except
Zuli is doing this in the eighties. Now, zuli Is
is a naval intelligence officer who's he's so he's still
technically in the reserves when he joins the cops. And
that meant when the CIA's torture is like Autnomo base

(03:07:27):
stalled out, they needed a hero and that hero was
zuli Um. Zuli Is was the most active. Like that.
The thing is the most active in is the torture
of Mohammad o old Sali, who is famously known as
the most tortured manic autonomo Um. He's yeah, at least
he gotten a guinness. Yeah, he yeah. They do sleep deprivation.

(03:07:52):
I mean they some of it's like the standards sort
of like get most stuff, which is like they don't
let you sleep. They blast like sounds until you sell
all the time him. They like beat you. There's molestations
and but there's also stuff that's like like you know
the tharnt of attack by dogs, but like the wh'll
do things like like he'll like soap people like get

(03:08:12):
soaked in ice water or like they stuffed him in
this like straight jacket thing that didn't let him breathe
properly and then stuffed full of ice and then Zuli also, yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's bad. And he also like threatens to
kidnap his mother and have recent to Guantanamo to be
braved because these people are again jazz monsters. And yeah,

(03:08:34):
Zuli is still alive today and romes the streets as
a freeman, having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being
a torturer. So good in the CPD that the CIA
was like, we're gonna bring this guy into the torture.
That's great, it's great. It's yep yep ah. And and
that that that brings us to our first interlude, which

(03:08:57):
is every year Chicago Police Office go to the grave
of the Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton's,
who they assassinated in a police rate after drug the
n um. They go to his grave to shoot his
fucking tombstone. They do this literally every year. The families
they keep getting you tombstones, they shoot them every They
shoot them every year. It just doesn't matter. Uh, the
CPD just keeps shooting it. And there's a quote from

(03:09:20):
the Great Trinity Daddy and marchis historian C. L. R. James,
And I think about a lot that goes when history
is written as it ought to be written. It is
the moderation and long patience of the masses at which
people will will wonder, not their ferocity. Yep. I really
hope there's a moment of people doing things to cops
that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah.

(03:09:43):
I think I can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes.
I'll make one other fun note, which is that five
Chicago police officers died last year from COVID. So that's good. Yeah,
let's make it fifty officer Dad. Look, they're working on it.
They don't they won't wear masks. Back to critical support
to the Chicago police who don't wear masks. They're they're

(03:10:04):
they're they're they're they're they're having their police Academy exams
in person. Now, oh that's good, that's good. You know what,
critical support spend more time indoors together without masks. Guys,
avoid those vaxes. Yeah, yeah, great, will happen. Okay, So

(03:10:25):
story two, which is a shorter one but no less bleak.
I think. On October fourteen, officer Jason Van Dyke fired
sixteen shots at Lakwon McDonald, who had turned around and
was walking away from him. Here's from the people of
the state of Illinois. Walking away aggressively, Chris, Yeah, oh boy,

(03:10:47):
violently exiting. Yeah, I walking away while black, which I
guess in the minds of like half of the United States.
Is someone at defended legal right to shoot people in
the back who are trying to a way. Yeah, it's yeah,
great country, We're nailing it. From the Chicago Tribune and

(03:11:09):
analysis of the video. This is this is from the
court case, but in the child Tribune. An analysis of
the video establishes that fourteen to fifteen seconds passed from
the time the defendant Van Dyke fired his first shot
to clear visual confirmation of the final shot. For approximately
thirteen of those seconds, McDonald is lying on the ground,
so he he fires literally every bullet in he's gone

(03:11:32):
at a man who is, by those like second shot,
lying dead, like well it's not quite dead yet, but
like lying on the ground. It's just Yeah. From the
cops perspective, like why not like that? That's like that,
like like they have the ability to do that. If
they get the chance, Oh I get to kill a
black person and it doesn't matter, then why like you know,

(03:11:54):
that's like if you if you you have to, you
have to think through like what they're actually processing this as.
And they don't see them as like a they don't
see them as like an equivalent human life. So it
doesn't like it's it's they don't it doesn't like you
can't like apply the same rules of civility that like
we should all kind of agree upon because cops have

(03:12:17):
such a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top,
that they can never actually exist within any kind of
humane society. That's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses
fingers crossed one day. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and
I think that the thing, you know, Okay, so look,

(03:12:39):
if this is the price of a liberal democracy, right,
if if you're going to if you're going to live
in a society that has like you know that that
where laws are enforced by the police, the police are
going to murder people like that's that that that's what
you're signing on for. And I think that I think
that's an absolutely unacceptable price. And but we shouldn't do this.
Um Now. The other aspect of this is because you

(03:13:01):
have to keep all of these just absolutely like just
bloodthirsty burderers on the leash. And because also all the
people who are actually in the governments are just genuinely
the asplicable human beings. Uh. Immediately after I mean, like
really before the shots have stopped firing, like, there's a
coper up that stretches from like includes everyone from the

(03:13:24):
officers on the scene all the way up to may
Raw Emmanuel. So for example, mysteriously none of the multiple
dashboard cameras on the scene we're recording audio for reasons
only the discerning listener can guess at yep, Like everyone
across the entire chain of command again going right up
to the mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let
this video get out because it's it's so bad that

(03:13:45):
even the CPD s like this is gonna look bad
for us. Because the thing gets out, then people will
want to do bad things to cops and they can't
have that. And you know, so this this, this is
this tape is concealed for over a year until the
journalist Brandon Smith like literally gets a like sues them

(03:14:08):
and literally gets the judge to like order the state
to release it. And while this is going on, that
the cops are doing this massive pr blitz featuring this
just like incredible pack of racist lies, including that McDonald
had lunge for it yet Van Dyke with a knife. No,
he didn't, He was literally walking away from them. That
McDonald had a gun, which is initiesting one because not
only like they didn't even have time to like plant

(03:14:29):
like they killed him so fast, they didn't have time
to plant a gun on him, like there's no gun.
But the multiple officers will are are like you can
you can find news things of them talking about how
this guy, oh, he had a gun. It's like there's
no gun. Um. Yeah. The classic one is that like
Van Dyke feared for his life and uh, no he didn't.
He probably should now, but he does not. Yeah, he

(03:14:50):
should never. He should never live awaking or sleeping moments
where he's not in constant fear of someone cutting his
head off, just as like in terms of the horror
that should be viewed inside people who do these things,
they should never like they shouldn't have been able to
like sit down and be comfortable. The closest we've ever
gotten in to justice for one of these guys is

(03:15:10):
when that mob surrounded Uh, Derek Chauvin's house. Yeah, and
it would have been actual justice if they had gotten
through the door. Yep, yeah, it's yeah, so you know
all and you ever like so there's all there's there's
this huge coterie of cops. We're all just lying about this.
They're lying in the press. They're lying just there lying.

(03:15:30):
They they start they lie like on the stand um.
And you know, the strategy works for a while because
this country is just the racist tellhole until the court
forces him to release the video. And when it becomes
clear of the video is going to come out, the
state immediately charges him, like they charged him, and then
later that day they released a video. Now, now keep
this in mind, they had this video for a fucking year.

(03:15:51):
It's what it's all. It's all fake and you know, yeah,
and they only charged him with the alternative was literally
being run into the sea by an entire mob of
the totally the entire population of Chicago. Um. So, Van
Dyke is suspended without pay, right, but he immediately gets
hired by the by the police union. Yeah yeah, yeah,
and and Van Dyke Van Dyke eventually, i mean he

(03:16:13):
goes down. Eventually he gets convicted of you know, of
second green murder and sixteen counts of battery. But you know,
there's a there's a later report that describes the involvement
of sixteen other officers in the cover up. Uh. Four
officers were eventually fired for lying about the case, three
were tried for the cover up and acquitted, and four
officers were given a one week suspension for the mysterious
lack of camera audio. Honestly, more is more than usually happens. Yeah, well,

(03:16:41):
I mean this is like this video is so bad
that like this video is so I mean, Raw Emmanuel
doesn't really mean he that the consequence he suffers is
that he decides not to run again because it will
be bad for him. But Raw Emmanuel is currently now
that his his consequence is that he's the American ambassador
of Japan and death. You know, I I will also

(03:17:03):
say this, the people of Japan do not deserve Raw Emmanual.
The Liberal Democratic Party, on the other hand, are maybe
the only people on earth who actually deserve him. Like,
if you didn't want us to palm row Mammanuel off
on you, you shouldn't have taken all that CIA money
in the fifties and sixties and let them run your
political campaigns. So Liberal Democratic Party, lie down with dogs,
get fleas um. But yeah, Jason van Dyke was released

(03:17:23):
from prison two weeks ago after serving less than half
a sentence. Mcwam McDonald's remains dead. Yeah. I mean the
really depressing part is that that is more consequences than
usually ever happens, and that that only happened because of,
you know, like an incredible amount of organization, and like

(03:17:44):
I think of all of the times where there is
no video, Think of all the times where there's nothing
and things just happened, no one watches it, and then
dead bodies get kicked into a ditch um. And that's
way more common than anything where there's a type of
like recordings or even where there needs to be cover ups.
You know, you you both are probably too young for

(03:18:04):
this movie. But in one of the Transformers movies, after
they beat all the bad Transformers, okay, you know where
the navy lifts them all up and drops them into
the sea. Yes, what if we did that with the
Chicago Police Department. Just drop him in the sea, big old,
big them up, drop him in the sea. Yea, Now

(03:18:25):
we put them in a bag. There's no swimming Okay,
that's fair. Look, look they one one, they get one
bag individual, each individual against one bag for each bag.
They put over someone's head and strangled them with I
think that's fair, and then right into the sea and
solves all problems. The blessing, like I do, I do
genuinely want to say, is that like if if you

(03:18:48):
read this story over and over and over and over again,
you get people who are like you get the governor
going like the system is fundamentally broken to must reformat.
You get the courts saying the system is fundamentally broken
and blush reformat and it never changes. They just keep
killing people, they keep inslaving people, they keep doing like,
they keep troaturing people, they keep murdering people, they keep

(03:19:08):
raving people, and this will not end until you abolish
the police. Like there is no alternative if you if
your car is fun is broken on a fundamental level,
you can't you can't reform your car to make it better.
There's a certain point where it's total and you're like, well,
I guess that kind It's like Asian block is shattered

(03:19:30):
and you're like, we fixes the tires, so it ought
to go now. No, It's like if it's broken on
the fundamental level, you can't reform it. Those words like
those words don't go together, yea, like throw out, throw
out your car and build a train. That's that's what
you have to do. Walk to get a bicycle, honestly, Like, yeah,

(03:19:55):
I stuck a bottle onto the rail of my A
R fifteen. So it's not a gun anymore. No, it's
it's still is gone. Um. Yeah, this is really really
sad um and it's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Um. Anyway,
I'm gonna go watch Two Eights The Dark Night and

(03:20:15):
feel feel great about myself. Yeah all right, Well that's
gonna do it for us, and it could happen here
today until next time. Uh, hope that more Chicago police
officers get COVID there there is that. There's that fun
scene in the Dark Knight where the Joker goes into

(03:20:37):
the Chicago Police building and blows up the prison block
with all those cops inside. That is that is a
fun scene. Yeah anyway, Um, oh my goodness, it's could

(03:21:02):
happen here. All right. Well that's the introduction. I'm Robert
Evans and my work's done for today. Chris, Yeah, it's me.
It's Christopher. We are We are back with two more
stories of rape, torture, and murder from the Chicago Police Department.
Yeah we have Yeah, well you know, okay, this one, this,

(03:21:23):
this one will be more fun than last time because okay,
so basically, since since I started showing up on this show,
I have made a case. I have been dropping references
to the fact that Chicago Police Department is literally a cartel,
and today I am finally telling the story of how
this is a little unfair. But yeah, also, also I
didn't mention this before we go win. There's also a

(03:21:44):
bonus cartel because while I was doing research on one
of the cartels, I realized that I couldn't actually talk
about it without talking about the other cartel. So there's two.
There are two completely unrelated CPD cartels that are will
show up in this story. Uh yeah, it's great. So
all right, this is the story of Ronald Watts. Now,

(03:22:05):
Ronard Wats joined the CPD in nine after serving in
the Army, making him yet another example of the fabled
troop cop combination that produces the worst people on earth.
Um what. Wats was assigned to patrol Chicago's old public
housing like projects now wants is from housing himself. Um,
there's okay. So some of the people who knew him

(03:22:28):
before he went into the police claimed that, like he
was just always like a drug dealer, and that he
went into the police too like drug deal more. I
don't know if that's true, because I mean, he's also
in the army for a while, so I I don't know.
It's sort of unclear. But you know, he's for the projects.
He he knows that terign well, and that's why he

(03:22:49):
was an extremely effective agent of terror in a place
where officers would regularly drive by blasting the N word
and other racial slurs out of their cop car speakers.
Uh yeah, here here, here's the intercept describing what like
Chicago cops are just doing at the projects. They were
officers who found it amusing to toy with those under
their power, arranging the foot race of heroin addics determined
who would go to jail, for example, or forcing a

(03:23:11):
woman they had searched on the street to walk home
naked from the waist down. It's yeah, people who find
joint exerting their power over other people and they think
it's funny. Yeah, why they become cops. Yep. Well, and
you know and the other reason to become a cop
is is the the second thing that they do constantly,
which is they just walk into the lobbies of these
buildings just start taking everyone's money. And like they literally

(03:23:34):
call the lobbies of the public housing buildings like quote
their ATM machine. So they're just doing this constantly. There's
also cops and this is not every cop that they're
specific cops you do this who would show up on
the first and the fifteenth of the month, wait for
everyone to catch their paychecks and then rob them. And
you know, and the thing I think is important about
this is that, Okay, so like WATS and like the

(03:23:56):
specific cartels do this, but this isn't just WATS. This
is like, this is everyone who's working at these projects
is just walking up like to like the poorest people
in Chicago and just robbing them constantly. Um yeah, like
this is this is you know, this this is just
how regular policing works. And the elite units are even worse.
So Cartel number one or I guess, I guess you're

(03:24:17):
trying about choose since we've introduced WATTS. But so there
used to be an elite unit in the Chicago Police
Force called the Special Operations Section or s OS. And
these guys, these guys are different because they you know,
they're they're they're not attached to like an area or
certific you know, they're they're just completely their own thing.
They're just like they're the Special Response Team. And s
OS would just go into projects and just ransacked the

(03:24:39):
entire building like they would go room by room like
taking people stuff and just looting it and then just
like walking out. And you know, it's not even like
there's not just that they're taking cash, like they're taking TVs.
And I mean the thing that the thing the thing
you if when you when you read interview some people
who lived through this, like they're not just taking like
stuff that's like you know, let's use that are expensive there.
They'll take people's like lamps, like they're just walk out

(03:25:00):
with anything like literally anything they can sell um. And
you know, I get like these are these are the
people living in these projects are like huge, like a
lot a lot of these postures literally like segregation era, right,
and so they're they're almost entirely black and they're just
take like they're just getting robbed, but constantly by both
regular cops a special operation section, and there's not even

(03:25:24):
like you know, like cops nowadays have like they have
like civil asset forfature where there's this like pseudo legal
framework and no, no no, no, there's like they're not even
this is the nights, They're not even doing that. They're
just literally walking in and robbing these people at gunpoint. Um.
S OS like they eventually get shut down deals and
seven after so there's a series of scangles about them.

(03:25:44):
They they steal like hundreds of thousands of dollars and people,
they do shakedowns with drug dealers, they start kidnapping people. Um.
At one point in s OS, dude like tried to
hire his coworker to do a hit on someone who
was like going to report them to the Feds. And yeah,
but s OS isn't the main story today because Watts
is writing is running an even larger version of this operation. Um,

(03:26:07):
and you know, well I's proways researching this. I had
the realization that, like, so I've talked to people in
Chicago about like the CPD Cartel's right, and I had
the realization that there are conversations that I've had people
where we've been we've both been talking about different ones,
and we both we both thought we were talking about this,
Like I've had people talking backwards like oh, they were
talking about the West. I was like, no, No No, I
met the Watts one. It's it's it's great. It's love

(03:26:32):
love our institutionalized just robbery system. Yeah. So the other
thing I want to mention because so the intercepted like
really good, like four like huge four part series on
on the Watts. H like cartel. But I think it's

(03:26:52):
worth mentioning that, Like even you know that there's like
two quote unquote good cops who like go after Watts
and for years and they've met your him down. But
like even those cops are doing things that are objectively horrifying.
Like most of the actual cop work in this story
is done by is literally just the good cops. Like
they know a homeless guy they called Chewbaka who they

(03:27:13):
paid to be an informant in like blankets, sleeping bags
and food and like it's like it should be fair
Chebaca like genuinely like likes the two of them, But
Cheubaca is the guy who does all of the work here,
Like what Wastz gets like like he's the guy who's
like wearing the wire. He's the guy who knows everything

(03:27:33):
the cops. The cops don't know anything, and Chibaka has
known that everything that was going on from the beginning.
They just don't ask him for years. But like in
Chiubaca like goes to prison at one point because Wats Okay,
so what Watson Wats is just like a drug dealer, right,
um so wants and uh so so Cheebaca would like,

(03:27:55):
you know, he he was like he was like a
sort of low level like runner. Right, you'd get a bag,
he'd like move it sometimes times And one time in
Watchaws these new for informations. So one time, like Watts
was like trying to get information on where a drug
stash was we could rob it and then like well
time so he could do a police raid on it
and then take the drugs and sell them. And Chibaka
just like didn't know. So Wat's just like through be

(03:28:16):
in prison for two years and it's just like you know,
this this stuff this time happens constantly. That there are
so many people who are just you know, like people
trying to survive in the city and then oh, hey,
you don't have the exact specific information that this cop
wants on this drug thing. So we're just gonna send
you to prison for two years. And Chivaca, who like

(03:28:37):
risks his life wearing a wire and brings down one
of the biggest cartels in the CPD, as best I
can tell, is still living on the street because the
society is just broken in ways that like are difficult
to comprehend and incredibly bleak. Yeah mm hmm. Yeah. So okay,
back to Watch this operation. Watts has this thing called

(03:28:58):
the Watts Tax, and the Watch tex is if you
run drugs, you pay the tax to Wats and this
this tax gives you production from the police. If if if
you don't pay the Watch tax, the cops show up,
they put you in prison, they take all your cash,
they raid your drugs, and then Watch resolves your drugs
that are profit I mean that is like objectively, that
is a decent grift, Like in terms of it's pretty
good logistical plans, like yeah, okay, I can I can

(03:29:20):
see how how this would actually be very profitable. Yeah,
it's genius and like and and the other thing about
these taxes, like these taxes are enormous amounts of money,
Like if if so, if if, if you're running a drug,
that's like, okay, so you have a drug that you
move and the drugs I've I've ran drugs for thirty years,
I know. Yeah, so the tax for the for that

(03:29:41):
single drug can be as high as fifty dollars a week.
So he is he is making a lot of money,
so much money, just an incomprehensible amount of money off
of this, I guess, I guess you would have to
become cops. I have an idea for a pivot. Do
it in the car, tell pivot. This is how we give,

(03:30:02):
this is how we get funded by this in a
lower care And we've always been a cartel, but that's well,
when we moved from podcasting into drugs, we can partner
with our friends at the scene, a lower cartel. Yea
would be great. Eventually, there's a guy named Big Shorty
who's another like player in the scene. And yeah, all
the people in this name of this great names. Yeah

(03:30:22):
it's great. So Big Shorty is like, I'm not paying
like fifty k a week per drug to do this anymore.
I'm gonna go to the Feds and so so be
short like he threatens to go to the feeds and
he goes to the d A and then like a
couple of days later, she's gunned down the street by
yeah you never yeah no, like yeah, well if you do,

(03:30:43):
you have to make sure they like disappear you because uh,
you never threaten it, like that's the yeah, yeah, yeah
you don't. These worlds you mentioned like cops and going
to in any combination, and everyone around you just like,
all right, well, this person's got to be dead. That's
just how that's gotta go. Yeah, it's it's not it's
not the best move I've ever seen. It's yeah, so

(03:31:06):
you know, And and this is when this is when
the cops, the two cops are gonna bring Watch down,
like actually started to take notice because literally for years,
I mean they're they're all sorry about this, like people
they'd be locking people up and people would say things
like why are you going after me for two bags?
And Watts is running the dope and just no one
believes them, Like the cops are being told constantly for
years like that the cops who aren't in on the

(03:31:28):
on the intel I being told literally for years that
that this whole thing is you know that that oh yeah,
well why why are you bothering me? Watts is running
this operation. They don't believe them, and they don't they
don't believe them basically until Big Shorty gets shot. Because
when when Big Shorty goes down like another they get

(03:31:48):
another guy who's like pretty big in the scene, the
guy's like, oh, yeah, no, he got shot by Wats,
and they're like, wait, hold on now, the cops go
to the FBI, and the FBI, it turns out, of
has been trying and failing to put again put together
a case against Watts for so long that like they're
on there like second like agent who they've had in
charge of the case because the first guy, like I

(03:32:08):
just could do it and laugh. And so they had
another guy and almost immediately after this, uh there's there's
another guy. There's another dealer named Fears who he has
this Fierce has this great grift which is like all
of his people wear Obama shirts just like just like
you do eight but he doesn't know, doesn't seven or something?
But yeah, so like that, all all the people doing
this thing, they wear Obama shirts and they call the

(03:32:31):
drugs like Obama and so what everyone they have their
lines called Hope. So and like this this this actually
works on the FBI, Like the FBI doesn't understand that
they're running drugs because they think that they're that Like
all the Messa references of Obama are just like they're
talking about like Obama. It's like there's there's so many,
there's so many great like FBI weird incompetences to the

(03:32:53):
story like that. There's one point where the cops are
going through the documents and they see the word they
see Lou, and it's just Lose, a short for lieutenant, right,
But the FBI thinks that Lou is like a name,
and so they kind of tracked down this guy named Lou,
which is just it's it's ah, just baffling, incredible and

(03:33:15):
coms never thrilled when they have to investigate cops. Yeah, yeah,
even though it is literally their job. Yep. But hey,
I hate doing my job too, so please continue, Chris. So,
so if that fears guy who choose doing the Obama thing,
like take seventeen rounds to the chest, and so the
FBI number rounds to take to the chest, Yeah, that's

(03:33:37):
a lot. It's it's it's interesting number two right, because
like like it does difficult significance. Guess yeah. What would
also like like is did they like reload, Like do
they have a gun that has seventeen round man? Yeah? No, no,
there's yeah, there's that's not that's not it. Is it
like a handgun or is it a rifle? I think

(03:33:59):
it's a gun, yeah, or like Baltimo people with hangdguns
block seventeens have seventeen round magazines. That makes sense, yeah, yes.
So so after this, the FBI investigation intensifies, and so
the FBI goes to the Internal Affairs Division or i
a D, who are like the most hated cops of

(03:34:20):
all cops by other cops, because there're people who are
supposed investigate the police and you know, so, so they
tell that you guys who are going after watch, they're
going to be protected. And this works for like a
year and then the head of a I D changes
and it's like a cop cop guy instead of so
they had this like they brought an FBI guy who
had been had of a D and that he gets
kicked out and they bring in like a cop and

(03:34:41):
that cop just immediately tells literally everyone that that the
two cops are running an investigation. It gives Watts, and
so uh do they die with the next few months
there studdingly no, I espect. I can tell Watts seemed
to have thought that like they wouldn't just wouldn't be
able to get him see too much protection, which worked

(03:35:02):
for a while. Um yeah, it's yeah, he has a
lot of power. Yeah. Well, and also, I mean the
other thing about this is she just like his stuff,
starts getting wilder. So he goes after this guy. He
tries to go after the drugs of this guy named Monk,
and like Muk is carrying a bunch of drugs, he's
trying to He's trying to rob bunk Um from the
intercept a wild car chase and suit on the Dan
Ryan Expressway like Sure Drive, and ultimately into the Hyde

(03:35:24):
Park neighborhood, where Monk lost control of the car and
crashed in a park. He fled on foot. Watson his
team seized the dope and cash. They didn't even check
on the condition of the women and infant who remained
in the car, which is great. And also that's that's standard.
That that's that that's like standard CPD procedure. I have
literally seen this happen like in Hyde Park, like I

(03:35:45):
have there. When I was in college, I almost got
run over in his seat and like the CPD almost
ran me over in this like car chase that went
bad and this giant multi car crash and like there's
like sixteen cops, right, they all just run past the
car crash after the two guys are chasing and like
have to go make sure no one died. And I
was like, I, this is great. You have just almost
murdered me. And then also you're not checking on all

(03:36:07):
of these people in this car even in the wreck.
I Oh, I hate a CPD. I hate them a lot.
This took the sound. This sound nice. Yeah, it's great
there there. Yeah, this just happens like all the time,
like often enough that like literally in the same place,

(03:36:28):
which like all of these big because you've got like
a few really big, shitty, big city police departments. You've
got your l A p D, You're n Y p D,
You've got your Chicago Police Department. By god, you've got St.
Louis cops. And they're all they're all shitty and simultaneously
the same in different ways. Like there there, it's the
same basic idea. It's brutality, it's violence, it's robbery. Um,

(03:36:51):
but they they find unique ways to do those shitty things,
which is fascinating. Yeah, Like I've always like like they
n y p DS, like they're big thing is if
you get a large number of people together, the NYPD
is just going to annihilate you, like l A p
D has like the Nazi gangs. CPD thing. CPDS thing
just seems to be crime torture. It's torture and yeah St.

(03:37:15):
Louis Police Department will attack you with dogs if you're
not a white person. Like, yeah, they've all got they've
they've they've they've chosen their cops subclass. Yeah. Now okay,
so but back in the investigation, the two cops in
investigating Watts are like even so basically all the researchers

(03:37:36):
get cut off. It's literally just them to watch. Note
like basically knows that he's they're coming from them, and
they almost get him anyways, because cops are just not
very smart. Um, and you know they're about to get
him on a sting for drug running and then right
before like look, I think it's like the day of
that they're running the sting, they suddenly get like transferred

(03:37:57):
to the police academy, and they basically just like get
attained in this police academy for like weeks and it's
it's purely weird. And eventually, like and you know, this
is when like everything just completely comes apart with the
liaison between the CPD and the FBI literally tells them
they can't move on the case because if they move
on the case, it's going to reveal that Watts murdered
a dude, because well they so they don't have good

(03:38:19):
evidence some big shorty, but they have they have evidence
that they have good evidence that he killed Fears and
h And the head of Internal Affairs basically tells them like, yeah,
like I won't do anything about Watts because it comes
out that another CPD unit had gone rogue after s OS,
I'll be done for so I'm just gonna cover for them.
The second cartel is too much. Only one cartels It's great, Um,

(03:38:44):
I can excuse one cartel, but I try the line
too but once you hit four cartels back too good,
which is why I am such a big fan of
the Los Angeles Police Department. It's great, Look you got it,
you got you got you just you just gotta get
over the cartel hump and once you're over, Yeah, you got.
It's like it's like growing out your your hair. Right,

(03:39:06):
there's gonna be that period where it looks really awkward.
That's when. That's when you've got two cartels, and then
you get hot at four cartels. Then you're fuckable again. Yeah,
it's great. So there's an interesting description from one of
the two cops that don't want to read because it
gets out how the code of Silence works. Um from
the intercept he had, she said, this is about the
the A A D. Guy he had, She said, made

(03:39:28):
too many deals, there by neutralizing his ability to act,
attributing her understanding of this dynamic largely the conversations with
Rivera himself, conversations she denied ever occurred. She described him
as ensnared in a web of mutual blackmail at which
bosses have leverage over one another by virtue of their
shared knowledge of the deals they've made. She gave an example,
I'll make the cr get your guy go away if

(03:39:49):
you promote my guy within your unit. The code of
silence and cloud or thus entwined Rivera. She recalled once
remarked to her that the bosses quote trade crs for
favors like baseball cards. So yeah, this is this is
what the code of silence is. It's it's it's an
informal code sort of. That's also called the thin blue line,

(03:40:10):
which is great, uh yeah, but basically it says that costs,
you know, it's that cops will protect the road. But
but it's more than that. If if if you if
you cross the name blue line and you break the
code of silence, you will be formally retaliated against by
your commanders. And but when when when I say breaking
the code of silence, what that means literally is if
you take any action against another cop, like it literally

(03:40:31):
doesn't like they can be torturing people, they could be
literally running a cartel. It doesn't matter. If you say
anything about them, you will be like formally retaliated against
by every other cop. And so the two cops who
are investigating wats like, they get arrested by internal affairs.
Internal affairs like tries to like basically make a fake
case against them, and they eventually get out, but their

(03:40:53):
you know, their careers are over right because they you know,
attempted to like do the thing sort of that cops
are nominally supposed to do and they just immediately get arrested. Um,
and you know, and they have a lot of other
stuff happened to them. Like one of the two cops
comes home to a bell box literally full of ship,
with a note that says, since you like ship so much,

(03:41:13):
thought you'd enjoy this amazing. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Like that's fun. That's fun. That should happen more often,
Just that should happen a lot more off other other scenarios. Yeah, yeah,
it's it sucks that these are the cops that this
is happening. Like, of all of the this is like
the only time I like do not approve of like

(03:41:33):
sending cops ship like this is this is the wrong
reason for the wrong reason to sender. You're gone. That's true.
They have probably stuff, they have done stuff. I will
make sure it's better. It can be safer if it's
If dogshit is used, then d N a K is

(03:41:54):
harder to track anyone. You know what the safest ship
of all to use. No, I don't ship, panther ship.
Panther ship. See I can Yeah, I think I p
I is never going to figure that one out. Yeah,
I get the technology, get right on. I'll get right

(03:42:15):
on that. Yeah, we're gonna go to go collect panther ship.
We'll be gone for a month. It could be their
unibomber for like fifteen years. They're trying to track down
what kind of ship is getting put in people's mailboxes
until your brother sends them a letter saying I know
someone who has access to a lot of panther Ship
and grudge tragic tail as time and then you can

(03:42:41):
get uh an HBO miniseries where they make you like
look slightly like you're in a boy band, only slightly.
It's like you were in a boy band but aged out. Yeah, yeah,
you were in. So the coat of silence also extends

(03:43:02):
their friendly politicians. Here's some the Interset report. Soon after
he came to the confidential section, he was given the
assignment of investigating a deputy superintendent. The allegation was at
the officer. The official lived outside the city. Mills worked
on the case for months and concluded the allegation was true.
He produced a thick file. Take months. I'm sorry I
have to take months. There cops allowances for the caper

(03:43:28):
of where does this guy who works here? Yeah? Very funny.
The next day the file came back to him. It
was mart There was a yellow post with the handwritten
message and make it unfounded. So that's fun, awesome, amazing, Yeah,

(03:43:50):
make it cops are cops are a breed of their
own poetry. Poetry. Yeah. So actually, there there's a long
history of like, yeah, politicians do something cops all the time.
Like remember the story, right, like rama, Manuel's like nephew

(03:44:12):
or something killed the guy in a car crash and
the CPD he got Manuel got the CPD to just
like that, never investigated it. They just were like, oh,
someone died in the car crash and it just went away.
It's it's real fun. Um. Yeah. So so eventually shortly
after this sort of those two cops get like detained
at the police academy. The FBI and the in the

(03:44:34):
CPT move on wattson his partner Mohammed and no one else. Interestingly,
because again, if you think about this for about five seconds,
they were an enormous number of people who either know
about this operation or are actively involved in running a
fucking drug cartel that is one of the biggest players
on the South Side, who are still just cops. And
like the CPD goes after exactly two people, there are

(03:44:57):
like dozens of people who were actively involved of them
this who are still cops um and and you know,
and the only real tradition to this is that the
FBI and the CPD are complicit, which is that you know,
I mean, so parts of the CPD want to keep doing,
keep keep running the cartel. The FBI is like, both
the FBI and the CBD also have an interest in
keeping this covered up because they don't want like, you know,

(03:45:19):
oh hey, look at the look at the loss of
trust in in in law enforcement. It comes out that
there were actually two cartels running in the same place
at the same time, parallel to each other, and then
we didn't catch them. Like yeah, but it's great because
literally nothing happens to these people. They're still out there,
they're still doing cops shit. Uh yeah, only two people

(03:45:40):
went down for that, and yeah, so the cartel is
just still there. It's that's good, it's still well. It
proves that if you put in the work, you can
really build something that lasts. And I think that's a
lesson we all should be inspired by. Pull yourself up
by your uh jack bootstraps, and oh yeah, that's good stuff. Okay,

(03:46:03):
so so interlude number two. On May four, six, someone
threw a stick of dynamite at some cops and Haymarket
Square in Chicago, tree the general strike for the eight
hour work day they started. The cops fired wildly into
the crowd, and the state rounded up a bunch of
completely random anarchists who, by their own admission, had nothing
to do with it, and had them executed. Now the cops,
for their part, built a statue for the cops at Haymarket. Now,

(03:46:27):
the first of these statues were destroyed on May fourth
by a guy who just right, so he he had
he was like, he's a street car driver, right, and
he had to like every single day he had to
go past the statue of the Haymarket cop. And one
day he was just like no, and he he ran
his street car off of the on rails, right, He

(03:46:48):
random off of the rails and rammed it into the statue.
This guy rules dope. So the cops build another statue,
and that that second statue was blown up by the
weather Underground in October nineteen nine. Uh, the costs make
another statue. The third statue is also blown up by
the weather Underground in October. It was like that was

(03:47:10):
less than a year later. Yep. Yeah, and so the
continue they originally they rebuilt it again, right, and originally
they have it under like a twenty four hour armed
guard Jesus and then and then and then. But you know,
even then they were like, okay, we can't protect it.
So they moved it into an enclosed courtyard in the
middle of the of Chicago Police Academy because they're too
cowardly to show it in public. Awesome, that's good. That's

(03:47:34):
a win. That's a win everyone so much that they
have to hide the statue to the assholes who got killed. Yeah,
that's great. One day, one day, that fourth statue will
follow the first three. One day, one day by the
mere cosmic forces of the universe, by entropy. The force

(03:47:57):
of entropy will one day destroyed the statue. Yes, okay,
So onto story number four. Story number four is the
Chicago Police Department's black site. So the Chicago Police Department
has a black site called Home and Square. Um. So,
so normally, you know, you go to a police station
and you get booked, right, they book you, they put

(03:48:17):
you into the system, and you know, because you're in
the system, like you know where Um, like people people
can find you, right because you can just look someone up.
You can look someone up in the system. Uh. At
Home and Square, they don't book people if you just
if you go there, you just disappear. There's no record
of you. Uh, there's no there's no way to contact
a lawyer if you're in there. Uh, your lawyer doesn't

(03:48:38):
know where you are because again there's no records of
where you are. You've just been grabbed off the street
and taken to a building. Um. Yeah. And and this
is a so store storage of people there tends to
be pretty short. They don't tend to hold people longer
than a couple of days. But what it's therefore is
this is this is a confession machine. This is the
way to force confessions have a UM by just you know,

(03:49:01):
literally disappearing them uh and denying them access to lawyers
or literally anyone knowing where they are. And they're just
holding them until they confess. Uh. And also yeah, so
so at Home and Square prisoners are routinely shackled for
for hours, like like tens of hours, sometimes twenty four hours, beaten,
denied phone calls, and robbed constantly. This is this is
another fun sepety tradition is Yeah, they'll just take you

(03:49:24):
to this black site and then rob you and then
maybe they'll release you, but you know they've still robbed you.
And yes, you know they do these beatings, and these
beatings are incredibly intense, like you know that they're punching people.
They're doing like knee strikes and doing elbow strikes. You're
hitting people with batons. Sometimes they're tassering people. Uh. We
we have a report that that the cops filed of

(03:49:46):
listening listened as a cop being assaulted. And the thing
that they're listening as a non it was like like
non like fist assault. Was the guy spat blood? Yeah,
well and they listened to as an assault blood on them. Yeah,
it's great, it's yeah. They also do things like they
put like flex cuffs around people's necks. Torture. Yeah yeah

(03:50:13):
they Yeah, that's a way for someone to die. But
it's almost like that's maybe part of the intention is
that someone will quote accidentally die. Oh we'll get to that. Okay,
well so not great, Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's not
it's it's bad. There's another guy who Okay, so the
cops are completely convinced this guy who was completely innocent. Well, okay,

(03:50:34):
I do want to say, like I'm gonna say a
lot of people are innocent because they are. But also like,
even if you're guilty, you no one deserves this, Like
maybe the cops doing it deserve it. But even then
it's I don't even think they do, Like yeah, you don't,
yeah people, yeah, like so this guy, you might knock
down a statue or three, but yeah, like you know,
like it's yeah, it's it's really grim like yeah. So

(03:50:57):
they hold this guy's mouth open with a pen, right,
and then they keep elbowing him in the stomach until
he throws up. Um. And so she tries to get
medical attention because he keeps throwing up because he has asthma,
I mean also because she just got elbowed in the
stomach repeat his mouth yeah um. And instead of giving
him medical treatment, even though he like easily could have died,

(03:51:18):
the cops just beat him up for asking. There's another
guy who gets uh sexually abused with the barrel of
a gun, and when he starts screaming, the guard the
gun goes on a ranch about how he needs to
be careful or he might accidentally pull the trigger. Oh boy,
it's it's bad. Um. This this is all within that
specific yeah, this is this is this is this is

(03:51:38):
all just in Homeland square. Um. He claims that like
the cell he's being held in, he doesn't get any food,
doesn't get any water. They keep him there for hours
and the like the cell just smells like blood and
like feces because yeah, they don't let people go to
the bathroom to other individuals. Uh. Stephanie Martinez and Calvin
Cofy described relieving themselves will shackled in a Home and

(03:52:01):
Square and interrogation room. Martinez locked up with two thousand
and six, was told by a guard that she did
not have the key to Martinez has handcuffs and could
not take her to the bathroom. Kofi, taken to Home
and Square on the sixth of February two fifteen on
suspicion of narcotic activity, defecated on the floor after two hours,
fruitlessly requesting for the bathroom. A police officer made Calvin

(03:52:23):
clean it up with his skull cap. The lawsuit alleges
it's these people are sick there. It's it's yeah, yeah, yeah,
they hate that it's like yeah, and you know the
things they're holding children in here, like they have people
as young as fifteen who are being literally everything about

(03:52:44):
this is that when so sometimes sometimes you get sort
of like arrested normally, although again I should mention that
the Constitution does not exist, like it's it's fake, it's
a lie. No one ever gets read the miranda rights.
It doesn't matter because the constitution doesn't exist if you're poor. Yeah,
it sort of exists if you're not, but I will
guarantee you they're reading their miranda rights to people who

(03:53:06):
look like they got yeah, yeah, yeah, no, these people
there's actually a story of these two point rieking guys
who got brought in and they like the cops are
like trying to get them, give us something, and they
just like they start name dropping like civil rights lawyers,
and the cops are like, okay, okay, uh, we're good.
We'll we'll we'll drive you back. If you don't talk,
we'll we'll drive we'll drive you back to like where
you came from. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's extremely grim. Yeah.

(03:53:28):
They just want to funk with people who can't defend themselves. Yeah. Yeah,
and you know and then the way they do this right,
like they they do these raids where like everyone's they're
they're they're they're not wearing badges. Everyone's just like wearing
matt like like black armor and like black masks. And
so people describe getting like dragged out of their house
and they don't know if they're getting robbed or like
if they're being kidnapped. And then they are being kidnapped
by just being kidnapped like by the cops, and they

(03:53:49):
get dragged and then again they're they're dragging like fifteen
year olds into into this thing. Uh. There there's one
guy who gets found unresponsive in an interrogation room. Um, now,
the police say that they died from heroin overdose. But
this makes literally no sense. So the first reason why

(03:54:09):
it doesn't make any sense is that the cops initially
lie about where he about where he like had the
overdose and died because they don't want to reveal that
he uh you know, was in their secret black site,
so they like lied and that he was another he
was at another site. Now, the other thing you know
that that contradicts the claimed that this guy was had
a heroin overdose is that the hospital when he when
when the hospital saw him, they wrote that he was sober,

(03:54:33):
So I mean he could have he could have had
a heroin overdose in terms of the cops injecting him
full of yeah, like yeah, that's the most likely thing,
Like it does nothing part of this. So so this
guy was selling cocaine right, um, but again he's selling cocaine,
not heroin. And the other and you know, his his partner,
like there was another guy he was he was selling
cocaine with like his partner, when everyone who knew him

(03:54:55):
was completely insistant that you know he does he doesn't
do drugs, right, he sells them because you know, do
you sell drugs? But yeah, and and the cops and
you know, there are things that the cops do. The
comp thing where they they changed their story twice. So
originally they said that he like committed suicide by heroin overdosing,
and then they changed their story too. He died by accidents. Um.

(03:55:16):
The The other thing that that indicates that he probably
did not in fact die from heroin overdose is that
there's bruises all over his face. He has a busted lip,
his neck is super red, and none of that shows
up in the in the police autopsy and yeah, yeah,
and this all reads just like a standard Burge error interrogation,
so that like they beat him, they put a bag
over set to suffocate him, and then you plant heroin

(03:55:36):
on him and you know, you you call him. Yeah,
that's the day's work. Yeah yeah, and you know, and
there's there's another thing that that that I should mention
here about the story, which is that, Okay, so this
guy is in a Chicago Police Department black site, right,
how did he get heroin in? Like everyone in his
black site is literally shackled to a wall, Like there's

(03:55:59):
no the old, the oldly place the hair we could
possibly have come from is the cops. So it's like,
you know, and independent autopsy says he dies of hissphyxiation.
Uh so yeah, I'm gonna read something from the Guardian
about the guy who uh, the guy's partner who was
in the next cell over. The other partner who requested

(03:56:19):
to be cited as John Dowell. He rebuilds his life
post conviction, was in a Home and Square interrogation room
near Galvin's. While Dobe was unable to see inside, he
told the Guardian he heard a lot of commotion, then
booming and banging, and then a gagging sound coming from
his friend's cell his partner. Yeah, so this this guy,
uh like his partner, Like he's that guy's also like

(03:56:41):
chained to a wall for like twelve hours. Um here
here's he he's with them today. I heard a holler.
I heard officers talking to him. After that, I just
heard a lot of commotion like boom boom boom boom
and banging boom boom, boom, boom boom, And then I
didn't hear nothing after that. My door was kind of
cracked and then they shut it. After that, they shut
my door all the way before the police shut the

(03:57:03):
door dozed, I heard a gagging sound like he makes
a choking noise, like choking, like somebody was choking after
the commotion, like choking. Yeah, oh yeah, it's it's very
it's very obviously from the get go. Yeah. Yeah, like
they tortured this guy to death and yeah, it's yeah.
And and the other fun part about Homelod squares Homeles
Square is also used to torture political prisoners. All right, So,

(03:57:25):
Brian Brian Jacob Church is a member of the NATO three,
which is a group of anti NATO protesters and twelve
who got set up by an incredibly elaborate government entrapment
scheme and arrested for it. Um and he was taken
immediately to Homeland Square. He's never read his branda rights.
He's cuffed to a bench for seventeen hours, um, and
he he asked to call his lawyer because like a
good leftist, he has the National Lawyers Field number written

(03:57:47):
on his arm. And you know, this is something that's important.
So the Guardian talked to like dozens of people who
were held here right Um. Exactly two of them were
able to contact a lawyer, and they were both white
and church Church is one of them. And this is
actually how uh part of how Home and Score goes
public because Brian Jacob Church like talks to the press
about it and Spencer Ackerman it's a great journalist, does

(03:58:10):
a bunch of incredible reporting and like brings the black
site to light. And so there's there's seven thousand and
eighty five people we can prove we're taken to Home
and Square. Uh, six thousand of those people are black.
Less than one percent of those people had their rest logged,
which means the cops just vanished them. Uh, it's almost
certainly more people. Now, I'm going to read something about

(03:58:33):
this from from the book Writings from the World of Policing.
This Home and Score revelation seems to me to be
an institutionalization of practices that date back more than forty years,
said Flint Taylor, the civil rights lawyer and most associated
with pursuing area to Commander John Burge. Back when I
first started working on torture cases started representing criminal defense
in the early nineteen seventies, Taylor continued. My my clients

(03:58:56):
often told me they've been taken from one police station
to another before ending up an area to where they
were tortured. That way, the police prevent their families and
lawyers from seeing them until they could coerci the torture
or other means confession from them. So, yeah, that that's
our fucking police reform. Instead of having a instead of
taking the police station to police station, the police have
now been reformed so that they have one institutionalized black

(03:59:17):
site instead of multiple ones. Home and Square is still
open to this day. That this came out in FI,
there have been like over half a decade of protest
against it. Um, so supposedly the rules have changed and
if you get a rested they have to put you
in the system. But square is still open. There's probably
another one like somewhere that they've just they've they've they've

(03:59:38):
they've switched which side they're doing their black sites on.
And yeah, well, yeah, I have I have a have
a closing statement. It is it is an inhuman crime
that a single one of these fucking demons is allowed
to roam our streets with the badge and the authority
to rape, torture and murder us and the certainty system

(04:00:00):
will beat us into a pulp if we attempt, even
in the smallest way both symbolic way possible, to resist them.
The police must be abolished. There is no alternative. For
the sake of our survival, for the survival of children,
and for the sake of every generation that is bore
its horrors before us. We could only abolish the police,
salt the earth upon which it stands, and drive the
very concept of policing into a space of such infamy
and terror that even the worst among us would not

(04:00:21):
dare to even propose bringing it back. Also, get rid
of that last statue. Yeah, that one destroyed. Let's knock
that one out of there too. Yeah, I mean, I
feel like everyone who's ever been to that site has
should have the the the like universal right to take
a hammer and maybe you know, maybe maybe an RPG

(04:00:43):
and just like do whatever they want to that building. Yeah.
I think the men who continued to like in women
who continued to work in CPD, like anyone who was
ever arrested by them or or otherwise brutalize them should
just forever have the right to just give him like
a solid shot to the balls, you know, like just

(04:01:04):
just like they get to wear a little sign around
their neck and it's like, oh that guy used to
that guy was you know, it was one of Burgess dudes.
So anybody who sees them can just give him, give
him a little haymaker right in the right in the
bread basket. That is a proposal, that is I'm running
from the mayor of Chicago. I mean, I I'd look,
our bears all suck, so you know, move move over here,

(04:01:26):
and we we we we can propose a solution to
this problem that is so unbelievably not proportionately violence to
what the police have been doing that it boggles belief,
and I'm pretty sure I can still manage to be corrupt. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's Chicago, you can't not. I mean, I guess.
I mean life was sort of corrupt. Life's less corrupt

(04:01:47):
than normal. She's just bad. But yeah, it's Chicago. You'll
you'll find corrupt, corruption will be foisted upon you. I'm
I'm actually fine with that. Well, another another uplifting episode

(04:02:08):
of It could happen. Yeah, I will say this, like
Garrison named it last yet earlier today, Hi, here's a
problem by you know, and I will say any any time,
any time someone tells you that, like, no, it's fine,
we're going to reform the police, just like remind them
that reforming the Chicago Police Department went was that the
reform was that we don't have black sites. We do

(04:02:28):
have we don't have consulidated the black We were from
multiple black sites to one black site. And also they
probably moved it again just you just have to get
rid of that is the essence of police report. Yeah. Anyway, Yep,
there's a problem. Okay, bye bye. Hey, We'll be back

(04:03:01):
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
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