Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, famed smart Guy and inspiration for Bernie Sanders's
Speaker 1: hair do, once famously stated, I know not with what
Speaker 1: weapons world War three will be fought, but World War
Speaker 1: four will be fought with sticks and stones. The implication
Speaker 1: of his words is quite obvious. By the Cold War era,
Speaker 1: the weapons available to nation states had grown so powerful
Speaker 1: that if they went to war with one another again
Speaker 1: on a mass scale, civilization as we know it would
Speaker 1: be annihilated. But what if Albert was wrong? Brilliant as
Speaker 1: he was, mister Einstein was trapped as we all are
Speaker 1: in the time he lived. The towering armed giants of
Speaker 1: his era where the United States and the U. S
Speaker 1: s are, and it was only rational to fear them
Speaker 1: unleashing hell upon each other and the world. But we
Speaker 1: live in different times now. Today Russia and the United
Speaker 1: States still pack potent nuclear arsenals. But the great global
Speaker 1: conflict that increasingly sweeps our world is not a battle
Speaker 1: between nations. It is a clash between people who want
Speaker 1: to be free and the authoritarians who want to squeeze
Speaker 1: them dry. You've seen some of this in the news.
Speaker 1: In the last few weeks. More than a million people
Speaker 1: have taken to the streets of Lebanon demanding the resignation
Speaker 1: of their government. Protesters in Hong Kong have continued their
Speaker 1: months long battle against the state. Catalonians have taken to
Speaker 1: the street and their fight for independence from Spain. Revolutionaries
Speaker 1: in Rajapa fight with machine guns and wire guided missiles
Speaker 1: against the overwhelming firepower of Turkey and NATO nation. Right now,
Speaker 1: as I type this, uprisings have lit up the skies
Speaker 1: and capital cities around the world from east to west.
Speaker 1: Each of these movements has its own reason for taking
Speaker 1: to the street, but I think most of these activists
Speaker 1: would agree with the sentiment I saw expressed on a
Speaker 1: poster board in Santiago, Chile. We're not from the left,
Speaker 1: and we're not from the right. We're from the bottom
Speaker 1: and we are coming for those on top. This will
Speaker 1: be a different episode of Behind the Bastards than you
Speaker 1: normally get. This is traditionally a show that tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Uh And most days I weave a
Speaker 1: tale of entertaining bastardry to a comedian guest whose rideshotgun. Today,
Speaker 1: my only guests are activists and journalists from around the
Speaker 1: world Chile, Lebanon, Rojava. I decided this rather unorthodox episode
Speaker 1: was necessary because I truly believe that the future freedom
Speaker 1: of everyone listening to this depends on what we all
Speaker 1: do over the next year and change. The current uprisings
Speaker 1: around the globe are but a prelude. There will be more.
Speaker 1: The world is burning and it will not stop anytime soon.
Speaker 1: So let's begin. We can probably trace this current set
Speaker 1: of revolts to the protests in Hong Kong, which started
Speaker 1: on March thirty one, two thousand nineteen. Now, the spark
Speaker 1: that started those protests was a proposed new bill which
Speaker 1: would have allowed individuals to be extradited to China for
Speaker 1: a variety of crimes. Since Great Britain gave the island
Speaker 1: back to China in nine Hong Kong has been governed
Speaker 1: by an agreement generally summarized stas one country, two systems.
Speaker 1: People in Hong Kong enjoy more personal freedoms than the
Speaker 1: citizens of mainland China. They are in effect a semi
Speaker 1: autonomous zone, not completely unlike the Curtish cities of Northern Iraq,
Speaker 1: but pro China. Elements within the government of Hong Kong
Speaker 1: sought greater integration with China, which meant throwing many of
Speaker 1: the more subversive elements of their society under the bus.
Speaker 1: The people of Hong Kong did not want to see
Speaker 1: their friends and relatives sent off to mainland China to
Speaker 1: be beaten and tortured for their political beliefs, so they
Speaker 1: took to the streets. When the protests started seven months ago,
Speaker 1: most observers doubted that they would last more than a
Speaker 1: few weeks. But the people of Hong Kong shocked and
Speaker 1: continue to shock the world with an array of innovative
Speaker 1: tactics for battling state power. They placed traffic cones over
Speaker 1: tear gas grenades and pour in water to disarm them.
Speaker 1: They deploy phayleanxes of protesters armed with umbrellas to counter
Speaker 1: police projectiles. And they organized demonstrations that flow like water
Speaker 1: around the forces of the state and against all odds.
Speaker 1: These tack picks have worked. The activists of Hong Kong
Speaker 1: are still holding out. In fact, their movement has evolved
Speaker 1: from just a protest against a single law to a
Speaker 1: series of five demands from the government. They want the
Speaker 1: state to officially retract the description of their protests as
Speaker 1: a riot. They want their jailed fellow activists freed and
Speaker 1: the charges against them dropped. They want an investigation into
Speaker 1: police brutality, and they want universal suffrage, a chance to
Speaker 1: vote for their leaders without the involvement of the government
Speaker 1: in Beijing. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lamb,
Speaker 1: has ceded to only a few of the protesters demands,
Speaker 1: retracting the extradition law, but holding fast against the others.
Speaker 1: The Chinese government has moved twelve thousand troops onto the island,
Speaker 1: and thousands more await in the wings. Week after week,
Speaker 1: the clashes have continued. In the last month or so,
Speaker 1: a sixth demand has developed amongst the activists, the police force,
Speaker 1: they say, must now be entirely disbanded. On September thirty,
Speaker 1: Carry Lamb took to the last bastion of all would
Speaker 1: be tyrants, ACE book Live. She did a carefully curated
Speaker 1: Q and A session where she defended the police of
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, who have been videotaped firing concussion rounds at
Speaker 1: journalists and shooting activists. She called the demand for the
Speaker 1: police to be disbanded puzzling. Quote, I'm puzzled when I
Speaker 1: hear this, because when there are public order and safety
Speaker 1: issues such as theft or unfortunate attacks, people say they
Speaker 1: must ask police to follow up seriously. So police are
Speaker 1: playing a very important role and we must support them
Speaker 1: in law enforcement. And yet the people of Hong Kong
Speaker 1: continue to turn out in their millions, and now that
Speaker 1: they have seen the police as an instrument of violent
Speaker 1: repression on a mass scale, they are unlikely to go
Speaker 1: back to the way things were not without being forced
Speaker 1: to do so by even greater violence. And so the
Speaker 1: protests continue. The whole situation hanging upon the edge of
Speaker 1: a razor blade. It is impossible to know how things
Speaker 1: will end, but the powerful images coming out of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong have inspired other acts of resistance around the world.
Speaker 1: It would be too much to call the protests on
Speaker 1: that island the spark that set our current fires of revolution,
Speaker 1: but they certainly provided fuel, just as the people of Catalonia. Now,
Speaker 1: Catalonia is one of the wealthiest and most productive regions
Speaker 1: of Spain. The Catalonian people have their own language and
Speaker 1: identity that goes back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: Barcelona is generally seen as the political and cultural capital
Speaker 1: of that region. Starting in the early nineteen hundreds, Catalonia
Speaker 1: became the center of socialist and anarchist politics in Spain.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen twenties, an alliance of affinity groups,
Speaker 1: which are collections of individuals with shared interests, coalesced into
Speaker 1: a resistance against the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.
Speaker 1: A number of different uprisings followed for the next decade,
Speaker 1: several of which were brutally suppressed by Fascist general Francisco Franco.
Speaker 1: This all culminated in the Spanish Coup of nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: which was pulled off by an alliance of anarchists and socialists.
Speaker 1: For a while, these leftists held off the advancing forces
Speaker 1: of Spanish fascism, but Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy backed
Speaker 1: Francisco frank Those regime and the so called democracies of
Speaker 1: the world let the resistance in Spain die. Catalonia was
Speaker 1: crushed under the fascist boot heel. In time, Spanish fascism
Speaker 1: died a natural death, and the nation today functions about
Speaker 1: as well as any other liberal democracy, which is to
Speaker 1: say that roughly half of the people there hate their
Speaker 1: government at any given time. Since nineteen seventy eight, the region,
Speaker 1: like Hong Kong, has had limited autonomy from the central government.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, Catalonia one even greater independence
Speaker 1: and was described as a nation in a new statute.
Speaker 1: But then came the two thousand eight financial crash and
Speaker 1: bitter austerity measures introduced by the government to cut public spending.
Speaker 1: Catalonia represents sixteen percent of Spain's population but contributes about
Speaker 1: nineteen percent of its tax revenue. Many within the region
Speaker 1: resent paying so much into a government that continually cuts
Speaker 1: their benefits. That resentment was further stoked in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: when Spain's Constitutional Court reversed the statute that gave Catalonia
Speaker 1: greater autonomy. Set artists held a symbolic referendum on November
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, which was outlawed by Spain. The vote
Speaker 1: showed substantial support for independence, and in the two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen regional election, separatists one big. This led rather inevitably
Speaker 1: to a full referendum on independence on October first, two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen. The Spanish Constitutional Court declared this illegal, but
Speaker 1: the referendum went forward and ninety of voters supported independence. Now,
Speaker 1: only forty three percent of the region actually voted, due
Speaker 1: in large part to a trade union boycott, and other
Speaker 1: polls show that the Catalonian people are fairly deeply divided
Speaker 1: about independence, But the Spanish government came in and cracked
Speaker 1: down on the separatists brutally. Madrid dissolved the elected Parliament
Speaker 1: of Catalonia and arrested nine of the most prominent secessionists
Speaker 1: and brought them to trial on Monday, October fourteenth, two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen. All nine were convicted and sentenced two years
Speaker 1: in jail. This sparked a new and much more extensive
Speaker 1: series of protests against the government, as even people who'd
Speaker 1: been on the fence about secession we acted to the
Speaker 1: violence of the state. The latest series of Catalonian uprisings
Speaker 1: have been deeply inspired by the protests in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: The primary organizing principle of the Hong Kong protesters, b water,
Speaker 1: seems to be particularly impactful on Catalonians. The basic idea
Speaker 1: of this b water principle is that protests should be formless, shapeless, leaderless,
Speaker 1: and nimble in order to counter the clinched fist of
Speaker 1: state power. Catalonians took this idea and ran with it,
Speaker 1: modifying it into their own revolutionary axiom, be a tsunami.
Speaker 1: They formed a group called Tsunami Democratic in September, which
Speaker 1: suggested mass civil disobedience in order to defend the autonomy
Speaker 1: of Catalonia. Once their leaders were sentenced, protests broke out
Speaker 1: across the region, blocking traffic and assembling in multiple public
Speaker 1: spaces to march on Barcelona's airport. As they marched, many
Speaker 1: of these activists chanted, we are going to do a
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. I'm going to quote now from an article
Speaker 1: in Courts by Mary Hui, who has extensively covered the
Speaker 1: uprising in Hong Kong and is covering the uprisings in Catalonia.
Speaker 1: Quote at Barcelona Airport on Monday, Striking the similar scenes
Speaker 1: played out as thousands occupied both the terminal and the
Speaker 1: roads outside the building, eventually forcing the cancelation of at
Speaker 1: least one hundred flights. Tsunami Democratic even distributed some one
Speaker 1: hundred thirty boarding passes via the messaging app Telegram so
Speaker 1: that protesters could enter the airport, and a move reminiscent
Speaker 1: of some Hong Kong protesters who purchased cheap flights in
Speaker 1: order to enter the airport in circumvent a court ban
Speaker 1: on demonstrations in the building. In late September, the Grassroots
Speaker 1: Group Assembly in Nasional, Catalania even held a public forum
Speaker 1: titled Experiences of the use of New Technologies and the
Speaker 1: non violent Struggle the Case of Hong Kong. Quote quote
Speaker 1: with un a quote. I should say we've been inspired
Speaker 1: a lot by the Hong Kong protests, although we are
Speaker 1: aware of the differences between both societies. A representative of
Speaker 1: picnic x republica digital platform designed to mobilize Catalans for
Speaker 1: political action, told courts the Hong Kong people have done
Speaker 1: a very good job in letting every buddy else know
Speaker 1: about their fight through social networks. These are the first
Speaker 1: lessons we have learned from them, the use of these
Speaker 1: tools to mobilize the people and keep them informed. The
Speaker 1: protesters in Barcelona did not just content themselves with chanting.
Speaker 1: They lit garbage cans on fire. They damage street signs
Speaker 1: and traffic lights, and did an estimate at one point
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars in damage to the city. This sort
Speaker 1: of activism, the kind that ends with broken windows and
Speaker 1: serious financial damage to the state is deeply frowned upon
Speaker 1: by many Americans, even by many American liberals. A lot
Speaker 1: of you probably feel uncomfortable with the idea, even if
Speaker 1: you generally support protests. I'd ask you to think about
Speaker 1: why that is, and to ask yourself if the state
Speaker 1: truly understands any language but the language of damage done
Speaker 1: to its bottom line. The protests in Hong Kong have
Speaker 1: done even more financial damage. The stock market alone is
Speaker 1: down five hundred billion dollars since the beginning of the
Speaker 1: protests in March, and that doesn't include the financial cost
Speaker 1: incurred by a blockaded airport, by roads and streets cut
Speaker 1: off to traffic. A protest that doesn't cost the government
Speaker 1: anything more than the manpower of its police is not
Speaker 1: much of a protest at all. Jordy Barbata, a journalist
Speaker 1: and political writer in Barcelona, said that the protesters in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong have provided a global dimension to a local
Speaker 1: conflict by attracting mass international sympathy. This sympathy might be
Speaker 1: the only thing holding the Chinese military back from more
Speaker 1: aggressive intervention. Jordy recognized that now and in the future,
Speaker 1: activists around the world could only hope to succeed in
Speaker 1: their struggles against oppressive states by generating mass awareness and
Speaker 1: international solidarity. To that end, protesters in Barcelona massed in
Speaker 1: front of the Chinese consulate and a show of solidarity
Speaker 1: with Hong Kong. Prominent Hong Kong protester Joshua Wong told
Speaker 1: Catalan News that he was worried about the excessive use
Speaker 1: of force by Spanish police. He stated, people in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong and Catalonia both deserve their right to determine their
Speaker 1: own destiny. Simultaneous rallies were held in Catalonia and Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: but as these activists express solidarity with one another, the
Speaker 1: government's oppressing them did the same thing. The twelfth of
Speaker 1: October brought this headline from the South China Morning Post,
Speaker 1: China offers support to Spanish government amid Catalonia crisis. China's
Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said quote, the Government of the People's
Speaker 1: Republic understands that supports the Spanish government's efforts to protect
Speaker 1: national unity and its territorial integrity. Being result of the
Speaker 1: struggle for Catalonian independence, like the protests in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: is still very much up in the air, but both
Speaker 1: struggles offer important truths for the rest of us, including
Speaker 1: my fellow Americans. Dictators and authoritarian powers around the world.
Speaker 1: Whatever ideology they claim to hold, dear will always stand
Speaker 1: together because the people on top always have more in
Speaker 1: common with each other than they do with you. This
Speaker 1: is why Turkish dictator taip Air Dooan and President Donald
Speaker 1: Trump were able to come to such a chummy arrangement
Speaker 1: about the future of the autonomous region of Northeast Syria
Speaker 1: known as Rojava. The Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF, an
Speaker 1: alliance of a issues who protected the leftist revolution in
Speaker 1: that area, fought alongside US forces for years. More than
Speaker 1: eleven thousand of them died in the battle against Isis.
Speaker 1: But when push came to shove, the American President felt
Speaker 1: more affinity for his fellow autocrat than he did for
Speaker 1: the revolutionaries of Rojava, so he abandoned them. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this issue at length on my podcast Worst Year Ever,
Speaker 1: and a number of other places. For our purposes today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to let the words of a much better
Speaker 1: journalist than me tell the story. Kabat a Boss is
Speaker 1: a reporter, a documentarian, and a fixer living in Northeast Syria.
Speaker 1: She's one of the most remarkable people I've ever met.
Speaker 1: In mid October two thousand nineteen, she wrote an article
Speaker 1: for The New York Review of Books. This is Ethnic Cleansing,
Speaker 1: a dispatch from Northern Syria. I very much recommend reading
Speaker 1: the entire article, which will be linked on our website
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com. I'd like to quote from
Speaker 1: the beginning of the piece. Now, this is Khabbat. When
Speaker 1: my mom called to ask me where I was, I
Speaker 1: lied to her. Sometimes I do not want to worry her,
Speaker 1: as I'm often reporting on stories from play says that
Speaker 1: aren't safe. When she said get ready to remove, I
Speaker 1: realized something was wrong. Komischli was under attack. Can't you
Speaker 1: hear the shelling? She screamed. She lives in Rimmelan, a
Speaker 1: city an hour away, but she was here to visit
Speaker 1: my brother. The Turks were targeting my neighborhood, she said.
Speaker 1: That was Wednesday afternoon, October nine, the first day of
Speaker 1: Turkey's attack on Rojava Western Kurdistan, as we call it
Speaker 1: in Kurdish. Commischli, my city, was one of the few
Speaker 1: places in Northeast Syria that had enjoyed relative peace despite
Speaker 1: Syria's eight year civil war. In past years, Turkish president
Speaker 1: Receipt Type Erdowin made constant threats against us, but I
Speaker 1: never really expected him to make a move. The Americans
Speaker 1: were here and they promised they would protect us, so
Speaker 1: Edwin's bluster seemed meaningless. I was wrong. First we experienced
Speaker 1: clashes with the regime forces of Bishar al Assad. Then
Speaker 1: it was our turn to face down the fighters of ISIS,
Speaker 1: the so called Islamic State. After the group rose in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, ISIS detonated bombs and planted suicide
Speaker 1: attacks in Kamischli and the towns of northeast Syria. For
Speaker 1: all that, we never had artillery showing before, so when
Speaker 1: my mother called, I was scared. Everyone was. That day,
Speaker 1: October nine, I was driving back from Sarah Khanyi, about
Speaker 1: fifty miles from Commichali, when an air strike targeted a
Speaker 1: military base a few hundred yards from the scene of
Speaker 1: a protest that I had been due to report on
Speaker 1: about a half hour later. In the aftermath of the bombing,
Speaker 1: we feared we were going to be hit by another
Speaker 1: wave of Turkish planes. Everyone fled the scene. My colleague Alan,
Speaker 1: who was an exceptionally good driver got us out of
Speaker 1: there in seconds. This is Robert again, and just a
Speaker 1: few months before, Kabat wrote that. In August of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, journalist j Canrahan and I spent more than
Speaker 1: a week in Alan's car with Kabat. At that time,
Speaker 1: Rojava was at peace. We felt safe virtually everywhere. For days.
Speaker 1: We visited all women farming collectives, local communes, representatives of
Speaker 1: a justice system that was experimenting with art therapy as
Speaker 1: a treatment for captured ISIS fighters. The sheer amount of
Speaker 1: optimism we felt in the air was staggering. It almost
Speaker 1: tasted Neither Jake nor I wanted to return to Iraq
Speaker 1: when our visit ended. Today, however, Rojaba is in chaos.
Speaker 1: Hundreds are dead and an unknown number of ISIS prisoners
Speaker 1: have gotten free. In the confusion. Two hundred thousand civilians
Speaker 1: have been made refugees. I asked about how the autonomous
Speaker 1: Region has handled the flow of so many refugees in
Speaker 1: the wake of the fighting. Here's how she responded, I
Speaker 1: went to in the past days to these shelters, and
Speaker 1: there is uh every time, new numbers increasing very fast,
Speaker 1: and the humanitian situation get worse and the response is
Speaker 1: so slow comporting to their needs. In addition, it's it's
Speaker 1: wars as a results of the Turkish attack on the
Speaker 1: virtual centers. As the Turkish air strike they hit they
Speaker 1: unlogged them in Surigny, which is feeding the WATA to
Speaker 1: a city of Serikani and Hasseta ntil Timer and that
Speaker 1: result a cut of WATA three days from those cities.
Speaker 1: And this situation of the population and the IDPs, it's
Speaker 1: gate wars as a result of that. Also, I met
Speaker 1: many families and most of them basically from Trilabias Regani
Speaker 1: and even some of them have been many times displacement
Speaker 1: as they were from Afrin. I think if the international
Speaker 1: response is limited, that will gonna lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Speaker 1: Even I met the head of the West Municipality of
Speaker 1: the Hassaka, Mohammed Shammy, and he was explaining to us
Speaker 1: how it's there is a pressure on the city and
Speaker 1: there is no support. For example, he gave an example
Speaker 1: about the needs of the bread. He said, we use
Speaker 1: it to back thirty five tones of the floor daily
Speaker 1: for Hassaka. Only last days we are baking fifty tons
Speaker 1: and we cannot cover the needs of the population. So
Speaker 1: the situation every day, every hour, gate wars and wars,
Speaker 1: and there is a gap and and all the organizations
Speaker 1: have to respond to these needs. In the face of
Speaker 1: ethnic clins in out of sheer desperation, Rojava invited in
Speaker 1: the Assad regime and the Russian Army. This was not
Speaker 1: a decision anyone wanted to make. Many people in Rajava
Speaker 1: had risen up against Assad in the early days of
Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War. I asked her about how she
Speaker 1: felt that this development would affect the women's revolution in Rojava.
Speaker 1: Regime is representing the patriarchy system. On the contrary, Rojava
Speaker 1: is representing the woman revolution. Women of Rojaba built last
Speaker 1: eight year specific system for the woman in all levels military,
Speaker 1: economically and politically, and they made impact in the education
Speaker 1: via teaching digitology, which is a woman's sense on the
Speaker 1: mentality of the new generations. In addition, the implementation of
Speaker 1: the co presidency system and all the institutions starting from
Speaker 1: coming to the highest official ranks allowed very effective participation
Speaker 1: of a woman to lead this region beside them and
Speaker 1: interview with the bidality co presidency of a society. Protection
Speaker 1: forces in Al Jazeera kanton about this subject, and she said,
Speaker 1: we know how to protect ourselves now a there are
Speaker 1: years of experience and we are not afraid of a
Speaker 1: region coming back. It's obvious that the woman of Rojaba
Speaker 1: will not lead their gainst easily, but there is a
Speaker 1: great risk on the woman evolution in case the regime
Speaker 1: take over Rojava. I do believe that the region will
Speaker 1: first start get the woman specifically, because this is what
Speaker 1: makes Rojava unique on a global level. The very last
Speaker 1: thing I asked her was what if anything people outside
Speaker 1: Syria could do to support Rojava in its struggle. Here
Speaker 1: was her answer. I think the people of the outside
Speaker 1: can help Rojaba, and specifically, all the feminist movements have
Speaker 1: to rise up for otherwise we as a woman all
Speaker 1: over the world might face the risk to lose the
Speaker 1: woman revolution. Any activity to support Rojaba like demonstrations, donation
Speaker 1: by Code Turkish goods and rise the awareness of the
Speaker 1: Western community about what is Rojava facing currently. It's a genocide,
Speaker 1: it's an ethnic glancing, and it's a demograh demographic changing
Speaker 1: and everyone have to take the responsibilities in order to
Speaker 1: make some steps and that's what'll going to help Rojaba.
Speaker 1: For sure. She's calling for solidarity, the same sort of
Speaker 1: solidarity the protesters in Hong Kong and Catalonia have expressed
Speaker 1: for one another. Whenever I write or talk about Rojaba,
Speaker 1: people always ask me where can I send money to help?
Speaker 1: And you might do some good by donating to the
Speaker 1: Kurdish Red Crescent. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the people of Rojava, like the protesters in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: won't be helped by any money you could send. What
Speaker 1: might help them is your solidarity, your willingness to harangue
Speaker 1: your elected leaders on their behalf, or to get into
Speaker 1: the streets and protest at the Turkish embassy or the
Speaker 1: Chinese consulate, or wherever it might get attention. There are
Speaker 1: protesters in Germany right now who have protested in front
Speaker 1: of buildings of companies that supply arms to the Turkish nation.
Speaker 1: The United States supplies plenty of weapons to Turkey. There
Speaker 1: are places you could gather. Another group of humans who
Speaker 1: could really use your solidarity. Right now are the people
Speaker 1: of Santiago, Chile. As I write this, the city has
Speaker 1: been convulsed by marches and brutal clashes between police and
Speaker 1: demonstrators for more than a week. If you read most
Speaker 1: of the news about what is happening, it places the
Speaker 1: blame on a four percent hike in the cost of
Speaker 1: public transportation. I was lucky enough to sit down with
Speaker 1: two activists in Santiago over Skype. Saul is an American
Speaker 1: living in Santiago over the last eight years with his wife, Stephanie,
Speaker 1: a native Chilean. They told me to be wary of
Speaker 1: attributing just one cost to the protests. What initially started
Speaker 1: this protest was a group, a bunch of students who
Speaker 1: were evading uh the metro so to protest the rise
Speaker 1: in the fair which is the second or third time
Speaker 1: they've raised the metro in the last three years. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's the most expensive metro in South America.
Speaker 1: And and even though for someone from the United States
Speaker 1: it might seem it's still very cheap, or how are
Speaker 1: they only protesting over ten more cents or whatever? But um,
Speaker 1: in Chile, if you make the minimum wage, you could
Speaker 1: be spending almost of your wage on the metro. It
Speaker 1: is very expensive here. And uh so what happened is
Speaker 1: a lot of students were getting together. It's like a
Speaker 1: big group and so there will be hundreds of them
Speaker 1: and they would all rush into the metro together and
Speaker 1: jump over the turnstiles and so the h that's how
Speaker 1: it all started. And then the police were very heavy
Speaker 1: handed in their reaction and got very violent, and then
Speaker 1: it got kind of worse from there, and so the
Speaker 1: protest exploded into more of a general protest because, um,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of problems in Chile and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of um inequality and a lot of things
Speaker 1: that have never been fixed since the since the dictatorship,
Speaker 1: so they're still using the same constitution that was written
Speaker 1: by pinol j and um. Yeah, and there's lots of
Speaker 1: other things, Yeah, the corruption of Pinera, the current president,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of protests over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years about the pension plans the AFP. Sault speaks
Speaker 1: fluent English, so he does most of the talking for
Speaker 1: the segments of the interview I'm including this episode, but
Speaker 1: his wife talked quite a lot too, And I'm going
Speaker 1: to include the full audio of this interview when all
Speaker 1: of the other interviews in an episode that will drop tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be a straight recording of all
Speaker 1: the interviews. There will be a normal episode on Thursday.
Speaker 1: You can get back to your regularly scheduled comedy now.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed several other Chilean dissidents over Twitter, and crippling
Speaker 1: inequality in that nation is one thing that every single
Speaker 1: one of them has brought up as the real cause
Speaker 1: of these protests. One popular memes sir reculating among activists
Speaker 1: in Santiago is a picture of a glacier with a
Speaker 1: tiny peak of ice above the water line and a
Speaker 1: gargantuan mountain of ice underneath it. The images labeled social
Speaker 1: uprising in Chile. The bit above the water is the
Speaker 1: forcent metro fare increase, and the bit below the water
Speaker 1: line is extremely high. Social inequality, decades of abuse of power.
Speaker 1: Almost everything is privatized, including water, high taxes and low benefits,
Speaker 1: precarious jobs, miserable pensions, politicians, outrageous salaries and benefits, high
Speaker 1: student loan debts, unfair justice system, political police and military corruption,
Speaker 1: predatory lending and banking system, and more. The Organization for
Speaker 1: Economic Cooperation and Development the o e c D measures
Speaker 1: income equality via something called the Genie coefficient. This ranges
Speaker 1: from zero, the minimum which would exist in a perfectly
Speaker 1: equal society to one which would presumably be a society
Speaker 1: in which Jeff Bezos owns everything and we have to
Speaker 1: pay rent for access to our own bones. Chile's Genie
Speaker 1: coefficient is among the highest on the planet point five
Speaker 1: zero and when to quote now from a write up
Speaker 1: in Borgan magazine. Despite the high tax bracket, a higher
Speaker 1: proportion of tax tends to be levied on individuals from
Speaker 1: poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. This system greatly reduces the disposable incomes
Speaker 1: and consumption ability of the common people. As a result,
Speaker 1: the poor in Chile often suffer from malnourishment and hunger
Speaker 1: because they are unable to afford basic necessities. Poor education
Speaker 1: also forms the bedrock of economic inequality in Chile. Thousands
Speaker 1: of young people have recently called for more education, reform
Speaker 1: and peaceful demonstrations. A majority of the population is lacking
Speaker 1: the skills that are essential for attaining good jobs and incomes. Moreover,
Speaker 1: this inequality is also prevalent and higher education, as the
Speaker 1: poorer unable to pay for college and other institutions of
Speaker 1: higher learning. Additionally, Chile has had to juggle with the
Speaker 1: issue of corruption at the hands of the rich and
Speaker 1: powerful oligarchs in the country. These powerful entities often evade tax. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Public Services unit has also been caught
Speaker 1: up in various corruption scandals since two thous and two
Speaker 1: due to a lack of resources and misallocation of funds.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing in Chile is people at the top
Speaker 1: who have access to basically all of the money, who
Speaker 1: are not taxed nearly enough of their income, and who
Speaker 1: are increasingly pushing the burden of funding the government onto
Speaker 1: the people who have almost no money. It's a problem
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound familiar to anyone else in the world.
Speaker 1: By the way, the Genie coefficient of the United States
Speaker 1: is point four three, just a little bit under point
Speaker 1: five zero. And um, it's really interesting because in Chile
Speaker 1: almost uh ten family are they have control uh for
Speaker 1: all the they are they they are they have control
Speaker 1: with the gang. Yeah. So it's it's similar to the
Speaker 1: United States, where there's you know, a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: billionaires that are kind of controlling everything. But in Jilian
Speaker 1: it's literally ten families, and these ten families are are
Speaker 1: very very rich and have a lot of control in
Speaker 1: the country. Um. But but yeah, so it's it's about
Speaker 1: a lot of things um the protest now. On October nineteenth,
Speaker 1: President Piniera announced that he was reversing the fair increase,
Speaker 1: but this did not assuage protesters. Thousands continue to take
Speaker 1: to the streets. Bonfires lit up the Santiago sky, and
Speaker 1: unrest began to spread to other cities in Chile, like Valparaiso.
Speaker 1: Late that night, the government declared martial law. General Javier
Speaker 1: Ettiaga de camp told citizens. We invite all citizens to
Speaker 1: return to their homes and to evaluate the measures that
Speaker 1: the government has arranged and cooperate to protect their family,
Speaker 1: their integrity and their own assets. This is the first
Speaker 1: time Chileans have reverted to military rules since the era
Speaker 1: of Dictator Augusto Pinochet from nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, the state's repression of these demonstrators
Speaker 1: has been brutal. At least eighteen people have been killed
Speaker 1: in the protests, and by the time you hear this,
Speaker 1: that number will likely be much higher. I like to
Speaker 1: quote now from an article in the Guardian than interviewed
Speaker 1: one protester. I was coming home and the military patrol
Speaker 1: stopped me, said one bruised and blooded man as he
Speaker 1: stumbled home in the early hours of Tuesday morning. They
Speaker 1: put me in the truck and bang, bang, bang. They
Speaker 1: smashed me in the head with the butt of a gun.
Speaker 1: I begged them to stop it. They kept on kicking me,
Speaker 1: and they took my friend away. There's video now circulating
Speaker 1: on Twitter if Chilean soldiers detaining a protester and then
Speaker 1: as casually as you or I might swat a mosquito,
Speaker 1: shooting him in the leg with an M sixteen. The government,
Speaker 1: for its part, claims all these people are looters or criminals,
Speaker 1: general terms the state now applies to anyone it does
Speaker 1: violence against one protester I interviewed on Twitter. Juan told
Speaker 1: me this. Whenever they give a speech mentioning our current situation,
Speaker 1: they talk about the protesters that way, criminals or bad
Speaker 1: elements of society, or similar expressions, giving to understand that
Speaker 1: this is a criminal matter rather than one of policy,
Speaker 1: which explains the curfew, the soldiers on the streets, and
Speaker 1: so on. And now here's uh Saul and his wife
Speaker 1: Stephanie expressing very similar opinions. The police respond to often
Speaker 1: peaceful protests with with tear guys and um and violence,
Speaker 1: and now of course there's been declared the state of
Speaker 1: emergencies and now you have the military in tanks in
Speaker 1: the streets too. And why you said that the police
Speaker 1: have gotten more aggressive and more violent this year, Why
Speaker 1: would you do you have do? Is there a reason
Speaker 1: behind that? Do you think like, is there some sort
Speaker 1: of cause to that that you can see? No, it's
Speaker 1: not any reason. It's only a strategy of the government.
Speaker 1: But it is a bad idea. And in UM, a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, we saw some car of the
Speaker 1: cuffs uh driving in the in the passel really traditionally
Speaker 1: the center of the city and uh tear gas. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: A couple of months ago there was some crazy protests
Speaker 1: and the police we were driving through like plaza, their armost,
Speaker 1: like the downtown, like the center of the historic center
Speaker 1: of town, and and and throwing tear guys that people
Speaker 1: who aren't even protesting. And um, But to answer your question,
Speaker 1: I think that it just has to do with the government,
Speaker 1: because um, a couple of years ago the president was Bachelete,
Speaker 1: who is more center left, and so I think the
Speaker 1: police now under Vinera understand that they kind of have
Speaker 1: carte blanche to do whatever they want and that they
Speaker 1: won't be reprimanded for um violence against protesters. And when this,
Speaker 1: when this current wave of like heavy street actions broke out,
Speaker 1: were y'all there for sort of the beginning of that.
Speaker 1: Were you there on sort of the first day that
Speaker 1: this like really kicked off into um, you know, a
Speaker 1: citywide sort of thing rather than just kind of a
Speaker 1: fair protest. Yeah, definitely. So we Um we live about
Speaker 1: step six or seven blocks from the Plaza Italia, which
Speaker 1: is the Metro Bacadado, which is like the center of downtown,
Speaker 1: and it's the historic place where protests always start and
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of in the thick of it.
Speaker 1: And then also we are right by this intersection where
Speaker 1: when the protest really got serious two nights ago, um,
Speaker 1: the there were five buses that were burned right at
Speaker 1: our intersection, so um yeah, it's kind of right outside
Speaker 1: our door. These burned busses have become part of one
Speaker 1: of several conspiracy theories that have grown up around the protests.
Speaker 1: Whenever there is mass civil unrest in the country, people
Speaker 1: from one are both sides of the conflict will cook
Speaker 1: up conspiracies, and the world being what it is, some
Speaker 1: of those will be true. Most of the conspiracies in
Speaker 1: Santiago center around the burning of three busses and the
Speaker 1: arson attack on the headquarters of an L Chile power
Speaker 1: company who recently hiked their prices. When I first encountered
Speaker 1: video of the n L building burning, it was being
Speaker 1: celebrated by non Chilean leftists as a justified attack on
Speaker 1: a corrupt capitalist institution. But every Chilean I've interviewed has
Speaker 1: expressed severe doubts as to whether or not these arson
Speaker 1: attacks were the work of protesters. Yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: we're not typically uh like conspiracy there as people, but
Speaker 1: as far as like what a lot of people have
Speaker 1: been talking about is with both the n L Electric Company, UM,
Speaker 1: with the fire that happened on their their staircase right there,
Speaker 1: fire escape, and there was a number of suspicious things
Speaker 1: about it. You know, it started on the eleventh floor,
Speaker 1: so it's like, how could a protester do that? And
Speaker 1: I don't know, um, And of course it only burned
Speaker 1: that the fire escape and it didn't touch anything about
Speaker 1: the main building. And there's so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: suspicion here UM of that, and then uh of the
Speaker 1: idea that possibly it was the police or the government
Speaker 1: who started that as a way to justify um, bringing
Speaker 1: in the military and all of that and starting the curfew.
Speaker 1: And what's that thing is very similar is uh these
Speaker 1: five buses that were burned outside of our apartment. UM.
Speaker 1: It was very strange because yes, there's there's almost never
Speaker 1: five buses all right next to each other on the
Speaker 1: street in the corner and UM. And then there's also
Speaker 1: been videos that have been passed around what'sapp and um
Speaker 1: social media where you see that these busses were like discontinued,
Speaker 1: so they were already like in bad situation, their bad shape.
Speaker 1: And then there's a video that's been passed around of
Speaker 1: the police like escorted one of these busses very slowly,
Speaker 1: almost like they're escorting it here so they can burn
Speaker 1: it and again use it as justification, um to ratchet
Speaker 1: up the police response. So it's hard to say, and
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to be a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: but certainly there's uh, there there's suspicious things happening in
Speaker 1: that regard and on the street here. Almost every chile
Speaker 1: and that we've talked to has has said that they
Speaker 1: pretty much believe that it was the police that that
Speaker 1: we're doing that. Now, I don't want to act as
Speaker 1: if I have any real understanding of who is correct here.
Speaker 1: It is entirely possible that piste Off protesters committed these
Speaker 1: arson attacks. It's also possible that the state did so
Speaker 1: to justify President Piniera's declaration we are at war and
Speaker 1: his assumption of martial law. That's the thing about serious
Speaker 1: civil unrest. Once your government starts gunning down people in
Speaker 1: the streets, all kinds of conspiracy theories suddenly become plausible.
Speaker 1: Another local Chilean activists I found on Twitter goes by
Speaker 1: the name Antifa al Farrado sent me a translation of
Speaker 1: an anti protest meme that blames all the unrest on
Speaker 1: Venezuelan President Madeiro and essentially frames the uprising in Chile
Speaker 1: as a communist conspiracy. It's basically framed as a flow
Speaker 1: chart that starts with financing politicians and parties close to
Speaker 1: our ideologies, networking and universities and NGOs degrading the meaning
Speaker 1: of social values, indoctrinate young people in liberal ideas. Constitutional accusation.
Speaker 1: It's Chili's term for impeachment uh and and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. So it's basically like a little flow
Speaker 1: chart showing that everything happening in Chile right now is
Speaker 1: a part of this communist conspiracy cooked up by Madeiro
Speaker 1: and the bowlev Orens, which is kind of one of
Speaker 1: the names for the communist revolution in that country. And
Speaker 1: I've seen zero evidence that this is actually true, and
Speaker 1: I share it mainly to make the point of how
Speaker 1: confusing these situations can get, particularly to an audience of
Speaker 1: foreigners who are unlikely to understand the nuances of the
Speaker 1: politics in the region. Most Chileans and Santiago are unlikely
Speaker 1: to be convinced of this last conspiracy theory unless they
Speaker 1: already believe in some sort of all encompassing communist plot
Speaker 1: to destroy their nation. But conspiracies like this can play
Speaker 1: a role in cutting off international solidarity with activists. More
Speaker 1: conservative members of foreign nations might see something like this
Speaker 1: and become convinced that the government of Chile is only
Speaker 1: trying to defend themselves from an insidious Venezuelan plot. The
Speaker 1: same behavior occurs on the left. By the way, you
Speaker 1: do not have to look for to find people on
Speaker 1: Twitter condemning the Hong Kong protests as Western BacT and
Speaker 1: part of a capitalist conspiracy against the Communist government of China.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, all conspiracies like this are a way
Speaker 1: to distract and detract sympathy from real human beings fighting
Speaker 1: for their lives. I have my own political beliefs, but
Speaker 1: whenever I see people facing rubber bullets and tear gas
Speaker 1: grenades and extra judicial murder at the hands of the state,
Speaker 1: I'm always going to side with those people over their government,
Speaker 1: no matter where that government lands on the political spectrum.
Speaker 1: On the day before I wrote this episode, Friday, the
Speaker 1: twenty six of October, more than one point two million
Speaker 1: people took to the streets of Santiago to protest. That
Speaker 1: should be all the evidence you need that this is
Speaker 1: not just some conspiracy and is in fact the result
Speaker 1: of very real, very honest anger. Some Chileans continue to
Speaker 1: take to the streets at night in violation of the curfew. Others,
Speaker 1: not willing to risk it, stay at home but contribute
Speaker 1: to the protest by banging on pots and pans to
Speaker 1: make noise and, in Juan's words, signaling their discontent. The
Speaker 1: early stages of the protests in Santiago were pure expressions
Speaker 1: of local fury based more on emotion than calculation. But
Speaker 1: as the days have worn on, Chilean activists have found
Speaker 1: themselves looking out towards Hong Kong for inspiration. When I
Speaker 1: first interviewed Juan on Sunday the twenty, he told me
Speaker 1: there isn't a greater level of organizing or planning. It's
Speaker 1: not like the Hong Kong protests, for example. I guess
Speaker 1: we're not very sophisticated protesters, and then he sent me
Speaker 1: up smiley faced with sticking its tongue out. But a
Speaker 1: few days later on I ran across a video on Twitter.
Speaker 1: It shows hundreds of protesters in the streets of Santiago.
Speaker 1: A police tear gas grenade comes sailing over the crowd
Speaker 1: and lands in the middle of it. A dozen or
Speaker 1: so men and women quickly surround the grenade, dumped into
Speaker 1: a plastic bag, and douse it with water. Linked in
Speaker 1: the video was a tweet from a Hong Kong activists
Speaker 1: from four days earlier explaining this exact method for dealing
Speaker 1: with tear gas. The only recent protests to eclipse the
Speaker 1: uprising in Chile in terms of scale are the ones
Speaker 1: currently happening in Lebanon on the twenty October, more than
Speaker 1: one point two million people marched against their government nationwide,
Speaker 1: and on the nineteenth more than a million people assembled
Speaker 1: in Beirut alone. Now, the Lebanese nation only has a
Speaker 1: population of four or five million, which makes these protests
Speaker 1: the proportional equivalent of some eighty million Americans taking to
Speaker 1: the streets two days in a row. And if you
Speaker 1: follow mainstream Western news sources reporting on the unrest, they'll
Speaker 1: generally blame it all on What's App. On October twenty,
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, Public Radio International published an article titled
Speaker 1: how Lebanon's What's app tacks unleashed a flood of anger.
Speaker 1: But as with the public transit tacks in Chile, the
Speaker 1: events being looked at as causes of this unrest just
Speaker 1: the straws that broke the camels back. In fairness to
Speaker 1: p r I, the actual article does go into this
Speaker 1: in a little bit of detail, but we all know
Speaker 1: that in the social media era, most people barely read
Speaker 1: past the headlines. So I sat down with joey Ayoub,
Speaker 1: a Lebanese writer and Middle East North Africa editor for
Speaker 1: if X and Global Voices. He's been present for many
Speaker 1: of the marches in Lebanon, and he pointed out that
Speaker 1: a lot of the recent unrest in his country was
Speaker 1: actually kicked off by a series of brutal wildfires and
Speaker 1: an incompetent government reaction to the crisis. Lebanon actually had
Speaker 1: horrible wild fires back in two thousand eight, which inspired
Speaker 1: a group of citizens to raise money to buy a
Speaker 1: small fleet of firefighting helicopters to protect the country in
Speaker 1: the future. Now, these helicopters were very successful in putting
Speaker 1: out wildfires for a couple of years, but due to
Speaker 1: outrageous corruption, money to repair those helicopters was funneled away
Speaker 1: towards god knows what and who, and my two twelve
Speaker 1: the fleet was no longer operational. Here's Joey the wildfires.
Speaker 1: That was last Monday, So that's fourteen the night of
Speaker 1: the fourth into the fifteenth, and classed about forty eight
Speaker 1: hours and it was Yeah, and those for the that
Speaker 1: was well lost basically years worth of teas lost. Usually,
Speaker 1: so I think there was something I came against teas
Speaker 1: that's horrible. That's usually an average. Yeah. Uh So that
Speaker 1: obviously pasted a lot of people off because the government
Speaker 1: was utterly incapable on reading whatever wants to deal with it.
Speaker 1: You had pretty much we haven't had several servants paid
Speaker 1: in like twenty years of these old volunteer forces, and
Speaker 1: you had you even had like this about defense forces
Speaker 1: from the Palestinian camps that stepped up that helped, and
Speaker 1: you had basically volunteers just doing it themselves. There wasn't
Speaker 1: really anything until two things happened that put them off.
Speaker 1: One is Greece cyclists in Jordan basically sent some you know,
Speaker 1: helicopters and whatever. And the other thing is we got
Speaker 1: lucky because it started gaining the day after. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's pretty much why, like we the damage was more
Speaker 1: or less limited, if you want. And so the fact
Speaker 1: that after all of this, just like a day later
Speaker 1: or something, the first thing the government can think of
Speaker 1: doing is to impose it acts on what'sapp, which is
Speaker 1: obviously free service that people use because actual phone services
Speaker 1: are extremely expensive. And Lebanon that was kind of you know,
Speaker 1: as everyone has been saying that, you know, that whole
Speaker 1: sort of poly comes back then and then you had
Speaker 1: protests on that like that Thursday evening, so that's basically
Speaker 1: weak now. And in that protest you had lots of
Speaker 1: good blogs. You had basically some of the usual protests
Speaker 1: that we have been seeing before. And during that protest,
Speaker 1: one of this if you want symbols, that became this Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know the point of unity, I guess is
Speaker 1: there was the bodyguard of one one politician took out
Speaker 1: his gun, started scaring people. People were not scared, they
Speaker 1: were actually fighting act. And then he had this woman
Speaker 1: who kicked him. Uh. And that became this sort of
Speaker 1: meme and it became super popular and that kind of
Speaker 1: galvanized everything. And then after that it became sort of
Speaker 1: like a daily story. More people come down, there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a passion than the next day, even more
Speaker 1: people come down, a familiar story if you if you
Speaker 1: see what I'm going with this, and now how it's
Speaker 1: day in number eight and people are sitting in the
Speaker 1: steats and it's way more than justin by roots. The
Speaker 1: protests in Beirut started off with the air of almost
Speaker 1: a carnival or perhaps a dance club, and there was
Speaker 1: in fact DJs and dancing, but there was also a
Speaker 1: powerful sense of solidarity that grew between people day after
Speaker 1: day and built upon itself. The only reason these protests
Speaker 1: have not been crushed by the government. Is that activists
Speaker 1: were able to mobilize enough people from a wide enough
Speaker 1: s wife of society that mass brutality simply was not
Speaker 1: an option. Seventy two hours into the campaign, Prime Ministers
Speaker 1: Sadhariri announced a new economic package, halving the salaries of
Speaker 1: public officials, read amping the electricity sector, and eliminating a
Speaker 1: bunch of do nothing government jobs that existed to suck
Speaker 1: money away from the poor and squired into the hands
Speaker 1: of rich connected people's children. This was rightly celebrated as
Speaker 1: a victory by many activists. Although the protests are ongoing
Speaker 1: and most Lebanese believe there is much more to be done,
Speaker 1: the success they've seen already is proof of how much
Speaker 1: can be accomplished and how quickly it can be accomplished
Speaker 1: when enough of the nation gets on the same page.
Speaker 1: Now that may seem impossible and a nation is divided
Speaker 1: as the United States, but prior to these protests, Lebanon's
Speaker 1: division seemed unbridgeable to you know. Two days ago was
Speaker 1: the thirtieth anniversary or commemoration whatever off the TOEF Agreement,
Speaker 1: the agreement that was signed in that ended the Libanese
Speaker 1: Civil War, and they signed it in the city off
Speaker 1: in Saudiahevia, and that system sort of codified sectarianism even
Speaker 1: more than it was before the war. It did a
Speaker 1: number of things I won't get into now it's not
Speaker 1: that relevant, but what it did really is make it
Speaker 1: almost basically impossible for anyone to identify, for like, in
Speaker 1: any other way other than with your sect. So the
Speaker 1: fact that I am from a certain sect, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if I am a believer or not, or in
Speaker 1: atheists or not, None of these things matter. What matters
Speaker 1: is that this, this is your sect, and so you
Speaker 1: vote according to that, and you vote according to sect
Speaker 1: and according to where your family is supposedly originally from.
Speaker 1: So for example, I can vote in a Shefie, but
Speaker 1: I don't live in a shefe I live in a
Speaker 1: different part of Lebanon. And that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why it's been so difficult to really organize, because, for example,
Speaker 1: when there was the municipal elections in thousands sixteen, uh
Speaker 1: something like a quarter of story, like, there's four times
Speaker 1: more people who actually live in baby boots than people
Speaker 1: who are adjusted to to vote in bay boots. So
Speaker 1: you have many of my friends who live and I
Speaker 1: don't live in Baywood, but they live in they live
Speaker 1: in baby Boots, and so they were helping organized people
Speaker 1: who are officially registered and maybe including people who don't
Speaker 1: live there to vote there. So that's kind of just
Speaker 1: like a small example of why it's been so difficult
Speaker 1: on all levels to really organize for an alternative to
Speaker 1: disc thanks with them that we have now. And yet
Speaker 1: with no centralized structure, with no hierarchy of leadership, the
Speaker 1: people of Lebanon have been able to at least somewhat
Speaker 1: transcend the divisions built into their society to stand up
Speaker 1: and force basic change. The exact nature of the problems
Speaker 1: that must be confronted will differ from country to country
Speaker 1: with every protest, but as we see when we observe
Speaker 1: all of these movements side by side, the basic script
Speaker 1: for effective change is always the same. Pick a few
Speaker 1: concrete things that everyone agrees need to be changed, get
Speaker 1: enough people out into the street and disrupt the normal
Speaker 1: flow of life, and make the nation effectively ungovernable and
Speaker 1: unprofitable until you get what you need now. The fact
Speaker 1: that this is all relatively simple does not make it
Speaker 1: easy zy nor does it mean that every uprising like
Speaker 1: this is guaranteed to meet with success. Quite the opposite, really,
Speaker 1: And this rather tragically brings me to Egypt. Ab del
Speaker 1: Fata Alcisi came to power in two thousand thirteen via
Speaker 1: a super fun military coup. Since his predecessors have been
Speaker 1: famously swept out of power by popular unrest and mass demonstrations,
Speaker 1: he spent much of his time in power making such
Speaker 1: things impossible in the future. CC knows something that only
Speaker 1: the very smartest dictators learned. You cannot let protests start
Speaker 1: because once they start, they can grow exponentially, like things
Speaker 1: did in Lebanon, and then there are too many people
Speaker 1: out in the street to shoot, and then you have
Speaker 1: to make concessions, and then you fall. In late September
Speaker 1: two nineteen, an exiled former military contractor named Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: started posting a series of videos documenting massive corruption within
Speaker 1: the Egyptian military. He called for a million people to
Speaker 1: march in the streets. This was, of course, just a spark.
Speaker 1: More than one third of Egyptians live in poverty. Most
Speaker 1: of the people who did take to the streets cited
Speaker 1: economic grievances as the reason they stood up but sadly
Speaker 1: they did not stand for long because CC's military was
Speaker 1: there to crush their will. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from the Guardian. Now more people have been arrested since
Speaker 1: rare protests broke out last weekend, and on Thursday, the
Speaker 1: Ministry of the Interior affirmed that it will confront any
Speaker 1: attempt to destabilize the country with decisiveness. According to local media,
Speaker 1: central Cairo was heavily guarded as riot police, fans of
Speaker 1: security officials, and plain closed police spread out among the
Speaker 1: network of streets surrounding Tafrir Square, the epicenter of egypt
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven revolution. The figures for the arrests were
Speaker 1: compiled by the Cairo based GEO, the Egyptian Center for
Speaker 1: Economic and Social Rights. Bystanders and others who had little
Speaker 1: to do with the protests were reportedly detained along with
Speaker 1: the demonstrators, and those arrested being held across the country. Now.
Speaker 1: When people did try to march in Egypt, police met
Speaker 1: them with tear gas, with ubber bullets, with real bullets,
Speaker 1: and with brutal clubbings. They also blocked off access to
Speaker 1: much of the Internet, restricting Twitter, Facebook, Messenger. In Skype,
Speaker 1: as well as a number of international news sites, in
Speaker 1: order to make it impossible for Egyptian activists to coordinate
Speaker 1: with one another or to share their stories with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. All of this worked, the protests
Speaker 1: in Cairo fizzled out. Cecy's reign is for now seemingly secure.
Speaker 1: Sixty thousand political prisoners still languish in Egyptian jails, and
Speaker 1: authoritarians around the world viewed this development with as much
Speaker 1: optimism as I have for the protests in Lebanon. Just
Speaker 1: days later, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised the dictator
Speaker 1: for a positive progress and with the relationship between the
Speaker 1: two nations. U S President Donald Trump called CC his
Speaker 1: favorite dictator and said of the suppressed protests in Cairo,
Speaker 1: everybody has demonstrations now. The Guardians spoke with several Egyptians
Speaker 1: about their reasons for protesting and for not protesting, sayed
Speaker 1: a thirty four year old fest employee gave a response
Speaker 1: that I think embodies exactly how dictators want their people
Speaker 1: to feel. Quote I never went to a protest and
Speaker 1: I never will go. There is a lot of things
Speaker 1: wrong in the country. Some people are literally eating from
Speaker 1: the garbage, but protesting and riots will make things worse.
Speaker 1: God knows. I agree with what they say, but I'm
Speaker 1: alone and I have no one to defend me, so
Speaker 1: I can only focus on putting bread on the table now.
Speaker 1: The good news is that unspeakable brutality does not always
Speaker 1: halt people from standing up. Sometimes things can get so
Speaker 1: bad that no amount of bullets and battery will dissuade
Speaker 1: a population. And this is what we are seeing right
Speaker 1: now in the nation of Iraq. The basic story there
Speaker 1: is the same one we've dealt with this whole episode.
Speaker 1: The government in Baghdad is corrupted and incompetent. It squeezes
Speaker 1: the average people of the nation dry while offering them
Speaker 1: piss poor public services and little hope of a better future.
Speaker 1: The people there got angry, and so they started protesting.
Speaker 1: The police and security forces responded with almost unbelievable bloodshed,
Speaker 1: killing multiple men by firing tear gas canisters directly into
Speaker 1: their skulls. I've seen some utterly unspeakable X ray images
Speaker 1: of the corpses of these protesters, skull shattered and deformed
Speaker 1: by massive metal cylinders of poison. It's it's beyond comprehension
Speaker 1: in some ways. More than a hundred people have been
Speaker 1: murdered so far, and as I write this, the protests
Speaker 1: are still ongoing. It is possible that the violent sweeping
Speaker 1: Iraq right now will degenerate into a vicious conflict, not
Speaker 1: unlike the Syrian Civil War. I hope things will go better.
Speaker 1: The people of Iraq deserve a break, and more than anything,
Speaker 1: they deserve your attention and your solidarity. They are a
Speaker 1: part of this great global uprising, and their future freedom
Speaker 1: is tied directly to yours. In two thousand eleven, as
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring reached Syria and protests turned to gun battles,
Speaker 1: the world and the United States largely turned away. There
Speaker 1: is an excellent New York Times column which I would
Speaker 1: advise you all to read. It always comes back to
Speaker 1: Syria by Ranya Abuzed. I'm going to quote from that now.
Speaker 1: The Syrian War enabled a resurgent Russia to expand its
Speaker 1: influence in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Cutter imported
Speaker 1: their feud into Syria, backing different rebel groups and fomenting
Speaker 1: rivalries that in part helped splinter the armed opposition Iran
Speaker 1: and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah supported the government of Bisharh
Speaker 1: al Assad Hesbala's domestic Lebanese opponents supported the rebels. At
Speaker 1: one point in Lebanon, every fourth person was a Syrian refugee. Jordan,
Speaker 1: too has borne the brunt of the refugee crisis. Turkey,
Speaker 1: the conduit for foreign fighters and munitions into rebel ranks,
Speaker 1: absorbed three point six million Syrian refugees and hosts the
Speaker 1: world's largest refugee population. All of Europe, by comparison, is
Speaker 1: home to about one million Syrian refugees, on influx that
Speaker 1: has nonetheless upended Europe's politics. And then there was the
Speaker 1: rise of the Islamic State and Al Qaida's use of
Speaker 1: the Syrian conflict to rejuvenate its ranks and recruit men
Speaker 1: and money. Both groups exported horror well beyond Syria's borders.
Speaker 1: The flood of refugees from Syria and the rise of
Speaker 1: Isis are intimately tied with the fact that Donald tr
Speaker 1: Rump is the president in our very own nation, and
Speaker 1: with the fact that Nazis now march in Germany again,
Speaker 1: and with the fact that the city of Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: has become an irregular battlefield for fascists and anti fascists.
Speaker 1: None of the terrible things happening in our world occur
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. It is something of a cliche right
Speaker 1: now on social media to refer to the terrible news
Speaker 1: that so dominates our daily lives as evidence that we
Speaker 1: live in the darkest timeline. Much of the reason things
Speaker 1: are so very grim right now is the complete failure
Speaker 1: of liberal democracies around the world to respond effectively to
Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War. Many people thought that since the
Speaker 1: country was, in Donald Trump's words, seven thousand miles away
Speaker 1: from them, what happened there was not their business. But
Speaker 1: it was. And what is happening in Iraq, in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: in Chile and Hong Kong, and in many other nations
Speaker 1: around the world is all of our business. I didn't
Speaker 1: even cover the protests in Ecuador and Indonesia and Russia.
Speaker 1: The world is a fire with rage right now. Those
Speaker 1: of us who live the islands of stability can turn
Speaker 1: our heads away and focus on our own personal problems,
Speaker 1: as say it in Egypt, focuses on putting bread on
Speaker 1: the table. But if we do that, the hope for
Speaker 1: a better world is truly lost. For all of us.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the episode. That's what I got for
Speaker 1: you now. Uh. You can find us online behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram and at Bastard's Pod. You can buy t shirts
Speaker 1: on te Public. But really, um, what you ought to
Speaker 1: do is find a way to get involved. To find
Speaker 1: something that you can do, even if you just started
Speaker 1: by putting in an hour in a week to some
Speaker 1: sort of activism, something near you or far from you. Um,
Speaker 1: just don't let this moment in history pass you by.
Speaker 1: There's people out there fighting who need your solidarity. There's
Speaker 1: things near you that need to be fought for. Go
Speaker 1: do it.