Live Like the World is Dying—S1E108
This Month in the Apocalypse: Feb. 2024
Episode Summary
This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about volcanoes, fires in Chile, rivers in the sky, storms of new magnitudes, the war in Ukraine, the ICJ ruling on Israel’s genocide, how the immigration bill is confusing and bad, God’s Army descending on Eagle’s Pass, and how charitable bail funds are under attack. Live Like the World is Dying will be taking a break until sometime in March! Stay tuned!
Host Info
Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.
Publisher Info
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Transcript
Brooke 00:15
Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your monthly installment of This Month in the Apocalypse, in which we'll be covering wonderful or not so wonderful news events that happened in January, 2024. With me--I'm Brooke--today is Inmn.
Inmn 00:38
Hi, Brooke. Yeah, it's me Inmn, you're...one of your other hosts for Live Like the World is Dying.
Brooke 00:46
One of my other Strangers.
Inmn 00:48
Another Stranger coming to you from the tangled wilderness of the news.
Brooke 00:59
That's right. Okay. But before we do that, let's give a shout out to one of the other podcasts on the Channel Zero Network of podcasts of which we are proud members. Here's a jingle from them. Jingle jangle jingle. Jingle jangle [Sing rhythmically like a song]
It's Going Down Jingle 01:16
It's going down, and you're invited. For what they sellin', there is no running. There is no hiding. There's only fighting or dying. It's going down, you're invited, for what they sellin' we ain't buying. There is no running. There is no hiding. There's only fighting or dying.
It's Going Down Host 01:45
It's Going Down is a digital community center from anarchists, Anti Fascist, autonomous, anticapitalist and anticolonial movements. Our mission is to provide an autonomous and resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action.
It's Going Down Host 2 02:01
Go to It'sGoingDown.org for daily updates. Check out our online store for ways to donate and rate and follow us on iTunes if you like this podcast.
Brooke 02:18
And we're back. Welcome back. Inmn,, let's talk about the news, because everything's happy and good.
Inmn 02:25
Do we have to talk about the news? There's...the news is not a good place right now really.
Brooke 02:31
But for some reason, someone signed us up--I'm gonna blame Margaret, partly because she's not here--but also because I'm pretty sure it was her for having us do this monthly news roundup.
Inmn 02:43
I do want to say that these segments, I really like doing them because it kind of forces me to learn more about a lot of things that I take a cursory look at on Instagram or something where I'm like, "Oh, there's an infographic. I'm going to screenshot it and then learn more about it for this for this segment." So it does help me. And I've also heard a lot of really wonderful feedback from listeners out there, which I just want to plug. We're really glad that this segment makes people feel better about the deluge of horrible news that we're inundated with at all times. And yeah,
Brooke 03:26
That's a good point. Yeah, I do...It keeps me from sticking my head in the sand as much as I might do otherwise, because it's tough, and it makes the news easier to swallow when I can talk about it with you and, or Margaret because we can all make fun of the horribleness together. And that's, again, slightly less...makes it slightly less horrible.
Inmn 03:48
Yeah.
Brooke 03:49
You know, there's a piece of news that I forgot to mention when we were making our lists for today, but it's very, very important. Speaking of making fun of the news, it's that Jon Stewart's going to be returning to the Daily Show on Monday nights.
Inmn 04:04
Cool. Hell yeah.
Brooke 04:08
If you're...if you're a child of exactly the right era, Jon Stewart was sort of the band that got you through some horrible news events with some humor, or maybe was the way that you finally started listening to the news because he at least made it funny. So yeah,
Inmn 04:23
And he's like...yeah, and he's kind of since done some stuff where it's just like him like doing interviews with people and he's just like, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you introducing transphobic laws? Why are you horrible?" And I'm like, hell yeah, Jon Stewart. It's not surprising. It makes sense.
Brooke 04:28
He never really had a lot of fucks to give but I feel like he's completely run out of all the fucks he's ever going to have to give about bullshit things now and he's just really laying out how it is.
Inmn 05:05
Yeah, yeah.
Brooke 05:06
And I look forward to getting to that stage of life where I've got some white hair and I can just be, you know, "Fuck the nonsense. No fucks given.
Inmn 05:14
Totally.
Brooke 05:15
Old person.
Inmn 05:18
Yeah, I mean, we can all become the angry crone on the mountain that screams at people that we want to be. We can all become that right now.
Brooke 05:33
That's your advice today. No news. Just take that advice and no episode. Can we do that? No. Okay.
Inmn 05:39
Yes, if you liked this podcast....we'll get to that at the end.
Brooke 05:49
Alright, I can't quit after five minutes. Then here we go. Let's talk about the climate news because there's always climate going on. [Inmn woo’s sarcastically]
Inmn 05:58
Things in the climate, a deep climate of news.
Brooke 06:04
Things that happened in January, kind of January specifically, an erupting Icelandic volcano. The eruption actually started in December and then quieted down...the volcano took a month off. And then it fired back up again in mid January for a couple of days. And it's actually the fifth eruption in the last three years. It's happening specifically on the Reykjanes peninsula of Iceland, where lava reached the edges of a fishing village of Grindavik, which is home to about 4000 people. They were actually evacuated only back in November, because there was seismic activity that scientists expected was a precedent to the eruption of the lava fissures there. And the scientists were right. So those folks haven't been able to go back to their village since early November. And I'm using "village" because that's what they call it, not because I'm trying to be judgy, diminutive, or anything like that. Anyway, the lava from January did get far enough to reach the edges of the village. And so the village has had a couple of different disasters that have destroyed a lot of structures, the seismic activity being the first event, and that was caused by the lava flowing underneath the ground, and then by the lava itself hitting the edges of town and destroying things. So it may even be--and this may have just been a doomsday thing in the news--but it may be determined that the village is no longer a safe place for people to live and they might not be able to reestablish homes there.
Inmn 07:52
Dang.
Brooke 07:53
Although, they also said that about Chernobyl, and people live there, so I don't...you know, I don't know. There's some really beautiful--you know, but tragic but they're also beautiful--pictures of these lava flows, because it's not like it's a big, giant above ground volcano that erupted. It's lower to the ground or an underground volcano that erupted and then created these fissures where a lava just flows out of. You know, and then in the contrast of the beauty of Iceland has made some really stark and interesting images. Speaking of fire, the country of Chile is fighting almost 200 wildfires right now. The worst of them have burned through densely packed neighborhood areas. More than 120 people are confirmed dead and there are hundreds more missing. And interestingly, if you listen to the episode I did on Maui, I talked about the conditions that caused the Maui fires. The conditions in Chile are basically identical to what was going on Maui. There's a...Chile is in an extreme drought and has been so for a decade. And then they had intense wind storms that whipped up the fires that have burned through in the cities. And well, they started in the wilderness and then got down into the cities. So, they're fighting a big, big problem right now as well. If only it could get hit by the atmospheric river that's been flowing over the state of California. Yeah,
Inmn 09:28
Yeah, a place that, historically, is quite dry, now experiencing--like, what is it? It was like half a year of rainfall or something? Like 10 inches of rain fell in really not that long?
Brooke 09:42
Yeah, there are several different ways that it got measured in the different stories I read. One was like, you know, a month or a couple months worth fell in a day. And another one that was like, yeah, six months worth fell in a week or something like that. Like extreme amounts of rain and in a very short period of time. So there's severe flooding in South Southern California. There have been more than 100 mudslides in Los Angeles. Yeah, the atmospheric river's also dumping a massive amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, making it kind of impossible to get in and out of the mountains at the moment. And as part of this storm, there's also been really intense wind storms, which have knocked out power to almost a million people in the state. Northern California was hit the hardest, first by the power outages. But that's moved into a lot of coastal areas and expected to get worse. And we have talked a lot about floods on this podcast. We have done episodes with flood and how to manage floods and act in floods. And so just a reminder, in floodwater, don't drive into flood water, don't go into floodwater, don't walk in it. It's dirty and it's dangerous. And it doesn't take a lot to get your car stalled. So, avoid floodwater.
Inmn 11:07
Yeah, um, what? What is an atmospheric river? This was a new term to me, as it might be to many in the last week.
Brooke 11:18
I think I first learned the definition...or I first heard this term and learned about it back when we first started doing episodes of This Month in the Apocalypse, because it came up then, but it is a lot like what it sounds like. It is a massive amount of water moving through the sky. So like clouds that are very, very pregnant with rain and then it tends to dump down a lot of water and very suddenly.
Inmn 11:52
I see. I see.
Brooke 11:55
A river in the atmosphere, literally an atmospheric river, then falls and becomes rain and or snow. And actually, we here in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, got hit with snowpack and ice and rain from an atmospheric river like mid January or so. It wasn't as severe as the one in California, but it was an atmospheric river passing over.
Inmn 12:23
Yeah, yeah. Woof. Yeah, I know, this is.... In, you know, in the small ways that it's obviously affecting people in a lot of ways, but some friends went down to...tried to go down to California to get some much needed sunshine recently, or during this event, and were met with, you know, flooding and intense rainfall and not the, not the sunshine vacation that they hoped for.
Brooke 12:55
Yeah, hope they made it back safe, if they've come back yet?
Inmn 13:01
Yeah, I believe. So.
Brooke 13:03
That's good. Now didn't some other states have some other weather things that you heard about?
Inmn 13:09
So, it's more something that relates to this idea of further exploring climate change and what its impacts are and what it is manifesting as, and we've talked a lot about this on the show already, but it's like we're getting a lot of extremes all at once. Like, so much so that climate scientists have been talking about how we have this, a hugely higher percentage of catastrophic climate events often than we ever have, or that we have had in the history that we're measuring that's relevant to us, if that makes sense. I feel like there's a lot of people who say like...they try to call on stuff from hundreds of thousands of years ago, you know, and they're like, they're like "The climate has...this is a natural cycle."
Brooke 14:09
"This has happened before"
Inmn 14:12
And I'm like, "Yeah, well, this one is driven by humans."
Brooke 14:18
Yeah, but the math doesn't add up a lot of the time on it, right? Like the frequency and type...the frequency and diversity of events occurring is so statistically improbable.
Inmn 14:31
Yeah, it's just a higher percentage of catastrophic climate events. And one of those things is that scientists--I don't believe that...I don't believe that there has been one recorded yet--but scientists see the potential for a new category of hurricane to emerge, which would be a category 6 hurricane. And the categories are defined often by size and wind speeds and stuff like that. So for example, I think like a category 5 hurricane, I think it's wind speeds of like 150 or so miles an hour. And then a category 6 hurricane would be wind speeds of 192 miles an hour. Which is a terrifying speed. Yeah, so imagining winds that are moving faster than Ferraris or like race cars.
Inmn 15:45
Jeez Louise. Yeah, that's so fast.
Inmn 15:49
Yes, quite fast. Quite...quite terrifying.
Brooke 15:54
Okay, so they haven't actually had one yet or recorded one but they anticipate that it could be possible?
Inmn 16:03
Yeah, and this is based on tropical storm wind speeds. I think. I'm like half remembering this. No, I don't believe there's been one recorded yet but from evidence of storms and being recorded in oceans, it seems likely that one could and will occur soon. And climate scientists have linked this, pretty predictably, to warming oceans and climate change. So, but um.... Oh, this was gonna go in the headlines, but it feels very related to the oceans. Scientists may have found Amelia Earhart's plane.
Brooke 16:54
Oh, yeah, I meant to write this one down. Yeah, yeah.
Inmn 16:59
Which there's...I read a very confusing article about it. And I'm like...I didn't glean much from it. So maybe it was just a clickbait article. But potential that Amelia Earhart's plane was found. Which, I really enjoyed living in the mystery of Amelia Earhart. So I'm hoping that definitive proof does not come.
Brooke 17:24
Yeah, I read a couple articles about it. I come from a piloting family. So airplane news is, you know, what often catches my radar. [Makes a drum-cymbal sound in response to her joke.] It was somebody who had done, you know, an independently wealthy person who spent like 10 million bucks of his own money, or something like that, to go on a sea expedition to try and find the images and they were taking deep sea pictures. And they had the...I guess the pictures don't develop right away necessarily. And so they're taking the pictures, and they have moved on from the location. And then by the time they--or maybe they were out of reception or something--and by the time the pictures were loaded in, they could look at them and found what they thought was perhaps the plane. It's in the area where they think that she may have crashed and it's, you know, I don't know other indicators that make it seem sufficiently plane-like. They were far enough away that it wasn't easy to like to turn back and go do some more pictures and stuff. So they're planning a second excursion to go out and do more detailed pictures of that specific area and see what they can find.
Inmn 18:33
I see. I see. You know what else happened in the ocean in the past like a month or two?
Brooke 18:40
Nothing but good things, right?
Inmn 18:43
Yeah, yeah, actually. Yeah, actually a good thing. Some...another yacht was sunk by orcas in Europe.
Brooke 18:51
Yay! Like it's like a billionaire, my penis needs measuring yacht?
Inmn 19:01
I believe so. I did not read the article. I just saw the headline.
Brooke 19:09
Well, I have a sad orca headline that I wasn't going to wait to share, but if you're gonna bring up orcas now. There's a pod of them that are trapped in ice outside of Japan. There's a...there's an ice sheet that's not moving because winds are not.... Usually the ice sheet moves around. I think it gets pushed south and melts. But there hasn't been wind, so it hasn't moved and there's this pod of orcas that have like punctured a hole in the middle of it so they can come up for air and stuff but they're basically trapped in the middle of this ice sheet and if it doesn't move or melt they probably won't make it
Inmn 19:51
Dang, that's really sad.
Brooke 19:54
Let's go blow torch some ice sheets. Come on climate change, you're supposed to be melting the ice. Save the orcas. [Inmn goes "Nooooo!"] I think I did something wrong in my math.
Inmn 20:07
Yeah. I have one more happy animal thing. Okay. A bald eagle attacked a government drone and knocked it out of the sky and it's now on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Brooke 20:24
Oh, I love it. That's a great place. Well, I don't want it to be at the bottom of the lake. But as my people were original inhabitants of the borders of Lake Michigan, I support this.
Inmn 20:37
Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Brooke 20:39
As my clan within the Potawatomi tribe is the Eagle clan, I also support this. It may have been one of my ancestors. I'm just saying.
Inmn 20:56
Hell yeah. I can't wait for the communique taking responsibility for this.
Brooke 21:05
Eagle clan strikes again.
Inmn 21:07
Hell yeah. Um, I have one more kind of like, watery thing. I feel like we're in like the realm of water right now. Which makes sense. So Lake Mead is...the water levels have been very steadily rising for like a while now. Like, Lake Mead, which, you know, there's books written about Lake Mead being depleted.
Brooke 21:32
We've talked about it a few times on the show.
Inmn 21:35
Yeah. Like the growing anxiety that a lot of people in the southwest have whenever Lake Mead gets down a certain amount. Yeah. But Lake Mead water levels are up. And that's mostly due to--I feel like this is a complicated thing--it's not like, "Oh yeah, Lake Mead is...the water is, the water's fine. What was everyone worried about?" This is, I believe, like a symptom of like...we have these historic rainfalls in California, we have these historic snow falls in the surrounding areas, and it's because of historic rainfall. And so it's like all of those are reasons why Lake Mead is filling up again, is because of floods elsewhere. You know? And so it's like climate change being a messier thing where we have like unpredictable weather patterns that sometimes contradict each other. You know? We have droughts and floods. We have historic rainfall and droughts all at the same time. And like, you know, it's like for California, especially with the mudslides and stuff, it's like, historic rainfall is...the ground is not made, or is not in a in a state to deal with that water, which is why too much water in any place can be a problem. So yeah, I don't know. These aren't any, like, hard--like, I'm not a climate scientist-these aren't like, hard declarations of good or bad because it's far more complicated than that. But kinda cool that Lake Mead is up?
Brooke 23:25
So it's up right now? I mean, doesn't it usually go up this time of year? And is it up more than usual?
Inmn 23:34
It's up more than usual.
Brooke 23:40
Yeah, fingers crossed there a little bit.
Inmn 23:43
Yeah. But little notes of good things here. But there's some pretty bad stuff out in the rest of the world right now?
Brooke 23:56
Yeah, there is. So there's...there's war going on around the world, not World War, but wars. You know? I mean, there's always conflict and fighting. But of course, there's some that have been in the headlines for quite a while. Unfortunately, February marks two years since Russia invaded and attacked Ukraine. And that fighting is still ongoing. There is a YouTube channel--I meant to look up his name and I forgot--but a fellow who does kind of a comprehensive 20-30 minute update on what's going on in that war that he posts every couple of weeks. It's pretty thoroughly researched and well done. It's interesting. He's been talking about the so-called meat-wave attacks that Russia has been doing. Basically, they're sending in a bunch of soldiers to attack, you know, a city, or whatever, and the Ukrainians are in a good defensive position and mow them all down. And then the next day they send in another bunch of soldiers and same thing. Same thing. Same thing, like just days and days of these very vulnerable, barely protected soldiers on the Russian side being sent in and then just completely slaughtered.
Inmn 25:26
Yeah, but there one interesting thing that I heard--which, you know, this makes sense, no one wants to be part of the meat-grinder attack--was Russian soldiers who are being critical or defecting or something because of it, because they were like, "No, we actually don't want to be killed like this. This is horrible."
Brooke 25:49
Apparently, they have made it really hard to defect. Once you're there, basically, they drag you to the frontlines and then they say, "You can either go forward and get shot or you can stay put and we'll shoot you, once they get to that point. But they have...like they've been, you know, conscripting prisoners in Russian prisons to come out being like, "Hey, you get out of the prison and you get your term reduced," or whatever. But then word has gotten back to the prisons that this is how those people are being used. So prisoners are refusing to sign up. So then they've been doing tactics like turning off the heat in prisons and stuff like that too, you know, or shortening their food supplies or things like that, to try and force them to sign up and be part of these meat waves.
Inmn 26:36
Holy shit. Yeah.
Brooke 26:38
So that war continues, and it continues to get worse and be awful. Yeah. Other places that are fighting, it's been four months since Hamas attacked Israel and they've been fighting. There continues to be a lot of tragedy and horrible shit going on in that situation that I'm not following closely enough to speak intelligently about the details of. Inmn, I don't know if you want to jump in and if you know of any of the news that has happened more recently. But mostly, I just wanted to point out that that's been going on for four four months now.
Inmn 27:19
Yeah, I mean, we did like a recap in our last, in our like This Year episode about the ongoing genocide in Palestine from Israel. And some, you know, updates since then: So the...South Africa sued Israel in the International Court of Justice or ICJ. I think that's what that stands for. And...which is totally not surprising that South Africa would be one of the countries to do that, having a lot of experience with apartheid and genocide. Weirdly, another country that has a large history of apartheid and genocide, Germany, has not been using its historical knowledge of its apartheid and genocide for good. And Germany announced a plan to intervene in the case, in defense of Israel. There was a ruling, I believe, on January 26th by the ICJ, which was essentially saying to Israel, like, you cannot commit acts of genocide any more. And then you have to preserve...make sure that aid can go to Gaza, and you have to preserve documentation of past genocidal acts. And essentially gave Israel a month to start to comply with this, or something. In which the response from Israel has been that--like this is as of a few days ago--but over 900 more Palestinians have been killed since this ruling. Hospitals have continued to be attacked. And Israel is doing things like continuing to flood tunnels in Gaza with seawater, an act which a lot of experts have said will cause ecological catastrophe for over 100 years.
Brooke 29:43
Wow.
Inmn 29:46
Yeah, it's real...It's really bad. And, like kind of tied to that, Biden is being sued in federal court in California for being complicit in genocide with Israel. Um, I believe the ICJ ruling also called for essentially countries to not give either side weapons, something which is absolutely not going to happen, and the US has like...like there's the big immigration bill which was tied to sending billions of dollars to Israel. So that's definitely not going to happen. Yeah, it continues to be, continues to be really horrible. The other things kind of going on with that are that like, you know, Israel is supposed to be letting aid trucks and stuff into Gaza, but then Israeli settlers are showing up in mass to blockade those trucks. And then the trucks are inspected and sometimes the trucks are shot at after they go into Gaza. Israel, like, there was, I saw, some headline about Israel targeting a United Nations relief convoy by boat. And I don't know, it's just a...it's a big mess. And it doesn't feel like the ICJ is gonna try to hold Israel accountable in real ways.
Brooke 31:34
Yeah, How about we turn to something we know more about and know more better, like stuff going on in the so-called United States.
Inmn 31:46
Where other bad stuff is happening?
Brooke 31:52
But at least....
Inmn 31:53
It's all bad!
Brooke 31:56
Everything sucks. Where's Margaret to be like her Margaret-ass-self and add some positivity to our doomsdaying?
Inmn 32:07
There's this big immigration bill that was in Congress. And it was kind of lauded as like a large bipartisan immigration reform thing. And it is weird. It's a very weird bill. It's very complicated and filled with politician doublespeak and shit like that. But before we get too deep into that, to give a little more context to it, have you heard about the tensions in Texas recently? We've talked a little bit about it before but...
Brooke 32:49
I have actually. I did listen to some news reports on some shit going on. In fact, one of them--you're gonna get into this in more detail but I just want to follow up on--I think last time I talked about some of the Border shit in Texas there was an issue that was definitely going to go to the federal government to be decided and it finally did and was but I'll let you take it away.
Inmn 33:15
Yeah, so in what seems like a lot of governors, especially like Republican governors, being emboldened to stretch the limits of what their jurisdictions are, in Texas, Abbott has for, you know, a while now, has had the National Guard putting razor wire and concertina wire all over the US side of the Border and also in the river and also on the Mexico side of the Border. But it's kind of like started this beef where Abbott has been using the National Guard to do things like putting up razor wire and things like denying Border Patrol access to the Border. And it's caused these huge, weird little standoffs. And the matter ended up going to the Supreme Court, where they voted that Texas had to allow Border Patrol to access the Border and to remove the razor wire because they didn't have the authority to do those things. It's caused this big, big, little weird mess and it's causing this mess where the Republicans and Republican governors, like pretty much every Republican governor, signed on supporting Texas and they... Like a lot of the rhetoric around it is like, "Oh, Biden's Border is a mess. Like Biden can't shut down the Border." And then in the news, Biden will be like, "If we can just pass this immigration bill, I can shut down the border." And it's…no one is good in this scenario. Like Abbott and these like other Republican governors are fucking crazy. And Biden and this immigration reform bill are also really bad. They're like playing a "Who's the worst" game, and the worst is being lauded as being better.
Brooke 35:44
Wild.
Inmn 35:45
Yeah, it's a huge mess. So the most recent thing with this was in the town of Eagle Pass, Texas, because of this growing tension between Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard, and the Supreme Court ruling, a convoy calling themselves God's Army recently descended upon the the town of Eagle Pass--and God's Army is made up of exactly who you would expect it to be made up of--and they all went down there to help the National Guard in this standoff with Border Patrol, essentially. Where it's like, anything that frames Border Patrol as being the more reasonable outcome or side of a conflict is utterly absurd.
Brooke 36:48
The thing that I was laughing so hard at about this is that they were touting this as 700,000 people were going to come and participate in God's Army and join this convoy. And it ended up being like 40 vehicles.
Inmn 37:03
Yeah. Yeah.
Brooke 37:07
That was my, that was my laugh out loud part of it. But yeah, there's more things to laugh at.
Inmn 37:13
Yeah, more things to laugh and cry about. But yeah, so into the actual bill. The bill would grant, essentially, emergency authority to shut down asylum processing based on quotas. So Biden's idea of shutting down the Border is even more restricting people's access to the asylum system. Because a lot of people that we're seeing come over are just turning themselves into Border Patrol to start processing asylum claims, because ports of entry have been closed or because of instability happening in Northern Mexico because of the US. And so like, the bill heavily restricts people's access to the asylum system. It would close asylum proceedings, essentially after a certain number of encounters with Border Patrol per a like…per day or per week. And this is like static closure. Like Border Patrol can just say, "We've hit the quota, we can't process any more people." And it also gives them the authority to for people who they are refusing to make asylum claims, essentially, to immediately deport them instead of people like lingering in the system to try again, or to stay in this asylum process. It also raises the bar for what people have to prove in order to make an effective asylum claim. But it grants immediate work visas to people who do get to go into the next step of asylum claim processing. But it makes it hard to get to that next step. Yeah, it makes it harder to get to the next step. But it grants work visas to people if they do make it. But it makes it much more difficult. And experts are saying most people will not be able to make it to this next step of asylum processing.
Brooke 39:46
Yeah. So it's not...it's not really a thing that...a great thing that they automatically get a visa because it's gonna be so hard to get there.
Inmn 39:54
Yeah, but from like, as of this morning or something, Trump asked Republican lawmakers to kill the bill. So that's...that bill's not gonna happen because Trump asked for it to get killed.
Brooke 40:12
Wow. I can't believe that man still has any sway in politics. I do not understand. And we could do a whole episode on me just not understanding how. But that's not for here and now.
Inmn 40:27
Yeah. You know, what else is the...some legislation that's bad that is getting passed, maybe right now, as of when we're recording this?
Brooke 40:40
Whoa, I can't wait to hear what it is. Tell me please.
Inmn 40:44
An attack on charitable bail funds.
Brooke 40:48
Oh my God. What?
Inmn 40:54
I'm laughing because it's...I have an adverse reaction to horrible things. This is...this is really bad. Yeah. So the Georgia State Senate passed this bill--I forget what the bill number is, it's like bill SB 63 or something like that--and Georgia passed...in the Senate passed a bill that would...they call it "expanding the cash bail system." But really what it does is criminalize charitable bail funds. And the House is expected to pass the bill today, as of recording this episode. So it will probably already have been passed by the time the episode comes out. The bill adds 30 additional charges that are ineligible for an unsecured release, including unlawful assembly--so any protest--and obstruction of law enforcement, street racing, and promoting street racing. And so, you know, it's clear...it's clear what their targets for this legislation are. And it also restricts the number of cash bonds that any individual, corporation, or group can pay on someone's behalf.
Brooke 42:19
Oh, really?
Inmn 42:20
Yeah, per year. And guess how many?
Brooke 42:27
Is it...is restricting the number, not the value...like dollar value?
Inmn 42:32
Restricts the number of bonds.
Brooke 42:34
Is it one, or something?
Inmn 42:38
Three.
Brooke 42:40
Okay, yeah.
Inmn 42:41
But, you know, three ain't much better than one. Yeah, no more than three cash bonds may be posted per year by an individual, corporation, or group in any jurisdiction in Georgia.
Brooke 42:53
So I'm sure they're touting as some kind of like, "Oh, well, because gangs are just going to bail out all their people or something like that."
Inmn 43:01
I think it's...I think it's pretty openly targeting protest movements and, and like other people, too, but it's like...I think they're being pretty open about it. And so a question that a lot of people might have, which is the same question that I had, is would this affect bail bonds organizations? And could a charitable bail fund become a bail bond organization? And the answer is that a charitable bail fund probably could become a bail bond organization. But bail bonds organizations are also restricted to the three bond maximum. And in order to increase that for bail bonds, organizations--like businesses--they would have to go to a third-party company to obtain a surety bond. And in an interesting and hellish funnel--so there's an existing Georgia law that already prohibits a bail bonds organization from recommending attorneys to a client. So like, groups like the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, even if they became a bail bonds organization, would face the same restrictions and they would also be criminally unable to recommend attorneys, which is something that the Atlanta Solidarity Fund does, is connect people to attorneys.
Brooke 44:35
They'd have to become separate organizations?
Inmn 44:38
Yeah, or something. And yeah, It's bad. This also...in addition to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, this also affects groups like churches that just bail out unhoused people routinely and it also affects Black Mama Bailout Action, which is dedicated to bailing out black moms who are incarcerated who are just waiting on bail, you know? It's...it's bad. Yeah. To make it worse for like other parts, Tennessee has also introduced a bill prohibiting courts from accepting cash bail paid by a charitable bail organization. Kentucky passed, in January, a bill prohibiting charitable bail organizations from posting bonds of $5,000 or greater. Abbott has also signed a law requiring charitable bail organizations to register with the county and essentially like a lot of red tape that makes it hard for them to exist. It's...yeah, there's a nationwide attack on bail funds right now. And, it's really bad. And that's my US politics blurb, that I don't have much good to say about, except that there's a lot of weird red tape being introduced into a lot of people's lives and I just know that people are going to figure out creative and amazing ways to get around all this bullshit.
Brooke 46:35
Yeah, that's a good positive thought on that. I appreciate you adding that.
Inmn 46:41
Yeah.
Brooke 46:42
I've got one headline to give you that might cheer you up a little bit.
Inmn 46:47
Yay. Cheer me up [said with desperation]
Brooke 46:53
That King Charles of Great Britain...UK...whatever the fuck his domain is, has cancer.
Inmn 47:03
Yay.
Brooke 47:05
Unfortunately, it's in its early stages. So you know, might beat it and be fine. But here's hoping. But that's the last piece of news I have for you today. Let's all be happy.
Inmn 47:22
Um, you know, a kind of cool thing that happened in the US? The Oglala Sioux Tribe barred the Republican governor from entering the Pine Ridge Reservation after she said that she was going to send razor wire and security personnel down to the Border in Texas. They were like, "You can't...we are trespassing you from...
Brooke 47:51
Our sovereign lands.
Inmn 47:52
Yeah, our sovereign lands. Which is pretty cool. And I had some other bad headlines and I just can't say them right now.
Brooke 48:03
Okay, good. Let's leave on the happy notes.
Inmn 48:06
Yeah. In some other fun...a couple other fun happy notes--this is totally unrelated to anything but I thought it was really cool--so you remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Brooke 48:19
Yes. I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer yesterday when I was in goodwill with my daughter and we found DVDs of it and it was awesome!
Inmn 48:27
Yeah! Did you know that Dolly Parton was a producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer anonymously?
Brooke 48:36
Oh my gosh, that rules?
Inmn 48:39
Yeah, her production company was the production company that made Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Dolly has recently, in the news, been talking about a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Brooke 48:58
Oh my god. I just...I have a friend who recently participated in the filming of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque soft porn movie. So that's pretty, pretty fun too. But I would totally take a reboot of that show because I loved that show. Buffy was such a badass.
Inmn 49:18
Yeah, yeah. So, Dolly is doing cool things.
Brooke 49:26
Thanks, Dolly.
Inmn 49:28
Thanks Dolly.
Brooke 49:28
That is the best news to end on, maybe there might be a new BTVS and I am here for it. And I will, once again, force my older brother to watch it with me and make him a superfan too.
Inmn 49:39
Yay! Um, but that is probably where we're gonna leave stuff.
Brooke 49:53
That's all the news that's fit to pod.
Inmn 49:55
All the news that's fit to pod
Brooke 49:57
There's probably a podcast that has that as their slogan already. And I just stole it and don't know it. But I'm going to pretend that that was a Brooke Jackson original. I'm here for it.
Inmn 50:04
Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Oh, we, before I forget, so we do have a little bit of an announcement before we get into our outro. And that is that Live Like the World is Dying, we're going to be taking a little bit of a break starting immediately. Starting immediately, we are going to take about a month-long break. So we'll be back sometime in March. And we... we're all...a lot of...all of our lives are just a little too chaotic right now. And we need to pause and regroup and we're not going to stop recording. We're going to continue to record. The show is not ending. We are just taking about a month-long break. And we will be back in March. And we're really excited to come back in March when we have had a little bit of a break and can really focus on what we want this next year of Live Like the World is Dying to be like. So thank you everyone who has listened and supported us for as long as you have. And yeah, we will see you sometime in March.
Brooke 51:27
Rock on.
Inmn 51:33
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then organize in your communities against all of the horrible things that we've just talked about. And this is a horrible pivot, but you...if you...also if you enjoy the show, then you can support the show. And one of the ways that you can support the show is just by talking about it, by telling people about it, by introducing it to people, by liking, reviewing, subscribing, all of those weird algorithm things that I barely understand. And you can also support the show by supporting it financially. And you can support the show financially by supporting our publisher Stranges in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a collective media publisher. We publish books, podcasts, zines, and all kinds of other fun stuff. And you can find us at Tangledwilderness.org. And you can support us by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. We put out a couple other podcasts like the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast, the Spectacle, which was formerly the Anarcho Geek Power Hour. And we have a lot of other new and exciting projects coming at you this year. We, as of listening to this, you should go check out our website because likely you will be able to download and order a physical copy of Penumbra City, the TTRPG that we've been working on for far too long, that we are starting to mail out our Kickstarter orders for this week. And it is probably available for you to go read right now. And that's truly wonderful. And in particular...so on our Patreon we have a $20 tier, which includes acknowledgements and shout outs and you can pay us $20 a month to support all of our projects and also get us to thank you. an organization, or a theoretical or fictional concept that you would like us to thank. So here are some things that we would like to thank. Thank you. Ephemeral, Appalachian Liberation Library, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Eric, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jennipher, Kirk, Chris, Mic Aiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much. And we will see you in March.