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Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, famed smart Guy and inspiration for Bernie Sanders's

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Speaker 1: hair do, once famously stated, I know not with what

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Speaker 1: weapons world War three will be fought, but World War

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Speaker 1: four will be fought with sticks and stones. The implication

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Speaker 1: of his words is quite obvious. By the Cold War era,

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Speaker 1: the weapons available to nation states had grown so powerful

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Speaker 1: that if they went to war with one another again

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Speaker 1: on a mass scale, civilization as we know it would

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Speaker 1: be annihilated. But what if Albert was wrong? Brilliant as

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Speaker 1: he was, mister Einstein was trapped as we all are

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Speaker 1: in the time he lived. The towering armed giants of

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Speaker 1: his era where the United States and the U. S

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Speaker 1: s are, and it was only rational to fear them

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Speaker 1: unleashing hell upon each other and the world. But we

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Speaker 1: live in different times now. Today Russia and the United

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Speaker 1: States still pack potent nuclear arsenals. But the great global

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Speaker 1: conflict that increasingly sweeps our world is not a battle

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Speaker 1: between nations. It is a clash between people who want

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Speaker 1: to be free and the authoritarians who want to squeeze

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Speaker 1: them dry. You've seen some of this in the news.

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Speaker 1: In the last few weeks. More than a million people

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Speaker 1: have taken to the streets of Lebanon demanding the resignation

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Speaker 1: of their government. Protesters in Hong Kong have continued their

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Speaker 1: months long battle against the state. Catalonians have taken to

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Speaker 1: the street and their fight for independence from Spain. Revolutionaries

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Speaker 1: in Rajapa fight with machine guns and wire guided missiles

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Speaker 1: against the overwhelming firepower of Turkey and NATO nation. Right now,

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Speaker 1: as I type this, uprisings have lit up the skies

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Speaker 1: and capital cities around the world from east to west.

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Speaker 1: Each of these movements has its own reason for taking

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Speaker 1: to the street, but I think most of these activists

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Speaker 1: would agree with the sentiment I saw expressed on a

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Speaker 1: poster board in Santiago, Chile. We're not from the left,

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Speaker 1: and we're not from the right. We're from the bottom

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Speaker 1: and we are coming for those on top. This will

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Speaker 1: be a different episode of Behind the Bastards than you

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Speaker 1: normally get. This is traditionally a show that tell you

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Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in

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Speaker 1: all of history. Uh And most days I weave a

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Speaker 1: tale of entertaining bastardry to a comedian guest whose rideshotgun. Today,

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Speaker 1: my only guests are activists and journalists from around the

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Speaker 1: world Chile, Lebanon, Rojava. I decided this rather unorthodox episode

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Speaker 1: was necessary because I truly believe that the future freedom

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Speaker 1: of everyone listening to this depends on what we all

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Speaker 1: do over the next year and change. The current uprisings

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Speaker 1: around the globe are but a prelude. There will be more.

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Speaker 1: The world is burning and it will not stop anytime soon.

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Speaker 1: So let's begin. We can probably trace this current set

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Speaker 1: of revolts to the protests in Hong Kong, which started

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Speaker 1: on March thirty one, two thousand nineteen. Now, the spark

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Speaker 1: that started those protests was a proposed new bill which

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Speaker 1: would have allowed individuals to be extradited to China for

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Speaker 1: a variety of crimes. Since Great Britain gave the island

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Speaker 1: back to China in nine Hong Kong has been governed

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Speaker 1: by an agreement generally summarized stas one country, two systems.

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Speaker 1: People in Hong Kong enjoy more personal freedoms than the

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Speaker 1: citizens of mainland China. They are in effect a semi

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Speaker 1: autonomous zone, not completely unlike the Curtish cities of Northern Iraq,

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Speaker 1: but pro China. Elements within the government of Hong Kong

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Speaker 1: sought greater integration with China, which meant throwing many of

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Speaker 1: the more subversive elements of their society under the bus.

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Speaker 1: The people of Hong Kong did not want to see

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Speaker 1: their friends and relatives sent off to mainland China to

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Speaker 1: be beaten and tortured for their political beliefs, so they

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Speaker 1: took to the streets. When the protests started seven months ago,

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Speaker 1: most observers doubted that they would last more than a

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Speaker 1: few weeks. But the people of Hong Kong shocked and

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Speaker 1: continue to shock the world with an array of innovative

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Speaker 1: tactics for battling state power. They placed traffic cones over

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Speaker 1: tear gas grenades and pour in water to disarm them.

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Speaker 1: They deploy phayleanxes of protesters armed with umbrellas to counter

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Speaker 1: police projectiles. And they organized demonstrations that flow like water

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Speaker 1: around the forces of the state and against all odds.

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Speaker 1: These tack picks have worked. The activists of Hong Kong

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Speaker 1: are still holding out. In fact, their movement has evolved

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Speaker 1: from just a protest against a single law to a

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Speaker 1: series of five demands from the government. They want the

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Speaker 1: state to officially retract the description of their protests as

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Speaker 1: a riot. They want their jailed fellow activists freed and

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Speaker 1: the charges against them dropped. They want an investigation into

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Speaker 1: police brutality, and they want universal suffrage, a chance to

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Speaker 1: vote for their leaders without the involvement of the government

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Speaker 1: in Beijing. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lamb,

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Speaker 1: has ceded to only a few of the protesters demands,

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Speaker 1: retracting the extradition law, but holding fast against the others.

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Speaker 1: The Chinese government has moved twelve thousand troops onto the island,

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Speaker 1: and thousands more await in the wings. Week after week,

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Speaker 1: the clashes have continued. In the last month or so,

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Speaker 1: a sixth demand has developed amongst the activists, the police force,

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Speaker 1: they say, must now be entirely disbanded. On September thirty,

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Speaker 1: Carry Lamb took to the last bastion of all would

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Speaker 1: be tyrants, ACE book Live. She did a carefully curated

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Speaker 1: Q and A session where she defended the police of

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong, who have been videotaped firing concussion rounds at

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Speaker 1: journalists and shooting activists. She called the demand for the

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Speaker 1: police to be disbanded puzzling. Quote, I'm puzzled when I

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Speaker 1: hear this, because when there are public order and safety

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Speaker 1: issues such as theft or unfortunate attacks, people say they

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Speaker 1: must ask police to follow up seriously. So police are

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Speaker 1: playing a very important role and we must support them

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Speaker 1: in law enforcement. And yet the people of Hong Kong

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Speaker 1: continue to turn out in their millions, and now that

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Speaker 1: they have seen the police as an instrument of violent

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Speaker 1: repression on a mass scale, they are unlikely to go

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Speaker 1: back to the way things were not without being forced

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Speaker 1: to do so by even greater violence. And so the

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Speaker 1: protests continue. The whole situation hanging upon the edge of

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Speaker 1: a razor blade. It is impossible to know how things

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Speaker 1: will end, but the powerful images coming out of Hong

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Speaker 1: Kong have inspired other acts of resistance around the world.

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Speaker 1: It would be too much to call the protests on

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Speaker 1: that island the spark that set our current fires of revolution,

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Speaker 1: but they certainly provided fuel, just as the people of Catalonia. Now,

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Speaker 1: Catalonia is one of the wealthiest and most productive regions

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Speaker 1: of Spain. The Catalonian people have their own language and

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Speaker 1: identity that goes back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

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Speaker 1: Barcelona is generally seen as the political and cultural capital

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Speaker 1: of that region. Starting in the early nineteen hundreds, Catalonia

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Speaker 1: became the center of socialist and anarchist politics in Spain.

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Speaker 1: In the late nineteen twenties, an alliance of affinity groups,

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Speaker 1: which are collections of individuals with shared interests, coalesced into

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Speaker 1: a resistance against the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.

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Speaker 1: A number of different uprisings followed for the next decade,

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Speaker 1: several of which were brutally suppressed by Fascist general Francisco Franco.

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Speaker 1: This all culminated in the Spanish Coup of nineteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: which was pulled off by an alliance of anarchists and socialists.

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Speaker 1: For a while, these leftists held off the advancing forces

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Speaker 1: of Spanish fascism, but Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy backed

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Speaker 1: Francisco frank Those regime and the so called democracies of

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Speaker 1: the world let the resistance in Spain die. Catalonia was

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Speaker 1: crushed under the fascist boot heel. In time, Spanish fascism

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Speaker 1: died a natural death, and the nation today functions about

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Speaker 1: as well as any other liberal democracy, which is to

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Speaker 1: say that roughly half of the people there hate their

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Speaker 1: government at any given time. Since nineteen seventy eight, the region,

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Speaker 1: like Hong Kong, has had limited autonomy from the central government.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, Catalonia one even greater independence

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Speaker 1: and was described as a nation in a new statute.

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Speaker 1: But then came the two thousand eight financial crash and

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Speaker 1: bitter austerity measures introduced by the government to cut public spending.

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Speaker 1: Catalonia represents sixteen percent of Spain's population but contributes about

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Speaker 1: nineteen percent of its tax revenue. Many within the region

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Speaker 1: resent paying so much into a government that continually cuts

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Speaker 1: their benefits. That resentment was further stoked in two thousand ten,

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Speaker 1: when Spain's Constitutional Court reversed the statute that gave Catalonia

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Speaker 1: greater autonomy. Set artists held a symbolic referendum on November

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Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, which was outlawed by Spain. The vote

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Speaker 1: showed substantial support for independence, and in the two thousand

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Speaker 1: fifteen regional election, separatists one big. This led rather inevitably

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Speaker 1: to a full referendum on independence on October first, two

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Speaker 1: thousand seventeen. The Spanish Constitutional Court declared this illegal, but

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Speaker 1: the referendum went forward and ninety of voters supported independence. Now,

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Speaker 1: only forty three percent of the region actually voted, due

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Speaker 1: in large part to a trade union boycott, and other

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Speaker 1: polls show that the Catalonian people are fairly deeply divided

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Speaker 1: about independence, But the Spanish government came in and cracked

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Speaker 1: down on the separatists brutally. Madrid dissolved the elected Parliament

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Speaker 1: of Catalonia and arrested nine of the most prominent secessionists

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Speaker 1: and brought them to trial on Monday, October fourteenth, two

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Speaker 1: thousand nineteen. All nine were convicted and sentenced two years

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Speaker 1: in jail. This sparked a new and much more extensive

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Speaker 1: series of protests against the government, as even people who'd

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Speaker 1: been on the fence about secession we acted to the

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Speaker 1: violence of the state. The latest series of Catalonian uprisings

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Speaker 1: have been deeply inspired by the protests in Hong Kong.

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Speaker 1: The primary organizing principle of the Hong Kong protesters, b water,

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Speaker 1: seems to be particularly impactful on Catalonians. The basic idea

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Speaker 1: of this b water principle is that protests should be formless, shapeless, leaderless,

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Speaker 1: and nimble in order to counter the clinched fist of

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Speaker 1: state power. Catalonians took this idea and ran with it,

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Speaker 1: modifying it into their own revolutionary axiom, be a tsunami.

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Speaker 1: They formed a group called Tsunami Democratic in September, which

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Speaker 1: suggested mass civil disobedience in order to defend the autonomy

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Speaker 1: of Catalonia. Once their leaders were sentenced, protests broke out

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Speaker 1: across the region, blocking traffic and assembling in multiple public

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Speaker 1: spaces to march on Barcelona's airport. As they marched, many

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Speaker 1: of these activists chanted, we are going to do a

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong. I'm going to quote now from an article

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Speaker 1: in Courts by Mary Hui, who has extensively covered the

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Speaker 1: uprising in Hong Kong and is covering the uprisings in Catalonia.

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Speaker 1: Quote at Barcelona Airport on Monday, Striking the similar scenes

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Speaker 1: played out as thousands occupied both the terminal and the

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Speaker 1: roads outside the building, eventually forcing the cancelation of at

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Speaker 1: least one hundred flights. Tsunami Democratic even distributed some one

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Speaker 1: hundred thirty boarding passes via the messaging app Telegram so

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Speaker 1: that protesters could enter the airport, and a move reminiscent

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Speaker 1: of some Hong Kong protesters who purchased cheap flights in

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Speaker 1: order to enter the airport in circumvent a court ban

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Speaker 1: on demonstrations in the building. In late September, the Grassroots

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Speaker 1: Group Assembly in Nasional, Catalania even held a public forum

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Speaker 1: titled Experiences of the use of New Technologies and the

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Speaker 1: non violent Struggle the Case of Hong Kong. Quote quote

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Speaker 1: with un a quote. I should say we've been inspired

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Speaker 1: a lot by the Hong Kong protests, although we are

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Speaker 1: aware of the differences between both societies. A representative of

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Speaker 1: picnic x republica digital platform designed to mobilize Catalans for

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Speaker 1: political action, told courts the Hong Kong people have done

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Speaker 1: a very good job in letting every buddy else know

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Speaker 1: about their fight through social networks. These are the first

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Speaker 1: lessons we have learned from them, the use of these

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Speaker 1: tools to mobilize the people and keep them informed. The

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Speaker 1: protesters in Barcelona did not just content themselves with chanting.

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Speaker 1: They lit garbage cans on fire. They damage street signs

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Speaker 1: and traffic lights, and did an estimate at one point

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Speaker 1: seven billion dollars in damage to the city. This sort

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Speaker 1: of activism, the kind that ends with broken windows and

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Speaker 1: serious financial damage to the state is deeply frowned upon

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Speaker 1: by many Americans, even by many American liberals. A lot

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Speaker 1: of you probably feel uncomfortable with the idea, even if

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Speaker 1: you generally support protests. I'd ask you to think about

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Speaker 1: why that is, and to ask yourself if the state

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Speaker 1: truly understands any language but the language of damage done

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Speaker 1: to its bottom line. The protests in Hong Kong have

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Speaker 1: done even more financial damage. The stock market alone is

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Speaker 1: down five hundred billion dollars since the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: protests in March, and that doesn't include the financial cost

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Speaker 1: incurred by a blockaded airport, by roads and streets cut

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Speaker 1: off to traffic. A protest that doesn't cost the government

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Speaker 1: anything more than the manpower of its police is not

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Speaker 1: much of a protest at all. Jordy Barbata, a journalist

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Speaker 1: and political writer in Barcelona, said that the protesters in

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong have provided a global dimension to a local

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Speaker 1: conflict by attracting mass international sympathy. This sympathy might be

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Speaker 1: the only thing holding the Chinese military back from more

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Speaker 1: aggressive intervention. Jordy recognized that now and in the future,

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Speaker 1: activists around the world could only hope to succeed in

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Speaker 1: their struggles against oppressive states by generating mass awareness and

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Speaker 1: international solidarity. To that end, protesters in Barcelona massed in

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Speaker 1: front of the Chinese consulate and a show of solidarity

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Speaker 1: with Hong Kong. Prominent Hong Kong protester Joshua Wong told

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Speaker 1: Catalan News that he was worried about the excessive use

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Speaker 1: of force by Spanish police. He stated, people in Hong

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Speaker 1: Kong and Catalonia both deserve their right to determine their

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Speaker 1: own destiny. Simultaneous rallies were held in Catalonia and Hong Kong,

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Speaker 1: but as these activists express solidarity with one another, the

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Speaker 1: government's oppressing them did the same thing. The twelfth of

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Speaker 1: October brought this headline from the South China Morning Post,

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Speaker 1: China offers support to Spanish government amid Catalonia crisis. China's

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Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said quote, the Government of the People's

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Speaker 1: Republic understands that supports the Spanish government's efforts to protect

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Speaker 1: national unity and its territorial integrity. Being result of the

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Speaker 1: struggle for Catalonian independence, like the protests in Hong Kong,

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Speaker 1: is still very much up in the air, but both

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Speaker 1: struggles offer important truths for the rest of us, including

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Speaker 1: my fellow Americans. Dictators and authoritarian powers around the world.

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Speaker 1: Whatever ideology they claim to hold, dear will always stand

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Speaker 1: together because the people on top always have more in

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Speaker 1: common with each other than they do with you. This

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Speaker 1: is why Turkish dictator taip Air Dooan and President Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump were able to come to such a chummy arrangement

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Speaker 1: about the future of the autonomous region of Northeast Syria

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Speaker 1: known as Rojava. The Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF, an

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Speaker 1: alliance of a issues who protected the leftist revolution in

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Speaker 1: that area, fought alongside US forces for years. More than

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Speaker 1: eleven thousand of them died in the battle against Isis.

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Speaker 1: But when push came to shove, the American President felt

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Speaker 1: more affinity for his fellow autocrat than he did for

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Speaker 1: the revolutionaries of Rojava, so he abandoned them. I've talked

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Speaker 1: about this issue at length on my podcast Worst Year Ever,

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Speaker 1: and a number of other places. For our purposes today,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to let the words of a much better

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Speaker 1: journalist than me tell the story. Kabat a Boss is

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Speaker 1: a reporter, a documentarian, and a fixer living in Northeast Syria.

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Speaker 1: She's one of the most remarkable people I've ever met.

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Speaker 1: In mid October two thousand nineteen, she wrote an article

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Speaker 1: for The New York Review of Books. This is Ethnic Cleansing,

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Speaker 1: a dispatch from Northern Syria. I very much recommend reading

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Speaker 1: the entire article, which will be linked on our website

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Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com. I'd like to quote from

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Speaker 1: the beginning of the piece. Now, this is Khabbat. When

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Speaker 1: my mom called to ask me where I was, I

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Speaker 1: lied to her. Sometimes I do not want to worry her,

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Speaker 1: as I'm often reporting on stories from play says that

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Speaker 1: aren't safe. When she said get ready to remove, I

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Speaker 1: realized something was wrong. Komischli was under attack. Can't you

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Speaker 1: hear the shelling? She screamed. She lives in Rimmelan, a

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Speaker 1: city an hour away, but she was here to visit

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Speaker 1: my brother. The Turks were targeting my neighborhood, she said.

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Speaker 1: That was Wednesday afternoon, October nine, the first day of

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Speaker 1: Turkey's attack on Rojava Western Kurdistan, as we call it

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Speaker 1: in Kurdish. Commischli, my city, was one of the few

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Speaker 1: places in Northeast Syria that had enjoyed relative peace despite

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Speaker 1: Syria's eight year civil war. In past years, Turkish president

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Speaker 1: Receipt Type Erdowin made constant threats against us, but I

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Speaker 1: never really expected him to make a move. The Americans

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Speaker 1: were here and they promised they would protect us, so

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Speaker 1: Edwin's bluster seemed meaningless. I was wrong. First we experienced

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Speaker 1: clashes with the regime forces of Bishar al Assad. Then

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Speaker 1: it was our turn to face down the fighters of ISIS,

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Speaker 1: the so called Islamic State. After the group rose in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, ISIS detonated bombs and planted suicide

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Speaker 1: attacks in Kamischli and the towns of northeast Syria. For

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Speaker 1: all that, we never had artillery showing before, so when

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Speaker 1: my mother called, I was scared. Everyone was. That day,

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Speaker 1: October nine, I was driving back from Sarah Khanyi, about

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Speaker 1: fifty miles from Commichali, when an air strike targeted a

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Speaker 1: military base a few hundred yards from the scene of

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Speaker 1: a protest that I had been due to report on

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Speaker 1: about a half hour later. In the aftermath of the bombing,

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Speaker 1: we feared we were going to be hit by another

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Speaker 1: wave of Turkish planes. Everyone fled the scene. My colleague Alan,

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Speaker 1: who was an exceptionally good driver got us out of

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Speaker 1: there in seconds. This is Robert again, and just a

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Speaker 1: few months before, Kabat wrote that. In August of two

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Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, journalist j Canrahan and I spent more than

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Speaker 1: a week in Alan's car with Kabat. At that time,

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Speaker 1: Rojava was at peace. We felt safe virtually everywhere. For days.

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Speaker 1: We visited all women farming collectives, local communes, representatives of

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Speaker 1: a justice system that was experimenting with art therapy as

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Speaker 1: a treatment for captured ISIS fighters. The sheer amount of

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Speaker 1: optimism we felt in the air was staggering. It almost

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Speaker 1: tasted Neither Jake nor I wanted to return to Iraq

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Speaker 1: when our visit ended. Today, however, Rojaba is in chaos.

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Speaker 1: Hundreds are dead and an unknown number of ISIS prisoners

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Speaker 1: have gotten free. In the confusion. Two hundred thousand civilians

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Speaker 1: have been made refugees. I asked about how the autonomous

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Speaker 1: Region has handled the flow of so many refugees in

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Speaker 1: the wake of the fighting. Here's how she responded, I

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Speaker 1: went to in the past days to these shelters, and

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Speaker 1: there is uh every time, new numbers increasing very fast,

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Speaker 1: and the humanitian situation get worse and the response is

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Speaker 1: so slow comporting to their needs. In addition, it's it's

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Speaker 1: wars as a results of the Turkish attack on the

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Speaker 1: virtual centers. As the Turkish air strike they hit they

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Speaker 1: unlogged them in Surigny, which is feeding the WATA to

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Speaker 1: a city of Serikani and Hasseta ntil Timer and that

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Speaker 1: result a cut of WATA three days from those cities.

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Speaker 1: And this situation of the population and the IDPs, it's

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Speaker 1: gate wars as a result of that. Also, I met

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Speaker 1: many families and most of them basically from Trilabias Regani

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Speaker 1: and even some of them have been many times displacement

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Speaker 1: as they were from Afrin. I think if the international

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Speaker 1: response is limited, that will gonna lead to a humanitarian crisis.

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Speaker 1: Even I met the head of the West Municipality of

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Speaker 1: the Hassaka, Mohammed Shammy, and he was explaining to us

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Speaker 1: how it's there is a pressure on the city and

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Speaker 1: there is no support. For example, he gave an example

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Speaker 1: about the needs of the bread. He said, we use

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Speaker 1: it to back thirty five tones of the floor daily

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Speaker 1: for Hassaka. Only last days we are baking fifty tons

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Speaker 1: and we cannot cover the needs of the population. So

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Speaker 1: the situation every day, every hour, gate wars and wars,

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Speaker 1: and there is a gap and and all the organizations

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Speaker 1: have to respond to these needs. In the face of

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Speaker 1: ethnic clins in out of sheer desperation, Rojava invited in

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Speaker 1: the Assad regime and the Russian Army. This was not

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Speaker 1: a decision anyone wanted to make. Many people in Rajava

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Speaker 1: had risen up against Assad in the early days of

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Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War. I asked her about how she

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Speaker 1: felt that this development would affect the women's revolution in Rojava.

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Speaker 1: Regime is representing the patriarchy system. On the contrary, Rojava

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Speaker 1: is representing the woman revolution. Women of Rojaba built last

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Speaker 1: eight year specific system for the woman in all levels military,

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Speaker 1: economically and politically, and they made impact in the education

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Speaker 1: via teaching digitology, which is a woman's sense on the

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Speaker 1: mentality of the new generations. In addition, the implementation of

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Speaker 1: the co presidency system and all the institutions starting from

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Speaker 1: coming to the highest official ranks allowed very effective participation

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Speaker 1: of a woman to lead this region beside them and

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Speaker 1: interview with the bidality co presidency of a society. Protection

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Speaker 1: forces in Al Jazeera kanton about this subject, and she said,

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Speaker 1: we know how to protect ourselves now a there are

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Speaker 1: years of experience and we are not afraid of a

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Speaker 1: region coming back. It's obvious that the woman of Rojaba

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Speaker 1: will not lead their gainst easily, but there is a

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Speaker 1: great risk on the woman evolution in case the regime

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Speaker 1: take over Rojava. I do believe that the region will

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Speaker 1: first start get the woman specifically, because this is what

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Speaker 1: makes Rojava unique on a global level. The very last

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Speaker 1: thing I asked her was what if anything people outside

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Speaker 1: Syria could do to support Rojava in its struggle. Here

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Speaker 1: was her answer. I think the people of the outside

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Speaker 1: can help Rojaba, and specifically, all the feminist movements have

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Speaker 1: to rise up for otherwise we as a woman all

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Speaker 1: over the world might face the risk to lose the

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Speaker 1: woman revolution. Any activity to support Rojaba like demonstrations, donation

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Speaker 1: by Code Turkish goods and rise the awareness of the

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Speaker 1: Western community about what is Rojava facing currently. It's a genocide,

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Speaker 1: it's an ethnic glancing, and it's a demograh demographic changing

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Speaker 1: and everyone have to take the responsibilities in order to

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Speaker 1: make some steps and that's what'll going to help Rojaba.

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Speaker 1: For sure. She's calling for solidarity, the same sort of

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Speaker 1: solidarity the protesters in Hong Kong and Catalonia have expressed

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Speaker 1: for one another. Whenever I write or talk about Rojaba,

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Speaker 1: people always ask me where can I send money to help?

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Speaker 1: And you might do some good by donating to the

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Speaker 1: Kurdish Red Crescent. But at the end of the day,

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Speaker 1: the people of Rojava, like the protesters in Hong Kong,

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Speaker 1: won't be helped by any money you could send. What

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Speaker 1: might help them is your solidarity, your willingness to harangue

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Speaker 1: your elected leaders on their behalf, or to get into

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Speaker 1: the streets and protest at the Turkish embassy or the

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Speaker 1: Chinese consulate, or wherever it might get attention. There are

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Speaker 1: protesters in Germany right now who have protested in front

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Speaker 1: of buildings of companies that supply arms to the Turkish nation.

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Speaker 1: The United States supplies plenty of weapons to Turkey. There

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Speaker 1: are places you could gather. Another group of humans who

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Speaker 1: could really use your solidarity. Right now are the people

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Speaker 1: of Santiago, Chile. As I write this, the city has

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Speaker 1: been convulsed by marches and brutal clashes between police and

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Speaker 1: demonstrators for more than a week. If you read most

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Speaker 1: of the news about what is happening, it places the

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Speaker 1: blame on a four percent hike in the cost of

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Speaker 1: public transportation. I was lucky enough to sit down with

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Speaker 1: two activists in Santiago over Skype. Saul is an American

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Speaker 1: living in Santiago over the last eight years with his wife, Stephanie,

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Speaker 1: a native Chilean. They told me to be wary of

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Speaker 1: attributing just one cost to the protests. What initially started

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Speaker 1: this protest was a group, a bunch of students who

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Speaker 1: were evading uh the metro so to protest the rise

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Speaker 1: in the fair which is the second or third time

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Speaker 1: they've raised the metro in the last three years. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so it's the most expensive metro in South America.

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Speaker 1: And and even though for someone from the United States

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Speaker 1: it might seem it's still very cheap, or how are

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Speaker 1: they only protesting over ten more cents or whatever? But um,

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Speaker 1: in Chile, if you make the minimum wage, you could

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Speaker 1: be spending almost of your wage on the metro. It

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Speaker 1: is very expensive here. And uh so what happened is

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Speaker 1: a lot of students were getting together. It's like a

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Speaker 1: big group and so there will be hundreds of them

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Speaker 1: and they would all rush into the metro together and

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Speaker 1: jump over the turnstiles and so the h that's how

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Speaker 1: it all started. And then the police were very heavy

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Speaker 1: handed in their reaction and got very violent, and then

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Speaker 1: it got kind of worse from there, and so the

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Speaker 1: protest exploded into more of a general protest because, um,

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Speaker 1: there's been a lot of problems in Chile and there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of um inequality and a lot of things

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Speaker 1: that have never been fixed since the since the dictatorship,

431
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: so they're still using the same constitution that was written

432
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: by pinol j and um. Yeah, and there's lots of

433
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 1: other things, Yeah, the corruption of Pinera, the current president,

434
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 1: and then a lot of protests over the last couple

435
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 1: of years about the pension plans the AFP. Sault speaks

436
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: fluent English, so he does most of the talking for

437
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 1: the segments of the interview I'm including this episode, but

438
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:34,880
Speaker 1: his wife talked quite a lot too, And I'm going

439
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 1: to include the full audio of this interview when all

440
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: of the other interviews in an episode that will drop tomorrow.

441
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: It's just going to be a straight recording of all

442
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:45,160
Speaker 1: the interviews. There will be a normal episode on Thursday.

443
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 1: You can get back to your regularly scheduled comedy now.

444
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: I've interviewed several other Chilean dissidents over Twitter, and crippling

445
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 1: inequality in that nation is one thing that every single

446
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: one of them has brought up as the real cause

447
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: of these protests. One popular memes sir reculating among activists

448
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: in Santiago is a picture of a glacier with a

449
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:05,800
Speaker 1: tiny peak of ice above the water line and a

450
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,959
Speaker 1: gargantuan mountain of ice underneath it. The images labeled social

451
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: uprising in Chile. The bit above the water is the

452
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:16,200
Speaker 1: forcent metro fare increase, and the bit below the water

453
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 1: line is extremely high. Social inequality, decades of abuse of power.

454
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: Almost everything is privatized, including water, high taxes and low benefits,

455
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,880
Speaker 1: precarious jobs, miserable pensions, politicians, outrageous salaries and benefits, high

456
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: student loan debts, unfair justice system, political police and military corruption,

457
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: predatory lending and banking system, and more. The Organization for

458
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 1: Economic Cooperation and Development the o e c D measures

459
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:45,200
Speaker 1: income equality via something called the Genie coefficient. This ranges

460
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:47,640
Speaker 1: from zero, the minimum which would exist in a perfectly

461
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 1: equal society to one which would presumably be a society

462
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: in which Jeff Bezos owns everything and we have to

463
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: pay rent for access to our own bones. Chile's Genie

464
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: coefficient is among the highest on the planet point five

465
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:02,640
Speaker 1: zero and when to quote now from a write up

466
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: in Borgan magazine. Despite the high tax bracket, a higher

467
00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: proportion of tax tends to be levied on individuals from

468
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 1: poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. This system greatly reduces the disposable incomes

469
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:15,959
Speaker 1: and consumption ability of the common people. As a result,

470
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: the poor in Chile often suffer from malnourishment and hunger

471
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: because they are unable to afford basic necessities. Poor education

472
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: also forms the bedrock of economic inequality in Chile. Thousands

473
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: of young people have recently called for more education, reform

474
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: and peaceful demonstrations. A majority of the population is lacking

475
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: the skills that are essential for attaining good jobs and incomes. Moreover,

476
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 1: this inequality is also prevalent and higher education, as the

477
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 1: poorer unable to pay for college and other institutions of

478
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: higher learning. Additionally, Chile has had to juggle with the

479
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: issue of corruption at the hands of the rich and

480
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: powerful oligarchs in the country. These powerful entities often evade tax. Similarly,

481
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Public Services unit has also been caught

482
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:55,919
Speaker 1: up in various corruption scandals since two thous and two

483
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,680
Speaker 1: due to a lack of resources and misallocation of funds.

484
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 1: So we're seeing in Chile is people at the top

485
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: who have access to basically all of the money, who

486
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,239
Speaker 1: are not taxed nearly enough of their income, and who

487
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 1: are increasingly pushing the burden of funding the government onto

488
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: the people who have almost no money. It's a problem

489
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound familiar to anyone else in the world.

490
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: By the way, the Genie coefficient of the United States

491
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 1: is point four three, just a little bit under point

492
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: five zero. And um, it's really interesting because in Chile

493
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: almost uh ten family are they have control uh for

494
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 1: all the they are they they are they have control

495
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: with the gang. Yeah. So it's it's similar to the

496
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: United States, where there's you know, a couple of hundred

497
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: billionaires that are kind of controlling everything. But in Jilian

498
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: it's literally ten families, and these ten families are are

499
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,440
Speaker 1: very very rich and have a lot of control in

500
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 1: the country. Um. But but yeah, so it's it's about

501
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: a lot of things um the protest now. On October nineteenth,

502
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 1: President Piniera announced that he was reversing the fair increase,

503
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: but this did not assuage protesters. Thousands continue to take

504
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 1: to the streets. Bonfires lit up the Santiago sky, and

505
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: unrest began to spread to other cities in Chile, like Valparaiso.

506
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: Late that night, the government declared martial law. General Javier

507
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: Ettiaga de camp told citizens. We invite all citizens to

508
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 1: return to their homes and to evaluate the measures that

509
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: the government has arranged and cooperate to protect their family,

510
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: their integrity and their own assets. This is the first

511
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: time Chileans have reverted to military rules since the era

512
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: of Dictator Augusto Pinochet from nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety,

513
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, the state's repression of these demonstrators

514
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 1: has been brutal. At least eighteen people have been killed

515
00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: in the protests, and by the time you hear this,

516
00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 1: that number will likely be much higher. I like to

517
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: quote now from an article in the Guardian than interviewed

518
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: one protester. I was coming home and the military patrol

519
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 1: stopped me, said one bruised and blooded man as he

520
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: stumbled home in the early hours of Tuesday morning. They

521
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 1: put me in the truck and bang, bang, bang. They

522
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: smashed me in the head with the butt of a gun.

523
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: I begged them to stop it. They kept on kicking me,

524
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: and they took my friend away. There's video now circulating

525
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: on Twitter if Chilean soldiers detaining a protester and then

526
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: as casually as you or I might swat a mosquito,

527
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 1: shooting him in the leg with an M sixteen. The government,

528
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: for its part, claims all these people are looters or criminals,

529
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 1: general terms the state now applies to anyone it does

530
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: violence against one protester I interviewed on Twitter. Juan told

531
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: me this. Whenever they give a speech mentioning our current situation,

532
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: they talk about the protesters that way, criminals or bad

533
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: elements of society, or similar expressions, giving to understand that

534
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: this is a criminal matter rather than one of policy,

535
00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: which explains the curfew, the soldiers on the streets, and

536
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: so on. And now here's uh Saul and his wife

537
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: Stephanie expressing very similar opinions. The police respond to often

538
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: peaceful protests with with tear guys and um and violence,

539
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: and now of course there's been declared the state of

540
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:20,720
Speaker 1: emergencies and now you have the military in tanks in

541
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 1: the streets too. And why you said that the police

542
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: have gotten more aggressive and more violent this year, Why

543
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:30,479
Speaker 1: would you do you have do? Is there a reason

544
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: behind that? Do you think like, is there some sort

545
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 1: of cause to that that you can see? No, it's

546
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: not any reason. It's only a strategy of the government.

547
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: But it is a bad idea. And in UM, a

548
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, we saw some car of the

549
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: cuffs uh driving in the in the passel really traditionally

550
00:30:53,120 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 1: the center of the city and uh tear gas. Oh yeah, yeah.

551
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: A couple of months ago there was some crazy protests

552
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 1: and the police we were driving through like plaza, their armost,

553
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: like the downtown, like the center of the historic center

554
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: of town, and and and throwing tear guys that people

555
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:19,959
Speaker 1: who aren't even protesting. And um, But to answer your question,

556
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 1: I think that it just has to do with the government,

557
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 1: because um, a couple of years ago the president was Bachelete,

558
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: who is more center left, and so I think the

559
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: police now under Vinera understand that they kind of have

560
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: carte blanche to do whatever they want and that they

561
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: won't be reprimanded for um violence against protesters. And when this,

562
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: when this current wave of like heavy street actions broke out,

563
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: were y'all there for sort of the beginning of that.

564
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: Were you there on sort of the first day that

565
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: this like really kicked off into um, you know, a

566
00:31:57,760 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: citywide sort of thing rather than just kind of a

567
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: fair protest. Yeah, definitely. So we Um we live about

568
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: step six or seven blocks from the Plaza Italia, which

569
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: is the Metro Bacadado, which is like the center of downtown,

570
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 1: and it's the historic place where protests always start and

571
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of in the thick of it.

572
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: And then also we are right by this intersection where

573
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: when the protest really got serious two nights ago, um,

574
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: the there were five buses that were burned right at

575
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: our intersection, so um yeah, it's kind of right outside

576
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: our door. These burned busses have become part of one

577
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 1: of several conspiracy theories that have grown up around the protests.

578
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: Whenever there is mass civil unrest in the country, people

579
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: from one are both sides of the conflict will cook

580
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: up conspiracies, and the world being what it is, some

581
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: of those will be true. Most of the conspiracies in

582
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: Santiago center around the burning of three busses and the

583
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:03,480
Speaker 1: arson attack on the headquarters of an L Chile power

584
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: company who recently hiked their prices. When I first encountered

585
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: video of the n L building burning, it was being

586
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: celebrated by non Chilean leftists as a justified attack on

587
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 1: a corrupt capitalist institution. But every Chilean I've interviewed has

588
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: expressed severe doubts as to whether or not these arson

589
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,760
Speaker 1: attacks were the work of protesters. Yeah, like you know,

590
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: we're not typically uh like conspiracy there as people, but

591
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: as far as like what a lot of people have

592
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: been talking about is with both the n L Electric Company, UM,

593
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: with the fire that happened on their their staircase right there,

594
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 1: fire escape, and there was a number of suspicious things

595
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: about it. You know, it started on the eleventh floor,

596
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 1: so it's like, how could a protester do that? And

597
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:57,600
Speaker 1: I don't know, um, And of course it only burned

598
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: that the fire escape and it didn't touch anything about

599
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: the main building. And there's so there's a lot of

600
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: suspicion here UM of that, and then uh of the

601
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:13,240
Speaker 1: idea that possibly it was the police or the government

602
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: who started that as a way to justify um, bringing

603
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: in the military and all of that and starting the curfew.

604
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: And what's that thing is very similar is uh these

605
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: five buses that were burned outside of our apartment. UM.

606
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: It was very strange because yes, there's there's almost never

607
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: five buses all right next to each other on the

608
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:42,439
Speaker 1: street in the corner and UM. And then there's also

609
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:45,879
Speaker 1: been videos that have been passed around what'sapp and um

610
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:51,240
Speaker 1: social media where you see that these busses were like discontinued,

611
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:54,760
Speaker 1: so they were already like in bad situation, their bad shape.

612
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: And then there's a video that's been passed around of

613
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 1: the police like escorted one of these busses very slowly,

614
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: almost like they're escorting it here so they can burn

615
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,720
Speaker 1: it and again use it as justification, um to ratchet

616
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:13,839
Speaker 1: up the police response. So it's hard to say, and

617
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to be a conspiracy theorist,

618
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: but certainly there's uh, there there's suspicious things happening in

619
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: that regard and on the street here. Almost every chile

620
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: and that we've talked to has has said that they

621
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:31,480
Speaker 1: pretty much believe that it was the police that that

622
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 1: we're doing that. Now, I don't want to act as

623
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: if I have any real understanding of who is correct here.

624
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: It is entirely possible that piste Off protesters committed these

625
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: arson attacks. It's also possible that the state did so

626
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: to justify President Piniera's declaration we are at war and

627
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 1: his assumption of martial law. That's the thing about serious

628
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 1: civil unrest. Once your government starts gunning down people in

629
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: the streets, all kinds of conspiracy theories suddenly become plausible.

630
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:00,359
Speaker 1: Another local Chilean activists I found on Twitter goes by

631
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: the name Antifa al Farrado sent me a translation of

632
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: an anti protest meme that blames all the unrest on

633
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: Venezuelan President Madeiro and essentially frames the uprising in Chile

634
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: as a communist conspiracy. It's basically framed as a flow

635
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: chart that starts with financing politicians and parties close to

636
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 1: our ideologies, networking and universities and NGOs degrading the meaning

637
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:26,759
Speaker 1: of social values, indoctrinate young people in liberal ideas. Constitutional accusation.

638
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: It's Chili's term for impeachment uh and and so on

639
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:31,879
Speaker 1: and so forth. So it's basically like a little flow

640
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: chart showing that everything happening in Chile right now is

641
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: a part of this communist conspiracy cooked up by Madeiro

642
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 1: and the bowlev Orens, which is kind of one of

643
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 1: the names for the communist revolution in that country. And

644
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: I've seen zero evidence that this is actually true, and

645
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: I share it mainly to make the point of how

646
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: confusing these situations can get, particularly to an audience of

647
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: foreigners who are unlikely to understand the nuances of the

648
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: politics in the region. Most Chileans and Santiago are unlikely

649
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 1: to be convinced of this last conspiracy theory unless they

650
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 1: already believe in some sort of all encompassing communist plot

651
00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: to destroy their nation. But conspiracies like this can play

652
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: a role in cutting off international solidarity with activists. More

653
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 1: conservative members of foreign nations might see something like this

654
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:17,439
Speaker 1: and become convinced that the government of Chile is only

655
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,480
Speaker 1: trying to defend themselves from an insidious Venezuelan plot. The

656
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: same behavior occurs on the left. By the way, you

657
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: do not have to look for to find people on

658
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: Twitter condemning the Hong Kong protests as Western BacT and

659
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: part of a capitalist conspiracy against the Communist government of China.

660
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:35,759
Speaker 1: In my opinion, all conspiracies like this are a way

661
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: to distract and detract sympathy from real human beings fighting

662
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: for their lives. I have my own political beliefs, but

663
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:44,439
Speaker 1: whenever I see people facing rubber bullets and tear gas

664
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,240
Speaker 1: grenades and extra judicial murder at the hands of the state,

665
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 1: I'm always going to side with those people over their government,

666
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: no matter where that government lands on the political spectrum.

667
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: On the day before I wrote this episode, Friday, the

668
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,800
Speaker 1: twenty six of October, more than one point two million

669
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:02,879
Speaker 1: people took to the streets of Santiago to protest. That

670
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: should be all the evidence you need that this is

671
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: not just some conspiracy and is in fact the result

672
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: of very real, very honest anger. Some Chileans continue to

673
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:14,800
Speaker 1: take to the streets at night in violation of the curfew. Others,

674
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 1: not willing to risk it, stay at home but contribute

675
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: to the protest by banging on pots and pans to

676
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: make noise and, in Juan's words, signaling their discontent. The

677
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: early stages of the protests in Santiago were pure expressions

678
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: of local fury based more on emotion than calculation. But

679
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:33,799
Speaker 1: as the days have worn on, Chilean activists have found

680
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: themselves looking out towards Hong Kong for inspiration. When I

681
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 1: first interviewed Juan on Sunday the twenty, he told me

682
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 1: there isn't a greater level of organizing or planning. It's

683
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: not like the Hong Kong protests, for example. I guess

684
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: we're not very sophisticated protesters, and then he sent me

685
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: up smiley faced with sticking its tongue out. But a

686
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: few days later on I ran across a video on Twitter.

687
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 1: It shows hundreds of protesters in the streets of Santiago.

688
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: A police tear gas grenade comes sailing over the crowd

689
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: and lands in the middle of it. A dozen or

690
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: so men and women quickly surround the grenade, dumped into

691
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: a plastic bag, and douse it with water. Linked in

692
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: the video was a tweet from a Hong Kong activists

693
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 1: from four days earlier explaining this exact method for dealing

694
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 1: with tear gas. The only recent protests to eclipse the

695
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:19,879
Speaker 1: uprising in Chile in terms of scale are the ones

696
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: currently happening in Lebanon on the twenty October, more than

697
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: one point two million people marched against their government nationwide,

698
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: and on the nineteenth more than a million people assembled

699
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 1: in Beirut alone. Now, the Lebanese nation only has a

700
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 1: population of four or five million, which makes these protests

701
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: the proportional equivalent of some eighty million Americans taking to

702
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: the streets two days in a row. And if you

703
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,839
Speaker 1: follow mainstream Western news sources reporting on the unrest, they'll

704
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,239
Speaker 1: generally blame it all on What's App. On October twenty,

705
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,720
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, Public Radio International published an article titled

706
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: how Lebanon's What's app tacks unleashed a flood of anger.

707
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: But as with the public transit tacks in Chile, the

708
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: events being looked at as causes of this unrest just

709
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: the straws that broke the camels back. In fairness to

710
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,440
Speaker 1: p r I, the actual article does go into this

711
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: in a little bit of detail, but we all know

712
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: that in the social media era, most people barely read

713
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: past the headlines. So I sat down with joey Ayoub,

714
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: a Lebanese writer and Middle East North Africa editor for

715
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 1: if X and Global Voices. He's been present for many

716
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 1: of the marches in Lebanon, and he pointed out that

717
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:23,360
Speaker 1: a lot of the recent unrest in his country was

718
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 1: actually kicked off by a series of brutal wildfires and

719
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:30,319
Speaker 1: an incompetent government reaction to the crisis. Lebanon actually had

720
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 1: horrible wild fires back in two thousand eight, which inspired

721
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: a group of citizens to raise money to buy a

722
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: small fleet of firefighting helicopters to protect the country in

723
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:42,800
Speaker 1: the future. Now, these helicopters were very successful in putting

724
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 1: out wildfires for a couple of years, but due to

725
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,320
Speaker 1: outrageous corruption, money to repair those helicopters was funneled away

726
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 1: towards god knows what and who, and my two twelve

727
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 1: the fleet was no longer operational. Here's Joey the wildfires.

728
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: That was last Monday, So that's fourteen the night of

729
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: the fourth into the fifteenth, and classed about forty eight

730
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: hours and it was Yeah, and those for the that

731
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: was well lost basically years worth of teas lost. Usually,

732
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: so I think there was something I came against teas

733
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: that's horrible. That's usually an average. Yeah. Uh So that

734
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:26,760
Speaker 1: obviously pasted a lot of people off because the government

735
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: was utterly incapable on reading whatever wants to deal with it.

736
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: You had pretty much we haven't had several servants paid

737
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: in like twenty years of these old volunteer forces, and

738
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,080
Speaker 1: you had you even had like this about defense forces

739
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 1: from the Palestinian camps that stepped up that helped, and

740
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: you had basically volunteers just doing it themselves. There wasn't

741
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: really anything until two things happened that put them off.

742
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 1: One is Greece cyclists in Jordan basically sent some you know,

743
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: helicopters and whatever. And the other thing is we got

744
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: lucky because it started gaining the day after. Yeah, so

745
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:06,200
Speaker 1: that's pretty much why, like we the damage was more

746
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: or less limited, if you want. And so the fact

747
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: that after all of this, just like a day later

748
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 1: or something, the first thing the government can think of

749
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: doing is to impose it acts on what'sapp, which is

750
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,360
Speaker 1: obviously free service that people use because actual phone services

751
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: are extremely expensive. And Lebanon that was kind of you know,

752
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:25,800
Speaker 1: as everyone has been saying that, you know, that whole

753
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: sort of poly comes back then and then you had

754
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: protests on that like that Thursday evening, so that's basically

755
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: weak now. And in that protest you had lots of

756
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,800
Speaker 1: good blogs. You had basically some of the usual protests

757
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 1: that we have been seeing before. And during that protest,

758
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: one of this if you want symbols, that became this Uh.

759
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 1: I don't know the point of unity, I guess is

760
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,919
Speaker 1: there was the bodyguard of one one politician took out

761
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: his gun, started scaring people. People were not scared, they

762
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,320
Speaker 1: were actually fighting act. And then he had this woman

763
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,840
Speaker 1: who kicked him. Uh. And that became this sort of

764
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: meme and it became super popular and that kind of

765
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 1: galvanized everything. And then after that it became sort of

766
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: like a daily story. More people come down, there's a

767
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: bit of a passion than the next day, even more

768
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,360
Speaker 1: people come down, a familiar story if you if you

769
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,839
Speaker 1: see what I'm going with this, and now how it's

770
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: day in number eight and people are sitting in the

771
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: steats and it's way more than justin by roots. The

772
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 1: protests in Beirut started off with the air of almost

773
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,120
Speaker 1: a carnival or perhaps a dance club, and there was

774
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 1: in fact DJs and dancing, but there was also a

775
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: powerful sense of solidarity that grew between people day after

776
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 1: day and built upon itself. The only reason these protests

777
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: have not been crushed by the government. Is that activists

778
00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:47,839
Speaker 1: were able to mobilize enough people from a wide enough

779
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: s wife of society that mass brutality simply was not

780
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: an option. Seventy two hours into the campaign, Prime Ministers

781
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 1: Sadhariri announced a new economic package, halving the salaries of

782
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,279
Speaker 1: public officials, read amping the electricity sector, and eliminating a

783
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:04,959
Speaker 1: bunch of do nothing government jobs that existed to suck

784
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: money away from the poor and squired into the hands

785
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 1: of rich connected people's children. This was rightly celebrated as

786
00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:14,760
Speaker 1: a victory by many activists. Although the protests are ongoing

787
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: and most Lebanese believe there is much more to be done,

788
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: the success they've seen already is proof of how much

789
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: can be accomplished and how quickly it can be accomplished

790
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: when enough of the nation gets on the same page.

791
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: Now that may seem impossible and a nation is divided

792
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:31,280
Speaker 1: as the United States, but prior to these protests, Lebanon's

793
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:35,359
Speaker 1: division seemed unbridgeable to you know. Two days ago was

794
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: the thirtieth anniversary or commemoration whatever off the TOEF Agreement,

795
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: the agreement that was signed in that ended the Libanese

796
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: Civil War, and they signed it in the city off

797
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: in Saudiahevia, and that system sort of codified sectarianism even

798
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: more than it was before the war. It did a

799
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:57,279
Speaker 1: number of things I won't get into now it's not

800
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: that relevant, but what it did really is make it

801
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: almost basically impossible for anyone to identify, for like, in

802
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: any other way other than with your sect. So the

803
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: fact that I am from a certain sect, it doesn't

804
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 1: matter if I am a believer or not, or in

805
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: atheists or not, None of these things matter. What matters

806
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: is that this, this is your sect, and so you

807
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: vote according to that, and you vote according to sect

808
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 1: and according to where your family is supposedly originally from.

809
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:31,319
Speaker 1: So for example, I can vote in a Shefie, but

810
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 1: I don't live in a shefe I live in a

811
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:36,959
Speaker 1: different part of Lebanon. And that's part of the reason

812
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:40,840
Speaker 1: why it's been so difficult to really organize, because, for example,

813
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 1: when there was the municipal elections in thousands sixteen, uh

814
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 1: something like a quarter of story, like, there's four times

815
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:51,280
Speaker 1: more people who actually live in baby boots than people

816
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: who are adjusted to to vote in bay boots. So

817
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 1: you have many of my friends who live and I

818
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: don't live in Baywood, but they live in they live

819
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,720
Speaker 1: in baby Boots, and so they were helping organized people

820
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: who are officially registered and maybe including people who don't

821
00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 1: live there to vote there. So that's kind of just

822
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: like a small example of why it's been so difficult

823
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: on all levels to really organize for an alternative to

824
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: disc thanks with them that we have now. And yet

825
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: with no centralized structure, with no hierarchy of leadership, the

826
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: people of Lebanon have been able to at least somewhat

827
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: transcend the divisions built into their society to stand up

828
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: and force basic change. The exact nature of the problems

829
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,280
Speaker 1: that must be confronted will differ from country to country

830
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: with every protest, but as we see when we observe

831
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 1: all of these movements side by side, the basic script

832
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: for effective change is always the same. Pick a few

833
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:46,239
Speaker 1: concrete things that everyone agrees need to be changed, get

834
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:48,760
Speaker 1: enough people out into the street and disrupt the normal

835
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 1: flow of life, and make the nation effectively ungovernable and

836
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: unprofitable until you get what you need now. The fact

837
00:46:57,560 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 1: that this is all relatively simple does not make it

838
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 1: easy zy nor does it mean that every uprising like

839
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 1: this is guaranteed to meet with success. Quite the opposite, really,

840
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: And this rather tragically brings me to Egypt. Ab del

841
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 1: Fata Alcisi came to power in two thousand thirteen via

842
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: a super fun military coup. Since his predecessors have been

843
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:26,000
Speaker 1: famously swept out of power by popular unrest and mass demonstrations,

844
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:28,600
Speaker 1: he spent much of his time in power making such

845
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:31,879
Speaker 1: things impossible in the future. CC knows something that only

846
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: the very smartest dictators learned. You cannot let protests start

847
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: because once they start, they can grow exponentially, like things

848
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: did in Lebanon, and then there are too many people

849
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: out in the street to shoot, and then you have

850
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: to make concessions, and then you fall. In late September

851
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: two nineteen, an exiled former military contractor named Muhammad Ali

852
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: started posting a series of videos documenting massive corruption within

853
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:00,440
Speaker 1: the Egyptian military. He called for a million people to

854
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: march in the streets. This was, of course, just a spark.

855
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: More than one third of Egyptians live in poverty. Most

856
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:08,240
Speaker 1: of the people who did take to the streets cited

857
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: economic grievances as the reason they stood up but sadly

858
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 1: they did not stand for long because CC's military was

859
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 1: there to crush their will. And I'm going to quote

860
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: from the Guardian. Now more people have been arrested since

861
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 1: rare protests broke out last weekend, and on Thursday, the

862
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: Ministry of the Interior affirmed that it will confront any

863
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: attempt to destabilize the country with decisiveness. According to local media,

864
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: central Cairo was heavily guarded as riot police, fans of

865
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: security officials, and plain closed police spread out among the

866
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: network of streets surrounding Tafrir Square, the epicenter of egypt

867
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven revolution. The figures for the arrests were

868
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 1: compiled by the Cairo based GEO, the Egyptian Center for

869
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:49,479
Speaker 1: Economic and Social Rights. Bystanders and others who had little

870
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 1: to do with the protests were reportedly detained along with

871
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: the demonstrators, and those arrested being held across the country. Now.

872
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:58,879
Speaker 1: When people did try to march in Egypt, police met

873
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: them with tear gas, with ubber bullets, with real bullets,

874
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 1: and with brutal clubbings. They also blocked off access to

875
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: much of the Internet, restricting Twitter, Facebook, Messenger. In Skype,

876
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: as well as a number of international news sites, in

877
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:13,240
Speaker 1: order to make it impossible for Egyptian activists to coordinate

878
00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 1: with one another or to share their stories with the

879
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: rest of the world. All of this worked, the protests

880
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 1: in Cairo fizzled out. Cecy's reign is for now seemingly secure.

881
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 1: Sixty thousand political prisoners still languish in Egyptian jails, and

882
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: authoritarians around the world viewed this development with as much

883
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: optimism as I have for the protests in Lebanon. Just

884
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 1: days later, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised the dictator

885
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: for a positive progress and with the relationship between the

886
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:45,400
Speaker 1: two nations. U S President Donald Trump called CC his

887
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: favorite dictator and said of the suppressed protests in Cairo,

888
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:54,720
Speaker 1: everybody has demonstrations now. The Guardians spoke with several Egyptians

889
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: about their reasons for protesting and for not protesting, sayed

890
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 1: a thirty four year old fest employee gave a response

891
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 1: that I think embodies exactly how dictators want their people

892
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: to feel. Quote I never went to a protest and

893
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: I never will go. There is a lot of things

894
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 1: wrong in the country. Some people are literally eating from

895
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: the garbage, but protesting and riots will make things worse.

896
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 1: God knows. I agree with what they say, but I'm

897
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: alone and I have no one to defend me, so

898
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:24,960
Speaker 1: I can only focus on putting bread on the table now.

899
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 1: The good news is that unspeakable brutality does not always

900
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: halt people from standing up. Sometimes things can get so

901
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: bad that no amount of bullets and battery will dissuade

902
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:36,759
Speaker 1: a population. And this is what we are seeing right

903
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: now in the nation of Iraq. The basic story there

904
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: is the same one we've dealt with this whole episode.

905
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: The government in Baghdad is corrupted and incompetent. It squeezes

906
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: the average people of the nation dry while offering them

907
00:50:48,200 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: piss poor public services and little hope of a better future.

908
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: The people there got angry, and so they started protesting.

909
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 1: The police and security forces responded with almost unbelievable bloodshed,

910
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,439
Speaker 1: killing multiple men by firing tear gas canisters directly into

911
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: their skulls. I've seen some utterly unspeakable X ray images

912
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,239
Speaker 1: of the corpses of these protesters, skull shattered and deformed

913
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: by massive metal cylinders of poison. It's it's beyond comprehension

914
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: in some ways. More than a hundred people have been

915
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,320
Speaker 1: murdered so far, and as I write this, the protests

916
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: are still ongoing. It is possible that the violent sweeping

917
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 1: Iraq right now will degenerate into a vicious conflict, not

918
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 1: unlike the Syrian Civil War. I hope things will go better.

919
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,720
Speaker 1: The people of Iraq deserve a break, and more than anything,

920
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: they deserve your attention and your solidarity. They are a

921
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: part of this great global uprising, and their future freedom

922
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: is tied directly to yours. In two thousand eleven, as

923
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,720
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring reached Syria and protests turned to gun battles,

924
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:51,239
Speaker 1: the world and the United States largely turned away. There

925
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:53,399
Speaker 1: is an excellent New York Times column which I would

926
00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: advise you all to read. It always comes back to

927
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 1: Syria by Ranya Abuzed. I'm going to quote from that now.

928
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,839
Speaker 1: The Syrian War enabled a resurgent Russia to expand its

929
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 1: influence in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Cutter imported

930
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 1: their feud into Syria, backing different rebel groups and fomenting

931
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: rivalries that in part helped splinter the armed opposition Iran

932
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah supported the government of Bisharh

933
00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: al Assad Hesbala's domestic Lebanese opponents supported the rebels. At

934
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: one point in Lebanon, every fourth person was a Syrian refugee. Jordan,

935
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: too has borne the brunt of the refugee crisis. Turkey,

936
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: the conduit for foreign fighters and munitions into rebel ranks,

937
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: absorbed three point six million Syrian refugees and hosts the

938
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: world's largest refugee population. All of Europe, by comparison, is

939
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:41,520
Speaker 1: home to about one million Syrian refugees, on influx that

940
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: has nonetheless upended Europe's politics. And then there was the

941
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: rise of the Islamic State and Al Qaida's use of

942
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 1: the Syrian conflict to rejuvenate its ranks and recruit men

943
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: and money. Both groups exported horror well beyond Syria's borders.

944
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,200
Speaker 1: The flood of refugees from Syria and the rise of

945
00:52:57,200 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: Isis are intimately tied with the fact that Donald tr

946
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 1: Rump is the president in our very own nation, and

947
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: with the fact that Nazis now march in Germany again,

948
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: and with the fact that the city of Portland, Oregon,

949
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: has become an irregular battlefield for fascists and anti fascists.

950
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:14,280
Speaker 1: None of the terrible things happening in our world occur

951
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. It is something of a cliche right

952
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:20,760
Speaker 1: now on social media to refer to the terrible news

953
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:23,680
Speaker 1: that so dominates our daily lives as evidence that we

954
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 1: live in the darkest timeline. Much of the reason things

955
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: are so very grim right now is the complete failure

956
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 1: of liberal democracies around the world to respond effectively to

957
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War. Many people thought that since the

958
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 1: country was, in Donald Trump's words, seven thousand miles away

959
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:43,840
Speaker 1: from them, what happened there was not their business. But

960
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:47,320
Speaker 1: it was. And what is happening in Iraq, in Lebanon,

961
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 1: in Chile and Hong Kong, and in many other nations

962
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 1: around the world is all of our business. I didn't

963
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 1: even cover the protests in Ecuador and Indonesia and Russia.

964
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: The world is a fire with rage right now. Those

965
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:01,799
Speaker 1: of us who live the islands of stability can turn

966
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 1: our heads away and focus on our own personal problems,

967
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: as say it in Egypt, focuses on putting bread on

968
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: the table. But if we do that, the hope for

969
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 1: a better world is truly lost. For all of us.

970
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: And that's that's the episode. That's what I got for

971
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 1: you now. Uh. You can find us online behind the

972
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter and

973
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: Instagram and at Bastard's Pod. You can buy t shirts

974
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: on te Public. But really, um, what you ought to

975
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 1: do is find a way to get involved. To find

976
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:36,320
Speaker 1: something that you can do, even if you just started

977
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 1: by putting in an hour in a week to some

978
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 1: sort of activism, something near you or far from you. Um,

979
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: just don't let this moment in history pass you by.

980
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: There's people out there fighting who need your solidarity. There's

981
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: things near you that need to be fought for. Go

982
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:54,400
Speaker 1: do it.