It Could Happen Here Weekly 240

Summary

Podcast Summary

Behind the Bastards: It Could Happen Here Weekly 240

Date: July 11, 2026 | Host: Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

This episode of "It Could Happen Here Weekly" brings together a spectrum of stories and analysis focused on the intersection of politics, rights, activism, and the ongoing distress signals from American and global civil society. The episode weaves together several key segments:

• A case study on how pro-Palestine activism manifested at recent World Cups and the limits of government attempts to shape public sentiment.
• A deep-dive, multi-part philosophical and practical critique of the concept of human rights: their history, application, flaws, and political weaponization.
• A dispatch from the America 250 “State Fair” in D.C., examining how nationalist and right-wing messaging finds cultural expression.
• The latest update and panel reaction to the Graham Platner scandal in Maine politics and its implications for organizing and the Democratic Party.
• A rundown of significant policy and news updates, including the introduction of a controversial police immunity law in France, the U.S. government’s practices concerning Iranian asylum-seekers, and recent ICE-involved shootings. The tone is critical, unsparing, sometimes wry, and deeply engaged with the realities of organizing, state violence, and the present American crisis.

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1. Palestine at the World Cup: Solidarity, Sports, and the Limits of Control

Host: Danael Kurd (01:00–19:35)

Key Points:

• FIFA's Contradictions: The World Cup repeatedly showcases both heartwarming globalism and egregious discrimination, especially against teams and fans from the global south. Notable exclusions included a Somali referee and the head of the Palestine Football Association.
• Hostility & Visibility: Despite a hostile U.S. political backdrop, grassroots pro-Palestinian solidarity flourished, with Bosnian and Moroccan fans leading symbolic and direct actions for Palestine (e.g., chanting, banners).
• Spontaneous & Organized Action:
  • "The story of Palestine at the World Cup is more layered than [recent events]."
  • Much of the 2022 Qatar World Cup’s solidarity was the result of coordinated campaigns by Qatari Youth Opposed to Normalization (QAYON)—from keffiyeh armbands to strategic actions targeting Israeli journalists.
    • "They called on local businesses to display signs that they were compliant with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement."
  • The 48th minute chants reference the 1948 Nakba, making every match a platform for political memory.
• Abraham Accords and Discontent:
  • Accords normalizing Israel-Arab relations were described as "historic breakthroughs," but deeply unpopular among ordinary Arabs—normalization without justice for Palestine is seen as betrayal.
    • "88% of Arabs across 13 countries rejected normalization with Israel," citing ongoing occupation.
  • "Peace initiatives that don't address the root causes of conflict don't actually create peace... They create a different kind of violence, a structural violence."
• Sports as Soft Power (Sports Normalization):
  • Western boycotts of Russia post-Ukraine highlighted double standards: political stands in sport are tolerated (or encouraged) when they align with Western priorities—but discouraged when it comes to Palestine.
    • "Mixing sports with politics was apparently fine when it was about sanctioning Russia... but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights."
• Morocco Case Study:
  • Government signed the Abraham Accords, but Moroccan players and fans still centered Palestine publicly. "Governments can sign papers but they can't really sign on behalf of public sentiment."
• The Lasting Lesson:
  • "The silence that has been imposed on this question... is not the consent it pretends to be. Governments can sign accords, but they can't erase what people know."
  • “[P]alestine keeps showing up uninvited at every table that tries to exclude it.”

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2. Deep Critique: The Flaws and Double Standards of Human Rights

Core Hosts: Mick, James Stout, Mia Wong | Two-Part, In-Depth Discussion (23:24–80:53)

Historical & Theoretical Foundations (23:24–47:02)

• Origin of Rights:
  • Natural rights traced to Zoroastrianism, Greek and Roman philosophy; John Locke’s formulation of life, liberty, and estate as inalienable.
  • "The social contract is often framed as consensual... I didn't agree to anything. I must have missed that meeting." (Mick, 28:43)
• Critiques of Rights:
  • Rights are only “real” when enshrined in law—but legality is not morality.
  • Rights often invoked as rhetorical cover for wars of aggression (e.g., Iraq, Georgia, Russia, Kosovo).
  • “We’re very selective when these rights need to be enforced or when there’s violence needed for it to be enforced.” (Mia, 37:19)
  • Rights fail when the state refuses to enforce them—as seen in Myanmar and elsewhere.

Simone Weil and Obligations vs Rights (40:45–48:31)

• Obligations as Deeper than Rights:
  • Weil favors "obligations"—fundamental duties to each other, not contingent on legal codification.
  • Legal rights can be stripped (Handmaid's Tale, ISIS slavery)—while the human sense of obligation persists, outside of statutes.
  • “Legality has nothing to do with it... The lack of any empirical data does not mean that there isn’t something there, even if it’s just like a gut feeling or a sense of justice.” (Mick, 47:03)

Arendt, Agamben: "The Right to Have Rights" & "States of Exception" (48:47–75:08)

• Hannah Arendt:
  • Distinction between "zoe" (bare life) and "bios" (political life). Rights only meaningful within a political community.
  • Stateless persons, migrants, and outcasts often lack the “right to have rights” (i.e., a community or state willing to enforce their rights).
  • Example: Sentinelese—rights are moot absent a community or sovereign to enforce.
• Agamben’s Homo Sacer & States of Exception:
  • "Homo sacer": a person stripped of rights by power, existing in lawless limbo (“state of exception”).
  • Modern parallels: Guantanamo Bay, the border zone, racialized policing, revocation of rights via reclassification.
    • “It is simply the state decides that you’re not part of a political community... and suddenly we can play like Hotel California 24/7 and drive you insane.” (Mick, 71:11)
  • Rights become transactional and subject to sudden revocation, often by bureaucratic or legalistic sleight-of-hand.

Practical Implications & Hopeful Actions (76:08–80:53)

• Politics of Obligation:
  • Direct actions—providing shelter or assistance, feeding the unhoused—are concrete ways of practicing obligation, rather than playing the rights lottery.
  • Putting radical politics into daily practice, e.g., housing a person in need, is upheld as “protecting human rights.”
    • "The world I want to live in is one where someone can feel safe in situations like that." (Mick, 78:52)
  • "If you put a trans girl on your couch, that's also protecting human rights." (Mia, 80:28)

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3. Dispatch: America 250 “State Fair”—A Report from Inside

Guest: Laura Jadid with Robert Evans and James Stout (81:09–104:29)

Field Notes & Memorable Quotes

• Atmosphere:
  • “Like if a Ren faire and a trade show had a baby and the baby had the worst aspects of both.” (Juliana/Laura, 83:13)
  • Audience: “Cheerfully rancid... all real Americans out here supporting Trump... cheerfully rancid vibes.”
• Exhibits:
  • Department of Justice booth: “card table, three folding chairs, a battered backdrop and nothing else... it was incredible and perfect. So heavy handed.” (Juliana/Laura, 82:51)
  • State booths varied from Oregon’s “most ‘f**k you’ award” (empty, bare) to Puerto Rico’s fully corporate/IRS haven feel and Georgia’s AI-generated poultry art.
  • DC Metro had a full mockup train, “an apolitical celebration of a real achievement,” hidden behind the Christian revival tent: “can’t have anything Americans broadly could enjoy.” (Juliana/Laura, 87:43)
  • Hyper-nationalist “art” exhibit: endless giant paintings of the American flag—artist quote: “...Yet still to this day, my favorite work of art is the Star Spangled Banner.” (Juliana/Laura, 90:26)
• Culture War Overload:
  • Dept of Education tent “100% banners by far right organizations... all about vouchers, homeschool, and Christian nation.” (Juliana/Laura)
  • “It all felt AI generated... my friend is trapped in an AI-generated version of reality.”
• Disaster Management Failure:
  • When severe rain hit, crowd safety protocols failed, with mass confusion, bottlenecks, and near-stampede conditions while people waited fruitlessly to see Trump speak.
    • “It’s like being in a really badly rendered video game. But it’s real, and you’re touching grass at the same time.” (Juliana/Laura, 84:29)
• Takeaway:
  • “Everything was so empty. It was such an empty thing. Everything was so sad... Small and lazy and trashy and cheap.” (Juliana/Laura, 101:25)
  • “It really did... it was just like the ethos of AI infused this place[, like] the backrooms.” (Juliana/Laura, 101:54)
  • “If I was giving a Yelp review... it feels right in this era of America to be, like, depressed and disappointed.” (Juliana/Laura, 103:10)

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4. News & Political Updates—Panel Discussion

Panel: Robert Evans, Mia Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout, Bill

Key Segments

A. Quick Round-up (104:48–109:01)

• Israeli National Security Minister Ben Gvir cancels U.N. trip amid war crimes protest.
• Ongoing confusion/rumors about Mitch McConnell’s health—“we could see a historic Weekend at Bernie’s event in American politics.”
• San Diego defunding and closing 30+ public toilets amid national and local infrastructure issues.
• In France, the lower house passes a dangerous police immunity law that would treat any police killing as justified until proven otherwise—a “dangerous bill” likely to pass.

B. Graham Platner Scandal in Maine: Sexual Assault Allegation and Fallout (109:01–127:16)

• Allegations: Jenny Rasico comes forward alleging she was raped by Platner in 2021, with strong corroborating evidence.
  • “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person.” (Rasico, 111:36)
• Immediate Repercussions: He loses endorsements/support; leading Democrats and activists call on him to drop out.
• Panel Reflection:
  • “It's quite common for someone who is a rapist to also be extremely charismatic.” (Bill, 119:39)
  • Panel underscores electoral risk when movements overly center charismatic figures; personal flaws can destroy collective organizing.
• Media Critique:
  • Ryan Grim and Dropsite’s attempts to inject doubt into the allegation (“soft rape apology”) are heavily criticized.
  • Consent Clarity: “If you withdraw consent at any time, no matter what happened before, it is withdrawn... if you stop consenting, it becomes assault.” (Bill, 129:23)
• Broader Reflection:
  • Panel notes sexual violence transcends left/right politics and is a structural issue inherent to systems of power.
  • “[When you say] ‘it’s only those guys’ ... you’ve created a place in which the people who do that have cover... Bad people do that—so no one I agree with would.”
• Procedural Wrap: Details on how the Maine primary replacement process will proceed.

C. Policy and Civil Rights Updates (132:30–151:25)

• Tariff Policy: New U.S. tariffs on forced-labor goods, but in practice a mechanism to reimpose wide tariffs for protectionism—hypocrisy given U.S. use of prison labor.
• US-Iran Asylum Scandal: Lawsuit alleges U.S. has been passing asylum-seekers’ confidential information directly to the Iranian government, resulting in deportees being targeted by IRGC.
  • “These accusations are crazy... not crazy in that I think they’re false... crazy in that they are abhorrent and disgusting.”
• ICE Shootings: At least two cases where ICE shot or killed undocumented immigrants during panic-inducing, plainclothes raids. Community outrage grows in Houston protests.
  • “They come here to work. So what if they don’t got papers? So what?” (Juliana, 150:59)

D. July 4th America 250 & Trump’s Rhetoric (151:25–157:14)

• America250 “Success”: Events marked by logistical chaos, no fireworks at midnight, and public frustration.
• Trump’s July 4th & Mount Rushmore Speeches:
  • Railed against “communism” as the greatest threat since WWI/II or 9/11. “America will never be a communist country. It’s like a cancer. You gotta cut it out and you gotta cut it out fast.”
  • “You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You cannot be both.” (Trump clip, 156:12)
• Panel Reaction:
  • “It’s just really stunning thinking about this is how the President of the United States is spending the 250th anniversary of the country.” (Robert Evans, 156:50)
  • General sentiment: The events, messaging, and leadership are all deeply reflective of the malaise and decay in present-day American democracy.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On solidarity at the World Cup:
  “Palestine keeps showing up uninvited at every table that tries to exclude it—and I think it will keep doing that.” (Danael Kurd, ~18:59)
• On human rights:
  “Rights only matter insofar as someone is prepared to use force to protect them... Those rights are backed up by people who... have fought for them, not because the rights enforce themselves.” (Mia Wong, 39:40)
• On responsibilities:
  “Obligations exist outside [of legal constructs]... it speaks to the nature of rights that your first instinct is not to say ‘oh, but that's against the law.’ Your first instinct is to say ‘that’s fucked up’.” (Mick & Mia, 45:28)
• Philosophy:
  “The right to have rights... The silence that has been imposed on this question is not the consent it pretends to be.”
• On the State Fair:
  “Everything was so soulless... small and lazy and trashy and cheap.” (Laura Jadid, 101:25)
• On the Platner scandal:
  “Sexual violence and getting away with it? That’s a structural force... regardless of what people’s stated politics are.”
• On Trump's rhetoric:
  "You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America... You cannot be both." (Trump, 156:12)
• On civil disobedience:
  "If the world you want to live in is one where that person can feel safe, then build it yourself. ... Put someone in need on your couch." (Mia & Mick, ~80:28)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:00–19:35 Palestine, the World Cup, and solidarity
• 23:24–80:53 Deep Critique: Human Rights—theory, history, critique
• 81:09–104:29 America250 State Fair—on-the-ground report
• 104:48–109:01 Rapid news round-up
• 109:01–127:16 Platner scandal: news, analysis, media response
• 132:30–151:25 Civil rights, tariffs, US-Iran asylum revelations, ICE shootings
• 151:25–157:14 July 4th, America250, Trump’s anti-communist rhetoric

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Conclusion

This episode is a tapestry of radical critique, lived experience, and urgent news that refuses to be comforted by American myth or empty formalisms. It makes the case through history, philosophy, and first-hand reporting that rights and freedoms—whether enshrined in constitutions or celebrated with fireworks—are only real when actively defended by ordinary people. Injustice, democratic decay, and “AI-generated” cultural hollowness are the backdrop, but collective action, confrontation with power, and solidarity remain the living threads.

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For more in-depth discussion on any of these segments, please refer to noted timestamps.

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Sources & further reading are available in the episode description.

Transcript

[Danael Kurd]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Mick]

Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff youf Should Know, and we're submitting our most science Y episodes for your peer review with our new Stuff youf Should Know. Doing Science playlist out now you want to know about Occam's Razor? The simplest explanation is usually the right one. We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park. Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody. Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat and listen to the stuff you should know. Doing Science Playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Juliana]

Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Where's my phone?

[Bill]

Juliana, maybe we can ask an actual human.

[Juliana]

Yes, because I have questions, and I bet you do too. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. And I still need to know why my poop's been green.

[Bill]

We've got actual people. And answering these exact questions. Listen to Bill and Juliana, the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Hey, Portlandia fans, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

[Mick]

The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form.

[Danael Kurd]

We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

[Juliana]

So.

[Mick]

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life.

[James Stout]

Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director

[Mick]

Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself, Kyle MacLachlan, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

[Robert Evans]

Kyle is going for it.

[Danael Kurd]

Here you fully improvised not just words, but a song about.

[Mia Wong]

Well, I thought you were all going

[James Stout]

to write a song.

[Juliana]

I remember you thinking that.

[Danael Kurd]

Listen to Podlandia AO Rewatch starting July 16th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

[James Stout]

Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal, so there

[Bill]

goes my big idea for the commercial.

[James Stout]

Give it a [e-mail] switch upfront payment

[Juliana]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50g. Me slow when network is busy see terms.

[James Stout]

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

[Danael Kurd]

Hello everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Danael Kurd and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I want to talk about football, soccer, whatever, and I'll just start by saying obviously FIFA is a terrible, terrible organization. And while there are many heartwarming events in this World cup, the World cup gets me, gets a lot of us. Despite everything, there have also been egregious incidents against players and referees and fans from the global south. Take for example, what happened to the Somali referee who wasn't allowed to come into the US to do his job. He was kept hours and hours in the airport before being unceremoniously returned to Somalia. Similarly, the head of the Palestine Football association was denied a visa into the United States, not allowed to come to the World cup on US soil. This is in spite of the fact that FIFA invited association heads from around the world to attend, and he did attend the opening game in Mexico City, or one of the worst incidents, if you can call it that, the way that the Iranian team has been treated. They weren't allowed to stay in the US despite the games they were playing in this country were constantly made to fly back to Mexico after every game. Clearly they were put at a severe disadvantage because they weren't allowed to rest and recuperate like the other teams. And listen, I'm not going to say there's a conspiracy, but having not one but three goals discounted by various eventually leading to their elimination from the tournament just adds insult to injury. But like I said, of course there are many heartwarming stories. For me as a Palestinian, it's been great to see how much Palestine keeps popping up, despite the fact that the environment in the United States is much more hostile on this issue than Qatar. The last World cup, people are still talking about Palestine and advocating for Palestine. Thousands of Bosnian supporters, for example, turned Toronto into a sea of blue as they marched toward the stadium for the Canada Match chanting Free Palestine. And they did that in a number of places. Inglewood, Seattle. They also chanted Palestine within the stadiums in multiple games. At that Canada game, activists also unfurled a Kick Israel out of FIFA banner. And it makes sense, really, when you understand the experience of Bosnians with genocide themselves not too long ago. Similarly, Moroccan fans held Palestinian flags or wore Morocco jerseys with the word Palestine on it. And this showed up on TV at the very opening match in Mexico City. Pro Palestine demonstrators gathered to form a giant human Palestinian flag, and South Korean fans brought Palestinian flags to the tournament, honoring a promise they made during their qualifying when their fans had chanted, we'll take Palestine to the World cup with us in Gaza, Palestinians are watching the games, too. Spain is the favorite team these days because of the government's position on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and because of superstar player Lamin Yamal, who has been unapologetically pro Palestine. Obviously, the genocide that has unfolded in Gaza and the war and killing that continues in the Middle east, in both occupied territories and in Lebanon, are part of the reason why this issue seems to be ever present. But it didn't start with a genocide. The story of Palestine at the World cup is more layered than that. And the 2022 World cup in Qatar was a good demonstration of why Palestine keeps popping up and what Palestine represents to fans, especially Arab ones, then and everyone now. I know it might seem strange to be talking about this now a few years after the fact, but I've been thinking about it a lot, especially given everything that has unfolded since. And I think the World cup moment is one of those events that gets more interesting, not less, as time passes back then as it does now. It's showing us something important, not just about Palestine, but about the limits of what governments can actually control when it comes to what their own people believe. So let's get into it. Palestine did not qualify for the 2022 World Cup. The Palestinian national football team was nowhere near Doha in an official capacity. And yet Arabs from across the region and across the world began referring to Palestine then as the 33rd team. Because Palestine was everywhere at the 2022 World Cup. There were Palestinian flags draped over shoulders in stadiums. Crowds erupted into chants of Multani, the Palestinian anthem. After Arab teams won, one Tunisian fan ran onto the pitch mid match for the Palestinian flag. And when Morocco pulled off their historic upset against Spain, so it's the first African and Arab team to ever reach the semifinals of a World Cup, Moroccan players ran to the crowd and held up the Palestinian flag. This was significant. Morocco had just signed the Abraham Accords with Israel only two years prior to this game, and their players didn't seem to care. Israeli journalists who traveled to Qatar to cover the tournament reported being coldly received, followed, and in some cases physically shut out of interviews by crowds of Arab fans. Some of these reporters were caught on camera claiming to be from other countries, like France or Switzerland. In order to get people to talk to them, some of them masked their logos from their stations. Israeli media at the time expressed something between confusion and outrage. One reporter remarked, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he basically said that the hostility wasn't just coming from governments, as they had assumed. It was coming from ordinary people. And this surprised them, but it shouldn't have. Now, none of this was purely spontaneous. That's the part of the story I find most interesting and the part that gets maybe the least attention. Months before the World cup began, a Qatari activist group called Qatari Youth Opposed to Normalization Q A Y O n started planning. They were founded in 2011, and by 2022, led predominantly by Qatari women, they had been working for over a decade to push back against Qatar's slow drift towards normalizing ties with Israel, which is something the Qatari government had been entertaining, largely under pressure from the United States and from its Gulf neighbors. And in a country where over 80% of people oppose normalization with Israel, this organization, Qatari Youth, had a base, but they had to work carefully because you can't have unsanctioned civil society organizations. There's all sorts of restrictions on independent activism, extremely severe in Khadr. But they saw the World cup as a window, an opportunity to turn what already existed, which was deep, widespread popular solidarity with Palestine, into something visible, coordinated and impossible to ignore. So they got to work. They persuaded Qatar's national team captain to wear a keffiyeh patterned armband before the opening match. And then there was this hashtag, the captain's armband is Palestinian, which started trending on Arabic Twitter. They reached out to Qatari influencers and prominent journalists who amplified the campaign across social media. And they called on local businesses to display signs that they were compliant with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. They also ran a kind of counterintelligence operation against Israeli media, because they were the ones that began identifying Israeli journalists and their logos on social media, flagging them so that Arab fans at the tournament knew who to avoid. And this is how those videos of Israeli broadcasters being turned away kept appearing online. They also organized fans to chant for Palestine at the 48th minute of every match. That's not random. That's a reference to 1948 and to the Nakba, where close to a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes with the founding of the Israeli state. Key members of Qatari youth said the goal was to turn Arab fans from sympathizers into participants. And they were honest about something else too. This only worked because the ground was already ready, as they put it. The campaign would not have succeeded had it not been for people's own proactive support of the Palestinian cause. And that's worth sitting with for a moment. The organizing mattered, the strategy mattered. But the reason it spread so quickly so far is that there was already a fire there. Qatar youth just lit the match. Now, to understand why people were so upset, you have to understand the Abraham Accords. I've talked about it on this podcast before. The normalization agreements brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 between Israel and the UAE, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco. These deals were sold as historic breakthroughs as a new era of peace. And in terms of official diplomatic relations, they were breakthroughs. They were historic. But there was a problem. Nobody asked the people and these accords didn't solve anything. Now, Arab public opinion surveys have consistently shown that that the vast majority of Arabs opposed normalization with Israel absent a resolution to the question of Palestinian statehood and the ongoing occupation. And in the most recent polling before the accords, it was something like 88% of Arabs across 13 countries that rejected normalization with Israel. And nearly 2/3 of those cited the occupation of Palestinian land as their reason. Only 7% cited something like religious objections. The theory had always been that if you normalize relations with Israel without a resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Israel would not have any reason to try and resolve the conflict or address the grievances of Palestinians. That Israel perhaps would become more aggressive if the guardrails were off. So what the Abraham Accords actually did from the perspective of ordinary Arabs was deep in the sense that their governments wouldn't listen to them, were willing to sell them out, sell out the Palestinians for economic and security arrangements that disproportionately benefited ruling classes anyway and the US Israeli security architecture. I've written about this academically and what I found is a kind of paradox at the heart of these so called peace deals. Peace initiatives that don't address the root causes of conflict don't actually create peace. They create a different kind of violence, a structural violence, because they maintain the root causes of conflict, and they enable authoritarian practices by governments. So Israel shares a lot of tools. Surveillance technology, propaganda frameworks, security cooperation, both material and discursive tools. And these have a way of turning up in the hands of governments repressing their own citizens. Now, I'm not saying the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain needed encouragement to repress their own citizens, but it's just another added layer, another way that the red lines shift and new ways that these governments can attack their own citizens and their own activists. For example, Emirati activists involved in anti normalization activities after the accords became targets of surveillance operations. And people who spoke out about the deals faced travel bans. In Bahrain, civil society organizations were newly restricted. The quote, unquote, peace came with a repressive apparatus baked in. Which is exactly why, when thousands of Arabs gathered in Doha's public squares to watch the World cup, the energy around Palestine wasn't some just like emotional sentiment. And it wasn't a relic. It was fresh. It was the anger of people who had just watched their governments make deals they never asked for and deals that were used to oppress them and not solve the Palestinian issue. There is a concept that academics and activists have used called sports normalization. The idea is that sports, because they're presented as apolitical or maybe as entertainment, as a space above politics, they can be used as a soft avenue for normalizing relationships that would be otherwise politically controversial. Israel has long pursued this strategy. The logic is if Israel and Arab athletes compete together, then this image of coexistence replaces the political reality of occupation. You don't need any kind of solution or diplomatic agreement. You just need enough footage of an Israeli in Moroccan shaking hands on the pitch to make people feel like things are moving in a good direction. Qatar youth were very explicit about targeting this. They hosted panels on sports normalization. They released a statement pointing out that Western political boycotts of Russia extended to sporting events after the invasion of Ukraine. And nobody then complained that sports were being mixed up with politics. And to them, the inconsistency was glaring. That mixing sports with politics was apparently fine when it was about sanctioning Russia, you know, admittedly very appropriately, but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights. And this double standard, I've encountered it constantly in my work, the insistence that the Palestinian cause is uniquely problematic, uniquely in need of being kept out of polite conversation or unreasonable. This insistence falls apart the moment you compare it to any other conflict where the west has chosen a side. Now, the World cup made that visible in real time when the Palestinian flag showed up in a stadium in Doha. It wasn't just a symbol of solidarity, it was an argument. It said this issue is not resolved. We have not moved on. It doesn't matter what the Abraham Accords said or how many photo ops, it's going to make any of this go away. Now I want to dwell for a minute on Morocco. Full disclosure, that's the team I support. I hope they go as far as possible. But Morocco is an interesting case and I think it illuminates something about the limits of top down normalization. Like I said, the Moroccan government signed the Abraham Accords and the deal actually included US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Morocco has long occupied itself. A case of a people's right to self determination being traded away in this diplomatic agreement situation. So it was a completely cynical arrangement all around. And yet when Morocco beat Spain and reached the semifinals, their players held up the Palestinian flag. When Morocco beat Portugal and the streets of Rabat and Casablanca erupted, the Palestinian flag was there too. And fans in Doha who had traveled from across North Africa and the Middle east were wearing Palestinian keffiyehs chanting for Palestine. Now the Moroccan government's deal with Israel did not transfer to the Moroccan people. And this is the key insight from the World cup, the one that I keep coming back to, that governments can sign papers but they can't really sign on behalf of public sentiment. And these countries are not democratic. So any kind of push to do something like this seems like a betrayal to their own citizens. And they can't normalize what has not been normalized in the hearts and minds of their own citizens. There is a kind of arrogance in the Abraham Accords framework. The assumption is that if you get the right signatures, if you get the right photo op on the White House lawn, that the conflict can be ignored at that the Palestinian cause can recede. But the World cup was a direct refutation of that assumption. Now I've been thinking about all of this in the context of everything that has happened since the genocide in Gaza. The daily images, the death tolls, the wholesale destruction of Gazan society and the ongoing question of what normalization means now and whether any of those Abraham Accords frameworks can survive what the world has watched happen. Now I do think it will survive. These governments do not care about what happened in Gaza. But what it shows is that the fears around the Abraham Accords were completely founded. Ignoring the Israeli Palestinian conflict would lead to an escalation in the violence. I think the World cup moment was a Preview back in 2022. It told us something about where popular Arab opinion actually was, not where governments claimed it was, and not where Western media assumed it was, but where it actually was. And it showed us that organized strategic activism can channel that sentiment to something visible and politically costly for the forces of normalization. Now, Qatar Youth Opposed to Normalization, was a small group, and they were operating under real restrictions in a country that doesn't allow independent civil society. And they still managed to turn a global sporting event into one of the most visible expressions of Palestinian solidarity in years. And that matters not because a football tournament, a soccer tournament, is going to solve anything. It doesn't. Palestinian families don't get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear into a manufactured consensus that was never real to begin with. And today, in 2026, this is not specific to Arab publics. Even Western publics have seen their governments ignore genocide, have seen their rights recede as their government's ally to protect genocide in a variety of ways. Now, I'll end with something a little more personal. When I watched those World cup crowds back in 2022, when I saw all these different Arabs, Moroccans and Tunisians and Saudis, people from countries that have varying and complicated relationships with this issue, all waving the Palestinian flag, I felt a kind of hope. And it's not naive. It's not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says Palestinians are not alone and the cause is not forgotten. And the silence that has been imposed on this question, attempted silence, top down, for so long, is not the consent it pretends to be. Governments can sign accords, but they can't erase what people know. And they cannot sign away what people feel when they watch a team lose and a flag goes up in a stadium and thousands of people start chanting. Palestine keeps showing up uninvited at every table that tries to exclude it. And I think it will keep doing that. Thank you so much for listening to it could happen here. I'm Daniel Karl. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.

[Bill]

And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.

[Danael Kurd]

And this is our new podcast, Wellness

[Bill]

actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays. And some of it is awesome and

[Danael Kurd]

some of it is, well, actually. Bull. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore.

[Bill]

Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic.

[Danael Kurd]

Like what's the deal with peptides?

[Robert Evans]

What's the deal with GLP1s?

[Danael Kurd]

What's the deal with creatine?

[Bill]

What's the deal with cupping?

[Danael Kurd]

What's the deal with sleep?

[Bill]

So join us for a weekly dose of stuff. Sanity might actually be just what the

[Juliana]

doctor or the economist ordered.

[Bill]

Listen to wellness actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Juliana]

Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult adhd. I need to look this up. Where's my phone?

[Bill]

Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break.

[Juliana]

You know what? Maybe I should just ask ChatGPT.

[Bill]

Or maybe we can ask an actual human.

[Juliana]

Yes, like a couple sex therapist.

[James Stout]

Whoa.

[Bill]

That escalated quickly.

[Juliana]

But okay, because I have questions.

[Bill]

We have questions.

[Juliana]

And I bet everyone has questions like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that.

[Mick]

How about this one?

[Bill]

Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating?

[Juliana]

Oh, and I still do need to know, why was my poop green that one time?

[Bill]

Hypothetically. Right, Right. Okay. Well, instead of letting the Internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact

[Juliana]

questions and laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online.

[Bill]

Listen to Bill and the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[Mick]

What did black music, food and culture teach us about who we were becoming?

[Juliana]

2016 was sort of that last era

[Mick]

of monoculture where we still consumed things in community. From Beyonce and Rihanna.

[Mia Wong]

Everybody wanted to be Beyonce.

[Danael Kurd]

I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.

[Mick]

To soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through black culture.

[Danael Kurd]

What does it mean to be black

[Mick]

and eat in America?

[Juliana]

So we were this group of people

[Mick]

who knew how to work the land,

[Juliana]

who knew how to live with the land. We. We make it do what it do.

[Mick]

Therapy for black girls is bringing together the conversation shaping black life right now.

[Juliana]

You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being

[Mia Wong]

a black American girl ever.

[Mick]

Therapy for black girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to therapy for black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Juliana]

A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.

[Mick]

So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tocatines to Mato Grosso.

[Juliana]

And he brought a team of executives.

[Danael Kurd]

They were going to help the country

[Juliana]

get in on a gold rush.

[Mick]

Carbon and its derivatives are going to be really the next great commodity that the globe's going to trade.

[Juliana]

But back home in Iowa, trouble was brewing.

[Danael Kurd]

If you live in Iowa, your land,

[Juliana]

your water and your voice could all be at risk.

[Danael Kurd]

Thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter.

[Juliana]

Now people are questioning if his climate solutions have anything to do with climate at all.

[Bill]

Gotta give Bruce and the guys credit.

[Mick]

They're Republicans.

[Bill]

They don't give a about any of this.

[Juliana]

Now on this season of Drilled Carbon Cowboys, the story of how the ethanol

[Danael Kurd]

kingpin of Iowa became the king of

[Juliana]

corn in Brazil and what it tells

[Danael Kurd]

us about the limits of technology and

[Juliana]

markets to solve the climate crisis. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mick]

Before we start, I want to make something inescapably clear. I am not against human rights or the ideals they embody and aspire to. Human rights are in fact a flawed attempt at making the world a better place for all human beings. And it is exactly those flaws that I want to address here. Just having universal human rights does not mean any progress or any improvements in that regard are no longer necessary. To reach those, there needs to be in depth conversations and critiques. I've deliberately chosen a provocative title to start this episode if said title makes it through post production. Because I think the best way to have this conversation is if we temporarily strip any blind assumptions. There should not, for the time being be a standard answer to just default back to. So let me say it again. The concepts and ideals of universal human rights are good and well intended. This is not a plea against either of those. This is just to ensure that we can all engage with the flaws and the criticisms that are currently laid at the feet above those human rights. Please don't hate me. Further, there will be some abstract concepts and theories here. I'll do my best to explain them in layman's terms. Unfortunately, the ivory tower of the university is still a thing and I think this bit should be accessible to everyone, not just university educated people. So if I'm being a bit reductive or unnuanced, it is to make it widely available. And with that, hello everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen. Here I am, Mick. I'm joined by the lovely James Stout. Hi James, how are you doing?

[Mia Wong]

Hey, good. I'm Good. I'm excited about this.

[Mick]

Yeah, we're going to go through a lot today. When I pitched this, I thought it would be just a fun 30 minute episode. And now we're at like 5,000 words and 10 pages of script. So.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, these things can get away from you.

[Mick]

Yes, exactly. And there's always the context. It's always context. You can just throw things out there. But I had to kill some darlings, unfortunately. But there we go. So to start off, we first have to explore a little bit about the history of human rights and how they came to be. When we are talking about rights, we are speaking of either a legal, a social or an ethical rule that is connected to legal systems, social conventions or neuroretical standpoints that are seen as normal for a certain group at a certain time because they evolve, they change. These rights are often inscribed, codified or written down in either legal documents or in the public consciousness. And what I mean by the latter is like omega cue for the bus or the train. It's not something that's often written down in a legal code or something. It's just an unwritten rule that exists between the people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Convention most likely.

[Mick]

If you're going to skip queues, you'll never be prosecuted or fined for that. People will probably think you're a bit of an asshole. So.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 by the UN. Prior to this, the concept of human rights was largely found in the idea of natural rights. The very first historical notion of this that we know of was in the Zoroastrian religion in the Iran region.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Which thought that citizens have a fundamental right to enlightened leadership and that people had the right to rise up against those who are wicked. Similar ideas surrounding rites are also found in like ancient Greek philosophy, like the Epicurean school of thought and the Stoics. Later it was also explicitly named by Roman philosophers which they probably stole from the Greeks like Cicero and Seneca did that. Cicero once said that we are born for justice and that right is based on not upon opinions, but upon nature. And I think this is important to zoom in on a bit. Romans were very, not very religious, but it was a religious society. They had tons of deities. But despite that, it's to nature that Cicero makes that claim.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. As opposed to God or gods.

[Mick]

Right, exactly. There's something innate or something by virtue of being human that that gives you those rights. There was in the 17th century was the English philosopher John Locke who discussed similar things, particularly that fundamental Rights, as he called them, such as life, liberty and estate. Estate, meaning property in this case, are things that could not be handed over or transferred under the social contract. With social contract, it is often meant that you as an individual, have surrendered some of your rights and. And handed them over to the authority under which you fall or to which you are subject. Often this exchange translates to that the authority to which you hand it over will then protect your remaining rights. Usually this is framed as consensual, as a voluntary deal you make or have made with, again, whichever authority happens to hold control over you. I also think it's worth noting that consent implies an active decision with knowledge and circumstances and the ability to consent. And this is just my own personal gripe. Whenever people refer back to the social contract, it's like, I didn't agree to anything. I must have missed that meeting.

[Mia Wong]

But yeah, it relies on this thought experiment.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like this idea of, like, would someone in X circumstance do Y thing? This is what Hobbes does, right?

[Mick]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Like, I guess Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau would be the people you'd want to read if you wanted to learn more about this. In Rojava, they have an explicit social contract.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Which is like a document, and people do get to consent on it. I guess I should say consult rather than consent.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

There was a long consultative process that was part of the formation of the most recent social contract in Rojava, as opposed to requiring universal consensus to be established.

[Mick]

Once again, Rojava's leading the way.

[Bill]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Showing us all the way. But that's relatively unusual.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mick]

We will be touching a little bit on Hobbes and Rousseau.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, Fun.

[Mick]

But to sum the latter bit up, like, the virtue of being born hardly checks my boxes for active consent. But, you know, I think there's some bureaucrats out there who will disagree with me on that. As you said, James, the idea of the social contract came from philosophers like Rousseau and Hobbes and are core to our contemporary understanding of, like, social and political theory and are also foundational to most liberal democracies. The ideas as following. First, there was no state and no authority, and everyone was in a state of nature where human existence was harsh and brute and short.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Nasty brutish. In short is the, like the Hobbes quote that gets deployed a lot about people and things.

[Mick]

Yes. Ignoring the fact that Hobbes was an idiot.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And that life without the state is not nasty, brutish and short. And we have a lot of examples of this.

[Mick]

No, but it's this Retroactive justification, because this is how things are now. So I am inventing a story to justify how we end up here.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Jim Scott, I guess, kind of deals with this a little bit.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

In the art of not being governed when he's talking about the idea that those who exist without the state are behind those who exist within the state, as opposed to just on a different pathway they've chosen to follow.

[Mick]

Yeah, because, like, we need the authority and you need a social contract, because otherwise humanity is just subject to its own worst impulses, like Hunger Games without the dystopian stuff inside it. Therefore, we need authority, which was created to keep this state of nature at bay and make or keep us civilized. And this also then ties in with, like, the monopoly on violence, because that is one of the rights that you surrender under the social contract and is given to, like, specialized government forces in order to use the violence that is necessary to maintain order. As a small side note, the whole state of nature thing is pretty much bullshit. On why that is is discussed at length in the dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. But it would be way too much to also include here. Yeah, you'd have to listen to me all week.

[Mia Wong]

I do have an audiobook of the dawn of Everything and it is. It's a lot of audiobook.

[Mick]

Yeah, it's such a massive book. Just massive.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Just as a small clarification before we move on, there are many more notable figures who've written about, like, natural rights. Francis Hutcheon, Hegel and Thomas Paine. Clearly, there are also many more who did that in the American context, like Thomas Jefferson. But everyone listening to this knows the American stuff way better than I do, so I'll just skip that. Including the parts where Jefferson was pretty selective on who counted as a human being and who didn't.

[Mia Wong]

Many such cases.

[Mick]

Yeah, many such cases. Unfortunately, it has not gone away as much as it should have.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

So the biggest criticism that we have here to address against natural rights is that you can't draw from facts. It's something that you say is out there, but you can prove it through science or through empirical research, through data collection. It's something that comes from tradition, authority, or morality. There is no argument to be made that it exists in the same way as the coffee on my desk as I'm writing this. To put it very bluntly, natural rights being inherent or unalienable is just saying they exist because I say so. It has just as much weight as me claiming that I now own James's chickens, which I now do. It is a fact.

[Mia Wong]

You have to fight me for them. I'm not surrendering the monopoly on chickens.

[Mick]

Yes. You know where I live. You can FedEx them to me.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Mick]

So what has happened is by putting these natural rights into law, we can make them like real or tangible in the sense that there is something you can point to, like that thing says it, or this law says it. It transforms natural rights from something that is scientifically baseless into like a part of the social contract and thus should be upheld by whatever authority, state or government you happen to be subject to. The creation of constitutions in democracies is like a very explicit attempt to make rights real. But as we all know, they're also not infallible. In the wake of the horrors of the Second World War, the international community drafted and voted on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was a massive step at the time. Of the 58 member states at the time, 48 voted in favor of two did not participate, and eight abstained from voting. For those of you who are paying attention, there are so little countries that voted on it because judges were less countries back then. And an exact number is very hard to find because all data sets and all definitions just differ. To this day, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still one of the most significant milestones of the 20th century. It has pretty neutral language in terms of culture, religion, or anything particular political system. It also became a stepping stone for like the International Bill of Human Rights and several different treaties with all 193 UN member states as of now, signing at least one or more of those treaties. Yeah, I can't understate how massive that achievement is. And before we were actually criticizing it, I do think it's right to recognize it, but it isn't perfect, which is why we're also going to kick against its shinbone for a while. So to the surprise of no one, human rights are flawed but good. They've also been used pretty disingenuously, and that is where I like to start. They have often been used as like a justification for war to obscure or hide other motivations. Like think of the Iraq war. No, not, not that one. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Yeah, the Saddam government publicly stated that they wanted to support a revolutionary government in Kuwait, that it was for Arab solidarity. They also cited that the current administration over there was incredibly unpopular and thus they had to invade for greater political and economic freedom for the Kuwaiti people. What was widely seen as like the actual motivations were oil resources and more regional control. Because, of course, Russia has also used human rights as a reason for invading. You look very surprised at that, James.

[Mia Wong]

I was about to say the same thing. Russia loves to do this.

[Mick]

Yes, they did it in 2008 when they invaded Georgia because they had to protect Russian citizens and peacekeepers, while it was mainly about preventing NATO expansion in the newly independent Georgia. Same thing happened in 2014 when they first invaded Ukraine because Russian speakers had to be protected from Ukrainian fascists. There was also the Serbian forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the Serbs were under threat, and India's campaign into East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh. Although in that latter one, the motivations seem a bit more muddled because it appears there's some genuine concern there for human rights or humanitarian aid. But again, models limit time.

[Mia Wong]

And I think it's always telling where states decide that it's important to go to war for human rights and where they don't.

[Bill]

Right.

[Mick]

Yeah, we're very selective when these rights need to be enforced or when there's violence needed for it to be enforced.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. No one's rolling out to defend the human rights of Rohingya people in Myanmar, for example.

[Mick]

No, exactly. And like, I think you said this at some point, but, like, when in Myanmar the revolution started, there was like an explicit appeal to, like, human rights.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And like a very well elucidated appeal to, like, R2P.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

The right to protect. I think I'd have to check. Responsibility to protect. It's what R2P stands for. Not right, but responsibility. So it's a responsibility of a state to intervene in the internal affairs of another state if human rights are being abused in that state. It's the best of my understanding of it anyway. And this is as it's been explained to me by many, many young people in Myanmar. I actually spoke to a young person in Myanmar who had orchestrated, at great risk of their life, a massive R2P, like, floating sort of symbol that could be seen from the air, I guess, explicitly to alert the world that our human rights are being violated and we have human rights. So surely the people who guarantee those

[James Stout]

rights

[Mia Wong]

will intervene to protect those rights. So, like, you saw signs explicitly calling on asean, on the un, on the European Union, on the United States, and like, also people trying to make signs that were very funny so that they would go viral in English because they wanted the world to see them. And they figured if the world saw them, they'd be like, huh? Human rights are being violated. And it took a lot of dead People for I think because that's a very entrenched view that many of us have right that we have these rights. We do. But rights only matter insofar as they are someone is prepared to use force to protect them in this instance. And nobody was apart from the people of Myanmar themselves.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

So rights based discourse still vary. Very common there. Now those rights are backed up by people who initially used homemade and 3D printed firearms and now have much better firearms. But the reason those people have those rights is because they fought for them, not because the rights enforced themselves or any other state decided to enforce them.

[Mick]

No, exactly. It is pretty revealing that when a people desperately in need for their rights to be upheld by some force or by some army or whatever, and they're making explicit appeals to it and the international community as a whole is like,

[Mia Wong]

nah, they get a close horizon areas,

[Mick]

but they were unalienable.

[Mia Wong]

So yeah, great.

[Mick]

They still technically had them sort of maybe, right?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

They should have bought a premium package. And Also, yes, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yeah, I did not forget it was very much justified as a mission of liberation and freeing people from a dictator while it was much again, oil and influence as it always is. Which is why you will now have to listen to ads so cool Zone media can get some much needed oil and influence.

[Mia Wong]

Nice.

[Mick]

And we're back now loaded with petrodollars. It is time to dive deeper into the critiques. So someone whose work was incredibly influential in the realm of philosophy and ethics was Simone Vail James, I think you may have heard of her.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, she was with the Darutti Column, an international group. She burned herself frying eggs in a farmhouse that they liberated and had to go home.

[Mick]

Yes, she is a fascinating figure.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Someone who just like forest gumps through the history of amazing things in that time period.

[Mick]

Yes, it was like, I have written this down in the script, but when she was 8 or 9, she refused to eat chocolate or something in solidarity with the soldiers overseas or the soldiers who were fighting in World War I. There's tons of incredible stuff in there.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, amazing.

[Mick]

I didn't know that. Like she taught at a university. But then in 1934 she took a leave of absence from teaching to work anonymously in two different labor factories because she better wanted to understand the working class. A few years later she would join the anarchist Doruti column, as you said, and fight in the Spanish Civil War, where she very badly wanted to fight, despite her outspoken pacifism. But her comrades held her back because she was incredibly nearsighted. They were like, yeah, we don't trust you with this machine gun.

[Danael Kurd]

Which.

[Bill]

Fair.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

And she died eventually at a very young age in 1943, due to her poor health, that is, while she was sick. She would only eat whatever she thought residents of Nazi occupied France would be able to eat and refuse to eat more, as her biographer Richard Ries summed up. As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it, it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.

[Mia Wong]

Wow.

[Mick]

That's badass in my book.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. It's a cool way of phrasing too. It's a beautiful sentence.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Simone was very critical of the concept of rights, and she much preferred to speak of obligations. The latter, she argued, are much more fundamental than rights, because rights are only meaningful to the extent that others respect those rights to her. Rights are relative and related to certain conditions, but obligations exist outside those conditions. On the surface, this may seem like the same criticism we had earlier, that they only exist out there and only because I say so. But I think she moves further than that because she sees a system that has its foundation on these obligations, specifically what she calls the need for a soul. To her, these needs are the things that we as human beings require to thrive. Food, shelter, medicine. But also equality, freedom of opinion, and security in the form of not having any persistent fears. There are many more in her book. I'm not going to delve much deeper in it because I think the gist is out there. Now, this may seem like a very theoretical difference, but let me illustrate what I think is a very strong example of, like, rights versus obligations. I have stolen this metaphor from the philosophize, this podcast, okay. From the episode in which the host discusses the modern day concentration camp and Giorgio Agamben. So all the credit to that host for this metaphor. So let's get back to those chickens that used to belong to James, but that I now own. Like, it is my right, in a legal and economic sense, to sell these at the markets. And it is my right to sell them for any price that I think they are worth. Just as it is my right to very quickly go out of business because nobody wants to buy my $5,000 chickens. And now I'm going to be a bit provocative. James, feel free to respond.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mick]

What if someone were to be forced into prostitution either by coercion or violence?

[James Stout]

Okay.

[Mick]

Why is that wrong? Why is that disgusting and abhorrent?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, for many reasons.

[Mick]

Is the reason for that because this person has a legal Right to not be forced into prostitution or is there something else going on there?

[Mia Wong]

Well, there's a lot. There's a lot more going on there. Right. Like it's a part. Because it's like disgusting to us as people that someone's forced to do this without their consent. And without consenting, like actively to doing a thing that they are being forced to do against their will.

[Mick]

Exactly. But it speaks to the nature of rights that like, your first instinct is not to say, oh, but that's against the law. Your first instinct is to say, like, oh, geez, that's fucked up.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that's wrong.

[Mick]

And it is wrong, because what you're doing is like violating the agency, the autonomy, the dignity, the sense of belonging to themselves and their bodies. It is something that. It is much more a gut feeling, something that exists out there rather than like pointing to Law 23, subsection to paragraph three, whatever.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Mick]

And we can put it in a more concrete example, like the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In short, for those who are not familiar with either the book or the show, it's about a patriarchal totalitarian republic, very religious, where some women are forcibly assigned to powerful and high status men to bear children for them. Now, in this society, the sexual violence, the forced pregnancies, the births, they're entirely legal. Like the people doing it. And that's not just the men in those books. They are doing it within their rights. It is legal what they're doing. But also going to ask you, as like the listener, does that make it any less fucked up?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, like, I guess we can argue the same thing in the Islamic State.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

There were people who were forced into slavery, sexually assaulted, sexual violence was commonplace. It was at least accepted. I'm not familiar with the exact legal structures of the Islamic State with regard to that, but certainly it was widespread and not condemned. And like that doesn't matter. It was still wrong. It was still disgusting.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Which is why people, including people in Kurdistan, decided to take up arms against it.

[Mick]

And very rightfully so.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I guess they're like universal human rights were violated that their rights under the Islamic State and so much as that was a state, which it was. Were not.

[Mick]

Yeah, and we'll get there. Because there's like a difference between having universal rights and having a sovereign that is going to respect them. So, yeah, sorry for that painful metaphor. I think that both of these make it clear, although maybe painfully clear, like legality has nothing to do with it. Like the rights have nothing to do with it. It's your human response and your lack, or the fact that you have a sense of decency that makes something like wrong or right. Yeah, so the right to not be preyed upon can be taken away as are all right, but the sense of injustice, of wrongness, will not. There exists an obligation to the people in your community, regardless of which community or the size of it, to not do horrific shit like that and in the process destroy part of someone's soul and being. The lack of any empirical data does not mean that there isn't something there, even if it's just like a gut feeling or a sense of justice. Will and myself would say it's wrong because we have an obligation to others to respect them. That by like just being born human, you have to have your agency and your autonomy and your dignity respected. But do you know what will destroy your soul and being?

[Mia Wong]

Is it the products and services that support this podcast?

[Mick]

It definitely is.

[James Stout]

They already have.

[Mick]

And we're back after the identity crushing stream of serducts and produces or whatever. To quickly recap what we said before the break, which is that you can say that there is something beyond rights, as rights can conveniently be taken away when those in power think that is what they need to do. It is what Simone Vale would call the difference between being a subject and being an object. Being a subject to something in the sense that you can be subject to a queen through that lens, being a subject means that you're only seen as something that has value rights in relation to the queen. There is a relational aspect here that defines what or who you are. Being seen as an object here means that you exist in and of yourself and that you're not defined because of the definition of something else. I think a good way to view this is to think of someone's child, son or daughter, and thinking of that same person as just themselves. Like in the first one, it's the relation that you emphasize. In the latter, you just see them as a person regardless of like linear image or relation. Yeah, I fear this next part could be rather complex, but I'll do my best to go into like layman's terms. It evolves some pretty complex philosophy about authors whom many people have read but few understand. Yeah, myself included. I'm an idiot. I'm just trying to make it make sense and make it like clear and legible for everyone who hasn't read these authors. And I probably wouldn't recommend reading them. So we're speaking of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. Both made Some major critiques of human rights. And these are in relation to each other to an extent. Sam. To start off, they make distinctions and definitions on what it is to be human and what it is to be recognized as a human being. Arendt uses the terms zoe and bios for this, like the Greek terms.

[Mia Wong]

Okay.

[Mick]

Zoe is the idea and the concept of life in a purely biological sense, as just a biological unit that breathes, that consumes, that defecates.

[Mia Wong]

Okay?

[Mick]

Think of someone living alone in the mountains without anyone else nearby or any contact with other human beings. Like biologically, yes, they are human. There's no denying that. But in terms of bios, meaning a life that has meaning and that is political, it becomes less obvious that that person alone in the mountains can be recognized as human.

[Mia Wong]

Sure, yeah. Part of being human is being part of a community, Right? We only are able to fully realize ourselves in the context of other people.

[Mick]

Exactly. And that is what I'm getting at. Without saying that this person in the mountains is not a human being, but they're isolated and not part of a community. Think of making meaningful moments together with those dear to you. That is, in a sense, the meaning that the term bios kind of points to. Living alone in the woods also means there's no community or no sovereign power to hold someone accountable or to uphold their supposedly unalienable rights. As a little pointer between I'm going to use state power, sovereign or government pretty much interchangeably, because I don't want to repeat the same words or say power every two sentences. I think that would make for a boring listening. But just so you as the listener know that that is somewhat intentional. So it is in the context of the man in the mountains that we should interpret Zoe and Bios not like, as in literal black and white checkboxes, but like, as a nuanced lens to look through. And if we look through this lens, then the following pops up. For someone to have bios, there needs to be a community. There needs to be a sovereign, or as Hannah Arendt would say, a political community that can be any group of people, any country, political identity or ideology that doesn't really matter for you to belong to a political community, whichever one of those categories it is. But that is the most fundamental right, according to Hannah Arendt. And we'll get into why she also calls it, like, the right to have rights. The right to belong to a political community that in turn cherishes you and upholds those rights for you. The man in the woods has no one to do that for him, he lacks a certain political and legal recognition of his humanity that comes with being part of community. If we think of people on the move of migrants or of stateless people, then we can look at them as not having a political community. And in the context of bios, as Aaron puts it, there is also no political community to emphasize their humanity or uphold their human rights. Yeah, because there is no system or sovereign that can uphold them or enforce those ideas.

[Mia Wong]

Sometimes they're able to act collectively to protect each other. Right. Like within that. But that is a different thing. Right, That's.

[Mick]

Yeah, that.

[Mia Wong]

I guess you could call that obligation.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

That is their obligation to each other that they are fulfilling when they do that. Right, like that. As you say, that. No, no powerful entity is obliged to protect their rights. You could look at the example of outdoor detention in the U.S. right. I remember once I was out feeding people in outdoor detention. It's with Prop, actually. He also has a podcast on this network. And we ran into this guy, had like a. He had like a polo on. And I said, the fuck are you doing? Who the fuck is this? And he had like, nice shoes. And I was like, what's happening out here? This guy was from the office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. Because you have a bunch of rights in the U.S. right? That person came along and they had a clipboard and they did a bunch of stuff and it didn't matter.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

There's people. A bunch of those people's rights were being violated. I'm sure the person ticked a bunch of boxes on their which rights are being violated for it didn't feed those people. We did didn't keep them warm that night. We did didn't build them a shelter. We did. It was us fulfilling our obligations to each other, not their theoretical rights under the state, which mattered.

[Mick]

Exactly. And just to point out, like, they're prior to that, not necessarily part of your political community, but you just feel that it is your obligation as a human being to like, I can help these people. I can feed them, I can keep them warm.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, exactly. Like. And is it Locke who does ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

[Mick]

Maybe not Hemingway.

[Mia Wong]

Hemingway wrote the book, but it's based on. No, it's. Ah, man, we gotta Google this. Because otherwise that's not For Whom the Bell Tolls. John Dunn. So other John. I think about that a lot. It's something I would hear, like, occasionally referenced in reference to the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War, including by John McCain, who wrote an obituary for the last American international brigadier to die, which is like one of the less shitty things John McCain did, which he did many shitty things, terrible things. But like inherent in that is the idea that like the bell here being the funerary bell. Right. That like I guess when humanity is devalued, my humanity is devalued and like I am not fully realized as a person if people are being stripped of their dignity in my presence in my community. So like those people are not part of my community, but like my community is being devalued because humanity is being devalued in my community. And the way I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen is by stepping in in order to protect those people, to keep those people safe, to show those people that fundamentally human dignity is guaranteed by other humans and not by other states.

[Mick]

Yeah, very well said. So I have one last example here. If there's too many examples for the listener, I apologize. But I just want to make it clear. So I've done my best to find examples and explain them.

[Bill]

Yeah.

[Mick]

The Sentinelese people in the Bay of Bengal, I think most of you have heard of them. They are like an indigenous people that are isolated on a single island and they've had little to no contact with the mainland or air quotes modern world.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

I think in 2018 or something there was a missionary.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Every few years some bellend will try and go and give them the Bible and they'll kill them or fire arrows at them or.

[Mick]

Yeah, yeah, those people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Now like I can't guarantee that this is how what is going on because I haven't spoken to them obviously, but I'm guessing that they don't speak of human rights and we the non Sentinelese people don't really speak of their right to health care, their right to freedom of opinion. My point is more that like unless there is contact with them and they become like a political community, there are no really not any human rights for them to speak of or to uphold. Like in a sense they don't have human rights because there is no contact and nothing to uphold or enforce at this point, James, this is where we are going to isolate ourselves on an island until it is time for part two.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, perfect.

[Mick]

Looking forward to seeing you very soon again for our next shin kicking badass.

[Mia Wong]

And I am fashioning a bow to defend us from Christian missionaries in boats.

[Mick]

Yes. Let us also throw like spears and arrows at missionaries coming to our isolated island.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Hey everyone, welcome back to it could happen here I am still Mick and I'm still with Jim. James, if for some reason you haven't listened to the first part, I would strongly urge you to do that first because we're going to dive straight in here and I'm afraid you're going to miss a lot of context and a lot of explanation as to what's going on. So, yes, our next shin kicking badass is Giorgio Agamben. I mentioned him before. Some of you may have heard from him, because around the COVID pandemic, his work became incredibly popular. All of the sudden he follows a similar philosophical path that Duthana Arendt already laid out, but he goes like a few steps further. I'm sorry to say that we have once again some concepts to explore before we get to go deeper. Agamben strongly uses the concept of homo sacer. It's a Latin term used during some time in the Roman Republic. It means sacred man or accursed man. It is a person who is banned from society, might be killed by anybody, but must not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. So Akamben sees this as someone who is exiled from society and also not recognized as someone fit or worthy of being used in religious rituals. Like, in fact, the Roman state has declared that this person is just a biological life form. Okay, that's in essence what this boils down to. It upholds like the sovereign power over this person because it is like the Roman state that could enforce this or retract it, but for all intents and purposes, like the homo sacer is like stripped of humanity from political community, essentially rightless. Yeah, and this is also like a really weird position because you're still sort of subject to the state without the state wanting anything to do with you. Almost like a very one directional relationship. And Agamben in turn adapts this concept of the homo sacer into his state of exception. In his work of the same name, he lays out how in times of emergency, usually this is what, like the German philosopher Carl Schmitt often referred to. But Agamben is taking it in a much cooler direction than Carl Schmitt ever did.

[Mia Wong]

Okay.

[Mick]

In times of emergency, where on a political level the decision is made to increase the legal power of the sovereign system, this increase can be an addition of new laws or the annulment of others. The question of how legal this is, this increase in power is often a very, very gray area. Like martial law is a good example. Like there is a real, perceived or imaginary threat to the country or society, and thus whoever is in power Invokes martial law and suddenly all bets are off because they can't be restricted by law in order to deal with that situation, many a dictator has invoked martial law just so they could crush down on everything.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. There are so many places where I could think of where there's been a state of exception or a state of emergency for decades. Right. I mean, to an extent, since the United States passed the Patriot act or like, you know, in the United States we famously have the first 10amendments because the Constitution, which are referred to as a Bill of Rights. Right. Which enshrined many of the things that states are supposed to do to us. Unless you happen to be in the border enforcement zone or subject to some of these, like, sneak and peek warrants that the Patriot act allows. Right. Or other. Other pieces of legislation as well. Right. Like, there are many, many, many examples of this.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Where Hannah Arendt has like, very distinct, like the Zoe and the Bios and Arganbenz sort of sees like an in between area where. Yeah. You become this homo sacer, where, like, you're not really the one, you're not really the other. And in that gray area, just anything can happen.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I think that, like, humans without rights concept is.

[Mick]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Useful.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Mick]

And they become so fluid in a bad way. Like, if I were to arrive at, like, lax, if I make the wrong joke while I'm in the gray zone, then probably every one of my orifices will be searched for, like, drugs or other things. But once I step out of lax, then, like, the LAPD can do that to me.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Mick]

Without a whole different bureaucratic legal animal that they'll have to deal with.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

But like, physically, I just took three steps, you know.

[Mia Wong]

Right. Yeah, yeah. Or like, if you think of the rights that migrants and refugees have.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, they can be in the same space as someone, but have completely different rights. Think about how the Rohingya people are in the camps in Bangladesh, for example. Like, a Bangladeshi person could come there, but they would have very different experiences of the state and their rights, especially if they tried to walk out of that.

[Danael Kurd]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Together.

[Mick]

Or like Palestinians living in certain areas. And the Palestinians will need to be able to identify themselves at each checkpoint where they have to wait two hours and an Israeli person will just walk through it and wave to the guards. They're the exception, so they can be treated differently.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. You literally have roads that they can't go on. Right. But yeah, a Palestinian and Israeli person is a good example. Right. They could be holding hands, walking together and enter a checkpoint, and from the moment they entered to the moment they left, they would have completely divergent experiences.

[Juliana]

Exactly.

[Mick]

And a whole different set of, like, legal rights and legal protections.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Another example that I wrote down here was like, the pandemics and the lockdowns, because I know at least in the Netherlands, when we had lockdowns, it was very unclear as to if it was constitutionally even allowed to do that and if the crisis was severe enough to justify those measures on a legal level.

[Mia Wong]

Right, yeah. It's also a discussion here.

[Mick]

Yes. Well, I'm not an expert on the US So I can only use my own example here at this point. This is where all the critiques sort of start to blend together. And this is where I hope, like, it's going to make the most sense. As Simon Fael already said, like, rights are conditional and require power to uphold them for you as a subject. What we run into now is this distinction between being human as a biological unit or as a political one, because the latter has access to rights, the former doesn't, and as a consequence, that person becomes this homo sacer, in a sense, outside of society. And the protections that that offers, you get all the downsides of being a subject, but none of the benefits, like the social contract sort of becomes revoked.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

The tricky part is that power can also treat you differently based on, like, biological categories or political categories. Like prison labor is a very good example of this. Yep. Under the 13th Amendment, slave labor was made illegal except as a punishment. So as soon as power can give you a punishment, some of your rights just dissipate.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Like another. Another one is healthcare. Like, if you're a CIS woman experiencing, like, menopausal issues, it's relatively easy to get, like, hormone treatments. But if you're a trans woman, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult or downright illegal to get those very same hormones. And that's also like this categorization in order to treat someone differently. So what I think I'm trying to say is that aura can also navigate in such a way that even if you are part of a political community, it can negate the rights and the human rights that should come with it by categorizing you differently. This is Agamben's massive critique, because rather than you getting human rights and getting them respected by power, it makes you dependent on power to recognize and honor it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

In a way, human rights become a liability instead of a protection, because power, the sovereign, the state, can still decide whether or not to recognize you as, like, biological or political.

[Danael Kurd]

One.

[Mick]

Of the most tangible and powerful examples of this not being recognized comes from our good friend James President Gregory Wookie Bush and his seaside resort in Guantanamo Bay. I think I had that correct. Under international law, you're still entitled to have certain human rights when you are detained as a prisoner of war. I'll be citing a little bit from the third Geneva Convention in which this was ratified. The status of POWs only applies in international armed conflict. POWs are usually members of armed forces or of one of the parties to a conflict who fall into the hands of the opposing party. The third Geneva Convention also classifies other categories of people who have the right to POW status or may be treated as such. POWs must be treated humanely in all circumstances. They are protected against any act of violence as well as against intimidation, insults, and public curiosity. International humanitarian law also defines the minimum acceptable conditions of detention, covering such issues as accommodation, food, clothing, hygiene, and medical care. So you know where this is going.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Because Greg Water Walker Bush circumvented this all by proclaiming that certain people were not prisoners of war, but rather enemy combatants and as such, not subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention. It's a bait and switch that is as smart as it is, like, diabolical, because power simply switches around the political community. That applies to you, and suddenly they can do whatever they want to you because you're just the biological unit. It's a linguistic switcheroo.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And it shows how our rights are perceived in US Law to come from the state as guarantor of them.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, because these people were quote, unquote, terrorists, and they weren't fighting on behalf of a state. Therefore our obligations to them and to the state that we're at war with don't exist.

[Mick]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And, like, so they. Therefore, they don't have rights. Because there is not a state to say, hey, you're violating them. Even though many, many Americans, including in many, many court cases, said, hey, you're violating their rights. And even when they were citizens of other countries, like British people were in Guantanamo Bay.

[Bill]

Yeah.

[Mick]

From. From all over the world.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Also, I think there never has been a single conviction because of whatever the fuck happened in Guantanamo Bay.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. They have their own special court. I don't know if they've convicted people there, but they definitely have a court there.

[Mick]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I didn't know about the convictions, but I remember teaching a sociology course and getting into Guantanamo Bay quite a lot. But that was some time ago. I've had students who were. Who served at Guantanamo Bay. And I think it's fair to say that, like, that the psychological damage that does to everybody involved should not be underestimated. Like, it goes back to your idea of like, we have an inherent gut feeling of right and wrong and participating in something that you know to be wrong isn't good for you. It's not. It's not the same as being tortured and waterboarded. But knowing that you are in a place to be clear. I don't know anyone who has participated in any of that, like, enhanced interrogation bullshit. But just being a fucking cook in a place where that happens is still damaging, I'm sure, to you and your sense of being a person who believes in their obligation to others.

[Mick]

Yeah, I would not trust anyone who wouldn't be affected by that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Mick]

That person who is not affected by that is either a psychopath or dead inside. Yeah, I'm not going to be nuanced about that. But this is the core of the entire critique against human rights. Because it is simply the state decides that you're not part of a political community or just cuts you off from it and suddenly we can play like Hotel California 247 and drive you insane, or lack of sleep, too hot or too cold. It's so weird to have something that we are taught is unalienable. It's actually just the premium option, but you can't buy it. There is a power that has to say, oh no, this person has the premium package and you get to have human rights. It is this right to have rights, as Arendt said, that makes it really weird because you're still dependent and unless recognized, you're still just an animal existing out there. It's. Yeah, so, and this is why I thought it would be a good idea to have this discussion because I think we can look at pretty much any continent at the moment and see things that are like, oh, you can see this pattern everywhere.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, it's very relevant to the United States right now, right, because like, we got, you know, largely the Department of Homeland Security going out there and doing stuff which is violative of people's rights, both in US and international law terms. And there's been a response, right, by certain groups of people. And I understand, right, if you have spent your whole life seeing rights as guaranteed by the state and the state is a benevolent actor, that it's hard to make that mind switch. I do understand that, but it actually doesn't matter. And this is very hard for some people to grasp, judging by my replies on BSKY app. Yeah, that's actually illegal. It doesn't matter. Right. Like, people just being like, oh, they can't do that while they're doing. Doesn't matter that they're violating like half the Bill of Rights in a two minute period. They're still doing it. There is no accountability because the state doesn't hold itself accountable. So we need to think of a framework where our assumptions can line up with reality.

[Mick]

You come back to obligations because what do you think is right and wrong to happen to people?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, we'd meet that a lot with outdoor detention, actually. Like when we were feeding people, you'd be like, hey, just trying to get help from folks, you know, like, trying to be like, hey, you know, we're trying to feed these folks and help us out, give us whatever. Like people will be asking friends and their community. And then folks would be like, well, they can't do that. They have the right to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'd be like, cool, do you want to come tell them? Like, we'll see how it goes, I guess. But like, they are doing it and we have an obligation to take care of them. And like, I think people have become very comfortable outsourcing their obligation to the state without realizing that. Therefore they no longer get to decide who gets rights and when. When you do that.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Mick]

I think it's important to highlight like this little switcheroo. If you think of like the Palestine protests. They can't outright ban protests because then you're very much violating the Constitution.

[Mia Wong]

Right. Yeah.

[Mick]

But if you say like, oh, no, but this is not because they're protesting. This is because it's anti Semitic and we need to protect these other people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

Like the acts that are happening on the ground have not really changed, but the way you can approach this from a legal and a political level become a whole different ballgame. And I think that that doesn't pertain to human rights as much as like the example you, you mentioned. But it is again, this bait and switch that keeps happening.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Mick]

And I'm sure everyone listening can think of times or examples of that. And it is not great.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, it's. It's not great.

[Mick]

Yeah. That is all I have. Unfortunately, I don't have any advice or anything on how to deal with this for you as the listener.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

It doesn't help to tell if a cop. They're violating your human rights. They won't listen to.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I think it could be easy for people to assume that this is a hopeless thing. Right. Because the rights only matter when the state decides they matter, therefore, they don't matter. But it can also be a hopeful thing because maybe if we look at the example, I write about this in my book of the Yazidis, when they were in Shanghai and they were on their mountain, and the Islamic State, I think it was ISIS at that time, not sure if it had declared itself the Islamic State, yet was surrounding them and, like, very much coming to violate every single concept of rights and decency that one can imagine for a human being. Right. And I remember interviewing a Yepege commander about this in Rojava and him saying, obviously, I'm translating here. It's an indirect quotation, but we were very disappointed in the states of the world at that moment. And so we decided to go ourselves. And, like, it was a very small number, Right. Like, different accounts have had different numbers of, I think, entirely Kurdish. We can. We can debate if a ZD people are Kurdish or not, but, like, it's not the place for that, is it?

[James Stout]

No.

[Mia Wong]

People from the YPG who went to the mountain and eventually built corridor with their blood, with their bodies. Right. To allow those people to come to Rojava. Now, unfortunately, those people. This is a very good example now, I think about actually. Right. So those people acted as guarantors of someone else's rights by fulfilling their obligation. Now, if we look at where the Yazidi people are, in some part, not every single Yazidi person, but many Yazidi people are still in refugee camps in Iraq. Right. The conditions that they are in. We hear a lot about how bad conditions are for the people in the Islamic State prisons or were. We do not hear as much about how bad conditions are for the Yazidi people, but they are bad.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

They have a right to a much better life. The states of the world are not fulfilling that right. They are not fulfilling their obligation to these people who did nothing other than live the way they've lived for thousands of years. And because that way was considered to be heretical by the Islamic State, they were targeted for genocide.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

And would have been killed in much greater numbers were it not for those people who were willing to fulfill their obligation to go and defend them. And then the states of the world have let them down again. And so, you know, try to try to find a future for themselves. So, like, it's.

[Mick]

We're very good at that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. This is the thing that we do.

[Mick]

I may have a hopeful example.

[Mia Wong]

Nice.

[Mick]

I told you, James, that I had a random person living in my house. And. Well, for you the listeners through the community. It became known to us that there was someone who had fled an unsafe home situation. Legal adult. But I'm not entirely sure how much it should say, but it sounded very serious and we took it very seriously. And I had a spare room at that time. I did not know this person. I only have a first name. I never learned a second name or anything. Never asked for an id. I thought to myself, the world I want to live in is one where someone can feel safe in situations like that. So despite me being a pretty introverted person, I was like, okay, come live here, because you need some place to get back on your feet. You need somewhere to be safe. And that is a way in which you can uphold your obligations to other people also with the safety, security, without persistent fear, a roof over their heads, even just a place to cool down a bit and figure things out. And it would wreck my own political convictions to be able to help in such a situation and not do it because I find it a little uncomfortable to. Of a stranger living in my house. Also, for the record, nothing was stolen. Nothing weird or bad happened. This person just lived here for a week and moved on. Yeah, but that is a way in which, like, you could also, in any small way, like, fulfill your obligation to other people and to live in accordance with, like, your own convictions and your own moral and ideological compass.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I think that's a great example of how you can act according to your obligation. Right. And we can all do that in different ways. Right. Like, different senses. And, like, that's one thing. Like, I liked what you said a lot that, like, if the world you want to live in is one where that person can feel safe, and, like, we only do that by building it ourselves. My perception of politics is that, like, we are wasting our time asking the state to build that world for us. And instead we can build it, like, piece by piece along the way. And I know people perceive anarchism to be chaotic and violent, but most of the time when you're doing anarchism, you're making someone food or giving someone a blanket. Very nice, pleasant things to be doing. It makes me feel better that we can make a world where that happens through our individual actions.

[Mick]

Yeah. Very nice David Graeber metaphor there for the digging a well.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

So like, like Mia likes to say, like, put a trans girl on your couch.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Mick]

That's also protecting human rights.

[Mia Wong]

Yes.

[Mick]

Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I just thought of it. But yeah, put someone on your couch who is in dire deed of a Safe place. Yeah, but be also safe yourself.

[Mia Wong]

Clearly.

[Mick]

I think that's all we have, James. This was depressing and then uplifting enough.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that's what we do here.

[Bill]

Okay.

[Mick]

Yeah. Well, take care everyone, and until next time,

[James Stout]

Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it continuing to happen here. I'm Robert Evans and today I've got a friend of the pod, Laura Jadid, in the studio. Well, not literally in the studio. You know how things work with the Internet, folks. And last weekend, Laura traveled to the Great American State Fair in our nation's beautiful capital of Washington, D.C. where she witnessed a lovely celebration of America's 250th anniversary with no inclement weather whatsoever. Is that right, Laura?

[Juliana]

No, it was charming and beautiful and very professionally done and everyone had a lovely time.

[James Stout]

Awesome stuff, Laura.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Let's start. Was this just kind of as soon as he said he was doing this, you were like, well, I have to be there. This is just simply not an option for me to miss.

[Juliana]

I mean, I definitely wanted to go. I actually was in town for a different. I was there for a religious extremist conference, which is a whole different ball of wax. But it ended early and I was like, you know, I've got several hours before I need to return home. Why don't I go have a nice time at a fair. I haven't been to a fair in a while. I should go to a fair.

[James Stout]

Yeah. So how was it? Walk us through, like step by step, kind of your experiences at this Wonderful event celebrating 250 years as technically a country.

[Juliana]

Yes, Well, I would say the highlight, other than the weather, which we'll get into, was going into. There are. There's these little rooms where they've got booths for states and territories and departments of the government and random sponsors. And my favorite booth I think was probably the Department of Justice because it was completely empty. And by empty, I don't mean there wasn't anybody there. I mean that there was a card table, three folding chairs, a battered backdrop and nothing else.

[James Stout]

Sure, yeah, yeah.

[Juliana]

It was incredible and perfect. It was so heavy handed.

[James Stout]

That's great.

[Juliana]

You know, I know people who use subtext and they're all cowards and there are no cowards in this administration.

[James Stout]

Yeah, your photos of that were really funny. So I guess the layout is like, it almost seems. Sounds like a trade show or something. We've got like these booths for each of the states and a bunch of government agencies and then like, what all is going on?

[Juliana]

Yeah, it's like if a Ren faire and a trade show had a baby and the baby had the worst aspects of both, it was incredible. Like, you, you enter it. And I will say this so you know, people, you've probably seen pictures. Everyone's, I think, seen pictures of what this thing looks like.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

And the Fourth of July was different and that there were a lot of people there because that's the day people came from all over the country to celebrate the Fourth of July in D.C. so it was crowded, but everything else was somehow worse than it looks in the picture because, like, you know, you can see the pictures of like the Temu Arch and you see how bad it looks, but there's nothing like walking towards it. And from a distance it's like, oh, that's an odd thing in the middle of a field, but it looks fine. And then the closer you get, the worse it looks. And it's just this, this kind of slow dawning horror of this, like uncanny valley object. There are the two long buildings that were just going by either side basically for like the length of the Washington Mall. Just little like tent slash trailer buildings with canvas stapled to them. And the canvas had this illusion of columns and bas reliefs and stuff like that. And we've seen, you know, that's in pictures. But walking down the mall and seeing that optical illusion not shift with your perspective is just. It's like being in a really badly rendered video game. But it's real and you're touching grass at the same time. And it's just the whole thing is so eerie and strange. Yeah.

[James Stout]

Yeah. So what can you tell me about, like, the audience? Like, what's the vibe like on the ground when you, when you show up, at least for the first portion of this, before the weather starts to change?

[Juliana]

Yeah. So I've been to a lot of right wing events. It's kind of what I do. I've been, you know, I go to a lot of these and this was less Maga forward. I'm not saying there were no Trump hats or Trump shirts, but it was mostly just like, America. Hell yeah. But everybody there was very clearly Republican. Everyone assumed everyone else was a Republican. The booth operators assumed everybody was a Republican. Pretty safe assumption. It was Maga lite, I'd say. I mean, it was almost more horrifying in that way because it felt like it was kind of realizing their fantasy of, like, all real Americans supporting Trump. You know, these were all the real Americans out here celebrating America. Just regular folks who think Trump's doing a great job and aren't at all disgusted by this fair. So the vibes were kind of cheerfully rancid, I'd say.

[James Stout]

Cheerfully rancid, yeah. What a great term to describe the country as a whole right now. Do you have any kind of like top faves like of, of the, of the, the things you saw like on the ground? They're like what stuff really stuck out to you.

[Juliana]

Yeah. So initially, before the weather went to hell and my focus changed, I decided because, you know, there's been a lot of articles about how absolutely God awful and dumb and silly the Sarahs.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

I decided to do something a little different. I was going to go to every single state and territory booth and rank them. And the variety in the state and territory booths I found interesting. You know, you had Oregon, actually. I gave out some like fake awards when I wrote about this on my substack. And Oregon won the most fuck you award. It was close, but it was just this very small booth. Two of the walls, blank white canvas, kind of plasticky. And then there was just like a thing that said Oregon, the Beaver State. And there was kind of a, a little banner of some of the things that are in Oregon and a Columbia sports like bag just kind of clipped to it with like, just a, you know, a kitchen clip. I was like, yeah, well that, that wins this.

[James Stout]

Yeah, that sounds like Oregon, baby.

[Juliana]

It was great. It was great. Yeah. And then you had like Puerto Rico, which was clearly sponsored by the businesses that want people to go to Puerto Rico for the tax breaks. And it was very lush and there were big screens and it was populated entirely by hot Puerto Rican guys who are teaching middle America how to salsa. And everyone enjoyed that very much so.

[James Stout]

Oh yeah, that sounds good.

[Juliana]

Ye. Georgia's was completely about poultry. AI generated entirely pictures of poultry sponsored by Purdue Chicken.

[James Stout]

Uh huh. That's what I think of when I think of Georgia, of course.

[Juliana]

Poultry, obviously.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

The infamous Georgia poultries. Yes. And so it was like some states went all out. Some states kind of were like, you should visit our state. Some states were like, we sold this booth to a company. And then some states were like, this is a booth we are here.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

We're legally required.

[Juliana]

Yes. We have fulfilled our requirement to have an object at this fair.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

And then there were these like little flashes of normalcy in this otherwise very abnormal event. Those were almost more disconcerting because it was like a glimpse of what might have been. Like the DC Metro had a full scale subway car, like three subway cars linked up, mockup railroad and you go inside and it was like a museum of the history of the Metro and how it's helped D.C. and how it was built and fun facts about the Metro. And it's like kind of a boring exhibit, but it was an apolitical celebration of a real achievement.

[James Stout]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Juliana]

Right. And so, you know, naturally, Freedom250 hid that behind one of the long low buildings and also a 24. 7 Christian Revival tent, just to be sure nobody accidentally stumbled on anything that wasn't just weird as hell.

[James Stout]

Just to make sure there wasn't anything that like Americans broadly could enjoy.

[Juliana]

Exactly. We can't have that. Like, it has to be here, but you don't have to put it out of the way. Don't worry about it.

[James Stout]

Got to be culture war oriented. Yeah.

[Juliana]

Yeah. So that was kind of the most normal. If I had to pick a most abnormal. And it's.

[Danael Kurd]

It's tough.

[Mia Wong]

It's.

[Bill]

It's.

[Juliana]

That's a. That's a crowded field.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

The Department of Education booth was completely 100% banners by far right organizations.

[James Stout]

Awesome. Great. I love to see that. Yeah. So, yeah, just. Just purely the most like racist homeschooling, forward cut school funds, vouchers.

[Mia Wong]

Yay.

[James Stout]

Like teach kids Vietnam didn't happen, gay people don't exist kind of bullshit. Great. A lot of turning point. Yeah.

[Juliana]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Very much. America's a Christian nation.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

Yeah. So weirdly, I was surprised TV USA wasn't in there. One of the ones, Prageru, obviously, you know, the premier university of America. Prageru was in there. Also a thing called Patriot Academy, which I wrote an article about them in 2022, not realizing they would be part of our education system at the time. But I went to their constitutional self defense course at the Whittington center in New Mexico, where we learned how to shoot handgun and also about the biblical origins of our Constitution.

[James Stout]

So that's good.

[Juliana]

Yeah. It seems like a good thing to teach kids. It seems like a really good program to implement maybe, you know, in our school systems.

[James Stout]

Yeah. It's not like I'm not optimistic about the fact that that's the Department of Education's booth.

[Juliana]

Yeah, yeah. But it's not optimal.

[James Stout]

Not. Not great. Yeah. Any other, like, weird kind of culture war signifiers at the booths that are particularly noteworthy?

[Juliana]

I mean, so this has been discussed elsewhere, but it really can't be mentioned enough. It feels like very emblematic of the time we're in. There was like a. I think it was the American. I don't think it was the Innovators Hall. It was America Made in America Hall. It was a much larger building with a lot more exhibits and right in the center of it, taking up the majority of the real estate. Like the largest by far. Just portraits after portrait, large oil paint portraits of the American flag, including a cross draped in the American flag, because why not? And the artist, whose name I guess is Scott Lobido, there's a quote by him above his beautiful works of exactly one subject, which says, and I quote, I have flirted eye to eye with Mona Lisa in Paris. I have touched the thick, painful brushstrokes of Van Gogh, and I gasped in awe at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Yet still to this day, my favorite work of art is the Star Spangled Banner.

[James Stout]

Oh, my God. I'm on this guy's website right now and the first thing on the Scott Libido website is sign my petition to install a giant permanent flag at ground Zero, New York city. It's got 116,000 signatures. Yeah, that really matters.

[Juliana]

Yeah, yeah. No, and if there's one thing the ground zero needs, it's more American flag in the 911 museum. It's not very American. You would never know going down there about patriotism at all.

[James Stout]

He also has a documentary about him that I think is just an ad streaming on Amazon prime and Apple TV called the Relentless Patriot. Oh, God.

[Juliana]

This is a fair adjective. I found the paintings very relentless, personally.

[James Stout]

Yeah, his art is incredible stuff here. There's some very. For over 30 years, America's artist Scott Lobido and America's artist Scott Lobato. Every first letter in that is capitalized, has respectfully painted thousands of renditions of Old Glory on schools, homes, firehouses, police stations, cars and canvases. Scott's past is rather colorful. Okay, so he's some sort of criminal. Yeah, Amazing shit. I really want to know about his colorful life prior to this point.

[Juliana]

Oh, my God. I like to imagine it was some kind of, like, petty theft. And he's like, you know what would make me way more money?

[James Stout]

Yeah, it's just painting forever American flag drawings with Donald Trump in them. Or a fist in one of his works of art.

[Juliana]

Wow. Like. Like a BLM fist or just a fist?

[James Stout]

No, it's like a fist in a flag. And the fist is covered in, like, paint that's like, flag colored.

[Juliana]

That makes sense.

[James Stout]

I'm on Facebook here. He's got a video of it. Let's wait for this fucking thing to start. But it looks like. Yeah, he's unveiling a piece of art. I'm trying to click through to the unveiling because I don't care what this fucker has to say, but it looks like it's just a middle finger. Yeah, it's just a middle finger. Well, and I think it's a four fingered hand. No, no, there's a fifth. There's a fifth, but it's just not a very. Well, it's not like a good. Like the proportions are really bad on this. Anyway, I'm sorry, we're spending way too much time on Scott Lobato.

[Juliana]

I mean, I will say, if America had to have an artist right now, a poorly drawn middle finger, you could do worse. You could have a worse representation.

[James Stout]

Poorly sculpted middle finger. Yes.

[Bill]

Oh, my God.

[James Stout]

Speaking of poorly sculpted middle fingers, maybe our advertisers sell that. I don't know. That's not my job. Foreign. Laura, let's continue. What next do you want to tell us about the great American State? Also, it's not a state fair. It's like the federal. It's like the national fair.

[Juliana]

So, yeah, like the states were there, but kind of as guest stars.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

So I, I don't know. I mean, the fair was just. It was, it was pretty boring there. There was the Ferris wheel. The merry go round from the World Fair was probably the funnest thing there. That was from, you know, a time when America did. But yet, no, it was just kind of a lot of what I've just said, that is, until the rain started. And I think that might be a decent place to go because it seemed that despite this having been forecast for about a week, they had made no plans whatsoever of what would happen if it actually did rain at all.

[James Stout]

Sure. That sounds like the Trump administration. Yeah.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

God wouldn't let that happen.

[Juliana]

No. God loves America. Why would he let it rain? Absolutely not. So at a certain point in the fair, my phone was dying. I had forgotten my charging brick at home, and I decided to charge it at the Department of Justice booth since no one was using it.

[Mia Wong]

Sure.

[Juliana]

So I stuck in there and I, you know, plugged in.

[James Stout]

You pay for the Department of Justice, you know, our tax dollars pay for that power. God damn it.

[Juliana]

My tax dollars? Yes. And no one, you know, I occupy the Department of Justice plugged in my phone. And about five minutes after that, this announcement starts going out over the speakers on loop for, like, you know, at least an hour and a half. Just, you know, due to inclement weather, the fair has been, quote, temporarily postponed. Please make your way to the exits, and then we'll let you back in when the storm blows over. And, you know, I waited an hour to get in like most people, and it was very hot, and they'd taken my nice pen away, and I was kind of salty about that. I didn't want to wait in line again. I'm like, I have electricity here. I have my backup pen. They didn't find. I have Sour Patch Kids, and I'm just going to hang out. So I did that for a while until the fair people found me and kicked me out. And then when I went outside, I found that I was not alone in this logic, that a lot of fairgoers were like, we'll just get wet here instead of getting wet out there.

[James Stout]

Right?

[Juliana]

Because they were telling us, you know, we'll go shelter in your cars or in the surrounding buildings. And, you know, we were encouraged not to bring cars because it's Washington, D.C. and there were a lot of people, and there's only so much parking, so people didn't have cars. And this is, you know, 7pm on a national holiday in the middle of D.C. so the buildings mostly weren't open either. So, you know, rather than go be wet outside, people decided to be wet inside. And this went on for about an hour until the cops showed up. And in a scene that I think would be recognizable to you as well, a line of cops just kind of trundling down the fair in motorcycles. The big difference between this and any other protest was that the cops were nice and not screaming or deploying tear gas and just kind of herded everyone out, you know, past the throngs of thousands already trying to get back in because there was nowhere else for people to go except for to block traffic for blocks and blocks and blocks, which is what they did in the rain. It was. Yeah. And so you've got a crowd of people who are both soaking wet and dehydrated, which is a great combination. And people start dropping as people are want to do. And so ambulances are coming through the crowd constantly. And, you know, this line that we always hear about protests, how they're, you know, they're blocking traffic and what if an emergency vehicle needed to come in? Well, that was very much in play, but for some reason that was okay. In this case, they just put on their sirens and went 2 mph and got through for what I want to say about an hour. This was just everyone standing around waiting to get back in, getting out of the way for ambulances, everyone getting more and more tightly Packed until the crowd started doing this, like, freaky lurches and shoves that, you know, it's like we're on the verge of a stampede here. Because they've planned this so well that, I mean, what else was going to happen? They weren't going to go home. It was temporarily postponed, so.

[James Stout]

Right. You want to come back? Yeah. They said temporary.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

It's a terrible idea.

[Juliana]

Right, yes. Like, don't go home. Hang out here, wait outside the gates and get soaking wet. Because this is safer than being inside the fair where you could, like, do things instead of just standing around and being angry.

[James Stout]

Yeah. It's both saying, like, we want you to stay out where you will be in danger, but also we want to put you into a situation where a lot of you have to move at once.

[Juliana]

Yes, yes. And they'll be upset and the security will be overwhelmed.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

Yeah. It was brilliant. Really, really brilliant stuff. And, you know, the storm continued to get worse. It did not improve. It just got more and more rainy, and people were more and more determined to stay. I mean, there was a little bit of attrition, but mostly, you know, and I fell in with a group that was more determined than most. They were, you know, following the ambulances in because the ambulances were making space, and it was a good way to move up, to just be completely antisocial in this way. Eventually, this group got far enough down the street that it seemed like we were going to make it in, and we kept moving a little bit. And there were the chants of usa I believe God Bless America was sung at one point, but the progress slowed, and then it stopped. And then music began to play just beyond us inside the fence, and the crowd became a bit more agitated, and God bless the USA started playing. And that was a huge catastrophe because, you know, that means the speech is about to start, and we were going to miss Trump speaking, which was a problem. And then Trump started speaking, and this was the moment that I think that the crowd just completely broke their will and spirits broke because the reverberation from the poorly placed speakers was such that you could not understand him. It was kind of a nightmare world for me in a different way, because you could hear Trump's cadence and voice, but not his words. It was just this, like, psychotic babble of nothing. Just watching over us.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Reading transcripts of it, even. It was just like. Honestly, it's like. It's like asmr.

[Danael Kurd]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Right. Like, it's just he's. He's creating at this point, like a Soundscape for them to kind of exist inside for a little while.

[Juliana]

Yeah, yeah. And then amplified by the fact that it was coming at us, you know, from several directions, out of sync. So truly incomprehensible. Just this weird Trumpian gibberish washing over this crowd. And the boo that erupted when they realized they couldn't hear their leader speak. It was just primal.

[James Stout]

Like, that's funny.

[Juliana]

It was great. I was having the. I mean, I was soaking wet, having the best time.

[James Stout]

Yeah, they're all in withdrawal. Yeah, yeah.

[Juliana]

It's like, no. And. And so, you know, he speaks for a while and midnight passes and there have been no fireworks. So the 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, has now passed in D.C. with zero fireworks whatsoever. But, you know, everyone was excited for 850,000 fireworks to go off, which they eventually started to do at around, you know, 12:15. Completely obscured by the trees. Completely obscured.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

Could not see them at all after all that waiting.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I saw your pictures and stuff from it. It's like you could. In, like, the top corner above a tree, you can see little bits of an explosion peeking out. Just the worst fireworks show. So frustrating.

[Robert Evans]

So bad.

[Bill]

Oh, my God.

[Juliana]

So I'm walking out and they're playing Journey. You know, of course, stop believing. Like, I have stopped believing. And then Bon Jovi's living on a prayer. I'm not really living on anything at this point. The smoke is so thick, even if we could have seen it was just an orange glow on the horizon. It's just crackling of bombs.

[James Stout]

It was just like, awesome. Well, we will conclude this story and your experience at the Great American State Fair. But first, here's one last ad break. Okay, so how many times, I'm curious, would you estimate you heard Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA during your time there?

[Juliana]

You know, believe it or not, just before Trump came out, just the one, which was.

[James Stout]

Oh, just the one. That's good. That's good.

[Mia Wong]

That's not bad.

[Juliana]

I was surprised as well. I assumed it would be playing non stop, but I guess that's like Trump's theme song.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanted to keep it, like, for him. It's like a WWF thing that's like what plays him on stage or whatever.

[Juliana]

Exactly, yeah. You know, I feel like this was a small rebellion because there was music playing inside of the state fair, but what you had was like Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville as I'm like, staring at the arch. Just. I mean, they Played Fortunate Son, which I guess isn't surprising.

[James Stout]

Not surprising. Not really proper, but not really proper.

[Juliana]

Katy Perry's Firework played several times because, I mean, you know, of course, firework, fourth of July. So it wasn't really like a big patriotic music fest. It was just kind of like pop music that was barely related and. Or a little sad. It was. Yeah, yeah. Odd.

[James Stout]

Odd. Well, anything else about the event at all that you feel like is really worth getting into here at the. At the end of our tale.

[Juliana]

I mean, the fact that there isn't, I feel like is in itself something like. There it was so empty. It was such an empty thing.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Juliana]

Everything was so sad, so lazy. Small and lazy and trashy and cheap.

[James Stout]

The feeling I kept having that it all felt AI generated, even the stuff that, like, couldn't have been. Like, the arch looked like an AI generated image, just stuck in the real world. And like, a lot of the booths, I mean, there was a lot of AI art there, but it just. Everything. All of your pictures. I kept thinking, it's like my friend is trapped in, like, an AI generated version of reality. That's really lazy.

[Juliana]

It's exactly. That is such a good way to put it. It really did. It was just like the ethos of AI infused this place. Like, it's kind of like if you described. I mean, I feel like I'm comparing everything to the back rooms right now because I just watched it and I'm

[James Stout]

a little obsessed, but, like, a lot of backrooms, vibes. This person who just watched the back rooms.

[Juliana]

Yeah. And yet, I mean, it really was like if somebody described what a building was and then someone who'd never seen one before was like, oh, like this, right? Like, yeah, sure, like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just. No, it was so soulless. I mean, you know, whether or not you care for America, I personally, you know, like, I. Country's got a lot of problems. I would like a lot of them to be better, but, you know, I live here. I'd like it to be nice. And it was just kind of embarrassing. It was sad that this. This is really what we are right now. We are just. Yeah, this, like, soulless. AI esque phoned in. Sad part is like, that part is not even the right word. Like radically far right. Bullshit. Yeah, yeah. It's gross.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah, gross. It's like, funny in a cosmic sense, but mostly depressing, to be honest.

[Juliana]

Yeah, yeah, I. I enjoyed my time there because I enjoy depressing, horrible things, but I can't. I can't say that like, if I was giving a Yelp review, it feels

[James Stout]

right in this era of America to be, like, depressed and disappointed.

[Juliana]

Yeah, yeah. Like, the people. And I've caught myself doing this too. Like, you know, this isn't a representation of who we are. Like, yes, it is.

[James Stout]

No, this is a pretty good reputation. Yeah.

[Juliana]

This is exactly who we are.

[James Stout]

What about.

[Mia Wong]

I got the vibe?

[James Stout]

More or less.

[Juliana]

Yeah. 4.5 stars. Nailed it.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I say that a lot. Like, whenever someone's like, this isn't who we are. Isn't it?

[Mia Wong]

Have you been us?

[Juliana]

I have.

[James Stout]

And this feels like us to me. Yeah. Periodically during, like, the riots in 2020, I'd post some footage and one of the comics would be like, this isn't the America I grew up in.

[Mick]

It's like, I don't know.

[James Stout]

It's the one I grew up in.

[Juliana]

I mean, it wasn't the one I grew up in, but that's because I lived in areas where the police weren't. So. Yeah, it was always there. I just wasn't visiting it, you know?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

Well, Laura, anything else? Pluggables to plug at the end here?

[Juliana]

Yeah, well, you can. You can check out. I've got a [e-mail]. i am Laura Jadeed on basically every social media platform. Mostly active on Blue sky right now, but theoretically on all the other ones as well. And yeah, come check me out. I am the only Laura Jade in the world. World. So I'm very easy to find.

[James Stout]

Excellent. All right, well, thank you, Laura, and thank you all for listening. We'll be back at some point in the future. Well, actually tomorrow. You know how this works.

[Robert Evans]

This is. It could happen.

[Bill]

This is.

[Robert Evans]

It could happen here. Executive disorder.

[James Stout]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of July 1 to July 8 for some small things. Last week, Ben Gvir, the Israeli National Security Minister, canceled an upcoming trip to New York City for the UN Police summit amidst calls for him to be arrested for war crime.

[James Stout]

That's good. That's good to see. It's nice to see that he's. He's feel scared, even a little, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The planned protest outside of the UN took place even though Ben GVIR did not travel to the city. No one really knows if Mitch McConnell is actually still alive as he remains hospitalized after being admitted in mid June for suffering cardiac arrest. On. On Tuesday, a bunch of Republican senators said that they for sure talked to him for multiple minutes about all his favorite topics.

[James Stout]

Definitely not AI generated images and shit.

[Bill]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

There's really no clear indication on what his current mental state is. Laura Loomer has said that he's effectively brain dead. Not a reliable source either.

[Mick]

Not at all, no.

[Robert Evans]

But the audio from the 911 call.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Indicates there was CPR being performed.

[James Stout]

So based purely on that, what Loomer says is very likely because when people at McConnell's age need CPR and are like at the time at which EMS arrives, this is not an uncommon result. Like what? What Loomers suggested.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

We could see a historic weekend at Bernie's. Even in American politics. If Republicans want to hold on to the Senate seat without doing a special election, honestly, it'd be the best way

[James Stout]

to honor his memory. Like that's the appropriate way to honor Mitch McConnell's memory. One last filibuster, kind of breaking the law. One last time to stack things in the GoP's deck.

[Bill]

I also want to note that friend of the show, Myra Lazine from Trans News Network did request comment about the status of McConnell from his office and has not received a reply. We will let you know if. If we get any kind of confirmation from their press staff that he is in fact alive.

[Robert Evans]

And our colleague James Stout, who will have a special segment later on this episode, also wanted us to note that San Diego has begun defunding and closing more than 30 public toilets today. Cool. To that I will add in a not humble brag fashion that Mamdani and the MTA announced a new plan to expand bus routes.

[James Stout]

Great.

[Robert Evans]

The same day anyway.

[James Stout]

You can have either world, people, but not if you live in California.

[Robert Evans]

Actually, no toilets or slightly faster buses. The two choices of American politics.

[James Stout]

Yeah, the two choices that are presented to voters.

[Bill]

Well, okay, I'm going to present a third choice, which is. I do want to talk briefly about something that's happening in France right now. There is an attempt that has passed the lower house and is pending a vote from the upper house as we speak, to pass a police immunity law. I don't know what exactly the term to describe it is, but it is a law that would automatically treat any police killing as justified until proven otherwise. This is obviously an extremely dangerous bill. It effectively allows the police to, as long as there are no witnesses, kill someone and not be investigated or removed for it. So that is still technically making its way through the French Parliament. But Very much looks like it could pass and is extremely bleak.

[James Stout]

Cool.

[Bill]

Yeah. Which is, obviously, this is a bill backed by the French far right that's also being backed by, you know, a bunch of the French, quote unquote, center right. And, yeah, quite bad.

[Robert Evans]

Speaking of bad, let's get on to our first main story this week. As many of you know, there's been a major update in the main Senate race. On Monday, a woman named Jenny Rasico came forward with an allegation that Graham Platner raped her in 2021. Rascoe told POLITICO and CNN that she and Platner had been seeing each other on and off for about two years. And then one night in 2021, Platner entered her home, quote, unquote, heavily intoxicated, despite Rasico explicitly telling him not to come over. Once inside, Platner forced himself on her while she resisted and repeatedly told him to stop. And then he raped her. Rascoe told Politico that Platner did not remember what he did the next morning, but shortly thereafter, she cut off contact with him after telling him what happened that night was not consensual.

[James Stout]

Yep, I. I guess this is what it took, unfortunately. I'm like, I'm sorry this lady had to come forward and say this.

[Bill]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

But, you know, it does look like this has done the. The job, finally, of ending this guy's career. I mean, I guess we'll see. Anything could happen still. But I don't know what else to say.

[Robert Evans]

Her specific allegation is heavily corroborated in the reporting.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Politico interviewed the woman's next boyfriend, who in 2023, she told him about what happened with Platner and also reviewed emails to a therapist discussing the sexual assault. Politico published some private Facebook messages between Resco and a friend of hers whom she warned against getting involved with Platner. And that was years before he ran for office. I'll read some of those texts here. He can be charming and funny, and he's a decently intelligent person. He's not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him, and I will just very politely call him consensually careless at times. She followed up by writing, when drunk, plus ptsd, he lies. Also doesn't listen to you when drunk, unquote.

[James Stout]

And it's. It's still remarkable, honestly, how much slack she was trying to cut him in that message, like, unnecessarily empathetic way of expressing that to someone else about a person who had done that to you?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I don't know. That's what struck me about that.

[Robert Evans]

One of the most, like, devastating parts of this is that Rasico told Politico that she previously withheld this accusation because she agrees with Platner's political platform.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Quote, one of the reasons I didn't come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person. I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person. Unquote.

[Mick]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

After Resco made this allegation, which is Platner's first public allegation of rape or sexual assault, Lindsey Fifeld, the Republican operative who was at the center of the New York Times report on Platner last month, told the Washington Post that Platner sneakily removed condoms during sex.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Robert Evans]

Which is also a form of sexual assault.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

In a video released on Monday, Platner denied the allegations and said, quote, we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward. Following the allegation, Platner lost high profile endorsements, many of his volunteers, and support from community organizations. The 30,000 member activist organization, Main People's alliance, whom Platner was a member of, withdrew their endorsement and told him to step down. The Democrat nominee for governor, Hannah Pinigree, who Platner supported as a ranked choice candidate, released a statement calling for him to drop out of the race, quote, for Maine, for the future of control of the U.S. senate. And because no party should stand behind a candidate facing allegations of assault, Graham Platner should exit the race immediately. Democrats need a nominee who can beat Susan Collins in November. Graham Platner is no longer that candidate. Graham Platner tapped into something real. Voters hungry for change showed up with real passion and energy. That energy doesn't have to go away. It needs a new candidate to carry it forward. That last little section by Hannah is part of what I was trying to express in my recent piece outlining the campaign's platform and on the ground strategy. And I think looking back at his campaign, it really is worth trying to understand why it worked as well as it did up to this point, up to this allegation. This election has highlighted that there can be a considerable gap in the way certain candidates are talked about online and how they are viewed by the local organizations or the local electorate. Now, at least the organizations are breaking with Platner. We don't have a great idea yet of how voters see him post these allegations, but there was a series of focus groups that the Bulwark ran in June with a group of Maine women who supported Platner but said that they would draw the line at an allegation of sexual assault. So my last episode was focusing on trying to explain how he won the primary and how his relationships with unions and local activist groups contributed to that campaign success. And there is a reason that I waited till after the primary to discuss that platform in detail. And we had done some piecemeal reporting on some of his other scandals, but the information circulated on Blue sky right now about Daniel Moroff, who was mentioned in the piece, was not as publicly accessible when that episode was written. And I think a piece fully evaluating or relitigating all the personal issues with Platner or some of his staff would have needed to be a separate episode, which is why that piece starts off with mentioning all of them main scandals before narrowing its focus on why he won the nomination and focusing on why he won the nomination so handily, like over 50 points against a Democratic establishment candidate. I think it's really important to understand what's happening in American politics right now, right?

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Platner got the most votes in state primary history. He did 83 town halls, amassed over 15,000 volunteers. And just a, like, a semiotic analysis of Platner as a person doesn't tell us how his campaign attracted such historic support in Maine. Right. Politics isn't just about vibes and symbols or even individual character, but rather structural forces. And there is a distinctness at the root of politics between symbols and, like, the real forces of society. Those forces can be aesthetically flexible and adapt a lot of different symbols. For every Graham Platner, right, a bad guy who represented good politics in Maine, there are many more people who represent very bad politics who, who dress themselves up in a spotless, like, moral symbology. Look at right now, right? There's a lot of Democratic, like, party figures who are taking a lap. People who have supported Andrew Cuomo and the Clintons who are saying, like, aha, I told you so. Who couldn't have seen this coming? And, like, that's. That's gross on its face because of the types of behavior that they are very clearly okay with excusing to put forward their candidates. But, but also, I think this, this. This reaction of, like, who couldn't see this coming, right? There's all these red flags. This also, like, fails to, like, understand how we got to this point. Like, Platner wasn't chosen to be the nominee by online leftists, but rather the people of Maine. But there are contributing factors that led us to a very, a very precarious situation, including the lack of serious vetting by some of the consultants working on this campaign.

[James Stout]

Oh yeah.

[Robert Evans]

As well as Chuck Schumer's clearing the field of other Democratic candidates, which helped create this effectively, one on one Mills v. Platner matchup, while other qualified candidates were pushed into the governor's race. And now some of those people might be going after the Senate nomination. Following the assumed dropout of Platner in these next few days, we do have to wonder.

[James Stout]

And by the time people listen to this, there's a good chance, I guess, this won't matter. But, like, what if he decides to just fuck the party, right? Like, what if they don't sort all this out? It's not an impossible situation. From where we're sitting right now. I don't think it's the likeliest, but it's not impossible. From where we are right now, it's not impossible.

[Robert Evans]

And that is an interesting kind of thing to think about.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Consultants like Morse Katz are urging him to drop out. And there is a lot of reports coming out that are suggesting that he will. And to this point, Platner has been a very effective conveyor of a working class centric platform. And his resilience as a candidate through his other well publicized personal issues have proven a real hunger for a new kind of politics. But by making himself the avatar of that movement in Maine, he has also severely compromised the movement. There's a lot of people who supported his campaign despite his past based on this idea that, that those past experiences led him to this working class politics his campaign was predicated on that he was not the same person who made those like awful Reddit posts a decade ago. But the details in the recency of this rape allegation suggests that is not really the case. This allegation affirms a larger pattern of behavior which is itself disqualifying and illuminates false and misleading statements Platner has made to supporters, which further undermine his integrity, reliability, and the trust necessary for an electorate for unions and community organizations to put forward a candidate with faith that he will follow through on the working class platform that he adopted. This redemption story that the campaign ran with attracted a lot of supporters. Supporters who Platner assured that no new damaging allegations would be coming out against him. Then this not only betrays the trust of those supporters and his volunteers, but it also puts the viability of their shared working class politics at risk based on their association with, with him and especially this new accusation of rape.

[Bill]

I think there's two things that are sort of important to keep in mind when thinking about this. One is that it's quite common for someone who is a rapist to also be extremely charismatic, to be a good communicator, to be very skilled at manipulating social situations, and that none of the things that they can be good at make it okay for them to be a rapist. But also that's how a lot of the people who are able to do these kinds of things are able to maintain themselves and are able to survive. That's how a lot of politicians who get into this place are able to just survive, despite the fact that they have credible rape allegations. We should mention, for example, that there are significant credible rape allegations against the President of the United States. A thing that has not stopped him from being elected twice.

[James Stout]

A conviction, not just allegations, it's a

[Robert Evans]

conviction found liable in civil court.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Bill]

Multiple allegations. Right. And then I think the second issue here, Right. And this is something you were mentioning when you're talking about the problem with him making himself the avatar of this sort of movement of structural forces, is that this is just to some extent one of the risks and one of the challenges you face when you're attempting to run a working class movement that is centered around a charismatic figure because there is always just a decent chance that they've done something horrible. This is a problem with just the structure of electoral democracy, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Bill]

This is a structural problem with the way that electoral democracy is about selecting your rulers and the fact that people who want to become rulers also just have a higher chance of being able to get away with shit like this. And that's something that you have to manage to make sure that your movements are not just one guy who can fuck the entire thing over by being a piece of shit.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And yeah, Rasko specifically talking about how she hesitated to come forward because she agrees with this, with this politics, with this movement. I mean, it's completely devastating. And like this reminds me of, you know, the Cesar Chavez allegations. Right. Like sexual assault is a problem across everything from, you know, like non hierarchical anarchist organizing to the labor movement to electoral campaigns. Not every rapist is going to have a Nazi tattoo.

[James Stout]

Bad politics.

[Robert Evans]

No, neither is going to have. Is going to have bad politics. Right?

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And like relooking at the sort of many red flags this has. I think a lot of people saw that like something like this is a possibility, but a possibility is not an inevitability yeah. And for a lot of people, especially in Maine.

[James Stout]

Right. The.

[Robert Evans]

The political platform and the community ties that Platner established outweighed the many red flags of Platner as a person. He kind of pushed that to a very. A very far limit. Like, farther than I've seen in a lot of electoral campaigns of how far he was able to maintain support.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Rather than that illustrating something uniquely special about Platner as a person, that shows the depth of the desire to unseat Susan Collins and the lack of trust in the Democratic establishment. Now, if this rape allegation is obviously completely discrediting by itself and also because of how it clearly illuminates this pattern of lying and dishonesty, I think that that. That compounds a lot of the issues that people have been talking about with Platinum for a long time. And, you know, like, even something like the tattoo. Right. Even if he did not know what the tattoo was when he got it,

[James Stout]

which I never believed. Like, and we said that when at the time, that. That's. That was never a credible story. Right.

[Robert Evans]

Fellow Marines in his group who also got the tattoo were interviewed by Zito. They said they didn't know what it was.

[James Stout]

That's not what I'm. What I'm talking about is he. He stated that he had not realized prior to it coming out that it was Nazi. After he had said that he loved the movie Come and See, which that image is in repeatedly. That was when I was like, well, he's a liar, Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[James Stout]

We said. We talked about this on air, by the way, just to be clear.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. And debating whether or not he is a Nazi overlooks the other very clear issues exemplified by the tattoo. You know, recklessness, poor judgment. And then considering these new allegations, you know, Platner's dishonesty. Right. Based on the conflicting reports of when he learned of the tattoo's Nazi associations. And I think that bolsters the fact that he has a pattern of lying, and especially, like, lying to get into power. Multiple times these past few months, Platner has reassured senators, supporters, and volunteers that no new allegations would be coming out against him, even while he was aware that Jenny Rascoe was speaking with outlets like the New York Times, Platner has until July 13 to drop out of the race, to be removed from the ballot, and the party has until July 27 to select a new candidate to appear on the November ballot. There's a lot of conflicting reporting on when exactly Platner is going to drop out and why he has not yet. And I might do an update on this based on what will change in the next few hours, the next day. But as of right now, there is seemingly a conflict or kind of like a power struggle between his campaign and the Democratic Party on deciding the transparency of the process to select the next candidate. There's been a few people from the governor's race, as I mentioned, who's thrown their hat in the ring. Troy Jackson has filed paperwork. He was the only DSA endorsed candidate in the Maine governor's race, also endorsed by Sanders. Dr. Nurav Shah, a kind of more like moderate progressive, announced his intention and as part of his announcement he mentioned opposition to Israel. So he's kind of trying to move in the direction of Platinist politics, even though traditionally he has been more of a moderate liberal. We'll find out in these next few days if the platform and campaign style that was so successful can transfer to someone else. Because I think this campaign has provided a very effective blueprint of in person engagement, town halls leaning on local organizing connections and having those connections and organized labor help determine a platform. A platform that has stuff like Medicare for All, tax the rich, no money for Israel, Supreme Court reform, destroying Citizens United, but also stuff like investing in manufacturing, public utilities, building clean energy and strengthening labor organizing laws. Yeah, quick update here. A few hours after recording, Platner released a lengthy 11 minute video maintaining these allegations are false and attacking the corporate media system and the quote unquote political establishment. Towards the end of the video he announced the campaign is suspending operations and said he will withdraw from the race, though he has not yet officially dropped out of the race and reports indicate he will not do so until Monday, which is the deadline. Also on Wednesday night we got a better look at what the replacement process is going to be. And instead of an open caucus, basically a mini primary, the mainstay Democrats have decided to go Forward with a 600 person nominating convention with 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees and 100 delegates from the state committee. This is not the most open or Democratic option the state party could have gone forward with and could cause some real blowback from voters who will be unable to participate in choosing the nominee.

[James Stout]

Well, we should talk about, I guess, the Ryan Grimm of it all.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, sure.

[James Stout]

So Ryan Grimm with drop side news

[Robert Evans]

published earlier today and breaking points as well.

[James Stout]

Yeah, and breaking points earlier today. This is Wednesday the 8th when we recorded that essentially the initial reports had not mentioned a couple of what they felt were relevant facts, one of which was that before texting him not to come over. She had texted about needing a massage on her glutes, which I don't see as super relevant.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[James Stout]

I think the argument being made, particularly by Dropsite is that, like, well, this was still a relevant detail that was not included. The other thing that was in that report that is more relevant is the fact that Politico had details about this assault way before they released them. Right. Like, way before it actually came out that may have been relevant to voters. I do think that's a fair critique. I don't agree with the relevance at all of her mentioning that she needed a massage. That's not an invitation to sex that doesn't like. I see that as entirely unrelated, and I think that this is within a tradition of that particular journalist defending people that he likes from allegations that are credible. I don't particularly respect this decision, but it's relevant.

[Robert Evans]

It's a pretty gross move to take this moment and then try to inject any amount of doubt into what's happened. And peddling this politely. I'll say soft rape apology.

[Bill]

That's.

[Robert Evans]

It's disgusting. There's this very similar thing coming from the Young Turks, from an Kasparian and Chenk. I'm happy that the majority report people turned on Graham, like, immediately apologized for defending him throughout these past few months, and said that they were wrong about him as a person. I'm glad they did that. But what Grim did here and what the Young Turks are doing is just completely despicable.

[James Stout]

Yeah. I think it's gross, repulsive. Yeah. I don't think there's any reason to bring that specific detail up other than to try to inject doubt, like you said.

[Bill]

Yeah. I want to say just one thing about the way that consent works, which is that if you withdraw consent at any time, no matter what happened before it is withdrawn. That's how it works. And if anyone, regardless of what happened until that moment, you have to continue consenting. And if you stop consenting, the moment you stop consenting, you have stopped consenting and it becomes assault. I want to be extremely clear about that because people are trying to muddy the waters about this, and this is just an important thing for people to understand about the way that consent works.

[James Stout]

I think that would be even more relevant if she'd said, come over and then said don't later. But what. What she said was not even starting the. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill]

No, it's not even that. But. But I just.

[Mia Wong]

I just.

[Bill]

I just want to be clear about.

[Robert Evans]

According to Grim's report, she did not Even ask him for a massage.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

His entire motivation to do this is, is so, is so suspicious. He's trying to say this is about like journalistic integrity and how Politico and CNN were dishonest with yeah. Rasico's, you know, claims and like that's, that's, it's completely absurd. I think anyone with half a brain cell can see what he's trying to do here and it's, and it's gross.

[James Stout]

I simply don't agree with that. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill]

And I think the other thing that's kind of very bleak about this is that like there is more proof here than most people who are sexually assaulted are going to have. Right. And this is still the reaction that it's getting from like, fortunately not a very large number of people, but still people who have large populations but still pretty influential people. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, like this is part of the reason why, you know, when this shit happens everywhere from like five person anarchist collectives up to like the DSA up to like the Democratic Party, up to the like the President of the fucking United States. Why this shit plays out like this, because this is just a structural factor of politics writ large, is that you are going to have to deal with people who fucking do this and their fight to get away with it and people who try to run cover for them.

[James Stout]

Yeah. I think this is part of why I have an issue sometimes with folks when there's a new allegation against a conservative politician or a right wing church figure or something and they're like, it's always these guys. It's like, no, it's every pedophilia is all over the place. It exists in left wing organizations and right wing organizations. And when you start being like, well this is a thing the bad people do, not a thing the good people do, then you've created a place in which the people who do that have cover. Like that's, that's what you're doing when you're like, no bad people do that. So no one that I agree with would.

[Bill]

Yeah, yeah. Like sexual violence and getting away with it. That's a structural force.

[James Stout]

Right?

[Bill]

Like that's, that's something that is brought about by like large scale structural forces that.

[Juliana]

Yeah.

[Bill]

Regardless of what people stated, politics are. Transcend those divides and people do it anyways.

[Robert Evans]

Well, let's go on a break and then we will return with more news because more things happened this, this past week.

[Bill]

Ye.

[James Stout]

All right, we're back. And you know, there's simply nothing to Say, but it's time for a little musical interlude.

[Juliana]

Rocking chasm.

[James Stout]

Rocking chasm.

[Mia Wong]

Ah.

[James Stout]

Oh, God. That just hits every single time.

[Robert Evans]

It's been too long.

[James Stout]

Yeah, it really has. It really has.

[Bill]

It really has.

[James Stout]

Time makes fools of us all. Mia, what's happening in tariffs today?

[Bill]

The tariffs have been in committee, which is why the tariff song has been in the box, but they are no longer in committee. So long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Which is to say February in a slightly. And we talked about the possibility of Trump replacing the tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down by using a series of different sets of tariffs. One of the sets that we mentioned are tariffs imposed by using Section 301 of the US Trade act of 1974. This allows the administration to carry out an investigation into unfair trade practices and then impose tariffs after the investigation is concluded. Now, so the administration basically set one of these investigations in motion, effectively the moment the ruling was decided in February. And on July 2, they returned with their conclusions, which, lo and behold, found that 54 countries were failing to, take appropriate measures to, quote, impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. Now, these countries, on top of Russia and China, include traditional US Allies like Israel, Japan, South Korea, and India.

[Robert Evans]

I think you mean the Islamic Republic of Japan. I'm sorry, I just. I. I could not let that one escape me.

[Bill]

I missed that reference.

[Robert Evans]

Did someone Trump. Trump today said the words the Islamic Republic of Japan when I think he did not mean to say the Islamic Republic of Japan.

[James Stout]

What country has taken fewer Islamic refugees than Japan? Like, I don't even understand how that could be. Like a conservative bugbear.

[Robert Evans]

He says the Islamic Republic of Japan fired missiles at US Ships.

[James Stout]

Okay, okay. He just misspoke. He misspoke. He was trying to say Iran.

[Juliana]

Okay.

[James Stout]

It's just a normal senior moment from our president as he launches or continues a series of illegal attacks on foreign countries. Just a normal senior moment from our warmonger president.

[Mia Wong]

We're good.

[James Stout]

We're good. Everything's fine.

[Bill]

Yes. Incredible stuff happening here that our. Yeah, our president cannot produce. Actually, admittedly, this is not the first time in our lifetimes that our president has not been able to correctly name the country which he is bombing.

[James Stout]

Sure isn't. Sure isn't. It's not even the second president that this has happened to in our lifetime. No, I'm not certain it's the third.

[Bill]

We're like three out of four. I'm pretty sure Bill Clinton could do it. So that's like three out of five.

[James Stout]

But I don't. I'm not 100%. He's a country boy. He probably fucked it up once. Now, we didn't bomb as many people when he was present, but we didn't bomb no people.

[Bill]

That's probably true. Good God. Good God.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, so sorry. Sorry. My apologies.

[Mia Wong]

It's okay.

[James Stout]

It's okay.

[Bill]

Returning from this, this, this bleak interlude, so again, countries that the US Are saying, like, are not enforcing this prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. So these again, include a bunch of traditional US allies like Japan, South Korea, India and Israel, which is sort of interesting. It also says, quote, the following six economies have failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan. So on this list, that is the entire eu, Canada, Mexico, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Turkey, which is a list of the world's largest economies. And then also there's a few kind of oddball ones like poor Sri Lanka, which they really have something out for Sri Lanka. I don't know exactly why it keeps showing up on these tariff lists despite the fact that these poor people have been just suffering unbelievably devastating economic consequences for a very long time. Now. I am in the unfortunate position of having to agree with California's Attorney General, a thing I am not typically doing. But he did in fact say something which is true, that this list of countries is in fact 99% of all U.S. imports. So, okay, now we can obviously note here the hypocrisy of imposing tariffs for forced labor in a country whose constitution specifically allows forced labor for prisoners. And note that, you know, forced labor of various kinds, from indenture, servitude to debt, peonage to various kinds of slavery, have been key elements to the development of capitalism from the beginning. But this is not about forced labor at all, as I think anyone who is even remotely paying attention will understand. So the tariff rates are nominally tied to setting up systems that ensure that goods produced with forced labor aren't being sent to the US with countries who are, like, out of compliance with the US system to do that, getting a 12%, 12.5% tariff rate and countries who are complying, facing 10% tariff rates. That's at least the theory. The practice is not that, as the diplomat notes, quote, the proposed tariff rates, however, cannot be explained by human rights concerns alone. Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines have not established import Prohibition systems meeting US standards and face a 12.5% tariff. Malaysia and Cambodia likewise lack such systems, but face a tariff of only 10%. So this is just a fairly naked attempt to reimpose the set of tariffs that Trump initially imposed in February in the wake of that Supreme Court decision. We talked about those in a different episode. They are up for a July 24 deadline. So it's pretty clear that this report is timed to come out in a way that allows these tariffs, which are very, very similar to the ones that were already in place, to go into effect. Now, it's worth noting that those tariffs had some bad court rulings. They're probably not going to last long enough to get, like a good Supreme Court ruling on it before they come out of effect. So those ones probably won't be lifted by a court order just because there's not enough time. But there's a good chance that these tariffs are also not going to survive. But the California attorney general is part of a very large group of state attorney generals which features the attorney general of almost every state with a Democratic governor, which I'm not going to read the list out because it's a bunch of them. But they are once again suing the administration over these tariffs. So here we are again riding the tariff roller coaster. And yeah, we're back with the Trump administration trying to impose 10 to 12% tariffs on most of the economies in the world.

[Robert Evans]

Speaking of the Islamic Republic of not Japan.

[Bill]

Oh, boy.

[Robert Evans]

Here is James Stout with a special segment.

[Mia Wong]

So what I want to talk about today is this lawsuit recently filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, represented by Public Citizen, which has some incredible accusations about what the United States government has done to people who are Iranian nationals seeking asylum in the United States. Specifically, they're alleging that the US Government has disclosed confidential information on Iranian nationals seeking asylum in the USA to the Iranian government. I am going to reference a complaint and quote from at length quite a bit here because these accusations are crazy. Not crazy in that I think they're false. I don't think they're false crazy in that they are abhorrent and disgusting, especially when you consider that the United States government has consistently talked about the rights of people in Iran while all the time violating those same rights. So let's quote from that complaint. Quote. Many of the asylum seekers are pro democracy protesters, members of religious minorities, such as evangelical Christians, or members of the LGBTQ community who seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran. Disclosing their confidential information to the Iranian government violates the asylum seekers confidentiality rights endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran directly or through chain rafael via third Countries at Risk persecution, torture and death following their arrival in Iran. If you're not familiar with chain refinement, it's sending someone to a third country that will then send them to the place of the usa. They can't or won't send them due to concerns of persecution or torture. So it's an end run around international law. It's barred by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, but the US has been doing it a lot under the Trump 2.0 regime. In the course of my work, I have met Iranians from all of the groups described in this complaint as well as those who are ethnic minorities in country. In addition to being parts of the groups described in this complaint, I can think of a group of young Iranian women I met in the Darian Gap who I spent a good deal of time talking to. Really lovely folks. There's a man with them as well. Actually, now I think about it, you can hear them. In my Darien series, I met some Iranian Christians in outdoor detention. A number of them remember one of them was having a heart problem. So it's been a deal of time trying to help Aaron get her medical attention. As I've covered before on this show throughout the USN Israel's Bombing Campaign on Iran Iran has kept killing its own citizens in the last couple of weeks. It has engaged some of the armed Kurdish groups and there have been casualties on both sides. The process of the US Government sharing these records with Iran, the suit alleges, began in March of 2025. It seems to have continued when the US was bombing Iran that year. It seems to have continued while Iran massacred thousands of its own citizens in January of this year, and it continued throughout the United States and Israel's current war on Iran. Indeed, a flight left for Iran on January 25th of this year, as the dead from the pro democracy protests were only recently in their graves. Iran doesn't have an embassy in the US and these affairs go through the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani Embassy. It was to that Iranian interest section that the State Department reached out in March of 2025. According to the lawsuit, the March 2025 meeting produced an agreement between the United States government and the Iranian government, under which ICE and Iranian government officials have begun holding monthly meetings to share the immigration files and information of Iranians in ICE custody. In addition, since the March 2025 meeting US government officials have periodically mailed or hand delivered immigration files of Iranians in ICE custody to the Iranian government. It then goes on to allege that ICE has provided officials from the Iranian Interest Section with access to people that it has detained and worked with the Iranian government to pressure these people to waive their rights. This is going to be them signing voluntary deportation paperwork where very clearly it's non voluntary when they're held against their will and pressured to do it. But that's what you'll hear it called. Many of the Iranian detainees did not consent to meet with the Iranian Interest Section officials, but were required to do so by ice. According to Iranian detainees who met with an Iranian intersection official, the official had knowledge of their immigration cases, including the details of their asylum applications. These non consensual meetings with the intersection officials solidify the detainees belief that they have been identified to the very same repressive government that they had fled. The United States government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran. According to this complaint. Some of those people were then interrogated by the intelligence section of the IRGC on their rival in Iran. Some of these people had detailed on their application as they must to make a good asylum application.

[Mick]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

That they had participated in the 2022 Jan Azadi movement. Woman Life, Freedom. It's a Kurdish slogan, slogan of the Kurdish Freedom movement that was used by pro democracy protesters in Iran after the murder of Gina Amini by Iranian police. This sparked a whole movement. Right. I'm sure you could find a great deal of good writing on that movement. It was very well covered. I have met women who took part in that movement. As I said before, you can hear some of them in some of my podcasts. They tried with every fiber of their being to make Iran better.

[James Stout]

Right?

[Mia Wong]

They saw their friends die to try and make Iran better. And then they fled because it was made very clear to them that the state was willing to fill the streets with blood before it changed. Now those people are obviously afraid of telling the truth on their asylum applications or even to their lawyers, especially while they're in detention, because they now know that that information could be delivered directly into the hands of the Iranian government. They may have said in their applications, I was part of this movement because I'm opposed to the government. And now that information is being delivered to the government. They came here to experience some of the freedoms that their friends died for and instead they were hand delivered to the regime that they had fled from. The US did not ask for any protections or guarantees for their safety. At the very same time, the USA was using the rights of Iranian people as a pretext for its war in Iran. It did this as it was depriving people of those very same rights back here. This is disgusting. I will link to the complaint in the sources if you'd like to read it yourself. I'm going to keep an eye on this one. Even amongst the horrors of the second Trump administration, this is just particularly abhorrent.

[Robert Evans]

We'll go on a break and then return for one more batch of news. We are back. Next up, two shootings by ICE which have both occurred just this last week, exactly half a year after the shooting of Renee Good Robert.

[James Stout]

Video captured Wednesday morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, showed ICE attempting to arrest an undocumented immigrant from Mexico named Clemente Laura Hernandez. There's video of this incident. You can see like a black car with flashing lights, like an unmarked police car blocking, like a white suv. Agents get out of the car and rush the suv. And again, they just kind of look like guys with guns in a moment. And one of them starts screaming that he's going to shatter the window and yelling at the driver. At that point, the driver pulls away in a panic. They hit the black unmarked car that had been blocking them. They speed off. Fucking ICE points out they're going the wrong way down a one way street. And they, they hit another uninvolved civilian vehicle. And it's like, yeah, they were panicked because an unmarked car drove up and gunmen ran out and started surrounding and screaming at them. It scared them. That's the kind of shit that happens in countries where the cartels are in charge of everything. If you pretend that like ICE is in any meaningful way different from a cartel or a gang, as of us recording this, this person has not been taken into custody. I hope they stay that way.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Also earlier this week in Houston, Texas, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who is 52 years old, was driving in the East End when the same basic thing happened. Unmarked cars surround him. Guys with guns get out. He gets really scared and he drives off and he gets shot as he's driving away. ICE accused him of having weaponized the vehicle. He was taken to the hospital where he died. Salgado Araujo had no criminal record. He had been in the country for more than 30 years. He was in a car with several people, including his brother. There's no evidence whatsoever of any kind of violence in his past. There's no evidence that he wanted to hurt anyone. There's no evidence that he was doing anything but being terrified by unmarked armed men surrounding him. His son has come out and said that if he knew they were ice, he certainly would have stopped and complied. He had no idea what was happening, which, again, seems very credible to me. There's already been a cavalcade of people coming out to demand an independent and impartial investigation into what happened, including U.S. representative Sylvia Garcia, who's a Democrat from Texas and obviously his son. And Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council manager, also called for an immediate and partial investigation. I don't know what good I think that's going to do. Like, realistically, for one thing, no law enforcement entity can be trusted to conduct an independent and partial investigation of ice, period, especially right now. For another, there's literally no way to guarantee that they will be held to account, even if the evidence, and I think it suggests that they were acting entirely wrongly and murdered a man. Like, I don't believe anything's going to happen to this guy at this point. So, yeah, I guess I support the idea of an independent and impartial investigation. I just don't think that's going to get us anywhere yet.

[Bill]

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think if we want an actual independent, like, impartial investigation, it's going to have to happen after this administration regime

[Mick]

is out of power.

[Bill]

And that's a thing that can be done.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Bill]

But it's going to just take a bunch of time until these people don't have control of all of the state security services. And in the meantime, they're just going to keep doing the same shooting over and over again.

[Robert Evans]

There's been growing protests in Houston these past few days. This is some audio recorded Tuesday published by Reuters.

[Juliana]

People are here to work. Families are dying. People are dying.

[James Stout]

What are they doing?

[Juliana]

Murdering innocent Mexican people that come to work? They come here to work. So what if they don't got papers? So what?

[Mia Wong]

Immigrants are welcome here.

[Juliana]

Say hello.

[Mia Wong]

Say it clear.

[Juliana]

Immigrants are welcome here. Trump did this to us. What happened to taking the murderers out?

[Mick]

What happened to taking the rapists out?

[Juliana]

What happened to taking the drug dealers down? Not innocent people. That's not what you said, President Trump. You didn't say that.

[Robert Evans]

Since then, the protests have only grown. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people marched in Magnolia park on the street where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot by ice. For our last segment, let's talk about America. 250. So this past weekend marked the 250th anniversary of the United States and things went off without a hitch. I heard the Great American State Fair was lots of fun. That it was. It was totally packed. That no parts of any stages nearly killed dancers as they were setting up the event, that there was no severe weather events that disrupted it. I heard it was fun. And adding to the fun was President Trump, who spent much of the 4th of July weekend talking about the growing threat of communism and the need to pass the Save America act following the Supreme Court's ruling in support of counting mail in ballots. In Trump's July 4 speech commemorating the historic occasion of America's 250th birthday, the president said that to keep America great, we must pass the Save America act, the troubled voter restriction bill that has failed to pass Congress. All voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship. There will be no mail in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment or travel. And you won't have cheating on the elections anymore. It's very simple. Unquote. Speaker Johnson has indicated his plan to pass another version of the SAVE act through reconciliation. The bill has repeatedly been stalled in the Senate, and that has bolstered a lot of Trump's frustrations these past few months. Now, following the Supreme Court ruling, it appears that Republicans will take another crack at it. But Trump also spent much of the America250 address railing against communism. Quote, america will never be a communist country. It's like a cancer. You gotta cut it out and you gotta cut it out fast. The communist system is the opposite of the American system, and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. Unquote, real, real 1950s style reactions to seven Social Democrats getting elected. But I think that the fact that how scared he is and other people, including on the Democratic Party side, and you know, there's been a wave of articles from the Atlantic really scared of the more kind of social democratic, democratic, socialist direction that the party's been going. Really frightened. In fact, I think like a few days ago, Trump even said the words a Social Democrat and said they're just communists. But the fact that Trump had to learn what Social Democrat is is a really interesting indicator of where we are at as a. On the eve of July 4th, Trump gave another speech at Mount Rushmore after speaking to the AI Ghost of Roosevelt.

[Mia Wong]

God.

[Robert Evans]

And during this Mount Rushmore speech, he spoke at length about how communism is a, quote, moral threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country. Including World War I, World War II, Pearl harbor, or even 9, 11.

[James Stout]

World War I is simply not a threat to our country and not, not in any way, shape or form was our country threatened at any point in World War I. Obviously, some Americans were killed as a result of Germany attacking shipping, but in no way were we in danger.

[Bill]

Yeah. And then, like, does he understand that Pearl harbor was part of World War II? Like, does he, like, get that?

[Mia Wong]

I.

[James Stout]

He was just shooting buzzwords off. I think that's all that was.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Bill]

Incredible guy. To control the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in human history.

[Robert Evans]

Trump also called communism the enemy of the Constitution, the enemy of July 4, 1776. Quote. On the eve of this 250th anniversary of American heritage, we resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly. President Trump also had this banger line, which is the only clip I actually want to play of this speech.

[James Stout]

You can be loyal to Karl Marx

[Mick]

or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both. As for those who peddle Marxist lies

[James Stout]

about our heritage, who tell our children

[Mia Wong]

that we live on stolen land or

[James Stout]

that our heroes were oppressors, they're doing something much worse than slandering our past.

[Mick]

They are slandering and attacking our future. Not going to let that happen.

[Robert Evans]

You can be loyal to Karl Marx, can be loyal to America.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Bill]

So true. So true. President Donald Trump.

[Robert Evans]

It's just really stunning thinking about this is how the President of the United States is spending the 250th anniversary of the country. Yeah, that. He, he thinks it is important to start bringing this stuff up. I just thought that was a little interesting tidbit that happened this weekend. Anyway, I think that is all we have for news this week.

[James Stout]

Okay. Well, I guess it's been. It hasn't been a short news week, but, you know, we don't always have to talk for an hour and 20 minutes about the shit that's happening. You now kind of know what's happening.

[Robert Evans]

No, this is just a 55 to 1 hour and 3 minutes with James segment instead. A shit short Newsweek.

[James Stout]

Yeah, a short news week. All right, Go. Go with Christ, my friends.

[Robert Evans]

We reported the news.

[Mick]

We reported the news.

[James Stout]

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

[Danael Kurd]

It could happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, this is 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. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.