Get ready to Live like the World is Dying with your host, Inman.

How's that?

How's that?

I set you up for success.

Welcome to Live like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times.

I am your occasional host, Margaret Killjoy, who is not the same person as.

Inman, despite what a lot of do.

You know, we're different people.

We're different.

We are in fact different people.

Although I have gotten to make a lot of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus are in the same room jokes lately.

Which I eventually learned is a pop culture reference.

Yeah, I was completely oblivious.

I've seen a couple of memes I didn't understand.

Well, it's like.

Well, I hope it just at least provides basis for the.

Like there's a reason the meme that is like there's a reason you never see cops and KKK in the same room.

Yeah, that's the basis for the joke is Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I'm more familiar with Childish Gambino and whatever the other name is.

I can't remember right now.

This was a terrible plan, Donald Glover.

I guess I shouldn't have set myself up for a failure like this.

Anyway, this is this month in the apocalypse, which is your once a month update on how the apocalypse is going, which you would have no other way of knowing because the thing is, is that a lot of the bad stuff, in fact no one gets any bad news anymore.

That's why people are busy hope scrolling.

And anyway, as you probably guessed, we have Edmund and James on this recording today.

And the other thing we have is to tell you that we are part of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts.

And here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Da da da da da da da da.

You were about to do an ad advert, weren't you?

I was not.

I knew.

No, I knew that I'm on the Adlus show right now and just reveling in that.

I can still do transitions because that's the problem.

Secretly doing cynical ad transitions is really fun.

It's the most fun part of the job.

Yeah, it is.

It's the part of the job that my mum tells me is going to get me fired the most.

Yeah, and it's genuinely important when you work for context.

James and I also work for a giant evil megacorporation, the world's largest radio monopoly in history.

And we have to pitch to ads when we do shows on that network and we don't on this network, which Is nice.

It is.

It is really nice.

I'm going to make those pompous academics regret kicking out such a genius, deciding to build my lab and do my research.

The Time Talks podcast.

Have you ever stared at a 500 page book and wish you could just talk to the author about their ideas instead of if so, the Time Talks podcast, part of the Channel Zero network, is for you where we discuss history, politics, music and art with an anti authoritarian and anarchist perspective.

The Time Talks podcast.

What's this light?

I feel different.

The Time Talk Spa.

Anyway, more importantly, Inman, anything happened this month?

A lot of things happened this month.

So many things in fact, that it's becoming.

I never want this to be.

It could happen here is already doing a fucking daily roundup of shit.

Yes, unfortunately, this is my whole job.

I'm like, is there a point to doing a month?

It used to be that in a month, yeah, shit happened and so there's stuff to talk about.

But now I'm like, I don't know, you could write several books about the last month already.

Someone will in the future.

Yeah, that's optimistic about people into the future.

I appreciate it.

I dream of a future with books.

Yeah, there will be a future with books.

They'll make a film for the telescreen, you know, the one that sees you when you're seeing it.

Yeah, yeah, I've been reading 1984 because I just want to fucking really soak it in, you know, like it's not enough dystopia maxing.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm sad maxing every day.

And I also went for a nice walk, so, you know, I get out there.

Walks are good.

I thought about.

This is just tangents now, but I thought about re watching V for Vendetta recently, even though I.

There's problems with everything, but I was like, this seems like the current level of dystopia that we're heading towards.

Yeah, I've tried to read.

It's called under the Iron.

Jack London's Dystopia.

Oh, is it as racist as Jack London is?

I mean, it's hard to be as racist as Jack London was, I think in a book that is printed because you can't stand up in the middle of the book and scream, I am first and foremost a white man.

And then a socialist or whatever.

Paraphrasing.

But many such cases, you know what, at least he said it because there's a whole lot of people who think that and they're not saying it.

Yep, that's true.

That's True.

I guess critical support to incredibly racist guy Jack Lander.

Yeah, yeah.

But don't do what I'm doing.

Don't.

Dystopia Max.

No, I feel like what I'm about to tell you is a little bit of a dystopia Max.

So we're going to see.

So the thing that I have to talk about is.

And there's a thing that I'm not really going to talk about because everyone's talking about it and I don't really see a point in talking about it.

Everyone's talking about it, but it.

The ostrich cult.

The ostrich cult.

The llama blood cult.

That I will not explain.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So I'm here to talk about Trump's executive order designating antifa.

Air quotes.

Air quotes Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Donald Trump claims to have done this somewhat in response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, despite the fact that no ties have been able to been drawn between the alleged assassin and the nebulous, again, air quotes group known as antifa.

But Trump has kind of used it as like a broad justification.

Trump has talked about doing this before.

He talked about it in his first term, and he didn't do it.

One of the biggest questions that people have kind of coming out of this is what will this mean?

And one of the biggest questions that people have coming out of this is kind of like, what is this going to mean?

And given the logic of any Trumpian decree, the answer is we.

You don't really know.

And it could be hard to predict.

And I think it's important for people to.

If you haven't gone and actually read the executive order, I think it's a good thing to do if it won't give you a massive anxiety attack like it did for me.

But it is also relatively, I will say, relatively short in comparison to his other executive orders.

It's like three paragraphs long.

And that could be a good thing.

Question mark.

Who knows?

And so one of the biggest things is kind of like, what does it mean?

And I think it's important to talk a little bit about what these designations mean.

So there currently is no list of domestic, like, designated domestic terrorist organizations.

There's.

It's not a category from a legal.

Point of view, right?

No, it's not a category from a legal point of view.

But what there are, or, sorry, what there is is a list of domestic or, sorry, foreign terrorist organizations.

And there's like a list on the State Department's website that it's like, I don't know there's like a hundred groups on it or whatever.

But that these domestic terrorism air quotes is again not the same thing at all in terms of what domestic terrorism even means.

There is no federal offense or law, statute where someone can be charged with domestic terrorism.

There are several state statutes and it varies state by state, like, kind of like what those laws, statutes, offenses, charges can be.

And almost all of them include actual violent behavior or something like that.

I was reading one of the one state they have a domestic terrorism statute, but it's like you can only get it if a deadly weapon has been used to perpetrate whatever the other crime was.

And there's usually like lists of specific crimes associated with it, which is also like kind of how a lot of the like RICO designations work is like, there's like lists of like very specific crimes.

And just to celebrate, a lot of the RICO charges in the Stop Cop City case were recently dismissed.

They were dismissed sort of on a technicality.

But I also think they were dismissed because people were able to whittle down a lot of the charges that were making the ricoh charges possible.

This is back in 2019.

Obviously a lot of stuff has changed, but I think it's interesting to think about the ways that even the FBI itself has classified these things.

So the former director of the FBI, this guy Ray, has in the past explicitly said that the FBI has declined to designate any organization as a domestic terrorist organization because they know it will infringe on the First Amendment rights of people en masse.

Yeah.

And he's also said that belonging to an.

Or the FBI has said that like belonging to an ideological group is in fact not a crime and that the FBI does not investigate ideology, it investigates violence.

And so kind of like large scale whole cloth.

Designating an ideological group as a domestic terrorist organization poses a lot of really strange legal questions that people are going to have to explore in like in the now what the fuck does this mean thing thinking about all of this, like what does it mean for air quotes?

Antifa, which the I think the state even recognizes is not an actual group.

Like the FBI recognizes that like Antifa is not like a membership organization.

Yeah, I mean like, but people like, like Trump knows that it's not a membership organization.

Trump knows that Antifa is not real, but it doesn't matter because his base does.

And he believes the fact that we say it isn't real is kind of like how Takunis claim that they're not tycoonists.

You know, like it's Like a thing where you're like, what?

No, I totally don't do that.

You know, that's what they think Antifa is.

But it just actually isn't.

It just actually literally isn't an organization.

It's a concept.

It's a concept.

It's a concept that means being against fascism.

But it's interesting the way these things kind of get classified and talked about sometimes because it's like, I know James is really familiar with this concept.

I guess Margaret, you are too, because you've also talked about this.

But it's like the United States government's history with anti fascism is complicated in that a lot of Americans who were returning from the Spanish Civil War, for example, were labeled as premature anti fascists.

Yeah, we're not exactly sure.

I can't point to an official document which uses that phrase.

Okay.

I can point to people who specifically got told by recruiters that they were premature anti fascists and unable to be enlisted.

Yeah.

That they can't.

Yeah.

That they can't work in the.

Yeah, they can't be in the military or they can't be officers in the military.

But I can't point to a FBI list of premature anti fascists.

Yeah, yeah.

And I just want to.

I want to read a little bit from.

Wait, what if instead we talked about the Spanish Civil War for the next 40 minutes?

Yeah, because I can fucking go to.

Come.

Ready?

Yeah.

Margaret's also pretty ready for it.

This is just Inman's.

I'm trying to set Inman up with a stress nightmare.

All right, Please continue.

I'm sorry.

No, I'm down.

Let's do it.

Let's fucking go.

Let's go.

Like the, like retreat into history as the world gets worse in order to avoid feeling bad.

Another show.

I want to read a little bit from the order because I think it kind of.

Who the fuck knows what's going to happen?

But it points to some interesting things.

So all relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt and dismantle any of and all illegal operations, especially those involving terroristic.

Terrorist actions conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa.

And so it's like, again, this is.

This, this executive order is pointing to actions, not to ideology.

But it is also in that sentence saying ANTIFA is a real organization.

Yes.

And that some might claim to be part of it.

And the other thing about it is that it also says in the order that this order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.

So it's like there are currently no applicable laws that really drive at new things happening.

Which this is not me saying that nothing will happen of this, that it's all smoke.

You know, I think things will happen because of this and we don't know kind of what's coming.

Fun fact, 40,000 people and Americans die because of wildfire smoke every year.

I'm going to get to that later when we talk about climate.

So it could be all smoke.

Could be all smoke.

The part that I do think is actually more scary than like the, than the rest of this is that Trump has like specifically talked about financing and stuff like that.

And in the larger sense, like, I'm like.

And Margaret, like me and Margaret were talking about this, like, is Donald Trump coming after some punks at their info shop?

Probably not.

Yeah.

Is Trump trying to use this to dismantle larger opposition to him?

Probably.

And he's already, he's already like doing things like getting the Department of Justice to like indict his political rivals and shit like that.

And so it's like, it's possible that this order could be just some big part of like attacking these larger entities like the Democratic Party in general.

But the part that is scary to me about the finance stuff is that so there is this thing on a federal level.

And back to.

So there's no federal statute for domestic terrorism, but there are enhancements and you can get stricter penalties for crimes if you've been designated air quotes.

Domestic terrorists.

Yeah.

Sometimes it can double your sentence, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

And like Daniel McGowan spent a lot of time in a special terrorism prison that was like a cmu, a Communications Management Unit.

And yeah, it can make things worse.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

But the finance related thing is that, for example, the list of foreign terrorist organizations, this former council person, this was an example that was given on NPR was this guy was like, yeah.

So if I give a $20 gift card to one of the groups on this list, I could go to jail for 20 years.

But if I give a $20 gift card to the KKK, then nobody fucking cares.

Jesus.

And so like, I think there's a big question mark around there being this new designation list.

And if similar kind of like finance related things could start to apply to groups on that list and there's no current law, but again, we don't know what's coming.

Yeah.

So that's my kind of dissection of what this executive order currently means or could mean.

And I'm not a legal expert.

I don't know James, you had something to say?

I can explain.

Like FTOs, I guess, like foreign terrorist organizations.

Because like, that seems to be what he's suggesting.

But just to be very clear, like we don't have that.

We don't have a domestic version of that because we have a First Amendment.

But like an fto, there is a discrete list of foreign terrorist organizations, and it will be a crime to provide material support to those foreign terrorist organizations.

Right.

So there are a lot of groups that you've probably heard of, they're on the FTO list.

A lot of groups that you probably haven't heard of, they're on the FTO list.

I guess most recent people do come off the FTO list when they go from being a non state actor to a state actor.

We've recently seen that in Syria, which has been quite remarkable with a foreign terrorist organization.

That is a statute, that it's a law.

But the groups that are on the list, those can be added by the executive branch.

So it will be possible for him to designate fucking Antifa Madrid as an FTO if you really want.

I mean, he would obviously get pushback from the Spanish government for doing that.

But, you know, that is not the case with a domestic organization because like, in theory, this is at the core of the First Amendment right, like the right to have protected speech.

That doesn't mean that there cannot be civil sanctions.

As Margaret mentioned, most of the people who fought fascism in Spain spent the rest of their lives being punished either directly by the government or indirectly by being unable to get hired.

That actually had some interesting consequences in that many of them ended up doing the sort of manual labor that is normally reserved for undocumented or non white people.

And then they participated in the struggles of those people in solidarity with them, which is because many of them were outstanding human beings and very nice people.

But nonetheless, even where they weren't criminalized, it was very hard for them.

There was actually one undocumented Spanish Civil War veteran who.

Wait, no, we actually shouldn't just do a Spanish Civil War thing.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, but.

But I think that that civil sanction thing is really legit.

Sorry, now I'm completely derailing you.

No, it's okay.

I'm mostly done because this is what we're seeing already, right?

And even things like Jimmy Kimmel, who doesn't need whatever, like, you know, is the big, like, canary in the coal mine, all the other canaries died a long time ago and no one cared.

But the really big canary died.

And people are Upset and whatever.

That doesn't mean that people shouldn't be upset about this particular one because they saw it.

And like, that's just a.

A true fact, but it's like, shit's still ongoing with that.

But it seems quite possible that his platform will be returned to him, but on a much smaller level.

And a ton of people are losing their jobs.

Right?

A ton of people are losing, like, getting kicked out of schools.

And there's all of these, like, things that can happen regardless.

And like, the chilling of free speech is not just about under arrests, you know, And.

And I think that that is something that we might see dramatically.

I think of, like, first term, Trump being like, antifa's bad and a friend of mine works at a coffee shop and then got doxxed.

And then all of these people called the coffee shop boss to be like, did you know your employee is antifa?

And the boss who was like, a shitty fucking boss was still like, man, I don't give a shit, you know?

And so, like, first term, that would be the reaction.

People would be like, whatever, I don't give a shit.

Like, fuck Nazis.

Right?

Yeah.

Second term, things are looking really different because, like, the Nazis actually have state power in a way that they didn't even when Trump was in power first time.

Yeah.

And so, like, I don't know, I worry about both sides, not the left and the right.

I worry about both sides of how to respond to this particular thing, because the two things I'm seeing that are worrying are people running around screaming, the sky is falling.

Particularly around.

There was a.

There was like, some poorly worded journalism that came out claiming that all trans people are now terrorists, according to Trump.

And this was like, not the case.

Right.

There is reason to worry embedded in that about designating the trans agenda as, like, tran tifa or whatever, which is slang, I hadn't even heard yet.

But I'm fine with it.

And like, you know, there's like, worrying stuff in there, but there's people who are like, being like, fuck, all trans people are domestic terrorists now.

All like, like, everything's over, whatever.

And then there's other people on the other side saying, like, oh, they've done this before.

Executive orders don't really mean anything.

They don't have the force of law.

And the problem is like, yeah, but the state doesn't.

A fascist state doesn't care whether the legislature is caught up yet or not.

And Trump does have power over what the FBI does.

Right.

What the FBI said in 2019 is like, it's relevant in terms of the lower courts, who are our best buds in all of this, which is Jesus.

But like, but it might still indicate where investigations are going to be going and where federal attention is going to be paid.

And it like could have very particular consequences.

And so I feel like it's like, don't freak out, but pay a lot of attention and like kind of get your shit in order.

It's like my advice.

Yeah, any kind of large scale, like community preparation.

Community and individual preparation for like repression in general.

Like think about these things right now.

Because like, it's like, even, even if you do not belong to the non existent group.

Air quotes.

Antifa.

I don't know, there's a lot of just weird wacky shit happening right now.

And like, you can.

But trust me, I can say this with authority, which is a funny way to preface this.

You can hate fascism.

There's nothing wrong with hating fascism.

And I don't know, last week I got really fucking shut down and like, I felt all kinds of crazy things.

And this week I'm like, it's time to be inspiring, it's time to be brave.

And it's time to remember that it is fucking okay to hate fascism and that we cannot tolerate fascism.

But maybe we should use this as an opportunity to talk about some courts because, yeah, I do just want to remind people that there are still courts.

And the reason that the immigration crackdown is the primary crackdown right now is because we do not have an independent judiciary.

We call them immigration judges, but they are effectively civil servants.

They can be hired and fired, and they have been fired in large numbers by the Trump administration.

That is why the Trump administration is having much more success there than it is in other areas where we've seen grand juries not indicting people, which is not a thing that normally happens.

Normally, if a case is going to grand jury, there's a massive amount of evidence.

But we've seen in la, for example, grand jury is not indicting people.

So I want to talk about a court case which is not about protest, but it is about little children.

Specifically, it's a case that pertains to dozens of Guatemalan children who came to the U.S.

unaccompanied by adults they're related to.

I don't like the phrase unaccompanied minor because I have spent a lot of time with migrants who have just arrived in the United States and in the Darien Gap, where migrants were traveling to the United States and children who are not traveling with Family members are still taken care of by people, and people will still accompany them.

They're just not related to them.

Right.

And that is an important legal distinction.

But some of the things that have given me the most hope in my life in the last few years is watching complete strangers who don't share a language with these children go out of their way to take care of them, to give them their last piece of food or drop of water, or to carry the little kids when they can't walk anymore.

So that's why I don't say that the Trump administration attempted to deport these children over Labor Day weekend.

Judge.

The emergency Judge, Sparkle Sukhnanan, temporarily halted their removal in the early hours of Sunday morning.

This was kind of a.

I mean, credit where credit is due.

Like, these people, the judge, and I believe it's her first Sparkle Sukhnanan, her clerks, they were up at like, 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning doing court shit.

And they filed an emergency protective order to prevent the children being removed from the United States because the judge argued this would prevent them from being put in potential extreme danger.

Their attorney literally ran onto the tarmac at the airport to tell flight control personnel that they were in violation of a court order of.

The plane took off.

Yeah, no, this is like.

That's some movie shit.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Yeah, it's like.

It's like if Legally Blonde was cool, this is what people think they're going to do when they become lawyers.

Legally Blonde is a great movie.

Okay?

I will admit that it has been probably two decades since I watched Legally Blonde.

I don't have a great recollection, but, yeah, this is what people think they're going to do when they become lawyers and they end up doing divorces or litigating maritime law or something.

But shout out to this lawyer who is a fucking hero.

So what happens now is that Judge Tim Kelly, who.

He's a circuit court judge who this pertains to, has to rule or has ruled now on the claim that the government made.

The government claimed that it wasn't deporting the children, it was reuniting them with their families.

That is important because if the government is deporting them, there are rules which govern how and through what methods you can just send a child on their own back to a country where they potentially are in danger.

Right.

If they are reuniting them with their families, those rules the government is claiming do not apply.

Okay?

So the government had previously claimed the parents want their children back.

It has since dropped that claim after Reuters published a Guatemalan government document that thoroughly refuted it.

But what the government is claiming is that it is the Office of Refugee Resettlement and not the Department of Homeland Security.

So that would put it under Health and Human Services.

Right?

Not dhs.

So that gives them two different venues.

Right.

First of all, like, if the class of children is attempting to sue dhs, they can be like, well, when you got the wrong people, this is an ORR joint.

Sorry, nothing we can do.

And secondly, they can claim that they are therefore exempt from all the protections that these children have under the United States law.

Right.

The kids had to wait it out in shelters.

Right.

They were taken away from foster families who they'd been living with in the middle of the night.

And fortunately, because of this protective order that the judge, Judge Sukhnanan, gave them, they weren't immediately renditioned to Guatemala.

Then a whistleblower contradicted statements made by Acting Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Angie Salazar.

So Salazar said in a sworn statement that the children had been screened to ensure they would not be subject to abuse or neglect if they were sent back.

Right.

It.

The whistleblowers, however, claimed at least 30 of the children had been deemed ineligible for return because they had indicators that they had survived previous child abuse.

This was in the ORR database.

Right.

What they're saying is they're not saying like, we have secret knowledge.

They're saying, like, the databases for the organization which Salazar represents had this information.

Therefore she should have known the judge.

Judge.

This is Judge Kelly now, right?

Having heard this and other evidence, said that, quote.

Well, he said the government's case had, quote, crumbled like a house of cards.

He granted protection to the children in the case.

They'd gone for a very broad class.

Right.

In these lawsuits, you can define the class in various ways.

In this case, he.

The people who he granted protection to were all, quote, unaccompanied Guatemalan children who have received neither a final removal order nor.

Nor permission from the Attorney General to voluntarily depart the United States.

This is a victory for the courts.

Right.

Like the government tried, it seems, to mislead the courts here, and they did not succeed because some people who are brave people in the Office of Refugee Resettlement came out and said, hey, this is not true.

We have information to prove this is not true.

And some lawyers got up on 1am on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and worked their asses off to make sure these children are not sent back to an abusive situation.

And they succeeded at least now those children are not being sent back.

And I think that it's really easy to be overwhelmed by the bad shit.

And what we're celebrating here isn't so much a win as the absence of a loss, but nonetheless, something bad was going to happen to these children, and people prevented it from happening.

I feel like that the win, though, is less.

I mean, it is the prevention of a loss.

But whenever we see people fighting with whatever means are available to them, that's the win.

That's the positive thing, right?

Is that saying, okay, the lower courts or courts, the.

Not Supreme Court, yeah.

Are actually trying to do the checks and balances thing that we all got promised was part of the American system, you know, and, like.

And so it's.

It is really heartening.

It's heartening to see people be brave.

You know, I, like, I talk to many immigration attorneys, right?

Like, I know the impact this shit is having on their mental health, and I know it's extremely severe.

But, like, those people are standing, like, in the breach between people and a really terrible consequence for a lot of people.

And so is this.

Are these lawyers who bought this case, right?

And, like, just to name one person, Lee Gallant from the ACLU has been, like, bringing, like, many cases against the Trump administration which have made a meaningful impact on protecting people's lives.

And, yeah, we should not, like, we should take inspiration from the fact that they have gone above and beyond in many cases to protect people from arbitrary punishment.

And I think that people are working really hard is a thing that we do sometimes forget about when we keep seeing the country sliding towards fascism.

But it is not sliding.

I mean, it is like, it's under control by, like, the administration is a fascist administration, but the country.

We're not living in Nazi Germany.

Not yet and possibly never.

Right.

One, because people forget that there's, like, other Nazi regimes we can.

I mean, other fascist regimes to be compared to besides the Nazis, but also, like, people are fighting really hard.

Like, I keep thinking about how, like, fascism is already trying, is already fashion as fast as it can in America, and it's not fashion nearly as hard as they wish it was.

Like, it is fascinating quickly.

And it's bad, but, like, all of the things that we still have, they've wanted to take them from us, and they haven't been able to because the majority of Americans are not fascists, you know, and more of them are willing to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.

I was down with capitalism fucking everyone over, but this is a step too far.

And I'M not even super mad.

I'm not trying to be like, oh, if you just show up now, you're just fuck you for whatever.

Like, I'm like just glad that we're fighting fascism, you know?

Yeah, no, if you're showing up then like I'm, I'm happy that you're showing up.

Like, I think now it's not the time to be sending people to cancelvania for their tweet six years ago.

Like Pennsylvania.

The video game though, it'll be our new TTRPG that we do.

Everyone's been gifted.

Just all slurs from the top to the bottom.

Being dm, you take serious psychic damage.

The shit you have to say.

Something I have really enjoyed in regards to or enjoying this is like a hard thing, but it's.

Enjoy is the wrong word.

But having a fun time seeing is like, Inman enjoys this, canceled, I enjoy this, Please cancel me.

Plus two Inman, the eternal DM is having psychic damage from this moment.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Is like seeing like a lot on social media.

Like, especially in regards to the, like the antifa executive order air quotes.

I'm saying air quotes so that like if this is ever read back to me like in like, in like court discovery that the word air quotes will be there to imply that I am doing sarcasm.

Yeah, good call.

But seeing a lot of people who are World War II veterans and shit like that who are like, I fought fascism.

What do you mean I can't hate fascism?

Yeah, yeah.

People who have that conventional respectability are very powerful right now.

And I'm glad to see people who don't have any personal skin in the game standing up.

Right.

Like, I think it's really important that we remember that there was a time when people who we would disagree with about a lot of shit were like, you know what, I will go and risk my life to kill some fascists because the world is worse if I don't.

And that's like something.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, I just.

We shouldn't forget that as we, we enter this particularly dark period of our history.

I think it a thing that I've been like really holding onto is that the things that beat the fascists in World War II were like all the runner up bad things, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Like the ussr, the UK and the USA were probably like the next bad things after Japan, Italy and Germany.

Yeah, yeah.

And like, and honestly a lot of them were probably worse than Italy.

But like, but still, like people came together and defeated fascism despite being real imperfect as individuals and as systems and like.

So we'll just remember that when the eu, the UK rejoins the EU and.

Makes Keir Starmer leads us against global fascism.

Anyway.

You have inspiring things to say about the climate, Margaret.

Well, while we're talking about people first, I want to talk about a person who I will express no opinion about, Ryan Ruth.

The other would be Trump assassin.

We don't remember either of the Trump assassins names from last year, but Ryan ruth was a 59 year old from North Carolina.

He got convicted this week.

This is why I'm talking about him.

And he's this 59 year old from North Carolina.

He's an itinerant building contractor and he was found guilty this week.

And look, he is pretty a classic, the kind of person who will do a lone action.

He chose to defend himself in court.

This did not go well for him.

He also tried to take his own life after hearing the guilty plea, trying to stab himself in the neck with a pen before Marshall stopped him.

And he also claimed that he wasn't there to hurt anyone.

But he has certainly been convicted of being there to hurt someone.

He staked out, if people remember this one, it wasn't the guy who shot Trump in the ear.

It was the guy who staked out a golf course with a rifle and had actually built a kind of sniper nest theoretically in the.

Allegedly he's been found guilty, but still, whatever.

He put steel plates attached to the fence, I think to bulletproof the area.

Yeah, I remember this.

He had to be like in his backpack, right?

Yeah, that would make sense to quote the New York Times about this.

According to prosecutors, Mr.

Ruth lived out of a Nissan SUV for weeks as he cased the golf course, searched online for Mr.

Trump's campaign schedule and watched his private plane at Palm Beach International Airport.

Among the evidence the authorities obtained were six cell phones, several license plates and notes about possible escape flights to Mexico and Colombia.

Mr.

Ruth had also left a box at a friend's house in North Carolina months before his arrest.

A letter in the box read, dear world, this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you.

The letter also offered $150,000 bounty for killing the candidate, end quote.

That's not a.

I feel like even if he hadn't defended himself, this guy was probably going to prison.

Yeah, like this.

Yeah.

It seemed almost like, I don't want to say it seemed unserious because it was a man with a gun.

Right.

But his certainly unprofessional, I guess, or some incompetent that doesn't make it any less.

There are lots of incompetent people with guns who have killed people.

But yeah, he seemed a bit like he'd just been Googling what to do.

But honestly, most of the years of lead paint stuff we've seen from the right wing have also been kind of this.

Dear AI how blow self up in cybertruck, please.

Or like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that one.

Dear Open Google, I would like to kill the following people.

Dear Court Transcript, I am speaking satirically about other people right now.

Yeah, but yeah, so that happened.

I don't know, I just don't want that to, like, completely be off people's radars.

Yeah.

But climate news with Margaret Killjoy, I finally get to, like, be my actual last name.

Whereas, like, I run this, like, fucking Hope Core ass podcast where I talk about how great everything.

That's not true.

Where I talk about how bad everything is, but how we can, like, try and do stuff together.

You know, the climate better than when.

You talk about literature on our other podcast as what are the.

What's.

What.

What do you go by on that podcast?

Is it.

Is it Inman?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm so sorry, listeners.

There's just this funny thing where people commonly think that me and Margaret are the same person and it's.

Yeah, it's really funny.

Although I will say, years ago, before I knew Inman well, but I knew Inman, I was using the hashtag on Instagram, be the D and D you want to see in the world whenever I was posting weird shit I had sewn, like, with costumes for larpy shit with swords, but also kind of anarchy.

And then one day I clicked on that hashtag and there was one other person who'd been using the same hashtag totally independently.

The other person who came up with the hashtag Inman, and that was me.

They actually share a mind.

They are two different physical people.

Yeah, you should see it on the screen.

It's incredible, it's bizarre.

And my legal name is actually Outman.

So anyway, climate news, it's bad, right?

And the thing that I've been talking about for a long time is that, and I hate saying this, fascism is the mini boss, right?

We can't defeat climate change until we defeat fascism.

It's like, probably a necessary step, but fascism is really bad.

But climate change is like, really worse.

They're also directly interrelated in a whole bunch of different ways.

But right now the world is doing this like kind of arms race thing between China and The US and we talk about this in a lot of different ways economically, but one of the ways that that's happening is that China, despite China being actually, I believe, the world's foremost emitter of greenhouse gases and, like, climate change stuff, they are investing very, very quickly into renewable energy, and they are trying to export renewable over the world.

And I have many criticisms of all of this, but whatever.

As compared to Trump's, America is very, very actively dismantling all renewable energy stuff.

Like there was a $6 billion wind farm, offshore wind farm, that was almost done.

That Trump was like, nah, you can't finish that.

And they're like, but it's.

It's almost done.

And they're like, nah, we don't want that.

That's the wrong vibe.

Our vibe is natural gas and oil.

And so Trump is trying to push the world to stay addicted to gas.

China is doing this other tactic, and this is going to cause problems down the road.

Other stuff.

Let's see.

Trump is pushing a road through the National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska or one of them.

Yeah, I was there last week or the week before.

Yeah.

So it's a snow road.

Right.

Is that the one you're talking about to Kuktovik?

I believe so.

I didn't write down the name of it because this is my Speedrun stuff, but yeah.

So you're saying.

Yeah.

So the road.

And the road's gonna have several consequences.

Right.

These communities have lived in these places for 20 plus thousand.

25,000 years, I believe.

See, like, to the point where, like, adding more numbers will not make a difference.

Right.

People have been there since there have been people in the Americas.

They have been right there.

When they got off the Bering Land bridge.

That's where they got off the bridge.

And like, driving roads to these communities, it's going to, aside from the damage it does to the climate, will also do irreparable damage to these communities.

Right.

And that's like, something that people don't.

I probably would have.

I would have heard that.

I just was like, oh, yeah, they're building a road through a wildlife area.

That's bad.

Everyone knows that.

And then I remember that I had to, like, really learn that when I was a younger environmentalist, was that, like, road building is one of the primary ways we destroy ecosystems.

Yeah.

And cultures.

Right.

Like, by bringing all the things that are terrible about capitalism in the US in 2025 to these people in their communities, which have remained very small and very tight for so long.

Yeah.

I will have a whole Podcast on that shit.

You can listen to hours of me talking about that shit.

Some point between now and November if you want to.

Oh, shit.

Oh, okay, cool.

Trump is also calling climate science a scam.

He is fighting against all renewable energy.

He has stopped gathering a lot of climate data.

He closed a database that tracks the cost of natural disasters that's been going since 1980.

The EPA under his administration is going to stop collecting emissions data from industries that pollute.

And it's just like, it's just bad.

Right?

He's just basically being like, all of that is fake.

They're just.

He's stopping tracking all of the numbers that show how his policies are bad.

Right.

So the studies that we're getting now might be some of the last studies we get from American sources for a while.

Well, there's probably a little bit longer.

And you also, we're starting to see this, like, regional coalitions of, like, health data and like, states are being like, all right, if the federal government won't do it, we'll fucking do it.

But let's see, a new study says that 70,000Americans will die every year from wildfire smoke by 2050, which is almost double the current 40,000 people a year.

This will be mostly in the Pacific Northwest, but it's also across the whole western half of the country, as well as getting as far east as like, Ohio and Maine.

Trump, of course, just repealed people dying of wildfire smoke.

Wildfire smoke?

Yeah.

Like, what does that mean?

Yeah, so it.

I was again reading some of this as fast as I could because I prepare things very well.

But basically it's not like people, like, it's not the 40,000 people with asphyxiate on wildfire smoke every year.

It's that wildfire smoke is one of the worst types of air pollution that exists.

It is like one of the most.

Like, a lot of stuff around climate change is around excess deaths rather than like, when you talk about heat related deaths, Right.

You count excess deaths, not the number of people who died of dehydration on the street in a very visible way.

Or like.

Yeah.

So these are excess deaths basically being.

Caused by this, unlike how most Covid numbers were compiled.

Yeah, yeah.

Whereas excess deaths is actually the better way to understand Covid because of course it, you know, is killing us slowly instead of quickly now.

Well, it's killing some people quickly, but now it's killing more of us slowly.

24,000 Europeans died this summer of excess heat.

And the excess heat did.

And in this case, it's specifically like the excess heat is as compared to if you took out man made global warming, you know, it also did $50 billion of damages to the European economy.

This year has seen more floods in the US since 1986.

It is 70% higher than the 10 year historic average.

Storms are holding more water, moving slower and dropping water faster.

That appears to be directly a climate climate related thing.

The most dramatic of all of these things.

Do you know Siberia is literally exploding right now?

No, like because of the earthquake or.

No methane pockets blowing up.

Oh yeah, yeah.

There's some good like outdoor mysteries about this which we won't get onto because it'll be like a four hour podcast.

Oh, I do love the like the.

Oh wait, that's a different thing.

There's the Siberian borehole which was like I think the deepest man made hole or whatever.

And people thought they could hear the sound of hell and there's like.

Anyway, whatever.

Yeah, no, Siberia is like blowing up with these methane pockets, which is of course not good for climate change.

With holes 150ft deep sometimes are left behind as the methane pockets are blowing up.

So it's just like pockmarked with craters.

And for the first time in recorded history, the Gulf of Panama didn't get this blob of cold water that rises to the surface between January and April every year.

This thing that's 18 degrees colder than the surface water or James, 10 degrees colder than the surface water.

Okay, thank you.

I was completely lost.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I change it to Celsius.

Yeah.

I was thinking, is there an ice cap up in there?

Like how will I ever know?

So thank you.

Yeah, I'm always looking out.

Celsius is clearly the good.

Really good for understanding water as it turns out.

Really good for science Fahrenheit, really good for daily weather.

0 to 100 is cold to hot as compared to Celsius where 0 to 100 is kind of cold to you're long since dead.

So not human.

It's not human focused.

Are you going to fall over on the ice when you go outside?

That is the question that everyone needs really.

Right.

Like that is that will hit you when you leave your house.

The most important piece of information is am I going to eat shit on my doorstep?

Will they see me?

Yeah, I see the argument.

So what we need is a recalibrated system where 0 is freezing and 100 is like 100 degree Fahrenheit.

Right.

Like we just need to recalibrate Fahrenheit to have zero be freezing and then we'd have the perfect system for.

Anyway, it's like reverse Kelvin.

Yeah.

No.

So there's this blob of cold water that rises to the surface between January and April every year in the Gulf of Panama.

It is 10 degrees colder Celsius than the surface water.

It brings nutrients up to the top.

It has been doing this forever.

The entire, like, coastal thing is dependent on this.

It's not happening.

It didn't happen this year.

There's also a new study that just is like, I mean, this happens every.

Every time you, like, look at climate news, you can just find new studies with new maps being like, here's how everything's in trouble.

And there's new one.

A new one out about how 12% of shoreline areas by 2050 will be completely unrecognizable from what they are now.

And that's not because of the heat blob, that's because of climate change and overfishing and all kinds of other stuff.

So the other big thing about the climate is that the US and the US pulled out because of Trump from, like, Paris agreement stuff a long time ago.

More and more of the world is ignoring climate, although you have other countries that are starting to come to the fore talking about climate or whatever.

Basically, everyone is so distracted by the heating up of the political situation.

This is my read.

I'm now speaking subjectively.

I believe that people are so distracted by the rise of fascism or in the case of the brewing potential for a world war, people are pretty distracted not paying attention to the climate.

That's.

I don't really have anything.

Like, the one positive thing I found about the climate is that the UN has finally passed after 20 years of work.

A act that somewhere in my notes is the name of the act.

But my act, my notes are in like 8 point font on a very small screen and I'm trying to talk into a microphone.

So there's an act, you can look it up.

And it finally passed the UN because it got enough member nations that's going to declare about 30% of international waters to be conservation areas.

And I feel like that kind of just like plays into this tension that is building between the United States and the United Nations.

Yeah.

And you know what?

Maybe that tension is good.

Okay, I was.

Sorry I had this plan where I was going to, like, bring it all together into this, like, positive thing.

But all I can say is that the positive thing is that there are, in the United States at least, is that there are states banding together to continue to offer vaccines.

Like Obviously this is a thing we didn't even talk about, but it's getting harder and harder to get Covid vaccines.

But fortunately the actual pharmacists are like, oh, yeah, you need an underlying condition.

You want to tell me you got an underlying condition?

Asthma.

Your bmi, I'm not checking here.

You know, self reported.

They gave me some free popcorn when I, when I got my COVID vaccine.

Fuck yeah.

And like being really nice out there.

That is the, the, the tops of these institutions are being gutted, right?

The rank and file are like, I love my work.

I care about vaccinating people, you know, and there is, as always, the hope comes from the bottom up.

And I think we're going to see more and more of that, even if some of that hope is coming from institutional level stuff.

As an anarchist, I don't want to be like, oh, the states are completely meaningless.

They're not right now, right?

When I think of like, what could possibly, if things went really well, it would be more blue states, the governments of more blue states growing a spine and saying, to quote a fucking.

I don't even remember which lefty late night TV host who's just a progressive or whatever.

Fuck you make me.

You know, more people being like not caving to this.

If we ever see like state level actors kicking ice out of the state, that's when I know we've like done something.

Yeah, that's what I got.

My funny little hopeful thing.

I don't know much about it.

So this is like really headline level thing.

Ostriches are going to cure us all of disease.

Sorry.

No, please do it a real thing instead of a right wing conspiracy thing.

It's rheas, Margaret.

A rhea is an ostrich, like animal for those.

Okay.

I had no idea.

I went, I could have gone emu.

But I, I thought you would, I thought you would join me in Rias.

Sorry, niche.

There's a really big general strike going on in Italy right now for Gaza and I think that's cool.

I also think that it's like, I don't know, like I, I'm so uninterested in playing the, like the, the culture war, you know, or whatever.

But there's this.

And Margaret was talking about this earlier, but it's like they're the, the amount of people that are just like out and openly gay now versus like when I was a kid is just so much bigger.

And like not all, like, some of those people are conservative, some of those people are alt.

Right.

But it's like There are so many people to find at least the most basic common denominator, common cause with which is that homophobia is fucked up, transphobia is fucked up, and fascism is bad.

I feel like these are the things I'm interested in meeting people on right now.

And I think that there's just an overwhelmingly huge amount of people out there who, like, I might not agree with about a lot of things, but are down to do those things.

I've finally kind of come around to the word's gonna struggle to come out of my mouth.

Left Unity, Popular Front.

Yeah, the Popita Francis is good.

I have written a book about that.

Is it about the Spanish Civil War, James?

Yeah, it is.

Break it down quickly for the listeners.

Did I tell you about the one time I was at.

I've told this on air like, eight times, and you're going to have to hear it again.

I was talking to a new friend, and we were at a coffee shop, and they were talking to me about something, and they were like, I don't really know anything about the Spanish Civil War.

Can you explain it to me?

And I would like to.

And they were dead earnest.

And I, like, looked around for the hidden cameras because I'm like, this is a trap.

This is a trap.

They're trying to get me to go on the most cliche rant I could possibly do.

Anyway, was it a trap?

So in 1936, no.

I was going to start reading page one, but you know what?

I'll skip the publisher's information.

If that person needs any more friends, I am willing to be their friend.

And I will say, escapism, not actually a bad thing.

And I can't remember whether it's Ursula Le Guin quoting Tolkien or.

I get this all confused.

But there's, like, this quote that comes from one of them, and I think it's like one of them talking about the other one.

That's just like, how can you blame a soldier dreaming of freedom if they're in a POW camp?

Or, like, how can you blame a prisoner for dreaming of freedom?

Escapism is actually okay.

Go read books.

Enjoy yourself.

Fucking live life.

Don't only listen to this Month in the Apocalypse.

You knew what you were getting.

It's called this Month in the Apocalypse.

Yeah, but for real, I have been making a conscious effort to be like, I am going outside for a walk in this place that I love, and I am turning my phone onto airplane mode, and I will not be checking any news for the next few hours.

And that is very good for My mental health.

I would suggest that if walking is something you can do, you give it a try.

Yeah, it's the.

To bring another fantasy cliche thing into it, because that's what we're currently here for right now.

Don't get Tharn.

I'm not going to explain this one.

Okay.

I don't know that one.

Or if I do, I don't remember.

Wow.

Okay.

Watership Down.

Watership.

I've never read Watership Down.

Oh, wow.

I've spent a lot of time listening to the Watership down themed band Fall of a Frog, and I saw them on their last tour.

James, they're from your ancestral homeland.

Oh, wow.

Perfect.

Yeah.

That's a British thing to be a Worship down theme band.

I can see that.

Yeah.

They're one of the best post crust bands in existence.

They're the reason that I know the word post crust.

That's not true.

I have.

I knew.

I know.

The right to the theme song of the.

Didn't Art Garfunkel write the theme song for the Watership down film?

Oh, I would believe it.

Nobody doubts that.

There's a couple of punk covers that are available if you find them on the Internet, that I enjoy.

So if you are enjoying listening to this podcast.

If you are listening to this podcast, go ahead.

Tharn is the concept.

Tharn is the concept of.

Tharn is the concept of when a rabbit is frozen with fear and can no longer run.

And that is when a rabbit is truly in danger.

Prince of the Thousand Enemies.

But first they must catch you.

Exactly.

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you can support it.

You can support it by going to Patreon.

Well, it depends on if we get deplatformed.

There's no particular reason we're at risk of this, but obviously just with the world, it's very complicated.

So if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you can Support us@patreon.com Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness.

Because Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness is the name of our publisher and it is what?

Which is a collectively run anarchist publisher.

And it didn't totally scare the shit.

It totally didn't mean anything to me when, like, the third word in Trump's executive order was the word anarchist.

But whatever.

Honestly.

Okay, I know that I'm closing out the episode, but sometimes when they give us credit as like, at least it wasn't like Antifa is a communist organization because you know what like, I mean, ANTIFA is like.

If anything, it is a popular front between communism and anarchism.

But I'm willing to let us be in the foreground.

Because you know, when there is an anti fascist two flag thing, you know, whether it was made by anarchists or communists.

Because if it was made by anarchists, it's a black flag in front of the red flag.

But if it was made by communists, it's a red flag in front of the black flag.

Or if it's made by really die.

Hard communists, it's just the old one with a red flag.

The red front.

Yeah, it's the red flag in front of a red flag.

And then if it's written by someone who's a diehard anarchist, it's two black flags.

Or if it's made by someone who doesn't have a color printer, it's two black flags.

Yeah, but if you support us on Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you a zine anywhere in the world.

And if you Support us at $20 a month, then I'll read your name.

Or someone will read your name at the end of every episode.

And for example, if you were to give US$20 a month, you would appear in a list that sounds a little something like this.

In particular, we would like to thank Hoss the dog Nicole and Tivka the dog Micaiah, Chris Kirk, Micah, Dana, David Paige, S.J.

theo Milika, Papa Runa, Allie, Janice and Odell.

Princess Miranda.

Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Lord Harken Carson Julia People's University of Palestine Violet Boldfield.

Portland's Hedron Hackerspace Appalachian Liberation Library Ephemeral Amber, Sunshine, Aiden and Yuki the dog.

Jenny and Phoebe the cats.

That's right.

I will shout out your dogs and cats or whatever other pets you have.

You have a headache.

Ostriches.

Well, all ostriches are clearly.

I mean, they're going to save us from all diseases.

We're very grateful for them.

And the emus llama Blood culture.

Jason Shova Blink Cat Farrell.

In West Virginia, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle association, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association.

Karen Lancaster chooses Love Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island.

Max, I think people are just having fun with trying to make us say certain things.

A future for Abby.

Not because of High Yuni.

That might be a normal name.

I don't know.

I meant Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island.

A future for Abby.

Alexander Gopal the Incredible ren arai.

The Ko Initiative.

Jonathan the Goose, the Golden Gate 26 tiny nonsense.

Mark Vale Ferro.

Your Canadian friend.

Aw, thanks.

My Canadian friend, Mr.

Crafty Sarah Baby Acab and her three great pups.

TSNB.

I don't know what that reference is.

Opticuna Simone Staying Hydrated Brought to you by Hannah Potatoes Tenebrous Press Arguing about what to shout Out.

Experimental Farm Network Accordions Dolly Parton and Edgar Meowling Poe.

Who are Cats?

The Black Trowel Collective, Groot the Dog, the KO Initiative, Niko the Waterfront Project.

Tivka's favorite Stick, Uliksei and Alder.

Oh my God.

Are there people named Ulikse now?

Holy shit.

Maybe it's an animal named Uliksei, but I don't know.

But either way, that's cool.

I think it's just the character you created, Ulixi.

Because these are shouting at my own character.

Mortal Choir thank yous.

Okay, but seriously, non binary name.

If you're looking for one Uliksi, you could be a three antler deer that kills anyone who exerts power over other people.

Na.

Is it non applicable or Narcotics Anonymous?

Who knows?

Nah, it's just.

Nah.

Nah.

So that would be an example of a list that you could find yourself on if you Support us at $20 a month and your money.

I'm doing this as if I'm doing an ad read, but like actually genuinely, the fact that we're able to put out this much content, we pay ourselves a modest sum and we focus especially on paying our audio editors.

And just like the people doing behind the scenes work to make all of this possible, and you all are some of the people making this possible.

And even if you don't give us money, you're helping make this possible by having listened to the end.

I don't entirely understand the mechanism by which that's true, but I'm certain it is.

And I need to go eat dinner.

Sat.