Live Like the World is Dying—S1E120
This Month in the Apocalypse: May, 2024
Episode Summary
This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Inmn talk about all the stuff that happened in the last month that was in no way concerning. From a collapsing climate to crumbling supply lines to the ongoing attacks on abortion access, the apocalypse is here, it’s just not equally distributed.
Host Info
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke.
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
Margaret 00:15
Hello and [stuttering realizing she's saying the wrong thing] live like the world is dying. A podcast introduction done professionally by someone who's literally a professional podcaster, your host, Margaret Killjoy. I'm not professionally paid for this podcast. This podcast only pays its transcriptionist and audio editor because we try to, but that's what we have. This is an amazing introduction. With me today is my co host. Inmn Hi Inmn.
Inmn 00:41
Hello. I am also not a professional, but I can say words,
Margaret 00:48
I mean, you would have done that introduction better than I did. Before we hit record, we're always like, "Who's gonna do the introduction?" And then I was like, "I got it. I am amazing. My name is Margaret and I podcast." But then, here we are. And this is This Month in the Apocalypse: May, 2024 edition coming out to you in the beginning of June, as is tradition. So we can talk about the previous month. We don't really stick very closely to the barriers of linear time and months and things, but here's some stuff that happened. But before we talk about the stuff that happened, we want to talk to you about--oh my god, I'm so used to doing ad pivots. This isn't a fucking ad pivot. This is a.... we're part of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and we are proud to be. Like, we do this because we actually believe in it. Here's a jingle. Go
Margaret 01:47
And we're back. So Inmn, nothing's really happened this month. Right? We can we can wrap this one up. That's good episode. Well done everyone. Nothing happened?
Inmn 02:27
Yeah, literally nothing apocalyptic happened in the last month. I don't know if it's like..... I don't know if shit's disproportionately getting worse and worse and worse and worse, which is like why every month I feel like there's far too many things to report on or talk about. Like, I haven't been someone who pays attention a lot to the everyday news until really starting to do these segments. And now I'm like, what was the news like five years ago? Was it this bad?
Margaret 03:06
Okay, so like, yes and no. There is something that happens, I think in preparedness in general, where if you put together all the facts, you can come up with this, like, "Holy shit, the world's ending." And you've been able to do that for probably thousands of years.
Inmn 03:22
Yeah.
Margaret 03:25
But certain things are picking up. Like, a lot of stuff ebbs and flows, you know? But it is a spicier time right now for more people than it was 10 years ago is certainly my guess.
Inmn 03:44
Yeah, yeah. And I wonder too, if the online-ness of the world now, I feel like, is like also peak, which I'm like, okay, we hear about more things because more of the world is...because the internet is just a much bigger, broader part of the world. And so we hear about a lot more things.
Margaret 04:08
Hear me out. You heard about less stuff until you started actively paying attention to the news. I would argue, because the world was perfect when I was young and it's terrible now that children are alive [sarcastic], that people overall probably had a better sense of the actual daily and world News as part of their life when their news came to them delivered in the morning by a newspaper. I don't know a lot of people who wake up in the morning and read WashingtonPost.com besides me. Most people log on to Twitter.com, which still fortunately redirects to the other hell site. I think we are far more aware of who said the wrong thing about the way in which they were trying to be trans inclusive than we know about what's actually happening. That's my cynical, old-lady-yells-at-clouds take though.
Inmn 05:06
Yeah, but it's also--this is turning into a weird segment--I get a lot of my news from Instagram or Twitter or places like that because it's the only place that people are posting about things. Because if you turn on like the whatever everyday news, it's like, they're not saying shit about shit. And so it's like weirdly, social media has become like the place where I find out a lot of news and, you know, we are doom scrolling so that you don't have to, so that you can listen to it all here. And it's gotten me paying attention to some funny things. One thing I have noticed is that I feel like at this point, there will be...I'll essentially do like updates on things that we've talked about previously, which is how the world works. Those things don't stop existing. One of the first things we're going to talk about is some just kind of US politics sphere stuff. In North Carolina, this bill is--or this repeal--is not going to move forward. But Republicans were, for a while, proposing to repeal an exemption from the Unmasking Mobs and Criminals bill which outlaws the wearing of masks or facial coverings in North Carolina. When COVID started, there was an exemption added for "masking for the purposes of health and safety" and Republicans have been trying really hard to get that repealed. Which people speculate is tied to appealing to anti-masking folks and COVID denialists for upcoming elections as well as making it more easy for the police to just detain people who are wearing masks, because they will technically be committing a crime. But the bill is not expected to move forward.
Margaret 07:17
I mean, at least for now. I'm sure that they're gonna keep trying to do this stuff and start banning masks. And don't worry, I'm certain all the concerned and moral Libertarians who refuse to wear masks when you had to wear masks will start wearing masks now that you're not allowed. [Joking]
Inmn 07:34
Yeah, yeah, exactly. There is also a push in North Carolina to...there's this like bill floating around about providing more instruction or like making it more regular for juveniles to be automatically tried as adults in felony cases. Because the.... I mean, this is a thing that just already happens but--
Margaret 08:08
Well they want to marry kids, so it makes sense that they also want to imprison kids.
Inmn 08:12
Yeah, it does. US politics hates children right now. And also wants to make everyone have them. This is a horrible segue into talking about abortion access legislation. Katie Britt, who is a senator, introduced a bill to make a database of pregnant people. The MOMs Act would--
Margaret 08:47
Jesus.
Inmn 08:48
Yeah. This bill called the MOMs act--this is this is not a bill, it was a bill that was introduced--and the MOMs Act would create this like national database of people who are pregnant. And the kind of like push behind it is claiming that it would create a lot of...connect people to resources and like funding and stuff like that, really pushing like connection to adoption systems and stuff like that. But it's mostly just connecting people to a lot of anti abortion propaganda.
Margaret 09:31
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Like those fucking billboards that are just like, "Pregnant? Get help." And you're like, wait, that's not true. You're lying to me.
Inmn 09:42
Yeah. Yeah. This is not a new law. It's a law that's actually been on the books since 1970. But in Missouri, did you know that pregnant people cannot get divorced?
Margaret 10:00
[Laughing] God dammit. Sure.
Inmn 10:07
yeah.
Margaret 10:07
Alright, Missouri.
Inmn 10:09
Yep, in Missouri since 1970, pregnant people have not been able to get divorced while pregnant. The original intention of the law--supposedly--was to hold men financially accountable to children. And so it--
Margaret 10:31
Because if you like, if you divorce before the kid is born, do you not have to pay child support or something? Wait, no, that can't be the case. Because you still have to pay child support whether or not you're married.
Inmn 10:43
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was supposed to, like try to more, whatever, tie men to the financial responsibility of children. And so like judges just like wouldn't finalize divorces while someone was pregnant. And in our current climate, it has, it's like being weaponized to trap women in marriages and like, I'm sure then it was actually just used to trap women in marriages, you know--or anyone who can get pregnant in a marriage. But with a lot of new anti-abortion legislation, it's like the thing where.... Oh, oh, sorry. The key part of the bill is that, when in Missouri, if you are filing for divorce, you have to disclose whether or not you are pregnant. It's like part of Missouri law. Yeah. And yeah, it has a lot of like, terrifying implications with a lot of new new anti-abortion legislation tied to states that start personhood at conception, you know? It's weird and has a lot of really weird implications.
Margaret 12:05
Yeah, the legal fallout of "embryos are people" is going to be funny.
Inmn 12:12
Yeah, yeah. And it's led to people not being able to get divorced because of being pregnant. And it's fucking weird. A woman in Tennessee was denied an abortion for a fetus that would--that will--be born dead and without a skull, there being no health and safety exemptions in Tennessee for abortion.
Margaret 12:47
Cool. Okay.
Inmn 12:49
Yeah. And, I believe it was Louisiana, although I have a hazy memory around, in a another state a doctor went on record, or whatever, to say that he believed that nine year olds were capable of carrying pregnancies to term. This is the state of abortion access in the United States right now. It's really bad Oh, God, I lost my train of thought because I'm really sad. I did all this research, and having to like say it out loud just makes me feel fucking terrible. The world is shit.
Margaret 13:44
No, it's really fucking bad.
Inmn 13:48
Some other kind of headline stuff going on in US political sphere, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is completely banned from all tribal lands in South Dakota. Which is kind of funny and and cool that a lot of tribes have--all of the tribes in South Dakota--have done that. And she responded by banning pronouns and tribal affiliation mentions in public university emails. It is now like, you're like not allowed to include pronouns or tribal affiliations in South Dakota in....
Margaret 14:37
Isn't the culture war great? [Joking]
Inmn 14:39
The the culture war is people with a lot of power playing like weird fucking playground pranks on each other that have horrifying--
Margaret 14:50
Body counts?
Inmn 14:51
yeah, horrifying implications for everyone around them. Interestingly--I wish I'd done more research on this--but in the Supreme Court there was this Qualified Immunity case that came up. And the Supreme Court, in a weird twist, ended up ruling that the person, the cop, that was seeking Qualified Immunity was denied it because they were like...because they were breaking the law to fuck with people. And, yeah, and they were not granted Qualified Immunity. And then Justice Sotomayor had this speech about how Qualified Immunity has no basis in US law. And so the Supreme Court might be having this weird crack against Qualified Immunity.
Margaret 15:54
That would be cool.
Inmn 15:55
Yeah, which is really bizarre considering everything else going on in the Supreme Court over the last few years.
Margaret 16:03
I mean, they're like the unelected nightmare.... They're the unelected Nightmare Council. But like, that doesn't mean that everything they do like maps one to one with whatever else. In a weird way, the fact that they're unelected, I wonder if it even sort of makes them a little bit like maverick, you know, because they're un.... They're entirely unaccountable to everyone, including their own base. Yeah, I mean, yeah. It makes them the Nightmare Council but like, you know, we get.... Nightmare Councils are right twice a day. I'm sure that the Nazgul killed some people who were also bad.
Inmn 16:43
A while ago--I forget in response to what thing--but some.... Oh, it was it was when Roe v. Wade got overturned. I made a meme of the Nazgul and the Supreme Court standing side by side, the photos that they took of themselves, I was like this is literally the fucking Nazgul.
Margaret 17:09
See, this annoys me because for anyone who doesn't know me and Inmn, me and Inmn were living in the same place and independently, without knowing the other was doing this, using the hashtag #betheDNDyouwanttoseeintheworld on Instagram to describe our various radical anarchist medievalist interests. So of course, I was sitting here feeling very clever about my Supreme Court as Nazgul comparison. Of course you've made a meme of this already.
Inmn 17:43
Yeah, you know, good brains do similar things.
Margaret 17:48
So do ours, okay. Yeah. Okay, what else we got?
Inmn 17:51
Um, oh, this, you know, I'm going to include this because it just ties in really well. So, like me and Margaret's fascination with things like Lord of the Rings, do you know about the history of renaissance fairs? This is a really quick fact, I promise.
Margaret 18:09
Does it come out of the SCA?
Inmn 18:14
No, no, it comes out of the Red Scare. [Margaret laughs incredulously] The modern renaissance fair model was created by a bunch of left-leaning communities that were being ostracized and blacklisted during the Red Scare. And it was, so it was like the first ones were designed and orchestrated by drama and history teachers and actors and like all these people from different trade backgrounds in and around like Hollywood, who were being ostracized and blacklisted due to the Red Scare.
Margaret 18:58
Fuck. And so they have like a way to meet up and shit?
Inmn 19:02
Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 19:03
That rules.
Inmn 19:04
Yeah, there's a deeper history, but--
Margaret 19:06
Have you've seen that George Romero documentary Knightriders?
Inmn 19:11
No, but I know it's your favorite movie.
Margaret 19:14
It's the best movie. I can't believe you've never seen it. Anyway, okay.
Inmn 19:20
Anyways, so the political climate of the US, as we know, is pretty, pretty terrible and intensifying--
Margaret 19:30
It start off with, he's in a creek and he's flat...he's whipping himself with branches. And then he puts out a crown. And then he's like, and he's just slept with his queen. And he puts on a crown, and then all of a sudden they're riding motorcycles. [Inmn laughing] And there's queer...there's like complex feelings about like queerness as well as like butch heterosexuality. And...anyway. Okay, what were you saying? Sorry.
Inmn 20:00
The new segment of the show, Inmn and Margaret's obligatory escapist facts that they know about stuff because the world is terrible. So, US political climate, pretty horrifying as always, and there is another pretty horrifying and intensifying climate in the world, isn't there, Margaret?
Margaret 20:27
Oh, you mean how the US infrastructure is collapsing? Okay. So when you frame it that way, you're like, "Oh, shit, the US infrastructure is collapsing, better run to the hills and fill your basement with beans and rice." And I mean, I did that. But you shouldn't do that just based on what we're saying. And this gets back to what we were talking about earlier, because I'm about to list a whole bunch of collapsed infrastructure things. And like, it's hard because it's like, well, I go out and look for these. I'm like tracking this, right? And so I'm about to list it all. And it it gets at the kind of.... Talking about the apocalypse is like talking about bad bills. There's these things that are like.... We should pay attention when bad bills are being proposed. And they're being proposed all the time. But like here in West Virginia, like last year, I want to say, there was like--I'm making these numbers up, they're rough, but I had the actual numbers at some point--there was like 100 anti-trans bills introduced in West Virginia. And like, two of them passed, and that sucks. I wish two of them hadn't passed, right? But we often hear about, like, "Oh, this bad bill or that bad bill," or whatever. And they're really good at indicating what the right-wing is trying to do. But they're not good at indicating what's happened. And we were talking earlier about where we get our news. And mainstream news has a problem where it has corporate sponsorship and it like, you know, has like a bias that they pretend like they don't, right? But I would say that overall social media, especially through the way that algorithms control us, has a tendency to like jump scare, you know, has a tendency to be like, "This bill happened and all trans people have been murdered," you know, and it's like, well, we haven't all been murdered. However, there's some serious, legitimate problems, and this like points to something. And I think that climate stuff is similar to that--although there's gonna be a lot of people murdered in this list of things I'm gonna talk about--but you know, it's like, we haven't all died yet. Unless you're an AI in the void listening to this 10 years from now when all the humans are dead, in which case, "Hey, how's it going?" Anyway, so, US infrastructure. Let's see. Atlanta, as we record this, is in the middle of a water crisis. They are on day five. Probably by the time this releases, it will probably be mostly fixed. But as of this recording, Atlanta's on the fifth day of a water crisis in what has to be the most over the top "There's money for cops but not for infrastructures" issue we've seen on the show yet. Atlanta, of course, is famously the center of massive social struggle to try and prevent the expansion of the police state, the Stop Cops City movement. On Friday, May 31st of this year one water main burst and then two more broke in the same afternoon. These massive water mains. And soon, six or seven other water mains broke across the city. I ran across a lot of different lists that had different numbers of water mains. Thousands of people were left with no water. The entire metro area was under a boil advisory. As of today, which is several days ago for you listeners, public school--like summer school--has been shut down. At least one hospital had to transfer patients to another hospital. I listened to this one woman talking about where she was just like, "Well, I got in the shower and I turned it on and water didn't come out and I cried." And I'm like, yeah, because going into the shower to cry is like what you do, right? But then there's when there's no shower, it's just a fucking nightmare, you know?
Inmn 24:27
Then you just got crying.
Margaret 24:28
Yeah, and that's not enough.... I guess if you put it in a sponge and use Bronner's and--anyway. Nearby, DeKalb County and the suburb of Decatur also had a water main break, despite being on a wholly separate system. This is probably unrelated. And this is going to be an example of what I'm saying about how these news stories work. Because this is bad and this is a sign of our crumbling infrastructure. But in a weird way, it's normal bad. Water main breaks are very common. It is unclear at the time of recording if this was a cascading failure, which is the most likely thing, or whether it was a huge important break and then a bunch of coincidental breaks. The DeKalb County one was almost certainly a coincidental break. Water main breaks happen in Atlanta every single day. Atlanta repaired 373 water main breaks in the year 2022. The US and Canada combined repair about 260,000 water main breaks every year. Most mains that break are over 50 years old. And over 33% of our water mains in the US and Canada are more than 50 years old. So more than a third of the water mains in this country are primed to break right now. Let's see, what else us electrical infrastructure is failing to keep up with increased demand. It's also, really interestingly, it's fucking over the attempt to try and get off fossil fuels. Because the way that solar works--you actually in some ways need more reliance on the electrical cables, right, because batteries are inefficient. And so when power is abundant during the day and rare at night, it like...you want all the power to go places during the day, right? Wind and solar farms are both being held back by our ancient infrastructure that we use. About 1500 gigawatts, or about a third of the power that the US currently generates total, is waiting to be plugged in. But there isn't the infrastructure for it. And we're actually building fewer new lines than we used to. You want to guess what's holding us back? [Long pause while Inmn thinks] It's Capitalism.
Inmn 26:46
I was like, it has to be something else. It has to be like--
Margaret 26:48
No, it has to be like racism or Capitalism, right? This is the US. It could be racialized Capitalism is the problem. We still use 100 year old wire technology for our high speed wires--high voltage wires, whatever. High power wires. Whatever. Which is steel wire surrounded by aluminum. This sags as it heats. And that causes problems both in the middle of the summer and then also when you put more power through it right, it causes more heat. When it sags and it's hot, it causes fires and shit. So they can't handle that much load. So they don't put all that much through it. Decades ago, people discovered better wires, which is carbon fiber core surrounded by aluminum. This can take a double the power and doesn't cause as much sagging. And it's just sort of interesting. So a lot of like, I try not to be like...technology's not going to save us, but it's like there's interesting shit when people put their minds to it and don't use the constraints of like Capitalism and stuff anyway.
Inmn 27:46
Yeah, yeah. There's no technology in a Capitalist framework that is going to save us because Capitalism will destroy us.
Margaret 27:53
Yeah. Capitalism isn't letting this new technology rollout because it is more profitable to develop whole new power lines than like retrofit old infrastructure. So they're like, "Oh, should we go through and rewire all this stuff? Or should we put in this one new power line?" And people are like, "Put in the one new power line? It makes us more money in the short term? And why do we care about anything? We're a bunch of Capitalists. [Margaret is doing a funny voice] And people make fun of us by doing funny voices when they talk about us. But we don't care because we have super yachts," which is exactly, it's a verbatim quote from someone I met named of The Rich. And another way that Capitalism is fucking over any attempt at green technology--whatever the fuck--California is currently in a solar crisis, where so many people have rooftop solar that electrical prices go negative during the day. It just like fucks up the economics. So they're reducing the incentives for new solar on rooftops because they don't want to lose a bunch of money by having power be free.
Inmn 29:00
Oh, my God. This is a joke, right?
Margaret 29:03
Nope. Yeah, no, it's hilarious. More outdated infrastructure of the United States. Speaking about data infrastructure, US schools, about 40% of US schools were built before 1970. Famously, in 1970 the air was colder.
Inmn 29:28
Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 29:30
And one of the reasons--I actually didn't even quite think this through--the main reason, as far as I understand, the reason we have summer break in the US is that we want children for farm labor, is the the classic reason, you know? That's what I always get told as a kid. I haven't...I literally haven't looked this up. But one of the knock on effects is that fewer schools have air conditioners because you're not in school in the hottest months of the summer, so you don't need air conditioners. So a lot of the US doesn't have air conditioning in their school or has inadequate air conditioning in their school. And what's happening now is that all of these older schools, as the heat comes north across the United States, is that all of the places at that latitude where it's--longitude? I think it's latitude. Whatever, the horizontal line. They're all fucked. And this is the Chicago-ish latitude because there's now days that are hot. Imagine a line going from Oregon through Iowa to like New York. This is the line of "fucked." Philly had to move the start of its school year as like one of the examples that I found. And then even still--
Inmn 30:45
Because it was too hot.
Margaret 30:47
Yeah.
Inmn 30:48
Oh, my God. Yeah,
Margaret 30:50
So it's like, over 80 degrees in the classroom is considered bad for understandable reasons. And it gets hotter than that, you know? Also, another fun thing about our infrastructure and climate change, there's projection maps. Washington Post says--I know I referenced them earlier. It's like, look, their political shit's pretty fucking mid. But they're one of the only large papers in the United States that regularly covers climate issues, even though like every...only like every third article is serious. The other two thirds are like "Buying this green light bulb will make orcas smile," or whatever, you know? But they do a lot of like data graphs and shit. And if you want to go look at this data graphs, there's projection maps of where he is going to fuck up the power grid royally. Because the power grid suffers under heat. And specifically, you get this expanded heat load as everyone runs their air conditioner. Okay, so like, you know how, cities have a heat dome?
Inmn 31:55
Yeah.
Margaret 31:55
Okay, so like cities can be up to like 12 degrees Celsius hotter than the surrounding areas. I think usually they're not that high. But they are fucking higher, right? All the concrete. Like, you throw some fucking trees in there and you're suddenly a lot fucking cooler. We've actually covered this on the show before with someone from Arizona who who studies this stuff. But everyone runs ACs. So of those 12 degrees Celsius, two of those are people running their air conditioners, like personal air conditioners. So cities are two degrees Celsius, which is like the bigger one, warmer just because of everyone's air conditioners. And so if you run an air conditioner, you're a selfish loser who deserves everything you have coming. [Joking] No, you need fucking air conditioners because the wet bulb temperature is real and it is coming for all of us. And we've talked about that enough on the show probably. Fortunately, in the past year or so, the idea of knowing what a wet bulb temperature is, I think, has gone a little bit more mainstream. It's the temperature at which you can't cool off and it...the more humid it is, the the worse that that number is. So if you look at this map, the areas that are most royally fucked over are southwest Arizona and whole Sonoran Desert is like real fucked, as well as South Texas. Honestly, all of Texas, pretty fucked. Then a moderate fuck you to the Southeast of the US and the Central Valley of California. And then like a little fuck you to the Mid Atlantic and the whole Midwest minus God's chosen place--
Inmn 33:37
West Virgina?
Margaret 33:38
Appalachia. Well that's the thing is like it's not West Virginia, it's like the strip running from about Asheville up into Pennsylvania. It's like this like peninsula of not fucked in this like sea of fucked, you know? Because I mean, well, because it's higher because there's mountains. And also fewer people live here because people, for some weird reason, don't like live in the mountains. Which is great. Stay out of the mountains. I want it all myself. Okay, what are you saying?
Inmn 34:09
In May, in Texas, this past May that just happened--I know how to say words--temperatures we're reaching like 116 degrees, which because this part of Texas is actually quite humid. And this is, this is where people.... Which I'm not being a denialist about shipping bad in Arizona but like, when I think about Arizona versus places like East Texas and stuff, I'm like, "Yeah, it was 115 degrees here and the humidity was really low, which will change. Arizona we'll get more humid. It will get worse. But in Texas with the humidity heat index, it was 130 degrees in Texas. Which is like lethal temperatures.
Margaret 35:00
Yeah, no, I believe that. And the thing about, when I was saying that it's a fucked areas in this context is only where the power infrastructure is, does blow already because of heat problems, and where the wind blow worse because of heat problems.
Inmn 35:15
Yeah, and we see that with like...Texas famously a few years ago had these wild blackouts because of how Texas has incredibly outdated electrical infrastructure that are all privately owned and run--
Margaret 35:30
And it's not connected to the rest of the national grid.
Inmn 35:33
Yeah, and so we there were all the breakdowns in it during these like massive heat waves and no one could do anything. It's bad.
Margaret 35:45
Well, you want to hear about more crumbling infrastructure elsewhere in the world?
Inmn 35:50
Nooo.
Margaret 35:51
Too bad. you signed up for it. Do you know Mexico City's sinking?
Inmn 35:57
No. [Incredulously]
Margaret 35:59
Mexico is sinking, at some places falling--I wrote 20 inches a day and I think it's 20 inches a year. I think I wrote that wrong. I mean, like something's falling 20 inches a day, it's called a sinkhole. But 20 inches a year is too fucking much for a city to fall. And that's like only, that's like the the peak of various places. Basically, the clay under the city is compacting as water is being pumped out of aquifers. It is projected to sink 100 feet over the next 150 years. Water shortages are continuing throughout the area so people are digging deeper and deeper and further and further out, of course making it all worse. Also famously going on in Mexico right now is that they elected a woman president who the US left is excited about because of her environmental cred and the Mexican left is like, "Are you fucking kidding me? This fucking lady that we don't have anything nice to say about?" So yeah, listen to your Mexican friends more than American newspapers about this particular issue. But another country with wild election news and infrastructure problems is India. As we record this, it will be all over. The dust is settled by the time you hear this. Like literally we ended up on a delayed recording because a storm took out my internet for a second and.... Speaking of, I'm like, "I live in the best place ever, the most resilient area." Whatever. I couldn't be on a fucking internet recording for an hour because of the storms. Not a big deal. But India. Okay, so things have updated along with that. Basically, they're having this big election right. And you got this guy named Modi and he's with theBJP, which is basically the fascists. They're the fucking Nazi Party. They are technically Hindu nationalists--not technically fascists. They like love Hitler and they're Nazis. They suck. I don't know how to.... They've been in power for the past 10 years. India is the most populous nation in the world. And they have been under essentially a ethno-nationalist, fascist government for the past 10 years, and people don't pay enough attention to it. Because racism. And Modi was expected to sweep the elections again, as he did the last two times in the BJP party, and he didn't. He.... Like everyone...if you watch Last Week Tonight, John Oliver did a piece on Modi last night and he's like, "Look, they're gonna win. He always fucking wins." And what happened instead is they had to--probably, it's all happening again now and this is old news to y'all--they probably have to make a coalition government. And so they're still gonna be in power, but they're going to be in power less than they were. And that is a good sign. Because the kill all the Muslims party should have less power. There's 200 million Muslim people in India and the president for the past 10 years.... They like.... Whatever, it's bad. People can go read about it and should. Another thing, India's also the like.... I feel like India is just a sign of where everything is gonna go. I feel like India is the future of the world. You know? Like, higher and higher population density, with poverty expanding, climate fascism, and climate crisis, because India is like one of the--I think it's safe to say it is the most densely populated area that is the most fucked by the current climate change--because if you look at the maps of like, "Here's where wet bulb will kill you today," it's like a swath across the Sierra-Sierra? No, the big desert. Sahara. And like a bunch of SWANA in general and India. And a lot more people live in India than--well, anywhere else in the world. You know there's, I think, 1.4 billion people living in India. Daytime highs around India are regularly 120 degrees during the day now and stain 90 at night. We are not in the middle of summer as famously, we just.... It's not even summer yet, legally. I hate that people pretend like the summer starts June 21, instead of it clearly starts in June. Whatever. Anyway. New Delhi recorded all time new high of 126 degrees. The first climate death of the year in New Delhi was a 40 year old migrant laborer, but in two eastern states 24 people died in just one day last week. Another state had 55 heat deaths in that week. Overworked air conditioners are sparking and catching fires across the cities. A forest in the Himalayas burned down. Water crises are looming rivers are running drier. Water truck deliveries are slowing down and desperate people are mobbing the water trucks that do arrive. It is...the apocalypse is here. It's just not equally divided or whatever. You know, people used to say like, "The future's here, it's just not equally distributed." The apocalypse is here, it's just not equally distributed. Anyway, that's what I got for this month. You got some more stuff, though, right?
Inmn 41:39
Yeah, this is some more just kind of like headline level climate stuff. So, I love talking about the little mini-fiefs of Texas and Florida that those governors are trying to further build. Which, yeah, I don't know. It's like the.... Should do should do a more in depth episode at some point about the Republican nation state fiefs that Republican governors are like trying to build. It's weird and terrifying. But DeSantis signed a bill that will delete climate change mentions from Florida State law.
Margaret 42:27
Oh, that'll get rid of climate change, if you don't talk about it. [Joking]
Inmn 42:29
Yeah, that will.... Yeah. And the you know, it's not going to spell any problems when the.... Have you--I'm sure you have--heard of the Doomsday Glacier?
Margaret 42:42
Oh, is that the glacier that once this melt is going to like raise the water level a foot and a year or something and drown Miami?
Inmn 42:49
Three meters. The water level, the sea levels will rise three meters.
Margaret 42:54
I inverted the foot to meter comparison and in my head. Yep. Okay.
Inmn 43:00
Yeah, so the Doomsday Glacier is showing more signs of melting due to like some warmer ocean currents because the sea is ridiculous. We featured this on the show a while ago, and this is a very different part of the world than where the Doomsday Glacier is, but in Florida sea temperatures were 100 degrees.
Margaret 43:25
That's too hot for water.
Inmn 43:26
That's too hot for water. That is like.... So like a lot of like commercial like hot tubs only go to like 104. The sea is a fucking hot tub, which is doing really bad things to a lot of...like ecological plants, animals, etc. I can say words. Stuff. And yeah, so the Doomsday Glacier's showing new signs and if that glacier collapses, melts, disintegrates, like global sea levels would rise three meters which would...Florida would be underwater. So DeSantis will have no more problems because Florida will be underwater.
Margaret 44:18
My favorite video meme about this is like when Republicans were like, "Well anyone who's concerned about it could just sell their coastal house," and like the person just comes out and is like, "TO WHO?!" Who are they going to sell it to?
Inmn 44:35
Yeah, no, it seems it seems very comical but it's like the global effects of the sea rising three meters is that states, like in the United States, states disappear. And this is less climate but more kind of like international--whatever, it's related. So a kind of cool video that I saw in the past month was that hundreds of people stormed a Tesla factory in Germany.
Inmn 45:14
Yeah, holding hands.
Inmn 45:15
This is the same place where like earlier the Volcano Group, they like burned down a substation or something, because people are really mad about.... People are mad about the Tesla factory existing, but they're really mad about this planned expansion that the Tesla factory is trying to do. And it's in responses to things like huge amounts of water consumption that the factory uses as well as their plan to destroy a nearby forest that butts right up against a protected wildlife area. And the town of Grünheide, where the Tesla factory is outside, of the entire town as a political entity voted rejecting the planned expansion, which Tesla has completely ignored. They're just like, yeah, wild. They're just like, "Well, the town voted. We don't care," which, it's like the farce that like...the farce that like, elections or anything or even voting is going to save anyone, even if people.... LIke, if everyone in a town decides "We don't want this, billionaires are just like, "Well, we don't care. We're gonna go ahead and do this anyways."
Inmn 45:32
Not to defend voting but in this particular context, I feel like what that offers is it offers this like sense of legitimacy to the direct action assists. You know, and so I think it's cool that they came together to state their rejection of this plan. And then it's even cooler that then people have picked up both daytime direct action and clandestine direct action because movements do really well when those...when all three of those things work in synchronicity. They only work together.
46:43
Yeah, no, that's very true. And Elon made a bunch of comments about it lamenting that the police were not harsher on the demonstrators and that gasoline car factories were also not being attacked.
Margaret 47:40
[Laughing] Like we'll get to them. Don't worry.
Inmn 47:43
Yeah. And more from Elon. So, you know, Elon Musk loves to, as a billionaire, play in political theater, which is like this terrifying thing that billionaires do is they moonlight as politicians and affect the entire world just by whatever the fuck they want to do. So there's this, there's this big war that's been happening in Sudan, which has displaced 9 million people. And Elon said that SpaceX will terminate Starlink access in countries that it isn't authorized to operate in, which is...I don't know what the fuck that means. But in Sudan, what it means is that like Elon in like some.... I think he likes to grant and revoke access to resources that he controls to affect global happenings. And so Elon intervening in the war in Sudan is that like it will collectively punish millions of people who rely on access to the internet in order to survive as they are being displaced. And like the whole world has said this. And they haven't removed Starlink access yet, but it's this lingering threat Elon is holding over everyone.
Margaret 49:29
Yeah, I mean, he invented a new kind of remote access internet that--well, he didn't invent, he fuckin own some companies that invented-- you know, a new way of doing internet that has a lot of knock on effects, but genuinely is a game changer for rural internet. And so therefore, immediately people become reliant on it in places where people are the most vulnerable, and he really enjoys having that power. There's no part of me that doubts that. I liked it better when he was like a stoner loser who was just like "Holy shit, I'm a weird stoner..." This never actually happened. But there was like, before he like became like the fucking arch villain of the world, he had this weird period where his public perception was a little bit...I don't know. Whatever. He's a fucking monster.
Inmn 50:23
Yeah.
Margaret 50:24
And he calls himself an anarchist sometimes. Do you know that?
Inmn 50:29
Oh, God, I did not know that. But make sense. Yeah, he likes to pretend that he's radical in some way.
Margaret 50:37
Yeah, he obviously.... It's funny because he has like this weird cherry-picked knowledge of Anarchism where he like.... Basically he reads a lot science fiction. He read the Culture series a long time ago by Lain M. Banks--and I haven't read it--but it basically has space Anarchism in it. And he was like, "Oh, I'm an anarchist now," or whatever the fuck you know. He tweeted that before on Twitter. And then like more recently, he posted something about being like, "If only Bakunin had gotten his way in the International," or whatever. Because he hates communism, right, because he's a fucking right-wing dick bag. And so then he like, therefore thinks Bakunin, somehow, wouldn't blow him up and take all of his stuff and unionize all of his workers. Which Bakunin absolutely would have. Like what? Fuck you, man. Anyway, sorry. On day I'll do a whole spiel about how much I hate this particular man for this particular aspect of his personality. I am not a big gatekeeper of anarchy, so when I find the people that I'm trying to get keep I need a big two-handed sword.
Inmn 51:56
Makes sense. Makes sense. Do you know who else continues to be terrible and is no surprise to anyone?
Margaret 52:09
Wait, did something happened to everyone's favorite former president?
Inmn 52:14
Oh, not to that yet, but yes.
Margaret 52:18
Who else is terrible?
Inmn 52:19
Israel. Israel is terrible. Israel continues to do terrible things. So the.... These are pretty brief headlines. Stuff changes literally every day. But this past month the ICJ ordered Israel to stop, to halt the--
Margaret 52:40
What's the ICJ?
Inmn 52:42
The International Court of Justice. It's like the highest...one of the highest courts in the world, or something, and they're who, South Africa like was--"suing" isn't the right word--but brought up this case against Israel for genocide earlier. They ordered Israel to halt its assault on Rafah. And since then, which we see this thing where like the ICJ like says, "Hey, stop doing this thing!" or like "Hey, this thing!" and then Israel does the exact opposite of that. And so after this order came from the ICJ, Israel started targeting and bombing displacement camps in Rafah with 2000 pound bombs. These are these are bombs that can kill someone from two football fields away from where they land.
Margaret 53:47
Jesus fucking Christ.
Inmn 53:49
It's utterly, utterly horrifying. Some kind of nice headlines--"nice" isn't the right word but you look for little moments of cool things happening in struggles--if you haven't heard of this, hundreds of hornets attacked in IDF squadron in southern Gaza and hospitalized 13 of them. A lot of countries are starting to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu. And a lot of countries like Spain, Ireland, Malta, and Slovenia have started to recognize Palestine as a separate state. These things that are like mostly lip service and don't really do anything, you know, like we've seen with with the ICJ. Nobody is holding Israel accountable for what it's doing.
Margaret 54:52
Yeah, but a lot of them are piling straw on the camel's back, you know? I think that like it's hard to know what of these various things will actually cause change. But I think that I think piling straw is actually a very worthwhile activity.
Inmn 55:12
Yeah, totally. And I misspoke. When I say "no one" I'm not including things the Houthis who continue to literally attack Israeli warships and shit like that, which is really cool. And also, there was this little, this little video that I saw of a Palestinian boy knocking a drone out of the sky with a rock.
Margaret 55:40
Hell yeah.
Inmn 55:42
Yeah. Which is really great. This is this is back in the United States, but the NYPD Assistant Chief pepper sprayed himself at a pro-Palestine encampment in New York City. At a pro-Palestine protest in Amsterdam a--
Margaret 56:06
A good dog!
Inmn 56:07
Yeah, a good dog. A police canine dog attacked a riot cop. Oh, and then Mexico, people set fire to the Israeli embassy there. Some kind of cool things and--
Margaret 56:26
Wasn't it in Scotland where they went and cut the internet connectivity of a weapons manufacturer? Maybe it wasn't Scotland?
Inmn 56:35
I didn't hear about that one.
Margaret 56:36
There's some other direct actions that have been happening.
Inmn 56:38
Hell, yeah. Hell yeah. And, you know, some nice things. And on a grim note, the Rafah crossing with Gaza and Egypt has been closed since May 7th after Israel bombed the shit out of the area. And this is the only entrance to Gaza that isn't directly controlled by Israel. And Egypt claims that it won't be reopened until the areas under Palestinian control. And this is continues to be in the realm of like, which this is something that I just don't understand too well and so it sounds doubly confusing, but like Egypt continues to restrict aid access and keep crossings closed out of some claim that that is like not being complicit with the genocide going on or not helping facilitate it. And it's really confusing and I don't understand it enough to have a real comment.
Margaret 57:50
Yeah, I don't know anything about it.
Inmn 57:54
But yeah, that's...that's what's happening over there. And that's it. Nothing...nothing else happened this month.
Margaret 58:06
I feel like anyone listening to this is probably aware that former Home Alone star Donald Trump has been indicted on several dozen counts of shit, and they're all felonies, and he's a felon now. I kind of... like I know you have some notes on it, but I just like...we put it at the end because it's funny and it's also like, you've probably heard this. That's like the one headline that between it and Rafah I'm glad that Rafah was dominating headlines, or at least dominating social media feeds. What do you got?
Inmn 58:49
Yeah, so Trump is felon. Was convicted of 34 felonies. It took jurors only nine hours to deliberate on the weeks-long trial. Which, you know, like nine hours even seems like a long time. But I feel like for a case like this, I'm like--
Margaret 59:14
It's 34 counts.
Inmn 59:14
Yeah, I imagine it just took them nine hours to literally go through the proceedings of whatever juries have to do.
Margaret 59:21
Yeah. [Laughing]
Inmn 59:24
And what a bunch of lawyers have been saying is that it is unfortunately unlikely to affect Trump in this thing that is not really a surprise to anyone that like rich and influential people will not face consequences for their actions. A lot of people think it is unlikely to affect his ability to run for president and that there's also all of these avenues for him to not even go to prison, which, you know, it's weird. It's weird to be like, "I want Trump to go to prison," because I don't believe in prisons, but fuck Trump.
Margaret 1:00:10
I mean, it's like one of these things, right, where it's like, people are like, "Well, why did we get mad at him about this thing?" that like, you know, it's hush money or whatever. It's not about all of the war crimes that every single President has committed. Like, every single president is a mass murderer. And then like, they're never put on trial for mass murder. Instead it's this. And, you know, I'm kind of like, well, he still broke these laws, and people are mad at him and trying to stop him from being exceptionally bad. Whatever. I don't know. It's also funny because it's like, well, I actually...I mean, I think you should be able to run for president when you're a felon. I think should be able to run for president when you're in prison. I'm going to talk about Leonard Peltier in a minute. But I don't know. Whatever, like fuck him. It's still funny. Like, that's how I feel about it. And also, like, it's just like, not boring. It's like, okay, it might have knock-on effects. And we don't know what those are gonna be yet. You know? Is it going to stop him from running for president? No. Is it gonna stop him from winning presidency? No. It makes him like...it puts his back against the wall. Now he's like, "Well, if I don't run for president...if I don't win the presidency I'm way more fucked," you know?
Inmn 1:01:21
Yeah. Yeah. And it's...I think people really pushing for some of the.... Like, this case was like, yeah, it's not anywhere close to any of the other fucked up.... Like, he's done so many fucked up things and this was also bad. But I think it points to some prosecutors who are like trying by any means necessary to like...they're like, "Well, it's unlikely that these other charges relating to January 6 th or election fraud are gonna stick. So we're gonna go for him anyway we can. And it's like, there's no presidential candidate that's going to not do horribly fucked up things. But like, we've--and we should do a deeper dive into this at some point--But if you still have not heard about Project 2025, which is like the pan, far-right, Republican legislative package that they are planning for 2025 when they assume that Trump will be reelected, this is a document that people can go read on the internet and it includes things like schemings between Trump and other folks to create a deportation army. Trump has talked about wanting to deport 15 million people from the United States. He has talked about wanting to introduce a denaturalization program for people who have become naturalized citizens. He has also made nods about like getting rid of birthright citizenship in the United States, specifically to affect people with parents who are not citizens. And also he's been in the news talking about saying things like he's considering banning contraceptives in the United States.
Margaret 1:03:28
I mean, he's...he's the fascist. Like, people are like, "Well, Biden's bad too." and you're like, "Yes." That doesn't...like fascist is a specific word with specific meaning, you know? So Biden is like an evil motherfucker. Biden is a Democrat. That's a different type of evil motherfucker. Like, that is an evil motherfucker that is worth stopping, that is worth fighting. It is a different thing than fascists. Like, I don't know. Everyone probably knows this but it annoys me when people are like.... lBiden is overseeing a genocide, right? Biden is culpable in the genocide in Gaza. And for an awful lot of reasons, he has lost himself the election and lost his electoral base by way of supporting this genocide, you know? And that's bad. And it's...I don't even want to be like, "And this other thing is worse." It's like, well, there's incomparable evil and then there's incomparable evil times two, motherfucker. It's like when you're a kid and you're like, "Well, infinity bad," and genocide is infinity bad. And then Trump is like, "Well, infinity times two." I already made that joke, but I was trying to make it a little bit clearer. And you know, I don't know. I don't...like I'm not really into electoral politics as a way of making change. More like I watch it like I watch the weather. But the weather is Stormy. That's my Stormy Daniels joke that I did by accident and I feel kind of guilty about.
Inmn 1:05:05
Yeah. Is this kind of like the thing where, I listened to someone talk once about how.... Because people are like, oh.... When people talked about like the Spanish Civil War, it's like a fight against fascism and Franco who is the the hand of fascism. And I listened to this political theorist talk about it and he was like, "Franco wasn't a fascist, which is not me saying that Franco was good. It is me saying that he was sometehing far worse than a fascist." And it was it was these kind of political definitions that I didn't really get. It was kind of a pedantic argument. But he was like, he was like, "Yeah, Franco wasn't a fascist. And it didn't make it better. It made it worse."
Inmn 1:05:09
I mean, interestingly Franco was more, in my mind, Franco was a different style of fascist. But the like...I mean, now I'm quibbling with a person who I don't know's argument, but in my mind--
Inmn 1:06:11
Yeah, I didn't know enough about it to quibble.
Margaret 1:06:13
In my mind, Spain didn't join World War Two. And like, but I mean, in a weird way, Trump is almost a little bit more Franco-ish than Hitler-ish. In that... Well, actually, I don't know. Now that I say that, Franco was--
Inmn 1:06:33
They're really similar.
Margaret 1:06:34
But Franco's whole thing is that he was religious. And Trump is like pandering to the Christian nationalist base. But the Trump doesn't believe in anything.
Inmn 1:06:44
Yeah, yeah. No, it's like Trump, Hitler, and Mussolini are like, all like Popular leaders who were striving to "save" their countries from whatever thing they were claiming was rotting it. They're all terrifyingly similar.
Margaret 1:06:59
I mean, again, Modi is the most powerful fascist in power in the world right now, I believe. The Indian Prime Minister. God, I hope it's prime minister and not President. I'm almost certain it's Prime Minister. But you know. And one of the specific things is it's an open for business attitude, because this is like this funny thing where.... Whatever. We could talk about the what makes a fascist a fascist at some other point. It's a very specific thing. And like, the Proud Boys and stuff are part of why Trump is a fascist. Specifically, having paramilitary groups that are outside the rule of law is a specific fascist trait. And wielding extra-legal violence is a very important component of fascism.
Inmn 1:07:55
I don't know how to end this one.
Margaret 1:07:57
Well, on June 10, which is the future from now--unless it's the past, unless you're listening in the future, especially my AI friend, who is the only living thing that is left alive 10 years from now. People are gonna be like, "Margaret is in favor of AI. I am online all the time and I have opinions." Anyway, whatever. Go fucking tough grass, hypothetical person I've made up to be angry at. On June 10th, Leonard Peltier, the longest serving political prisoner in the United States, who's been in prison for 48 years, has his parole hearing and I've seen it referenced as his final parole hearing. And people from his support campaign are doing a lot of work to try and drum up support. I am not a big "Send concerned letters to the government type person," but I believe in this case, and I did so myself. And his support team is asking people to. So look up Free Leonard Peltier. P-E-L-T-I-E-R. Leonard Peltier was--I did a whole two-part episode with someone about this and Lakota Wars--but Leonard Peltier is a...he's been accused...he's been convicted of killing FBI agents. His co defendants were tried separately and found not guilty by way of self-defense. To me, that is like the smoking gun of it. It has been proven in court that this was a self-defense killing of these FBI agents who were there to fuck with people and be bad. I would support Leonard Peltier even if he was innocent. But even for people who aren't like wild anarchists, there's a whole host of reasons to support this man, who is about 80 years old, getting out. And so please, we've been asked to try and promote that as we come up to this parole hearing. The reference of it as the final parole hearing is so sad, unless it's the final parole hearing because he's going to win. I like cut my teeth as an anarchist going to parole hearing...like protests at parole hearings for Leonard Peltier that clearly didn't work. I didn't cut my teeth very well.
Margaret 1:10:22
But, if you want to support this podcast, because the podcast is done now. So now it's the closing part. You can actually just stop listening. But I don't want you to. I want you to keep listening so that you can hear all of the amazing stuff about us. But you do you. It is published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We publish a bunch of other podcasts, including one that Inmnn runs called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Is that nominative determinism? No, it's not. That's not. Anyway. Not Inmn, but the Strangers.... It doesn't work. This whole bit didn't work. I'm tired. I'm going to eat food as soon as we're done recording and go look at the storm and play with my dog. But Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, we also publish a podcast called The Spectacle, which is, if you want to hear not me talk about Knightriders but other people talking about other movies, you can listen to The Spectacle and it's really good. You can also,if you sign up on our Patreon or go to our website. It's all free and shit. A lot of it, like the podcasts are free, and if you go to the website, all of our monthly features are free. We put out different zines every single month. You can also get them mailed to you for only $10 A month, anywhere in the world. And if you give us $20 a month, which goes to all of our costs, the aforementioned paying the transcriptionist and the audio engineer and I keep dangling in front of you this carrot that one day we'll pay the hosts but like that's not a very important carrot to you. It's more of an important carrot to me and Inmn. That said, it would pay for my dumpling cost after I have finished recording because I go completely smooth brained after I record. My friends are like, "Hey, what's up?" And I'm like, "Cartoons." And they're like, "What? That's not an answer to my question." And I'm like, "I'm eating ramen." And they're like, "Okay." Because I'm a social sprinter and I am.... So if you give us $20 a month, we will shout you out in list form here at the end. And it could be you, or it could be a thing that you care about, like a project or an animal. A non-human animal. Could also be human animal. Whatever, we'll shout out whatever you want. Unless it's bad, in which case we won't. Unless someone snuck in bad ones and we don't even know about it. And you could have your name in the following list. We want to thank--we really do thank you. It is really useful. It makes so much possible that you all provide us this, and we really appreciate you. We appreciate you Amber and Ephemoral and Appalachian Liberation Library. Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Boldfield, E, Patoli, Eric, Peoples University of Palestine: Treaty One, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, Ben Ben, Anonymous, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, SJ, Paige, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole and Tivkah the dog, and of course the also immortal--because Tivkah the dog is also immortal, because all dogs are immortal--but as always, we want to thank Hoss the Dog. And we want to thank you, our listeners for.... Did you know we forgot to celebrate. Did you know we hit a million fucking listens? Inmn has a point to make. I'll call on you. You've raised your hand.
Inmn 1:13:50
I'm sorry, the document of the thanks list has gotten so long that you failed to see the second page and we would also like to thank Bartholomew Spawndoom, Jason, aiden, alium.
Margaret 1:14:03
Oh, and I am going to turn off the pages in this doc as soon as we hit stop. Thank you alium, aidan, Jason, and Bartholomew Spawndoom. Jason, that's not a real name. Bartolomew Spawndoon, that's a real name. I hope you all are doing as well as you can and we'll talk to you soon.