Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 152

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Sources can be found in the descriptions of each individual episode. Hurricane Conspiracy Theories The 2028 General Strike and Climate Change Israel's History with UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon Anarchism In Argentina, Pt. 1 feat. Andrew Anarchism In Argentina, Pt. 2 feat. Andrew You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. And we are super excited to tell you about our new show, Dudes on Dudes. We're spilling all the behind-the-scenes stories, crazy details, and honestly, just having a blast talking football. Every week, we're discussing our favorite players of all times, from legends to our buddies to current stars. We're finally answering the age-old question,

what kind of dudes are these dudes? We're gonna find out Jules. New episodes drop every Thursday during the NFL season. Listen to Dudes on Dudes on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found off the coast of Florida.

And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Jess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers.

Each week we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? And like what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back.

And this season we're taking a bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the Margarita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba, and the Piñuc colada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.

Every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. It is a beautiful sunny day in Atlanta, Georgia, which means

I think they're all lying about the weather. They said this hurricane was going to come, and I'm fine. I don't believe them. It's all fake. Joined with me today is Mia Wong. I'm Garrison Davis. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. Welcome. And it's, hey, look, it's cloudy in Portland, so clearly they were telling the truth. I don't know what's going on in your reality But I can't believe that the Republicans have hijacked the weather control matrix and are aiming it at Portland, Oregon to wipe it off the map to give Oregon's To give Oregon's vote to Donald Trump in the next election You know

one of my foundational early political memories was discovering that like the two the mid 2010s era mayor of Ankara Thought that NATO had an earthquake machine that they were setting off off the coast of Turkey in order to cause tsunamis during Hurricane season so that because of deep NATO could destroy the Turkish economy I hope so we thought that was very funny and now every every single like major politician in America Believe some shit like that now and I was like, oh Major politician in America believes some shit like that now and I was like, oh Everyone has something not everyone has the same thing But everyone has something crazy that they believe and that's what we're talking about here today So, oh boy, it is it has gotten bad folks

Yeah as hurricane Helene and hurricane Milton brought widespread devastation to the southeastern United States Politicians TV anchors and influencers have been trying to weaponize the tragedy and the disaster relief effort for their own partisan electoral gain, particularly via the use of disinformation. While the government's response to Hurricane Helene can certainly be criticized, bad faith attacks originating from the far right have spread wildly online and have been boosted by Trump and Fox News. Many of these focus on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, with some of them

connecting to decades-old conspiracy theories about the agency. So this episode, we're going to go over some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about these hurricanes, but not necessarily to like debunk them. Because like, I know who's listening to this, but I think it's actually more helpful to place them into the larger tapestry of conspiracy thinking leading into the election and discuss how modern misinformation has presented a whole new problem that simple fact checks aren't equipped to handle. Hey, Garrison, you are very confident about that,

but I personally know leftists who I have been friends with who believe the weather weapon shit, so you never know. Well, I mean, I do believe that fact checks aren't gonna be the main solution here. Oh no, they're not gonna help that. I'm just saying, look, there are believers everywhere for the eyes to see. It's great.

That's kind of what I'm saying here. Yeah. Now, let's start by talking about Donald Trump and FEMA. Oh, God. So, some of the misinformation spreading about FEMA right now includes the claim that the agency is only providing $750 in aid to individuals affected by Hurricane Helene, when actually the $750 payments are just the initial relief funds to help with immediate needs.

There's also been claims that FEMA only issues loans and any relief money received has to be paid back. This isn't true, only in rare cases when someone receives duplicate funds from FEMA and insurance does money have to be returned to FEMA. There's also been claims that if victims fail to pay back FEMA, they will then seize your property. This is also false. More on this later.

Now, a TikTok video with over a million views claimed that FEMA is raiding people's homes to seize supplies. This isn't true. FEMA doesn't raid people's homes. On a more racist note, it's claimed that FEMA has run out of money for hurricane victims because Kamala spent billions of FEMA dollars on housing for illegal immigrants. At a campaign rally, Donald Trump said, and I'm not going to do the voice, the Harris Biden administration says they don't have money because they spent it all on illegal

immigrants. They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so that they could give it to their illegal immigrants." This lie was also shared by Sean Hannity on Fox News, and even when confronted with facts that discredit this claim, commentators on Fox still insist that even though it's not technically true, it still feels true. It may not be actually true that FEMA resources that could have been available in North Carolina have been given to migrants,

but there's no question about the broader orientation of FEMA under the Biden-Harris administration, which has been to channel huge amounts of money to communities and to non-governmental organizations to help with the massive influx of migrants that they themselves have created. And this is a fun one too, because there is FEMA underfunding, organizations to help with the massive influx of migrants that they themselves have created. And this is a fun one too, because like there is FEMA underfunding, but the reason there's

FEMA underfunding is that Republicans keep voting not to give it more money. Yes. Which like, oh boy. I mean, again, like this is a big part of the Republican strategy, just making life worse for everybody so that everyone's more angry so that people will vote Republican. And that's, that is the strategy they want want, because as long as they're as long as their base is doing badly and like upset and angry, they will find some way to blame it on the opposition and then vote in Republican.

This has been a conservative governmental strategy for decades. Yeah. Do all the terrible stuff and then blame the stuff that you did on immigrants, which good times. Love this country. Great stuff happening. A famously reliable strategy. Trump's also lied about the governor of Georgia not being able to get in contact with President Biden to coordinate disaster relief efforts when in fact they had spoken the day prior. Trump also claimed that the federal government and the North Carolina

Democratic governor have been, quote, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas unquote. This is also completely false that there were more isolated areas in North Carolina that were harder to reach, but people are trying to get there. And in fact, some of the hardest reach areas were actually immigrant communities who were like too scared to like actually ask for federal help out of fear they would be deported. So, yes, there actually is people really struggling to get relief, but it's not by and large your Trump voters. Again, certainly the relief efforts managed by the government have had their fair share

of problems. People are not getting all the help they need, but this is not a conspiracy by the Democratic governor to deprive Republicans of hurricane relief. That's not true. Now, Trump's falsehoods about the hurricane and the disaster response in service of his re-election campaign have signaled that it's A-OK for Republicans to spread all manner of hurricane conspiracy theories targeting the federal government.

Oh boy, and this is where we're going to get into the newest conspiracy theory sweeping the nation, that the government controls the weather. All of the weather, especially hurricanes. Now, this is not a new conspiracy theory, certainly. I'm so sick of the weather weapon shit. But the fact that we have sitting congressmen, including Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia, who is riding this thing like a fucking horse, is a little bit wild. She has been posting non-stop the past week about how quote unquote, they control the weather. I wonder what they means.

She has been attributing the weather modification to a few different agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Yeah, sure. Sure. Noah's doing this, like, come on. She has posted memes that prove that they're controlling the weather because they list a whole bunch of weather modification patents. Now, the funny thing is that most of these patents

are like over 100 years old, and many of them are expired. These patents contain plans to drop water from balloons to produce rain. That's the weather modification she's talking about. She included a patent that includes like a way to use like airplane exhaust to blow away poison gas from like trenches. That's chemtrails Garrison's chemtrails. It's absurd. All of these things are like, are like ancient patents

and like weather modification is a real thing. Technically, like we have been trying to alter the weather. One of the pointed to like real technologies is cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is a small scale technology to alter a cloud's precipitation, usually to increase the cloud's ability to produce localized rain by adding ice or condensation nuclei into the forming clouds.

This helps areas suffering from drought and low rainfall. Cloud seeding has been jumped upon by Republican conspiracy theorists as proof that the government is actually engaging in a massive weather control operation, including to produce hurricanes. Now, hurricanes are famously quite large, and it is impossible to determine the path or cause one to happen. This just simply isn't true.

Yeah, and I mean, the largest scale, like, attempts to manipulate whether the humanity has ever done, like, on purpose that wasn't global warming was for 2008 Olympics in Beijing and it took it took the entire industrial technological and scientific capacity of a nation of 1 billion people and putting like an unfathomable amount of resources and planning and like with just to go capability at specifically not making it rain in Beijing for like a fairly small amount of time and lowering the air pollution levels They barely managed to pull that off So they they sort of kind of made the weather better in one city for like two weeks

And that took a level of resource coordination like fucking unfathomable resource coordination like fucking unfathomable in most of human history. No, it's very challenging to alter the weather. It requires a lot of resources. No, it doesn't work very well. It's like shut down factories across like half the country. It was fiasco. These people aren't actually like talking about that.

They're talking about conspiratorial efforts from the federal government's illuminati to like target hurricanes on certain red states to alter the election. That's really what they're talking about. Conspiracy theorists on the right have pointed it to HARP, a University of Alaska Fairbrinks program. Not the HAR heart bullshit. That uses high frequency equipment to study the upper atmosphere according to Reuters. No, atmospheric monitoring equipment do not alter the weather. Conspiracy theorists have also targeted Doppler radios and NEXRAD, basically like radar control

systems and radio control systems as being used to change weather patterns and cause hurricanes. This isn't true. You can't change the weather with a radio or with radar. Again, we're not debunking this because this is so ludicrous, but these are the conspiracy theories that they're invoking and like harp conspiracy theories do go back quite a while. I've seen a few other things talking about like, direct energy weapons and lasers from space or lasers from the ground pointed at the atmosphere, which cause hurricanes to form. This also isn't real.

We cannot cause a hurricane to form. It's too big. No. And the thing about this stuff is like, these are all old conspiracies, right? But it's like, these are things that used to be like, like you would walk into a room full of guys who believe that 9-eleven was staged with holograms and that MK ultra successfully produced mind control that was originally developed by North Korea and Those people would laugh the like harp idiots out of the room

Yeah, it was a conspiracy seen by other conspiracy theorists as like to obviously bullshit like Do you know what isn't bullshit Mia Is it the product of services that support this podcast? It sure is the my pillow guy you try to sell gold now Here we go get your gold All right, we are back. But yes, these conspiracy theories have existed for a long time, talking about some degree of the government's ability to influence natural disasters and like big weather events. People have tried to blame forest fires on lasers, specifically the Maui fires from a

few years ago. They said were actually caused by direct energy weapons to get people to flee their land so that it could be seized by the federal government. All this kind of stuff. Now, like, some of them also point to, like, geoengineering, right? They say that although geoengineering is said to combat climate change, it actually causes climate change. Geoengineering, there's technically a few forms, but the one that we're talking about basically like injects aerosolized chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.

Obviously reflecting sunlight's not going to make a hurricane worse, but whatever. So this has gotten really bad. This has taken over a significant portion of the online right. Yeah. To the point that even people like DeSantis are having to like come out and say, hey guys, no, this isn't real. In a press conference, DeSantis claimed that there are, in fact, weather conspiracies, quote, on both sides.

Uh-huh. Yeah, my one friend. You kind of have some people who think the government can do this, and others think it's because of fossil fuels, unquote. Oh my fucking god. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! DeSantis' communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote, of fossil fuels." Oh my fucking god. Dissentis's communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote, "...the government controls the weather crowd, and the global warming and climate change

alarmists are two sides of the same coin. Unscientific, agenda-motivated, and unhelpful following a storm. Weather is weather." Jesus Christ. So even in their reputation of the weather controlling conspiracies, they could not help but dip into some climate denial conspiracies.

We love to see it. Oh my God. Now I think like hurricanes and natural disasters are uniquely susceptible to misinformation. During times of crisis, people try to search for information to relieve stress and they often don't take the extra time to verify said information. Whenever a new natural disaster strikes, old footage and videos circulate being passed off as current events. Conversations and arguments

about climate change and climate denial also spark during natural disasters leading to a surge of climate change conspiracy theories. While this is nothing new, the way people are getting information is changing with the increased use of AI, chatbots, personal assistants, and image generation. There was this TikTok trend ahead of Hurricane Milton, where you ask an Amazon Alexa what the result of the hurricane was gonna be before it hit landfall. I'm gonna play this video that has over two million views

on Twitter. Alexa, how many lives were lost during Hurricane Milton? Overall, extreme Hurricane Milton caused $21.3 billion in damages and caused 262 fatalities. October 8th, 2024, 12.15 PM Central Time. Very scary. Now this other video has over 750,000 views on TikTok. Alexa, what kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton?

Alexa, what kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton? From fandom.com, Hurricane Milton was an extremely powerful category five hurricane that caused widespread damage across its path in October 2024. They've already predicted the outcome. I wonder why. So that may have given you a hint about what's going on here. Obviously, Alexa doesn't know the future, nor has the government pre-programmed data about its secret weather control program into your Echo device. Alexa just pulls from information it finds online.

In this case, fandom.com hypothetical hurricanes wiki. Are you fucking which is a wiki which is a wiki based comprehensive database of hypothetical tropical cyclone articles that anyone could edit on quote you know I said I said as a I said as a joke a couple years ago that we were about two years out from the QAnon people discovering the plot of Metal Gear Solid and believing it was real But like we're so close to that now We are two months out from them from from an AI telling them the plot of Metal Gear Solid and then believing the Patriots secretly

Control the government they're quoting from a fandom wiki on fake Hurricanes that people make for fun and can be manipulated in the lead-up to a hurricane Specifically to cause this type of reaction. Again, like, has a bit, right? It's absurd. Now, to go even further into this AI singularity hellhole, a Twitter user tried to debunk that first video I played predicting the death toll. In the replies, this other user wrote, quote, There was a Hurricane Milton in the year 2000. Please before you post, at least try to fact check with GROK unquote. They include a GROK AI screenshot that reads,

quote, the name Milton has been used for one hurricane in the Atlantic basin. Hurricane Milton occurred in 2000. However, for the 2024 hurricane season, there was another Hurricane Milton making it the second time this name has been used for the 2024 hurricane season, there was another Hurricane Milton, making it the second time this name has been used for an Atlantic hurricane." So an argument then ensued about which AI is correct. Quote, Grok and ChatGPT disagree on the existence of a prior Hurricane Milton. Grok says, prior to the 2024 hurricane season, there were no hurricanes

named Milton in the Atlantic. Next, I asked ChatGPT, Hurricane Milton, which occurred in the year 1990, caused significant damage, particularly in Mexico, where it made landfall. I asked ChatGPT a second time, was there a Milton Hurricane in 2000? ChatGPT said, yes, there was a Hurricane Milton in 2000. It formed in the eastern Pacific in late December. You know, I- Another person replied saying, Grok states a 2000 hurricane named Milton struck Nicaragua in 2000, but it doesn't show up on the National Weather Service's hurricane tracking charts for 2000." Very curious.

It's insane. It's insane. These people are using chat GPT and Grok AI as search engines, and when they hallucinate fake data, they're alleging some kind of conspiracy theory to suppress data on a previous Hurricane Milton. I mean, it's also just worse, like having like this person condescend being like, please before you post, try to fact check with Grok. You're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Grok is a comedy AI

chatbot that's gonna generate you like a nonsense response. It's not a fact-checking tool. It's not even a search engine. They're just hallucinating data that people are then passing off as real information. I think I kind of feel for these people in the sense that like, if you live through the 2010s, the thing that you were able to do and that you were trained to do was if you had a question, you would type it into Google and sometimes it would give you the right answer. Yeah. Right.

But now it's like a machine has been created that answers the question, what if Google never gave you the correct answer and all of these people have been trained? They that they can put this into the internet and it will give them the correct answer except now We have a machine that destroys the entire Amazon every single second in order to generate the wrong answer well, I like specifically because of how these like AI systems have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff like how these like AI systems have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff. Like Republicans view it as like a political imperative to use them over the Democrat leaning search engines. And people aren't just turning to AI in lieu of search engine. They're also using TikTok. They're also now using X as their own search engine to get reliable information from users

instead of actually like verified information online, which you can find with a little bit of searching. So all this is creating a quite volatile scenario where misinformation is spreading at a faster pace than it really ever has before. Now just like in the Springfield pet eating hoax, people on the right are also spreading AI images as evidence of how the Biden-Harris government failed their disaster relief response after Hurricane Helene. The most circulated image is of a crying little girl wearing a life vest holding a wet puppy. Oh no. She is sitting in a boat surrounded by flood water.

This is pure boomer bait, right? Yeah. You will never regret liking this post. Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web forum called Patriots.Win. Oh god. Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web forum called Patriots.win. Oh god. And users there quickly saw that it was AI, but that didn't stop its spread online. The image got on Twitter and was spread around after being posted

by Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has a dark mega profile picture. I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone, quote, Laura Loomer called the image sad, quote, tweeting from a post by Buzz Patterson, columnist for the conservative blog, Red State, who wrote of the picture, our government has failed us again. Amy Kamir, RNC National Committee woman for the Georgia GOP and the co-founder of Women for Trump tweeted on Thursday that the image has been quote seared into my mind unquote informed that she was not looking at an authentic photo Kermor doubled down y'all I don't know where this photo came

from and honestly it doesn't matter there are people going through much worse than what is shown in this pic so I'm leaving it up because it's emblematic of the trauma and the pain people are living through right now." Unquote. Oh my god. So I get like at this point people know they're spreading fake information but they're doing it anyway because it helps them like they are willing participants in the complete removal of reality from their constituents brains. Omega Twitter account posted this AI photo with the girl and the puppy and wrote quote Kamala doesn't have enough money for this child. I can't hate this administration enough unquote. Oh my god So do you know what I can't hate enough? Nope. No, do you know what I love?

Dearly with my full my full life force Is it products and services? Yeah, it's the products and services that support this podcast. Listen to them. We will be right back afterwards my full life force. Yeah, it's the products and services that support this podcast. Okay, we return to conclude our hurricane misinfo rundown. So why is this stuff catching on? Like what's happening that's causing this to be so much worse than usual? What's going on? Why is this spreading right now? To answer that question I'm first going to read a tweet from Candice Taylor, a Georgia candidate for governor back in

2022. Quote, the weather can and is being manipulated. Wake up. Stop being ignorant or plain stupid. There is no such thing as coincidence. The most important election in the history of America is 30 days away. Pray. Georgia voting has been compromised and I don't know if we will be able to get all of our early voting days in. Now a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two states are necessary for a Trump victory. No coincidence. So, of course, this is all a conspiracy to send hurricanes

specifically at red states to compromise Trump's ability to win the election. A woman at a Trump rally explained that the government is using cloud seeding to make the hurricanes worse, and that this was pre-planned because Amazon Alexas already knew the information about the hurricanes ahead of time. Her reasoning was that the hurricane damaged land could be seized for lithium mining by Kamala Harris's husband and that the weather was controlled to rig the election against Trump. Now, this little tidbit about Kamala's husband, that's a nice little anti-Semitic jab in there. Of course, the Jews are controlling the weather to do lithium mining. Why not?

I'm now going to play a short clip from this interview. Not the whole thing, because it's way too long and she rambles about cloud seeding for longer than I want to include. But I will include this one short clip. You're implying that the government made a hurricane stronger to hurt its own country, the United States of America? Correct. And what would be the gain of that? When, if you, like there's been people out there, if they have an Alexa, I don't know if you've heard that, and they've asked what caused Milton.

You can go on there now, it's already predicted the number of deaths and the amount of deaths. It's already predicted it. On a Google, it won't do that. If you ask it about Helene, it'll tell you the government actively used seed clouding. This is before Helene even happened. Why would a country want to have a hurricane be strong

and hit its own country? — Because they want to control certain places. And if you're looking at where the hurricane's going, it's a lot of red states. If you're looking at the counties in North Carolina that were hit, there were all of them, 26 out of 28 of those counties, where for Trump, they're doing whatever they can because they can't rig the election.

Even control the weather? Yes. Very compelling stuff coming out of the Trump rallies. Jesus Christ. I'm going to quote from a Media Matters article on hurricane misinformation and conspiracy theories. Quote, a video with over 64,000 views has onscreen text that reads, we're at the point of revolution.

It features a user speculating for over 6 minutes that Hurricane Helene was somehow part of a plan to suppress white Republican votes. Quote, You might be able to speculate that this has something to do with the fact that these are largely white, rural Appalachian areas that have been affected. They're looking at it like this. This election is three weeks from now. We've just wiped out the complete and total infrastructure for all these towns and cities.

That's great because guess which way these towns leaned? They leaned red. These were largely Republican leading towns. As far as they're concerned, they could all die and they don't care because that's just one less vote for Trump." Unquote. Yes, Asheville, North Carolina, famously a Republican town. Famously the conservative paradise of Asheville. Now, a lot of these conspiracies also link up to very old like FEMA conspiracies, right?

There's been conspiracies about FEMA since like the 1980s. They've been heavily tied in with the militia movement. The formation of the Oath Keepers was in response to FEMA concentration camp conspiracy theories, basically that they'll use natural disasters in FEMA to, like, round up patriots to do some kind of new world order or that they're going to use FEMA to seize your land so then you're going to be put in a FEMA concentration camp. Very old conspiracies. Now, these have kind of fed into the current conspiracy matrix regarding the hurricanes. I'm going to quote from this one guy on Twitter called The Health Ranger.

No, not The Health Ranger. No. Mia, do you know who The Health Ranger is? Yeah, The Health Ranger is a frequent Alex Jones guest. Yes, he is. He's like an anti-vax guy and he's a whole thing in this whole conspiracy universe. I hate him so much. He does.

And this is what he says about the current hurricanes. Quote, Incoming intel, all caps. FEMA is waving ungodly amounts of money at private security firms right now, begging for security contractors to station at Florida to prevent Floridians from returning to their homes and businesses after the storm hits. The evacuation orders are to push people out of Florida

and keep them out. Reportedly, Delta Force personnel advising FEMA at the top. Devising denial of area enforcement plans which will be enforced at gunpoint if required. I'm told FEMA is practically panicked to get enough armed personnel on site, anticipating a tremendous amount of resistance from displaced people who want to return home to salvage whatever they can. This is the next step up the escalation ladder, as the federal government wages war against the American people, as we saw FEMA carrying out in North Carolina, actively hindering rescue efforts to maximize starvation and death.

To the people, do not escalate. Hold your ground peacefully and firmly. This looks a lot like a J6 style trap to provoke an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election. Don't play into their hands." This unhinged diatribe got over 10,000 likes and was spread wildly around Twitter. A few days ago, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted an article documenting this current conspiracy ecosystem, and they included one TikTok video that stated, quote, To my North Carolina families, please, I know it's hard, but please do not take that $750.

It's a loan, and if you don't pay it back, they will seize your property. In response to this, FEMA clearly stated that FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership over your property or land. So now we have these conspiracy theorists, which are being boosted by Republican officials, basically encouraging people to resist help from FEMA to not evacuate and like all of this puts themselves and others in great danger right you might say well if conspiracy theorists don't want help from from FEMA

like what's the harm right well these people have like kids like these people have families it's not just them that are gonna be affected if they're refusing to evacuate their family from from the path of a hurricane and like their kids die that's super fucked up if they're refusing to evacuate their family from the path of a hurricane, and like, their kids die, that's super fucked up. If they're refusing help from FEMA to feed themselves and their family, that's not a good sign of the current state of this country. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's bad.

Ron DeSantis' press secretary had to come out against the unhinged ramble from Health Ranger on Twitter, she quote tweeted his post saying, spreading lies like this could have serious consequences if people in evacuation zones see this and decide not to evacuate despite warnings from state and local emergency management, they are unnecessarily putting their own lives and the lives of first responders at grave risk." Wow, the fucking Ron DeSantis' press person, the leopards are finally eating your face after you joined the leopard eating face party? Wow, who could possibly have predicted this? The Ron DeSantis team has been replaced by the lizard people, I swear. Things got so bad that in DeSantis' emergency declaration, he had to specifically

put in language that stated that law enforcement will help ensure that people can return to their property after the evacuation has ended. Like goofy. Goofy shit. And just like in general, all these FEMA conspiracies are preventing people in need from requesting badly needed help from the agency. I'm going to include this one clip from this guy who was interviewed on MSNBC,

talking about how his family has been refusing help in North Carolina. My father-in-law lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and he was badly damaged by Hurricane Helene. And he has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper. And he believes, he literally believes

that if he accepts anything from FEMA, they're going to take his house. I don't understand how so many people are under the spell of this freaking con man. I don't understand it. Well, it's absolutely heartbreaking about your father-in-law. So sorry to hear it.

It's hard, it's hard just just it's hard to even imagine it I mean he lost almost everything and he's refusing all help from the federal government and complaining to us that he doesn't have food that he doesn't have the stuff he needs and yet he won't accept the help what the hell are we supposed to do we're not in the position to be able to fly across the country and help him. There's people begging us to get him to accept help and he won't do it. And I guarantee you I'm not the only one. I guarantee you I'm not the only one. I wish there was something I could say as to you know I don't know is there does he have access to any electronics where you could send him some

information debunking this and that he might we've done all of that we've done all of that we've sent him we've sent him all the FEMA bulletins we've sent him all the stuff from the fact-checkers He doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all he just believes Trump literally, Dan. He just it's a cult. He's a cult member. I'm sorry to say it. He's a he's a cult member. And he's my father-in-law and it sucks.

That's pretty bad. That's that's devastating. And I think that is very resonant to a lot of people right now, and how this whole conspiracy, misinfo ecosystem that's been getting worse slowly over the course of the eight years has just ruined families and puts people in constant active danger. Now, these conspiracies have also led to threats against FEMA workers and meteorologists for both being a part of the conspiracy and for controlling the weather. I'm going to read a quote from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote,

Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government. This includes calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals should quote-unquote shoot FEMA officials and the agency's emergency responders. Unverified claims about attacks on FEMA representatives have been used to glorify and encourage violence." Media Matters archived a TikTok video threatening FEMA employees, which received over 200,000 views, saying, quote, Dear Feds and FEMA, if you're trying to deny people access to help in the affected area, be advised. We're still under the War on Terror Emergency Declaration.

If you violate your constitutional oath to protect and assist, the charge will be treason punishment can mean being Unalived immediately by the citizens you are withholding aid from unquote On tick-tock they're threatening to unalive government agents Another video states quote public notice We the United States of America have declared FEMA personnel engaged in obstructing local rescue efforts in the area impacted by Hurricane Helene to be enemies of the state. If FEMA personnel offer any further obstruction or fail to immediately assist to their best ability, they can be arrested or shot or hung on site.

Unquote. Jesus Christ. Now, a lot of these conspiracy theories are also heavily anti-Semitic, talking about the religion of local officials, like I think the mayor of Asheville, and just in general combining these weather control conspiracy theories with FEMA conspiracy theories, saying that the Jews are somehow controlling all of this. That's just a recurring aspect of these conspiracies that I feel like it is worth mentioning. Especially because the right is trying to weaponize claims of anti-Semitism to attack

the Democrats on Israel right now, which is absurd because the Democrats are extremely pro-Israel. But still, their constituents are going to be spreading all these very unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling weather and using FEMA to hurt Christians in the Appalachians all that kind of stuff. Now, it's not just threats against FEMA officials Death threats have also been targeted against meteorologists as Rolling Stone documented in an article last week Quote, I've been doing this for 46 years and it's never been like this, says Alabama meteorologist James Spann.

He says he's been inundated with misinformation and threatening messages, like stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else, unquote. Great. A Washington DC based meteorologist named Matthew Kapusi said, quote, for me to post a hurricane forecast and for people to accuse me of creating the hurricane by working for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing, and it's resulting in a decrease in public trust, unquote. So like, again, like, why is this all happening? A part of it is because the election is upcoming, and people are trying to find reasons to think

why Trump might lose, and they're saying that the hurricanes are actually a plot by the Illuminati to make Trump lose the election via having these storms controlled by Jews and Democrats to target Republican areas. But like, what has changed in the actual ecosystem to allow this to feel like it's so much worse than what it usually has been? And I've kind of decided that everyone is now Alex Jones. Like everyone has become their own little mini Alex Jones. Platforms have changed in the past eight years to create massive social and financial incentives to go viral.

So now everyone is just doing what Alex Jones did, right? Like Alex Jones learned that he could make a profit saying all kinds of crazy shit on air. And now other people have also learned this lesson. This is a part of, I think, what's going on air. And now other people have also learned this lesson. This is a part of I think what's what's going on now. How does everyone has the capacity to go viral by saying whatever crazy shit they can during a moment of crisis. A few days ago there was a really good article in the Atlantic by Charles Warzell titled, I'm running out of ways to explain how bad this is. This is going to be linked in the sources below. I recommend you give it a read, but I'm going to read a paragraph from it here.

Quote, this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts. First, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality. And second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants. This reality fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and intentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and every large

event into a shameless content creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world." I know, Mia, we've been talking about this misinformation problem in the chat. And I know you had some comments you wanted to share. Yeah, there was a... Oh God, where did I first hear this? Am I even in a philosophy episode? There's a bunch of philosophical stuff about how ignorance works and about how it's not just like... Ignorance isn't just the state of not knowing something you have to actively create it, right?

You have to you have to go out of your way not to seek the information that would that was sort of like you know cause you to have to know or cause you to change your worldview or cause you to like have to confront what your beliefs are so people actively sort of Construct this this reality around themselves, they don't have to do anything that ever sort of challenges their own views. And this is something that you can see. I mean, you just you see it happening all over the place. And this is one of the things that we're so gets like gets right that is important

is that like people are active participants in the construction of their own universes. And now there's a financial incentive, there's a social incentive, and there's also a cognitive incentive, which is that like having to deal with the fact that you might be wrong about something fucking sucks and is hard. And sometimes you just don't want to know.

Totally. Yeah, I mean, and this is something that like myself, Robert and you have been talking about increasingly the past few years. It feels like misinformation is an outdated model to understand our current predicament. Misinformation is no longer meant to actually change minds or persuade people. It's just a mechanism to construct and reinforce false realities. In the recent meme politics episode, I talked about how AI images of trans

athletes or of immigrants stealing pets, like these aren't meant to convince anyone of their authenticity, but they exist in lieu of evidence to help people maintain their reality tunnel. An information researcher at the University of Washington named Michael Caulfield wrote an article earlier this year about how a whole bunch of mega people started to deny the authenticity of those videos of Kamala Harris's rally in that Detroit hangar, showing like a massive, a massive huge crowd with Air Force One or Air Force Two landing and her getting off, with these mega people saying that this was like AI's is fake, there was no way the crowd would be this big, and they invented a whole bunch of reasons for why that this photo must

be fake. And this wasn't fake, this was a real photo, this was easily verified, there's like video evidence from multiple sources showing that this is a real thing that happened. But Caulfield wrote, quote, the primary use of misinformation is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary." And yeah, I don't believe in giving these people a degree of passivity, right?

Like this is an active choice that they are doubling down and reinforcing and creating their own reality tunnels to live in. And I think the other aspect of this, this is something that Robert was talking with me last night, is like the people also propagating this, the people creating the environments to make this happen, are also willing participants, right? Like this is a big reason why Musk bought Twitter, is so that it purposely could turn into the current conspiracy shit show that it currently is. Facebook used to be where conspiracy theorists gathered to post their weird boomer opinions, and now it's Twitter alongside just actual, useful, verifiable information.

And now, because these two platforms have kind of combined, how we have so much conspiracy content on Twitter, it also just damages the use of Twitter as a platform to look for real information. And I think you can see the same thing with TikTok, with its very loose content moderation policy regarding factual information and the fact that people use TikTok as its very loose content moderation policy regarding factual information, and the fact that people use TikTok as its own search engine, creating its own ecosystem of misinformation fully isolated away from the rest of the internet. And this project to like, wear down collective reality is a long-term project by the right. You could look at the John Birch Society and other anti-communist groups from the 50s who used to deliberately put out fake articles about communists infiltrating.

Fox News and a whole bunch of conservative mass media like talk radio was created at least in part as a reaction to Nixon being forced out of office. And a lot of the same people funding right-wing media are also pushing for charter schools and attempts to destroy public education. It's all an intentional effort to make people's media literacy go completely down the toilet and propagate entire false versions of reality in service of a few rich people. And that's what our current situation is right now. And I don't know if there's a way to stop it. As you heard in that clip from MSNBC, like, fact checks don't work anymore. Because that's

not like the point of any of this. It's not meant to actually persuade people. It's only meant to reinforce what they already want to believe. So what do you do in a world post fact checking? I don't know. And we're gonna have to find out. I don't know, Mia, do you have any closing thoughts? You know, I will say one of the few things I've ever seen that's gotten someone out of something like this is just sometimes it doesn't always work like this, but every once in a while you could have an experience that is so cognitively shattering to everything that you'd believed that it just implodes. So Mia, you're advocating to dose your Republican family members

with LSD? Is that what I'm hearing? Well, no, what I'm advocating is that the people who think that China is a socialist state be sent to China and have to interact with members of the Chinese Communist Party? Because I have seen this work. It does work, it can. I've seen it happen. You can't talk to these people

for more than five minutes without you. But I mean, you know, and a sort of more serious note, I mean, this is something that, you know, you're trying to fight emotions on on a sort of intellectual level. And so like, if you want to deal with this, you I don't I think you have to kind of be working on on a sort of like, emotional act factor register. And that sucks because it's you know, it's effectively the abandonment of Politics as politics. It's it's arguably just a complete retreat into fascism But you know if you take this sort of understanding of fast one of the elements of it as fascism is reducing all politics to aesthetics Right, but we've hit this point where there's there's no centralizing viewpoint like central reality tunnel that most people are in. And that's largely, partially because of these people trying to destroy it and partially

because the people who were running the mainstream media blew themselves up by lying about Iraq and then by spending 30 years insisting that neoliberalism was the greatest economic system ever and then 2008 happening. And so we're in this position where the people who had built the guardrails blew it up in order to make money and push your political agendas. And now a bunch of other people who want to just destroy everything inside of those rails are just like detonating bombs inside of all of our like psychological conscious.

I mean, I think the guy who was talking about his stepdad in Asheville is correct. It is a cult. And you have to treat it like you would treat a cult. You can't fact check them out of this. You have to treat them like your friend just joined Scientology. Some people might just choose to completely cut the person off because they find it too dangerous. And that's fine. But I think there should be others that remain as a lif completely cut the person off because they find it too dangerous. And that's fine. But I think there should be others that remain as a lifeline to the person, right? If they ever one day realize, oh no, I'm in a cult and I need help, there needs to be

a way for them to get out. There needs to be a lifeline for them to escape. And this is the only way that like, quote unquote, cult deprogramming has worked. You can point to like people who've like gotten out of the QAnon conspiracy theory. This is the only tactic that actually works. It's reliant on the courtesy of others. Right? It's reliant that you have to put yourself in a degree of danger by maintaining contact with this person that is kind of dangerous because they are in this very volatile cult. There needs to be some lifeline for them. And I think that's really the only way that I know of right now that shows a degree of success in getting people out of this

like fucked up conspiracy matrix. And it sucks and it's not easy. And most people promoting like cult deprogramming are hacks with pseudoscience. And it turns out like this is just a very emotional problem. And it requires, unfortunately, emotional solutions that a simple Reuters fact check will not suffice. So anyway, that is my rundown on what's currently going on

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It could happen here, the podcast about things falling apart, how to put them back together again. I'm your host, Mia Wong. So for people who listened to yesterday's episode, which I'm hoping is like most of you. Yeah, so yesterday was a very kind of downer episode on hurricane misinformation and the way that these sort of people construct these reality tunnels. And you know, are they become active participants in their own sort of Propagandizements and I think we kind of we left on a kind of note of Of what you can do for sort of individual people, right? Which is the same mechanisms you use to get someone out of a cult which is you you stay with them You maintain enough personal connection that you can pull them out if they ever want to come out

but that's also not a large-scale solution to this problem. And in order to talk about a large-scale solution to both our present social crisis and the ecological crisis that this social crisis is being aimed to sort of cover up right now, I'm talking to Rosewater, who's the hub coordinator for Sunrise Movement's DC hub and delegate to Sunrise's delegate body and also a solar punk organizer, Rosewater. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, hi everybody. My name is Rosewater and yeah, long time fan of Cool Zone Media. Y'all were my introduction to my current like democratic confederalist politics. Oh, that's awesome. So it feels like a really fun, like full circle moment to have a chance to be on the pod. Yeah. And I'm excited to talk to you. So the specific thing we're talking about is in terms of there being an actual plan for what people are

doing, like past the next three weeks, like after the election. The biggest thing that has been happening is, it's something we've talked about a little bit on this show is the proposed 2028 general strike. So do you want to talk a little bit about what that is before we get into some rises involvement? And yeah, that's sort of broader story. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like most people who follow leftist politics were following the UAW strike against the big three automakers last fall. And people found that they found their strike really inspiring. And they had like really strong gains that were the sort of straightforward, like increased pay, like better benefits type stuff. And people were celebrating that. But

I would say the two actual most important changes were not reported on nearly as much. One was they eroded their labor peace clause, and they made it possible to go on strike if any of their facilities were closed, which labor peace has, in my opinion, been sort of strangling the US left for 80 years. Yeah, can you explain what that is for people? I think we've usually more broadly talked about is no strike clauses. But yeah, can you explain like what that is? Yeah, so labor peace is essentially a truce that was established between the labor movement,

capitalists and the US government, where the labor movement, capitalists, and the U.S. government, where the labor movement gets generalized rights and the U.S. government is like a quote fair mediator between capitalists and the labor movement and capitalists get a consistent workforce and peace, like peace from disruptions. And this essentially was established between the beginning of World War II and the end of the Red Scare, when all of the socialists and anarchists and communists were expelled from the labor movement. And it felt like a good deal to a lot of liberals at the time and a lot of normal rank-and-file workers at the time, but on reflection, it has really strangled the US labor movement. And so the fact that the UAW eroded their no-strike clause at all is a huge precedent, right?

Yeah, and this is something, I mean, I don't remember if this actually got into the Labor Notes episode that I did, but I remember at labor notes, I was listening to people talk about this. And this is stuff that I think the global impact of it has also been really underplayed. Like, I mean, obviously, there was a lot of tension paid this in Mexico, right? Because there's a lot of like, the structure of the auto industry is such that like, so obvious to me, I didn't even think about that until just now yeah so one of the things that NAFTA did is that sort of right across the border right right a whole sort of range of factories that are right across the border that operate off Mexican labor that do some of the auto industry stuff and so there's always been sort of connections between

the more independent unions there and sort of American unions so but like you know but this is also struck as being watched really, really heavily in China. Yeah, which is interesting because like Chinese state unions are a fucking joke. Yeah, they're basically not real unions at all. And the extent to which, you know, the China's version of the labor piece was also. The deal was less like you get rights and we get like labor piece and more like I we're going to just stamp out our working class organization completely in a way that like was even more thorough than what happened here where most of it got wiped out.

I think like the breaking of the labor piece and the demonstration that there is another way Something that has reverberated massively across a lot of different places I don't think both the people organizing the strike or The sort of like press coverage of it has really gotten into sort of how how wide the reverberations of this have been, right? I think if it were just of this have been? Right. I think if it were just eroding that clause alone, it wouldn't be such a signal. But the real thing that caught my attention at first was immediately afterwards, they

changed the end of their contract date to International Workers Day 2028. And they called on every union in the country and later every union in the world to align with that contract and go on strike with them on May 1st, 2028. And that was the first time, like, correct me if I'm wrong, that was the first time that a major labor union in America has called for a planned general strike since 1948. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think there being an actual plan and there being a way to do it that's legal is a big deal. Because part of the problem with this is that there's, you know, unlike unlike a country like uh, American labor law is specifically designed so that you don't have this happen.

And there's a bunch of legal mechanisms for this, but it's very, very specifically designed to make sure that people are not allowed to do solidarity strikes. People are not allowed to like coordinate the entire power of their, of, of their action. Yeah. And this is a pretty promising way around that. to coordinate the entire power of their action. And this is a pretty promising way around that. Yeah, this may be better for later in the episode,

but one of the things that we're doing is we're in collaboration with the Institute for Social Ecology, doing a teach-in on labor peace and the history of general strikes in the US about a week after the election in order to orient ourselves and whatever new political contexts exists there. But yeah, so yeah, I think that's a jumping off point to get into. I think

sunrise is kind of an unlikely organization that people would think to be getting like excited and trying to get involved in a labor struggle. Yeah. But yeah, let's talk about how Sunrise got involved. And I guess first also, I don't know how many people listening to this know what Sunrise is. And if you do know what Sunrise is, that might also make you more surprised you're getting involved in labor.

But yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. We're surprised you're getting involved in labor. But yes, let's talk about that. Yeah, so Sunrise is a youth climate movement that has been one of the main advocates for the idea of a Green New Deal when AOC first came into office and she did that sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office. That was a Sunrise action. And we historically have been an org that sort of like tries to bridge the divide between people who are sort of a politically liberal and more radical politics, which is a hard place to be. Yeah, someone's got to do it. really focused on trying to connect environmentalism

with labor, actually. Our main slogans, the main intervention that we've succeeded at has been associating the idea of environmental action with jobs, like green jobs and stuff like that. The problem with that has been one, it has been primarily rhetorical, especially after Bernie's loss in 2020.

And stories matter, but material conditions matter more. And the reason that we didn't, we weren't more materially involved in connecting labor and environmentalism. And by that, I mean, like connecting with unions is that unions leadership was often very far to our right. You know, especially in the United States. So it didn't feel like it made sense. But as a result, the sort of Biden years have been a time where there's been a lot of internal discussion about like who we are, are we a radical movement that sort of positions itself rhetorically

as more normie in order to bring in like young people who whose parents won't let them, you know, join a fight to end all unjust hierarchies or like seize the means of production etc. Like are we are we a radical movement that poses? normie or are we a like liberal progressive movement that sometimes asks for radical things and that's been a really big conflict within the org these last few years because the path To any climate action the only path that a lot of people have seen, has been electoral stuff, pushing politicians and things like that.

In a lot of ways, the Inflation Reduction Act was a direct result of Sunrise's organizing and our work to try and force through the Build Back Better program, but it aligned us with Biden. And from the point of view of a lot of our organizers, like, even if it was a victory, it didn't feel like one. And it's certainly not nearly large enough to actually handle the scale of the crisis. And so essentially the more radical wing of the, of the crisis. And so essentially, the more radical wing of the movement has been winning that fight over the last year or two.

Fight's a strong word. Has been winning that debate over the last year or two. And specifically, this last summer, when the American Federation of Teachers joined the general strike, which almost no one has heard about, but the AFT and their 1.7 million members have already decided that they're going to try and join the 2028 general strike.

So it's not just the UAW anymore. Yeah, but unfortunately we need to take a nap break. When we come back, we are going to get to that, because that I think will be looked back as one of the pivotal moments of this whole thing that everyone kind of just missed what it happened I completely agree. It's gonna be amazing. Yeah, okay ads unfortunately ads buy gold We're back. I don't buy gold. At some point I'm going to write a don't buy gold episode. Do you think this is a joke?

There is a don't buy gold episode. It's being worked on in the in the Mia laboratory. The gold scammer ad thing. Okay, back, back, back to the present or I guess back to the future. I don't know. Time, time is falling apart here. the gold scammer ad thing. Okay, back, back, back to the present, or I guess back to the future. I don't know. Time is falling apart here.

But let's talk about the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers. And I don't know what they've announced in terms of this. Right. So the American Federation of Teachers sort of led by the Chicago Teachers Union, the Baltimore Teachers Union, and to a smaller extent, the DC Teachers Union, managed to get through a resolution at their convention that when you read the title, it's very boring. It's like on aligning with the UAW. But when you actually click on the document and you read it, it is like class struggle fire.

Like reading it from beginning to end, I felt exhilaration. I felt like a fire exploded in my heart. It was so amazing. And I heard about this the same weekend that we were actually having a climate disaster training in DC, right? We had about a hundred leaders from across our movement, about half of our staff there. And at the beginning, people were really excited

for climate disaster actions, responding to moments like this actually. But when we talked about victory, when we talked about, and we're going to have like a mass mobilization against the climate crisis where the whole of our society like pitches in to do this. The federal government like does a World War Two style mobilization against this destruction and stuff like that. You could tell that people didn't see a path.

You could tell. Yeah. And so the like this news dropping that the teachers were joining a general strike, we're joining mass disruptions in some meaningful way. It hit us like a like a bomb. It was the perfect moment for it to hit us because it was like, yeah, if the auto workers are going on strike, and the auto workers are going on strike and the academic workers are going on strike and the teachers are going on strike, then why can't the students go on strike? And not only why can't they, but like the students must go on strike. And that was sort of the moment that really got our movement from, yes, we would like to figure out some sort of different way to

get to the mass disruption needed in order to win serious action on the climate crisis to like, oh, there's a path. Yeah. Like we see a path. It's core memory. Like if you know like inside out, like core memory formed that weekend. It was beautiful. Yeah. Like, if you know, like, inside out, like, core memory formed that weekend. It was, it was beautiful.

Yeah. And I think what's, you know, I mean, there's a couple of things that are important here. Right. But I think it's being underplayed exactly how important it is to have teachers unions being into this, because the thing about teachers unions is that they're in a extremely important lever on labor movement because the way the capitalist society is structured right is such that most child care is just sort of like all of that labor is basically to push on

the teachers right and the moment that child care collapses right a bunch of people suddenly also who are not normally on strike suddenly are not able to do their jobs because they have to have to find some way to take care of their kids. And so this is this is sort of a massive like leverage point in the in the same way that like sort of dock worker strikes or I mean not in the same way but like in a sense that a strike by these people can shut down way way more labor than just theirs directly Right. This is something that's very important. Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought about that.

I've thought about them in the context of like they're sort of community pillars. So like when teachers go on strike, they often bring way more community support with them than other types of workers. But yeah, you're totally right. Like outside of like the community going with them Also, that is the primary form of childcare that exists in this country Yeah and and this is something that like teachers organizers like she's you know organizers are very big on sort of emphasizing because they have an enormous amount of social power. Yeah, and it's

Kind of to a larger extent hasn't been tapped For for the kinds of sort of mass political action that we're seeing here. Mm-hmm Like it's one of those thing is one of those sort of leverage points that's always Existed but there hasn't really been the kind of like political will or momentum or sort of organizing capacity to fully mobilize it and Yeah, so I guess I want to move from here to talking about mobilize it. And yeah, so I guess I want to move from here to talking about Sunrise's involvement in the strike, because I think this part's really interesting, both in terms of there being like both the types of strike

support and student strikes. So can you talk I guess, about the sort of politics of student strikes and how you see this fitting into the broader thing that's happening? Yeah, yeah. So the climate movement sort of had the height of its power in 2019, I would say, when you had Fridays for Future and like Greta Thunberg, climate strikes all across Europe and America. But I would use the word strike in quotes because sometimes you had full walkouts. Sometimes you had like those sorts of huge things. But most of the time it was students asking permission from authority figures to participate

in a rally and things like that. Whereas in a class struggle context, like a strike is people going to the authority figure and saying this is not occurring because we're not going to be here. You know, like this has been a critique that's existed inside of sunrise, like from that period for years now, which was one of the reasons why we haven't focused on those sort of tactics as much. But with this sort of moment, especially if we can bring the teachers along, right? Being able to have students see their authority figures doing this sort of thing, especially in more conservative areas, while also teaching them how to do it. Because in really meaningful ways, schools are practice

work. Like they were directly modeled after factories in the 1800s. So schools are modeled after work. So if schools are practice work, then student strikes can be practiced labor organizing. Yeah. I mean, and turning schools from sort of laboratories for the reproduction of the class system into laboratories for learning class struggle is something that's very, very important, both in the immediate term and in the longer term. Yeah.

We've talked a bit about this on other episodes, but there hasn't been the kind of generational pass down of organizing skills that we've seen in sort of previous generations. And the way, honestly, we were talking, this is a fact about this in our sort of UAW staff union episode, right? The way that a lot of these unions are running

their staff systems also aren't designed to build up continuous momentum for people who learn how to organize and keep doing it. And this is a way we can sort of restart that treadmill to create a generation of organizers both in this moment and for the future. Yes, exactly. And I have had many critiques of my organization, many critiques of my movement. But the thing that has always made me want to stick around has been seeing the young organizers who find themselves here. The primary person who does our press stuff in the movement

is turning 18 in like three days. Wow. They're one of the best organizers I know. Like, it's... Wow. It's inspiring, but it's something that we, I want our movement to do at scale, as opposed to like having something like that every once in a while. Like you said, the idea of creating an entire generation. And I'd love to talk about a sort of thought process and plan around that after the ad break. Woo. Here's some ads.

When we come back, we'll do things that aren't ads, question mark. Woo. We are back. They want better ad transitions. They should raise ad transitions. They should raise my salary. Damn it. Awesome.

So one of the things that I think is really in terms of like for us, a stable niche in the movement ecology is to be sort of a feeder for radical labor in a sort of way. Like, because one of the things is, even if you are radical and you go into the labor movement, oftentimes you are going to be taught practices that rely on labor peace in meaningful ways. Practices that are going to be really disrupted if labor law weren't

a thing and stuff like that and it's something that holds back our ability to create a strongly organized working class but in the context of schools right there is no labor law there is no labor piece in a high school right so as a place to practice the sort of radical class struggle organizing that we're talking about, it's sort of the perfect place because it's a simplified version of the workplace of like adult reality. There are obviously many other like blockages, like students and like young people, minors, have far, far less power and far fewer rights

than you do once you become an adult. And their family has far more power over them. There are huge barriers. But in terms of grounding people in class struggle, labor organizing tactics, I'm thinking of things that you can learn about in Jane McAlevey's book, No Shortcuts and stuff like that. They can learn how to use structure tests and use hard organizing conversations

in order to build their power in a specific context and things like that. And whether or not they actually manage the strike, right? At the end of it, you have an 18-year-old entering the workforce who is a skilled, trained class struggle organizer who has gained their politics completely outside of the context of labor peace. Yeah, and I think that that's one of the important aspects of this. And I think that the second one of the important aspects of this.

And I think that the second one is something you were talking about earlier, which is sort of bridging the sort of labor ecological divide. And I think that's been happening more, which is encouraging because there's been an enormous effort to make sure this doesn't happen. I mean, I think we've talked about this on this show at some point. I know Margaret's talked about it on Cool people does cool stuff, but I mean one of the most famous times people tried to do this Um, so I WWE to organize it in Jodie Berry and she So legally speaking we don't know who killed her

What I will say is that she was killed by a car bomb that was virtually identical to a car bomb that was built by The FBI that was that dated by the FBI in their bomb like training things like a couple of weeks before. So, we genuinely don't know who killed her, however, comma, someone built a car bomb and blew her up in order to stop this from happening. So it's something that is very very obviously seen by the powers that be as extremely dangerous. Yeah, in the same way that we know exactly the singular one person who on his own completely killed Martin Luther King with no support from the US government. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, I think this is this is an important moment to sort of

do this because one of the things that the right is trying to do to like capture this sort of like moments of radical labor has been like, oh yeah, all the problems the UAW are because the government wasn't fortunate to make electric cars. It's like, you know, there's very much like an anti ecological angle to definitely to the way that sort of like Republican like co-option is happening. So that's another thing that we can use a simultaneous tactic for our side and helps defeat a co-option is happening. So that's another thing that we can use a simultaneous tactic for our side and helps defeat a co-option attempt. In addition to this being a way to like, take on the climate crisis in meaningful ways,

the climate crisis is also a way where we can like make more radical demands. This is one of the reasons that I really love sunrise and ecological like eco socialist movements in general, because if you ask someone to seriously consider how do we address the climate crisis and you're not paying them to have a specific answer, which is nonprofit industrial complex things. Like if you ask someone to seriously consider what do we need to do in order to address the climate crisis in?

Six months you have a radical no matter what in my experience No one who I've ever like talked to who has thought about that question seriously For six months and not avoided it has not come out the other end being like oh, we need a general strike We need a revolution. You know? Yeah. And so like being able to bring that exact analysis into the labor movement, I think is one of the things

that can bring back radical labor. You talk to labor leaders who might feel comfortable with labor peace and they're like, we can do this, we have time. And you're like, how much time exactly do we have? Like really think about it. Yeah. And this is something that we've seen, and I think this is sort of a good place to wrap up.

This is something that we've also seen in the way that immediate short-term disaster response is happening, where, you know, all of these sort of, you have like millions of people who are like, would not show up to a mutual aid thing are suddenly like out there doing mutual aid and have at least temporarily completely restructured the way the society works because they're confronted with the sort of immediacy of of crisis and also the immediacy of the fact that the way that we have been doing things simply is not actually a functional way to for example Respond to a hurricane. Yeah, I think there's a bridge there between the sort of immediacy of this like mutual aid disaster response

politics and sort of long-term goal of Trying to actually like have sustained so that's of action against the sort of climate devastation yeah, I completely agree. And this is quite a tangent from this specific topic that we're thinking about. But when I think about democratic confederalist politics, like Rojava was able to take power and have its revolution because the state retreated. And ideally, we don't have a civil war that causes the state to retreat, ideally. Yeah. One thing we do know will happen and is happening right now is that the state retreats during

disasters. The state retreats during climate disasters. And so if we're prepared to take that temporary mutual aid structures and jump on them in order to create systems like what they have in Rocheva and create like like build our labor movements, build our neighborhood power, build our direct democracy capabilities and be able to be like no we want to keep these. Whenever the police come back, whenever da da da da da, yeah like there's going to be devastation, but there's also a lot of opportunities for

creating really, really beautiful things. Yeah, and I want to close on there's now a whole argument as to whether or not whether or not Buenaventura de Rudi, who was one of this very prominent organizers in the Spanish Revolution ever actually said this. But there was a quote attributed to him that goes roughly, we are not in the least afraid of ruins. Like we are the people who built this world and we'll fucking do it again.

Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, and I think that's in some sense, the attitude that we have to be going into this year, right? Of, you know, like the path that we are on now. And this is true, even if a movement takes power that is dedicated to actually sort of dealing with the climate crisis, right? The stuff that we have now is normal. This is just what the future is going to be. There's going to be disaster, there's going to be storms, going to be destruction. But again, fundamentally, like, we are the people who built this world.

And we can build it again, we're going to have to build it again and we're going to build it better. Yeah, actually, that makes me think of this one song that we sing a lot in Sunrise. Like we have a really big cultural focus on movement song. I would really love it if that could be the outro. Yeah. There are more waters rising this I know, this I know. There are more waters rising this I know. It is a song called More Waters Rising by Saru Lynch, who is a movement musician actually

from Asheville, North Carolina. It's not fully clear to me right now if they are safe, but we've been singing this song for many years. It is a song that I think really resonates with the thing that me and Mia just finished talking about, knowing what's on the horizon, knowing the ruin that we may face, but also knowing that we're not afraid of that and that we can get through it. I will rebuild the mountains, this I know Yeah, so I hope that you all find the strength with this song and with these plans to rebuild the mountains. Thank you.

I will wade through the waters when they find their way to me I will wade through the waters, this I know, this I know. I will wade through the waters, this I know. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy

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

the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. Guess what folks, we're teammates again and we're gonna welcome you guys all to Dudes on Dudes. I'm a dude, you're a dude, and Dudes on Dudes is our brand new show. We're gonna highlight players, peers, guys that we played against, legends from the past, and we're just gonna sit here and talk about them.

And we'll get into the types of dudes. What kind of types of dudes are there, Gronk? We got studs, wizards, we got freaks. Or dudes dudes? We got dogs. Dogs! We'll break down their games, we'll share some insider stories, and determine what kind of dude each of these dudes are.

Is Randy Moss a stud or a freak? Is Tom Brady a dog or a dudes dude? We're gonna find out, Jules! New episodes drop every Thursday during the NFL season. Listen to Dudes on Dudes on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs?

Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejon. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. Season two, season two. Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? Okay. And this season, we're taking a bigger bite

out of the most delicious food and its history. Saying that the most popular cocktail is the Margarita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba, and the Piñacolada from Puerto Rico. So all of these things, we thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the ninth century BC. BC?

I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Kultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel de Lilla. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that

unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This week, Charlemagne the God sits down with Vice President Kamala Harris for a conversation you don't want to miss. The things that we want and are prepared to fight for won't happen if we're not active and if we don't participate. They tackle the big questions, politics, policy, and what's next for the country.

Doesn't the Biden administration have to take some blame for the border though? Charlemagne, first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system, which by the way Trump did not fix when he was president. Don't miss this in-depth interview with Charlemagne the God and Vice President Kamala Harris, only on The Breakfast Club. Catch the full interview now on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's a calm introduction to you. Just a chill one. It's me, James, and I'm joined by Mia. How are you doing, Mia?

Not the best, but you know, we're hanging in there. We're defeating the illness and the frailness of the human body. Overcoming the surly bonds of Earth, the types of face of God or something. That's what Elon Musk does every day, of course. Yeah, we're doing this with the power of cough medicine. It's gonna be great. Yeah, yeah. Not the kind of cough medicine that you can only buy so much of. Okay, so we're here today powered by cough medicine to discuss the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Of course, thing that we haven't talked about before, but there are lots of

people are talking about on the internet. And I wanted to like, just clear up what I think is some misunderstandings or like just a lack of background, sort of explain what they do, explain who it's composed of, a little bit of history and sort of its role here as Israel begins attacking Lebanon as it did Gaza, right? And as it has continued to attack the West Bank as well. Yeah, and as we're gonna get to the end of this episode, they've started making a small push into Syria. So great things happening here. We'll get to that at the end of the episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Israel once again employing an entirely proprietary understanding of borders and where they are and how they work. Maybe they're actually the no borders state. You know, like, uh, better to stand us in. My opposition to the Sykes-Picot borders is well known, but not like this, man. Like, come on, this is not like that when I said destroy the Sykes-Picot borders. In the Venn diagram, the overlap of people who disagree with Sykes-Picot, it's Mia Wong, the Kurdistan Workers' Party and

Israel, but it's a very small and they disagree with it for very different reasons. ISIS too. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, you're really in good company. Yeah, I remember back in like, back in like 2014, so this one's for, there's, there are a bunch of kids who listen to this show, and by kids I mean people who aren't like 27, who don't remember the fact that you could just argue with ISIS people on Twitter in like 2014, 2015, and like they had a really good PR operation. Oh incredible, yeah. And one of the arguments he would make was like, well yeah, we're trying to destroy the imperialists,

like, it's like, we're like, well, okay, but like, you're doing this by establishing ISIS. And it's like, really? Yeah, that was a wild time when you could argue them. You're doing this by establishing ISIS. And it's like, really? Like... Yeah. No, that was a wild time when you could argue that, like, you can still argue with, like, an Assadist occasionally on Twitter or like... Oh, sure. But like, this wasn't even just like, people who support them.

This was like actual ISIS PR guys. Yeah, yeah. They were... That was their whole job was to argue with you. Yeah. There are some pretty good articles from back in that time period about that, if you're too young to remember that. But yeah, so we're talking about UNIFIL today, right?

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Why are we talking about them? Because the IDF has spent the last week or so edging on just openly attacking them. And it has more or less openly attacked them, but it hasn't done so in like a complete way, I guess. We'll talk a little bit now about some of the things which have happened, because I think we should probably start there. And then we'll explain who Unifil are, what they do, whether they're, etc. A little bit of history. So, Unifil has caused a situation with the idea of extremely serious

and a flagrant violation of international law. A phrase which is used every time Israel does anything, because it's true. And then nothing happens. And then nothing happens. Yeah. And that's, I think, where we're going to end up today is that like, it's good that they are there, right? Like, just to big picture this, what Israel has done in Lebanon, in Gaza, and in the West Bank is it has attacked anyone who is any form of outside observer. It has killed aid workers, it has killed journalists and it has shot artillery rounds at peacekeepers, injured peacekeepers in Lebanon. Anyone who can provide any form of independent oversight, who can

provide any form of accountability for what they're doing is in danger. And this is more or less, I mean, Russia does this a little bit too, right? But among, I don't know if we're supposed to understand Israel as a democracy, but this war seems to be pretty unpopular even there. And then Yahoo really isn't. He's taken the Trump approach to democracy, let's say. Israel seemingly murdering journalists as part of its policy as a goal of its invasion of Gaza is pretty unique, even by the standards of like other Western militaries who have done some pretty terrible things in the Middle East in the last 20 years. So some of the things they've done in recent days, it's fired smoke rounds

about 100 meters from their compounds causing Unifil peacekeepers to have to don their gas masks. 15 of them were injured. They have like skin irritation from whatever the munition was. I don't quite know what it was. I guess I think expired smokes can do that and tear gases, old tear gas can do that. You're not supposed to use tear gas. Yeah, that's a war crime. Yeah, that's a war crime.

It's a war crime that lots of people do to be fair. They wouldn't be the first one I'd seen, but then again, right? Like, these are people, are they signatures to a Geneva Convention? Actually, I don't know. That's a good... They are. They don't give a fuck. Does it really matter? But yeah, have a look. I'm interested to know. Yeah, they actually have ratified the Geneva Convention, which I guess makes them mildly more... Yeah, there you go. ...international law bound in the US, which is like the ultimate rogue state.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, Israel is pretty much a rogue state at this point, right? Like that, I think, is the sort of the frame of analysis for which they should be understood. A rogue state doing violence at lookalike is wherever the fuck it wants with your taxpayer money because apparently there's nothing it can do which will cause it to have one centimeter of accountability from the U.S. Other things they've been getting up to, they've knocked down compound walls of the UNIFIL compounds. Can we explain what UNIFIL is, by the way? Yeah, sure.

So the UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It's tasked with peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal of the IDF. So in theory, the IDF, as we'll get into, has invaded Lebanon many times. In theory, since 2006, which was the last time it sort of invaded Lebanon, like it's invaded Lebanon on a very small scale, hundreds of times, right? Like, Like it's invaded Lebanon on a very small scale, hundreds of times, right? Like for instance, stepping across the border, which the border is not entirely agreed upon by Israel and Lebanon, but the United Nations has imposed something called a blue line, which is what it considers to be the border. Israeli troops will go across that to trim trees a lot so they can like spy more effectively,

right? They literally have towers and cameras and stuff. But in 2006, people who are old like myself, remember Israel, last time it did a sort of full-scale evasion of Lebanon and on its withdrawal. I'll just go through the history of Unifon now, we can talk about the attacks later, I guess. So they're supposed to keep the IDF and Hezbollah in theory out of an area between the Latani River and the Blue Line. The Blue Line is where the UN drew the border in 2000 and the idea is that the border was drawn there by the UN to determine if Israel had withdrawn

from Lebanon. That doesn't necessarily mean that all parties accepted it's the border they don't but it is the Blue Line for now. The UNIFIL have been in Lebanon since 1978. That was one of the times when Israel invaded Lebanon. At that point they were looking for the PLO. Yeah. I think the PLO had crossed over from Lebanon to attack and massacre people in Israel, right? At which point Israel then decided to just go hog and fully invade Lebanon in 78. It invaded again in 82 while Unifil were there and it sort of bypassed Unifil position to that point. And it doesn't mean that people didn't die

in these invasions, Unifil troops, peacekeepers, because they did, right? Like it's a dangerous place to be. Also like 82 is like the Sabra-Shatila massacre. Like, it's like, I mean, just like hideous Israeli massacres of refugee camps. Just the kind of thing that like used to cause more anger in the US that it did now Like yeah, now it's another day that ends in why right? Yeah, you know, they've bombed our hospital again It's better to gear of bombing hospitals now

And it doesn't seem to register anymore doesn't you know make that make the headlines? and it doesn't seem to register anymore. Doesn't make the headlines. Yeah, in 82 Israel bombed compound and it took Israel until the year 2000 to quote unquote withdraw from Lebanon. And at that point, that was when the blue lion was drawn, right? During that time before 2000,

it wasn't just the IDF that was operating in the area. You also had the South Lebanese army. I don't like the division of groups in this part of the world exclusively along religious lines, because I think that doesn't entirely explain things always. And I think it's like a very analyst brain way of seeing things, like to be like, oh, these are the Shiites and they do this, these are the Sunnis and they do this. But the SLA is a majority Christian organization. And like it began as its own independent thing in the civil war in Lebanon, but it became more or less an Israeli proxy, right?

It's certainly in this area and the UN calls them Israeli de facto forces, which is kind of a bold move from the UN actually, like, to just say it. Of course, saying it and doing it is another thing. But during the time from 82 to 2000, Israel invaded multiple times, right? Including in 1996, when just in the year of 1996, Israel fired on UNIFIL peacekeepers 270 times. Jesus fucking Christ. So like, I think that's like every weekday

for the entire year to put things in perspective, you know, like if they took weekends off, they fired on them every weekday, including shelling a uniform compound. After the withdrawal in 2000 withdrawal, UNIFIL starts with peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal and assisting the Lebanese government in restoring its authority in the area under UN mandate 1701. In 2006, it's relegated again. And eventually it's sort of ground to a standstill that time, ground to a standstill on top of a massive pile of civilian bodies as it tends to do, right?

They bombed Beirut in 2006. I remember that. I was traveling in the Middle East in 2006. I remember just being like, oh, this is It's I'd want to think to watch war in tv when you're at home But when you're that little bit closer and it's people who are like, yeah, my cousin is there. My brother is there a good school friend of mine was was in beru. I remember like It was one of my earlier experiences of just being like

This is horrific and there's nothing we can do like no one seems to care. No one's going to stop them. And like here we are getting on for two decades later and in fact no one has stopped them. They're still doing it. Talking of things that no one can stop, yeah. No one can stop the relentless march of capitalism and that is where we now have to pivot to advertisements. We are back. So in 2006, once again, Israel killed UN peacekeepers, right? Perhaps the most notable incident is when a precision guided bomb struck a bunker in which four UN peacekeepers were sheltering. They'd been shelled 14 times that day.

They had then gone to their bunker, right? To be protected from the shelling, at which point they received this precision guided munition, which killed four of them. The peacekeepers were from Austria, Canada, China, and Finland. Later, the UN sent like a quick reaction force and a rescue team, which the IDF also shelled. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like, I think this may be the time to point out that like, I think a lot of people

are maybe hopeful and maybe it's true that like, if Israel crosses a line with attacking like European people, that will matter more to the nation, to the states and governments of the world than it has done with killing Palestinian civilians. And to a degree, they might be right. You've had statements from a dozen or so countries that Israel shouldn't be attacking, but they're still getting this fire hose of money and weapons. There's still been no actual accountability. I think that will actually stop them from doing what they're doing. That's not like the fault of the people on the ground in Unifil for the most part. Yeah. But nonetheless, it's the case. It was also in that incident in 2006 that I was talking about, Unifil called the IDF 10 times to ask

them to stop shelling. And this bunker, by the way, I'm not talking about like concealed position, right? Like, I've been in bunkers and I'm away for work that you might not be able to see very easily. This bad boy is painted bright white with the letters UN on it. Like, it's incredibly well marked. It's impossible to miss. It stands out like a sore thumb. That's where they dropped their precision guided munition.

There was also an incident in 2010. This might be one people remember and this is one of the tree trimming incidents. So the IDF was trying to trim trees on the blue line. The Lebanese military perceived them to have entered Lebanon. I'm sure the IDF perceived themselves to be inside Israel. The IDF's understanding of borders as I, is somewhat unique. And so Indonesian, UNIFIL troops were there. This is a particularly interesting incident. The Indonesian troops seem to be pretty popular in Lebanon, from what I can tell.

There are 41 nations that take part in UNIFIL, right? But there are large contingents of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Irish peacekeepers and Indonesian and Nepali peacekeepers as well. The Indonesians are interesting because their government doesn't recognize Israel. And so they have no diplomacy. I don't quite know how they manage that because this will get into beautiful is controlled by this thing called a tripartite mechanism whereby they have to agree on almost everything with the government of Lebanon or the military of the Lebanese army and the IDF, which is

kind of classic UN, right? You have these people there who are positioned to do something really important right now, which is to stop the IDF doing in Lebanon what it has done in Gaza. But they've managed to engineer themselves into a situation where the IDF also has a veto on pretty much anything they can do. Yeah. Which like I was told, I spoke to someone who was very familiar with the operations of UNIFIL and they were telling me, for instance, so the

IDF had been able to control what munitions they were able to bring into the country. Jesus. Which matters because as we'll get into, one of the things that IDF likes to do is like literally knock on their front door with main battle tanks, right? They actually knocked down the front gate of the Unifil compound with a Macaver tank. Certainly like knocking the front gate down with a Macaver is one way of going about asking. Yeah, which is insane. Yeah. Like these people just completely lost their minds. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the thing, right? Like, I think that's what I want

folks to take away from this is that like, it's unlikely that the UN is going to go toe to toe with the IDF at this point. Yeah, no. That doesn't mean, as I've seen people saying that either they're there to spy for the IDF, they're not. The IDF keeps killing them. Yeah. In quite large numbers, like I think 42 Irish people have been killed in the history of uniform deployments, dozens from other countries too, right? Nor does this mean, there's Netanyahu who has called them quote hostages of Hezbollah, which is kind of a ridiculous claim, as many of the things that come out of his mouth are.

They're also categorically not. They're hostages of the United Nations, and there's this system that it's backed itself into whereby two belligerent parties can stop them doing anything they do. So I'll give you an example of that 2010 case, right? These Indonesian UNIFIL troops are trying to prevent the IDF and the Lebanese army firing at each other. The IDF is entering into Lebanon to cut down some trees in the perspective of the Lebanese army. I guess they started throwing insults at one another and soon enough they start shooting at each other.

So to Indonesian peacekeepers, there was a video of this that went around for a while. So the Indonesians decide that basically there's nothing we can do, they're going to shoot at each other and so they decide to withdraw, which probably isn't the best. Like, you know, they're not keeping peace by force, I guess, but they basically decide there's nothing they can do. They decide to pull out. Local people construct a roadblock to try and make them stay and prevent the IDF from entering Lebanon.

The Indonesians. This happens a lot. This is like... You'll see this happening. And this happens in various... I'm going to get into some other UN situations where this has happened, right? The two peacekeepers get separated from their unit. This is a video that kind of went around at the time.

I'm sure they're genuinely afraid at that point, right? In the video, they're being helped by local folks and they end up getting in a taxi to like leave and go back to their base. Which like I'm sure they were in a pretty shitty, they were having a bad day. And to quote Major General Alain Pellegrini, who is a French officer, who was Unifil commander from 2004 to 2007, quote, the problem is in such cases as this, if you intervene to protect the IDF, for instance, Unifil will be accused by Hezbollah or the people of protecting the Israelis and collaborating with the enemy. The other side, if we do the same with the Lebanese, Israel will accuse

Unifil of collaborating with Hezbollah. So like, yes, it will in the situation that we're seeing currently, like, I think obviously, like, what Israel thinks and says doesn't really have much credibility anymore, because they're ruled by this tripartite mechanism, there's really very little they can do. Yeah. They can fire at people if they're fired upon, but the idea isn't like engaging them in small arms combat, right? They're lobbing artillery shells into their compound, they're firing smoke, they're bashing down their walls with caterpillar armored bulldozers. The IDF loves an armored bulldozer. Yeah. Because, I mean, you can probably join the dots on

why the IDF loves an armored bulldozer. You know, they're in the business of knocking stuff down, I guess. And yeah, going into urban areas and destroying people's homes That's I'm sure other folks have armable though this to decide. Yes, it's kind of well known for using these things They shot down an observation tower last week, which had two peacekeepers in it No, I'm see those people were injured because their tower got shot down But like they're not fully attacking them enough that those peacekeepers would like defend themselves or their Their positions and I think if people are hoping that somehow an engagement between peacekeepers and the IDF will be what causes accountability, I don't think that's going to happen. And for the UN to actually really seriously intervene in a world like this, it takes one

of the UN Security Council members being like we will send our own troops Like that's like how the UN got involved in Korea, right? Yeah, like the US was like fucking we're gonna send an army there But like Russia is not going to like send an army So they're significantly too busy invading Ukraine and selling natural gas to Israel to like do anything China is not going to do it because there is real second largest trading partner and they don't give a shit. Like no one's actually going to like send troops to like back some kind of like UN mandate to like stop the Israelis from doing this. Like that's just like not even if the Israelis were to just start killing peacekeepers. Like it's not gonna happen. It's never happened any other time. The Israelis have killed peacekeepers.

Yeah, like peacekeepers have in other places for... Yeah. For instance, Irish peacekeepers in Congo, right? Yeah. Or the Canadians. And indeed, like the Unifor have engaged in combat before. But I think the chances of them like stopping the IDF invasion are extremely slim. Yeah, like if you're finding a state that is just

directly an American proxy, like there's no way. Yeah, it's like, I don't even think like the 70s NAM, like not a line movement like dominated UN could have pulled something like that off. And like this UN will not. No, like the UN will issue strongly worded statements. The UN will say it's deeply concerned. And I imagine that like, if you're just like a troop and then you're on your

unifil, so most of the, at least for the Irish, most of the people that have volunteered to be there, Ireland is probably among, at least among European countries, a country that has stood strongest in its solidarity with Palestine for a long time. I'm sure it fucking sucks. I'm sure it really blows. Oh yeah. And what the IDF has done now is advance past their like forward positions and the positions

where people are being injured by shelling are their headquarters positions. So like if you imagine a triangle with a broad base of it at the front there shelling and sort of fighting around the headquarters positions. I'm sure if you've been spending that much of your life as a soldier, you know, like, and you're watching something terrible happen, you'd want to fight, but yeah, you're just sitting around. Like, that doesn't mean that it's bad that they're there. No, yeah. Like, any form of accountability will make it more accountable than what happened in Gaza, right?

Yeah. Or at least it will make whatever happens more visible than what happened in Gaza. And it probably legitimately has slowed the Israelis down. Like, yeah, versus what would happen if there's nothing there and they could just run roughshod, which is, you know, again, like what we see in Gaza and what we see in the West Bank. Yeah, like, I mean, their strategy in Gaza has been, first of all, like militarily inept, right? Like they've lost control of areas in their rear because aside from just killing lots of people in flattening cities, they don't seem to be really doing much in an actual sort of targeted manner. And like, yeah, just the presence

of peacekeepers means that you can't just carpet bomb in advance, you know, fire at anything that moves. This area between the Latani River and the Blue Line civilians have largely left because there's intense combat going on there, right? There's Balar present there and then obviously the IDF are now present there and they're fighting. So like, if people can leave, they've left. So having not that civilians have really slowed the Israelis down in Gaza or been a civilian casualties don't seem to be something they care about. But yeah, having these folks there has stopped them just carpet bombing the area, which is a good thing.

Yeah, something that is not a good thing. It's our obligation to pivot to adverts again, which we will do. All right, we're back. Yeah, I guess like I've seen it from a few people. I think it's either the people who discovered like international politics a year ago and previously like hadn't really thought about it or from the kind of nativist right the idea that like they shouldn't be there. Like I've seen it from like some kind of nativist type folks about Ireland, like why are the Irish there risking their lives for the Lebanese?

What the fuck do the Lebanese ever do for them? I have such good news for you about who was training the IRA in the 70s. There were a lot of guys with Irish accents in the Becca Valley training the yellow camps in the 70s. So, you know, they really have actually done things for you. It's one of the things people do this with like the US, where there's like one of the Israeli lines, like, what have Palestinians ever done for black people? It's like, well, like, there are a lot of people

who got a lot of training with the yellow in the 70s. Like, they genuinely are, for better and for worse, because like there's also groups that they train that like they probably shouldn't have like every that about a lot Of the groups became the fighting vanguard, which was okay. It's How about described the fighting vanguard? The fighting vanguard were like a kind of built-in wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and like a bunch of those fighting vanguard guys who survived so they do an uprising and I think it was 84 They like all get killed those people who survived go on to be some of the founding members of al-qaeda

So not not always. Yeah, no great. Yeah, but like you know The record like you look one out of like 20 of the people you trade Go with haywire is not great, but like you know it's still there 19 other ones Did pretty good Yeah, I think Abdul Aziz was in the Bekaa Valley for a while. Yeah. Yeah lots of cadres of the of the PKK Yeah, PKK was there. Yeah, yeah, good died actually like like, um, yeah It's a good article called the Kurds who died for Palestine I was reading recently because often you'll see this like Idea that the Kurds are like inherently like

Zionist and I don't think that's true. No like they fought in the Lebanese civil war on the side of the PLO because they were in Becca Valley in the PLO's training camps. Yeah they didn't really have much choice to be fair. Israel was coming for them. Yeah and like Israel is one of the countries that helped kidnap Abdullah Ajeelat. They're Really not preside is at all. No, this is one of those two things that you'll see from like I didn't have that bar account So they're just people with very unoriginal opinions who like yeah kind of Turkish state lines When Israel builds settlements in a West Bank and Gaza, they do it with steel that comes from Turkey. Yep So yeah, maybe treat those claims with some skepticism. If there's a gray wolf in bio particularly.

Yeah, there is a broader, more serious point there, which is that like the actual physical resources that the Israelis use to to physically build the occupation. Right. Those all come from places and it's not all the US and I think people have this image that like, well, like it is true. The US sends an unbelievable amount of money to Israel but there's a lot of places where the Israelis are getting their shit for right like these really tech sector these really tech sector is one

of the cores the Israeli economy and it's one of the cores of Of the Israeli occupation is almost entirely fueled by like semiconductors and stuff that they buy from China, right? That's where all the the physical technical infrastructure of this stuff comes from. I talked about before about like Russian natural gas, right? All of these countries who will, you know, talk all of this shit like and the UN about Israel like people's geopolitical stances and what they're willing to send materially to the Israelis are not the same thing at all. And if you want to actually gauge how the occupation functions

It's because a lot of countries that nominally will be like, oh we oppose Israeli occupation But didn't just send them all the fucking resources that they need to do the occupation Yeah, and they don't get any heat unless it's like literal bombs and bullets, right? Yeah, and even and even then like lots of people like yeah, there's plenty of of non-us I mean the UK does a lot of this to you right? Yeah What are the things that IDF likes to do they haven't mentioned yet? It's mock air assaults of uniform positions Jesus Christ well, they'll fly in like a bombing formation Just basically I guess haze them. I can't really think of a way to describe it right they

Just basically I guess haze them. I can't really think of a way to describe it, right? They are like it's a terror campaign. Yes. Yes it's a very clear indication that like any day we could wipe you off the map, right and Some of the unifil assets seem to have anti-aircraft missiles Some of them don't but even still like they did, you know a determined attack by the IDF they'd be in big trouble, of course So right now I guess the situation we're in, according to the person I spoke to, is that these positions Israel has advanced past, like the peacekeepers there are still in their positions, right? They have using their own funds, which I presume means like funds from the states of which they are part, fortified their positions and improve their positions.

With their own, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, the UN is supposed to provide positions for them. It's supposed to provide their rations and it's supposed to provide weapons and vehicles for some of the states that like kind of aren't up to, I guess, a modern standard. That's incidentally why you don't see it so much here, but in other parts of the world

you'll often see troops on peacekeeping missions who like perhaps you haven't heard of that country's military before, right? Like it's very common for like also I think it is better that there are African peacekeepers in Africa than like white European peacekeepers, like I think for historical and very obvious reasons. I will mention, one of the places that sends a lot of peacekeepers to places is Nepal and the record of Nepalese peacekeepers that are being set by Maoist governments are not great. Not great.

It sucks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can Google that. We've talked about this in Brazil at length. And Haiti, sorry, Brazilian-Nepalese cooperation in Haiti is a shit show. Yeah, no, it has not been good for the Haitian people. I will say like one of the things that happens a lot is the UN pays them a certain rate for peacekeeping, I guess, or the UN compensates a certain rate, which is often a lot more than those militaries pay their soldiers.

So it's like a source of income for the military. If you see what I mean, they can like skim off the percentage. But these guys have at their own expense fortified their positions at their own expense supplied themselves with rations. So like they bought a ton of food and water. It's what that means in like non nerdy terms. So they're pretty well stocked up, right? They're like they're bunkered up. Yeah, but it's also it's also like this un operation is being equipped in the same way that like American school teachers make sure their classrooms have pencils. That's a perfect. What the fuck is going on here?

Yeah. Jesus Christ. It may be mere, maybe the state, not the best way of organizing human society is what people are saying. Look, we need to fuse the two and finally bring about my lifelong dream of armed teachers union pickets. Yeah. Bring it back to Blair Mountain, but for teachers. Yeah. So you're like, don't armed teachers, armed teachers union pickets. Yeah, bring it back to the Blair Mountain, but for teachers.

Yeah, so you're like, don't armed teachers armed teachers unions. Yeah, yeah, we can finally get bipartisan agreement on. Yeah, they're pretty well hold up like, like, like American Preppers dream of themselves being right surrounded by ammunition and MREs. But at some point, they're going to run out of food and water. And at some point, that means that they're going to have to resupply. Right? Now, on...

I'm just going to check the date very quickly. Unifil is on Twitter, by the way, if you want to follow them there. They kind of give a daily update on what's going on. On the 13th of October, Unifil said that the IDF soldiers stopped a critical Unifil logistical movement, which could well be like an attempt to resupply of one of these places, right? At some point, they're going to have to resupply them either by air or by land. And I think that is when we will most likely see like exactly how hard the IDF wants to

go against like, in this case, trucks full of MREs, right? Yeah. And previously they've gotten standoffs, like a few years ago, the French have done some interesting stuff as part of the Unifil mission. In 2010, they kind of went on a unilateral operation without approval to look for his butler. Yeah.

Not a great move. What? Yeah, it's wild. French forces have in Lebanon is such an interesting thing because it's like you have inside of the French soul is warring at all times two forces. It is it is recisme and antisemitism. Because they hate Muslims so much, but they are also so antisemitic. This is at all times warring. The nature of the French soul, the two wolves that live inside the French person. Yeah, well in 2010, their Islamophobia was winning. Specifically, they used sniffer dogs in people's homes, which is very disrespectful in culture in that part of the world.

I mean, also here, I would be really pissed off if fucking a bomb squad like getting started running sniffer dogs around my apartment. Yeah, for sure. Like, get out. Going through private property and doing things that they weren't supposed to operate with the Lebanese armed forces, right? So they put patrol alongside them. But in this case, the French decided they were just going to send it solo and obviously

pissed a lot of people off. And like, it's really interesting to see people address their concerns. Well, it's not interesting, I guess, but people address their concerns specifically with the French element of Unifil rather than other elements of Unifil. Like, for instance, the Indonesians seem to be pretty popular. The Indian element of Unifil teaches weekly yoga classes,

which are apparently becoming more and more popular. I've seen a bunch of videos, there's like TikToks of Lebanese people in that area who speak English and they all speak English with an Irish accent. Oh yeah. Because they've been there for so long, it's great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the Irish have been there since 70s, right? Like, I know of people who have two generations of their family who have been peacekeepers there. Yeah. I think for those people, like, like over time being there, I'm sure they do develop a personal connection to the people who they're around, and the people whose communities they are protecting.

I genuinely feel like it's probably a really shitty situation to be in, being locked in your base. That doesn't mean they should leave, right? I just want to end with, and I know we're going to talk about the Girl on Heights too, in 2013, Austria pulled out the Girl on Heights, and Ireland had to deploy a bunch of people really quickly to kind of cover that area. But if we look at like Strelka, right, where the UN could have prevented a genocide and did not. Yeah. The UN forces there withdrew, they surrendered and then places were captured by the Serbs and then used as collateral to stop the UN doing any more to prevent what. And like some of the most horrific acts in human history happened.

It's for Beniko, right? Just disgusting, terrible stuff. And like hopefully the UN has learned from that. Hopefully like individual nations. I think like in that case, it wasn't so much the UN as a whole. It's like the specific chain of command of those peacekeepers. I think they were Dutch. Well and like it's worth noting in that point too, like part of what's going on there is that like a lot of the European countries

until well into the genocide were basically pro-Serb because they saw the Serbs something that could like just cleanse the Muslims from Europe. It's like this is the explicit language that they're using right yeah and this is this has always been a problem with with UN missions is like well half the time you're trying to stop a genocide there's like some faction of the UN that's like no this one fucking rips and yeah yeah right this is the end but they are the bad guys though aren't they yeah I think it's good that they have like Muslim countries within their yeah that group and like I think it's probably good that the Irish are there in large numbers because as a country they have like Muslim countries within their group. And like, I think it's probably good that the Irish are there in large numbers,

because as a country, they have been better on Palestine than almost anyone else in Europe. Yeah, it turns out being a Colady has an effect on you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's on us as the British. But it's better that they're there, I guess. And like, no one talked about them for the past 10 fucking years. But like the most important time for them to be there is right now. Yeah. And like, even if they're not fighting, I think they serve a useful role. And like, it's the only accountability mechanism that Israel can't just destroy.

There are definitely people who are alive right now who would not be if the Irish were not there. Yeah. And like, I know we have these number of Irish listeners, like like I know it sucks if it's your family member who's stuck there like and like it feels like they're not able to do anything and they just stuck there as like collateral as a bargaining chip I don't know but like yeah I think overseas military deployments by European countries go it's one of the more defensible ones you know it's one of the ones that has stopped civilian lives being harmed. Yeah. And yeah, I think like the idea that they should leave, which I've seen people trotting out like that.

No, they shouldn't. Like when they leave, it's just like Gaza all over again. It's just Israel carpet-bombing civilians. Talking of carpet-bombing civilians, I guess, Mia, you wanted to talk about like Israel has decided to invade another country. So okay. So one of the things that's happened, this has gotten almost no attention, I think, Mi, you wanted to talk about like, Israel has decided to invade another country. Yeah. So, okay, so one of the things that's happened, this has gotten almost no attention, I think because the Syrian government does not want to admit that this is happening and they're not doing anything about it because they don't give a shit.

So Israel has been occupying the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967. Yep. They've militarized it, they've just been holding the territory for I shouldn't have tried to do math in the fly It's like over half a century 60 years. Yeah Well, and one of the things that's been happening recently is there had been there had been like I see described as like a Russian monitoring force Sort of on on the border of the Shura Nakba Golan Heights and this sort of like southern provinces of Syria Yeah, and the Israelis seem like southern provinces of Syria. Yeah.

And the Israelis seem to have just... Apparently they've done this before where they'll just like go in and bulldoze a bunch of farmland. Yeah, I think this is under the auspices of demining, right? Yeah, sort of. Yeah, I mean it's always been... It's always been pretty clearly like a land grab kind of thing. Yeah. But normally what happens is they go in, they bulldoze a bunch of places and they pull out Yeah, so somehow they have surpassed Turkey as the number one bulldozer of all of fields, which is sort of staggering

Like they just they love that shit. Yeah, but this time they've set up seems like a road project although given everything that we've been seeing about So, given everything that we've been seeing about the sort of like rise of the concept of greater Israel, where they just start invading everyone and radially outwards from Israel is extremely alarming. So they've bulldozed these places, but now and they're, but they set up like barbed wire like around the new territory, which seems like they're just actually attempting to do annexation. Yeah.

And that's really alarming because I mean like the Syrian government isn't gonna do shit about this right like you know Israel has bombed Syria a few times already. Oh yeah they bombed Syria last time I was there. The Syrian government doesn't give a shit right they're they're too busy like like they have courage to kill like they don't have time to be dealing with fucking Israel here. Yeah yeah. But there's been an explicit Israeli push They're too busy like like they have courage to kill like they don't have time to be dealing with fucking is really here Yeah, yeah, but there's there's been an explicit Israeli push like even further out from the Golan Heights and I think we're just gonna see this intensify as as the most sort of like deranged settler factions in

Israeli politics gain more and more power and the sort of like Frankly like very American, we must push our borders, we must like push into new frontiers and seize more land, like cycle sort of perpetuates itself. Yeah, a lot of the people doing the settling have literally come from America to do the settling. Yeah. Pushing out in the Golan Heights is bad.

Like, yeah, I know Israel claims it was attacked by Katib Hizbollah in the Golan Heights like last week and Katib Hzbollah has denied that. They claim Israel fabricated it. Neither of those people are people I particularly trust. Yeah, well, and this is also one of these funny ones where it's like the Israelis are denying that they've done this, I think, and the Syrian government is also denying that they've done this, but like everyone who's there is like, well, obviously they did this. Like, yeah. And like, I don't know why Israel keeps wanting to open up near France.

I mean, they, they, they, yeah, like you say, it's settler colonialist logic, I guess, but I do think that like the continuation of this, like full scale war generates consent for the government as it exists in a moment that it stops in the government's legitimacy will collapse there Yeah, but yeah pushing into Syria opens up a whole other world of shit Yeah, the worst stuff

Yeah, there's an there's a nation on earth who really doesn't need anyone else trying to fucking and it's not that Israel has not been Killing syrians for a long time. Israel has been lobbying anyone else trying to fucking and it's not that Israel has not been killing Syrians for a long time Israel has been lobbying munitions into Syria for a long time and it's increased in the last year yeah that like yeah you know I was in Syria on October 7th last year and pretty much sooner as Israel began responding to that attack it began responding in Syria as well but a ground operation is a whole different thing and there ain't no UN peacekeepers in Syria and yeah that could be very bad.

Yeah, so we'll keep you updated on that story as it presumably continues to get worse because... Yeah, everything seems to end like... I mean, I will say, okay, so today Biden made a thing that said if Israel hasn't resolved humanitarian situation in 30 days, he's gonna cut off aid, but like that's not gonna happen. Like it's simply not. Like everyone says that all the time. I mean how many lines have they stepped over? An American Red Line is a line that when you step over nothing happens. Yeah that's just how it works. Right, like it was in Syria, it has been multiple times. Yeah, I mean there's this old Russian joke about China's final warning.

Where, because like throughout the entire 70s when like there's all these border disputes going on, like even during the 60s, and like something's in the 50s, 60s, like Chinese officials would be like, this is China's final warning, Russia must stop, nothing would happen. This is where we're at with the Democrats being like, ah, Israel must stop doing whatever the fucks. No, they're not gonna do anything. They don't give a shit. Yeah, no, we've cried wolf so many times.

It's clearly not an issue that Harris feels like it's gonna lose her the election. And then whoever wins, we got four more years of turning a fire hose of money and weapons on children in Palestine and apparently Syria and Lebanon as well. So yeah, it's great. It's all great. I'm afraid this has not been a good news episode. I have people who have family there who are doing okay. I know it sucks. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

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

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

available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. Guess what folks, we're teammates again, and we're going to welcome you guys all to Dudes on Dudes. I'm a dude, you're a dude, and Dudes on Dudes is our brand new show. We're going to highlight players, peers, guys that we played against, legends from the past, and we're just going to sit here and talk about them.

And we'll get into the types of dudes. What kind of types of dudes are there, Grumps? We got studs, wizards, we got freaks. Or dudes dude. We got dogs. Dog! We'll break down their games, we'll share some insider stories,

and determine what kind of dude each of these dudes are. Is Randy Moss a stud or a freak? Is Tom Brady a dog or a dude's dude? We're gonna find out, Jules. New episodes drop every Thursday during the NFL season. Listen to Dudes on Dudes on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?

Like, what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejón. Our podcast Hungry for History is back. Season two, season two. Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? Okay.

And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the Margarita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba, and the piñuco lava from Puerto Rico. So all of these things we have, we thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the ninth century BC.

BC? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel de Lilla. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Tephany exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This week Charlemagne the God sits down with Vice President Kamala Harris for a conversation you don't want to miss.

Listen, I feel very strongly I need to earn every vote, which is why I'm here having this candid conversation with you and your listeners. They tackle the big questions, politics, policy, and what's next for the country. I am running to be president for everybody, but I am clear-eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities, and I'm not going to shy away from that. Don't miss this in-depth interview with Charlemagne the God and Vice President Kamala Harris, only on The Breakfast Club. Catch the full interview now on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple

Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to it could happen here. I'm here with me. How you doing? It's it's a bomb. Abominably early, which not even podcast early. It's like 8 a.m. Here. So it's going to be where we're we've done the caffeine.

We're holding on for dear life. I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. I have to ask, have you noticed that the continents are dripping a little bit? Continents are dripping? Yeah, yeah. And I don't mean like, blinged out. I mean, like if you take a look at a map and you assume that North is up and South is

down, you don't find it kind of looks like our major landmasses are melting a little bit. Uh you know okay now now now that you say it I can kind of see it. Hmm yeah this is a concept known as continental drip and I'm not tripping on anything. I'm not the first person to notice. Incredible. You can look it up. There's a whole Wikipedia page about it and everything. And well, South America alongside India, they kind of see it as the quintessential examples of this continental trip. And this is a very odd way that I've decided to segue into the next nation in our exploration of Latin America and anarchist history, it's right to

the east of Chile and south of every other country in its hemisphere, that is of course the Argentine Republic, more commonly known as Argentina, which is derived by the way from the Latin word for silver. My name is Andrew Sage, you can find me on YouTube as Andrisom. And thanks to the scholarship of Chuck Moss, Jeffrey de la Focarde and Angel Capuleti, we're going to take a journey into the history of anarchism in Argentina. Also got to do the shout out for Capuleti's Anarchism in Latin America. Great book. Also great cover. Got a big bird on it. Good stuff.

Oh yeah. Shout out. Of course, of course. So I suppose the best place to start is in the beginning. So there's this thing called the Big Bang, right? The universe expanded extremely fast in like picoseconds of time. There was large movement. Large expansion of matter and... Yeah, but seriously, Argentina has been peopled since the Paleolithic period. In particular, we find evidence of ancient peoples butchering the meat of an armadillo relative as early as 21,000 years ago. Jeez.

So, you know, we've been around. we've been around. From then on, as far as we can tell, for now at least, because you know the timelines are constantly getting updated with new information, as it should be, the area to be known as Argentina was pretty sparsely populated by a variety of diverse cultures with diverse social organisations, including foragers and farmers. To make a long and largely unknown history of indigenous coexistence and conflict short, people continued to live and the earth continued to spin for the next few millennia until a few ships on the horizon spelled doom for all to see.

These are, of course, the Europeans, who first arrived in the region with the 1502 voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, with the Spanish navigators Juan Diaz de Solis and Sebastián Cabo in particular visiting the territory in 1516 and 1526 respectively. Then in 1536, Pedro de Mendoza founded this small settlement of Buenos Aires. Maybe you've heard of it. But it was abandoned in 1541 thanks to continuous indigenous resistance, and had to be refounded in 1580. As for the rest of what would be Argentina, the Spanish Empire that was running most of

the continent was busy looting the silver and gold mines in Bolivia and Peru, so Argentina was kinda seen as a backwater. It wasn't as much of an interest by comparison. Argentina stayed under the Viceroyalty of Peru until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776 with Buenos Aires as its capital. After two failed British invasions in 1806 and 1807, and as you can see the British and Argentina have had a bit of a scuffle for some time now, the Buenos Aires capital would be the stage of revolution, as the 1810 May Revolution

replaced the viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, with the first Junta, a new government made by and for the locals. And then there was a royalist counter-revolution, some anti-colonial alliance with the then Spanish Philippines, divisions between centralists and federalists over the newly forming Argentine state, proposals to crown a Sapa Inca as monarch of an independent Argentina and the official declaration of independence for a republic on the 9th of July 1816. Just to go back a bit, to be clear, there is an alternate history scenario in which Argentina was briefly or continuously under an Incan monarchy.

That would have ripped. Literally, I believe it was a cousin of Tupac Amaru III was being considered for the position. Incredible. Incredible. Incredible indeed. See, people tend to see South America as just like, eh, you know, it's just the extra continent. I mean, I don't think people think about how much has gone on down there. Rather, it's not really present in the English-speaking

world's imagination. You know, we tend to focus on more of the northern hemisphere side of things, or whichever specific region we find ourselves in, whether it be the Caribbean or Australia, New Zealand, UK, US, Canada. We tend to think about English-speaking colonial history, We tend to think about English speaking colonial history, but Latin America had a lot going on in its time. I mean, come on, they had an alliance with the Spanish Philippines. Yeah, rips. Yeah. So, I mean, civil war go prrrr as they say between the centralists and the federalists. And that will continue for a while after the declaration of the Republic in 1816, and it

was only resolved in 1831 with a Federalist victory. Basically, it was a division over how they should organize the state, whether it should be in a Federal manner or more sensuous unitary manner. So the Federalists won, which would lead to the War of the Confederation between 1836-1839, the establishment of the constitution in 1853, and a temporary secession of Buenos Aires which was forced back into Argentina by 1861. And as in much of Latin America, anarchism would establish itself fairly early on thanks to the waves of migration from Europe, and particularly from France, Italy, and Spain. There are so many Italians.

Oh yeah, just an absurd amount of Italians. These folks fled political repression and poverty in their home countries. Refugees from the Paris Commune and anarchist literature from the aforementioned lands would find themselves in the streets of Buenos Aires City and the countrysides of Buenos Aires Province. They circulated anarchist ideas through group meetings such as the group El Miserable in the poor city of Rosario and publications like La Revolté, which was founded by Kropotkin all the way back in Switzerland. Kropotkin's Words of a Rebel would also make frequent appearances throughout Argentina, and his conquest of bread received a translation by Catalan carpenter Juan Villa.

As with the splits internationally, the first Internationales local section in Buenos Aires, which was founded in 1872, were split between the supporters of Marx and the supporters of Acuna. The former were predominantly French, the latter predominantly Spaniard and Italian. Three decades of substantial migration starting in the 1880s would spark significant growth in the anarchist movement, as the migrants found crushing economic deprivation and repressive governance where they hoped they'd find prosperity and liberty. Over three million people arrived, leading to the country having a foreign

born population of 33% by 1914. Nowadays, as in much of the world, unfortunately, that once foreign born population, some percentage of them are now unfortunately anti-immigration. Yeah. And violently so. It's a cruel irony that we find ourselves with. Just mere decades ago, their own ancestors were migrants. Among the migration wave came the likes of Hector Matei, an Italian anarchist who helped publish Il Socialista, which is a weekly paper.

And of course, believe it or not, the one and only Eric Omano Testa, who keeps making guest appearances in these last American anarchists on the series. He's just like all over the place, just traveling everywhere. If I recall correctly, he made an appearance in Cuba. He made an appearance in the Egypt episode as well. He just keeps showing up. He's really truly a globetrotter in a mold that we haven't really seen. Hey, I mean, move aside Pitbull.

You know, he's the real Mr. Worldwide. So Eracuvao Tasta, he actually fled Italy in 1885 after escaping imprisonment and he helped to establish the Circulo de Estudios Sociales where he and others gave public speeches promoting anarchism and he worked to organize the Sociedad Cosmopolita de Obreros Panaderos, an anarchist baker's union. I didn't know he could bake. Maybe he could bake, maybe he couldn't. Maybe he was just there, you know, helping them set up.

But in my head, I like to imagine that he was pretty good at baking bread and making cookies, you know? I'm pretty sure he was like an ice cream salesman, too, at one point. I might be getting that confused with like some other anarchist who was going around everywhere who was also selling ice cream. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I have vague memories of there being a story about like him having an ice cream cart and trying to make money and he couldn't do it because he kept giving ice

cream to children. I think I remember that story. I think Zoe Baker had a video on it. You know, those ads used to show on TV a couple, like about a decade ago, most interested man in the world. Yeah. He was he was based on our command. So Malatesta later returned to Europe in 1889, yet he left a lasting legacy in helping to

organize workers and sow the seeds for a powerful anarchist movement in Argentina. In the early 1890s, the anarchist paper El Perseguido became one of the most popular and prominent voices of anarchist communism in Argentina, despite ongoing repression and government censorship. The anarchist press continued to expand during this period, with publications like La Voz de la Mujer and Anarchist Feminist People emerging in Rosario. The 1880s and early 1890s also involved significant internal debates, particularly around the role of workers' unions and revolutionary tactics.

Some groups embraced anarchist cynicalism, while others believed smaller affinity groups as catalysts of social revolution were the way to go. While in the midst of a massive, rapid industrial growth and dealing with the worsening economic situation for the working class, such a society was ripe for transformation of the anarchist variety. Initially, the anarchists had been focused on counter-cultural concerns, particularly in the field of education, but as their ranks swelled in number, the stage was set for the debut of a mass anarchist movement among Argentine workers.

In 1897, the anarchist workers were found La Protesta Humana, later shortened to La Protesta, which would become an enduring anarchist paper throughout Latin America. But the anarchists didn't just stick to papers though. In 1901, anarchists were instrumental in the founding of the Argentine Workers' Federation, or the FOA, which was Argentina's first labor federation. The federation was founded in a congress that assembled some 50 delegates representing 30-35 workers' organizations from both capital and interior. The aim of the federation was an entity that included all workers without regard to their races or beliefs based on a solid foundation of direct action and economic struggle.

Though initially including Marxists, those would later depart to found the General Workers Union or the UGT, which was more amenable to party interests of course, which left the FOA in anarchist hands. The FOA stood at the forefront of the struggles, advocating for higher wages and better working conditions. At the time, the typical workday was 10 hours or more, with wages barely covering essential needs. Strikes broke out across industries, with notable successes.

Painters in Maradona Plata secured an 8-hour workday, and dockworkers in Buenos Aires won a 9-hour workday along with a wage increase. But despite the repression, the workers' movement continued to grow stronger. The FOA's membership surged, with 42 unions and over 15,000 members in 1903, rising to 66 unions and nearly 33,000 members a year later. In 1904, at its fourth congress, the group was renamed the Regional Workers' Federation of Argentina, or the FORA. Their reasoning was ideological.

By adding the adjective regional, it made plain that Argentina was not considered a state or political unit, but a region of the world in which workers struggled for their liberation. This fourth congress also approved a solidarity pact that proclaimed the establishment of a classless society with neither state nor private property as the ultimate aim of their struggle. The anarchist influence was clear, but it gets even more explicit in the following year. The UGT had been subordinate to the Marxist Socialist Party, but even their third congress in 1905 had a syndicalist emergence that preferred workers associations to political parties.

Basically even the non-annexist workers organizations were being influenced by the anarchist wave. So much so that the UGT wanted to form a solidarity pact with Fora. But the anarchists in Fora didn't quite trust the parliamentary socialism of the UGT. Still they did work with them to call a general strike in 1907 in solidarity with cart drivers in Rosario, joined by some 150,000 workers from around the Republic. That strike ended in victory for the workers. In 1905, two years before and at his fifth congress, Fora made its commitment to revolutionary anarchist communism explicitly known,

quote, we advise and recommend to all our followers the broadest possible study and propaganda with the aim of instilling in workers the economic and philosophical principles of anarchist communism. This education, not content with achieving the eight-hour workday, will bring total emancipation and, consequently, the social evolution we pursue." Forer was among the largest federations of workers' organizations, and it was officially anarchist-communist. The 1906-1907 general and tenant strikes garnered greater fervor, and in response, Buenos Aires police head Colonel Falcon swore to finish off the anarchists.

Buenos Aires police head Colonel Falcon swore to finish off the anarchists. 1907 saw Fora and UGT attempt to merger, but since the majority sought adherence to anarchist communism, the merger could not be achieved. Fora was militant and effective in achieving many of its goals, including wage increases, reductions in the length of the workday, and various rights of association. Port workers, crown transport workers, seamen's unions, beakers, metal workers, construction workers, and ship workers were all prominent in the federation and were well positioned to paralyze the Argentine economy and win their demands. In the first decade of the 20th century, these unions led six general strikes and many more

partial strikes. And women were more involved than in any other radical movement of the time, taking part in consumer boycotts and rent strikes as well. But the anarchists knew that ruptures in the capitalist economy wouldn't be enough to merely confront the system and refuse to corporate the system as it is. The social revolution also demands consciousness, solidarity, and the prefiguration of an enlightened, progressive society and social organizations. Thus anarchists engaged in counter-culture.

Multiple papers in multiple languages, theatre and poetry, May Day marches, social centers, popular education centers, popular libraries, and discussion circles. All of these efforts were seeded throughout the cities and linked to various unions to create a veritable and dynamic network of revolutionary causes. And since the government understood the anarchist threat, they tried their best to raise the cost of revolutionary activism. Their actions included petty police harassment, the humiliating and inconvenient searches and gratuitous demands for identification, which were a familiar experience for the anarchist militants. There was also the outlawing of radical publications, the suppression of the right to public assembly,

mass arrests, martial law declared for a total of 18 months between 1902 and 1910, and of course outright violence to the police, the army, and other formal forces, in addition to thugs acting on their behalf. The government also attempted to undermine the anarchist movement through legislative means. The residence law in 1902 granted the government the right to deport foreigners that are deemed undesirable without trial. After the law had been in effect for a few years, Fora called a general strike against its oppressive conditions. Fora's leadership condemned the law as a violation of human rights, labeling it as a tool by the state to suppress free thought and working class movements.

The government did not budge. On May Day 1909, police violently attacked a peaceful protest organized by transport workers and anarchists, killing eight people and wounding many others. Colonel Falcon, the recurrent villain who ordered the attack, later became the target of a retaliatory bombing by young anarchist Simone Radowitsky in November 1909. This act of defiance shook the whole country. In the meantime, the anarchist cause also resonated internationally. In response to the execution of Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish educator and anarchist,

Fora led a series of strikes in Argentina, joining global protests against his death. 1910 marked Argentina's preparations for the centenary celebrations of its first national government, portraying itself as a beacon of prosperity. But oh, here come the workers with their unrest and protests to sour the vibes and demand the release of political prisoners and the abolition of the law of residence. Naturally, the government responded by declaring a state of internal war, arresting hundreds of anarchists, including fora leaders, and imposing extreme censorship and restrictions on civil liberties, shutdowns of publications, and the declaration of a state of emergency.

The government also introduced the Social Defense Law, which levied a series of penalties against anarchist activity specifically. As the centennial celebrations unfolded, Argentina had transformed into a heavily militarized state, with more than 2,000 anarchists arrested or deported. So much for a grand celebration of their free democracy. Despite the repression, the workers' movements continued to grow. Forrest General strikes forced the government to make concessions and release jailed workers.

But divisions began to appear within the movement. After dealing with so much repression for their radical ideas, a split occurred in 1909 with the formation of the syndicalist group Cora, which adopted much of Fora's structure and retained some anarchist ideas, but leaned towards a less radical approach, hoping to be less of a target. The anarchists took yet another hit when, in 1912, the science-penya law made voting secret and obligatory, thus making anarchist abstentionism as a tactic illegal. The range of possible actions was being intentionally closed.

While dealing with these external pressures, anarchists also had to deal with pressures from within the workers' movement by even more folks who wanted to compromise their revolutionary goals. Another split between the syndicalists and anarchists occurred at the Fora's 9th Congress in 1915. Unions were increasingly led by reformists, social democrats, and uncommitted anarchists, which led to the thesis of a neutral syndicalism focused on winning workers' rights becoming the dominant position within fora.

The syndicalists dropped their commitment to anarchist communism and claimed the name the Fora of the Ninth Congress, while the minority of anarchists that maintained their commitment to anarchist communism took the name the Fora of the Fifth Congress. The timing of this split was impeccable though. You see, as has been a recurring theme in this series, the Russian Revolution of 1917 had a significant impact on Argentinian anarchism. In a sense, it reignited the revolutionary fervor within the movement and led to the reformist and cynicalist 409 losing influence, while revolutionary ideas once again gained momentum.

For a brief moment, there was hope. But the Bolsheviks would waste little time in crushing that hope. By 1920, Argentinian anarchists like their European counterparts began to distance themselves from Leninism. They began to recognize the authoritarian nature of the Bolsheviks, took note of Kropotkin and Lenin's correspondences, and soon came to reject the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On his part, alongside his mass slaughter of the anarchists in Kronstadt, Lenin also

ordered the confiscation of anarchist texts, which he saw as influencing the conflict within the Bolshevik ranks. Tale as old as time. Anyway, next time, we'll see if and how the anarchists in Argentina managed to navigate the tumultuous 20s, 30s, and beyond to leave a lasting mark on Argentine history. But things aren't looking too good for them right now. Until then, full power to all the people. This has been It Could Happen It. I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. Guess what, folks?

We're teammates again, and we're going to welcome you guys all to Dudes on Dudes. I'm a dude, you're a dude, and Dudes on Dudes is our brand new show. We're going to highlight players, peers, guys that we played against, legends from the past, and we're just gonna sit here and talk about them. And we'll get into the types of dudes. What kind of types of dudes are there, Grumps? We got studs, wizards, we got freaks. Or dudes dude.

We got dogs. Dogs! We'll break down their games, we'll share some insider stories, and determine what kind of dude each of these dudes are. Is Randy Moss a stud or a freak? Is Tom Brady a dog or a dude's dude? We're going to find out, Jules. New episodes drop every Thursday during the NFL season.

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

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

Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejón.

Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. Season two, season two. Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? And this season, we're taking a bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Saying that the most popular cocktail is the Margarita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba,

and the piñucolada from Puerto Rico. So all of these we have, we thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century BC. BC? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Defne Carmona Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel de Lilla. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Tiffany exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, Charlemagne the God sits down with Vice President Kamala Harris for a conversation you don't want to miss. Listen, I feel very strongly I need to earn every vote, which is why I'm here having this candid conversation with you and your listeners. They tackle the big questions, politics, policy, and what's next for the country. I am running to be president for everybody, but I am clear-eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities, and I'm not going to shy away from that. Don't miss this in-depth interview with Charlemagne the God and Vice President Kamala Harris,

only on The Breakfast Club. Catch the full interview now on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage. Find me on YouTube at Andrew's Home. I'm here once again with... Oh, Bea.

Haha. That was my cue. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah, she's here. And today, we're continuing the Latin American anarchism series with our exploration of anarchism in Argentina. The actual scholarship of Chuck Moss, Jeffrey de la Focarde, Angel Capuletti, and Jose Antonio Gutierrez and Ian McKay. When we last left, all various laws and government actions were pressed hard on the anarchist

cause in the country. Which of any anarchists executed, jailed, or exiled, what would become of the anarchist movement? Would things get better or worse? It's hard to say. I think you know the answer. 1919 marked the year of La Semana Tragica, or the Tragic Week, when several metal workers were killed by strikebreakers. This led to a general strike that shut down the entire country and pushed Buenos Aires into a state of chaos for several days. The anarchist paper La Protesta noted the complete shutdown and praised worker solidarity.

But despite the revolutionary atmosphere, the movement lacked a clear objective, which weakened its long-term impact. They had the power, but didn't do too much with it. Eventually the police and Argentina's first fascist organization, Liga Patriotica, were able to subdue the rebellion. The fascists, by the way, were backed by military figures like Rear-Admiral Bumek Garcia and O'Connor. They attacked and killed with impunity, and in the end 55,000 were detained, with anarchists

sent to Martin Garcia Island, and as many as 700 were killed and 4,000 were injured. But the anarchist movement persisted, as they always do. La Protesta continued publishing, alongside the launch of new papers like Bandera Roja and Tribuna Pulpabilitaria. Even after the government banned anarchist press in March 1919, the movement continued to organize, culminating in an extraordinary congress of 200 unions in September 1920. Throughout the 1920s, four of five remained

a powerful force in Argentina's labor movement, pushing for causes like the six hour weekday and resisting rising nationalist and military sentiments. But throughout came more repression. In 1921, Argentinian workers de la Forestal in the Chaco region were brutally killed for demanding better wages and conditions. The anarchist fora proposed solidarity actions, but the more reformist fora denied Congress distance itself, leaving the movement unsupported. This indifference unfortunately also extended to other violent incidents, such as the murder of workers by the fascist Liga Patriotica in Coaleguaichu, and worse still with the largely unreported massacres of striking rural workers in Patagonia

by the army, sending 1500 to death by firing squad. An event ignored by most media, except for anarchist outlets like The Protester. In this case, at least the anarchists got their get back somewhat later when German anarchist Kurt Wilkins assassinated Colonel Hector Valera, the military leader responsible for the killings. That whole story is so wild because the German assassin was also a pacifist, but it was just like fuck it we ball. Yeah, I mean sometimes you had to do what you had to do. Yeah.

And I mean, the government got it to get back as well because Wilkins was later murdered in retaliation for his murder of Hector Valero. But at least that led to a general strike across Argentina. It truly is a wild story. Anarchists in Argentina further agitated in opposition to the trial and execution of Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Fancetti in the United States in 1927. This was a notorious case, by the way, but we'll pull that string another time. There was a certain anarchist who took the protests in a different direction though.

Known to be prolific in his acts of violence, Italian anarchist Severino De Giovanni carried out bombings against the American embassy to protest the trial. Bombings against the Italian consulate to protest Italian fascism and robberies throughout the country. De Giovanni's actions sparked debate among anarchists about the issue of quote unquote anarcho-banditry. Some papers like Land Torture defended the Giovanni. Others like La Protesta attacked him.

The Giovanni's fight came to an end in 1931, when he was arrested and executed for carrying out the murder of one of his fiercest fellow anarchist critics, a certain La Protesta editor named Emilio Lopez Arango. As you could probably imagine, there weren't any general strikes to protest the Juvani's execution. General José Félix Uriburu led a coup in 1930 that marked the rise of fascism in Argentina and the continuation of systematic persecution against workers and anarchists. Many were imprisoned, deported, or killed, including prominent figures like Juan Antonio Morán and Joaquín Penaña.

Anarchist groups and unions were repressed under Uribe Uru's martial law, while the more moderate Confederación General del Trabajo, or CGT, dominated by reformist socialists, survived and became the main representative of workers in the country thanks to Uriburu's corporatist stance. Martial law was peeled back slightly by 1932. With such heavy blows to the movement, anarchists had to pull back to the more counter-cultural efforts that defined their movement in the 1880s. For our resumed publishing activities, with La Protesta returning as a daily, but government pressure including actions against its editors and restrictions on postal services, made it difficult to maintain this daily schedule.

Eventually La Protesta transitioned to a weekly, then bi-weekly, and finally monthly publication. Despite these challenges, a group of anarchist militants in via de voto prison conceived the idea of a national anarchist congress. This congress first met in September 1932 in Rosario with delegates from across the country. And one key outcome of this congress was the creation of the Comité Regional de Relaciones

Anarquistas, or the CRRA. This laid the foundation for what became the Argentine Anarcho-Communist Federation, or FACA, in 1935, although the organization never really gained a mass following. In 1935, anarchists also established the Biblioteca Popular José Ingenieros, a library and social center. While initially founded with the support of socialists, the anarchists took full control after the socialists left. Around this time, anarchist groups campaigned fiercely to free Voto, Mayni, and De Diaco,

comrades who had been tortured and imprisoned for over a decade. The newspaper, Justicia, was created solely to advocate for their release, which was finally granted in 1942. Throughout this period, the anarchist press remained active. The number of publications diminished. Several publishing houses like Nerveo, Iman, Tupac, and Reconstruir kept anarchist literature alive, publishing key works and essays. In 1933, Acción Libertaria emerged and eventually became the voice of FACA, later known as the Federación Libertaria Argentina, or FLA, until 1971.

But the most significant international event for Argentine anarchists during the 1930s was the Spanish Civil War. The rise of fascism and the resistance led by the CNT and Federacion Anarchista Iberica or FAI inspired Argentine anarchists to provide solidarity and support. Many travelled to Spain to join the fight, with José Grunfeld becoming the Secretary of the FAI. Campaigns to support anti-fascists in the Spanish Civil War were also launched, with FACA publishing books and pamphlets in the struggle. FACA launched Solidaridad Obrera in 1941, edited by Juan Corral and Luriano Riera,

though it was later shut down by the first justicialista government under Perón. by the first justicialista government under Perón. Fora also began publishing a series of booklets, including Todos contra la Guerra in 1935 and Lucha Constructiva por la Libertad y Justicia in 1944. One notable libertarian cultural journal, Hombre de América, ran from January 1940 until the end of 1945, covering nearly the entire duration of the Second World War. Fakker was clear about its position on the global conflicts of the time. In a 1942 general plenary, the group denounced both Western democracies, which they saw as

veiling capitalist exploitation, and the Soviet Union, which they deemed bureaucratic capitalism. However, they saw the greatest threat in National Socialism, the Nazis, and the rise of the Third Reich, warning that totalitarianism was the worst danger of their era. Facker's statement of solidarity with the oppressed under Nazi barbarity also recognized the threat posed by Soviet expansionism and the false promises of post-war democracies. Domestically, Faker and Fora faced a new challenge with the rise of Juan Domingo Perón. His populist approach, while beneficial somewhat to workers, was paradoxical for anarchists. Perón's government promoted a state-centered, jingoistic project that co-opted labour movements through

control networks, undermining genuine proletarian democracy. Anarchists rejected Peronism, seeing it as a threat to the revolutionary ethos of workers' solidarity. Despite this, fora retained some influence, especially among agricultural workers who were caught between the identities of peasants and workers. In June 1946, Anarchists launched a new newspaper, Reconstruir, with Luis Danusi as editor. The first issue featured Jacobo Prince's critique of Peronism in an article titled

El totalitarismo falsa el principio de justicia social, calling out the regime's distortion of social justice. By the late 1940s, nearly 1950s, Fora's influence had waned, and anarcho-syndicalism was reduced to a smaller role in Argentina's labor movement. However, the Sociedad de Resistencia de Operadores del Puerto, aligned with Fora, demonstrated their commitment to anarcho-cynicalism in 1952 by rejecting a compulsory wage tax to fund a monument to Eva Perón. This act of defiance led to the imprisonment of several militants for six months. Imagine you decide you want to reject extra taxes because the dictator's wife demands

a monument. Like that's... You get thrown in jail because you decide you don't want to pay that tax. Ugh, God, that's terrible stuff. While Perón's regime weakened free unionism, he did so by means of corruption rather than violence, contrasting with the methods of his predecessor Oriburu. FACA continued its work, holding several congresses, including the 4th in 1951 and the 5th in 1955, just before Perón's overthrow.

In 1955, FACA rebranded as the Federacion Libertaria Argentina, or the FLA. And the FLA held its sixth congress in 1961, and its journal Reconstruir published regularly from 1959 until 1976, coinciding with the onset of Argentina's most brutal dictatorship. But before we fast forward to 1976, we need to explore what took place in the 60s. The 60s are known as the New Left Era in many parts of the world, thanks to the rise of student radicalism. The New Left is marked by a notable libertarian and democratic impulse, an emphasis on cultural as well as political transformation, an extension of the traditional left's focus on class

struggle to acknowledge multiple forms and bases of oppression, including race and gender, an emphasis on anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, and a rejection of bureaucracy and traditional forms of political organization in favor of direct action and participatory democracy. Many youth were searching for a third way outside of Soviet and Western models. So during the 1960s and 70s, a new generation of Argentine youth turned to anarchism, though they struggled to collaborate with the older anarchist movements.

Cultural and political differences were the heart of this divide, with younger militants aligning themselves more with the global anti-imperialist movements of the time than with the anarchist legacy already within Argentina. In some ways, this generational rift left a scar in the anarchist struggle. In other ways, it helped younger anarchists to develop a clearer ideological stance, compared to their counterparts in countries where such internal conflicts were less prevalent. One of the most significant anarchist groups to emerge during this period was Resistencia Libertaria.

Operating clandestinely and with a cellular structure, RL aimed to ignite mass resistance and ultimately spark a prolonged popular war. The group was active in neighborhoods, labor movements, and student circles, and had a small armed wing for defense and expropriation purposes. Although it was formerly a national organization, RL's main operations were in La Plata, Córdoba, and Buenos Aires. As Argentina grew increasingly polarized in the mid-1970s, our royal activists became targets. Many were disappeared even before the military coup of 1976. But then it hit. Henry Kissinger at the United States

machinations bore fruit. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh there. A military coup overthrew President Isabel Perón, the third wife of the original Perón, and installed a junta led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Macera, and Brigadier General Orlando Ramon Agusti. This coup was part of Operation Condor, a coordinated effort between Latin American dictatorships backed by the United States under its Cold War national security doctrine. The aim was allegedly to maintain stability in the region that America considers its backyard, and US officials, including Kissinger, were sure to meet with

Argentine military leaders after the coup to encourage them to wipe out their opposition quickly and brutally before any whiny human rights concerns started to be raised internationally. The Junta remained in power until December 1983, during which time some 38,000 people were disappeared or executed. RL militants were particularly targeted by the regime. One particularly horrible story I have to share. The military men responsible for the killings, often spared pregnant women, kept them in custody until they gave birth, then killed the mothers and gave their infants to childless military families. That's the kind of evil we're dealing with.

And despite the dangers, RL continued its activities until 1978, when a series of coordinated police raids dismantled much of the group. Around 80% of RL members were detained in concentration camps, where they were tortured and most were eventually executed. And that is how you kill a social movement. In the final years of dictatorship and following the re-establishment of civil government in 1983, new and relatively anti-authoritarian social movements emerged in Argentina. Among the most prominent were the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers advocating

for justice for those who had been disappeared under the military regime. Alongside them, theorists, ecologists, feminists, and other grassroots activists began to make their voices heard. This shift marked a significant departure from traditional state-centric leftist politics, with a growing inclination towards more decentralized approaches. While this climate sparked renewed interest in anarchism, it didn't lead to a substantial increase in the membership of older anarchist organizations. Instead, it highlighted a transformation in how social movements approached activism and

sought to address issues of justice and accountability. And then we come into the 21st century. In the early 2000s, Argentina, which was once a poster child for neoliberalism thanks to the actions of the dictatorship, found itself in the throes of a devastating economic crisis. This meltdown didn't just affect the economy. It ignited a wave of social movements that were far more confrontational, radical, and anarchistic than before. We saw the rise of militant neighbourhood assemblies, factory takeovers, and intense

street protests. What was happening in Argentina was the direct result of more than two decades of so-called free market reforms and structural adjustment programs. These policies had left the economy in ruins, with poverty and unemployment levels soaring. By the time the crisis hit, poverty had shot up from 31% to 53%, and unemployment had jumped to 21.4%, nearly a quarter of the country's population. Out of this chaos came the Picteros, a new movement of unemployed workers who turned their anger into direct action. They didn't just march in protest, they blocked roads demanding work and dignity.

But what set the Picteros apart from traditional unions was their commitment to horizontal organizing and direct action. They knew that those unions didn't represent them, and they wanted something more than just jobs. They wanted dignity, and they wanted a say in how society was run. One of the voices from this movement, a woman from the Solano neighborhood in Buenos Aires, captured this spirit when she said, I dream of my children finding a way of life here, away from the despair the system gives us, we're building something new, politics without political parties.

End quote. The Picteros didn't just demand employment, they wanted meaningful work that gave them control over their lives. They weren't looking to be folded back into the capitalist system that had failed them. Instead, they called themselves autonomous workers, envision a society where people took charge of their communities and their futures. And then came December 2001. On the 19th, the crisis hit a boiling point. All across the country, people took to the streets. Unemployed workers, middle class families, and whole neighborhoods. They were united in their demands. An end to the government's economic policies,

and the resignation of the deeply unpopular President Fernando de la Rua. After two days of street battles with police, the government collapsed. In the wake of this upheaval, neighborhood assemblies popped up everywhere, and the pique d'éros intensified their efforts. Millions of workers across Argentina joined a general strike. In Buenos Aires alone, over a million people defied a government-imposed state of emergency, flooding the streets in protest. It wasn't just about venting frustration, it was about reclaiming their power. In a way, the ideas of anarchism—self-management, decentralization, and direct action—were

being put into practice on a truly massive scale, even though anarchist groups themselves didn't necessarily lead the charge. The fight wasn't just on the streets though. It had to happen in the factories, the fields, across all the sectors of society. They couldn't just remove politicians. They had to dismantle the entire system of exploitation and replace it with something radically different. A key piece of this puzzle was the rise of the fábricas recuperadas, or reclaimed factories. These takeovers didn't start with the 2001 uprising though. The first

occupation happened back in 1996, when workers in a coal storage plant took control after the bosses abandoned it. More factories followed suit, with workers stepping in when owners fled. But they weren't even trying to launch an offensive against capitalism, they were simply trying to survive. To hold on to their livelihoods in an economy that had pushed them to the edge. By the time of the Argentine uprising in December 2001, over 170 factories had been reclaimed, with some 10,000 workers taking part in this new form of collective labour.

The message was clear. When the bosses leave, the workers are more than capable of keeping things running. In these reclaimed factories, they got rid of the traditional management hierarchies amid collective decisions and shared income equally. It was a living example of one potential way society could function without the capitalist class. In the midst of the Argentine economic collapse, these workers didn't just resist, they were also producing. Hence their banner of Occupar, Resistar, Procir. Occupy, Resist, Produce. They knew it was possible to not just fight, but to build something new from the ground

up. Not just to survive, but to lay the foundations for a new society. The cries of quesivayan toros, or basically out with all of them, echoed the widespread disillusionment with the entire political class. But this sentiment needed to be transformed into something more substantial. A proper political framework to drive the momentum forward. But this alternative, this framework, this potentially anarchist framework, wasn't

fully developed among the population at the time. There were some comrades who were working towards building such a framework, but much of the movements, particularly of the left, were focused on elections as a way forward. Their logic was simple. A left-leaning government could introduce policies to alleviate the situation and prevent the open repression of popular movements. But what would this really achieve? It risked the transfer of another struggle from the streets, from the workplaces, from

the hands of the people, into the hands of a new set of politicians. Shifting the focus from the masses to a few leaders operating within clearly capitalist institutions. The elections were not important. The fight wasn't about winning seats in the government. And that needed to be understood. The fight was about building a true popular power. Que se vayan todos, out with all of them, rejecting not just individuals, but the entire political,

social, and economic power structures. Even though the Argentine people were not identifying as anarchists, they were applying anarchist principles in many aspects of their struggles. Just like the Zapatistas and Chiapas who rose up in 1994 with a rallying cry, Ya Basta, or enough already. The Argentine uprising was a clear rejection of state power and capitalism. Votes can't last forever, but they could plant the seeds of a new society, one built from below.

But the movement was torn between the two approaches, of whether factories should be managed by workers under state ownership or if they should be completely worker owned. Some argue that demanding expropriation by the state wasn't a real solution within a capitalist free work, because the state itself was responsible for the conditions they found themselves in. But even though they argue the true workers power came from the workers controlling their own production, on the flip side, cooperatives don't really address the deeper issues of capitalism. Cooperativism doesn't inherently challenge capitalist relations of production. It just tinkers with the surface issues like monopolies, internal structures, and competition.

Building a network of cooperatives can be valuable, but it's not going to create a subsystem capable of toppling capitalism. Anarchism, and specifically anarchist communist ideas, propose something far more transformative. Abolishing all forms of power exercised by a minority, whether the bourgeoisie or the state. Assuming control of not just factories and fields, but all of society. It's not a choice between cooperatives or state-managed workplaces. It's about creating conditions for all workers and all people to self-organize. And such reforms, such as reforms for workers to have control of their workplaces, are merely steps toward a much larger goal, which should be kept in mind in that struggle. These experiences and this history

in Argentina shows us that anarchist ideas are not just lofty dreams. They're grounded in real struggles of working people, consciously or unconsciously, proving that a society without bosses, managers, and exploitation is possible. Every social struggle, every revolutionary action is another step towards building that world. Through these movements, through these actions, through these struggles, we can see the foundation of a new society. And to the people of Argentina, who now face the rule of a new right-wing menace, I implore you to stand up and say once again, Que se vayan todos. I work with all of them. War power to all the people.

Peace. media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. And we are super excited to tell you about our new show, Dudes on Dudes. We're spilling all the behind-the-scenes stories, crazy details, and honestly, just

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Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. every Thursday. and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? And like, what's the history behind bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.

Hi, I'm Maite Gomez-Rejón. Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back. And this season we're taking a bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the Margarita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba, and the Piñu Colada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for History

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