smoke on the streets of bank of the police, around checking emissions. and the news is nearly all of these costs sailing around is fine until they get their engines checked. once again, the time capital has been swallowed bucks. now the smoke p. m $2.00 particular pollution does so small that damages the health of all those who breathe in. but the real culprit isn't the exhaust teams for industrial pollution by my spring. so especially in reason, in this recent years, that's including the trying to somebody sometimes. and there's a have a knowing sauces, funding, agricultural waste, mainly sugarcane amaze of cone farm is not only here, but also in memo, laos and cambodia. selling to some of the world's largest exposes, of sugar, an animal feed, the pharmacy, the cheapest way to dispose of that waste is the bonus they do. they face binds old

bands from the government. oh, well, protective is to protect all of them or what exactly it doesn't that make more sense to protect the farmer who can't afford to do anything other than burn his crops rather than the 1000000000 dollar company that's making to provide them with the option and the private company to provide them with the mechanical equipment. if dick got declined, learn what are the or the narrative? so going to discuss that. so the government will be doing something. yeah. but those huge agricultural companies carry considerable political weight. the opposition says lobbyists have held up clean a legislation for years. and even if impulse from neighboring countries, a band full of benefits, a still reeked by ty companies always say that we, we want to band the import, the boat and import stop flight. but we haven't said that we've gone a band to export from best buy and cultural areas where we have to speaking that

as well. we have to take responsible for the opposite country as well. the government, it says that new legislation is on the way to the clean air act presented. the problem it's a year ago is get to be passed into law. tyler has some of the biggest agricultural businesses in the world. but if the politicians here in parliament, a serious about and tackling and pollution, those of the company is going to have to clean up their act. tony chang, elgin's era bank. oh well that's it from me. so the side of the news continues with world. my system off to the stream, the injustice for me is the driving force of why i do this to show people what it's like to live in places where in just this isn't something you read in. the news is something that happens to every single day. whether it's a war or

a natural disaster, whether it's political corruption, making sure they understand in a simple language is absolutely crucial. the cities already 50 percent evacuated, most of those people actually left in the early days of the war. i couldn't do this job without the best cumberland, best produced is the best fixes and those other people to ireland in order to be able to get that message out to the world in in an age where our every move and social media post or comment is under constant council culture emerged sparking fears to base about accountability and censorship . today we dive into this polarizing phenomena and shaping our digital lives to ask, is it a tool for just for a weapon of fear? and these voices, and this is the street, the culture doesn't get

about being by cancel. culture is just about taking people down. look at that, look at on the hard did people can about getting the whole story. they didn't, it was just cancel. go to be vindictive. so entire right now, i guess i'll culture is the reason we have the me to go through. the reason women can finally pick up journal culture is the reason we finally get justice. guess what countries are the best thing that happened to you like you don't even know the council culture is definitely more than just a buzz word. it's a battle ground for ethics, free speech and power dynamics. for some, it's a vital way to hold people accountable, especially those in a position of power for others. it's a form of mob justice that silence has voices and stifles debate. to help us go through the concept and the implications around it. we have joining us today of rationing for la, founder of a new startup. explain dot c o dot. is that a and former editor in chief of the male and guardian,

and have post south africa check montalvo banassi program director for the masters in need of communication and development at the london school of economics. i'm christina brown, and shaheen mclaren, co hosts of the on council culture podcast. thank you all so much for your time. thank you for being part of the discussion today, christine, and show him. i'd like to start with you. we decided to do this. busy because as we observe the internet here on the stream, um, if you was like there's no escaping counsel culture as a concept. but as a concept that has evolved over the years and it has different meaning to different people. can i get you to 1st define what council culture actually is? of course i think when we talk about cancel culture, we are specifically referring to car. so right ality or the idea that people deserve to be punished when they do things that we don't like or that would have

been to be socially unacceptable. and when we talk about cancel culture, but just using language that is accessible to more people to be ality is that there is no such thing as canceled culture. cancel culture is just basically car. so reality and it's like most accessible format. it is a way for people too often insight mobs to take down people who they don't like. it is often a lot of language, a lot of rhetoric that is weaponized, a part of what christina and i are attempting to do with our pod cast is to take back the legitimacy of accountability. and what that means, because when we water down the legitimacy of accountability and we weaponized it against people, we just don't like or we try to disappear people or participate in parts of morality or trying to punish people. but little people have them disappeared. when we disliked them,

we kind of take away from what is like cancel things or things that should be treated seriously. like we've all seen on the very public stage, someone do what is very clearly a nazi salute. but when we are watering down what it means to be held accountable, that can result in that not being taken as seriously as it should be. it is alarming, and we should be alarmed. but when we are all participating in car surround e and constantly beating up on each other on the internet, it kind of takes away from where i should be. i'm. so what we're trying to do is kind of challenge that on its face and waters down the power of the users. christina, do you have anything to add to that definition? and i think that was perfect. i added that. i think a lot of people, this is something that's a human. i also discuss it that they conflate cancel culture with it being outrage, culture because so much of both of us being on the receiving end of moments where

we've been canceled and people want to allegedly hold us accountable. it's been based off of outrage and people weaponized. things like shaheen said, being really carswell not taking our apologies or anyone's accountability into account. and then it fixed the question, well, what is the point of this? i think council just started out as something that was an attempt to bring harm to the forefront because there's so many different types of people and isms, and phobias that harm a lot of communities in groups and having social media where anyone can really share how they're feeling and their experiences brought that to the surface. and i think that we haven't yet as a culture on done to the car surround it. assume is talking about and we've been indoctrinated with that. so we want to count ability but what does that look like? and what does that look like with pure social relationships where we're not in

community, is the people that we see in online and have their handles. that's not the same as sharing community and a space where you can help each other accountable in real life break by with people and touch the human being that you're trying to cancel. so i'm now we're in a stage, which is why she, when i started a pod cast, where after years of being visible online and having multiple situations where we've been, dost, or our jobs have been called, i lost the job from this personally. so we want to bring a new wants to, okay, we want and our actual accountability. what does that look like without outrage? some of that. how is that? yeah, that accountability with just the outrage actually is shakuntala. you wrote about council called her back in 2021. i'm and what are the things that you said is that the media, we're getting it all wrong. can you help us get it right? yeah, i, i mean, i want to 1st say that i very much agree with what my colleagues have just said. i

think human christina, trying to do something which we really need to do within communities, which is to be more compassionate with each other so that people can actually land and find out who is on our side and understand historically, who is in power and using that power against us, so i have nothing at all to disagree with with what has been said. but when i wrote that piece i was writing at the time when there was a massive backlash against black lives matter. and i think now we see that backlash in government, it's been in government in india since 2014. and i want to put the phrase cancel a culture into historical perspective in relation to 3 things. one of them is violence, actual physical violence against communities, whether that's violence, through through rates, through paul grounds and ethnic cleansing, or violence through bombs, stopping people out. and that is

a definitive way of telling people you cannot speak. the 2nd one is but historically modernized, communities have and should always have some means of speaking back to the powers that oppressed them. and boy quotes, cultural and social boy quotes have historically worked in places like south africa, again, stop by side. and in cases where particular companies are being extremely agreed use and how they treat local communities, boy clips have been very effective with all these tools. when i said this is a red herring, when i said this is an invention of the media, i meant that all of these tools are being appropriated by the far right, by those in power to get people fighting each other within communities. and that's why i said the media have got it or wrong. it is fascinating and thank you so much for clarifying that because it is fascinating to see how that has been used in different ways throughout the last few years. um has an a rush, the i watched your,

your ted talk where you describe feeling very publicly and then making global headlines for it. and then being publicly shamed, which had a devastating effect on your mental health. would you say you were cancelled? of course on these not one absolutely say i was cancelled, but i what i'm reading during about the conversation right now is how my colleagues have friend, how the sort of idea of folding power to college has been almost the 1st on the internet itself and started to be news against people who have to just not had much power. so they, i was a young woman of color into the 1st time with a lot of powerful enemies and kind of traditional spaces. and so when i made a mistake, a lot of people who had had peace with me for whatever reason, i felt i've been unjustly given a possible position john's into the fray. and very much with my colleague previously said um, kind of use the tactics that perhaps originated within community movements to hold

the power to account, to effectively create a pile on and create a reaction and a most pressure um, kind of the kind of attack that happened on me, which was like a, a social media attack was also a 2 day to 3 day few at a very intense period when my employer was a, they wasn't the mom that i despise. busy and they kept going, i try and talk to us close out of my job. there was no due process, there was no punishment that was to push on to what a mistake i had made. other people had gotten much worse and had not faced such sanction. so i think would be under those things i agree with is one that it is the mob justice element to it. and to the minimum of this tactics as might have the most out of cross with movements to hold tyler, to account a kind of being used by the problem with stands. mm. and i think, i don't know if you agree with me, but i think we've seen an example. an interesting example of the, as i'm sure he mentioned briefly very recently because all over social media these

past few weeks were the political developments in the west. notably, some pretty extraordinary moments and the presidential integration like this one, the to it'll must jesters, know, his words ignited a serious debate online with many people typically wondering how some of the powerful continue to get away with so much shaheen. what did you make of the debate that happened online and what it tells us about social media and about the society we're living in. and i think that everybody who just spoke did a really amazing job of highlighting exactly how the people in power utilize and manipulate like the masses through like the bastardization of these times that

we have all created to kind of keep each other safe by people who are typically pushed to the margins of society when we create language and come up with these tools to effectively call out the people who are process or who are in power. they in turn, flip it on our heads and forced us to use these tools against each other. and once we do that, we can water down with these things actually mean and when it's time to actually hold someone accountable, like a loan mosque who is very clearly again, doing a nazi salute. what happens is that people can say, this is just cancel culture, which has historically over the last few years, have been proven to be used in cases where it just does not apply, or where it has been. very cars are all towards people who truly did not deserve it because of simple, smaller mistakes and wins when you can create that illusion that anybody who's held

to that fire is somehow being, you know, put in the system or used uh, using these terms and an inaccurate way, it can kind of like minimize the impact of what they're doing is a manipulation tactic that happens on a mass scale. and we're witnessing witnessing this in real time. christina, you're not of your head and you agree with that. i agree with that so hard to lee i read was what everyone is saying this far. i'm really enjoying this conversation and that we've come to to a place where we can discuss this. i want to touch up and when we're looking at the one of us and whatever, what else was saying about it being what the nice people in our webinar using the tools that work from community to have accountability. i think it's also depending on the visibility of the person and the identity identity and the marginalization is that the person that is visible has because i've had people who shared my

marginalisation also attacked me. i've seen in fighting between people of the same race of the same sex orientation of the same social economic class finding each other and what the nice thing those tools against one another. so i would love to see that to just only those that have power over me, your social, social, economic power, me sometimes it's people that look like me and, and share rooms with me and back to what she was saying about it minimizes the actual harm being done when you have someone with your boss who's a rich white man doing a salute. if you had a note that is undoubtedly as we submitted, we all know the roots in that which, which it has uh, which it has denied for the sake of this conversation. the one was denied doing this, one is what i think one of the things that is also fascinating about this conversation . and i want to put this to 2nd tell is the idea that perhaps many people are waking up to the fact that um, social media is potentially not the level playing field that we all think it is

that we don't get the same chances in the same space is in the same voice is um, at least we don't count as much as some other people do our voices at least don't i think you're absolutely right. and i think also what christina said is absolutely right that within our communities, and i think i'm speaking of someone who's probably one of the oldest people in the room here long ago. so i wasn't able to, i don't think more of a sorry, go ahead. 40 years ago and i was part of organizing, that was a lot of what we call putting the reservation even within less communities within like communities, for instance, because i'm in the u. k. i'll take the example of who is and who isn't or who was and who wasn't allowed to call ourselves black. so we've had a lot of different woods in terms you know, 30 years ago i was part of black, great black action groups for justice and equality. and now that's been fractures

and schisms within that with different people saying, you know, you're not allowed to quote yourself based, so that which has only weakened community. so bullying within our own communities always has happened. this thing i would say is that we need to use the right times for these things if we choose to use. and i don't doubt to have good reasons for using the word counsel culture, which is to use a word which has been weaponized by those in power against us and is being used. for instance, in instances where people speak out on behalf of the palestinians being massacred or on behalf of survivors of costs are cost through a state in india, in the us and south africa, then we are, we are sort of playing that game it's, it's a difficult line to walk, but i think historically there's no doubt that that's been a hierarchy of hate aimed very much at the most vulnerable, even within marginalized communities. which means that we are often on the receiving end of pate and abuse from outside and bullying,

and one upmanship from within the community. and i mean, it's not new that the rich and the powerful or at least let's just say the powerful um, can use certain techniques and reverse things around to actually perpetuate the model . the benefit to them. um, i want to bring another element to another elements that we saw was a compelling argument in this conversation. take a look. we are not censored or silenced. we are surrounded by an inundated with more speech that has ever existed in the history of communication. and it is all weaponized by professional outrage. hunters of all stripes, scouring the globe for graduation speech snippets, off hand comment storing promotional tours out of context, comedy bits, lane marketing ideas, or any words and phrases. they believe they can latch on to, to generate monetized clips, outrages the engine of our modern media economy,

and sometimes someone loses a job or something else happens like that. that should never happen. the rush, the, your thoughts on this, on how outreach cells to well, absolutely, i can't help but agree with that to play because i do feel these know due process to the way we go about getting this accountability at the moment. people have to cancel culture bucks, month justice. but the fundamental idea around justice as fallback is super nice ation has held, is that they is due process, but you are innocent until proven guilty. the problem with online moms and social media, just as if it isn't the due process. and i think what the cookie just played, i believe it was by a comedy host of the get his name and makes the point that this isn't just how they were not in a vacuum people on just yeah, just a stupid story isn't just naturally say of people just industrious thing. what

comes to mind building and simplifies to be increasingly hostile, increasingly divisive, because the other buttons on do so to meet social cast forms, the vote that sort of speech. and to come up to my experience, i fell into that truck as an end to the publication of the house post where i was, i was on the most precious of my bosses. and this is the kind of news because it's really living in. and it's the reason i create my own start up cuz it's so topic, but on the most push to get move, you smoke small engagement and also the warranty with being divisive. so i allowed a device of comments piece on onto the website and in service to the next to me, toxic bod, internet. and obviously everyone turned around those and who was baptized. and i took the full and i, i was forced out of my job and it had, you know, subscriptions for myself mentally as well as professionally. but the real real take away the is that the entire information ecosystem, not just on social media,

but in general is and increasingly speaking. and i mean, you would also do us a probably subject to this is that we don't have so much pressure to about these algorithms, which appeal to the lowest common denominator of human nature and get to the motion just been proven by many studies of how things have devolved in terms of the social media and media. negative emotions get more reaction and engagement than positive on. and so people increasing the are those kind of statements and takes on my heart issues to, to yep, to shock the audience, which in gave with i could not tell you how many times i was asked to bring people that disagreeing to fight on air. so we would go viral, i think cause conversations like this one we have here and much more constructive. by the way, christina, i wanted to get your take here going fours. what do you think we can do collectively towards holding our sales? i'm those in power. accountable, surely we can all do better in the space i'd be

i'm actually going to take something i watched the rest of your head talk last night and i really, really enjoyed it. and there was a part where you were speaking about allowing people to make mistakes. and because counsel culture doesn't allow mistakes and actually learn from them. we're doing society of the service and moving forward. i don't know what social media or online is prepared to do, but i think my personal reason and what she meant i agreed on for why we started the pod cast is my way and our way of moving forward was to hold an example and hold a space for what new wants, accountability, grace, understanding and growth. like and our 1st 2 episodes we both go into our own stories of experiencing counsel quoted for the 1st time and harassment and threats and doc seeing similar to what has already been shared and where we were mentally during that time. and, and in the response of that and also the lessons learned since then. and i just

hope that kind of lead by example and have these really open valuable conversations . and some people are ready to hear them and some people are, i think we, we, before we even, you know, publish the pockets of it. so people are trying to cancel the uncomfortable trip, i guess. but this choke because of the conversation we are trying to, to have and, and something that so moving forward, i think if everyone can kind of think of moments where they might have made a mistake or had a missed up or been confused and, or felt like that and protect themselves and had greece for themselves and those moments where they had to learn from it. then degrees can be spread amongst other people into their direct communities and communities on line. perhaps if you're angry at so many papers because they're doing something right with the podcast, so we'll be monitoring dot and watching that and listening. i'm 2nd. tell them one final word. one final question for you. what would you like to see people and take

away from our conversation today? what would you like the conclusion of this debate that wasn't media debate to be i would definitely like to 2nd what christina just said and say, i would love to have much more. com, graceful conversations with i'm an acceptance of people's ability to make mistakes and to get things wrong. but i also want to draw attention to the different types of counseling which doesn't get cold counseling. and that's going to be a much more difficult pathway to take. so when someone has the visa withdrawn, because they going to speak about the murder of a group of people in palestine, that's counseling and the biggest way, but nobody calls it that it's sense to ship. it's all kinds of things. so when someone actually has a bomb dropped on their house because they've been judged guilty of being a terrorist at age full, that's canceling. it's much it's genocide. and i want to see us talking about those things while extending grace,

an easy conversation within our communities. i think that's something that we can do whether we are on the internet or not on the internet, and getting control of some of these companies breaking up monopolies and preventing the people in file from controlling both mainstream and social media is going to be a big uphill battle for all of us. absolutely. and we're here for us and thank you so much for bringing the children of gaza into this conversation. i cannot thank you enough chuckle color the russian is a he and christina, thank you for your time today. thank you for being part of the stream. and thank you all for tuning and stay in touch with us online. you can use the hash tag or the handle ag stream to send us your questions and suggestions. take care. and i'll see you soon. the a heavy fight thing. we don't simply focus on the politics of the conflict. it's the consequence of war. the human suffering that

we have a full time. we break bullets and bombs and some of the world's most trouble regions . the army floods in the face of ice holes advance. it is one of the most serious thoughts of violence in recent years. in some instances, we are the targets because we give voice to those demanding freedom the rule of law . and we always include the views from all sides, an ancient african jewish community, secret operation, and a dangerous journey during night, but the role so the soldiers multiplied sports and the c o $20.00 world reveals the covert masonic, and c i a mission that some of those thousands of it to your pin jews into israel, and their ongoing struggle for acceptance into society today. your peer to israel, secret journeys on knowledge to 0. the sun rises brilliantly here, the

history was written. the age of became theory is here, the be students and a totally the timeless journey. this is refrain we'll be discussing the war and gaza. and today how palestinian oxys are responding to it. the only thing that's right does have is the power of award winning old fashionable to speak to palestinians by the end director ok met. i'm assuming that you are able to train those emotions that are coming up with something to the beautiful and see those emotions without the wounds that's coming. refrain on out just sara.

investigating the use and abuse of power across the globe. on alex's here, the, [000:00:00;00] the hello i'm about to send, this is the news our life until coming up in the next 16 minutes. after 8 months, the roof of border crossing between garza and egypt is reopening for medical