It Could Happen Here Weekly 55

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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 compiletion episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. It's sports. We're doing touchdown

(00:30):
five yard penalty that the Angels have become the Mariners,
a body checking. Uh yep, this is the sports episode.
Welcome to It could happen here your favorite sportscast. I'm
not the host of this episode, but I'm talking for

(00:52):
some reason. Uh, James and Chris, why are we talking
about sports? To distract us from the crumbling of society
around us, but more specifically to talk about how sports
I used to laund other reputations of dictatorial regimes. And

(01:12):
I know Chris has got some interesting stuff on Balsonaro's
Brazil and sports. This is this is this has before that? Sorry, yeah,
I should measure this. This is okay, like this is
this is this is this is some wonderful pt era
of vintage crimes. Oh good stuff. Okay, I love a
Brazilian crime, no matter what the vintage. So I'm excited

(01:33):
to learn about how the NFL legitimizes the military police
state anyway. Um ye. And it's not even football, is it.
So multiple things they're doing wrong. I want to talk
first about like the original incidence of what we're going
to call sports washing, because everyone else calls it sports
washing too, So it's like using these big global mega

(01:57):
events to launder the reputation of a pretty reste of
all regime. So the o g instance of this is
the nineteen thirty six Olympics, which were held in Berlin.
You'll probably familiar with who was in charge in Berlin.
It was the Nazis. That's a spoiler, and the Anazis
were actually given the Olympics. The Olympics were given to

(02:18):
Biby Germany, which was considerably less ship than the Nazis,
but the Nazis took them on and they're really round
with them. And lots of the symbology that we associate
with the Olympics today, that the raising of flags during
the medal ceremony, the playing of national anthems. The parade
of flags are, the opening ceremony, the torch relay. The
torch relay goes from o g Olympia in Greece to

(02:41):
wherever the Olympics are being held. It's it's this big
ceremonial thing, right, that all of these things were created
by its guy called Carl D. M who was a Nazi,
to draw stronger links between the Nazi Party and the
ancient Greeks and position the Nazis the inheritors of this
classical legacy, right, and the civilized people in the barbaric world,

(03:02):
like the Greeks saw themselves. And obviously the Olympics, if
you aren't familiar, draws its legacy from a largely mythical
construct of a games that did actually happen in ancient Greek. Right,
so they claimed to be like a reconstruction of this
Greek tradition, except in the Greek truition everyone was naked,
which I think would make the Olympics much more watchable.

(03:23):
We could, yeah, it's that is. I would watch the
male gymnastics way more, not just naked but oiled. Yeah, honestly,
men's men's swimming would be a lot more interesting yes,
it would yep, naked Olympics, we can get behind. But
they didn't bring that back. Nazi didn't bring that back.

(03:44):
They didn't have some naked statues, but they weren't big
into nudity. But they fused a whole lot of fashy
eugenic shit. Right, So the reason that they started having
these medal tables was very much to reinforce their idea
of the superiority of one race over other races. Right.
Didn't really work out for them in the nineteen thirty
six because Jesse Owens turned up and owned them lots

(04:07):
of different events and c into being of course of
black American sprinter and long jumper, and it didn't well.
The Natietics Olympics did exist to did help significantly in
laundering the Nazi image. They hit away a lot of
their bullshit, like they for instance, like all the Nazi
Party newspapers like weren't distributed for the time that foreigners

(04:31):
were in the country. Right, they hit away anti Semitic slogans.
They even had a Jewish woman on the German Olympic team,
because there was lots of sort of fluster and and
sort of they're like neoliberal liberal complaining I guess about like, oh, no,
you're being anti Semitic, or you shouldn't. Oh look there's
a Jewish person on your team. It's fine. You guys
are great. You guys aren't anti Semitic at all. It's good.

(04:52):
We're sorted. And the US did nearly boycott the Olympics,
but they decided not to, and that this guy called
every brandage who went on to be a p of
ship of some right now, So like this Olympics, I
guess set the tone for the use of these massive
events to put on a show to the world and
bring the world's press and show them what you want

(05:13):
them to see and hide the stuff that you don't
want them to see, which I think is a nice
transition to talking about Brazil. Yeah, so we'll talk sort
of about that effective it. Their sports has a second
sort of incredibly important internal political effect, which is that
when when when you have a sports thing that's large enough,

(05:33):
like when you have you know, like we have a
World Cup, you have the Olympics, show up, you have
even to something the super Bowl, like you what what
What it basically creates is this like like it basically
creates a temporary sort of state of state of exception
where just like the sort of sort of normal function
of society stops, right, and you know that this can

(05:54):
going this and going a number of different ways, like
I and anyone wh's ever lived in Philadelphia, like, okay,
there there's a version of this in Philly where like
after after the Eagles win, like for like fifteen hours,
there are no laws like or like when they just
killed like thirty people, yeah, well like a hundred, Yeah

(06:15):
it was a ye, yes, yeah, I think yeah, yeah,
you got ahead of the sports for killing tons of people.
I think that likely to blame where the cops were sports.
But I mean, but that, but this, this is the
thing about sports, right, is that in order to sort

(06:35):
of like do security blah blah blah blah, blocks and etcetera,
in order to make sure the game's worked, you can
do fucking anything. Yes, right, justified. Its nasty as ship. Yeah,
And you know what, one of one of the things,
one of the sort of like examples that I wanted
to talk about about this happening is one that is
really not talked about that much, which is the two
fourteen World Cup in Brazil, which wound up I think

(06:57):
actually having a pretty big impact on the way Brazilian
politics went and also just destroying the lives of unfathomable
numbers of people. So okay, so this whole thing, like
I've been in like since it's happening to us fourteen.
It's been in the works since like Lula was in

(07:17):
office in like the late twenty like late late two
thousand's right, Um, this is this is like this is
like one of this is like one of the workers
parties like big things is that they're they're they're they're
going to have this World Cup. Um, they've taken a
ship ton of corporate money to do it. They've taken
you know, they've they've they've spent they spent enormous amount
of political capital making sure this is gonna happen, and

(07:38):
the consequences of it are just like astronomic. Something like
two d fifty thousand people like lost their homes in
order to like make way for like the fucking stadiums
and the fields and like all of the sort of
like bullshit around like all the sort of security, theater stuff,
all of like just like debate. Yeah, and this is
something that happens with Olympics, is to more famously, but

(08:01):
like when whenever you have a sports event like this,
there's just this giant cleansing that happens of like anyone
who's like onto the street, who's homeless, right, anyone who's
just sort of like doesn't look right, particularly anyone who's
black just sort of like suddenly is like disappeared by
the police from this area. Um. But this, this this
particular one in in in Brazil was interesting because this

(08:24):
is happening to just in fourteen, so and she doesn't thirteen,
they were like enormous protests in Brazil and actually there
there's been another like set of soccer events there in thirteen,
like something like eight hundred thousand people were in the
streets across Brazil like protesting it. But yeah, there there's
these like there's enormous street movements. Is like like six
percent of the entire Brazilian population was in the streets. Um.

(08:48):
They were like basically started as sort of like antiosterity
protests because cities were sort of like we're increasing the
price of like fairish first off, and it gets it
gets the just get kind of weird very quickly because
on the one hand, so like you have the workers
party in power right and like that the Workers Party
has been sort of sliding right by this point. But

(09:09):
you have a sort of like you have like a
really bilitant left that's industry. You have a bunch of anarchis,
you have a bunch of autonomist or sort of like
doing stuff. But then also right wingers start showing up
because it's a protest against the governments and the government's
like nominally a left government. And yeah, this leads to
just a really confusing stative affairs. But but you know

(09:29):
the next year, this like and the protest like keep
going for like a long time, and there's still like
even after like the largest ones are kind of pee
doing out, there's still protests happening. But when the World
Cup hits, like the World Cup, is that like is
one of this sort of like like the arth, like
the law suddenly doesn't work anymore. Like in orders to

(09:50):
do this, you have to sign like there's something called
the General Law of the World Cup, which is like
a bunch of like laws that you have to sign
it like physically change what you're calls are like in
order to have this event magnificent. I mean that's actually
that's actually great, you should do more of that. The

(10:10):
great thing about FIFA is that they've sharing a commitment
to human rights, to quality and democracy, and so I'm
sure there's rules are good rules, and you know so
so there are fun things like like it literally like
parts of the Brazilian constitution are suspended parts like well
so physically a bunch stuff about the right to strike,
Like there's a special court that's set up that like
it like that within forty eight hours, like like decide

(10:33):
on whether it's strike is legal or not and what
the thing is going to be. Like that's not very good.
It's really they're all not real very bad. Like like
there's there's the Brazilian governments like seventy million dollars buying
basically police equipment and like from the U S. From
Germany and from Israel, which is like the holy trinity
of good normal countries where if you're buying shipped from them,

(10:56):
you're doing a good thing. See I you were going
to talk about how you know, there's moments in our
society where the regular rules of engagement are suspended, and
in such we can use this moment of extra opportunity
to find new ways of liberatory of experiencing liberatory freedom.
People tried that, and and and and instead of a

(11:16):
bunch of literally like they were driving tanks through the
street like into like like blockading off like roads leading
out of the favelas with tanks like it was. It
was nuts, like some incredible videos of this time. Yeah,
there are like laws in Brazil about child labor, right, um,

(11:36):
guess what doesn't apply to FIFA, so you can just
so they can have fucking ball boys, they said, they
also have they have these. There are twenty thousand people
who are working for this event who are who are
classified as volunteers. You can just use them as basically
they started doing slave labor. Yeah, what's the what's the shocking? Yeah,

(12:00):
I know, are they forced into this or do they
actually volunteer? Kind of Okay, so sometime the actual you
know what it's actual slavery because it's it's not actual Okay,
so the Brazilian government will do actual slavery, but like
this is yeah, this is not quite that, but it's
a bunch of people who are kind of its volunteering. Yeah,

(12:24):
but yeah, who have who have no labor rights, like
and the everything happens is there's there there are enormous crackdowns,
like they just start they start doing the thing that
like the US does it too, but I think I
think like Canada, this is more than the US where
it's like when when when they know a protest is
about to happen, they like go find the like six

(12:45):
people who they think are protest leaders and just arrest
them beforehand. They started doing that. They there's a bunch
of people who get tortured. There's a bunch of like
the police are basically just going ape shit. They like, yeah,
they there are some like that. There's a point in
this where like the garbage workers go on strike and

(13:05):
they actually win because it turns out that if if
in the middle of the World Cup there's fucking garbage
piling up on the street, like it's really bad. But
like yeah, like this has like this has a just
like absolutely disastrous effect on like just just sort of
what's like everything is going on president in politics like

(13:27):
um one of the things that Lula does. I'm gonna
talk about this more in another Brazil episode, but Lula
like sent a bunch of Brazilian troops to invade haiti Um,
which fucking sucks, and then those troops came home and
they were used to occupy the favelas in real well
this was going on, and this kind of crushed like

(13:48):
what was left of the sort of left that had
been in the streets. Like they just got like they
just got they just got stomped because the Brazilian police
are on terrifying and like literally they're deploying colonial troops
like in the streets, and yeah, and so so this
this is a sort of second kind of thing that

(14:09):
you can get with sports, which is like on the
one hand they're used to sort of whitewasherzimes and on
the other hand they're used as as basically a way
to like do fascism inside of the state where you
can you know, like you can you could do a
state of exception, right like the law seas to exist,
the state becomes like this entity that can just sort
of like do whatever it wants in order to preserve itself.
And it's a way that you can just you know,
you can socially cleanse two people, and which is something

(14:33):
that would be like you know, would genuinely be pretty
difficult if you try to do this in any other circumstance,
but you know, it's it's sports, so you can just
basically do ethnic cleansings, and yeah, it sucks as sometimes
you can do it with the support of the other side.
Like the World Cup. It's coming to Qatar, right and

(14:56):
and they one of the things is happening against it's
quote unquote security consultants from the participating nations are coming.
So you have this like incredible situation where like a
the Qatari and like police chief I believe, has been like, hey,
for your own safety, fans, if you do happen to

(15:17):
be gay and it's illegal to be gay right in Qatar.
Like just guys, just don't hold hands with your partner
because it's not us who's going to come and beat
you up. It's it's the regular qataris right like you,
you won't be safe and we can't protect you from
their violent homophobia. And then we've got like Britain's sending
soldiers to be like, yeah, let us help you with
your security consultations. Guys, you we need to keep this

(15:40):
country safe. Oh god, okay, so did you do you
know what else those violent security consultations? Is it? Britain? Yes? Yeah,
we were now sponsored by the Nation of Britain help
better help online counseling. If you don't sign up for therapy,
a military a military team will break through your windows
and force you to go to therapy with that's that is,

(16:04):
that is the better health guarantee. And we're back. And
I am not thinking about the people who I know
who were physically dragged by cops in the therapy. It's great,
it's a great never happened. Never happened. No one's ever
been forced to go to therapy non consensually. It doesn't
have Yeah. Yeah, other things that don't happen include include sports. Yeah,

(16:30):
sports aren't real. Their fingment of our imagination if we
simply the ontology of sports is fatally flawed. One might
say that's sports for a way of teaching people to
be complying with rules and to be administrators in the
colonial empire. Or people can argue that sports offer a
gamified version of the world that allow you to recognize

(16:53):
problem solving in fun and creative ways and encourage team
building so that you have join online squad. I don't
actually like sports very much. On the other hand, do
quite like sports, but I'm aware of the role they play. Okay,
so this is like a big thing that the Gulf
States do. Um is particularly lead do this sports bullshit,

(17:17):
and Carter, I think, usually is smarter about it than
like Carter just has better pr people in the Saudias do.
And I mean they're they're slightly helped by the fact
that they are marginally less bad than Saudi Arabia, like
marginal like this is a this is this is a
this is a fucking a bar that is so low
you can trip over it. Like I think we can

(17:39):
just say both bad. Yeah, So should we talk about
the Catholic system a little bit? Okay, So the Gulf
States have this thing called the catholicis now and there
have been some alterations to it and something that made
it less bad in the last few years, but basically
this is the system that lets Okay, So there's a

(18:00):
there's a lot of mirket workers, particularly from Southeast Asia,
that like take jobs in the Gulf because they pay
they have the Gulf States have a like an obscene, fanatical,
like world rending amount of oil money um and so
people you know, come seeking these jobs because they need
to feed their families, and you know, there's a huge

(18:21):
amount of oil money here, like they have just every
petro dollar. Um. But the way this labor system basically
works is that like in order to like be in
the country, you have to have a job, right you like,
you like very specifically have to have a job, and
your employer has to be there. And so very very

(18:42):
bad things start to happen when you have a group
of people who you can just like instantly destroy the
life of. And so these will happen where for example,
like so you okay, so you show up, you show
up to Carter right, and your boss will just take
your fucking passport and it's is gone, right, and you know,
it's like okay, if if you don't do literally everything

(19:03):
they tell you, like you, you're not gonna get your
hasbro back. You're just fucked. And this creates a like
a genuinely like very close to slavery, has a lot
of the fucking horrors. Like you, there have been a
bunch of stories people like fucking jumping out of buildings
trying to escape and then like being dragged back. Like

(19:23):
it's fucking horrifying labor conditions. Um, it's and it's not
not indentured serviceude, Yeah, absolutely is. It's yeah, it is
it is one of the worst. It's it's one of
the worst labor regimes on earth that is not literally slavery.
It is. It is. It is in the category of

(19:45):
technically not slavery, but like very horrificly close. Yeah, it is.
It is. It is one of the worst things that
exists a serious and genuine solution to if you want
to solve like a bunch of the problems of all
of the all ship that's happening in the Gulf region,
if you gave every single one of these migrant workers
like several artillery batteries and a bunch of assault rifles

(20:07):
like instantly, like so many of the problems of this
region would be solved. Yeah. So I was just looking
at statistics. Six thousand, five hundred of these workers have
died in cutter since it was awarded the World Cup.
Like that's that's uh, that's that's a pretty alarming um

(20:27):
number of Like so it's from India, Bangladesh, ne poll
for Lanka prices like that, right, I think, Yeah, these
people have absolutely no rights and they have incredibly dangerous
working conditions. And also we got about like people are
super fucking racist, Like yes, like the it's it's it's
the kind of racism that you get when you have literally,

(20:49):
like basically pure absolute power over someone. It is a
it is a fucking trip. Yeah, people will literally have
to pay off the debts that they include. You'll pay
a recruitment trophee or a travel fee to get these jobs.
Like we're not messing around me, said the indentured sertitude. Yeah,
and it's very hard to do that. Your your your
employees could just you know, like they can just withhold

(21:12):
your pay for whatever the fun reason, because yeah, because
it's absolute power. There's like a few should I read
this one? That's an example of one of these deaths
that I could read if we want so. This guy,
um mad Hubal Apoly I think his name. He's from India.
He was forty three. He left his wife and his
thirteen year old son, Rejesh in India to take a

(21:32):
job in catering, and they never saw him again. One
late night, when his roommate returned to his dorm, he
found Bullapai's body on the floor. Like thousands of other
sudden and unexplained death, it's passing was recorded his heart
failure due to natural causes despite working for his employer
for six years. His wife and son received a hundred
and fourteen thousand rupees it's about a thousand pounds about

(21:54):
a thousand dollars now as well in compensation and unpaid salary.
Jess had no idea why his father died. He had
no health problems. He said, there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah. Pretty,
there's I'll will link the Guardian story. But there are
dozens of these stories of people who die working in
extreme heat for long hours with no breaks and terrible conditions.

(22:15):
It's pretty terrible shit. Yeah, And a lot of these
And also, and this is the only thing we should
point out, is a lot a lot of people have
died directly building, yes, the stadium stadium, Yeah, which is
like just like the absolute human horror of why on
why are we using like why are we building a

(22:36):
giant fucking soccer stadium in the middle of like in
the fucking desert, Like, yeah, Jesus Christ, in a place
with no endemic soccer culture. It's not that the stadium
is like, you know, going to be packed week in
and week out with the Qatari Altra is doing tea
pots and ship like it just exists for people to
come once to watch this spectacle and then leave again.

(22:57):
I mean it's the same thing with all the Olympics stuff, right,
Like they like tank a city's economy to build a
whole like basically miniatured like village in town that then
becomes useless after like a month. Yeah, some of them
will just get turned into like I don't know, that's
what the Olympics are for. The Olympics are like a

(23:19):
gathering place for a transnational bourgeoilie and they have always
been there, right like they when they started for a
very long time, the Olympics had an amateurism clause, which
meant that like quote unquote, professional athletes couldn't take part,
which was designed such that like Boua, people who had
enough leisure time to train could compete, but working class
people who needed to take time off to train couldn't

(23:40):
be compensated for that time off. Right, they couldn't even
be compensated for their time off taken to travel and
compete at the Games. So like, the Olympics are doing
what they're supposed to do, which is is bringing these
elite people together. But Coca Cola benefits more from every
Olympics in the city that hosts it. Yeah, yeah, I
mean and obviously the the Olympics are heavily tied to nationalism.

(24:04):
Um that has a whole bunch of you know, not great.
A munch of the national symbology comes from the Nazis
directly like that, yeah, exactly, But also on the flip
side of that, there's other stuff like um have like
Taiwan having to compete compete as Chinese Taipei and not
use their actual flag, which is other Like, yes, the

(24:26):
alternative would be more, you know, embracing the country as
like as a nationalist thing, like as it's as its
own nation. But still it's it is, it's still not
great that they can't they can't compete under their actual
you know, it's like a name and yeah, and and
and and you know, like and then this is like
Carter's kind of Weirdly, this is slightly backfire on Carter

(24:49):
a little bit because, like Carter, Carter works the best
as a sort of diplomatic power when nobody pays attention
to it. And then the like absolute funk brain geniuses
at the Gaitari role elite were like, what if we
fucking drew attention to ourselves? And that everyone was like, wait,
hold on, this place is fucked, but this has not

(25:09):
stopped it. FIFA is like maybe the only ruling sports
body more corrupt than the Olympic Committee. Like it is
is incredibly staggering, like a group of people who have
figured out a way to just like help a city
ethnically cleanse a bunch of its population and then extract
enormous amount of wealth and then look good while doing it. Yeah,

(25:30):
it is. It's it's an exercise and like pointing, pointing
over there while you steal someone's wallet, you know. Yeah,
So I think that the last thing I think we
want to talk about was talking about what the STA
Saudis have been doing this too, because yes, one of
the sport I'm most familiar with obviously is like cycling.
It's a sport I competed in, and it's recently seen
this influx of money from petrochemical states. Right, so we

(25:52):
have like you a E teen, We had a Dubuy
team for a while, and we there is like a
tour of Cuta and a tour of you buy Now
that like these are not places ayone wants to go,
right about it? Right, they're hot, they're flat, they're terrible.
But like, bike races have always served as a way
to consolidate nations, right, That's why the Tour of France exists.
It's like it's literally a loop and being like, hey,

(26:14):
you're included in this, And like in in Europe, they're
often used to consolidate nations that exist outside of states,
right like Flanders, Catalonia, the Basque country, Wallonia. All of
these places have bike races that delineate who belongs in
and who belongs out. Slightly different in these petrochemical economies,
because more delineates a look at us, We're a great

(26:35):
country and totally normal, and you can come here and
do sports. And please don't look at the way that
we treat our workers from Southeast Asia like um, it's
it's please ignore our seventeen wars like all the school
bus full of children we've blown up. Do not look
at Yemens like yeah, which also, by the way, I
do want I do want to just put this room.

(26:56):
And Carter also fucking involved in Yemen. Same with the
u A. They nobody ever talks about it. They also
are fucking doing this. Do not left them off the
book for this bullshit. Uh, yeah, yeah, it's interesting to
see it. Like, yes, it's interesting to see some fan
groups organizing like against this ship, right And chiefly I
think it's gonna it's about stuff that you're about to

(27:18):
talk about, I think, which is the purchasing of clubs
by these these very wealthy interests. I find it fascinating
to see that there's always been an anti fascist element
in football actors, right, there have always been clubs that
have been anti fascists. Those clubs have always tended to
oppose like ownership of the clubs that they are fans
of by finance capital. But it's interesting to see that

(27:39):
now articulated against these petrochemical regimes in the Middle East, right,
Like it gets Keith from fucking Bolton and his mates
who go to the football match every Saturday, and now
I'm fucking past because I allow an lgbt Q rights
in Qatar. But yeah, it's it's very funny to see.
And also it's nice to see, right, Like, it's good
to see people sharing so darity, like you can't display

(28:02):
in theory, you can't display pride flags in stadium or
anywhere else in Qatar right now, No people were talking
about taking them anyway, So maybe someone will do an
epic like Pride flag or TFO at the Olympics, which
would be uh, I don't know, I've never seen the
World Cup. Then they might all get disappeared. But yeah,

(28:22):
then the entire with caution. Yeah, then then the stadium
collapses and there we go. Okay, So the other thing
that's sort of been happening is that Starily has been
buying up a bunch of clubs. But they brought Britain's
Premier League Newcastle United team. There's like bought it that
they have. They the Stardies have this this thing called
the Public Investment Fund, which is like it's kind of

(28:43):
like a sovereign wealth fund kind of. They just use
it to like it buy ship and they've they've been
doing a bunch of sports stuff. They've also been pushing
into the sports, which is interesting the disasters. Yeah, so
they bought the e s L, which is the does
it still stand for Electronic Sports League especially? I think
it's all does so there doesn't. Okay, you're about to

(29:10):
be a Biggert and say sports on sports. No, they're
video games. It's better than actually better than regular sports.
They're different Chess the same ship is happening here. So
the E s L is like one of the it's
it's it basically ate a bunch of the other. So

(29:31):
they used to be a bunch of sort of circuits
for a bunch of different like E sports games, right,
things like kind of strikes seems like StarCraft. Um, those
are those sort of I think there's another. What's the
other big one that s L does. Um, seems to
be counts. Yeah, it's it's mostly kind of striking. They
basically consumed all of the like StarCraft, So they used

(29:51):
to be I M and dream Hack that dude stuff,
and they've eaten them all. And the E s L
just got like bought out by like like the Saudiast
fucking investment company, by and by by by a new
sort of like media group thing at the Saudiast Forum
that's headed by fucking former Activision CEO Brian Ward. Actually unbelievable. Yeah,

(30:12):
who who's the guy who engineered the fucking Activision Blizzard
merger and is now going on to do this bullshit
savvy games group. Yeah, I mean, like like East Sports
as always, there's funds always sucked, Like a bunch of
the stuff is funded by like fucking cryptocurrency. Right now,
I think somehow sports I just can't take it seriously.

(30:36):
It's the best. But yeah, they the Saudis have taken
by beloved StarCraft League. I will be waging an unending
holy war against them until they fucking ceased to exist.
And yea, yeah, you become a stock craft too. Again,
it sucks. All I know about East Sports is Sonic
Fox and Smash Brothers. That's all I know because everything

(30:57):
else just seems like people who are having a fun
time playing video games. That's great. It was very so
my my post was founded by the IOC and like
at the time I was there, there was just massive
Like first of all, there was like a lot of
boom iss discussing av sports for sports and then whether
they should be incorporated in the Olympics, and it was
extremely funny to watch, like these people completely failed to

(31:19):
understand the fundamental like you know, sports of physical contest
with the metal element, right, don't matter if you're moving
a thumbs or your whole buddy. But it was very
funny towards these people. I want to say this because
this is okay, so it's just really funny, but also
people get like really seriously injured doing the sports ship
like particularly Starkers. There's a lot of Starker players who
like sucking paralyzed, who have like serious year damage of

(31:42):
their spines. Yeah, because they have like StarCraft players, like
especially older days. You know, people like practicing sixteen hours
a day, right, and they're sitting in a chair and
they're they're fucking you know, they have like a PM right,
so you're doing like like six hundred actions in a minute,
and people's people's risks just explore loads, Like people get
fucking like damage to their spines to get nerve damage

(32:04):
like as it sucks. Um. I have a friend who's
a human physiologist who used to work for the Department
of Defense here and said, diego helping like you know,
like high speed MB people be better at killing people,
uh a Navy people, I guess in San Diego, and
then left to work for Red Bull in their sports
to oh yeah, yeah, yeah, to be the human physiologist

(32:24):
who like, yeah, optimizes people set up so that they
arrested a right angle and like, guest, I'm actually training.
I guess we won't be happy until Taiwan is playing
Fortnite in a democratized, decentralized East Sports league that has
union workers and I guess that's what we're advocating for now. Yeah,

(32:45):
that's the one goal of this podcast. There is a
there's a MYANMA National Unity Government e sports team. So
actually that there was actually a whole thing in competitive
StarCraft where someone someone held up someone held up a
Hong Kong flag and they fucking like they cut the
stream and fired this actually fired the two like like
they not only fired the guy who held the thing up,

(33:05):
they fired the two fucking casters who like who were
just there. Well it happens. Yeah, so critical respect that
person is. See the John Carlos, that's the raised fist
moment of the sports Yeah. So yeah, fuck sports do
bad things, make them do good things. Overthrower local governments. Yeah,

(33:26):
I mean the the revolutionary I mean this is this
has been written about by like actual academics, but the
revolutionary but the revolutionary potential of like soccer hooligans and
football hooligans are like it's massive, Like on what one day,
We'll do one episode about the fucking the Turkish soccer
ultras who fucking stole a back hoe and we're driving
it around Turkey, doesn't thirty destroying fucking police barricades with it,

(33:48):
sick of ship every lots of like in Rear Square
their Egyptian Ultras were leading in the Maidan it was
Ukrainian Nottras. And there's a really good book called people
should read if they're interested in the political potential of
football ultras. We should we should do something about like
hooligans in general. But yes, this was supposed to kind

(34:12):
of be about the various ways that there's sports things
that are kind of messed up. Yeah, maybe just regular
one more thing. You can stop these fucking giant mega
events from happening in your city, like people. People successfully
do this. They've done this with the Olympics, have done
this sub lesser sounds World Cup. But yeah, and if
you can do that, like please do like don't you

(34:34):
don't have to let these fucking sports company bullshit like
exacts ethnically cleanse your city. You just don't. You can stop.
No Olympics l A is something that people in the
U s should look up. Yeah, that is that is
your action item for today is look up. I think
we've talked about an Olympics before, but the ton Olympics.

(34:55):
On the podcasts I Think and the Last Thing I Will,
I will give an Easter egg. There's there's one sport
I actually un ironically enjoy curling. No, not fuck you,
You're racist racism. That's the episode Hello and Welcome to

(35:33):
It could happen here. It's a podcast about the world
falling apart and people who are putting it back together.
Today we're joined by Jimmy and Rain from mutually Disaster Relief.
They are helping to put back together some of the
parts of the world that are acutely falling apart right now.
My colleague Gare is here as well. I guess, and Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna get into it. We're gonna talk

(35:54):
about the response that mutual A disaster relief have made
too hurricane Ian. We're going to talk about how we
can solve these things without necessarily giving a bunch of
money to the wrong people, and people can help people
in a way that is natural, organic and good for everyone.
So Jimmy and Rain say hi everybody. Hello, Hey, and
can you explain to us a little bit first of

(36:16):
all about what mutual aid disaster relief is and how
it operates in these natural disasters. SURE mutual Aid Disaster
Relief is a people power disaster relief network based on
the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action.
And we act as a Swiss army knife for the
larger autonomous disaster response and mutual aid movements UH and

(36:40):
work with UH affinity groups, local mutual aid groups UH
and other disaster survivors to help form and foster or
communal recovery. That sounds great, That's very inspiring. Can you explain,
maybe for listeners who aren't familiar exactly what mutual aid
means in this count text. Sure mutual aid is a voluntary, reciprocal,

(37:04):
participatory exchange among equals. It's about sharing resources, but it's
also about sharing power. I'll spend a lot of my
life in poverty, and I know that many people in
the same experiences would rather not receive something than receive
something with a downward gaze. If if something costs us

(37:25):
our dignity, it's not worth it UM, and so mutual
aid is a way to share with each other UH,
where we're UM sharing as equals UM instead of a
powerful giver of aid and a powerless receiver of aid,
and it also has the dynamic of addressing the root
causes of the need in the in the first place. Okay,

(37:46):
that's yeah, it's really that's a good description. Thank you
very much. What what you've done recently, right, is responded
to Hurricane Ian, which most people I think will know
hit Floorida and I think the Carolinas after that. Can
you take us through some of the work that you've
been doing down there? Sure? A lot of what I've
been involved in it supplies distribution, So we're UM every

(38:08):
day loading up vehicles and going doing mobile distribution to
trailer parks, to public housing apartments, uh and other communities
that are hit in historically, you know, left out of
top down relief models, UM and providing tarps, water, food,

(38:31):
other essentials that people need. Yeah, sure, that's very important.
What's the situation like where now? What like with ten
days out something like that from when the hurricane first
made landfall? Is that right? I'm not sure exactly right?
Do you know? Yeah? No, time, time is not a

(38:51):
thing when this is happening. It's just kind of like
all of the days go together, or nights or both. Yeah. Yeah,
that's yeah, that's totally fine. So's you know, UM, in
some places, power is starting to get turned back on.
Gas is easier to find than it was, you know,
several days ago. UM, but there's still um, you know,

(39:16):
like a lot of need for solidarity based relief. There's
uh just like every disaster, there's uh many communities that
are left behind. UM. And it's the same communities that
are left behind by the disaster of capitalism and colonialism
and white supremacy. And so you know, even though power

(39:37):
is starting to get turned back on in some places,
it's gonna be months or years, you know before people
recover from this. Yeah, there's a lot of folks that
are not UM like to me he's talking about. There's
folks that are renters who you know, don't don't know
what they're supposed to do with their with the apartment
that they're in. The roof is caving in, and if

(39:57):
the landlord is not responding, then where do they spit
to do. So if there's folks on the ground, they
go in and they'll try to help get the tarp up,
you know, on the roof and things like that. So
that's usually the kind of stuff I'm involved with when
I'm when it's happening more in my area. But there's
a lot of us that are working like remote as
well to help support on the ground, like doing calms
and organizing supply lines through the autonomous supply line chain

(40:20):
that we have, and just kind of trying to mobilize
more affinity groups in the local areas, like Food Not Bombs,
UM sitting and Food Not Bombs came down and helped
out and did a food chair and so just trying
to get everybody who's close by to be able to
address the immediate needs and start planning for the long
term because Jimmy is right, it's going to take years. Yeah,

(40:42):
that's really fascinating. I think you're right that often like
and I think we should contrast actually that like that
they sort of not the large global nonprofit model or
the service provider model that they contrast with this, right,
which often kind of floods an area with resources whether
or not it needs them, and then withdrawals kind of
once attention is going to when people are left to

(41:03):
rebuild their lives kind of on their own, right. Yeah, Yeah,
time and time again, Um, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Maria.
You know, our rain, you know uh. In Louisiana has
experienced a number of hurricanes, you know, in recent years. Um,
you know, time and time again, we we we had

(41:26):
we learn over and over again that the state is
not coming to save us. The market is not going
to save us. The nonprofit industrial complex, it's not gonna
save us. We have to save each other. We have
to take care of each other from below. Yeah, I
think it's very true. I remember in eighteen when the

(41:47):
last seven mid terms came, there was a large migrant
caravan that came to Tijuana, which is just south of
where I live, and there are a number of these
big international non profits, but they weren't actually allowed to
enter the area where these people were. So you had
these people in a football stadium and you had large
non property outside, and they cut off the water to

(42:08):
the place where these people work because they wanted them
to go somewhere else. And it was this bizarre scene
where you had tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars
of resources sitting outside, and then you had little children
who hadn't had a drink of water that day sitting inside.
And it was really illustrative to me of how these
massive nonprofits can raise a ship time of money and
still completely fail people when they need help the most.

(42:31):
So it's great that you guys are out there doing that.
Can you take us through some of you You mentioned
Hurricane Katrina, you mentioned being in New Orleans, like, can
you take us through some of the other natural disasters
and how you've helped UM well, UH in twenty six
when we first kind of got our paperwork UM official

(42:53):
or whatever, we had the flood and plank rouge and
it was one of the most history excellent since like
the early nine and it barely made the news. And
there were several other major floods that happened with the
climate cause floods in the Midwest that UM summer that
barely made the news. And now people are starting to
talk about it right, starting to talk about climate change

(43:13):
because it's inevitable. Every single disaster is you know, more
just more and more frequency or higher intensity storm, more
rainfall in a shorter amount of time. And so we
had that flood and we hit the ground pretty much running,
just doing lots of bucking and gutting and organizing a
lot of folks coming up from UH, Texas and south

(43:36):
in like New Orleans area, and you know, east from
Florida all the way over Mississippi. UM. And then, like
Jimmy said, we just kept getting hit and hit. I
can't even remember everything after that, I knew there was IRMA,
and we responded to IRMA. We had national calms running
U which was really cool. People were signing up for
workshifts and helping out on the ground while people were

(43:58):
running around and getting transportation and getting people out of places,
delivering supplies, helping you know again with starping or like
things that might have happened homes UM. And then we've
had Maria. I went down to Puerto Rico for that
UM and helped out with some of the solar and
water issues there. And then we have Laura and Harvey,

(44:21):
and I cannot even remember all of them at this point, Fiona.
They just all they're all going to keep coming either
into the Gulf or they're going to head along the
East coast because of the way that the climate has
affected the currents and the surface water temperatures in the
Gulf in the Atlantic. Yeah, and like you said, they're
going to have a disportionate impact on people who are

(44:42):
already marginalized. What is it you were talking about people
signing up for work. That's interesting. So do you seems
like you're mostly volunteer organization to people who have special
skills just got up to a website and say hey,
I'd like to help. Well, how does that work? It
happens in a lot of ways. Sometimes folks will reach
out via the email on the website, um, or they'll

(45:03):
reach out on one of the social media, or they'll
know somebody and be like, hey, I want to get involved. Um,
it's really grassroots. Some people are in the ground. There's
a lot of folks that have gotten involved more long
term because um, you know, there was a response on
the ground in their area. They kind of got into
it just because that's you know, what ends up happening
when there's no one else around, you rely on each

(45:25):
other and you build that community. It's kind of it's
kind of just what happens. Yeah, that makes sense. So
what's your sort of national Do you have a sense
of how many people how many volunteers you have on
a national I'm guessing your national or international scale. Now
it varies, you know, like in in times of you know,

(45:46):
when you know, between disasters, uh, you know, there's you know,
dozens of people involved or you know, like a hundred
or two hundred, um. But then we're very you know,
participatory and um so when a disaster happens, you know
there's a lot more people involved, hundreds and thousands of

(46:06):
people that participate in one way or another. Like in Louisiana,
we've had a lot of different like DSA groups or
sri A groups come out and help out, like mobilies
on the ground and kind of come out as deffinity
groups and do different jobs, help out with different homes
and so really it's just like it's a network of
facilitating anyone who's interested in ensuring that all of us

(46:33):
have what we need when we know the response is
going to be slow from those that are supposed to
be handling that quote unquote right, and then you guys
can connect people with skills or people with time to
people who need help. Yeah, so really, anybody who has
skill of any kind or as welcome, that's great. Yeah,

(46:58):
where can they find that people do want to sign up?
I guess the easiest they would be yet I don't know.
Jimmy money in that I'm on the ground a lot.
Check out our website. Mutual Aid disaster relief dot org
and our emails mutual Aid Disaster Relief at gmail dot com.
We're on all the social media's as well, and yeah,
we we love it when folks uh reach out to

(47:20):
us and tell us how they want to be involved.
I wanted to ask you there are obviously some other
organizations who, like maybe I would name it, you can
if you want to, who have received a lot of
national press for doing helping people in times of disaster,
and maybe you can explain why, like some folks wouldn't
necessarily be comfortable asking them for help or going to

(47:43):
them if they needed help. Yeah. UM, so oftentimes, uh,
you know, you know like organizations you know, um, you know,
top down organizations. You know they partner with you know,
police or homeland security or carcetral institutions like that. There's

(48:06):
um a shelter after um uh when Hurricane Michael hit
the Panhandle. UM, you know, people who had warrants you know,
we're we're signed into the shelter and then police came
and scooped them up and brought them to um, you know,
to jails into prisons and you know, so you know,
um and also you know, even with with you know

(48:30):
with those you know, extreme situations aside um. You know,
the the top down approach is patronizing, it's stigmatizing it.
Um can um At sometimes provide the water, the food
that that people need, but oftentimes comes at a too

(48:51):
high of a cost. Uh, and people long for a
communal recovery. That's how we heal from disasters. Likeness from crises,
events is part of you know, a communal recovery. We
were all able to kitchen and receive what we need
and and give what we can. Yeah, can you tell
us can you give U an example of a communal recovery,
like that's something that's happened somewhere. Well, you guys have

(49:13):
been able to assist a community or a community be
able to assist a family or an individual in recovering. Yeah. Um.
One one example that I think that's really representative of
of our approach is um there there there's a family
who was evicted you know, the um illegally you know,

(49:36):
after after a disaster, and uh that you know, single
mom was looking after the other single moms making sure
they had you know, uh fuel for you know, their
generators to um you know, to power their their phone
in different different devices, and that they had diapers and
that they had you know what, what they needed to

(49:58):
get by even though you know, they no longer had
a roof over their head. And so when mutually disaster
relief comes across people like this, our resources are their resources,
you know. So so when we both local mutual aid
groups just the matriarch on the block who's taken care
of of of the other folks on the block, mutually

(50:22):
disaster relief exists to uh to share you know, um
this this network of supplies and labor and you know,
back up and support with with efforts like that that
are spontaneous that arise after every crisis. Okay, that makes sense.

(50:42):
That That's the thing I really wanted to get to
here was like, as you mentioned, climate changes causing these
natural disasters and the worst that things get them, the
worst that things get. And like you guys have started
this organization that helps people to help people, and I'm wondering,
like what a like, how can people organize to help

(51:04):
and be how can people in communities organize to be
more resilient and in the time when natural disaster is
becoming more and more commonplace. So one of the things
that I think what Jimmy spoke to regarding like a
matriarch on the black building, that community in advanced and
after if it happens to just be after, which is

(51:25):
kind of what happens a lot of times, is when
it's that forced, um, I don't want to say forced,
but out of necessity, right, Like necessity is the mother
of invention, right, And so there's these iterations of what
community can become. Every time there's a disaster, there's like
a clean slate and there's a vacuum in which something

(51:45):
can be created because there maybe nothing. And so if
you can see an opportunity and if you if you
have any kind of network on the ground or you
and it spontaneously erupts, then that can be the new
growth or the like or however you to phrase it.
But I think for the resiliency to happen, that solidarity

(52:07):
in the long term is built from those networks on
the ground. There's people recognizing each other and seeing each other.
And I think COVID is so interesting because people have
become so nuclear and like isolated the technology and then
forced into these pods of technology and that was the
only way people existed and then all of a sudden,

(52:29):
there was this need to be around people like people
like no, no, no no, I really want like human contact.
And so I think that kind of speaks to the
reality of what we need to survive and that's going
to be through disasters, through pandemics. So building that building
a community garden, like saying hey to your neighbor, finding
out who on your street is like an elder and

(52:50):
maybe doesn't have anybody checking up on them, Like knowing
what is in your what are the resources, whether it's people,
whether it's a food bank, whether it's like a water fountain,
Like what are the resources in your area? And where
can you spontaneously take over areas when something happens. There's
so many empty lots, different places that are you know,

(53:15):
really on the verge of being gentrified. And when something happens,
if you can help in the areas where you can
maybe take over a building, that would help maintain that
building for the persons who would otherwise be getting pushed
out soon. Right, Like we've worked with people that allow
us to set up school libraries, for example, in their
areas while we're while we're doing disaster the response, and

(53:38):
we helped build that house or that community center for
that school up while we're there and creating a community
space for people to then run with that concept of
what they wanted to build, like what they wanted to
put there. The best way you know, to prepare for
disasters is ongoing mutual aid projects, groups and efforts. You know,

(54:02):
the more that we can connect with each other, those
relationships and those connections, they're the groundwork for uh a
vibrant people power disaster response. You gotta know who's who.
You gotta know what people are able to do, wanting
to do. You know, what are people's strengths. It really

(54:22):
is about that resiliency. Knowing who you can count on
for something like who knows about you know, wiring, who
knows about plumbing, who knows about you know, the streets,
who knows the area the best? You know, certain members
in the community that are founders in the community that
others will respond to or navigate or gravitate too. I

(54:45):
got you. Yeah, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that, Like,
I think it's really interesting to contrast this with the
model of like surviving natural disasters that we've seen portrayed
so often, especially on like TV shows like Preppers, Right
which is like I will see on my own with
a ship ton of ammunition and shoot anyone who comes
off to my Roman noodle castle. But what are you

(55:06):
gonna do with that? When you're supplies right now? Then?
When you who are you gonna rely on? All we
have is each other? We're not. We're not. I mean,
more power to the you know, outlier individual out there
that can literally do everything for themselves. But I just
don't think that's humanities function we have. We have much

(55:27):
more UM when we share with each other um than
we have individually. When we pull our resources together, we
have enough for everybody. Uh. We you know, we take
what is in our cabinets, you know, as far as
food or sup supplies, we take what's in our medicine cabinets.
We make it liberated communal uh space and supplies and

(55:50):
and very quickly thinks snowball and uh small first aisation
becomes a wellness center or a clinic. And and and
that's you know, the hour of sharing with each other
and building building alternative infrastructure infrastructure together, and the alternative
infrastructure for me is really important to UM. I think

(56:11):
for us to be resilient, we we have to teach
each other the skills we have to start learning the
ways in which we will be able to actually build
back the way we want, the way we foresee our
communities to be. Whatever that looks like. But we need
those skills if we are going to divest, if we
are going to have autonomy. Yeah, I really like that

(56:35):
model of thinking of your natural disasters like an opportunity
to rebuild in a more a more equal way, rather
than thinking of it it's the thing which just has
knocks down, you know, the amount of stuff you've accumulated
or whatever. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity is
really positive. It is an opportunity to reevaluate, is an
opportunity to see each other, to see your neighbor. It's

(56:57):
an opportunity to be more sustainable in the rebuild, which
is the thing that I really struggle with in a
lot of responses. Um, it's just the dependency on the
existing supply chains and the existing methods of transportation like that.
That whole needs to be addressed for resiliency in the future.
There's got to be an entire real world of how

(57:18):
we respond in some ways in general, Yeah, divest the
way we want now, I think that's the sustainability thing.
If just reminded me of something which like, for whatever reason,
I bought one back last time I was somewhere. But
people can't see this being an audio podcast. But one
of the things you often see in natural disasters is
these things that are called humanitarian daily rations and it's

(57:39):
like a it's like an m R E. And it
comes in a pink packet and everything else comes into
packet and like it's within like two days. And obviously
this is a time when like sort of systems for
disposing of rubbish have been overwhelmed within two days, these
things and the foil packets and little brown experience of
fucking everywhere, and it's just it always strikes me as

(58:02):
so sad that like we've taken this time when people
are in crisis, and we've made at a time when
also that their environment is in crisis now as well. Yeah,
and it's a lot, and that's one of the things
I struggle with, um with water as well. Water is
kind of like my thing. I know that irony, but um,
when whenever there's a response, there's a heavy dependency on

(58:24):
bottled water and there's other alternatives, but it would require
you know, a little bit of advanced skill training, a
little bit of advanced infrastructure development, but that response could
be prepared in advance. And I think in in some
cases there's communities, especially in the local South, where that
advanced thinking about it's gonna happen, right, It's gonna happen here, right,

(58:48):
it's gonna it's gonna have what's gonna happen everywhere in
the Gulf Coast, and it's going to keep going up
and up, And whether it's a fire, whether it's a
hurricane where there's a math, to tornado, whether to drought,
in a food shortage or a pandemic, if we're not
thinking in advance and be just and I don't want
to sound like you know, necessarily prepper individualistic, but as

(59:10):
a community thinking in advance, like for example, small plug
but cooperation Jackson is thinking about building um their own
water infrastructure so that they are not going to be
dependent on just municipal water, which is yeah, I mean
why not even if it's small scale, why not start

(59:32):
developing community owned micro grids, water treatment facilities. Why is
it just capital large capital, Like Jimmy said, we're stronger together.
So if we pull together in these communities style, just
like old school see essays we can do that, then
we can. Essentially it's an it's another opportunity divested to

(59:55):
build it ourselves. We can do it before, we could
do it after. But I think for resilience for me,
finding ways around those existing models and supply lines is
critical to avoid the gap in the disaster and the response. Yeah,

(01:00:17):
talk us through a community on water sustainable water project
like that, like what does that look like? What are
the what are the components of it? It would So
that's a fabulous question, um. But it's also when that
I personally can't answer. I can because I'm not the
entire community. So there's so many questions that are involved
with that, like who's gonna who's committing to maintain it financially, operationally,

(01:00:40):
maintenance wise, you know how many people? A is it
going to be be used by? How frequently is it
intended for all the time? Used for just as a
response in a backup, So there's a lot of things
that are involved there, and also financial structures. There's so
many different ways that I can get set up, um,
And like Jimmy knows, I do not like to involve
myself with money aspects, I'm just straight hammers and like

(01:01:04):
you know, solar um. But there there's a lot of
the good examples of community owned my grigrids for solar,
and that's really the I don't know that there's that many,
especially in the US community owned water systems, but if
you look internationally that is likely different. Um. Yeah, but

(01:01:28):
as far as solar, that's a pretty common thing. Diversity. Well,
there's a lot of different ways my grogrids can get
set up and who could own it. So again it
depends on the scale, right, like who's going to fund
the operation at the beginning, if you have a few
angel owners that want to do it, or if you
have a community that's willing to pitch in an equal
amount for person you know, and how much they want

(01:01:50):
to use for it. So you calculate how much you
need for each person's use, you know, what's the distribution area,
how many camels do you need and how are you
going to get it to everybody? Are they going to
have battery paints for autonomous use? Are they going to
be like tied in? So there's it's a lot of
models that you could do for hurricane just before hurricane

(01:02:14):
Ian Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico um and it wiped out,
you know, for for a time the whole islands power grid,
but the autonomous off grid solar infrastructure that was built
up at the central state point of Mutual the Mutual
aid centers across the island stayed the lights stayed on,

(01:02:37):
and they were able to continue powering their communities through
autonomous infrastrure infrastructure. Oh yeah, that's really cool. I know
some indigenous nations and on the West Coast certainly have
their own micro grids as well. Nice. Yeah, it's it's
smaller scale, like how many like people are in the communities? Sorry, yeah,

(01:02:57):
the smallish scale. I think like maybe a few hundreds,
maybe a couple of thousands something like that. That's good. Yeah,
it's an area of interest, I know for other Indigenous
people for very obvious reasons. But yeah, that's really cool
if someone was interested in that. Like let's say I'm
at home with my community and I hear this and
I'm like, hell, yeah, that's what I want to do.
Can they reach out? Can they reach out to you

(01:03:21):
and be like, hey, help me, help me join together.
These fifteen press car batteries or would you be able
to help them with the like planning stages of that
or is that beyond the scope of your work. Um? So,
my my main area of knowledge is around water um,
and I dabble with solar a lot. But there are

(01:03:42):
a lot of folks in the network who have insane skills.
Like we have people working on all kinds of projects,
so many cool things. So I would say, yeah, reach out, um,
because that's kind of what the network is. It is
a lot of really cool people trying to just make
positive change. It's super awesome skills. A lot of folks

(01:04:03):
have pretty cool skills. Yeah. In the beginning of this interview,
you mentioned how you felt like times just kind of
slowed down or like it's all kind of blurred into one. Um.
Is that like a common feeling whenever these things happen
and people are on the ground, the type of otherworldly

(01:04:27):
nous or how everything feels so stretched out. How does
that kind of like what's your experiences with with that feeling? Um? Yeah,
I think that feeling is partly trauma, right, there's a
lot of trauma associated with the work, and you know,
those conversations happen a lot and it's UM really. I

(01:04:48):
mean personally, I won't speak for everybody obviously, but personally
I've feigned a lot of UM support just in our
collective network, everybody's UM. I feel really focused on the
same thing. So I personally gain strength from that. But
I think there is a lot of UM. I feel

(01:05:11):
like you can get a lot of hopelessness sometimes right
like you start to see the the long term need
and the fading of the spotlight because the next disaster happens.
And I mean there's literally still people in ban Rouge
who still have houses that haven't been fully rebuilt and
that was from the flood. And there's still places that

(01:05:32):
don't have electricity in Puerto Rico right now, and it's
been like, you know, I don't know what, over a month.
So you know, Flint, Michigan, just like name of thing. Right,
So I think, my, my, I don't think I could
do this work without the support of other people who
do this work, who have that same UM feeling, who

(01:05:54):
who experienced that. And the time. The time work I
think is partly for me again, partly exhaustion, partly trauma, UM,
partly UM like excitement. There is so much excitement right,
seeing seeing it, seeing the love, like, I don't want
to make it sound all bad, Like there's like beautiful

(01:06:16):
moments every day with the love that you have on
the grountain with everybody. Um, and so yeah, go for
it often. Um. You know, Dorothy Day, after the San
Francisco earthquake over a century ago, said, while the crisis lasted,
people loved one another. And what oftentimes we experience after

(01:06:40):
a major crisis or disaster is is that our lives
before we're disastrous. You know that capitalism and colonialism, in
the isolation and alienation and the meaninglessness, drudgery of the
work and selling ourselves to the highest bidder so that
we can survive, you know. Um, all that is an ongoing,

(01:07:02):
invisible disaster. And in in the moment where the the
ruins are around us and we see them, you know,
we we come together in a way that that draws
on on on that feeling of solidarity and love and
and those those ideas of a better world that we

(01:07:24):
that we protest for, that we march on the streets
for that we you know, envision coming you know sometime
in the future in a microcosm, they exist here and
now in in these local pockets of people taking care
of each other against all odds. Two. Yeah, I think
that's really that's really well put. Like it's sort of

(01:07:46):
it made me reflect on like I've reported from it
and worked in lots of natural disasters, and like that
time when they like alienation, boredom, and despair they associate
with everyday drudgery under capitalism goes away and you have
a purpose and everyone's working together and you're also on
like Twitter dot com all the time. It's very and

(01:08:08):
and in time stretchy is in at the same time
compresses It's it's very addictive in a sense, like it
feels wonderful and hopeful. And then it's the feeling that
an uprising tries to replicate. It's it's the it's this
moment of peak experience that makes you. It forces you
to fall out of the kind of the drudgery of

(01:08:31):
collapsing capitalist infrastructure and you're forced to actually live around
people and it's the weirdest feeling. And it happens when
horrible things happen, like disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, or it
happens people getting shot. Yeah, the moment of like national

(01:08:51):
uprising as well like it's the same it's the same
function and for a brief moment you're able to actually
live the things that you like preach um and you're
able to see them get applied to the world. I
think a lot of us getting away from that just
being a peak, right and having to come back down,
because I'm really is to build that resiliency, right, to

(01:09:15):
to create it so that the lights don't go out
and we just keep rolling and if they do go out,
you know, we've got a backup plan, like you know,
there's a wood burning stove and we make some pizza.
I don't know, but you know, I think, yeah, the
peak shouldn't be a peak, there should be just a shift.

(01:09:37):
So how do yeah, so how do we how do
we keep that right? How do we rebuild and keep
that momentum that that that net for each other? Yeah,
it's yeah, yeah, I think that Letton had an answer

(01:10:00):
to that that it did not work out the best. Yeah,
and and we're still here, yeah, yeah, here we are
listening to podcasts. But yeah, I think that was wonderful.
I really enjoyed that. I think your point just to
close out that discussion about like how you guys have
a network that supports people. Some of the most profound

(01:10:21):
depression I've experienced has been not like directly around disasters
or conflict, but coming home and feeling useless. So I
think that like checking in on people and continuing to
feel like you're pushing in a positive direction, Like more
people will experience a natural disaster after listening to this
and have done before listening to this, and next year

(01:10:42):
will be bigger than this year, and it will get
worse until but like you will feel elated and that's okay,
and you will feel devastated and that's okay. And checking
it on people is super duper important. And speaking of
that network and making connections, where can people find in
support the work that y'all do? All right, Jimmy Scene,

(01:11:05):
We can go to mutual a Disaster Relief dot org
or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, mutual a Disaster Relief on
Twitter it's mutual Aide Relief and our email is Mutually
a Disaster Leaf at gmail dot com. I would love
for more people to join uh this movement, you know,
both Mutual A Disaster really their local Mutual Aid Project

(01:11:28):
um and and and other other similar efforts or start one. Yeah,
that's a question we get a lot is like, Yo,
you guys talk about mutual aid and stuff, but there's
really nothing in my area. There's I don't I don't,
I don't know what whatether's to do. Like okay, well
there's some that can fix that problem. I mean, like,

(01:11:52):
do you have any like resources to help people kind
of figure out how they would absolutely? On our website,
mutual a disaster leaf dot or there's a resources tab
and one of the sessions is mutual aid about you know,
diving into the subject of what is mutual aid and
how to form a group or a project UM and
and other resources along those lines. We also have a

(01:12:16):
newly formed UM mutual Aid Toolkit Relief Toolkit that's on
our website. So if there are local mutual aid groups, UM,
this is a public form, so there's a big bold
like warning about it and happening it's public. For intention
we have our own obviously like internal threads, but this

(01:12:37):
is more like for folks who maybe haven't ever plugged
into mutually before, like being able to see where's all
the different mutual aid projects and what they're doing. So
UM again we talked about the resiliency, so This is
kind of our attempts to be able to map for
each other UM away where we can see what every
where where everyone is that's interested in responding and doing

(01:12:58):
what they're doing. So if it's a you know, bom
screw or like whatever your mutually things that you're doing,
if you want to join on to that UM that's
a fun way to see who might be in your area.
If everybody start stilling it out, fantastic. Thank thank you
so much for taking time out of the stretched out
or fis concept of litera progression of time to talk

(01:13:21):
with us about the fantastic work that you are all
a part of. Thanks for having us appreciate it. Hey everyone,

(01:13:46):
and welcome. It could happen here. I'm Andrew the YouTube
channel andrewis UM. I would like to borrow some of
your time today or tonight, whenever you're listening to talk
about movements, the fact that humans move around and the
most Indian restrictions on it in our modern world. Today,
I'm joined by my co hosts. Hello Garrison here, Hi,

(01:14:11):
it's James as well. Right. Glad to be here and
to be here with you guys. So even before I
was an anarchist I would say there were three things
I really despised. Things I despised from like fairly early
each that being the education system, advertising and porters. I

(01:14:37):
believe freedom of movement is fundamental. I don't know if
that's controversial or anything, but these days it feels like
it has reached a point of like really great restriction,
more so, I think than at most points of human history.

(01:14:59):
So I want to talk about the history of borders,
the role of borders, and the fight against borders. Not
to give you some context, cause you can't about my
accent and from the Caribbean, particularly from Trina and Tobago,
and being from an island nation, twin island nation. Actually

(01:15:20):
I have been made away of the constant through history
that has been into Ireland migration, whether you're talking about
the Polynesian migrations across the Pacific, whether you're talking about
even within the Malay Archipelago or the Philippine Archipelago, or
even when you're talking about of course the Caribbean. There's

(01:15:43):
always been, you know, this movement of people going from
Ireland to Ireland. You know, like Tronada is very close
to northeastern Venezuela, only eleven kilometers off the coast of
northeastern Venezuela out in the Northern Area in literally called
Northern Range, is an extension of Venezuela's maritime and these mountains,

(01:16:06):
but the connections to end there. Human settlements in Turad
dates back at least seven thousand years. In fact, one
of the oldest human settlements discovered in the Eastern Caribbean,
the Banouari trade site, is found in southeastern turn Dad.
One of the leading theories of human disposal across the

(01:16:28):
world places the migration of the Caribbean as beginning in
Turnad and going up the Antillian chain. A lot of
the indigenous groups that settled in turn Dad and in
the other islands north of Trindad and for the most
part migrated up the or Nocle River in what is
now Venezuela. So exchange in migration between the continents and

(01:16:50):
the island has continued undisturbed freely for thousands of years
before the arrival of the Spanish, and today in our
free quote and code post colonial code and code world,
what was once the norm is now criminalized. Now you
have to go through this proper process. In order to migrate.

(01:17:12):
You have to ask permission from governments who draw these
invisible lines or in some cases violently physical lines in
the sand and demanded deference. And yet still migration continues,
because migration is a constant of human existence, legal and illegal.
Recent Venezuela crisis and subsequent migration is just another uptake

(01:17:35):
of the same. Refugees, desperate escape the present um of
American imperialism and Venezuelan government mismanagement and all the component
is us that have caused Venezuelan crisis have been flee
into Colombia, to Brazil, to the Dutch Caribbean Islands, to
the other lastin American countries, and of course to turn
that well, this migration is extorted by opportunists, facility, by

(01:18:00):
the organized crime of human traffickers, because when you try
to restrict that kind of demand, when you illegalize that
kind of movement, the people on the margins, we'll try
to take advantage of those who are who need to
move around, because that need is still there. And so

(01:18:23):
lines also, of course are not necessarily creating, but they
serve to exacerbate essues like xenophobia, which is you know,
only amplified by the existence of orders, and they also
deal with, due to their paperless status, a lot of
gross exploitation because they struggled to find work and secure

(01:18:47):
the basic necessities of life. The Venezuelan refugee crisis is
a disaster I've seen unfull before my own eyes when
I have witnessed firsthand, and one that is facilitated and
exacerbated by the existence of borders. And you've seen similar
issues of cool another part of the world too, you know,
borders are enforced between the US and Mexico, between Haiti

(01:19:09):
and the Republic, between Spain and Morocco, when you euroupe
in the Swanna region, between India and Pakistan, between Australia
and Indonesia, um between Palestine and Israel. And being journalists,
I'm sure you guys have experienced, perhaps foodstand other examples
of the violent enforcement of borders. James, you have any experiences, Yeah,

(01:19:35):
for sure. I actually live just about the same distance
you live from Venezuela. I live about the same distance
from the US border with Mexico, so I've spent quite
a lot of my journalistic career crossing the border and
reporting on the border. And like it's as you said,
it's become increasingly violently enforced, and it's just ugly scar

(01:19:56):
on on the landscape now. And it's and I often
like to say, the border doesn't protect people, it controls people. Yes, yeah,
it's a very cruel and vicious and entirely arbitrary distinction
between what is Kumi is Land to the north of
the border and Kumi is Land to the south of

(01:20:16):
the border in my case, Yeah, exactly exactly. The way
that borders have cut through, um the homelands of any
different indigenous groups has been absolutely disastrous for them. This
has taken place, and of course the us UM and
most I suppose recognizably in Africa, where these clunial borders

(01:20:42):
have been causing tremendous harm to this day. Yeah, yeah,
that's a very good point. I remember, just talking of
like weird border things. I remember just before the pandemic,
I was on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. And when you it, it just seems
so absurd, like to think that you know, some literally

(01:21:04):
some I'll do it in England or a line on
a map or whatever in Germany. But one of the
things that it creates is this weird situation where plastic
bags are illegal in Rwanda because they're trying to protect
the environment and they're not in Congos. So there's like
this illegal arbitrage trade of plastic bags across this border.
And it's just such an odd and constructed, entirely unnecessary

(01:21:27):
and strange sort of legacy of the colonial plunder of Africa. Yeah.
I didn't even hear that before. That sounds quite interesting. Um,
he says, between Rwanda and Democrats Republic of the Congo. Yeah,
I think it's sending the border town there. Um yeah,

(01:21:49):
people people will come across with their plastic bags. Be
interesting to see how that develops. I know they are
attempting to unify Democratic Republic of the car and go Tanzania, Kenya,
you can salt Sudan, um, I think Jubooty and and
Somalia and a few other places I think into like

(01:22:10):
an East African federation. So be interesting to see how
those um discrapan seas and laws developed. Yeah, the Rwanda
border with Congo is that there's a soldier every fifty
meters with a big machine gun, even going right through
the middle of the New Way rainforest, which is very
remote by rewinded standards. Under a busy country with lots

(01:22:33):
of people. But yeah, yeah, that's a very militarized border
right now, right, yeah, yeah, that reminds you it's a
less militarized example. Um. I mean, people point out the
disparity between the US Canada border and the US Mexico border,
but I remember reading a story somewhere about how persing
on the Canadian side UM had like they could very

(01:22:56):
easily cross over onto the US side, but there was
like a steep trooper or something just standing there and
it's like if you cross over, have to arrest you.
And it's just it's like you're right there, we're literally
having a conversation face to face, and yet if I
walk over this our cherry designation, I have to be jailed. Yeah,

(01:23:17):
it's bizarre. There's a very arbitrary The border between Myanmar
and Thailand is it's a funny example like that where
like it's a river and this is unfortunately resulted in
people trying to cross it here and able to swim dying,
which is terrible, right, But one thing that happens is
like if you're in the river, you're in neither country.
And so people will make stilts like little stands on

(01:23:41):
stilts which come up to the level of the river bank,
such that they can stand in like no man's land
or every man's stand, maybe every one's land, and sell
alcohol without paying the Thai taxes and to people who
are standing on the bank in Thailand. And again it
just really illustrates how stupid now but treat this whole

(01:24:01):
thing is. So as we're talking about the absurdity of boarders,
I suppose it's only fair to get into their history
because for most of the rule, and for most of
human existence, really free movement has when the status cool traders, migrants,
hunter gatherers, nomads, they freely traversed this little blue marble,

(01:24:25):
as they call it. Of course, many ethnic groups maintains
it in relationships with particular lands. But even when city
states on such rules, it was rare for rulers to
delineate precisely where their realm ended and another's began. The
first like large scale restrictions really a rose under the

(01:24:48):
Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, when he forbade
serves from leaving their lord's land. Documents, of course, had
to be created to request safe passage. To ask O king,
will you please allow me to move from point A
to point B, my lord, your majesty soon whatever. What

(01:25:13):
what do we call the first passports is what quickly
and rules the medieval era essentially bound large parts of
yours population in place by sufdomb and movement was viewed
by rulers as ruin us to their law and order.
They needed static populations to stay in place so that

(01:25:38):
taxation and the raising of troops and whatever they wanted
to extract could easily be extracted. Because you know, if
if these presidents were able to just move as they pleased,
they will probably try to evade taxation that a little

(01:26:00):
bit too excessive. Um, they would probably trying to evade
the oppression of their rulers. And that they did. I
mean throughout feudalism, passant revolts and uprisings very commonplace, and

(01:26:21):
it's due to those revolts of the masses that sift
them would come into a decline as a wage labor
rule was in the fifteenth and sixteen centuries, but that
would mean that free movement came back because now people
were commodity that a country's government wanted to keep within
its borders. Sur rulers offered citizenship and tax incentives and

(01:26:44):
want to encourage migration. And yet while they were encouraging migration,
they were also kicking people out. So countries like Spain
and France were either executing or expelling ethnic and religious
minorities and mass So this period also bring about the
rights of you know, nationalism, which were tapped into an

(01:27:06):
earlier sense of um I suppose connection and sort of
subvert that from connection to community to connection to this
abstract notion of nation state, the imaginary community of the nation.

(01:27:27):
Nationalism in Europe would attempt to unify a vast and
diverse range of cultural groups and classes under one state
while defining themselves against outsiders. And of course this ruling
class meta narrative exists as a mechanism of manufactured, meaningless
loyalty in order to control you. But that's a topic

(01:27:50):
for another time. This era has also been described as
one of the large just periods of involuntary migration in
human history, that be in the Transatlantic slave trade, which
trafficed an estimated twelve point five million in slave African
people between the sixteen and nineteenth century. But there was

(01:28:14):
this one key movement in history of borders that would
have lasted effects to today. At the end of the
Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia was signed by
a hundred and nine principalities and touchies and imperial kingdoms
which basically agreed in sixteen forty eight that the state's
borders were inviolable and an absolute sovereign state could not

(01:28:35):
interfere in the domestic affairs of another. Now, of course,
this is all just talk, right at the end of
the day, states have continued to interfere the domestic affairs
of others, would continue to violate the borders of other states.
There are plenty of board of disputes that are alive
and well some decades or even centuries old um on

(01:28:57):
this planet. And then, of course this idea of West
Pralian severenety would not really be applied to people outside
of Europe. The actual inhabitants of the interesting looking maps
that the West Filian era produced, we're not actually made
privy to any of those um decisions about the drawing

(01:29:21):
of borders. They would also be moving, of course, people continuously,
so you know, Spain was kicking out um Jewish people
and more's and people who relate the heretics as Uni
inquisition um. The British was moving their dissenters, criminals and

(01:29:42):
general pains and the Bombacy to settle colonized in places
like Australia, which is why Australia is like that. And
things progress a bit further, you have the notion of
free trade and free market gain in some ground thanks
to Adam Smith this new school of economics. At the
same time, concerns of population of MOUTHUS, unemployment and social

(01:30:08):
unrest in Europe led governments to start facilities and emigration
moving out their colonies. The more general free flows settler clonalism,
which would lead to domestic depopulation in Europe. And then
there was another shift, as tend to be the case
in human history, as in the nineteenth century, migrants from
now underdeveloped regions began to stream towards the more developed

(01:30:32):
areas and drews. So you had North Africans going to France,
Italians and Irish headed to New York and all the while,
of course racism and xenophobia festering and proliferating as nationalists
with top fay against the so called threats to their nation.
Of course, Italians and Irish were eventually assimilated into the
hegemonic notion of whiteness. But North Africans in France have

(01:30:57):
not been so lucky. Oh I said, who is lucky?
Could and could because there's a little conversation about how
whiteness destroys cultures and erases the unique identities that these
people would have come up with in an efforts to
unite them against minorities such as African Americans in the US.

(01:31:19):
So you see this period of lockdown, of this increased
nationalism and these restrictions. These bad restrictions would also try
to manipulate access to certain technologies, um, the telegraph, the
rail road. Yes, they enabled central governments to assert their
presence across the whole territory, but they would also try

(01:31:41):
to compete with other nations UM and keep certain secrets
regarding technology. See that particularly um during the Cold War,
but we'll get to that a bit later. During the
First World War, we have of some sixteen million people,

(01:32:02):
the Great War UM as you should probably call it
if you ever happened to time travel to that period.
I don't think people would want to hear that this
is just the first two wars. But after the World War,
the Great War UM, the seggregationist Wouldrew Wilson, who was
US President at the time, proposed fourteen points to the

(01:32:25):
international community in order to prevent such horrors. And one
of those core principles of the fourteen points was it
the globe's borders. We were drawn along clearly recognizable lines
of nationality. And like I said before, this is of
course just in Europe. It's not like any of these
WILL leaders actually care about the territories they coughed up
in Africa. And I think there was a point that

(01:32:48):
I wanted to make about technology and how technology has
been restricted because when you look at again the real
road and telegraph, while they enabled central governments to suit
their presence and assut their control, and like ever before,
the potential these technologies was kind of lost. Yes, the

(01:33:11):
railroad in the telegraph can help a government to suit
its control over its territory, but it con justest as
easily empower people to travel further and faster than they
ever had before, so communicate across greater distances and they
ever had before. And insteadin the hands of the states,

(01:33:33):
these technologies are of course used for oppress events. Back
to the end of the First World War. In the
post war period, which saw the collapse of four European
empires Ottoman, Russian, Austro, Hungarian, and German, millions of refugees
were left in a world where immigration controls had continued
to tighten and passports gained greater prominence. Last once the

(01:33:58):
nation state was mented in place, Fascism and Nazism would
quickly arise to god its supposed purity. The world would
once again be plunged into war, the second one, this
time which would again leave millions of uprooting and displaced
people that states like Switzerland quote unquote neutral and the

(01:34:19):
US would largely refuse to assist. After the Second World War,
nation building would continue to displace and slaughter millions of
ethnic and religious minorities. Millions of refugees have been dismissed
from lands that have been colonized and imperialized, and intervened
with wars and wrecked with just the destruction of climate

(01:34:43):
change and poverty, and yet immigration controls only tightened further,
and they will likely continue to tighten due to the
effects of climate migration and climate collapse, especially in our
post ninety leven reality. US border patrol in particular has

(01:35:05):
escalated to employed twenty thousands and agents, and Israel Run
is the largest open air prison in the world. These days,
militarized borders with heavily guarded barbed wire and electrified fences,
which were once common in times of war, have now
been a staple of times of peace. These marginary lines

(01:35:26):
in the map have become in some places violent fixtures
on the landscape, with thousands of people lose their lives
every year for simply trying to cross. We've entered an
era of essentially bordering without precedent, and thanks to today's technology,
governments no more now about the people they govern, the
people within their territory, but at any point prior and

(01:35:48):
human history. Cross border surveillance keeps neighbors in the new
managing and monitoring their populous like lab rats. Data has
become of aluable then black cold itself. These governments have
chosen to wall and survey. This is our will now.

(01:36:10):
It's not some future cyberpunk the stupia, The curveillance capitalist
health keepers here now and borders have an important for
rule to play. But as our power structure their system
of control. As the writers that Crime Think have said,
there's only one world on the border is tearing it apart.

(01:36:34):
And I think the idea of borders extends much further
than just the nations borders. When you look at the Internet,
fire walls, the checkpoints, the hidden databases, the for profit
prisons in the gated communities, all these different boundaries enforced
by ceaseless violence, enforced by a deep aortation, enforced by vigilanty,

(01:36:59):
attack by street haraspment by torture, All of these boundaries
are holding us back and tearing us apart. Migrants, due
to their vulnerable status or often the first target when
it comes to the economic down to and oppression, civiilians

(01:37:19):
and scapegoating nations wield of fair of this other and
they use that to prevent their people from fighting for better.
They turned their eye towards another victim. I doesn't even

(01:37:40):
get into all the different categories that have been constructed
migrant expert, refugee, asylum seeker, illegal alien, and that one
in particular really grinds my cares because it is I believe,
the pinner cool of the humanization to look at a

(01:38:06):
person who's dice just man just managed to like just
by happensands fell on the other side of the border,
to look at them and to deem them alien, deem
them illegal, to brand them that, and I even acknowledge
their humanity when referring to them. And it's become a

(01:38:28):
normalized part of political discourse to speak of illegal aliens.
But I don't think we should reget just how violent
that kind of languages. It's particularly violent when you count
for the fact that while these borders are used to

(01:38:49):
restrict people on the lowest rung of society, capital has
very few restrictions. In fact, that has much less restrictions,
and people the right and their capital can cross borders
with ease, go from place to place without munch process.

(01:39:09):
And in fact, we look at Jeff Bassos and we
say that, oh, well, he's the richest man the world
for say soon, But when you account for the wealth
that has not been accounted for, I think it must
be put into perspective that Bill Gates, Zackaboo, Jeff Bazos, etcetera.

(01:39:35):
They are the richest people that we know of, not
necessarily the richest. A global economy has also been of
course moving resources for a while now. Resources have more
freedom than people. The unequal and even development has extracted

(01:39:57):
minerals and materials from some parts of the world, process
them in other parts of the world, manufacture them in
other parts of the world, and then sold worldwide for
the profits to be hoarded by select few countries and
select a few people. These wealthy countries plunder the poor
and then brutalize those who follow. Where the opportunities of Antica.

(01:40:19):
But I don't think that one's opportunities one freedom. One's
freedom should be restricted by where they were born or
by the wealth that they do. To not control passports,
inequality is yes, you that should not exist. Passports should
not exist. Palestinians can travel visa free to only thirty

(01:40:42):
eight countries and territories, yet those in the West Bank
are restricted by violent by violent checkpoints and those who
live in gas are call you distript at all. Meanwhile,
other regions enjoy fast visa free travels, such as Germans
who have access to countries and territories, or the Japanese,

(01:41:04):
who enjoy the most freedom piece of free of all,
with ninety three countries available to them. A billionaire like
Elon musket flying wherever he wants in his private jet.
A political prisoner like a Jory Luta, who can be
kept in solitary years on end. Traditional seafear and channels

(01:41:26):
and land has been militarized and guarded by these vast navies,
by these vast troops, by these these machines, These structures
that disconnected, unraveled the deep ties between communities, borderston us
all into prisoners, and I think it's about time we

(01:41:50):
resisted them. As the underground railroads of anti Nazi and
anti slavery resistance has shown everyday people can help every
day people, no matter the obstacles. If you live in
a border sanctuary city or a migrant community, they are
probably already groups that are put in this work and

(01:42:12):
you could join that infrastructure resistance. If not, you can
help to create that infrastructure to connect with people who
are affected by borders in ways that you aren't. I mean,
perhaps you have a neighbor or a cool worker who's
undocumented and could you use a help in that try

(01:42:32):
to connect cross border formal and informal, public and coland
design because these connections, these networks, or how people move,
live and evade state violence. Obviously, I can't speak for
everybody situation because different people's legal status, language, ability, education level, gender,

(01:42:56):
raised class, commit muns and ability would affect their contribution
to the anti borders movement. But however you decide to contribute,
I hope that you would remember who it is we're
trying to help. We're not trying to act as you know,

(01:43:16):
these saints for the media, and I recognized the irony
of saying saints in particular considered my old YouTube name.
But the media is not our focus. The audience of
our actions is not public opinion. It is those we
want fighting with us, people who need our help, people

(01:43:39):
who know the violent supporters forutand so they get into
direct action two, you know, directly affect the material outcomes
of people influence our borders. You know, whether you're helping
my creation prisoner managed to escape, or helping one person
get a roof over their head, helping an asylum case,

(01:44:00):
having a person who is trapped in this system to
find the strength to get through a day. These actions
refuberating our communities and they help oup others do the same.
We also, need, of course, more infrastructure, networks, alliances, skills
and resources to be cultivated to strengthen our autonomy from

(01:44:24):
these structures and to develop ability to defend against them,
and of course these actions should be rooted in some
strategy long term and short term for overcoming this regime
onnths and for all. Just for a final would I
would say that there is nothing necessary or inevitable about borders.

(01:44:49):
Only the violence of their most ardent believers keep them
in place and without them what as with seats to exist,
waters can only exist if they are enforced, and together
we can make waters and enforceable. Together we can create

(01:45:12):
a will in which everyone is free to travel, free
to create, and free to exist on their own terms.
Now's it. If you like what I spoke about in
this episode, or if you just like to hear my voice,
feel free to check out my YouTube channel and Truism

(01:45:35):
and you can support me on picture and dot com
slash Seeing True, will follow me on Twitter at and
Disclosing True. Hey everyone, and welcome taken up in the hare,

(01:46:01):
I'm Andrew the YouTube channel Andrewism, and today I want
to talk about the squatting movement. Actually, before I do that,
I'm joined today by my co hosts Your Cause Andrew
or Garrison Davis and James Stout, and I am your
producer Sophie and I am here Andrew, please continue, Thank you, Sophie.

(01:46:23):
I want to talk about the squatting movement and particularly
how people love overcome the analities of privatizing land and
restricting people's access to it so they could cove a
life for themselves. Um in this troubling world now, I

(01:46:46):
think a lot of people are least passionally familiar with
the squatting movements, the political squatting movements where be an anarchist,
a tournament store, socialist of nature that I've taken place
in Italy, the US, and most famously Denmark where they
had you know, Freetown Christiania set up. But outside of

(01:47:11):
the global North and much of the rest of the world,
squatting is just a fact of life. It doesn't typically
though sometimes it does have radical political ambitions. So today
I'm not going to be spending time discussing the squatting
movement in Europe or North America, but instead discussing the

(01:47:36):
millions of people in the world lack of access to
land where they can find secure shelter. And I turned
to what has been deemed informal occupation or squatting to
find residents. Most specifically, I'll be discussing the Caribbean, but
first I need to get into some statistics. It's always

(01:47:58):
that kind of weird, right. In nine fifty, only eighty
six cities around the world had populations of one million
people or more. In twenty sixteen, there were just over
six hundred cities that met this threshold. Over half of
the world's population now lives in urban areas, and nearly

(01:48:20):
a billion, if not a billion, are estimated to be
living in informal settlements, mostly in the urban and perry
urban areas of less developed countries. I don't know if
any of you have read Planets of the Slums by
Mike Davis. I don't think I have, but he discusses
this phenomenon, this explosion in urbanization, and the fact that, unfortunately,

(01:48:45):
you know, these cities aren't exactly urban Eden's. They are
deeply impoverished, filled with m makeshift and often unsafe, whether
it be you know, poison us or just poorly constructed
or disease written dwell ends areas such as their roots Quarantina,

(01:49:08):
Mexico cities Santa Cruz, Maya, Huaco Ros Favelas, and Cairo
is a city of the dead. We're up to one
million people living homes made out of actual tools. Now
Davis addresses the issues root cause, that being post colonial
neoliberal policies driven by free market Catholics principles. It is yes,

(01:49:33):
cities modernized in the wake of the colonial era, a
lot of the same zone and boundaries enforced by imperial
powers across racial and soce economic lines were continued. So
quality colonization did not really take place, and did imperial
rule didn't lead to a magical increase in equality e galitianism.
It's just that post colonial rulers took up the mantle

(01:49:55):
where a colonial rulers left so and of course this switch,
this changing of hands of power was kept up by
the International Monetary Fund, which stepped in on behalf of
these elites and pushed the poorest citizens basically into thickly

(01:50:16):
concentrated slums by making it easier for the ruling class
to ignore these issues and prioritize the affluent. The debt
restructure and policies and nine also LEDs a lot of
governments cutting down on their public health and education investment

(01:50:37):
expenditure so that they could repay the loans that they
had been forced to take out David spent a lot
of time talking about Asia and sometime talking about the
increasing hardship in African cities. But the situation of squatting
is often overlooked in the Caribbean, and so I'd like

(01:50:57):
to draw some attention to that. I think that anyone
who has lived in the Caribbean or as family in
the Caribbean would be somewhat familiar with the idea of
family land, which is this idea that you know, you
have these plots that the family essentially owns collectively, maybe

(01:51:21):
somebody living there, or it may just be landed as
being passed along for anyone who needs it. UM. A
lot of this land was acquired by purchase, and a
lot of it was acquired by squatting in Trinidad, in
Jamaica and Puerto Rico and Martinique and Barbadoes. Squatting was

(01:51:44):
how a lot of recently emancipated people gained some foothold
to live now they could not stay on the plantation system. UM. Now,
the early squatting movement was largely wiped out by the

(01:52:08):
growing plantation system UM, but eventually a new squatting movement
would arise due to escaped slaves and maroons and post
indentured individuals who would resettle um on those regions that

(01:52:28):
were previously wiped out by the plantation system. I'm going
to spend most of the focus of this episode discussing
what took place in Jamaica because I discovered this really
excellent research paper done by Professor Jean Besson. But Jamaica
is really quite an interesting example because Jamaica is one

(01:52:49):
of the few Caribbean countries that had a successful, sustained
maroon movement that lasted into the twenty one century. And
so what happened, as is the case for a lot
of these colonies, is you have this Cittain model of
land ownership called crown land. Basically all the land of

(01:53:10):
the crown deemed themselves to own by virtue of colonized.
In these places, crown land would often be you know,
parceled out when they want to attract new colonists to
their different colonies, and so enslaved people in Jamaica created
these squatters, settle months on crown land, basically recaptured that

(01:53:35):
land and created villages and communities um in as maroons
in that context of colonial violence, and of course these
governments would demolish the squads settlements and try to effect
land capture. But in Jamaica, the Maroons succeeded, particularly the

(01:54:05):
Leeward Maroons, as they were two different groups to win
Wood Maroons in the Leewood Moroons, and that's a whole
different history. Today, a Kampong Village is the only survive
in village for the Jamaican Leewood Maroons, and there's also
the oldest persistent Maroon society in African America. After the

(01:54:26):
enslaved Africans and Creoles escaped the plantations and squatted Crown Land,
they waged successful guerrilla warfare against the British colonists in
the First Maroon War and the leadership of Kujo and
that land would be the basis of two Leewood Maroon
villages that be in Kujo's Town in St. James and

(01:54:48):
a Kampongs Town in St. Elizabeth, a Kampong being named
after Kujo's brother in arms, Captain A. Kampong. Eventually, Kujo
Town will be renamed Trelawny Town after the treaty between
the British governor would grant the Maroons their freedom and
fifteen hundred acres of legal freehold land. A compound town,

(01:55:14):
on the other hand, did not really get any legal
recognition until a land grant was given to them to
some two thousand fives around a couple of decades later
between six the Second Maroon War before between the Trelawny

(01:55:36):
Town Maroons and the British colonists. Because of course the
British did what they would do and whipped two of
the Maroons for the theft of pigs in Montego Bay.
Of course, this is just the insight and incident, as
these things tend to be, for the deeper discontent regarding
access to the land. And after this Second Maroon War,

(01:55:59):
the learning Roons ended up being deported to Nova Scotia. So,
for those a bit familiar with you know Canadian history,
the Maroons are moved to and resettled in Canada. As
a result of this and the Trianytown ruins Land being confiscated,

(01:56:21):
a compunc Town became the soul surviving village and today
it remains Common Treaty town. It is owned in common
by the some I believe it's like just over three
thousand adults, all of which, by the way, claimed descent
from you know Couju and they sort of have a

(01:56:43):
mixed settlement, producing for household use, rare and livestock, utilizing
in the forest of medicines and timber um, cultivating food
forests and provision grounds. And even after that was of
the communitude migrate, they would still have that connection to
their commons and often returns to either live or visit.

(01:57:08):
Trilony Town. On the other hand, after being recaptured by
the crown, it was eventually purchased and transformed into family
lands by the descendants of slaves, lanterns, and ruins, and
of course squatting played a part in that development. Most

(01:57:28):
recently in Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been
a move by governments switching from a policy of trying
to eradicate squatters and instead trying to give them titled
their lands, either granting them or usually selling it to
them in an effort to alleviate poverty so they could
use their house as you know, collateral for business loans

(01:57:51):
and that kind of thing. And that's basically what happened
for a compound town and for Trelawney Town, where the
captured land was surveyed and subdivided and put for sale
and so the squat was able to purchase the land
and the government was able to impose taxation on the
people who lived on that land. Now, I I spoke

(01:58:12):
of squatting in the Caribbean Latin America typically being not
radically political, but there are political slash religious movements that
have used squatting to gain a foothold. For example, the
Revival Zion movements and offshoot of Rasterfarian movements. If I'm honestly,

(01:58:37):
couldn't find much information about them, but they're enough from
Jamaican religion and slash cult and so they managed to
capture a lot of the land near Trelawney Town and
we're often settled their homes right behind the city councils,
no squatting signs. Eventually, you know you have about thirty

(01:59:01):
house shools who have basically recaptured their land from Babylon,
as Rastafarians would describe the state um. Their community, which
they called Zion, became a very vibrant squatter settlement of
some seventy house yards on about thirty acres have captured land. Eventually,

(01:59:28):
the land was surveyed and subdivided, of course, trying to
tax and control the people that were there, But the
situation led to a lot of people still you know,
not being able to afford the land, and still of
course having to squat on the land that they lived on.

(01:59:51):
But so long difficulty with squatted land is that it's
a very um tenuous, very fragile, wild state of being.
The future is often unswittan and cleats. It's more secure,
i would say, than being like homeless, but you're still
very much subject to state violence. Um And even when

(02:00:15):
so called legal avenues opened up for you to get
the land, you know, through purchase, the fact that you
had to squat in the land in the first place
should be some indication that you probably can't afford to
buy land. But squatting enables people, at least in the

(02:00:37):
interim two potentially you know, develop some funds and stuff
until they are able to secure a future for their families.
I think a lot of the liberal solutions to the
issue of squatting and poverty is to replace these sorts

(02:01:01):
of systems and put it instead like proper private property
rights and giving these people private property so that they
could achieve sustainable development goals and all the other buzzwords
that you know, these programs tend to use. I think
the future of these kinds of projects, however, should be
more along the lines of commons. I think that the

(02:01:26):
fact that they were able to secure that land without
the government's approval should be an indication that the government
should not need to approve for people to live on
the ether You're called home. I've spoken a previous episode
about barb Uda and they are commons, and I really

(02:01:49):
don't see why. I do see why, but I really
believe the solutions these isssues lies in reclaiming the commons,
lies in rejecting these colonial and post cluonial governments which
based themselves on exclusion and illegality. And bring a boat,

(02:02:14):
participatory local management of the land, by the people, for
the people. And that's about it. Thanks, and do you
think it was re fascinating? Any any final thoughts, Scare James.
My final thought is that we have a live share
wonderful And yeah, just the thing I was thinking about

(02:02:36):
as we talked about squatting this one. You will be
excluded unless you can pray the cost of entry or
work out how to not be excluded, I guess. But
it's on the twenty six of October I nearly forgot
what month it was, And you can buy tickets on
the internet. Yeah, so we're doing this live stream October

(02:02:56):
twenty six, six pm. It is a live virtual event
and you can get tickets at moment dot c o
slash I see h H will link that in the
episode script. Will be a fun, spooky themed light show. Hey, everybody,

(02:03:28):
Robert Evans here and welcome to it could happen here.
You know, when we started the show, when I did
the first season of it, you know, the one about
all the Civil War stuff. Back in this was basically
a place for me to write long essays explaining my
vision of the future and the present. Uh, And people
seem to like that a lot. We did a little

(02:03:49):
bit of that at the start of this new Eternal
daily season of the show. Um, but obviously over the
last year or so, it's it's morphed into something very
different and something wonderful and successful, and it's brought a
lot of new voices, or at least voices people maybe
hadn't heard from as much out in front of the audience,

(02:04:09):
and I've been really happy about that. But what I
also haven't been doing is writing any more essays about
the world and how fucked up shit is. Because you know,
I've been managing a bunch of stuff and there's been
a lot of work to do, but I like doing
that stuff, and I think you people like it, So
I'm gonna try to do more of that. And I

(02:04:30):
wanted to kind of start by talking a little bit
about Silicon Valley. And I'm going to say something at
the start of this essay that a lot of people
are probably instinctively gonna want to disagree with, which is
that Silicon Valley and the tech industry have been gigantic
failures by every metric that matters. They have made life
comprehensively worse for humanity, and there is no real fact

(02:04:53):
based counter argument to that statement. This is a hard
pill for people to swallow. I'm sure a lot of
folks are frustrated in me for saying it right now
and are thinking of counter arguments. Most people today are
critical of the tech industry, obviously, particularly made your social
media companies, but they still tend to acknowledge the tremendous
wealth created by Silicon Valley, as if there's some sort

(02:05:13):
of inherent value to that. Behind a number on a
spreadsheet collectively, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, the so
called Big Five had a seven point five trillion dollar
market cap. And every person listening to this keeps a
device in their pocket made by or using the software
of one or more of these companies. And so when
people want to make the counter argument to what I

(02:05:35):
just said, they'll tend to point out some version of this. Uh. Yeah,
companies like Facebook have done bad things, but the Internet
is still a tool for good. It connects people, YadA
YadA YadA. Smartphones empower us. You know. There's all these
positive things about the internet, to which I will say,
present me with your fucking evidence that that has mattered
for people really in terms that actually, inaggregate improve their lives.

(02:05:58):
I will show you my arguments to the col dry.
In the period of time from Harry Truman's election to
the end of the Nixon administration, American productivity on a
per capita basis increased at a faster rate than it
did at any other point in history. But then something happened.
From nineteen seventy three to two thousand and thirteen, income
growth was eighty percent slower than it had been in

(02:06:18):
the previous three decades. If productivity had continued to grow
at the same rate from nineteen seventy three to two
thousand thirteen as it did from nineteen forty six to
nineteen seventy three, the economy in two thousand thirteen would
have been sixty percent larger than it actually was. Now,
I'm going to guess a decent number of the people
listening to this grew up watching The Jetsons. I know

(02:06:39):
I did, and for the most part it was a silly,
pretty harmless animated show. But at the center of it
was a dream about the future that seems unfathomable in
light of current events. George Jetson, who was in the
show a pretty normal working class guy, worked three hours
a day for three days a week. One of the
running jokes in the show is that he considered himself
overworked despite this idyllic schedule. Now, this was never particularly

(02:07:03):
a focus of the show. It was just kind of
something that was mentioned from time to time. And that's
because the idea that a work week might just be
nine hours in the future wasn't a joke. This was
the direction of futurists in the nineteen sixties, looking at
that surgeon productivity I just mentioned, and all of the
middle class wealth that had been created from the forties
through the early sixties. This is the direction they saw

(02:07:24):
us heading in around a decade ago, in a period
that was still significantly more optimistic than our current age.
The Atlantics. Alexis Madrigal, when on a reading spree of
some early twentieth century futurist novels, his conclusion was this quote.
Technological optimists sold the world on automation by telling people
it would create unimaginable amounts of leisure for them. The

(02:07:45):
big question for the workers of the twenty first century
would be how to spend their copious amounts of free time. Now,
the future we've actually gotten has given us the opposite
of this dream. To try and cover up the rank
and rampant ways modern technology has failed. Human think tanks
funded by venture capitalists and tech gurus produce an endless
stream of identical futurist thinker types who write columns about

(02:08:08):
how the world is actually better today than it's ever been.
A good example of this would be this June column
by Rob Ascar titled the World's getting better, Here's why
your brain can't believe it. It opens with this paragraph
life has improved for most people around the world over
the past generation, temporary pandemics aside. The rub is that
you can't get anyone to believe the good news, and

(02:08:29):
the result is a toxic political environment and the potential
collapse of democratic norms if too few people feel that
a stressed system is worth saving. Now, I might point out,
for example, that if people don't actually feel like the
system is good, perhaps it's not really working well. There's
a number of counter arguments you can make to this. Now,
two years later, this again was written in June, We've

(02:08:52):
got a massive war in Europe. People are worried about
nuclear warfare as a result of that. Again, we've got
a degradation of democracy world I that's continued to pace
from where it was. We've got soaring inequality, we've got
inflation the likes of which a lot of people alive
have never seen, myself included prior to this point. And
we still have a pandemic. So it's clear that Rob

(02:09:13):
is at least not as smart as he thinks he is,
which is what I would say about everyone who makes
versions of the same claim that he was making. Now,
this doesn't mean I'm saying that life is worse now
than it was at some imagined pre lapse arian version
of the past. I actually think that's kind of a
useless way to think about the past. In the future,
there's different things people would have preferred. There's things that
are objectively better, there's things that are objectively indebatably worse.

(02:09:36):
You know, that's hard to make those kind of claims
about history, especially when they often rely on saying, well,
X amount of more people have been pulled out of poverty.
And the question to that is, well, I don't know,
before colonization of Africa, would you say all of those
people in what became the colonized parts of Africa were
in poverty or were they simply not part of a

(02:09:56):
system that measures poverty and anyway whatever. We can go
on and on about that. My point is that the
metrics these people used to claim the success of our
current system to talk about how wonderful things are today
are constantly shifting, and they're widely arbitrary. The same year
Rob wrote his stupid column, an in O r C
studies showed that Americans self reported being happy at the

(02:10:18):
lowest levels in fifty years. You can quote Jukes statistics
about wealthare access to luxury goods all you want. But
the modern world and the post two eight financial crash economy,
all of which was built in the shade of the
tech industry, is making people miserable now. Happiness is obviously
not a perfect measure of progress either. Self reporting is
always dicey, but things like the consumer price index in

(02:10:41):
per capita income, which are often used by folks on
the optimist side, are also juked and jiggered to hell
and back. So to provide a bit more of an
international scale, I'm going to quote from the Berkeley University's
Greater Good magazine. Quote released annually on the International Day
of Happiness, the World Happiness Report ranks countries based on
their life satisfaction the Gallop World Pole. Residents rate how

(02:11:02):
satisfied they are with their lives in a scale of
zero to ten, from the worst possible life to the
best possible life. This year's report also analyzes how global
happiness has changed over time, based on data stretching back
to two thousand five. One trend is very clear. Negative feelings, worry, sadness,
and anger have been rising around the world, up by
from two thousand ten to two thousand eighteen. The others

(02:11:24):
also found troubling trends and happiness in equality, which is
the psychological parallel to income inequality, how much individuals in
society differ and how satisfied they are with life. Since
two thousand seven, happiness inequality has been rising within countries,
meaning that the gap between the unhappy and the happy
has been getting wider. This trend is particularly strong in
Latin America, Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. And this is

(02:11:47):
kind of getting it. I think, what is an incredibly
important point, for one thing, if you want to look
at how people have self reported their unhappiness rising. This
massive recent surge and unhappiness occurs almost at exactly the
period of time that the smartphone takes off and becomes ubiquitous.
And the smartphone is such a bafflingly useful device. I
would never want to give mine up as a thing

(02:12:08):
that I had access to, And the Internet is an
incredibly powerful tool. I wouldn't want to give the Internet
up either. But the usefulness and the the undoubtable brilliance
behind these products makes it seem inconceivable to argue that
they haven't made us better at accomplishing the things that
matter to us. But the evidence on this is pretty clear.
I want to quote now from a write up in

(02:12:29):
The Atlantic. No matter how aggressively you torture the numbers,
the computer age has coincided with a decline in the
rate of economic growth. When Chad Civerson, an economist at
the University of Chicago's Business School, looked at the question
of missing growth, he found that the productivity slowdown has
reduced GDP by two points seven trillion dollars since two
thousand four. Americans may love their smartphones, but all those

(02:12:52):
free apps aren't worth trillions of dollars. The physical world
of the city, the glow of electric powered lights, the
rumble of automobiles, the roar of air planes overhead, and
subways below is a product of late nineteenth century in
early twentieth century invention, the physical environment feels depressingly finished.
The bulk of innovation has been shunted into the invisible
realm of bites and code. All of that code, technology

(02:13:14):
advocates argue, has increased human ingenuity by allowing individuals to tinker, talk,
and trade with unprecedented ease. This certainly feels true. Who
could dispute the fact that It's easier than ever to
record music, market a video game, or publish an essay,
but by most measures, individual innovation is in decline. In
two thousand and fifteen, Americans were far less likely to
start a company than they were in the nineteen eighties.

(02:13:36):
According to the economist Tyler Cohen, the spread of broadband
technology has corresponded with a drop off an entrepreneurial activity
in almost every city and in almost every industry. Now
you might think from all this that I'm out ahead
into some sort of techno dumer anti si primitivist rant here.
I'm not. Perhaps I should, but I'm not. I am
a person who loves technology. I got my start as

(02:13:57):
a journalist. As a tech journalist, I joy as Lee
traveled the world for years, visiting conventions looking at new gadgets.
And a lot of this was in that pretty wondrous
period if you're a gadget nerd from two thousand eight
to two thousand eleven, where there were there's these amazing, new,
weird sci fi gadgets dropping every single week, stuff that
you'd grown up watching and like Star Trek, the next
generation suddenly getting mailed to your door for you to

(02:14:20):
test out. I tested hundreds of tablets and smart gadgets
in that time frame, and there's some really great products
that came out from that period. Bluetooth speakers are wonderful.
A lot of people, including me, use them happily on
a daily basis. But when it comes to legitimately life
changing applications of technology that's come to us in the
last fifteen years or so, I can really only think

(02:14:40):
of three things. Number one is the ability to navigate
by GPS basically everywhere. Number two is the ability to
be in constant contact with people around the world. And
number three is the ability to store a shipload of
media on a portable device. So I'm not anti technology,
Nor am I saying that big tech doesn't make things
that are cool or useful? And what am I saying

(02:15:00):
we should get rid of this stuff? The point I'm
making is that viewed at thirty thousand feet, the tech
industry has produced very little of quantifiable value to the
human race, and it has caused unfathomable harm at the
same time. Now, in my opinion, this has nothing, or
at least fairly little to do with how the technology
inherently works, and instead has everything to do with the

(02:15:22):
ideology behind the people who developed and who continue to
marshal that technology. In nine, two of the smartest guys
in the twentieth century by my estimation, Richard Barbrook and
Andy Cameron, wrote an essay about the ideology that animated
the men who had come to dominate the twenty first
century tech industry. They titled their essay the Californian Ideology,

(02:15:44):
and I think it still counts as one of the
three or four most incisive accurate essays of that century.
The gist of the idea was that as the first
wave of the digital boom started to hit in the
mid nineteen nineties, the thinkers behind it were fueled by
a mix of left wing by a x of left
wing egalitarian, often anti status beliefs that got wedded to

(02:16:05):
right wing free market fundamentalist libertarian ideology and created this
deeply toxic way of thinking about the future. You can
see this in the story of guys like Steve Wozniak,
the inventor of the personal computer, who was also a
former phone freaker. He committed federal crimes as a kid,
hacking the phone system primarily because fuck the man. But
then when he's a young man the Waws hooks up

(02:16:27):
with a guy named Steve Jobs, and Jobs is a
brilliant but heartless con man who cares about nothing but
market dominance. Jobs recognizes the naive brilliance of Steve Wozniak,
and he turns it into an engine for wealth creation.
At one point, he steals money that Wosniak was owed
for a project that they took on together, money Wniac
probably would have just given him if he'd asked, and
he used it secretly to fund their business, which became Apple.

(02:16:51):
In their essay, Cameron and Barbara, who are much better
writers than I, described the Californian ideology this way. The
Californian ideology is a mix of cyber and etics, free
market economics, and counterculture libertarianism, and is promuligated by magazines
such as Wired and Mondo two thousand and preached in
the books of Stuart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and others. The
New Faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students,

(02:17:13):
thirty something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats, and even by
the President of the USA himself. Now, the tech industry
as we know it got its start courtesy of government money.
Everyone knows that the first version of the Internet was
developed as part of a Defense Department project, but the
entire computer industry, all of the coders and engineers who

(02:17:33):
would form the first generation of Selincom Valley profit engines,
all these guys got their start working for or as
defense contractors. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, thousands
of these people were left out of jobs and they
were forced to move into the private sector. Everything worthwhile
that's come out of big tech has involved a titanic
amount of public funding, one way or the other. And
I'm gonna quote from that essay again. Almost every major

(02:17:55):
technological advance of the last two hundred years has taken
place with the aid of large outs of public money
and under a good deal of government influence. The technologies
of the computer in the net were invented with the
aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the first difference
Engine project received a British government grant of five hundred
and seventeen thousand, four hundred and seventy pounds a small
fortune in eighteen thirty four. From Colossus to EDVAC, from

(02:18:18):
flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing has
depended at key moments on public research handouts or fat
contracts with public agencies. The IBM Corporation built the first
programmable digital computer only after it was requested to do
so by the U. S Defense Department during the Korean War.
The result of a lack of state intervention meant that
Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the first electronic

(02:18:41):
computer in the late thirties when the Wehrmacht refused to
fund Conrad Zooz, who had pioneered the use of binary code,
stored programs, and electronic logic gates. One of the weirdest
things about the Californian ideology is that the West Coast
itself was a product of massive state intervention. Government dollars
were used to build the irrigation systems, highway schools, universities,
and other infrastructural projects which make the good life possible.

(02:19:04):
On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast high
tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork
barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured
billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics, and
nuclear bombs from Californian companies. Americans have always had state planning,
but they prefer to call it the defense budget. Now
this state of affairs is more or less unchanged today.

(02:19:27):
Elon Musk is probably the most celebrated modern tech visionary.
Miss Sundry companies have taken nearly five billion dollars in
public funding, subsidies, and government support since two thousand fifteen.
All of these libertarian visionaries, who push in their political
lives for a world of lossyfair economics and corporate sovereignty,
only produce value with the help of taxpayer dollars. Period.

(02:19:50):
The irrational exuberance of public financing and the narcissism to
ignore its role in innovation has given us a generation
of tech industry overlords who seem bound and determined to
destroy their own creations. Steve Jobs represented the most successful
and probably the most intelligent manifestation of the Californian ideology.
Every tech industry ghoul currently boiling away fortunes for the

(02:20:12):
sake of their ego. I'm thinking of Zuckerberg and Musk
most prominently right now is trying to be him. Steve's
skill was being able to perfectly inhabit the form of
a visionary, and he was so good at doing this
that he convinced this generation they could follow in his footsteps.
But Steve Jobs was only ever playing at being a creator,
at being an inventor. His skill was not in making things.

(02:20:35):
He had other people to do the making. Steve was
an exceptional confidence man, and like all good confidence men,
he was able to make money because he understood on
a deep level what other human beings wanted. This skill
allowed him to lock Apple into spending hundreds of millions
of dollars on R and D for what would become
the first proper smartphone, and for a while, he was

(02:20:57):
just having them toss that money into an apparent chasm,
repeatedly turning back iterations of the product that weren't quite right,
on the strength of his belief that when they got
it right, it would be worth it. In the year since,
we've seen many wanna be Steves try to follow in
his footsteps, igniting tens of billions of dollars of venture
capital for absolutely nothing. One of the best examples would

(02:21:17):
be Uber They lost eight point five billion dollars in
two thousand nineteen six point eight billion dollars. Once upon
a time, The understanding the jobs and vision of what
Uber could be was that all of this ignited VC
cash would be worthwhile because eventually the company would succeed
in replacing human drivers with autonomous cars, cutting out the
primary cost in the entire professional driving industry, and making

(02:21:42):
the potential for a shipload of profit. But after investing
more than a billion dollars in self driving cars, Uber
sold their entire autonomous vehicle division off at a loss.
All of that expense had resulted in self driving cars
that averaged one half mile travel per accident. Despite this,
after a two point six billion dollar loss in August two,

(02:22:03):
Uber stock sword. Now the realities of what generates profit
and loss in the tech industry have been completely divorced
from productive reality or value created. For quite some time.
The delamination of real value in big tech happens subtly.
It's not hard to see why Apple, who created a
device every human being wanted to have in their pocket,

(02:22:23):
became worth a shipload more money, right, pretty obvious. The
value case for Google's core business search is also pretty obvious.
And as much as I hate Facebook, it became initially
successful because it provided people with something of real value
a way to stay in touch with human beings they
had met over the course of their lives. Younger folks
may find this odd because they've grown up with the Internet,

(02:22:45):
but as a kid, I can remember very vividly my
parents talking about the friends they'd had in high school
and in college, and how a lifetime of moving regularly
had severed many of the connections they'd valued with these people.
When I joined Facebook and my freshman year of college,
I found real value and the ability to maintain and
sometimes even build stronger connections with people I would otherwise

(02:23:05):
have lost touch with entirely. There is the core of
something good, or something at least valued inherently by people
in Facebook, and that's true with most, if not all,
of the Big five companies. When people reflexively leap to
defend the tech industry as an engine of innovation, they
can point to these successes. But the point that I'm
making isn't that no good ideas come out of Silicon Valley,

(02:23:27):
or that there isn't anything valuable that is involved in
what these companies do. It's that the endless quest for
profit and the narcissism of this Californian ideology lead inevitably
to the destruction of whatever value the industry creates. This
is why none of these innovations have actually led to
surges and productivity, why none of them have made us
any happier, which I think might be more important. Any

(02:23:50):
potential these creations had was smothered by the ideology that
drives Silicon Valley money. Facebook took the connections that they'd
made with people and used them to feed those same
people rage bait. They destroyed the open Internet, shuttered countless
local news sites, put tons of people out of business,
while algorithmically pushing millions of folks around the world towards

(02:24:13):
whatever kept them angriest and most online. Google spent billions
on an endless stream of spinoff products like Google Plus
and Google Glass, which were nearly all catastrophic failures, at
least on a financial sense, and all the while they
gradually turned the search results they prided themselves on into
a sponsored ad feed. Google is less useful now than

(02:24:34):
it was a couple of years ago. You noticed this
immediately if you just get on there and start asking
it questions. Elon Musk has taken the visionary technology that
underpins the Tesla, all created by other people and used
the clout from that to shatter any chance of California
developing a high speed rail system. By the way, in
June of two, Tesla stock value plunged seventy five billion dollars,

(02:24:56):
which is substantially more money than the company has ever
actually made. Elucidating the full scale of the failure of
Silicon Valley an American techno optimism would take more time
than I'm able to spend right now, So instead, I
want to talk about the idea that's behind so much
of the recent big failures that we've seen from big
tech stuff like Meta pissing away ten billion dollars half

(02:25:17):
the budget of NASA in a year to create a
worse version of vr chat. The idea is called blitz scaling,
and it basically means attempting to achieve massive scale at
breakneck speed. You take big risks and you spend huge
amounts of money very quickly to try enforce apps or
other products onto the market that are then adopted rapidly
by huge numbers of people. This brings in a shipload

(02:25:40):
of VC money, and as a way that you can
make a fortune. In the years since Jobs brought the
first iPhone out, on stage. This has become the dominant
model of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Everyone is looking for the
next iPhone, right, something that can take over an industry,
something you can take over the world that rapidly, that
can change human life almost overnight. In Funding Calls, Mark

(02:26:00):
Zuckerberg says this. In Funding Calls, Mark Zuckerberg says this
very directly, comparing his company's metaverse dreams to the new smartphone.
The thing that Mark misses because his ideology renders it invisible,
is that Steve Jobs didn't make people want the iPhone.
He was able to figure out what they wanted already,
what they had talked about wanting for decades, starting with

(02:26:21):
trike orders and communicators on Star Trek, and he lashed
his dev team until they built the damn thing. Now.
The metaverse has some analogs in fiction, including the thing
that it gets its name from, um, but number one,
most depictions of the metaverse in fiction are not aspirational
things people want their dystopian uh, there's no evidence that

(02:26:43):
people actually want this thing that he's igniting a fortune
to build, or that they'd spend meaningful periods of time
in it if it existed. There's not a lot of
polling on this data, but one in seven but one
seventeen thousand person survey I found showed less than twenty
respondents respect expressing an interest in meta in a metaverse
like the one Zuck is trying to build. The last
time Facebook provided any kind of information about how many

(02:27:06):
people are on Horizon Worlds, which is kind of the
core of their metaverse efforts, it was somewhere around three
dred thousand people in the most recent quarter. They declined
to provide an update to those numbers, which suggests the
number has not increased um And if you just want
to look at what happens when people create a digital
product that actually has a strong base of interest, look
at how quickly World of Warcraft went from, you know,

(02:27:29):
a thing that very few people outside of nerds would
have known much about, to a thing that was entirely mainstream,
millions of users, regular references to it on television. You're
just not seeing that with any of this metaverse ship
because there's nothing in it that people actually want. The
sheer hollowness of big tech is starting to become financially

(02:27:49):
obvious to Facebook. Stock has lost fifty seven percent of
its value in the last year. Amazon is down Google
by and even Apple has fallen by fourteen sent More
to the point, I think any honest person has to
look at the last fifteen years or so in which
these companies have ruled our economic and social lives and asked,
are we better off now? Over the course of the

(02:28:11):
nineteenth century, productivity and income rose at unprecedented rates. There
was a lot of brutality in this process, right. We talked,
you know, on behind the Bastards regularly about all of
the horrible labor things that happened in the nineteenth century.
It also marked the beginning of the fossil fuel age,
which may well kill us all. But while all this
was going on, another thing that happened is wages for
the working class doubled in the first half of the

(02:28:33):
nineteenth century, and the second half. Life expectancy rose faster
than it ever had before as well, and that continued
through the first part of the twentieth century. Now, near
the end of the first quarter of the twenty one century,
we're not seeing that kind of movement. The United States
is now ending its second consecutive year of declining life
expectancy for the first time in any of our lifetimes,

(02:28:55):
and real average wage adjusted for inflation, has remained flat
for almost half a injury progress has flatlined, and nothing
about how brilliant the modern tech industry is or how
cool some of these gadgets and products are can change
those fundamental facts. It's a failure. Hey, We'll be back

(02:29:17):
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
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