Transcript for Twin Trouble Podcast #6 – We’re Back

Jeremy
You have been listening to “The Night Will Not Be Silenced”. This epic hardcore punk song was put together by a group of international artists called Cacerolazo, including The Rebel Riot, Kultureshock, the Outcast, the Slingshot, and others, in support of the pro-democracy movement against the military junta in Myanmar, where hundreds have died in the popular resistance movement. For more information and to donate to the cause, the band is encouraging people to check out www.isupportmyanmar.com.

Jason
Hello and we’re back. We’re going to re-animate this podcast we started at the beginning of 2020 when my brother was in the federal prison system for the tail end of a ten year sentence for hacktivism. He has since been released and we are reunited here in our hometown of Chicago.

Jeremy
It’s been a long journey but it’s great to be back. And it’s great to be together with you again my brother after so many years. Now we get to do this podcast in person.

My name is Jason
And I am Jeremy
And we are Twin Trouble.

Jason
Hey we got a lot to get into so much has happened, what’s on the agenda?

Jeremy
We’re first going to talk about my release from federal prison and experiencing COVID behind bars

Jason
We’re also going to have a segment about Free Speech, Fascism, and the Internet, where we’ll talk about Parlerleaks, Gableaks and the fallout of the failed Jan 6 MAGA coup along with some thoughts on the future of antifascism and information activism

Jeremy
And we’ll be doing our regular section On The Noise, where we’ll talk about political prisoners and other news and updates in the struggle against Empire.

Jason
We got a lot to talk about it so lets get it going. Last time we put out a podcast back in May, you were locked up at the CCA in Tallahatchie, Mississippi.

Jeremy
That’s right, well remember, I was at FCI Memphis three months away from being released to the halfway house, when the feds pulled a fast one on me at the last minute. They sent me across the country and called me to testify in front of the Grand Jury investigating WikiLeaks, and when I refused, they held me in contempt of court. I ended up having to do an extra six months or so, as we talked about in previous podcasts. Then as they were sending me back to federal prison, the pandemic hit, and I was stuck in several raggedly transit center jails like Grady County and CCA Tallahatchie. Because at the time, the US Marshals weren’t transporting people to prison, but they were still shuffling people back and forth to court, so thousands of us were being exposed to prisoners from all over the country, left to sit for months uncertain of our future, and we all caught COVID.

So after our last episode, I was finally sent back to FCI Memphis, back in BOP custody, but I had returned to a federal prison system that was barely recognizable, because the pandemic. It more closely resembled the raggedy county jails that I had spent in the past year. It’s essentially a big lockdown system now, everybody’s constrained in their cells for most of the day. And I figured when I arrived I’d be put in segregation with other new arrivals. And they did put us in the quarantine unit, but instead of being isolated, it was actually a combination of new arrivals, people who actually had active COVID cases, and people who were about to be released who needed to pass two COVID tests before they go to the halfway house. And at first we were just freely mingling with everybody in the day room. At the time, the pandemic hadn’t really hit Memphis yet, but things would quickly change.

So now remember, by the time I got back to Memphis I was already well under 12 months left of my sentence. And in the federal system, you’re eligible for up to 10% at the tail end of your sentence to be done at a halfway house or home confinement. And a 10 year sentence like mine, I could have gotten the full 12 months, but it was not meant to be. They could have just released me immediately from the quarantine unit, but instead I was sent back to general population where I had to wait several more months before the case managers got around to preparing my halfway house papers.

Then it just got really bad at FCI Memphis, they called it “modified operations”, which meant we only got one hot meal a day, we only got two hours of outside recreation a week, there was no library. You could only go to the law library if you could prove that you have active court cases. We were only allowed out of the cell one hour a day, and not even on weekends, and there was always a longass line for the phone. There are no visits anymore, well they did bring back visits for about two weeks behind glass for only one hour, not really practical for most people whose family and loved ones are several states away. So they had those visits for two weeks, but then they shut it down again, and never brought them back.

So In addition to COVID crisis the fact that the federal system is just entirely locked down now. You know the long term effects of solitary confinement, inability to move around or get access to sun, fresh air, or healthy food, it’s something that is well studied yet they just basically pretend like it’s not a problem. I mean, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people in the feds are just in the cells all the time, with very limited access to sunlight or fresh air. But there was one part of the prison that they did not lock down and that was the UNICOR factories. As you know every federal prison they have basically a sweatshop where prisoners work for such low wages to produce things such as military uniforms, and so forth. Well since the very beginning of the pandemic the BOP kept the UNICOR factories running while they had everybody else locked down. Even as the pandemic hit FCI Memphis they still kept people working UNICOR and if you wondered what was so essential going on at this factories that they put everybody at risk, what they’re doing is they’re sorting coat hangers. Coat hangers!

Jason
Coat hangers?!

Jeremy
That’s right, the department stores across the entire midsouth they would send their unsorted coat hangers to FCI Memphis so they have prisoners sort through and categorize them by size by shape by color and send it back to the store. Somehow there’s a profit in all of this but what really bothered us is that while we were stuck in the cell all day, people who did work UNICOR they were in a separate unit where they could hang out in the day room, they were able to go to the yard every single day instead of us having just once a week and they got to go to commissary more often. We would watch them from the little windows of our cells go back and forth across the compound all day. It’s a set of privileges they give to their most loyal prisoners who helped them make profit.

Jason
So the whole time you’re just waiting for them to submit your halfway house papers?

Jeremy
Yeah that’s right I mean i could have been released immediately but the case managers, they’re just notoriously slow and bureaucratic, indifferent. I had been trying to bug my case manager every day but they actually deliberately set up the system to where they reduce contact between inmates and staff for COVID so they say but in effect they just don’t answer any of our written requests to staff, it’s basically just easy for them to ignore us. I had to wait about four months for them to get my release papers together and by then I was so close to my max date I only ended up getting three months halfway house. So, they sent me back to the quarantine unit from which I just came from to pass two COVID tests. By now they made even more restrictive changes we only had 10 minutes out of cell every other day and we basically had to choose between a shower and a phone call which also made it impossible for us to do any twin trouble episode

Jason
You were waiting to be released, and then you caught COVID again?

Jeremy
Right, remember they mix people with active COVID cases in the same unit as people who have to pass two COVID tests in order to be released. So they ended up bringing in like 10 people from the other units who had actually had COVID and they put one in the cell next to mine. Our cells were connected by an open vent that you literally could put your hand through right? And so we were banging on the doors like trying to get the attention of the medical people who really only walked by every couple of days and I was telling him “hey man you can’t keep me in the cell next to this guy with a COVID” and he said “nah, it’s not airborne like that” literally what he said. I called his ass out, he told me to shut the fuck up, and we went back and forth for a few minutes. They could have moved into another empty cell down the range but they don’t care and ultimately they didn’t do anything. And this same guy was the one who administered my COVID tests! I passed the first rapid test but I failed the second PCR test two weeks later.

It’s hard to imagine that you could catch a COVID in a quarantine unit that was supposedly set up to protect us, yet here it is, six months after catching it at Grady County, I catch it a second time a week before my release, which also delayed my outdate by another week, like it was one final fuck you from the feds. It just proves all of their COVID protocols were mostly for show, and what ended up happening was just as I left, COVID hit really bad, several hundred cases, and someone died.

Jason
Yeah this is an atrocity, that they’re so negligent, that prisoners are being denied proper healthcare, that prisoners are five times more likely to get the virus than the rest of us out here. That a lot of guards are refusing vaccinations while many prisoners can’t get it all, and they’re not even providing alcohol-based sanitizers. These problems are ubiquitous, for example here in Chicago, Cook County Jail became a hotspot over the summer, and 8 prisoners and a couple guards died. They should have done a mass release when the pandemic happened , but not even a once in a hundred year deadly virus can get the system to recognize prisoners as humans deserving of empathy and compassion. Basically, there’s no way to deal with the pandemic within the prison system, what we really need to do is shut it down and free everybody.

Jeremy
Definitely, abolition is the only solution to the COVID crisis in prisons. You hear about some people being released under the CARES Act, but really in the feds it’s mostly the minimum security campers that are getting out early. When people would file for compassionate release in the courts, the BOP would file an objection in almost every single case, often bringing up old irrelevant disciplinary reports. So while I was able to recover COVID and finally be released from prison, I think about all the people who are still behind bars forced to experience all of this. It was bad enough already but it’s right now it’s a particularly terrible time to be locked up. It’s one of the reasons we’re gonna continue using this podcast to highlight the struggles of prisoners. We must never leave a comrade behind. We need to be doing everything we can to set them free.

Jason
One ongoing situation we want to highlight is that of Mumia Abu Jamal who recently caught COVID. He’s serving a life sentence in prison and already been in prison over forty years. He already had a number of other physical ailments which require more attention than prison health services offer, and because of these preexisting conditions he is particularly at risk of COVID. He was briefly in an outside hospital but is back in the prison infirmary right now without access to his property. There is a huge campaign to get him released and people definitely should be writing letters, you know doing everything we can to demand Mumia’s freedom .

Jeremy
For sure, yeah there’s a number of political prisoners who have already been locked up for decades and are getting up there in age, another case is that of Sundiata Acoli, and really the State wants them to die in prison. Sadly just this week Chip Fitzgerald, the longest-imprisoned member of the Black Panther Party, passed after 51 years in prison, rest in power. And it’s never been about what they supposedly did, it’s about what they represent, and even after all these decades, they’re basically trying to kill them by keeping them in these COVID-infested prisons.

Jason
Marius Mason also caught COVID behind bars, Reality Winner as well.

Jeremy
Hundreds of thousands of prisoners have become infected, thousands have died, and these are certainly low estimates because there’s no centralized method of tracking these numbers. The BOP has a tracker, but a lot of local jails with federal contracts like Grady County aren’t reporting or even testing, basically trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

Jason
In other political prisoner news, Steve Martinez was locked up once again for refusing to comply with the grand jury. As one of the Standing Rock water defenders, he had been previously subpoenaed back all the way back in 2017, and was jailed for refusing to testify as he continues to do today.

Jeremy
Yeah prosecutors use Grand Juries to target political movements, and individuals such as Steve Martinez, his decision to refuse to comply and staying true to his principles really speaks to the strength of these movements. You know, he’s been battling this for four years now in and out of jail, refusing to comply, and obviously the state knows that he’s never going to comply, not that he knows anything anyways. So the judge also ordered that he must pay $50 a day, that he refuses to comply with the grand jury, which is a particularly cruel form of debt slavery. That is another way that society controls people outside of the carceral system. So despite all Steve had to put up with, he’s still staying strong. still staying true. And is an inspiration for all of us out here. And we got your back.

Jason
Also on the topic of political repression, Chicago police recently released additional photos of anti-colonial activists who they say were at the protests earlier in the summer of 2020 at the Columbus statue, which is, of course, a symbol of colonization and genocide, and has got to go. So they released these photos after they had already done a video montage of the event last year, highlighting people’s faces and stuff. They say that they’re suspects for mob action, which is a felony, vague enough in definition in which to basically encapsulate any person that they say may have been at a protest. It’s an intentionally chilling action, the Chicago police basically of course want to of course discourage additional protests by continually putting people out there six months after the fact.

Jeremy
But their inability to identify these protesters is testament to the strength of our ability to stay anonymous by wearing a mask. But you know, makes me wonder like, why now? Why are they going after people from an old action that everybody supported, and anyways, the City later took down the statue on their own.

Jason
All summer Chicago police in fact, at this action, were particularly brutal, utilizing “less than lethal” but dangerous as fuck crowd control weaponry against protesters. The pig union boss of the FOP, John Catanzara, a Trumpie through and through, is even on the chopping block for his job, basically fighting against the mass public outcry to defund the police with all kinds of racist posts on his facebook and vocally supporting the Jan 6 insurrectionists.

Jeremy
So the CPD targeting these anti colonial activists is just a continuation of the larger trend of repression against Black Lives Matter, antifascists and generally anybody who has participated in any of the demonstrations over the summer of 2020, they arrested over 15,000 people, many activists are still in jail and facing heavy handed court cases.

Jason
Of course this week is also the beginning of the trial of the cop who had murdered George Floyd, we’re all watching and re-experiencing the moments that set off the the uprising of 2020 which is important to look at because, you know, we just passed the year anniversary of the murder of Briana Taylor where the cops who killed her got off. we’re looking back over the movement last year, the murder of Jacob Blake in Kenosha he got off, the cops in Buffalo New York who pushed down the 35 year old man at a protest cracked his skull they got off so you know, we’re all watching the situation very closely to see what’s going to happen, if there’s going to be any any semblance of justice to be had in this fucking racist criminal legal system.

Jeremy
I picked a hell of a time to be released from prison.

Jason
Yeah you’re re-entering society in the midst of some historic moments

Jeremy
The pandemic, these police shootings and the resurgence of fascism… Over the years I tried to stay on top of what was going on, and it was frustrating not being able to do anything about it. I listened to the election coverage from the quarantine unit, and watched the Jan 6 right-wing coup attempt from the Halfway House. And it has all been surreal to say the least.

Jason
While many were shocked at how MAGA boiled over to the point of insurrection at the capitol, few can say they were surprised. Emboldened fascists grew in plain sight under the Trump regime who denied and minimized the reality of right-wing and white supremacist violence while demonizing BLM and leftwing protests. Leading up to the 2020 election, we saw in slow motion how the GOP planned on doing exactly what they accused their opponents of doing – trying to hold onto power and relevancy by stealing the election. Trump stacked the supreme court, attacked mail in ballots, made up countless phony voter fraud claims and with the weight of all the right-wing-media channels that echoed the line that the vote was stolen, he convinced his millions of supporters that he had won when he did not. And he riled people up to the point where they had been committing violence and hate crimes in DC at these million MAGA marches for months before Jan 6th. When the day arrived for his wild protest, Trump did not disappoint the mob. He incited his pawns in the #ArmyForTrump to go to the capitol and, with strength, directed them to stop the counting of certified votes, less their country be taken away. While the MAGA hordes battled cops in the halls of congress, Trump sat in the back and watched the whole thing from the sidelines. Trump called the rioters “special”, but when they left that day, the fools realized they had been suckered and sacrificed for the GOP. Despite all their patriotic gurgling sounds about Stopping the Steal, they turned out to be the ones trying to overthrow a democratic election, if you wanna call it that. They tried blaming antifa one last time for the coup while it was happening, but as we live in a surveillance state and this is the fucking capitol, there were thousands of cameras broadcasting to the world all the unmasked faces of the rioters that day, there was no doubt that it was all MAGA. The white supremacist mob was livestreaming themselves storming the capitol, taking pictures and videos, posting selfies of themselves trashing the halls of congress.

Jeremy
They were essentially uploading evidence that they themselves had been complicit in the fascist insurrection, but when the political blowback came, they tried to blame antifa.

Jason
When the rioters left the capitol, the smarter ones had realized that they had best begin taking all this down. However, it was too late, as some woke high-tech computer wizards found a obvious flaw in Parler’s terrible security, and scraped all the uploaded data from Jan 6th, including geometric locations of individuals linking them to the capitol riots, and released it to DDoS, the whistleblowing collective of information activists. This proved invaluable in analyzing who was there, how exactly it went down, as well as a glimpse into how this insurrection had been mounting up into the point of violence, on these so-called ‘free-speech’ right wing social media platforms. Antifascists had been warning people for a long time about this threat, and now that it has happened, we all have to look at this thing, analyze and understand how we got here and how we can prevent them from ever mounting a massive fascist revolt like that again.

Jeremy
Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter for spreading disinformation and inciting the riot, but he still had the full weight of the presidency, he had a press room of people around the clock waiting for him to say anything and he refused to condemn it until it was over. So you can’t say that he had his free speech taken away, that he was censored. Adding fact check notices to Trump and all these rivaling clowns repeated dissemination of misinformation is not a violation of free speech, it’s a defense of reality.

Jason
Days later Parler would be shut down, deplatformed from Apple, Google, and Amazon, who understandably didn’t want to be held liable for the festering racist violence. So now you got a bunch of right wingers whining about free speech and being censored, But the simple fact is, Parler was never the neutral social media platform as it presents itself. It was very clear that they were organizing this right wing coup in plain sight.

Jeremy
And of course, there’s a long history of anarchists, socialists and other left wingers being kicked off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram for years, It’s Going Down, CrimethInc, the Twitter account for the New York-based anarchist community center The Base. Twitter also prevented DDoS or anyone from posting about Parler or Blueleaks. Also, sex workers are routinely repressed by the tech giants and are kicked off of social media and payment platforms. So it’s never been the right that has experienced censorship, it’s always been the left, and marginalized communities, who have been repressed by the state throughout all of history from Occupy Wallstreet going all the way back to the Palmer raids, the Red Scare, the Alien and Sedition Acts where it was actually a crime to profess anarchism or communism or advocate against US involvement in World War I. And this isn’t just some historic shit we read about, we’ve seen this firsthand. Me and you Jason, we’ve seen mass arrests, seen our friends beaten and arrested, and we’ve both done time for our involvement, sure sometimes for direct actions we’ve actually done, but there’s also plenty of times we’ve experienced harassment and arrest for no reason.

Jason
So free speech is a pretty ridiculous hill for fascists to die on, considering they basically got caught red handed in the whole insurrection thing. But they lean hard into it. They named CPAC “America Uncanceled”, and despite that Trump was clearly to blame for Jan 6th, Trump still gets to go on TV and lie about whatever he feels like, having faced zero repercussions for trying a coup and bringing the country to the cusp of a civil war. At least this is how his base saw it.

They definitely don’t like being called out for their bullshit, their racism and transphobia, their hate speech and violence. They tout the First Amendment and free speech as if it gives them an absolute right to say whatever they want regardless of the consequences. This issue escalated and came to a head at an important moment in the Trump era, remember Charlottesville in 2017. This was a fascist gathering billed as “Unite the Right: Free Speech Rally”. Hundreds of nazis and proud boys were protected by the police and allowed to spout hate and antagonize the city with violence that turned deadly. A comrade Heather Heyer was killed by a fascist who drove through a crowd of protesters. Now this did not become a moment of universal condemnation: Trump famously said both sides had “good people”, he told the Proud boys to “stand back and stand by”, essentially giving a green light to this violence which unfortunately became something fascists and cops continued doing well into 2021, glorifying and musing openly about on Parler and Gab and facebook too. Where is the line? This is how free speech absolutism leads to fascism. It’s Karl Poppers paradox of intolerance, we must never tolerate the intolerant, less we lose our tolerant society.

And to anyone who actually looks at these right-wing platforms, it’s clear that all this talk of free speech is just a shield for hate speech. These platforms are hotbeds of racism, misogyny, lies, disinformation, transphobia, especially with Gab.

Jason
Using their own words revealed in part by Gableaks, you can see the true character of the people who are involved, just look at the CEO of Gab, Andrew Torba, who was deliberately soliciting anti-semitism, trying to invite fascists like Roosh and America first ‘Groyper’ Nick Fuentes to their platform, who was present at the capitol Jan 6th and called for violence on congresspeople. So it is free speech for fascists like these who they are really defending.

Also important to note it was the Tree of Life mass murderer, the largest act of violence against jewish people in this country, committed by a verified Gab plus user who had posted just before committing a racist atrocity. Today we see waves of anti-asian violence, fueled by racist rhetoric Trump continues to spout, echoed in these right-wing media platforms, which led again to mass murders such as that we had just seen unfold horrifically in Atlanta. To not take hate speech seriously is only going to ensure that this racist violence continues.

So after Parler was deplatformed, journalists mapped the movement of followers from Parler to Gab, But we got them on the run, because earlier this month, we woke up one day excited to learn that Gab was hacked, and that there is such a thing called Gableaks. Now it should be noted that nobody at DDoS was involved in the actual hack. The leaked info, which is massive and includes user data, private messages, posts and some passwords, is currently being made available to journalists and researchers, and we’re excited to see what info is yet to come from this.

Jeremy
This mapping of the extremist right would not have been made possible if it were not for the work of DDoS and other information activists who by publishing this information to the world we can be made aware of these community threats. The work that they’re doing is really the forefront of the fight for free speech.

Jason
Of course these bastards are mad. The blowback from these Gabbies is best described as targeted harassment of members of DDoS and anyone they see as involved in the collective who are exposing all these fascist racist trolls. Their attacks are personal, and riddled with transphobic slurs, dead naming, they have even posted pictures of children.

Now of course we also live in the post-Jan 6 era of mass antifascism, where all these trump bastards are getting doxxed, doxxing being one of many tools of self-defense long utilized by the community to raise awareness and bring attention to racist dangers. But whilst doxxing and Open Source intelligence such as Gableaks, Parlerleaks, Blueleaks and all the other leaks are important towards the safety of the community it prompts us to address the question of privacy on the internet

Jeremy
There’s an important distinction between the sort of hateful right wing harassment Andrew Torba and his Gabbie trolls are engaging in, and the content leaked in Gableaks. Information activists say it like this: we demand privacy for the people and transparency from the powerful.

Jason
The fact is that these hateful fascists have rallied to support one of the most powerful men in this country and literally organized a violent coup, and here they are, complaining about free speech censorship and privacy violation? Give me a break. Trump couldn’t even get convicted for inciting the riot in the very chamber his mob attacked. Now there’s still a very vocal Trump wing of the GOP and he’s even teased about running for president again. Even Don Jr called CPAC TPAC for Trump. They haven’t lost anything. The Trump’s are even talking about starting their own social media platform, which is guaranteed to be an epic failure and laughing stock, where unfortunately these hateful bastards will continue to have space for hate.

Jeremy
We’re talking about their privacy when you know the information coming out of these leaks are going to offer insight into the way fascist and right wing extremists organized, important in stopping future violent fascist movements. And I have to say, watching from afar, it is truly inspiring that the next generation hackers are out there standing on the right side of history in this struggle, standing against the police, standing against fascism.

Another point is even though the security apparatus certainly knew that they were planning for violence on Jan 6th, well-publicized weeks in advance, Trump and his clowns literally organized the rally, it still took them several hours before cops even showed up. The softness in which these police targeted the Jan 6 rioters should be compared to the way they handle left wing protests, for example the J20 counter inaugural demonstrations in 2017 where cops literally just kettled in and mass arrested hundreds of people. Basically anybody who was present was subjected to concussion grenades and numerous crowd control devices, and faced numerous felony conspiracy derived charges that the state pursued for over a year. They issued subpoenas to the hosts of the web servers such as dreamhost for disruptJ20.org to find anybody who simply visited the website.

Jason
We should also of course compare the police response on Jan 6 to what we’ve been seeing all 2020 during the Black Lives Matter uprising. We immediately see the differences in treatment that these right-wingers experienced from capitol police, all these people who had been arrested, the majority of them who had been facing several serious felony charges were immediately released on bail.

Jeremy
First off bail is an almost unheard-of thing in the federal system, especially for violent charges. There was even a protester in Seattle who came to the capitol and was charged with numerous counts of beating a police officer. He was released on bail so it’s clear looking at the way the police treated these rioters that they managed to escape as unscathed as they were because of white privilege. They were treated so easily because they were fighting in service of white supremacy. Many of the people present were actually cops, and the few cops who were actually working the demonstrations were very likely sympathetic to their cause.

Jason
Yeah many of them are being investigated right now for their involvement. MAGA thought that the cops were going to welcome them, which many of them did.

Jeremy
And the spoiled right wingers had such an easy time while they’re in jail. The QAnon Shaman of course famously won the right to an organic diet, which is basically unheard of. You know how hard it is to just get a vegetarian meal? It could take months if at all. So he was moved to the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia which is where I was at last year when I was being held in contempt of court. I was actually working as a cook in the jail kitchen and even though I did my best I could only do so much with the quality of ingredients we had to work with, the food was garbage, so it is outrageous to think that they are making special accommodations. Another Jan 6er named Bruno Cua was being held in transit at the Grady County Jail in Oklahoma City which is where all of us had caught COVID last spring, he apparently had a hard time. First off another prisoner punched him, and then he had caught COVID as well. But he had his lawyers get in front of a judge and was released on bail from Grady within 24 hours, while all of us were just left to stew in that COVID den for months.

Now, to be clear, we aren’t advocating that prosecutors do a better job of keeping them in jail. We’re pointing out the inequities and contradictions of the system. We don’t want to see an expansion of the police state or new terrorist laws which may sound appealing to establishment liberals but almost certainly would double back and be used against us. As antifascists and abolitionists, we are advocating for alternative forms of resistance to these racist hate groups outside of the State.

Jason
So, even though it’s only been a few months since the coup, these right wingers are back at it, already beginning to hold fascist and militia gatherings, Proud Boys, 3 percenters, Oathkeepers are still rallying, downplaying Jan 6th while members of their orgs actively conspired and participated in the violent riots at the capitol

We’re living in an era of accelerated fascism, and although it went badly for them here in the so called United States, meanwhile in Burma and Myanmar, military coups have mobilized the people to rebel, and hundreds have died so far resisting in these unfolding situations. Your average Gabbie or QANON MAGA insurgent may not make these connections, but high-profile fascists are taking notes and learning from their mistakes. If we don’t take the threat of right wing insurgency seriously, the next uprising may not be as much of a failure as Jan 6 was for them.

Jason
Speaking of explosive failures, we also want to talk about the endless series of musk launch flops, we seen three starship explosions in just a few months, two since we started recording this podcast. Now this is Elon Musk’s SpaceX starship program, which is on this massive drain on time energy and resources on some bunk plan to colonize Mars. This is a pipe dream for the 1%. They continue blasting off rockets during the Texas freeze while Musk’s Texas based company, Tesla continued to rake in billions during the pandemic while also violating COVID lockdown orders and forcing employees to go back to work. This really illustrates the lack of societal priorities. We let these billionaires do whatever pet projects they want. While the the rest of the population goes without heat or electricity, you know, it’s it speaks to the stark, medievalesque, class divisions of late capitalism,

Jeremy
Another Neo Columbus project of the tech elites is this new hotel they’re building to orbit Earth for rich tourists. It’s called the Voyager station. And the comparison has been made to the movie Elysium, where it depicts a kind of caste society where people are struggling in a post apocalyptic, impoverished Earth dystopia, but then you got these rich people living in polished gated communities in space.

Jason
They had these health pods basically where it could heal any physical ailments. So you have all you have a bunch of people on Earth who don’t have access to these health resources, who shoot up rogue spaceships basically to cross the divide of space into these rich enclaves even just for a moment to access these health pods for badly needed service, it’s a metaphor for the times we live in. And these Muskites, these Muskrats are, you know, obsessed with the ridiculous idea of living a better life on some space station while leaving Earth to rot.

So starships to Mars, wow a lot has changed since you’ve been out Jeremy, hell, since our last podcast in May. So now that you’re out, what are your plans?

Jeremy
Right. I mean, it’s an exciting time to be released. So much has changed. It’s actually been difficult adapting, can’t even believe it’s real sometimes, but I’m so happy to be out, happy to be with you. It’s been so long! But you know, the whole experience has only solidified and enhanced my perspectives on the need to fight the system. And I want to get involved, although of course I’m not going to be doing anything remotely illegal anymore. I actually still have three years of supervised release to do.

Jason
You have a lot of special probation conditions right?

Jeremy
Yeah, I have a lot of extra restrictions besides the usual. The Judge said that I was to have “no involvement or contact” with “civil disobedience organizations” or “electronic civil disobedience organizations”, whatever all that means. It sounds so broad and vague, not to get all constitutional but it sounds hella against the First Amendment. Also, my computer is running monitoring software through this private company, and I’ve got to pay for it too! So I’m gonna have to be careful, even though I’m not doing anything illegal anymore. But I think I can find meaningful ways to contribute to the struggle without putting myself or others at risk from this extra surveillance.

Jason
For one, we’re going to continue to do these podcasts. We look forward to collaborating with others to bring some other voices and ideas to the table.

Jeremy
Definitely, I have some other plans as well, I got some writing stuff in the works, maybe some music. But another project we want to talk about is this video game we’ve been developing.

Jason
Yeah fresh out of prison and already we’ve jumped into this epic project together! So we’ve been making this game that actually incorporates many of the ideas we’ve been talking about today. It’s called Smash MAGA: Zombie Trump Apocalypse. Imagine that right-wing Trump supporters have caught the zombie plague…

Jeremy
Hard to imagine.

Jason
And anti-fascists have to confront the infectious, indoctrinated hordes. It’s going to be an old school smash-and-run action adventure style of game, kind of like Smash TV! for Nintendo. I’m doing the art and music, and Jeremy you’re doing the programming.

Jeremy
I think a lot of people saw the Jan 6 rioters, saw all these conspiracists refuse to wear the masks, and it’s like they became brainwashed by fake news, and just become mindless zombies in service of their fascist leader. It seems the whole country has been taken over by this plague. Well, we’re going to give people an opportunity to do something about it in this game

Jason
Although fictional, the game will represent real-live events, for example, one of the levels you’ve got to defend a vaccination site from virus-infested zombies, now that actually happened in LA, some anti-vaxxers actually shut down a vaccination site for several hours. And one of the weapons in the game is this mask-shooting tripl;e crossbow, so you get to slap masks on these science-denying fools!

Jeremy
We’re still got a lot of work to do, but you can check out our progress and some screenshots at our website smashmaga.com

Jason
Okay so we’re coming on the end of our podcast, you can find this and other podcasts at our website at twintrouble.net

Jeremy
You can also find us on the Channel Zero Network, that’s anarchism in your eardrums.

Jason
So until next time ……….