Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: This is the beginning of the podcast, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm James, and this is it.
Speaker 2: Could happen here today. We are going to be talking
Speaker 2: about the recent events that have happened in Palestine and
Speaker 2: the recent acts of terror that the IDEF has committed
Speaker 2: against Palestinians. So yeah, thanks for joining me, James, I
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be another fun one from us.
Speaker 4: I know. I think that's like our thing. It's just
Speaker 4: uplifting podcasts.
Speaker 2: If they don't leave depressed, we're not doing our job, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, if you're driving, maybe pulevi because we're going
Speaker 3: to try make you cry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but no really, I mean, like, in all seriousness,
Speaker 2: there has been some shocking footage that has come out
Speaker 2: of Palestine this month. On April fifth, in particular, there
Speaker 2: was footage that emerged from a luxA mosque, which is
Speaker 2: the third holiest site in Islam, and it is within
Speaker 2: occupied East Jerusalem. The compound is within that area, and
Speaker 2: the videos are showing Israeli security forces mercilessly beating Palestinian
Speaker 2: worshippers and that violence left at least twelve Palestinians injured
Speaker 2: and obviously just fueled more public anger, and three of
Speaker 2: those Palestinians had to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if people haven't seen the videos, like you
Speaker 3: don't have to watch them really, but it's pretty horrific.
Speaker 3: Like we were just talking before we started about how
Speaker 3: monstrous you have to be, like to stand there and
Speaker 3: whack someone with a stick again and again and again,
Speaker 3: especially when they're not particularly any threat to you other
Speaker 3: than you know, you perceive their existence to the threat
Speaker 3: to your state project. Yeah, and they're just trying to
Speaker 3: go to the mosque.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they literally just there there, there, there's no weapons,
Speaker 2: They're trying to pray. They're praying, and yeah, I feel
Speaker 2: like prayer is a very vulnerable state to be in,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like it's not it's kind
Speaker 2: of like, I don't know's it was just really upsetting.
Speaker 2: And and you're right about the dehumanization thing, because we
Speaker 2: were because a gun would make it so much easier
Speaker 2: to kill someone, right, But to purposely injure someone with
Speaker 2: your own hands, I think is us for sure.
Speaker 3: I think maybe it's when a lot of people in
Speaker 3: America at least, like it was very formative to me
Speaker 3: the first time I saw a cop fucking battering someone
Speaker 3: with a stick, you know. And I think if a
Speaker 3: lot of people in America maybe had that experience firsthand
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, and it maybe changed their
Speaker 3: perspective on things. But yeah, this is what colonialism does everywhere, right,
Speaker 3: And it's that what's happening here and in Ramadan as well, right.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, and this is kind of like a trend,
Speaker 2: like there's no excuse for doing and people always try
Speaker 2: to point fingers about like who's the bad guy here?
Speaker 2: But on the other side, rockets were fired from Gaza
Speaker 2: and Lebanon as a warning sign after this escalation happened.
Speaker 2: It was literally a warning like please don't do this,
Speaker 2: this is wrong. But Israel didn't listen, and the following
Speaker 2: day Israel repeated the violent attack on Hada'maschetif, which is
Speaker 2: what Arabs call that compound. It's also called Temple Mount
Speaker 2: for the people of Jewish faith. And yeah, they and
Speaker 2: then as that was happening, the following day, Israel carried
Speaker 2: out air raids on Gaza and Lebanon. So not only
Speaker 2: did they not heed the warning, it was like a
Speaker 2: slap in the face. And I'm going to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the experience that some people had in
Speaker 2: Gaza from this, but that's a little bit later. But
Speaker 2: I just want to like put that out there that
Speaker 2: when people are like, oh Hamas or whatever, they fired rockets,
Speaker 2: It's like, what do you what do you expect people
Speaker 2: push in a corner to do? I just that's what
Speaker 2: I always think about.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Well, yeah, and if harmasafis rockets sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, does that mean everyone should be collectively punished?
Speaker 3: Like you shouldn't be able to practice your faith now?
Speaker 3: Like that that's that doesn't make any fucking sense. And like, yeah,
Speaker 3: how do you react if you've seen your grandmother beaten
Speaker 3: with a fucking stick at church or synagogue, on mask
Speaker 3: wherever you go. Especially Yeah, like during Ramadan at a
Speaker 3: time when like this particular place on earth has got
Speaker 3: like that all the Abrahmic faiths are like looking at
Speaker 3: this place and trying to do their religious stuff there,
Speaker 3: and like I'm not a particularly religious guy, but surely
Speaker 3: there's no religion which way, like the thing you should
Speaker 3: be doing at your Holy days is beaten people with
Speaker 3: a stick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like even if you're not a Muslim, that that
Speaker 2: area is still really sacred to both Christians and Jewish people,
Speaker 2: and you would think that Jews wouldn't want to be
Speaker 2: horrific on that area in general, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like it's yeah, it's just like even even if that
Speaker 2: little area is not particular sacred to you, like it's
Speaker 2: still all sacred in my opinion, and I feel like
Speaker 2: people forget that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, it takes a real like it's
Speaker 3: an interesting sirrong word. It's the juxtaposition of these sacred
Speaker 3: spaces and then it's incredible, like it's somewhere I've been
Speaker 3: when I was younger, and like all around that part
Speaker 3: of Jerusalem or around Drews, my guess, is juxtaposition of
Speaker 3: like sacred spaces, which is supposed to be peaceful and
Speaker 3: calm and reflective and then people doing the violence of colonialism,
Speaker 3: like right there, and it's just such a profound kind
Speaker 3: of whiplash every time you move from one to the other.
Speaker 2: And yeah, because they're the extremes of both. It's like
Speaker 2: one of the most sacred and one of the most violent.
Speaker 2: It's not there's no like wishy washiness about it. But
Speaker 2: let me continue, Okay, So after this happened, the Arab
Speaker 2: League held an emergency meeting to discuss these air raids.
Speaker 2: And just in case you don't know, the Arab League
Speaker 2: is a regional organization in the Arab world. It has
Speaker 2: twenty two members, but Syria hasn't been a member since
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. That could be another episode another time, but
Speaker 2: that's what the Arab League is, in case someone out
Speaker 2: there needed a refresher. But the League condemned the attack,
Speaker 2: and it said in a statement that quote the extremist
Speaker 2: approaches that control the policy of the Israeli government will
Speaker 2: lead to widespread confrontations with the Palestinians if they are
Speaker 2: not put to an end. And at least four hundred
Speaker 2: Palestinians were arrested on Wednesday of April fifth when this happened,
Speaker 2: and they remain in Israeli custody. They're being held at
Speaker 2: a police station and occupied East Jerusalem for no reason.
Speaker 2: It's never really for a reason. It's very rare.
Speaker 5: That's for a reason.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces use excessive force,
Speaker 2: including stun grenades and tear gas, causing suffocation injuries to
Speaker 2: the worshippers and then beating them with batons and rifles.
Speaker 2: There was a twenty four year old student who has
Speaker 2: attained beca Oeis and he said, we were conducting Ichtikaf,
Speaker 2: which is the really religious Muslim worship that is reserved
Speaker 2: for Ramadan, is very sacred, and he said we were
Speaker 2: conducting Ictigaf at the Aluxa because it's Ramadan. The army
Speaker 2: broke the upper windows of the mosque and began throwing
Speaker 2: stunt grenades at us. They made us slide down on
Speaker 2: the ground and they handcuffed us one by one and
Speaker 2: took us all out. They kept swearing at us during
Speaker 2: this time. It was very barbaric. And then an elderly
Speaker 2: woman said, according to this reporter, she was like catching
Speaker 2: her breath outside and in tears and she said, I
Speaker 2: was sitting on a chair reciting in the Quran. They
Speaker 2: hurled stun grenades and one of them hit my chest.
Speaker 2: And this is like, there's no discrimination, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. It's not there's no discrimination to their hate.
Speaker 2: Everyone and is under the same umbrella. If they're Palestinians,
Speaker 2: if they're Muslims, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't be like using taar gas selectively in
Speaker 3: a place of worship. But that's not how that worked.
Speaker 3: You kind of break windows and throwing ta gas. By definition,
Speaker 3: you're targeting every single person there for the crime of
Speaker 3: being there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no excuse of like we we were shooting
Speaker 2: back at shooters, you know what I mean, that's not
Speaker 2: an excuse or they could use. It's like you're infiltrating
Speaker 2: a place where people are literally trying to pray, Like
Speaker 2: there's no there's no.
Speaker 3: Excuse, like old ladies, you haven't eaten all day, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I had a drink of water. They're not like and
Speaker 3: you shouldn't be threatened by those people, like yeah, but
Speaker 3: if their existence as Muslims in the place that you
Speaker 3: don't think they should be allowed to exist, it's threatening
Speaker 3: to you then because you're doing a colonialism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're I mean, you're the bad guid in
Speaker 2: the situation in this case. And the Palestinian Red Cross
Speaker 2: said that Israeli forces prevented medics from reaching the mosque.
Speaker 2: And this has happened before. As James mentioned to me
Speaker 2: before the podcast, it's like a very typical characteristic thing
Speaker 2: of the IDF to block paramedics or aid to come
Speaker 2: help people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people want to look more at like a podcast alumni.
Speaker 3: Tarik has done a lot of first aid working Gaza
Speaker 3: and he's written about it on his medium page. I'll
Speaker 3: find a link and we'll put it in our sources. Yes, please,
Speaker 3: you can see some first hand accounts of how difficult
Speaker 3: it is to like again, right that I don't really
Speaker 3: see how you could find it objectionable to help someone
Speaker 3: who's been hurt. Yeah, but yeah, it seems to be
Speaker 3: a recurrent thing. Yeah, it's it is.
Speaker 2: And what I always find amusing is Israel's statements after
Speaker 2: things like this happen. They're always so comical and so stupid.
Speaker 2: And this time they said when the police entered, stones
Speaker 2: were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside
Speaker 2: the mosque by a large group of agitators. It also
Speaker 2: said that a police officer was wounded in the leg,
Speaker 2: like womp, womp, are you kidding me? Like, I don't
Speaker 2: care about his fucking leg. I don't like they always
Speaker 2: mentioned stones. I'm so tired of them mentioning stones and rocks,
Speaker 2: like shut up, no, it's time for army at the
Speaker 2: Middle East. And it's like they hurled stones at us,
Speaker 2: like fuck off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have the fucking iron dome and a kid
Speaker 3: has thrown us a rock at you, like and like
Speaker 3: that's the stone thing in particular. I don't know why that.
Speaker 3: It's something the Border patrol use a lot when they
Speaker 3: kill people at the border right through a stone, Like
Speaker 3: it's this is a commonality of training between these two organizations, right,
Speaker 3: but like, yeah, what you also like when we entered
Speaker 3: the mosques and people threw stones at us, like what
Speaker 3: were you fucking doing in the masque? Like why were
Speaker 3: you there?
Speaker 2: Like and I'll get into the rules later, but there
Speaker 2: are very specific times because this place is sacred to
Speaker 2: so many people, there are specific times for each faith
Speaker 2: to enter and use the compound, and so they weren't
Speaker 2: supposed to be there and they were beating people to
Speaker 2: make way for Jewish people to enter and have their time.
Speaker 2: But that's not the way to do it. And I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure they weren't supposed to be there at that time.
Speaker 2: But I mentioned this in a previous episode. The government
Speaker 2: is more far right than ever, and so the nationalists
Speaker 2: that are like encouraging violence are usually the ones that
Speaker 2: are succeeding. In response to this, Jordan, and Jordan acts
Speaker 2: as a custodian of Jerusalem's Christian and Muslim holy sites.
Speaker 2: This is under a status quot agreement that has been
Speaker 2: in place since the nineteen sixty seven war. They condemned
Speaker 2: the flagrant storming of the compound and then Egypt they
Speaker 2: called for an immediate halt to Israel's blatant assault on
Speaker 2: XA Worshipper's But other than that, there hasn't been much.
Speaker 2: Like the US said was like, I think I don't
Speaker 2: know the exact quote that anyone in the US said,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure they were like, oh no, this shouldn't happen,
Speaker 2: and then they move on. It's never really any kind
Speaker 2: of helpful action or reprimand or anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One from Koreine Jean Pierre, which is we urge
Speaker 3: all sides to avoid further escalation, which why was this
Speaker 3: Why do you even bother saying shit when you like,
Speaker 3: don't escalate when they come into your moscue and tea?
Speaker 3: I guess you would throw stung grenades at you, Like
Speaker 3: what are they supposed to do?
Speaker 6: Like sincombay a, Yeah, well so why it's like, it's
Speaker 6: like the same situation we had a couple of years
Speaker 6: ago where you have the police that are in swat
Speaker 6: gear and fully armed with people that aren't and you're
Speaker 6: saying like this both sides thing like both sides shouldn't
Speaker 6: do violence.
Speaker 2: Or escalate or whatever. And I think it's so stupid
Speaker 2: when that happens, because there's a clear aggressor and a
Speaker 2: clear victim in that situation. But as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: Palestinians see a luxamosque as one of the few national
Speaker 2: symbols over which they retain some element of control. They are, however,
Speaker 2: fearful of a slow encroachment by Jewish groups, and this
Speaker 2: is what happened at the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is also
Speaker 2: called the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven half of them was turned into a synagogue.
Speaker 2: So Palestinians are worried about that happening again. And they
Speaker 2: are also worried about far right Israeli movements that want
Speaker 2: to demolish the Islamic structures in elkximosqu and build a
Speaker 2: Jewish temple in their place.
Speaker 4: So it's not just.
Speaker 2: Like rumors of this happening. There are nationalists in the
Speaker 2: far right government and the people that they follow that
Speaker 2: want that to happen. And by now it is quite
Speaker 2: clear that American efforts to prevent another escalation in Palestine
Speaker 2: is failing, and it's not the Palestinian side that's responsible.
Speaker 2: Prime Minister and Yahoo, his desperate bid to cling to
Speaker 2: power is not conducive to any de escalation that anyone
Speaker 2: can ever encourage. All he's doing is accelerating the process
Speaker 2: of violence and triggering instability, not just in East Jerusalem
Speaker 2: but like all over the state of Palestine. And Okay,
Speaker 2: before we move on, let's take our first break before
Speaker 2: I forget BRB. We are back. I ended the last
Speaker 2: segment talking about how the US diplomacy is failing an
Speaker 2: understatement of the century. But for more than a year now,
Speaker 2: the tensions and occupied Palestine territories have been very high.
Speaker 2: The arned Palestinian resistance has been active, especially in Jenin
Speaker 2: and Nablus, and Israeli security forces have carried out incessant
Speaker 2: violent raids of Palestinian towns and villages. I said it's
Speaker 2: in a previous episode, but the UN called twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two the deadliest year for the occupied West Bank in
Speaker 2: the past sixteen years, and these rarely Army killed at
Speaker 2: least one hundred and seventy Palestinians, including thirty children, and
Speaker 2: injured at least nine thousand people. The first two months
Speaker 2: of this year have been the most violent since the
Speaker 2: year two thousand, with sixty five Palestinians killed, including thirteen children.
Speaker 2: This year, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides with
Speaker 2: the Jewish holiday of Passover. Hadamashadif Aka Temple Mount is significant,
Speaker 2: as I said, for both Muslims and Jews. Muslims believe
Speaker 2: it's the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and the
Speaker 2: Jewish people believe that it's the site of two biblical temples. Regardless,
Speaker 2: it contains the Aluxamos currently and it's been there since
Speaker 2: ten thirty five a d. And it's again the third
Speaker 2: holyest site for Muslims and an incredibly sacred place for
Speaker 2: prayer and worship. It's I'm sure there's like an energy there.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not religious, but I kind of feel that
Speaker 2: energy sometimes where like everyone thinks or believes in a
Speaker 2: place and it becomes important just as a place. It
Speaker 2: doesn't even need to be explained, I think in general.
Speaker 2: And maybe I'm biased because I was raised Muslim, but
Speaker 2: still I think it's silly to pretend that this is
Speaker 2: at this current point in time, like there's a reason
Speaker 2: for them not to be there, or there's a reason
Speaker 2: for like a synagogue to be built instead.
Speaker 3: Like I think it's just so stupid.
Speaker 2: My vocabulary isn't expansive enough to actually describe how you feel,
Speaker 2: but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, And it's such a barbarous thing to
Speaker 3: do to take this thing and like to destroy it
Speaker 3: that's so special to literally.
Speaker 4: More than a billion people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and be like now fuck you, like we have
Speaker 3: more guns, so we're doing our thing now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was correctly speculated because of this coincision of
Speaker 2: Ramadan and Passover that it would be a potential flashpoint
Speaker 2: for violence, and two regional meetings were held under United
Speaker 2: States supervision to hope to preclude any major escalations from
Speaker 2: this time, and it didn't work obviously. On February twenty sixth, Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian,
Speaker 2: Egyptian and American officials met in the Georganian city of Akaba.
Speaker 2: They emphasize a commitment to a quote de escalation on
Speaker 2: the ground to prevent further violence, and Israel pledged to
Speaker 2: stop authorizing new illegal settlements in Palestinian territories for six months.
Speaker 2: On March nineteenth, the second regional meeting happened and it
Speaker 2: was held in Charmelchech, where the Palestinian and Israeli officials
Speaker 2: committed to uphold the status quo of the Holy sites
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem quote, both in words and in practice, and
Speaker 2: they emphasize the quote necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians
Speaker 2: to actively prevent any actions that would disrupt the sanctity
Speaker 2: of these sites in general, but especially during the upcoming
Speaker 2: holy month of Ramadan. I feel like every time Israel
Speaker 2: says anything, you can't actually believe anything they say. There's
Speaker 2: pledges don't matter, the UNS labeling them as the partment
Speaker 2: APARTI you say doesn't matter, nothing really matters, because it's
Speaker 2: all empty words. And nhen Yahu's government hasn't been upholding
Speaker 2: the status quo in words or in practice. He is
Speaker 2: allied with far right and alter religious forces that have
Speaker 2: openly stated that the Israeli recognition of these Urginian gardenship
Speaker 2: of the holy sites was a historic mistake that they
Speaker 2: are bound on rectifying. So not only are they meeting
Speaker 2: just like to say face, I think they've openly said
Speaker 2: that we don't respect this group that is being held together.
Speaker 2: We want we want to we want to change it.
Speaker 4: We don't.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't understand how anyone can believe anything this
Speaker 2: country says.
Speaker 3: Even within Israel, right like people who can recognize that
Speaker 3: this current like Nenyaku coalition, it is opposed to the
Speaker 3: basics of their constitution and their democracy. And like when
Speaker 3: when you have people within the IDF being like, now, dog,
Speaker 3: you've gone too far like that, I think that that
Speaker 3: says a lot. But like they're not saying you've gone
Speaker 3: too far in yet throwing stung grenades into a mosque, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he will get away with pushing that ship further and
Speaker 3: further and.
Speaker 2: He has gone away with it.
Speaker 3: It's it's atrocious and will continue to when he gets
Speaker 3: domestic pushback, right like, because like aggressive Zionism is the
Speaker 3: kind of unifying like the grand unifying policy that brings
Speaker 3: people together for him, his coalition. So he's going to
Speaker 3: hell keep doing this, and like it would be irrational
Speaker 3: to expect people in Palestine not to respond. I know
Speaker 3: there are lots of new groups that are like popping
Speaker 3: up to fight back, which you know, you'd have to
Speaker 3: be incredibly naive to expect that not to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just what happens when you push people in
Speaker 2: a corner. And then I think what they actually like
Speaker 2: is an excuse to fight back too. So like when
Speaker 2: these when these groups do attack, that's always their excuse
Speaker 2: as to why they're attacking. So it's almost like they're
Speaker 2: provoking an attack on purpose to give them a reason
Speaker 2: to attack, which is stupid. Again, that word is the
Speaker 2: only word in my head right now.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, I was thinking about this thing that
Speaker 3: they do again, which seems to be like sticking a
Speaker 3: middle finger up. It's like that they like to withhold
Speaker 3: the bodies of people they've killed. Uh huh, yes, quite often,
Speaker 3: and like I just don't, like, what do you expect
Speaker 3: to gain by doing that other than just being unfathomably cruel.
Speaker 2: And the burial process for Muslims is very sacred, it's
Speaker 2: a very sacred ritual, and so they're purposely denying them
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: It's like, I mean, did you Neva convention. It's it's
Speaker 3: like a pretend thing. It doesn't matter, but it's still
Speaker 3: in humane, right, doesn't matter if some some people, so
Speaker 3: some old white dudes a long time ago, decided it
Speaker 3: was in humane or not, because I think anyone with
Speaker 3: Ed Sgudon could be like, man, that's so that's fucked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, And speaking of the Zionist movement
Speaker 2: and the far right movement, twenty twenty three started with
Speaker 2: the far right Minister of National Security at Tamara Berg Gavid.
Speaker 2: He entered Al Haramashadif and this provoked public anger across Palestine.
Speaker 2: Under his watch, the raids by Israeli settlers on the
Speaker 2: Muslim holy site of Alaxamosque. They were under the protection
Speaker 2: of the Israeli security forces and they've only intestified Bengavie.
Speaker 2: In other extremists in the government are in Yaho's only
Speaker 2: chance to stay in power and to avoid going to
Speaker 2: jail for corruption. And they know that, and they're taking
Speaker 2: advantage of the situation to support by all means possible
Speaker 2: the violence that the Jewish settlers have unleashed onto the
Speaker 2: Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank and continue to
Speaker 2: erode the status quo at the Holy sites. All of
Speaker 2: this is an aim to establish new facts on the
Speaker 2: ground aka full Israeli control. All of this is with
Speaker 2: the aim of establishing full Israeli control. And Yahoo does
Speaker 2: not mind this violence. He encourages and likes it for
Speaker 2: his own means. For him, violence is a useful distraction
Speaker 2: from the anti government protests which have played his sixth
Speaker 2: term in office because I did an election episode about
Speaker 2: Israel that you can always listen to. But net and
Speaker 2: Yahoo being in power wasn't supposed to happen again is
Speaker 2: the main thing. And him being in power and bringing
Speaker 2: in this terrible government. There's a reason why it's all
Speaker 2: happening so intensely. Yeah, it's just years of Zionist encouragement
Speaker 2: finally coming to a head, especially now that a lot
Speaker 2: of Zionists are in power and war is not really
Speaker 2: in Israel's interest. It's currently preoccupied with the Palestinian resistance
Speaker 2: in the West Bank. It's worried about Iran's military presence
Speaker 2: and diplomatic successes in the region. It's been striking Syria regularly,
Speaker 2: even just days after the devastating earthquakes that happened this year.
Speaker 2: They bomb Syria and they want to curb Iranian influence.
Speaker 2: And they're also concerned about Hezbollah's role in a recent
Speaker 2: roadside bomb explosion near the border with Lebanon. So starting
Speaker 2: a religious war quote unquote does not suit their I
Speaker 2: don't understand the motivation there, other than to further a
Speaker 2: certain dominance and to scare the Palestinians. On the other side,
Speaker 2: Hamas and Gaza has tried to take a measured response. Again,
Speaker 2: it warned Israel against further raids all in Alxa, and
Speaker 2: it is reluctant to escalate this because it would take
Speaker 2: attention from the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. Because
Speaker 2: Hamas sees the main area of conflict with Israel as
Speaker 2: the conflict in the West Bank, armed attacks in the
Speaker 2: occupied territories cause much more anxiety to the Israeli authorities
Speaker 2: than a confrontation with Gaza. Hamas's strategy now is to
Speaker 2: encourage a popular Palestinian mombilization in the West Bank, Jerusalem
Speaker 2: and Israel in order to serve as a barrier to
Speaker 2: further encroachment on the Aluxa Mosque. And that said, Hamas
Speaker 2: may find itself under pressure to act decisively, especially if
Speaker 2: Israel's brutal violence against worshippers continues. The Palestinian people I
Speaker 2: mentioned this in previous episode, but they have reacted angrily
Speaker 2: at the weak response from the PA, the Palatine authority,
Speaker 2: and it's inaction. They're frustrated that the supposed protectors or
Speaker 2: liaisons that they have to negotiate or protect them, they're
Speaker 2: not doing anything. So that anger becomes this pressure on
Speaker 2: someone to act, and it's usually Hamas because they're the
Speaker 2: longest standing and most powerful group in that area. The
Speaker 2: Hamas leadership would not want to be perceived as passive,
Speaker 2: and they may feel compelled to abide by popular demand
Speaker 2: to take a tougher stance and intensify rocket fire towards Israel.
Speaker 2: And this would repeat, as I mentioned earlier, the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one war on Gaza, which was also triggered by
Speaker 2: Israel's raids on Al al Samosque, and this would only
Speaker 2: further escalate the violence. Well after Ramadan, it's not going
Speaker 2: to just be contained in this month. And let's take
Speaker 2: our last break, really right back, and we're back talking
Speaker 2: about the escalation of violence. And there have been repeated
Speaker 2: warnings that Israel's actions in the Holy sites could trigger
Speaker 2: a quote unquote religious war. In January, Jordinian Ambassador Mahammud
Speaker 2: Daifa Lahmoud told the UN Security Council that Israeli attacks
Speaker 2: on Alfaramashadif are provoking quote the feelings of nearly two
Speaker 2: billion Muslims and this could spark a religious conflict. So
Speaker 2: the people that are saying it's religious may actually have
Speaker 2: a point if this actually comes to a head, because
Speaker 2: it's actually not the whole. The whole Israel Palestine quote
Speaker 2: unquote conflict is not about religion. It's about occupation and colonialism.
Speaker 2: But in this particular instance, when it comes to the mosque,
Speaker 2: the anger is very rooted in faith and a direct
Speaker 2: like slap in the face of their faith.
Speaker 3: So it takes a yeah, you can make it a
Speaker 3: religious conflict. I think that's like other colonial powers have
Speaker 3: been very good at doing by like desecrating holy sites
Speaker 3: of a religion. Yeah, right, Like it's kind of yeah,
Speaker 3: you risk alienating like it's a billion people, or you know,
Speaker 3: uniting a billion people in opposition when you just flagrantly
Speaker 3: do this shit like this. Like I don't think anyone
Speaker 3: who I'm not a religious person either, And like I
Speaker 3: watched that video of the cops or soldiers, I guess
Speaker 3: kind of the same thing and like beaten people with
Speaker 3: chairs and shit, and like that made me furious. That
Speaker 3: made me want to hurt someone, like and that's not
Speaker 3: something that's specially special to me. Maybe it was, I
Speaker 3: can imagine it even more furious.
Speaker 2: It should make anyone mad to see someone treated like that,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It shouldn't make anyone furious
Speaker 2: to see that kind of terror taking place.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people have trouble putting themselves
Speaker 2: and someone else's shoes maybe, or like they have trouble
Speaker 2: caring about something that doesn't affect them, And I think
Speaker 2: that is a very dangerous path to go on. It's
Speaker 2: just very self centered and main charactery and heartless.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, it's very odd that as humans, Like
Speaker 3: we've normalized the existence and to an extent, people will
Speaker 3: like simp for the existence of like this state, right,
Speaker 3: which is like an abstraction of capital, And like then
Speaker 3: the state exists as an a protraction of capital, and
Speaker 3: it has boundaries and rules, and if you transgressed us,
Speaker 3: even if you don't, if you're just like like antithetical
Speaker 3: to its vision for a piece of land, then then
Speaker 3: people can come and beat the shit into you while
Speaker 3: you're praying. Now, like that's just a thing that's going
Speaker 3: to happen. And like, I don't know if I feel
Speaker 3: like sometimes if we if we sort of re round
Speaker 3: the past two or three hundred years and we're like, hey,
Speaker 3: peasant in the seventeen hundred six, do you want to
Speaker 3: be in a place where like someone could walk into
Speaker 3: this mosque anytime thirty stom grades beat the shit out
Speaker 3: of old ladies, and like no one would go from
Speaker 3: like A to B. Right, But we're at B now
Speaker 3: and people don't seem to want to like investigate how
Speaker 3: we got here and what we can do to change it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they regard it as like just a thing
Speaker 2: that happens in order for like humanity or like civilization
Speaker 2: to progress. Yeah, so backwards. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: No, people can read the door of everything they want to. Yes,
Speaker 3: they want to know about that, but yeah, oh you
Speaker 3: can just you know, not in sim for cops.
Speaker 4: If you don't, I can help.
Speaker 2: That's a good first step, because to fuck cops. But
Speaker 2: there is a growing concern that with its aggressive actions
Speaker 2: in Aluxa, Nanyahu's government is seeking to impose restrictions on
Speaker 2: the access that Palestinians have to the holy site, the
Speaker 2: way that it was done with the Abrahemi Mosque and
Speaker 2: Hebron that I mentioned earlier. This mosque was divided by
Speaker 2: the Israeli authorities into sections that Muslims and Jews can
Speaker 2: visit to supposedly prevent further violence because a masker happened
Speaker 2: there in nineteen ninety four, when a Jewish settler opened
Speaker 2: fire on Muslim worshippers and killed twenty nine people who
Speaker 2: were there to pray. So it's We've talked about how
Speaker 2: history repeats itself a lot, and being afraid of that
Speaker 2: happening is not illogical, it's not irrational because it's happened before,
Speaker 2: it could happen again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the IDF always backs up these settlers, right like
Speaker 3: they did it yesterday. I think, like a kid was
Speaker 3: killed in a refugee camp in an incident. I think
Speaker 3: we'd started when, if I'm not wrong, there was a march,
Speaker 3: like a bunch of settlers were marching into into an
Speaker 3: area and claiming that you know, it's legalizing it and
Speaker 3: normalize it, do another colonial conquest. And yeah, they're willing
Speaker 3: to shoot a kid like you know, they seem to
Speaker 3: be willing to back these people, especially when they form,
Speaker 3: if I understand correctly, like an important part of the
Speaker 3: coalition that Nenya who's relying on right now.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a huge part. And also those marches by
Speaker 2: settlers are usually protected by cops, like they're shielded by
Speaker 2: the IDF. It's not like they're there to stop any
Speaker 2: kind of conflict. They're there to protect the settlers. It's
Speaker 2: just backwards history repeating itself. And if these measures are
Speaker 2: imposed on Alexa, it would be a clear violation of
Speaker 2: the status quo, under which non Muslims are allowed to
Speaker 2: visit only at certain hours of the day and they're
Speaker 2: not allowed to pray inside. But this is obviously not
Speaker 2: what's happening and so far there have only been condemnations
Speaker 2: issued by Arab states and the EU and the US.
Speaker 2: What Arab and Western capitals do not understand is that
Speaker 2: unless there is a harsh response to Israeli actions now,
Speaker 2: Natanyahuo's far right allies will only be emboldened to go
Speaker 2: even further in their efforts to take over Muslim and
Speaker 2: Christian holy sites and settle there. Israeli aggression and Elhadamashdif
Speaker 2: is turning Israel into a detonator that will sooner or
Speaker 2: later blow up the whole region. It's really felt like
Speaker 2: that for me for a long time, and for a
Speaker 2: lot of people. It's like this metaphorical ticking time bomb
Speaker 2: and Israel themselves is provoking it to detonate. And I
Speaker 2: think this pressure cooker of a situation is bound to
Speaker 2: have an apex. It's not going to be boiling forever.
Speaker 2: And the violence isn't just contained at Alexa. Israel didn't
Speaker 2: take a break from all their other terrorist activities to
Speaker 2: focus on just one, because their other terrors activities are
Speaker 2: still happening. As you mentioned, on April tenth, a Palestinian
Speaker 2: child was killed by Israeli forces in the akabeta Jabar
Speaker 2: refugee camp in Jericho. Mohammed Fayez Bahan was fifteen years
Speaker 2: old and he was shot in the head, chest and stomach.
Speaker 2: Make it make sense. On April eighth, the Gaza Strip
Speaker 2: endured a night of bombardment as Israeli fighter jets conducted
Speaker 2: air raids on several sites in the territory. The first
Speaker 2: Israeli air strike that hit was near Eldora Children's Hospital
Speaker 2: in the besieged Gaza Strip. Some reporters talked to people
Speaker 2: that experienced this event in this active terror and some
Speaker 2: going to read some of their quotes. Samar al Juan
Speaker 2: talked to Al Jazeera about her terrified experience when she
Speaker 2: rushed to her two year old daughter's bed to pick
Speaker 2: her up. Moments later, the glass from the window next
Speaker 2: to her on the bed shattered and crashed onto the cot.
Speaker 2: She said, my daughter miraculously survived. Last night, we were
Speaker 2: sleeping in the ward. Suddenly we woke up to the
Speaker 2: sound of terrifying air strikes. There were moments of massive fear.
Speaker 2: The glass was falling. I immediately rushed to take my
Speaker 2: child out of her bed. Moments later, the window fell
Speaker 2: on her bed. I was so close to losing her
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. She continues to say. All the sick children
Speaker 2: were frightened and screaming. A state of tension prevailed among
Speaker 2: all the mothers and the medical staff because of the
Speaker 2: intensity of the bombing, glass from the windows was falling
Speaker 2: and shattering. There were some windows that fell onto the
Speaker 2: beds of sick children just moments after they had been
Speaker 2: picked up, and this could have caused a catastrophe and
Speaker 2: a large number of injuries. The Godz's Ministry of Health
Speaker 2: said this is not the first time that health facilities
Speaker 2: have been targeted and it is unacceptable. These attacks not
Speaker 2: only put patience lives at risk, but they also create
Speaker 2: a sense of fear among healthcare workersats in their families.
Speaker 2: The same mother from earlier went on to say, several
Speaker 2: children have spent the night trembling in fear. Our children
Speaker 2: are poor in Gaza. They do not enjoy Ramadan or
Speaker 2: d or any other occasion. They are always threatened with
Speaker 2: fear and destruction that may come their way at any moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's We did an interview a few months ago
Speaker 3: with some young men from Gaza that we haven't put
Speaker 3: out yet, but we will, But I've spoken to them
Speaker 3: quite a few times, and I remember one of the
Speaker 3: things that they would say to me that really sort
Speaker 3: of like was very affecting for me was that like
Speaker 3: they they got they had very young boys who would
Speaker 3: come and stay and they would do parkour together, and
Speaker 3: that these eight year old boys would routinely wake up
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night screaming like like with
Speaker 3: horrible PTSD, and they think, yeah, the fucking their children,
Speaker 3: Like they shouldn't be anywhere near that stuff. And like
Speaker 3: people will talk about precision air strikes in Gaza and
Speaker 3: like it's not like even even if you manage to
Speaker 3: somehow not kill any people, then you're still going to
Speaker 3: fundamentally alter the course of someone's life in a terrible way.
Speaker 2: There was there was a study done. I'm paraphrasing it,
Speaker 2: but it basically showed that the children in Gaza are
Speaker 2: in a perpetual state of trauma like they had. They
Speaker 2: they never get over the phase where they're out of
Speaker 2: that fireflight mentality. Yeah, there's they're stunted in this the
Speaker 2: fear part of PTSD. And it's so sad because that's there,
Speaker 2: that's their reality. They've never known anything different other than
Speaker 2: fear and violence and the loss of life at any moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they can't leave right, like, it's extremely difficult,
Speaker 3: Like our friends who have tried to leave that it's
Speaker 3: taken them years of trying to leave. They can't go
Speaker 3: anywhere else. They're trapped in the most bombed place on earth,
Speaker 3: and that's the whole reality.
Speaker 2: Gaza has been referred to an open air, constant camp,
Speaker 2: like it's not just a place where people live.
Speaker 5: It's been.
Speaker 2: Just the main target of Israel for a really long time.
Speaker 2: And I always recommend this movie, but Gaza Fights for
Speaker 2: Freedom is a great movie by Abbi Martin. It's free
Speaker 2: on YouTube. I would watch it if you want some
Speaker 2: more examples of what's happening in Gaza, because it's horrific.
Speaker 2: It's a hard watch, but it's important if you want
Speaker 2: more information. In the Altafa district of Gaza City, raids
Speaker 2: were also taking place. Meshdi Abu Nima and his family
Speaker 2: woke up at three am first hold, which is the
Speaker 2: pre sunrise meal right before you fast the whole day,
Speaker 2: so they woke up at three am and then suddenly
Speaker 2: Israeli warplanes were attacking the empty land. Next to their
Speaker 2: house and this caused severe destruction to their home. Abu
Speaker 2: Nima is the father of seven children, and he told
Speaker 2: Al Jazeira it was like an earthquake. We were terrified.
Speaker 2: Immediately I rushed to my three daughter's bedroom to find
Speaker 2: my two year old daughter covered shattered window glass. I
Speaker 2: can't forget her shock, fear and her heartbeat. Everyone in
Speaker 2: the house was screaming until now. I don't understand why
Speaker 2: they bombed our area. How could an empty land be
Speaker 2: bombed without any justification. There are no resistance fighters or
Speaker 2: any military sites here. It is just an empty land
Speaker 2: between residential buildings. And there was a lot of detruction
Speaker 2: that happened. As I said, there's no excuse for it.
Speaker 2: The oldest son in this family his car was obliterated
Speaker 2: and it was his only source of income, and he
Speaker 2: told al Jazeira conditions in the Gaza Strip are unbearably difficult.
Speaker 2: The bombing came and destroyed whatever we have left. Life
Speaker 2: here has truly become hell.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, do you.
Speaker 2: Want to spell to any differently people? But I don't
Speaker 2: want to end this episode completely on a terrible note.
Speaker 2: I was really happy today when I woke up and
Speaker 2: my mom sent me this video of Bernie Sanders calling
Speaker 2: Israel or racist government like in those words on television,
Speaker 2: which is very very important, especially as a Jewish ally
Speaker 2: because I've said this before, but Jewish people that defend
Speaker 2: Palestine are some of the most important allies we can have,
Speaker 2: because there's no excuse for anyone to be like, you're
Speaker 2: anti Semitic, because it's not about that, it's not about
Speaker 2: religion or anything. If you're anti Zionist, you're not anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: It's very different. And so having Bernie Sanders be the
Speaker 2: one to call out Israel is very important. So I
Speaker 2: want to play that clip because he'll say it better
Speaker 2: than I can, And yeah, that's the episode.
Speaker 8: Do you think that democracy is in peril in Israel
Speaker 8: right now?
Speaker 9: I do. I am very worried about what Nyahu is
Speaker 9: doing and some of his allies in government and what
Speaker 9: may happen to the Palestinian people.
Speaker 10: And let me tell you something.
Speaker 9: I mean I haven't said this publicly, but I think
Speaker 9: the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel,
Speaker 9: and I think we've to put some strings attached to
Speaker 9: that and say you cannot run a racist government. You
Speaker 9: cannot turn your back on the Two States solutions. You
Speaker 9: cannot demean the Palestinian people there. You just can't do
Speaker 9: it and then come to America and ask for money.
Speaker 8: Has the administration Have you talked to the administration about it?
Speaker 8: They've been very careful in criticism of the Nat Yahoo government.
Speaker 9: Well, I am not careful about it. I'm embarrassed that
Speaker 9: in Israel you have a government of that nature right now.
Speaker 8: And are you going to introduce something we may well yes,
Speaker 8: to try to attack strings to.
Speaker 11: Us they cannot give if you have a you know,
Speaker 11: whether it's Saudi Arabia or other authoritarian societies. If a
Speaker 11: government is acting in a racist way and they want
Speaker 11: billions of dollars from the taxpayers of the United States,
Speaker 11: I think you say, sorry, but it's not acceptable.
Speaker 9: You want our money. Fine, this is what you got
Speaker 9: to do to get it.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to what could happen here. It's still Cherene
Speaker 2: and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining me, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime the listeners they get what they want, you know,
Speaker 2: they demanded it, and here.
Speaker 3: We are delivery log onto the subreddit.
Speaker 2: I was interested in having someone else receive the information
Speaker 2: I had because it's really hard to do it with myself.
Speaker 2: And it's also hard not to like sound like a
Speaker 2: bored professor or something, because I just sound.
Speaker 3: Like this something I have experienced.
Speaker 4: Hear, Yeah, like a pro professor.
Speaker 3: But it's also very emotionally challenging to just be like,
Speaker 3: here some terrible fucking things that have happened again and exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you buy yourself, it's like it feels a
Speaker 2: lot heavier for some reason. Uh, And so I'm glad
Speaker 2: to have someone else on anyway, Thank you. Today I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about something that happened seventy five years
Speaker 2: ago this month, So there's going to be some history here,
Speaker 2: but I think it's really important history, so please stay
Speaker 2: tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But seventy
Speaker 2: five years ago this month, before Israel was officially established,
Speaker 2: the Dairya scene massacre happened. This massacre was part of
Speaker 2: the Nekba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even seventy
Speaker 2: five years later, and it should always serve as a
Speaker 2: reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in
Speaker 2: order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized,
Speaker 2: have people killed and forcibly removed from their homes, and
Speaker 2: the indigenous people were expelled from their homes and the
Speaker 2: ownership of their own land was granted someone else. And
Speaker 2: I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that
Speaker 2: happen is extremely important because we're not that far removed
Speaker 2: from that brutalization. We can say, like, oh, that was
Speaker 2: medieval times, people were different. It's like, no, that was
Speaker 2: like less than one hundred years ago.
Speaker 5: Shut up.
Speaker 2: The nakba aka the catastrophe in Arabic. It refers to
Speaker 2: the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians
Speaker 2: from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias in the
Speaker 2: New Israeli Army during the State of Israel's establishment between
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven and nineteen forty eight. The Nekabo was
Speaker 2: a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish
Speaker 2: majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves. Zionist leaders use the
Speaker 2: euphemism quote unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today
Speaker 2: would be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nakba
Speaker 2: and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today. They
Speaker 2: lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, when some European Jews, influenced by the
Speaker 2: nationalism that was sweeping the continent, they decided that the
Speaker 2: solution to anti Semitism in Europe and Russia was the
Speaker 2: establishment of a state for Jews and Palestine. They began
Speaker 2: immigrating to Palestine as colonizers, where they started depossessing indigenous
Speaker 2: Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In November of nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created
Speaker 2: United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into
Speaker 2: Jewish and Arab states against the will of the majority
Speaker 2: indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision
Speaker 2: or choice to make. Regardless, the UN approved of a
Speaker 2: plant divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the
Speaker 2: will of Palestinian people. It gave fifty six percent of
Speaker 2: that land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that Jews only owned about seven percent of the private
Speaker 2: land of Palestine and made up only thirty three percent
Speaker 2: of the population, and a very large percentage of this
Speaker 2: percentage of thirty three percent were recent immigrants from Europe.
Speaker 2: So handing over more than half of someone else's land
Speaker 2: truly does it make sense. I don't care what religious
Speaker 2: text or citing, it was wrong at this point in
Speaker 2: time to take that land.
Speaker 4: It was just wrong.
Speaker 2: The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just
Speaker 2: forty two percent of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian
Speaker 2: Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and
Speaker 2: were indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to
Speaker 2: be governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after
Speaker 2: the partition plan was passed. The expulsion of Palestinians by
Speaker 2: Zionists militias began months before the arming of neighboring Arab
Speaker 2: states began to be involved. So there was no other
Speaker 2: person to say, don't do this, or like there was
Speaker 2: no one else to fight to hold them back. I
Speaker 2: guess is what I'm trying to say. And by the
Speaker 2: time these Zionist militias and the new Israeli Army finished,
Speaker 2: the new State of Israel covered seventy eight percent of Palestine.
Speaker 2: So they did even follow the rules either. They just
Speaker 2: kept on swallowing up the land that wasn't even there
Speaker 2: to begin with, with this violent Nekba that it's just
Speaker 2: it's it's a terrible, horrific thing they did. There is
Speaker 2: a film on Netflix called Farha. It's the first film
Speaker 2: that depicts any kind of story about the Nekba, and
Speaker 2: it's by a Palestinian filmmaker. It's really powerful. I would
Speaker 2: recommend seeing that if you want an example of what happened,
Speaker 2: because it's all factual as far as like the terror
Speaker 2: that they did, so I'd recommend that film. Give it
Speaker 2: five stars for the haters, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Oh, guy, I can imagine. There were reviews just like yeah, death, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was the film that the Israeli government tried to
Speaker 2: to ban, and they were a lot of Zionists were
Speaker 2: commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one
Speaker 2: star or whatever. They want Netflix to take it off Netflix,
Speaker 2: but no, we fuck the haters. Help us out. Five stars.
Speaker 2: Put it on the background of your TV. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Just keep streaming it, keep streaming it exactly strike a
Speaker 4: blow against colonialism.
Speaker 2: But that's just an example of how important and scared
Speaker 2: they are of the truth. Because it's a movie. It's
Speaker 2: a fucking movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The control of the narrative is so important in
Speaker 3: these things, exactly. Yes, And even the way you refer
Speaker 3: to it, right, not not calling it the knock, like
Speaker 3: calling it a transfer, not a cleansing, exactly, calling it,
Speaker 3: like not referring to it in the same terms as
Speaker 3: we would do like the genocidal set of colonialism that
Speaker 3: settled this country, or you know, the way that Britain
Speaker 3: and France and Germany behaved in Africa, like trying to
Speaker 3: not like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state, right
Speaker 3: when when that's what it is, is what it does. Like,
Speaker 3: all of those things are so important, and they might
Speaker 3: seem like petty battles, but they really control how we
Speaker 3: see things. I think when you control language, you can
Speaker 3: control how people perceive things.
Speaker 2: And I think controlling the narrative is so parallel to
Speaker 2: like controlling the history books, because that's what gets remembered
Speaker 2: by the people that want to the narrative to have
Speaker 2: a certain thing. Not all history books obviously, but a
Speaker 2: lot of the times the things that are considered facts
Speaker 2: are biased. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, you're only getting half of the things, right,
Speaker 3: or like, yeah, I mean, as a historian, we are
Speaker 3: all biased, and so we should declare our biases and
Speaker 3: sort of go forward that way, rather than presenting our
Speaker 3: biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a
Speaker 3: biased thing, which is what we tend to get in
Speaker 3: the US, especially when we look at this stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 2: I Like, I didn't bash historians, but I criticized them.
Speaker 2: But you're like, I'm an historian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will not jump to the defense of science
Speaker 3: historians I've worked with. Like, there's a chapter in my
Speaker 3: book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, and like
Speaker 3: about thirty percent of volunteers were Jewish people, right, and
Speaker 3: many of them had been like couldn't go back to
Speaker 3: Like there are some of them who like fought in
Speaker 3: the Spanish Civil War, were gorillas in the Second World War,
Speaker 3: survived the Holocaust in some cases, and they were anti Zionists,
Speaker 3: and so like they didn't have a place, like you know,
Speaker 3: there wasn't a place for them as people who had
Speaker 3: had stuck to their very decent principles of like you
Speaker 3: shouldn't impose shit on force for people who don't want it,
Speaker 3: and we're opposed to fascism or opposed to colonialism. There
Speaker 3: wasn't a place for them in that sort of post
Speaker 3: World War two Jewish movement, that Zionist movement. There were
Speaker 3: in other places, but yeah, it's very sad that their
Speaker 3: stories aren't like like if a friend of mine was
Speaker 3: the person who first wrote articles about them, but like
Speaker 3: their memory is completely erased, right, or at least it's
Speaker 3: not present, And then they should be people that, like
Speaker 3: any recentall person would be very proud of, right, they
Speaker 3: were willing to die for someone else's battle, and then yeah,
Speaker 3: they were kind of that they're they stuck to the
Speaker 3: same principles the whole way through it, and the world
Speaker 3: kind of moved around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I think as time goes on,
Speaker 2: those things won't even be existing in people's reality, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like if no one remembers that
Speaker 2: that happened, if no one is part of what that happened,
Speaker 2: like it's just going to go away. It's going to disappear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why it's so important to do history and
Speaker 3: to do like to use different sources, right, and to
Speaker 3: do history from a people's perspective, not from a perspective
Speaker 3: of people who are in power.
Speaker 4: Exact history from below, that's what we call it.
Speaker 3: Say that sounds on more time if people call it
Speaker 3: history from below, but like and to look at other sources, right,
Speaker 3: like without like riding my hobby horse too much. Like
Speaker 3: I was primarily a historian of sport and anti fascism,
Speaker 3: and like specifically sport.
Speaker 4: I got a ton of pushback on when I started.
Speaker 3: Because it's not important, right, and it's not you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like fucking I don't have any charts or whatever,
Speaker 3: and like, it's actually very important to where people were
Speaker 3: able to express who they were and who was on
Speaker 3: the team and who was not on their team, right,
Speaker 3: And that's where you find these people who are very
Speaker 3: impactful lots of other areas. And I think, like if
Speaker 3: I was a younger person and I was trying to
Speaker 3: find my way from my identity and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: the signism seems wrong, like in the same way that
Speaker 3: other things seem wrong, to have those people to be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: these people also saw that, right, Like they didn't want
Speaker 3: a boot on anyone's neck, not just not I didn't
Speaker 3: want it to be their boot on someone else's neck
Speaker 3: and that was fine. You know, they like having seen
Speaker 3: the Holocausts, having seen what happened in to Spain, the like,
Speaker 3: now this shit is wrong. It's still wrong. Doesn't matter
Speaker 3: if we're doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their humanity prevailed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's important for people like to have those
Speaker 3: those stories to be like, Okay, well I'm not fucking
Speaker 3: crazy or it's not that I just don't understand what
Speaker 3: it was like back then because a lot of people
Speaker 3: could see it and we're like, no, we shouldn't be
Speaker 3: doing this.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, historian James, thank.
Speaker 4: You for jordaning me today. Sorry, no, why are you apologizing?
Speaker 5: I love that shit? Fuck No, I love it history
Speaker 5: from below.
Speaker 3: That you said, yeah's quite no theme.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good thing to abide by. So
Speaker 2: I'm glad that there's a little catchy phrase for.
Speaker 3: It, Stewart Hale and things like that. Yeah, we'll do
Speaker 3: another episode on this one day.
Speaker 5: Yes please.
Speaker 2: So, as we mentioned before, Israel stole about seventy eight
Speaker 2: percent of Palestine and then this left twenty two percent,
Speaker 2: and the twenty two percent was compromised of the West Bank,
Speaker 2: East Jerusalem and Gaza and these regions fell under the
Speaker 2: control of Jordan Egypt, respectively. In the nineteen sixty seven war,
Speaker 2: the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza,
Speaker 2: and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards. And just to
Speaker 2: give you some numbers, I think they're important sometimes just
Speaker 2: to get the context of the scale of something. But
Speaker 2: the Nekaba, by the numbers, is what I'm about to continue.
Speaker 2: Between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million Palestinians
Speaker 2: were expelled from their homeland and they were made refugees
Speaker 2: by Zionist militias, amounting to approximately seventy five percent of
Speaker 2: all Palestinians. Between two hundred and fifty thousand and three
Speaker 2: hundred fifty thousand Palestinians were driven out from their homes
Speaker 2: by Zionist militias between the passage of the UN Partition
Speaker 2: Plan on November twenty ninth of nineteen forty seven and
Speaker 2: the establishment of Israel on May fifteenth of nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: Prior to the outbreak of war with the neighboring Arab States,
Speaker 2: several dozen massacres of Palestinians were carried out by Zionist
Speaker 2: militias and the Israeli Army, which played a critical role
Speaker 2: in prompting the flight of many Palestinians from their homes.
Speaker 2: More than one hundred Palestinians, including dozens of children, women,
Speaker 2: and elderly people, were massacred in the Palestinian town of
Speaker 2: Dariusne near Jerusalem on April ninth of nineteen forty eight
Speaker 2: by Zionist militia. This is the main massacre I want
Speaker 2: to talk about today because it's been exactly seventy five
Speaker 2: years on April ninth. But it was one of many massacres,
Speaker 2: and it was the one that is cited as igniting
Speaker 2: a lot of the Codomino effect. The massacre at Daria
Speaker 2: Scene was one of the worst atrocities committed during the
Speaker 2: Nakba and a pivotal moment in Israel's establishment as a
Speaker 2: Jewish majority state, and again it triggered the flight of
Speaker 2: Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and beyond. The Dariacene
Speaker 2: massacre is commemorated annually by Palestinians around the world. Approximately
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians remained inside what became
Speaker 2: Israel's borders in nineteen forty eight, a quarter of them
Speaker 2: internally displaced. These Palestinians, who are sometimes referred to as
Speaker 2: Israeli Arabs, were granted Israeli citizenship, but stripped of most
Speaker 2: of their land and governed by violent, undemocratic military rule
Speaker 2: as of nineteen sixty six. As of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: there are more than two million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship,
Speaker 2: comprising more than twenty percent of Israel's population, and they
Speaker 2: are forced to live as second class citizens in their
Speaker 2: own homeland, subject to dozens of laws that discriminate against
Speaker 2: them in almost every aspect of life because they're not Jewish.
Speaker 2: Let's take our first break here, and I'll come back
Speaker 2: and tell you more terrible things. So herepe, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2: I'm going to finish up a little bit more of
Speaker 2: these numbers, and then I'm going to talk about Daryasin.
Speaker 2: More than four hundred Palestinian cities and towns were systematically
Speaker 2: destroyed by Zionist militias and the New Israeli Army, or
Speaker 2: they are repopulated with Jews. Between nineteen forty eight and
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty, most Palestinian communities, including homes businesses, houses of worship,
Speaker 2: vi urban centers. They were destroyed to prevent the return
Speaker 2: of their Palestinian owners, who are now refugees outside of
Speaker 2: Israel's borders, or they were internally displaced inside them. Today
Speaker 2: there are more than seven point two million Elstinian refugees,
Speaker 2: including Neckbus survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in
Speaker 2: the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and neighboring
Speaker 2: Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they're
Speaker 2: denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland.
Speaker 2: This is the last big number I want to say,
Speaker 2: just because I think it's it's so big I had
Speaker 2: to say it. Approximately four million, two hundred and forty
Speaker 2: four thousand, seven hundred and seventy six acres of Palestinian
Speaker 2: land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after the
Speaker 2: establishment of the state in nineteen forty eight. Millions of acres.
Speaker 2: Like it's not just a tiny little place that no
Speaker 2: one was in before, like noe, millions of acres of
Speaker 2: land were forcibly stolen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, and all of them like land that
Speaker 3: people have had for generations, that they've farmed Like this
Speaker 3: is like it's not the oldest settlement on earth, but
Speaker 3: people have been living here for tenth thousands of years.
Speaker 2: I said, Aluxey Yesterday was built in ten thirty five.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, this shit is very old and like sometimes
Speaker 3: the same people or people's sort of family. It's not
Speaker 3: just a like loss of property, so lots of everything
Speaker 3: that's sacred and like the Aluxa Mosque or these things
Speaker 3: that are sacred and important to you, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, and so more it's what you said earlier.
Speaker 2: It's like we have to remember these things because otherwise
Speaker 2: they'll get forgotten the in whoever's recording the history, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like it's yeah, I mean they have been here. Right
Speaker 3: when we look at how America sees itself, it sees
Speaker 3: the land that it expanded into, it's like terrannualius, like
Speaker 3: like empty land that was unoccupied, which it was not.
Speaker 3: There was not a wilderness to tame. Like there were
Speaker 3: people living here and they were living very happily, and
Speaker 3: they were living they weren't like I don't want to
Speaker 3: do the whole like like in commune with nature thing,
Speaker 3: but like this wasn't a wild and savage place, right,
Speaker 3: there were people existing here and taking from the land
Speaker 3: and living on the land, and like we that just
Speaker 3: doesn't get fucking like Ruth Bader Ginsburg was citing the
Speaker 3: doctrine of discovery, you know, like you all the Libs
Speaker 3: love Ruth Bada Ginswick, but like it's so subsumed into
Speaker 3: what America is that Like like Obama did a fucking
Speaker 3: tweet like this nation was built on peaceful protest. It
Speaker 3: was built on fucking genocide, Like fuck off, yeah, but
Speaker 3: we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten, right, Like
Speaker 3: you don't go to school in California and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: there is a fucking unit they just changed. Actually there
Speaker 3: was a Unipero Hessea High School, and like this is
Speaker 3: a person who did genocide. Like we wouldn't have a
Speaker 3: fucking Gerbels High School in Germany, you know.
Speaker 4: And then Britain does a shit too.
Speaker 3: I'm not not like, yeah, I'm in a glasshouse, so
Speaker 3: I don't say that, but yeah, we we this wasn't
Speaker 3: an empty place.
Speaker 2: And it's really important to remember that because that is
Speaker 2: so often the talking twenty of fucking stupid people that
Speaker 2: try to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to
Speaker 2: now the main massacre or topic I want to talk
Speaker 2: about today, which happened on April ninth in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: just weeks before the creation of the State of Israel,
Speaker 2: when members of the Urgun and stern Gang Zionist militias
Speaker 2: attacked the village of Dryasin and they killed at least
Speaker 2: one hundred and seven Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages,
Speaker 2: massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive to clear
Speaker 2: the way for the creation of the State of Israel.
Speaker 2: And this was one of the many massacres that happened
Speaker 2: during the Nekba, where again an estimated fifteen thousand Palestinians
Speaker 2: were killed and some seven hundred and fifty thousand fled
Speaker 2: their homes as refugees, ignited a very terrifying domino effect.
Speaker 2: This year, the UN will host its first ever high
Speaker 2: level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in
Speaker 2: the establishment of the State of Israel in May nineteen
Speaker 2: forty So this is the first time ever that the
Speaker 2: U one has recognized that the Nekba even happened, or
Speaker 2: like is it happened enough to mention it and commemorate it.
Speaker 2: But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the loss of
Speaker 2: each village that was once part of their homeland. Among
Speaker 2: them was Daria Scene, and it was a village perched
Speaker 2: on a hill west of Jerusalem. And this massacre has
Speaker 2: become emblematic of the suffering that Israel would inflict on
Speaker 2: the Palestinians. Many of the people slaughtered, from those who
Speaker 2: were tied to trees and burned to death to those
Speaker 2: lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns.
Speaker 2: Many of these people were women, children, and the elderly,
Speaker 2: and Fudaw does a really good job of showing this
Speaker 2: lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie
Speaker 2: that I mentioned earlier. As the news of these atrocities spread,
Speaker 2: thousands fled their villages in fear. So again on April
Speaker 2: ninth and nineteen forty eight, the Israeli militia struck Daria Scene,
Speaker 2: where about seven hundred Palestinian lived. According to the Israeli narrative,
Speaker 2: operation Nashon and Ahhson apologies if I mispronounce that, but
Speaker 2: this operation aimed to break through the blockaded road to
Speaker 2: Jerusalem and the fighters encountered stiff resistance from the villagers
Speaker 2: that forced them to advance slowly from house to house.
Speaker 2: It's kind of silly and strange how the same excuse
Speaker 2: is being used, like a century later to justify acts
Speaker 2: of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them and that's
Speaker 2: why they butchered them.
Speaker 4: It's yeah, it's it's it's pathetic. It's stupid and pathetic.
Speaker 3: And like, yeah, for having the I don't know, temerity
Speaker 3: to be like no, you can't take my home. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they carried out a collective punishment on Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that's the Israeli narrative. That's what their history books say,
Speaker 2: is that this was the aim of this operation. They
Speaker 2: were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to
Speaker 2: go from house to house like that's it's just a
Speaker 2: fucked up narrative. But Palestinians and some Israeli historians say
Speaker 2: that the villagers had signed a non aggression agreement with
Speaker 2: the Haganah, which was the pre Israeli state Zionist army.
Speaker 2: They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in
Speaker 2: mass graves. According to a nineteen forty eight report, filed
Speaker 2: by the British Delegation to the UN. The killing of
Speaker 2: quote some two hundred and fifty Arabs men, women and
Speaker 2: children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and
Speaker 2: children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by
Speaker 2: automatic firing. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with
Speaker 2: degrading brutality. This is from a nineteen forty eight report
Speaker 2: filed by the British delegation.
Speaker 5: Like it's in the.
Speaker 3: Record, weren't they both like the stern going and the
Speaker 3: whatever the militia was called the begin was in It's
Speaker 3: like I said, l I think were like they hadn't
Speaker 3: really done any military operations before, right that they'd just
Speaker 3: been just like bomb like they did car bombs and
Speaker 3: shit favious to this, Like the British had already like
Speaker 3: like that. They were like they were killing British people
Speaker 3: and I guess Arab people in Palestine before this.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I mean the escalation in violence was like
Speaker 2: pretty severe, right, but I think they would have gone
Speaker 2: there eventually, you know, there's kind of hit forward.
Speaker 3: I think they'd already like established an intention or like
Speaker 3: a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in
Speaker 3: their way, right, and they wanted to show that they
Speaker 3: were like unlike the like I guess, like the labor
Speaker 3: aligned Zionist movement, that they were like more hardcore than that,
Speaker 3: and they exactly like. That's why they made a spectacle
Speaker 3: of violence like this.
Speaker 2: They're establishing their their power and dominance right. Israeli historian
Speaker 2: Benny Morris said that the militias quote ransacked unscrupulously, stole
Speaker 2: money and jewels from the survivors, and earned the bodies.
Speaker 2: Even dismemberment and rape occurred. I mean, there's nothing to
Speaker 2: say to that. The number of dead is disputed, but
Speaker 2: it ranges from one hundred to two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2: A representative of the Red Cross who entered Darya scene
Speaker 2: on April eleventh. Two days later, they reported seeing the
Speaker 2: bodies of some one hundred and fifty people heaped haphazardly
Speaker 2: in a cave, while around fifty were amassed in a
Speaker 2: separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the
Speaker 2: time that such events had been quote unquote infamous. In
Speaker 2: Darya scene, hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred.
Speaker 2: He said, let the village remain uninhabited for the time being.
Speaker 2: Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of
Speaker 2: war and a warning to our people that no practical
Speaker 2: military needs may ever justify such acts of murder. He
Speaker 2: also noted that Darya scene had a profound demographic and
Speaker 2: political effect. He's referring to the fact that the news
Speaker 2: of his masacre spread and it prompted hundreds of Palestinians
Speaker 2: to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next Pilunia, Cyrus,
Speaker 2: bit Saruk and Bidu. Daria scene was no mistake, according
Speaker 2: to Israeli historian Elain Pape. Iline Pape has been called
Speaker 2: a Israeli quote unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth,
Speaker 2: the actual truth of what happened in their history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the concept of Vision's history is nonsense. Like it
Speaker 3: suggests that like there is a settled history at some point,
Speaker 3: which that's not right. Like we're always looking at sources again,
Speaker 3: but was looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not
Speaker 3: like there is like this monolith of history and then
Speaker 3: some meddling bussard comes and chops it down. It's fundamentally
Speaker 3: like misunderstanding how history is done. Yes, why shouldn't pay
Speaker 3: attention to Malcolm Gladwell for that and many other reasons,
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's a ridiculous idea. He's not Like it's
Speaker 3: not like everyone was like, oh yeah, this wasn't a
Speaker 3: bad thing, and then he came along and like injected
Speaker 3: some kind of political animists in his history. He came
Speaker 3: along and looked at maybe news sources, maybe the same
Speaker 3: sources of people. How I don't know, And it was like, now,
Speaker 3: you guys, have you got this wrong? You called this wrong?
Speaker 3: But that's what historians do. Like you can't fucking write
Speaker 3: your PhD without disagreeing with someone and doing some new history.
Speaker 3: Like that's what takes you from a master's to a doctorate.
Speaker 3: And like you're supposed to do three articles in a
Speaker 3: book to get tenure. Like your articles can't just be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we pretty much called this one right the first time,
Speaker 3: you know, Like the process of doing history is to
Speaker 3: revise and hope to better understand things from different perspectives. Totally.
Speaker 2: I like that that's the point of history is to revise,
Speaker 2: Because you're right, and I just think it's it's so
Speaker 2: discrediting of his work.
Speaker 3: To call him a.
Speaker 2: Revisionist historian, Yeah, it's condescending, you know, and as someone
Speaker 2: that interviewed him called him this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean hopefully he gave them both barrels because
Speaker 3: it's it's kind of a ridiculous. Yeah, it shows that
Speaker 3: they fundamentally unqualified to be discussing the topic.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk about what he said, but
Speaker 2: I realized that I didn't take the last break, and
Speaker 2: I want to right now, and that.
Speaker 4: Is my choice. So Okay, Satan, proud of you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and we're back. We're talking about Ellen Pepe
Speaker 2: a revisionist quoe unquote historian, but not really. You know,
Speaker 2: he was called that because he was talking about Israel
Speaker 2: the way it should be talked about, with actual historical facts.
Speaker 2: In one of his writings, Pape wrote depopulating Palestine was
Speaker 2: not a consequential war event, but a carefully planned strategy
Speaker 2: otherwise known as Plan Dalette, which was authorized by the
Speaker 2: Israeli leader Ben Gurion in March of nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: Operation Nashan was in fact the first step in the plan,
Speaker 2: and as I said, the massacre unleashed a cycle of
Speaker 2: violence and counter violence that has been the pattern of
Speaker 2: since this happened, Jewish forces have regarded any Palestinian village
Speaker 2: as an enemy state or a military base, and this
Speaker 2: has paved the way for this blurred distinction between massacring
Speaker 2: civilians and killing combatants. According to the historian, so what
Speaker 2: does all of this say about Israel's vision today? This
Speaker 2: is why I want to talk about this is because
Speaker 2: this started this whole cycle of violence that we still
Speaker 2: see perpetuated today. And it's why Palestinians refuse to forget
Speaker 2: it and forget what happened, and they'll always talk about
Speaker 2: Palestine because they don't want to be erased from history books.
Speaker 2: Dariasne has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession as
Speaker 2: well as a historical fact Israel must confront when retelling
Speaker 2: its national narrative. According to Pepe, given that terrorism is
Speaker 2: a mode of behavior that Israeli's attribute solely to the
Speaker 2: Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a part of
Speaker 2: any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's pace, asked.
Speaker 2: One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to
Speaker 2: accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one with
Speaker 2: the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior.
Speaker 2: Israeli historians as well as Israeli society. They've only been
Speaker 2: able to admit to the massacre and Daria scene by
Speaker 2: attributing it to the right wing group Irgun, but have
Speaker 2: covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one
Speaker 2: in Tantura in nineteen forty eight. This was carried out
Speaker 2: by the Huganah, the main Jewish militia from which the
Speaker 2: current day Israeli military has evolved from. And despite this
Speaker 2: shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights
Speaker 2: Watch and Amnesty International have labeled Israel itself in a
Speaker 2: part heid state.
Speaker 3: I've just seen the worst ever op ed in the
Speaker 3: Jerusalem Post about now what tell me it's about this,
Speaker 3: but it's about like the Knakba, Like it contains like
Speaker 3: this kind of narrative that like, oh, well, the Knackbo
Speaker 3: was who was coined by by like historians to like
Speaker 3: explain the failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which
Speaker 3: is like a what does that fucking matter? And be
Speaker 3: like what are you saying? Like well, like that contains
Speaker 3: within it the nonation that they would have to defend
Speaker 3: themselves from someone who was that how and then like
Speaker 3: like going back and forth on the number of people killed,
Speaker 3: like which you know, the low estimates are as low
Speaker 3: as like one hundred and seven highest winths in the
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifties based on claims that the militias
Speaker 3: themselves made. Right, So like again, what it is it
Speaker 3: cool to kill like one hundred people but two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty people's like, you know, we should step in there,
Speaker 3: And just like I was just checking the author's affiliation
Speaker 3: because that's always fun, and he's a research for the
Speaker 3: Menachen Beigine Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly,
Speaker 3: But when the organization you work for is is a
Speaker 3: memorializing heritage of one of the dudes who led the massacre,
Speaker 3: you might want to like to step aside from I
Speaker 3: mean or not right or just shut up, just dive
Speaker 3: the fuck in. But like you are flying your flag
Speaker 3: as a fairly part. It's like I said, right, all
Speaker 3: historians are bias. But yes, when like you know, if
Speaker 3: if I work at the Colonel Custer Heritage Center, like
Speaker 3: please take my account of the United States, like violent
Speaker 3: assault on the Lakota people with a pinch of salt,
Speaker 3: because like, I'm coming at this from a certain perspective,
Speaker 3: and yeah, here we are at twenty twenty three, still
Speaker 3: still doing the doing the thing where we were, rather
Speaker 3: than just like taking the l and just being like oo,
Speaker 3: like it's bad actually to rape and mutilate and murder
Speaker 3: people trying to trying to equivocate.
Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned articles though, because I just saw
Speaker 2: one when I was researching for Aloxa yesterday of this
Speaker 2: Israeli car that admitted that the videos he saw was
Speaker 2: a bad.
Speaker 5: Look like that's what he said.
Speaker 3: It was just like good Cup, Yeah, And the course
Speaker 3: of solution site is to not allow people to take
Speaker 3: videos of you brutal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah that's the yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Tim Apple known anti cup, Yeah, anarchist.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Human Rights Watch and Amiasty International have labeled Israel as
Speaker 2: an apartheid state, and Human Rights Watch said in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, we reached this determination based on our documentation
Speaker 2: of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by
Speaker 2: Jewish Israeli's over Palestinians. As recognition grows that these crimes
Speaker 2: are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires
Speaker 2: burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: Apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario, and I
Speaker 2: apartheid is a very light word to use, but I
Speaker 2: did want to just mention that they an organization, so
Speaker 2: that not just like I don't know, there's it's officially
Speaker 2: on paper that Israel sucks, Like why are we still
Speaker 2: defending it? I'm just like, go rewatch the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: video from yesterday, like or audio, because there's no reason
Speaker 2: we should be funneling any kind of support into that country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it. It's mad. We still made
Speaker 3: a lot of money selling weapons to Israel, but it
Speaker 3: used against like and a Robert and I pursued a
Speaker 3: public records request for going on two years for like
Speaker 3: these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke grenades
Speaker 3: and flash bangs that a US company is selling to Israel, Right, yeah,
Speaker 3: like it's great they can fire them into a masque.
Speaker 2: I mean not surprising.
Speaker 3: No, it's just annoying. Annoying the wrong word. But like, yeah,
Speaker 3: there are people who make a lot of money every
Speaker 3: time things get more violent there, right, And people who
Speaker 3: are very invested in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, that's gooulish as fuck.
Speaker 2: It is, And that's actually all I have. That's a
Speaker 2: good good place to end if any But I hope
Speaker 2: you learned something if you didn't know something in this episode,
Speaker 2: and I hope you go watch Futterha or God's Fights
Speaker 2: for Freedom. I don't think this is history that should
Speaker 2: ever be understated or forgotten, so I'm always more than
Speaker 2: happy to talk about it, even if it's depressing. So
Speaker 2: thank you for joining me today, James.
Speaker 4: It's okay, it's been very uplifting.
Speaker 3: I don't be all right. It's important. It's it's very important.
Speaker 3: Hopefully one day we'll have the PK Gaza episode.
Speaker 2: Yes, that'll be great.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I guess if you're in the UK and have old
Speaker 3: copies of Men's Health, you can read about young people
Speaker 3: doing parkering Gaza. It's pretty heavy. I will have another
Speaker 3: story about that soon.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Where should people? I think a good thing. Maybe if
Speaker 3: we could end on like where, where is a good
Speaker 3: place to find new about Palestine?
Speaker 2: I really like El Jazeera, especially their opinion pieces are
Speaker 2: pretty good because a lot of the times they're written
Speaker 2: by people that are really passionate about what they're writing.
Speaker 2: I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always
Speaker 2: a good call. Like hummedal Kurd is one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent voices recently that has been uplifted, and I
Speaker 2: would follow his social media as his sister has one
Speaker 2: as well. His family's house was basically we had the
Speaker 2: threat of being demolished last year. His house was in
Speaker 2: Schech if you remembered any of that stuff from last
Speaker 2: year with the violence going on there. I also really
Speaker 2: like Sobhitaha. He's on Instagram mostly and he has a
Speaker 2: podcast now. I would highly recommend following his stuff. He
Speaker 2: is so informed and so uh just easy to understand too,
Speaker 2: So I would watch that And yeah, hummedal Kurt actually
Speaker 2: was on some news program like like Face the Nation
Speaker 2: or no, maybe not that, but he was on recently
Speaker 2: like basically handing the asses of the people that were
Speaker 2: talking to him about Israel and Palestine. Is that the
Speaker 2: right way to say that.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He was just saying he was he was not willing
Speaker 2: to be talked over and whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I like, Yeah, he shouldn't be. My friend
Speaker 3: Hossam is a photographer in Palestine. Most of those Alda
Speaker 3: Zerra pieces you'll see are his photographs. Actually, well Sam
Speaker 3: Salem g He's photograph we've worked together before. But yeah,
Speaker 3: if you if you're a person who'd like to see pictures,
Speaker 3: his pictures are very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point too. Also, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of accounts that are solely about Palestine, and a
Speaker 2: lot of these Palestine activists follow them and share them,
Speaker 2: so you will find more organizations by following them. There
Speaker 2: is I for Palestine, there's I think it's like land Palestine.
Speaker 2: Like I think there's a lot of really trusted accounts
Speaker 2: on the Internet. You have to find the ones that
Speaker 2: are trusted, and a lot of times it's stuff from
Speaker 2: the ground and that's the stuff that needs to be
Speaker 2: seen and shared. Because if there's going to be any
Speaker 2: upside to fucking internet and social media, it has to
Speaker 2: be to spread stuff like this around and make sure
Speaker 2: people know about it.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it gives us a way to like
Speaker 3: get underneath that like hegemonic narrative and see what happens
Speaker 3: to real people every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's all, okay, whatever, that's the episode by.
Speaker 10: Hey and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen
Speaker 10: here with me Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrews and
Speaker 10: I'm joined today by It's me.
Speaker 3: It's just James today, Just James. That's like a cringe
Speaker 3: from the nineties.
Speaker 10: Really, I was not aware, just sort of curiosity. James,
Speaker 10: do you play any Paradox Games?
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: I don't think a type of computer game.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, that was well, it's like a game development company,
Speaker 10: and also they also distribute games as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, you've hit an area about which I have very
Speaker 3: little knowledge in.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and by the way, this isn't sponsored, it's just uh,
Speaker 10: it's how I ended up stumbling upon this topic. Right, Okay,
Speaker 10: so just you know, hearing me for a second year.
Speaker 10: So where the Paradox Games is Crusader Kings three?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm already infitted to see where this goes.
Speaker 10: So, yes, it's a medieval grand strategy game. It's sort
Speaker 10: of like it's it's a combination of like those classic
Speaker 10: sort of well grand strategy games I know, also a
Speaker 10: bit of sims flail. You're playing as a character and
Speaker 10: you're also playing as that character's dynasty, so you'll be fit.
Speaker 10: You play as the grandfather, and then the father, and
Speaker 10: then the son, and then the grandson, and so on
Speaker 10: and so forth, and so I actually, if you can't tell,
Speaker 10: I play the game sometimes a little bit too much,
Speaker 10: but I appreciate the role playing. The setting a set
Speaker 10: between either eight sixty seven or ten sixty six and
Speaker 10: fourteen fifty three, which is considered the end of the
Speaker 10: medieval era due to fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Yeah,
Speaker 10: so you know, at a certain point and playing the game,
Speaker 10: after I've played in pretty much every corner of the map,
Speaker 10: I was looking for a new religious movement to spread
Speaker 10: across the map for fun. Of course, this is something
Speaker 10: I do with my free time. And I started reading
Speaker 10: about all these different strands of Islam that they have
Speaker 10: in the game, like the Commasians and the Ebadis and
Speaker 10: the Sufreez. Yeah, and that led me to stumble across
Speaker 10: the move Tasialism and the Naja Dad. And please bailed
Speaker 10: me with the pronunciations of everything about to pronouncing this episode,
Speaker 10: but move Tassilism and the Naja Dad. I started digging
Speaker 10: into this stuff and that led me to make the
Speaker 10: decision to talk about what I've been learning before I begin.
Speaker 10: I know, even the idea of religious anarchisms is somewhat controversial,
Speaker 10: particularly they describe and see between the anarchist slogan of
Speaker 10: no gods, no masters, and of course the history of
Speaker 10: various faith based class struggles. MY stance on it is complicated,
Speaker 10: But whatever my stances, I don't think we could deny
Speaker 10: the reality that religious anarchisms have existed in the past
Speaker 10: and still exists today.
Speaker 3: Now I'm really interested in this, I'm I'm just I'm
Speaker 3: working on a book at the minute about anarchists at
Speaker 3: war or I guess how anarchism meets war, and people
Speaker 3: variously sort of defining out anarchism narrowly and widely. I
Speaker 3: grew up in the early two thousands, I guess, with
Speaker 3: like the kind of new anarchists, as Greber called it,
Speaker 3: and they were always amongst that broader movement opposed to
Speaker 3: like neoliberal globalization. There were always religious people, and I'm
Speaker 3: not a religious person, And I went to a school
Speaker 3: where there was a priest, and the priest had been
Speaker 3: a member of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa
Speaker 3: and was wanted there and had left for doing violence
Speaker 3: to get which, like it's pretty based and so like
Speaker 3: I have a lot of time for a lot of
Speaker 3: religious people, it's always been kind of an area of
Speaker 3: I guess interest to me this like religious anarchisms.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it certainly it has a very eventful history. Yeah,
Speaker 10: so I wanted to talk a bit about the rather
Speaker 10: interesting history of just one tradition. Although the whole thing
Speaker 10: about the anarchism and I'm going to be discussing is
Speaker 10: that I wouldn't really call it anarchism, not at least
Speaker 10: not by our standards. Yeah, it's more of a distinct
Speaker 10: and notable resistance to centralized authority or a minimization and
Speaker 10: decentralization of that authority. I think it's morek into like
Speaker 10: a mini archism than an actual anarchism. Sure, right, but
Speaker 10: it's still interesting to see I guess, the seeds of
Speaker 10: anti authoritarianism through history.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 10: So these particular movements, they have a sort of an
Speaker 10: anti Khalif, Khalif being the religious leader in Islam, they
Speaker 10: have a kind of an anti Khalif action that expanded
Speaker 10: into a broader philosophical and political conclusions. So we can
Speaker 10: start in the city of Basra in Iraq in the
Speaker 10: eight hundreds, where a discussion was taking place recording how
Speaker 10: the Uma or Islamic community should respond to a leader
Speaker 10: of the Abbasid Caliphate would become corrupt and tyrannical. Now,
Speaker 10: the two me and stream opinions were that of the
Speaker 10: activists who believed in stage in a violent revolution to
Speaker 10: install a new legitimate leader, and the quietists who believed
Speaker 10: impatiently perseverant under tyranny or passively resistant. It's funny how
Speaker 10: we see these kind of ideas about change rearing their
Speaker 10: heads again and again and again throughout history, despite various
Speaker 10: different contexts. The other people who were like, yeah, let's
Speaker 10: go get it, and the other people who are like, yeah,
Speaker 10: let's rock back a little bit and take things with
Speaker 10: more passively. So that's interesting right now. Abubaka, the guy
Speaker 10: who was the first caliph, he made it clear in
Speaker 10: his inauguration that obedience is not incumbent upon his followers
Speaker 10: if he contradicts the will of Allah. And for those
Speaker 10: who don't know, Allah is God in the Islamic religion.
Speaker 10: And yet the dominant position in Islam has been the
Speaker 10: quietest position even to this day, the activist position is
Speaker 10: less popular. Some would say some people have this idea
Speaker 10: that the only manifestation of Islam can be the unseen
Speaker 10: in the autocracies of Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.
Speaker 10: But even back in Islam's Heidi, there were Muslims willing
Speaker 10: to resist the tyrannical control of even religiously or ordained rulers.
Speaker 10: So back to Bastra in the eight hundreds, there was
Speaker 10: also a third category of solutions proposed, which we can
Speaker 10: call anarchists in the general sense, but not really in
Speaker 10: the actual sense. Most of the Muslim anarchists believe that
Speaker 10: society could function without the caliph. They proposed a kind
Speaker 10: of evolutionary anarchism where private property was not abolished per se,
Speaker 10: but because the ruler was considered illegitimate, the titles of
Speaker 10: property the ruler granted would also be considered illegitimate. They
Speaker 10: also argue that the caliph must be agreed upon by
Speaker 10: the entire community, which is no easy task considering how
Speaker 10: Islam divided between Sunnis and Shia's almost immediately after the
Speaker 10: prophet Muhammad died. However, without this consensus, no logismate clief
Speaker 10: could exist, and it was widely accepted that a lot
Speaker 10: did not impose obligations that were impossible to fulfill. So
Speaker 10: then it was reason that then there was really no
Speaker 10: obligation to establish legitimate clief if no consensus could be found,
Speaker 10: there's a little loopool. Basically, we need full consensus. We're
Speaker 10: never gonna get full consensus. Oh well, shrug, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah.
Speaker 10: And then in the time, in the contextbe this is,
Speaker 10: you know, medieval times, you're seeing a lot more. You're
Speaker 10: seeing several different political configurations and formations and ways of
Speaker 10: organizing society. So some of them at the time, we
Speaker 10: were seeing their neighbors, the Bedwinds, and the bed Winds
Speaker 10: were living without rulers like normal. So they were like, well,
Speaker 10: why can't we live without rulers like normal? And so
Speaker 10: they use that as a justification as well. And so
Speaker 10: they also had many proposed ranging from a radical decentralization
Speaker 10: of public authority to a complete disillusion of public authority.
Speaker 10: One particular genre proposals involved replacing the calief with elected officials,
Speaker 10: either completely independent of each other or join together in
Speaker 10: a federation, and these elected officials would be temporary and
Speaker 10: only remain in office when legal disputes arose or when
Speaker 10: an enemy invaded. When the problem was resolved, they would
Speaker 10: lose their position and society would return to quote unquote anarchy.
Speaker 10: There was even a minority sect which calls for the
Speaker 10: complete abolition of the state, called it Nashda, and they
Speaker 10: argue that if there wasn't sufficient agreement establish this in
Speaker 10: a clief, there can never be enough to establish law
Speaker 10: at all. They wanted not just political independence, but intellectual independence,
Speaker 10: because according to them, individuals should be able to reason
Speaker 10: for themselves and have no one above them but Allah.
Speaker 10: Basically the religious anarchist slogan one God, no masters.
Speaker 12: Yeah, right, but we'll get a twisted of course, all
Speaker 12: this radical stuff apply to them within their group alone,
Speaker 12: So if you weren't part of their group, you could
Speaker 12: still be enslaved or killed.
Speaker 10: So it's kind of a selective, yeah, it's a bit
Speaker 10: selective in their freedom mindedness. Then in eight seventeen, so
Speaker 10: a couple of years later, the center of religious power
Speaker 10: and the Muslim world collapsed with the fall of Baghdad.
Speaker 10: The chaos of civil war ensued, but in the absence
Speaker 10: of public authority, they would naturally emerge an order out
Speaker 10: of the chaos without central planet. As we've seen it
Speaker 10: again and again and again throughout history, people self organized
Speaker 10: to protect themselves and their positions collectively in times of
Speaker 10: natural disaster, in times of crisis, people come together without
Speaker 10: having a state, having without a state having to organize
Speaker 10: them and tell them what to do and how to
Speaker 10: do it. Yeah, such has been the case for centuries.
Speaker 10: And speaking of centuries, we're going to jump ahead a
Speaker 10: little bit to the twelfth century where we could see
Speaker 10: a sort of a pseudo nihilist anarchist movement called the Kalandaria,
Speaker 10: a movement of wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes from Andalusia and
Speaker 10: Spain to Iran, Central Asia, India, and Pakistan. Many of
Speaker 10: the Khalandaria had body persons and tattoos, in explicit defiance
Speaker 10: of Islamic traditions that regarded such practices as haram. Here's
Speaker 10: a bit of an interesting story. One of the earlier
Speaker 10: divisions of the Malatimir was once being followed by a
Speaker 10: crowd of admirers, and in reaction to their praise, he paused,
Speaker 10: pulled out his pep and urinated on the ground. Is
Speaker 10: a sort of a ratic It's almost like what seems
Speaker 10: like Greek guy.
Speaker 3: Oh, the one who like dies because of the d diogenies, right,
Speaker 3: so he kind kind kind of like a Muslim.
Speaker 10: Dirogenis a sort of a rejection of society and rejection
Speaker 10: of its values. As a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 10: of these divisies, they choose voluntary poverty and nudism as
Speaker 10: a lifestyle. They were reject civilization. They would have a
Speaker 10: sort of an active nihilism and director of society. One
Speaker 10: of them has been quoted in saying an effect that
Speaker 10: money is well. I don't know if I could say
Speaker 10: that before he crossed that out. I think we I
Speaker 10: think we get, we get the get the idea of course,
Speaker 10: again not really anarchism in the classical sense, so in
Speaker 10: an actual sense, but manifestation of one trend within or
Speaker 10: one streak within an anarchist movement. Steak jumphead against the
Speaker 10: nineteenth century. Now with perhaps the first anarchist to convert
Speaker 10: to Islam, Ivan Aguelli born in Sweden in eighteen sixty nine.
Speaker 10: Aguilli was interested in philosophy, spirituality, ideology and literature, and
Speaker 10: he explored new ideas ravenously. He joined the Theosophical Society
Speaker 10: in France and he met anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in
Speaker 10: London in eighteen ninety one. He also began reading the
Speaker 10: Quran around in eighteen ninety two and invited Islam in
Speaker 10: eighteen ninety seven. And GWELLI wrote about Islam and anarchism
Speaker 10: fairly frequently, but he didn't really connect them together. However,
Speaker 10: there was another one, another anarchist to convinced Islam, Isabelle Everhart.
Speaker 10: She Grubb in Geneva and converted to Islam around eighteen
Speaker 10: ninety six or ninety seven, and she challenged both Eastern
Speaker 10: and Western norms through her writings and practice practice, pursuing
Speaker 10: a nomadic lifestyle in Nigeria, joining a Sufi order and
Speaker 10: expressing her unconventional spirit by dressing as a male when
Speaker 10: she felt like, taking on a male name, and pursuing
Speaker 10: a lifestyle of purported promiscuity, journalism, smoking kief, and journeying
Speaker 10: across the North African desert by horse. I think she
Speaker 10: would also be considered a figure of queer anarchist history.
Speaker 10: I wasn't able to find anything about how she identified personally,
Speaker 10: but apparently so. I don't know if she was a
Speaker 10: cross dresser or if she was tramps or something else entirely.
Speaker 3: Right, Like you get especially in that period, like like
Speaker 3: misogyny is is so rampant that like it could be
Speaker 3: necessary to like, I guess, to present as male even
Speaker 3: if you weren't like trans in you and gender identity,
Speaker 3: just to have access to things that were constrained I
Speaker 3: don't know, like delimited as mets.
Speaker 4: Rightly, Yeah, exactly makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I think it's why it's to just be like,
Speaker 3: we don't know, rather than to necessarily like like claim
Speaker 3: to someone's identity stuff when what we know is their
Speaker 3: presentation stuff.
Speaker 10: Agreed. Also, during this time in the Ottoman Empire, there
Speaker 10: was a not insignificant population of European anarchists, mostly Italians,
Speaker 10: you know. Alexandria alone, there were approximately twelve thousand Italians
Speaker 10: living and working, often in the building sector. By eighteen
Speaker 10: seventy six anarchists they had organized a branch of the
Speaker 10: Cyndicalist International Workers Association, and in the early eighteen hundreds
Speaker 10: at Coomara, Testa and other Italian anarchists joined the Urabia
Speaker 10: Prize in against the British, and this was perhaps the
Speaker 10: first time that Muslims anarchists fought a military campaign side
Speaker 10: by side other uprising was squashed. Anarchists were less harassed
Speaker 10: in the Ottoman Empire than in many other parts of Europe.
Speaker 10: Later on, in nineteen oh one, anarchists co founded a
Speaker 10: free popular university, the University Popularity Libre or UPL, in Alexandria.
Speaker 10: It provided free courses on subjects like tool stories and
Speaker 10: Cunan's ideas, the arts, pragmatic topics like working negotiation strategies,
Speaker 10: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, common if you
Speaker 10: were indigenous to the region, tough luck indigenous muslim and
Speaker 10: indigenous Muslims and Arabic speakers went really part of the
Speaker 10: upls program went't really included pretty much marginalized from the
Speaker 10: education entirely, and the UPL crash became more and more
Speaker 10: aimed toward and controlled by upper class interests. So that sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a fair yeah, lame.
Speaker 10: Very lame. Yeah, a lot of disappointments in this episode,
Speaker 10: people who are like nearly there and then kind of
Speaker 10: there of course. Yeah, but that's that's that's part of history, right,
Speaker 10: jumping head even more in the twentieth century. We got
Speaker 10: to see the fall of the Caliphate in nineteen twenty
Speaker 10: four and the two new influential currents of Salafiism or Slafism,
Speaker 10: the Muslim Brotherhood which is known for their social democratic lenans,
Speaker 10: and the Saudis, who are known for their monarchic venus.
Speaker 4: To put it likely, Yeah, that's even so.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they as possible yea, yeah, I mean we even
Speaker 10: so late on a sort of an Islamic liberation theology
Speaker 10: developing that dismissed bin Ladin and senseless and lifted up
Speaker 10: the examples of the revolutionary Barbie movement of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 10: Malcolm X and Ali Shariati's quest for a just and
Speaker 10: classless society. Then there's also a neo Sufi group known
Speaker 10: as the Murabhutin, the Mura Bhutun and the Inclusive Mosque
Speaker 10: Initiative in London as other examples of you know, how
Speaker 10: Islam could be used to resist some Islamic traditions. And
Speaker 10: there are also several individuals today who have explicitly and
Speaker 10: publicly self identified as Muslim anarchists, not Muslim and anarchists,
Speaker 10: but specifically Muslim anarchists, including Ab dinner Pradu and Mohammad
Speaker 10: jan Venus.
Speaker 4: That's cool.
Speaker 10: That's a sort of a basic rundown. But I think
Speaker 10: inevitably with these sort of topics you sort of fraught ideas,
Speaker 10: something like an Islamic anarchism, they're going to be some
Speaker 10: challenges and criticisms, right, Yeah, I'd like for one, you know,
Speaker 10: it's a fairly new concept, the idea of Islamic anarchism.
Speaker 10: Like I went over, there were certain trends that can
Speaker 10: be described as an archic, iphibian, generous, but the idea
Speaker 10: of Islamic anarchism as the something going out of after
Speaker 10: development of anarchism and through anarchism as a political philosophy,
Speaker 10: it's fairly new and it challenges a lot of the
Speaker 10: traditional Islamic teachings on authority and governance. So some scholars
Speaker 10: practitioners have pointed out that with the emphasis of social order,
Speaker 10: the emphasis of authority of the state in the role
Speaker 10: of law, this idea of rejecting hierarchy and authority as
Speaker 10: advocated by Islamic anarchists is you know, heretical practically. There's
Speaker 10: also some criticism that with Islamic anarchisms rejection of all
Speaker 10: forms of authority in hierarchy, it undermines the concept of tweed,
Speaker 10: which is the belief in the oneness of God, and
Speaker 10: by you know, rejecting that by undermining that concept and
Speaker 10: promoting individualism and self rule, it sort of goes against
Speaker 10: that teaching. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, there's also
Speaker 10: this challenge to the idea that Islamic anarchism or Islamic
Speaker 10: anarchism could be compatible because of the slogan and no cause,
Speaker 10: no masters right. Of course, Islamic anarchists and other Islamic
Speaker 10: socialists would argue that Islam should be seen as a
Speaker 10: liberating force that can help individuals achieve freedom from a
Speaker 10: Prussian exploitation. The same argument is made with a lot
Speaker 10: of other strands of religious anarchisms as well, and so
Speaker 10: to bring things to a sort of a close, I'd
Speaker 10: say that, you know, like every religious anarchism, like every
Speaker 10: political philosophy, like every religion, like everything, Honestly, people pick
Speaker 10: and choose, you know, in Islam you can find elements
Speaker 10: of quietism as well as activism detached to mysticism, as
Speaker 10: well as pragmatic daily concerns, traditions of violence, and traditions
Speaker 10: of non violence, moderation, and extremism. In anarchism, tensions exist
Speaker 10: between pacifism and insurrectionism, cyndicalism and individualism, nationalism and anti nationalism,
Speaker 10: collectivism and individualism. Again, and I'm not a Muslim, I'm
Speaker 10: not a religious anarchist of any variety.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 10: I think that there is room for even if I
Speaker 10: may not agree with it in all cases the conclusions
Speaker 10: some people draw. I think there's room for these sorts
Speaker 10: of dialogues to be had. I think there's room for
Speaker 10: exploration to the history of all sorts of historical movements
Speaker 10: and ideologies and religions and ideas, because I mean, there's
Speaker 10: a whole legacy of billions of people who have lived
Speaker 10: and died long before us, and I think I find
Speaker 10: it interesting, at least as a thought exercise, to see
Speaker 10: how they came to their conclusions as well. So I
Speaker 10: hope this episode was thought provoking, enlightening and interesting to
Speaker 10: those who tuned in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 3: It's always interesting to see these Yeah, like, we don't
Speaker 3: have to agree with all of it, but it's interesting
Speaker 3: to see where people come at these things from. It
Speaker 3: was I was wondering if you were going to get
Speaker 3: to or not. But like one of the things that
Speaker 3: you saw in the Spanish like not really the Civil
Speaker 3: War as much, but in the Second Republic was the
Speaker 3: socialists and like left liberals explicitly selling out like Moroccan
Speaker 3: Muslim people and North African people more generally whatever their faith,
Speaker 3: and anarchists being like, no, we should express solidarity with
Speaker 3: these people, like even if we if they are aren't
Speaker 3: and some of them were part of like they were
Speaker 3: anarchists in Spanish North Africa of course, but like even
Speaker 3: if they weren't, being like, we should oppose colonialism, and
Speaker 3: when every other kind of left stripe didn't, it's kind
Speaker 3: of one of the failing sort of public not to So, yeah,
Speaker 3: they've been these conversations, I guess for a long time.
Speaker 3: Like it was interesting to hear about those Sufi's in
Speaker 3: Spain and think about how long those conversations have been
Speaker 3: going back and forth, you.
Speaker 10: Know, exactly exactly. I think the whole Iberian Peninsula's really
Speaker 10: interesting reachion in terms of the confluence of cultures. I
Speaker 10: did miss that particular historical instance in my research with
Speaker 10: also pointing it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no worries big Nerd for that stuff.
Speaker 3: Is there anything you'd like to plug before we get Andrew.
Speaker 10: Sure, sure, so. You can find me on YouTube at andrewism,
Speaker 10: on patreon dot com slash Saint Drew, and I've logged
Speaker 10: off of Twitter, but if you want to get updates
Speaker 10: when I do decide to log in to post updates
Speaker 10: here and there, you could follow me on Twitter at underscore.
Speaker 10: Thank you, Andrew, Take care everyone.
Speaker 1: Peace, Oh boy, Welcome to It could happen here a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less
Speaker 1: depressing than that. This is gonna be a mix of
Speaker 1: both of those things. I'm Robert Evans. My co hosts
Speaker 1: for today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are
Speaker 1: we both? How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling?
Speaker 3: I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, so I'm
Speaker 3: excited like a kid Christmas. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, James, that answers my question for you. But Mia,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Lord Miles Rutledge.
Speaker 5: I have seen him on Twitter and I cannot express
Speaker 5: how excited I am for this.
Speaker 1: So we are talking about a real piece of shit today.
Speaker 1: This is kind of relevant to our I try to
Speaker 1: always justify you know, our purview is broadly speaking, collapse,
Speaker 1: you know, what we call the crumbles, and Miles Rutledge
Speaker 1: is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and
Speaker 1: conmen who sort of sort of seep in at the
Speaker 1: edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever,
Speaker 1: you know, they're in behind the bastards. We've done a
Speaker 1: couple episodes on like different white people who tried at
Speaker 1: various points to like conquer Latin American nations, and like
Speaker 1: the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, just kind of during these
Speaker 1: periods of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on,
Speaker 1: and so like some group of mercenaries would be like,
Speaker 1: I bet we can like steal Nicaragua, right, let's Goways
Speaker 1: wear the shot. You know, you get these kind of
Speaker 1: like these kind of people, and Lord Myles Rutledge is
Speaker 1: sort of the lower body count end of that, but
Speaker 1: in some ways a lot more frustrating because at least, look,
Speaker 1: there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another
Speaker 1: country and then getting murdered yourself. There's at least like
Speaker 1: a a degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge
Speaker 1: is like purely but like doing war tourism in order
Speaker 1: to like pump his his TikTok and his Instagram and
Speaker 1: his YouTube. And I find that worse than like, I
Speaker 1: don't know those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and
Speaker 1: got captured by fishermen. So they were great, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then laid in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story,
Speaker 1: perfect story, took a b begun with them, Such a
Speaker 1: good story. And this one has a similar this story, thankfully,
Speaker 1: Miles the story has has a is an ending almost
Speaker 1: that satisfying. So Miles Rutledge was born on James. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna bring you in for a second.
Speaker 1: How do I spell this last name? R o U
Speaker 1: T l E d g E. He's British age.
Speaker 3: Routledge believe if it's the same as the academic publisher,
Speaker 3: which which is spelled the same, and then it's Routledge.
Speaker 3: And look, I don't give a fuck about scary field.
Speaker 3: Sad to say, have we won?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, So Miles Routledge was born on September fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, probably somewhere near Birmingham. I don't think
Speaker 1: we have, like like it's just kind of based on shit,
Speaker 1: he said. But yeah, I don't see why he'd probably
Speaker 1: he'd lie about that. I don't think people brag about
Speaker 1: coming from Birmingham.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, thanks to generations of medical advancements, he survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood. Because he does strike me as the kind
Speaker 1: of person who wouldn't have done that in like the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, he got into the University of I'm gonna
Speaker 1: need your help here again, James.
Speaker 4: Lowborough, Luffborough, Luffbrough.
Speaker 5: Unbelievable. That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War two
Speaker 5: German aerial division or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like the very Broie section
Speaker 1: of the So he gets into the University of luft
Speaker 1: bro as a fucking physics student, or so he says,
Speaker 1: and sometime within the last two years he got an
Speaker 1: internship at an investment banking firm.
Speaker 3: So the guy a kind of guy.
Speaker 1: He's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece
Speaker 1: of shit. But I haven't found much in my casual
Speaker 1: research about his financial situation or how much money he
Speaker 1: was born into. But I think he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess his parents were at least comfortable because, as
Speaker 1: a young man still in college, he had the funds
Speaker 1: to travel pretty extensively, starting in twenty nineteen when he
Speaker 1: visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Now, this is one of
Speaker 1: the most popular destinations in the world for what is
Speaker 1: called dark tourism, and this is largely this is people
Speaker 1: who live kind of boring lives otherwise traveling to places
Speaker 1: that sound scary in order to impress people on like
Speaker 1: the TikTok or whatever. Now I just said that, but
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything wrong. Now, there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of problems with getting to Chernobyle because of the war,
Speaker 1: but like prior to the expand innovation, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyle. My
Speaker 1: thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or
Speaker 1: whatever is like, are you increasing the odds of like
Speaker 1: causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources
Speaker 1: in a way that like harms people who have no
Speaker 1: choice in being there? Right, and visiting Chernobyl whatever, You're
Speaker 1: not really putting anyone at risk, So that's fine. But
Speaker 1: in may of twenty twenty one, though Miles Rutledge made
Speaker 1: the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that it
Speaker 1: was distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist, Afghanistan. Now,
Speaker 1: he decided to head over there during kind of the
Speaker 1: end stages of the war. Although if you guys can
Speaker 1: remember back that far, the collapse of the Afghan government
Speaker 1: that the United States had backed happened more rapidly than
Speaker 1: most people had predicted, so it was kind of like
Speaker 1: less clear I think when he booked his trip that
Speaker 1: thinks we're going to fall apart quite that quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, humor to feel the same way about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So yeah, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where like Miles, you know, his plan to go there
Speaker 1: was again not as like he's not heading there as
Speaker 1: a journalist. There's not like a story he wants to tell.
Speaker 1: He's not traveling there for kind of a practical purpose,
Speaker 1: Like he really does frame this as just he wanted
Speaker 1: to go on vacation, and he wanted to go on
Speaker 1: vacation specifically for what I think is probably like the
Speaker 1: dumbest reason I've ever heard of anyone choosing of a
Speaker 1: vacation location, especially choosing fucking Afghanistan as a vacation location.
Speaker 1: I'm going to play a clip from one of his
Speaker 1: YouTube videos.
Speaker 5: Now, why am I in Afghanistan?
Speaker 4: Well, that's a really good question.
Speaker 5: During COVID lockdowns. Afghanistan's only open without a vaccine man date,
Speaker 5: So I just think.
Speaker 3: I've never heard his voice before. I'm more angry now.
Speaker 1: To Afghanistan because they don't have a fucking vaccine mandate.
Speaker 4: Oh my fucking real warrior for freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the just the dumbest idiot. I hate him.
Speaker 1: So anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the
Speaker 1: vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of
Speaker 1: young British Men who have gone out to Afghanistan on
Speaker 1: a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive
Speaker 1: his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular
Speaker 1: Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something
Speaker 1: called everybody Wiki, which yeah, yeah, which I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: it that one before, but it's it very hilariously lists
Speaker 1: his occupation as quote, posting online during the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one Siege of Kabul.
Speaker 3: That's great, that's that's actually Tim Kennedy.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 1: So for obvious reasons. He encountered difficulties. He wound up
Speaker 1: sleeping by the side of the road one night, he
Speaker 1: was taken into Taliban custody. While he makes a big
Speaker 1: deal out of this, I actually don't think he was
Speaker 1: ever in serious danger, particularly not compared to, for example,
Speaker 1: the people fighting and dying or the civilians and said
Speaker 1: he's taken by the Taliban, who had to endure an
Speaker 1: often violent change of regime when the Taliban was taking
Speaker 1: over here. And lets you know, obviously there's the danger
Speaker 1: of like accidents on the road, which is always a
Speaker 1: significant danger in a place called like Afghanistan. There's the
Speaker 1: danger of you know, being caught up in a fight
Speaker 1: or something potentially, But the Taliban in this kind of
Speaker 1: late stage of their takeover, had no desire to harm
Speaker 1: a British citizen like Miles, or to harm like, you know,
Speaker 1: Americans who were in the country. And in fact, we're
Speaker 1: working kind of in the later stages of the US
Speaker 1: evacuation to try to make sure it happened peacefully, not
Speaker 1: because the Taliban is so good guys, but because like
Speaker 1: there's no geopolitical benefit to them from like a random
Speaker 1: British traveler dying. It's just gonna cause problems for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just stress and a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they didn't have like, I don't believe they were.
Speaker 1: The Taliban was, ever, like threatened his life in any way. Miles, though,
Speaker 1: posted through it, reporting that he was stuck in a
Speaker 1: pickle and giving details of his experience to fans on
Speaker 1: four Chan and Twitch. He started using the name James.
Speaker 1: You had asked about this, he started using the name
Speaker 1: Lord Miles due to the fact that he had purchased
Speaker 1: a fifteen pound lordship certificate as a bit I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not that surprising.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 3: What can't say that?
Speaker 1: Sorry, no you can You're you're you're British.
Speaker 3: It's fine, okay, Daniel, Yeah, I leave that one in.
Speaker 3: That is my conviction. I what a twat, Sorry, what
Speaker 3: an absolute prick because he's what's really fucking frustrated. Everything
Speaker 3: about his existence is for frustrating right now. So it's
Speaker 3: what's so annoying is he's playing this fucking twee parochial
Speaker 3: version of Britishness for an exclusively in American audience. Right,
Speaker 3: if you're born near fucking Birmingham, we're not all. Look,
Speaker 3: we are not all pride and prejudice people. And if
Speaker 3: you've moved to another country, you will constantly encounter people
Speaker 3: thinking you grew up in Harry Potterland. But like, we're
Speaker 3: not all turfs either. But like he's fucking doing it,
Speaker 3: like and he's doing it like a naive America. Like
Speaker 3: there are like the Scottish Parliament has made statements about
Speaker 3: not buying these stupid Scottish titles. Yeah, here's a pray.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's very silly. He justified this by saying,
Speaker 1: because I think he buys it while he's in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: he explained to his followers, the Taliban may see that
Speaker 1: as a reason to keep me alive, some negotiating powder powers.
Speaker 1: They'll think I'm important. They don't care. They don't want
Speaker 1: any fucking Westerners dying in the country because it'll fuck
Speaker 1: up their chances of like you know, they want to
Speaker 1: get integrated to the like fucking global economy. They want
Speaker 1: to qualify for like loans and ship like they don't
Speaker 1: want to They don't want the problems that you dying bring,
Speaker 1: Like you being a lord has not going to impact
Speaker 1: this in any way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they don't.
Speaker 5: They don't want like the British government deciding like, oh, ship,
Speaker 5: they killed someone, now we need to just bomb like
Speaker 5: cobble for eight months or whatever.
Speaker 3: Now. I don't want to say in his defense because
Speaker 3: I would not like to speak in his defense. But
Speaker 3: I will say that the one person who might be
Speaker 3: conned by a lordship you bought online is Boris Johnson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have an impact on Bojo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 5: It is not defense. It's not like Bojo's gonna be
Speaker 5: sticking around for very long.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 5: You have like you every every every like seven weeks,
Speaker 5: you are rolling a dice as to whether the Conservative
Speaker 5: PM is someone you can con with the lordship title.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, none of them in the last few years
Speaker 3: have been what I would call intellectual titans.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 5: But but but Hope springs a turtle, Rishi sud acts
Speaker 5: in trouble too, so they might I don't know.
Speaker 3: A brave shot. You just really go down the fast road.
Speaker 1: I really I feel sorry for you all across the pond.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would be like to have
Speaker 1: your politicians be national laughing stocks. I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: gotta be that's just got to be hard. No American,
Speaker 1: we we'll ever know what that's like. We are ruled
Speaker 1: by the hero of Ireland. Oh I I was gonna
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, my hero, the governor of Florida
Speaker 1: and his best friend, the pedophile who just committed suicide.
Speaker 5: This a different pedophile.
Speaker 1: No, this is the pedophile who like backed Santus's like
Speaker 1: early political rise and now just killed himself after he
Speaker 1: got exposed.
Speaker 5: Oh so it's this isn't all Alexander. Okay, never mind,
Speaker 5: this is a different pedophile. I'm every day there's a
Speaker 5: new one.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 3: It's not Mike Gates's a friend who's also aphile.
Speaker 1: Now you know who I cannot prove at this point
Speaker 1: as a pedophile, Miles Rutledge. So let's get back to
Speaker 1: his story please. So he also claimed during this period
Speaker 1: where he's kind of like quote unquote on the run,
Speaker 1: that the four Chan users he was posting with kept
Speaker 1: him alive by giving him updates on Taliban progress through
Speaker 1: ocent as they advanced through Kabul. That's broadly speaking, not impossible.
Speaker 1: So the idea that Miles, again, I don't believe he
Speaker 1: was ever threatened by the Taliban. They're again not nice people,
Speaker 1: but they're not like unhinten, They're not isis you know.
Speaker 1: They they are a government. They don't have a benefit
Speaker 1: in something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though,
Speaker 1: played up the idea that he was something between a tourist,
Speaker 1: a journalist, and a philanthropist building his trip to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is a quote little charity thing. At the same time
Speaker 1: as he said that he was prepared for dea when
Speaker 1: he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country,
Speaker 1: Eventually a United Nations safe house took him in and
Speaker 1: he was given a seat on one of the last
Speaker 1: planes out of the country. Now this is an actual actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's frustrating because like there are people in danger from
Speaker 1: the Taliban who had no couldn't leave, right, Like he
Speaker 1: took one of their spaces. Somebody didn't get out who
Speaker 1: is in danger because of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like very good friends of mine, like I spent
Speaker 3: much of that time, Like I've written about Afghanistan, I've
Speaker 3: worked with translators and like good friends of mine. Sometimes
Speaker 3: them left Afghanistan, but many of them still have their
Speaker 3: families there right, and every single day they have anxiety
Speaker 3: about whether their families are okay if something terrible has
Speaker 3: happened to them. Yeah, and this twat is just like
Speaker 3: sitting on a plane posting on four Chaney Like that
Speaker 3: makes me properly angry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's And that's again what I was talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to if you're gonna go to a
Speaker 1: place that is that is beset conflict, you know, by
Speaker 1: civil war, by violence or anything like that. Number one,
Speaker 1: you have responsibility to like have a reason to go
Speaker 1: beyond I wonder what it's like. And you have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to not make things worse for people who don't
Speaker 1: have a choice about being there. And he did. You know,
Speaker 1: that's like fundamentally why I hate this guy is he
Speaker 1: absolutely took an opportunity to escape from I don't know,
Speaker 1: some woman's rights activist or something, you know, some somebody
Speaker 1: who was some turp or something, somebody who didn't have
Speaker 1: a choice about fucking being stuck in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just some fuck you wanted a fair cracket life.
Speaker 3: And and yeah there's a prick. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 3: And he could have stayed. I have friends who stayed
Speaker 3: through that time and covered it. Like your concern is
Speaker 3: for your sources, not yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, or you could have done the thing that
Speaker 5: his ancestors didn't, just walk across the border Pakistan like
Speaker 5: your ancestors did this. This is the one thing like
Speaker 5: Hell's look.
Speaker 1: Like through the Kyber Pass and then become Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: his best friend. You know, that's a proud tradition, which I.
Speaker 3: Thought you were gonna go with dying man, which would
Speaker 3: have also been a very That's another proud tradition.
Speaker 1: Getting sniped by a jizil in the fucking uh Kaiber Pass.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. He had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: immediately pivoted because he built up a big social media
Speaker 1: following around his posts there, pivoted to a career as
Speaker 1: a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an ireland,
Speaker 1: not an Ireland. He traveled next to an island in Brazil.
Speaker 1: There's this island off the coast of Brazil that like,
Speaker 1: like you're not allowed to go to because there's so
Speaker 1: many fucking snakes.
Speaker 4: Like it's just it's.
Speaker 1: Extremely dangerous to go there because it's covered in fucking snakes.
Speaker 1: And he like went there wearing armor, but he didn't
Speaker 1: actually run into any snakes, because snakes don't, like you know,
Speaker 1: they're not generally aggressive, most of them. He got arrested
Speaker 1: in Kenya for as best as I can and tell,
Speaker 1: being a prick nearer refugee camp, and then he traveled
Speaker 1: to Ukraine right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to
Speaker 1: try to make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people about him. The highlight of that trip was he
Speaker 1: claims that he drove a woman and her kid out
Speaker 1: of the country and rescued them, and also brought people
Speaker 1: snacks whatever. Miles has always been two things. He's deeply
Speaker 1: enmeshed in right wing meme culture, and he is at
Speaker 1: least superficially committed to Christian extremism. He is like kind
Speaker 1: of a at least it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian.
Speaker 1: He's super fashy right. This is not like a hidden
Speaker 1: thing within his videos and stuff. I found one write
Speaker 1: up of him on a right wing religious news website
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea of how he builds himself
Speaker 1: to his ideal audience. Miles Wroteledge is a self described Catholic,
Speaker 1: independent war journalist and charity on the ground at just
Speaker 1: twenty one. He had to do Afghanistan with the Taliban
Speaker 1: seized control, and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates
Speaker 1: that are peppered with humor, reality and a little naivete.
Speaker 1: In the past, Routledge went to war torn countries and
Speaker 1: into areas no NGO or charity dared to go, according
Speaker 1: to his GoFundMe paigde, so he can hand out bibles, food,
Speaker 1: medicine and money.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a special place in hell for some time
Speaker 3: giving a stopping person a Bible.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also like he never went to places other people
Speaker 1: wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you everywhere he
Speaker 1: went there were already like people like the Freeburmer rangers
Speaker 1: or even medicine sands, frontiers uh or journalists without borders,
Speaker 1: like there were there were people there. Because he's not
Speaker 1: He's not like I've seen his videos, He's not going
Speaker 1: anywhere special.
Speaker 5: There's how many people are in Callable like ten million people?
Speaker 1: Yes, these are big cities, he's four million people sure,
Speaker 1: Playing off of kind of these the provincialism of his
Speaker 1: audience and the fact that most people in the West
Speaker 1: when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine when they hear it,
Speaker 1: or like even like a place like Kenya, which is
Speaker 1: like a massive country with major cities and all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff like that, like, oh, these places are just
Speaker 1: death traps and you don't go there, and like, no, man,
Speaker 1: even like I would get this when i'd go to
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot, visited Arax seven or eight times,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, man, it's like most of it's
Speaker 1: just a country. Like, yeah, there's specific things you have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that are dangerous, but like it's
Speaker 1: just a place, like millions of people live there and
Speaker 1: don't die every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is ludicrous to suggest that he was in
Speaker 3: any day. Yeah, like you could go to all these
Speaker 3: places and stay in a five star hotel and yeah,
Speaker 3: like you're not in any danger, especially as a.
Speaker 4: Rich white British guy.
Speaker 1: Brady ground by, Yeah, to the extent that he's like
Speaker 1: in Ukraine and traveling near the front where there's like
Speaker 1: random missiles and shelling, Yeah there's some danger, but again
Speaker 1: it's danger that he is exposing himself to unnecessarily and
Speaker 1: then creating a situation whereby if he is injured, that's
Speaker 1: a bunch of morphine and antibiotics that can't go to
Speaker 1: a fucking civilian who had no choice because they were
Speaker 1: raised in constantiniva or whatever. You know, Like, yeah, fucking yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a praise Yeah, yeah, so I mentioned a little earlier,
Speaker 1: he's definitely a fascist. And you know when I say that,
Speaker 1: sometimes people do the whole ou lefties will call anything
Speaker 1: a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one.
Speaker 1: So shortly after his famous trip to Afghanistan, he published
Speaker 1: a book about his very brief time in the country.
Speaker 1: This book included some interesting claims, like that he was
Speaker 1: the last person to enter the country on a tourist
Speaker 1: visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa
Speaker 1: had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, my response was simply an a four
Speaker 1: sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it.
Speaker 1: It was accepted without question. I was ready for my
Speaker 1: very own white boy summer. He also notes that the
Speaker 1: last right, which was at the time kind of like
Speaker 1: a meme in you know, fashy online Nazi circles, it
Speaker 1: was all over telegram. He also known to very pragmatic
Speaker 1: child yeah, although not problematic in this sense. Chet did
Speaker 1: not I think mean for that to happen. He's just
Speaker 1: problematic in other ways. So he also notes that the
Speaker 1: last thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho,
Speaker 1: which he described as a sacred male experience. I will
Speaker 1: remind you all that that is a movie directed by
Speaker 1: a woman. He also writes about the fact that he
Speaker 1: ordered a meal at the airport before leaving, but decided
Speaker 1: not to eat it because it was likely filled with soy.
Speaker 1: He goes on like a whole diatribe about how Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is probably safer for him because there's no soy in the.
Speaker 3: Food, just.
Speaker 1: So. The weird right wing memes and signaling, all of
Speaker 1: which are like he's always like a year or two
Speaker 1: out of date on his like far right signaling and
Speaker 1: stuff too, which is weird. All of it makes a
Speaker 1: little more sense when you realize that the book that
Speaker 1: he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, James, he recognized that, didn't you. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: It is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the Antelope
Speaker 1: Pill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath It,
Speaker 1: you know you've got the main book and is like
Speaker 1: this is if you like this book, read these books
Speaker 1: are a collection of One of the books is a
Speaker 1: collection of speech speeches from Kai Murros, who is a
Speaker 1: Finnish right wing activist who was formerly a maoist but
Speaker 1: is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who suppose supports
Speaker 1: total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He advocates
Speaker 1: for an uprising in the UK in which all university
Speaker 1: staff will be executed by death squads.
Speaker 5: So he hasn't gone.
Speaker 4: That far from the malm So.
Speaker 1: Not that far there, Like, look, there's still pieces of it.
Speaker 1: So the next book that's recommended if you're interested in
Speaker 1: Miles's book is The Death Company, which is a first
Speaker 1: hand account of the Italian in World War One that
Speaker 1: was very influential among early fascists. And then there's Let
Speaker 1: Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I found a review
Speaker 1: of this book on a website called the White Art Collective,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read a quote from that now.
Speaker 1: So this is a Nazi reviewing this book by a Nazi.
Speaker 3: Right, good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen is a
Speaker 1: big city writer sent on assignment to interview James Alexander,
Speaker 1: the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who has revived
Speaker 1: his state with, among other things, a Christian themed public
Speaker 1: works program and Mount Calvary, an artificial mountain which villagers
Speaker 1: climb up and pass the stations of the Cross, then
Speaker 1: view a live action recreation of the Crucifixion with music
Speaker 1: by a live choir. The first few chapters until Rob
Speaker 1: meets Alexander, feel like a dead pan satire of apocalypse.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 1: Rob didn't want a mission, but for his sins, he
Speaker 1: was given one. He's a fish out of water who
Speaker 1: has to navigate and improvise his way to the goal.
Speaker 1: There's a magical realism vibe of the book despite nothing
Speaker 1: overly supernatural occurring, and maybe this is why Phillips calls
Speaker 1: it a mundane phantom. But it's also a mundane fantasy
Speaker 1: for the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described
Speaker 1: in the book are so far beyond what is possible
Speaker 1: that suspension of disbelief is required. Even the Nazi seems
Speaker 1: like to think it's kind of a shit book, which
Speaker 1: is very funny to me. So again, if you publish
Speaker 1: your book with Antelope Pill, Like you are comfortable, at
Speaker 1: the very least comfortable with having your book advertised next
Speaker 1: to explicitly Nazi power fantasies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, going to Antler, you know we've both
Speaker 3: published books, Like, Yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me
Speaker 3: to even try.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are the Nazi one of the Nazist publishers
Speaker 1: out there. In April of twenty twenty two, Miles attempted
Speaker 1: to re enter Afghanistan. He claimed in videos that his
Speaker 1: goal was to rescue a tour guide and his family
Speaker 1: who were threatened by the Taliban, but he wound up
Speaker 1: stuck in Pakistan, claiming that this guide had lied to
Speaker 1: him and claimed that the border was closed to British people.
Speaker 1: He he's like, to be fair, I have no issues
Speaker 1: with this. No, that would be fine. He gets like
Speaker 1: he starts like freaking out in the video, he's like
Speaker 1: a near tears and stuff. He claims that he'd spent
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand pounds on the trip and now he was broke,
Speaker 1: so obviously he uses that he has to beg for
Speaker 1: money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: that was just the whole point of the trip. He
Speaker 1: also pointed, posted whiney status updates, claiming his life had
Speaker 1: been ruined by the failed trip. Quote, this means I
Speaker 1: can't go on a date with a girl I really liked.
Speaker 1: It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend.
Speaker 1: I will go home to an empty room. I am
Speaker 1: at my end, but I know, big baby.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Despite his failure, he did not give up on his
Speaker 1: dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again. For the sake of content,
Speaker 1: he put together another trip for the start of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. In late February, as he geared up to go,
Speaker 1: he made some tweets to his followers that give us
Speaker 1: more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is.
Speaker 1: From February twenty seventh, flat mate saw my Bible and
Speaker 1: said that book is a fairy tale. So I threw
Speaker 1: my empty mug at his head, broke on the wall
Speaker 1: behind him. This isn't the first instance. And after a
Speaker 1: while you have to stop playing nis and to fend
Speaker 1: your faith.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Great, this tweet that I remember seeing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a great one. Now people used to
Speaker 3: send me his shit so often.
Speaker 1: He's infuriating. Yeah, there's a worse one. The most infuriating
Speaker 1: tweet I found from this guy came a bit further
Speaker 1: down and it's it's a picture of him. I thinking
Speaker 1: it might be Dubai. I think it's Dubai. So he's
Speaker 1: like got his back to the skyline and he's just
Speaker 1: kind of like looking off into the distance pensively, and
Speaker 1: it says, friends say, I space out all the time.
Speaker 1: My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't remember, Sentinel Island is the Forbidden Island
Speaker 1: and the Andamans which is part of India where in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and endangered
Speaker 1: the lives of an entire so he could satisfy his
Speaker 1: narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to death by
Speaker 1: them via arrow before he could get too close, and
Speaker 1: hopefully did not spread any diseases to them. I wish
Speaker 1: mild success in reaching the island and meeting his similar fate,
Speaker 1: But if he gets anywhere close to them, there's just
Speaker 1: such a high chance that he will spread deadly disease
Speaker 1: to the people there that I hope the Indian government
Speaker 1: keeps him away, even though it would be very funny
Speaker 1: if he got shot to death by that would be
Speaker 1: quite a laugh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, truly living out the dreams of being a British lord.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, continue a real time on our tradition getting
Speaker 1: fucking murked by the natives on an island. So the
Speaker 1: good news is that friends of the pod, the Taliban
Speaker 1: may have taken care of you know, this guy for us.
Speaker 1: Shortly after making those posts, he re entered Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: a video posted several days later he bragged about entering.
Speaker 1: While he's in Afghanistan, he brags that he made a
Speaker 1: fake visa in order to get himself into the country.
Speaker 1: So he breaks Taliban law entering the country in a
Speaker 1: fake video and then posts a video while he's in
Speaker 1: Kabul bragging about it. So, first off, genius brain, unbelievable
Speaker 1: smarts there. So this the first video that he posts
Speaker 1: back is it's titled something like Shooting Guns with the Taliban,
Speaker 1: and it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad
Speaker 1: to see what kind of guns are available. He talks
Speaker 1: a lot about how all these US guns and gear
Speaker 1: are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it.
Speaker 1: Like most of the video, he's in like this fucking
Speaker 1: I'll show you he's in like this fucking gun bazaar
Speaker 1: and he's like really awed by this giant ar style
Speaker 1: Turkish shotgun, which we've seen some of them. We have
Speaker 1: seen some of those, James. They're terrible weapons. They are
Speaker 1: definitely obviously the Taliban got a hold of a shitload
Speaker 1: of US gear. Nobody's questioning that these shitty Turkish shotguns
Speaker 1: are not American weapon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well that that's that's probably why it's in the
Speaker 5: bizarre and not like in someone's like or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Taliban have access to a lot of American gear.
Speaker 1: He is kind of just like looking at i don't know,
Speaker 1: like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like
Speaker 1: trash guns. So I'm gonna show you a first clip
Speaker 1: from this video.
Speaker 7: Here is sometimes a little bit dangerous, so there's a
Speaker 7: lot of diesta. If you don't know who diesh is
Speaker 7: it's basically isis.
Speaker 4: Now isis?
Speaker 7: You know, I'll number be Taliban. However, the weapons market
Speaker 7: and maybe in some areas would be quite bad at
Speaker 7: for me, so I'll have to be a little bit careful.
Speaker 7: But if you've seen this footage ended up, Okay, I'm
Speaker 7: gonna take a moment to tell you, guys about my
Speaker 7: sponsor tend.
Speaker 5: What the fuck.
Speaker 3: This is not official medium, but.
Speaker 5: Gesus, that.
Speaker 3: Is one of the most jarring address.
Speaker 1: Like if you're not watching this, he's like standing in
Speaker 1: the desert and like talking. There's that brief clip of
Speaker 1: like a picture of some isis guys, but then he's
Speaker 1: like back in the desert talking and then suddenly a
Speaker 1: shot like it cuts very harshly to him in his
Speaker 1: hotel room doing like a fucking ad for an investment
Speaker 1: banking app. It's so fucking or like a stock trading app.
Speaker 1: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: And then yes, yeah, don't see uh have you got
Speaker 3: the shahata written on it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it sure does.
Speaker 13: Oh yeah, I was gonna say people she was this,
Speaker 13: but to spare yourself, like god, yeah, he's he's wearing
Speaker 13: his white headband.
Speaker 3: Who's I can't see it anymore, but you can see
Speaker 3: something you're in and Arabic on it, I guess, and
Speaker 3: doing it as much for something called ten.
Speaker 1: D's yeah, something which is like yeah, some sort of
Speaker 1: like stock trading app for I'm going to guess people
Speaker 1: to get their life saving scammed from them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my apologies tendis if I'm getting you wrong, but
Speaker 1: you're spider.
Speaker 5: Yeah, ah damn.
Speaker 1: It's okay. We've got enough sports betting companies to that. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll be okay. Run regular us, right, yeah, run Reagan
Speaker 1: gold coins or silver coins will take care of us.
Speaker 1: So again, one of the things that's very funny about
Speaker 1: this is the amount of time he spends flipping out
Speaker 1: over this dog shit AR style shotgun. For those of
Speaker 1: you who aren't gun people, the Turks make a number
Speaker 1: of different shotguns that kind of look like AR fifteen's.
Speaker 1: They're all very impressive looking to people who don't know
Speaker 1: anything about guns. They're terrible weapons. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: they're terrible is that shotgun shells do not work well
Speaker 1: in magazines. The reason most shotguns are tube fed because like,
Speaker 1: shot shells are plastic and they have a weird shape
Speaker 1: to them, and if you stick them in a magazine
Speaker 1: like a normal bullet, they just tend to like jam
Speaker 1: and misfeed a lot. It's just we're not a good
Speaker 1: way for it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the one gun, the one actually like produced
Speaker 3: in a factory gun that I'm aware of that the
Speaker 3: folks in ME and R are like, now, fuck it.
Speaker 1: Will just three, like we are desperate, but these are
Speaker 1: just and he like he spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: like talking about how cheap guns are. You can get
Speaker 1: guns here cheaper than you can anywhere else, because like
Speaker 1: this ar shotgun is two hundred bucks, Like, man, I
Speaker 1: can get an ar shotgun for two hundred bucks in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: They're terrible, nobody wants them. So he does eventually go
Speaker 1: out with what he claims is the Taliban. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, it's a guy who has an
Speaker 1: M sixteen that he probably paid like a hundred bucks
Speaker 1: to go shooting with. Right, maybe the guy, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people in Afghanistan are technically the Taliban, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean like much, right, Like at this point,
Speaker 1: they're the government, like you know, you get like your uncle,
Speaker 1: you know, gets you a fucking gig or something watching
Speaker 1: a road or whatever. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about this guy. He claims he's the Taliban. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play you a clip of him shooting this
Speaker 1: guy's sixteen.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, another one.
Speaker 1: No hearing protection sweeping people.
Speaker 5: Just sweeps him again, the.
Speaker 7: Move, thank you.
Speaker 1: The Taliban guy is visibly nervous about him using the gun.
Speaker 3: He's mad he got that vacuum one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's backing away.
Speaker 3: He's just like.
Speaker 1: Shooting into the air. I love how like visibly nervous.
Speaker 1: The Taliban guy is his legs with the gun, like
Speaker 1: points the barrel at that guy's legs like three different times,
Speaker 1: shoots up into the air. He's just an incompetent asshole
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 4: He's doing all of these like like eighties action movie poses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, touch, It's It's very stupid. He has no hearing
Speaker 1: protection and so he like hurts his ears like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's It's just comprehensively stupid and sad. So this
Speaker 1: video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up
Speaker 1: with two other UK citizens who were in the country,
Speaker 1: one of whom was he's described in most of the
Speaker 1: news articles I read it is just a charity medic
Speaker 1: and it's this is all a little unclear. It seems
Speaker 1: like this guy was in possession of a firearm without
Speaker 1: a proper permit. He claims that he has a permit,
Speaker 1: but that was lost or something whatever. At any rate,
Speaker 1: Miles goes missing in early March, and after several days
Speaker 1: that Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two
Speaker 1: other British guys and also two Polish guys into custody.
Speaker 1: And it's a little unclear why, but it seems to
Speaker 1: be due to like them breaking some laws with guns.
Speaker 1: It also may have something to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that Miles broke the law entering the country. He seems
Speaker 1: to be being treated reasonably well at present, it's unclear
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to him. I hope, I mean honestly, like,
Speaker 1: of all the people who deserve to be in a
Speaker 1: Taliban prison, Miles Rutledge is the one that's amazing, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: keep that go ahead and keep that guy Taliban, like.
Speaker 5: Solid very excited for whoever is in the Prime Minister's
Speaker 5: chair next week to like maybe get around to start.
Speaker 14: Negotiating with the Taliban. They don't the British, the British
Speaker 14: Far and Office just don't give a fuck anymore. Like
Speaker 14: I've had to contact them with when colleagues have been detained,
Speaker 14: et cetera, and like they'll literally be a now computer
Speaker 14: says no and just like tight fuck off.
Speaker 4: Like so hopefully they do the same for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't. I haven't seen anything like the late
Speaker 1: most recent news stories about him were like more than
Speaker 1: a week ago. It looks like, uh, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying anything recently, so it doesn't look like I'm guessing
Speaker 1: we would have there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed.
Speaker 1: The Daily Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was there to try to find himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny, he says. He claims at one point,
Speaker 1: like yo, guy has been taken by the by Afghan
Speaker 1: intelligence for taking like a thousand dollars out of Western
Speaker 1: Union suss amount, no internet, no idea when this will end.
Speaker 1: Everything is good, but please excuse my lack of communication.
Speaker 1: That was like March eighth, something like that. And he
Speaker 1: hasn't really been back on in a while, Like he's
Speaker 1: kind of been dark for quite a spell, So I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe something terrible has happened to him or
Speaker 1: what's happened to him at which point or in which
Speaker 1: case like that would be kind of funny fuck him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where I am officially. Yeah, I mean he fucked
Speaker 1: around and found out. Yeah, like you keep again man,
Speaker 1: you want to like, yeah, you keep fucking around. You
Speaker 1: like go to a place with like a famously like
Speaker 1: dangerous authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to brag about breaking the law for a
Speaker 1: YouTube video. Yeah, man, maybe they'll get pissed. It's like
Speaker 1: the same shit with like, obviously the Romanian government is
Speaker 1: not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind of
Speaker 1: shit with like Andrew Tate, where you're like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to this other country and brag about the fact
Speaker 1: that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty good way to get them to fucking problems
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 5: Like, anyway, my favorite Miles post, if I'm remembering this right,
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure like two weeks before he like got arrested.
Speaker 5: He he he posted a tweet about how like he's
Speaker 5: safer in he's safer in Afghanistan and he is in US.
Speaker 15: That he would be in San Francisco, in na in Brooklyn. Yeah,
Speaker 15: he spent no two days, he spent forty eight hours
Speaker 15: quote unquote homeless in Brooklyn for again for content, And yeah,
Speaker 15: it is it is funny that like he is in
Speaker 15: a lot of trouble.
Speaker 3: Now he tried to go to Mission Texas as well.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he ever went, but he was
Speaker 3: going to do so I missed that. Yeah, he was
Speaker 3: gonna do something fucking horrific with people crossing the Rio Grande.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh see the look. You're not gonna hear
Speaker 1: this often from me, but critical support to the Taliban,
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're really fighting the good fight for
Speaker 1: all of us.
Speaker 16: By caving this guy behind bars, I was it initially
Speaker 16: seemed like he had he had fallen into the hands
Speaker 16: of like the Islamic State Chorussan Province, and yeah, I'm
Speaker 16: gonna have to Yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Rarely have to hand it to Islamic State, but we
Speaker 3: may have had that one occasion.
Speaker 1: That don't give ices a lot of credit, but that
Speaker 1: it is, like you know what, I'll just I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and say this on behalf of the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, Taliban, if you keep him locked up,
Speaker 1: you know, we will erase one of those big Buddha
Speaker 1: statues from like the list of Taliban crimes. We'll all
Speaker 1: agree to forget one of the Buddhas. Like, hold, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm not signing on to this. I'm so
Speaker 1: bad about the Buddhas. I just come on, we need
Speaker 1: all the Buddhas. Anyway, Fuck this guy.
Speaker 5: Yea.
Speaker 3: Side, I hope they're feeding him tofu.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope they're feeding him all of the soy
Speaker 1: and after anastea like fucking park a soy truck up
Speaker 1: to that guy's cell. Anyway, that's a story, Like there's
Speaker 1: these guys are like, especially in the social media. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've always been a part of war and of conflict.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a degree to which like this is
Speaker 1: a not a news story like this is actually kind
Speaker 1: of a one of the older stories in human history.
Speaker 1: Is like dudes kind of stumbling into war zones in
Speaker 1: order to write about it or otherwise like make it
Speaker 1: about them. So, you know, uh, fuck these people and
Speaker 1: fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. I hope we I hope
Speaker 1: he winds up like those Venezuelan merks or not there.
Speaker 4: I mean they weren't.
Speaker 1: They were in Venezuela who are caught on video pissing
Speaker 1: themselves and then lying in the piss. That's that's my
Speaker 1: dream for Miles Rutledge spending some time lying in piss
Speaker 1: before he's sent back to the UK. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 3: Nice. Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like that they
Speaker 3: did to the British.
Speaker 1: He did make a bunch of posts about how cool
Speaker 1: the Taliban were, So I don't know, like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can drink. Look, man, you said you wanted to live there. Uh,
Speaker 1: here you go. Yeah, I don't know. I think he's
Speaker 1: a dick, and I think this is funny. That's my
Speaker 1: official stance.
Speaker 3: Happy Earth Day.
Speaker 5: And by Happy Earth's Day, I mean the Earth is
Speaker 5: dying and people are killing it. Yeah, welcome, welcome. Did
Speaker 5: it happened here the Earth Day episode?
Speaker 16: Now?
Speaker 1: Now, now, quick question me? What is Earth?
Speaker 5: So? The Earth is one of many, many, many planets
Speaker 5: in the universe. It was, it's cagealed rock. There's some
Speaker 5: like melty shit in the middle of it, but on
Speaker 5: the outside, there's a part of it that's nice to
Speaker 5: live on, and it'd be nice to continue to have.
Speaker 10: It be that.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is different than what I had been raised
Speaker 1: to believe. But I'll humor you here. Please continue.
Speaker 5: Yes, And so okay, we are we going to be
Speaker 5: talking today about one of the many attempts to destroy
Speaker 5: the Earth and also Garrison this year too.
Speaker 4: Hello, yes hi, I'm here also for the Earth for
Speaker 4: the Earth.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and this is a special episode featuring a bombing.
Speaker 1: So it is ah, I love a good bombing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is very exciting. Actually, tally speaking, it's two bombs.
Speaker 5: So it is near midnight on July tenth, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 5: The crew of the Green Peace boat Rainbow Warrior Year,
Speaker 5: which is docked in the harbor of Auckland, which is
Speaker 5: New Zealand's largest city. A thing that I learned rob
Speaker 5: researching this episode.
Speaker 4: Wait, really, that's New Zealand's largest city. Yeah, yeah, there's not.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot in New Zealand other than Hobbits
Speaker 1: and that one show about vampires.
Speaker 5: A lot of cheese too that they make, make make
Speaker 5: a lot of make a lot of milk.
Speaker 4: So they did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the greepiest boat is. It is docked in this harbor.
Speaker 5: Most of the crew is asleep or some of them
Speaker 5: are playing cards, and they are they are relaxing after
Speaker 5: having celebrated the birthday.
Speaker 4: Of one of their crews.
Speaker 5: Suddenly a massive shock rips through the boat. Water starts
Speaker 5: flooding into the ship. Lights go out, and the crew
Speaker 5: thinks they've been hit by a tug boat by accident.
Speaker 5: That lasts a couple of minutes until a second explosion
Speaker 5: hits the boat.
Speaker 4: Mister President, a second explosion has hit the boat.
Speaker 3: Nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Joke, Yes, very excellent, good work.
Speaker 5: So the crew the light like the people fleeing nine
Speaker 5: to eleven. The crew flees the boat, but they realize
Speaker 5: that their photographer, a guy named Fernando Perieira, is missing.
Speaker 5: Peri Era like it hasn't quite realized that the boat
Speaker 5: is like under attack, and so he runs back to
Speaker 5: his cabin to grab his camera, and then the second
Speaker 5: explosion hits in the boat sinks so fast that he
Speaker 5: never has a chance to get back up.
Speaker 4: And he drowns to death.
Speaker 5: And the crew very quickly realizes that this is not
Speaker 5: an accident, and rescue divers discovered there are massive there's
Speaker 5: like massive holes in the ship from where I've been
Speaker 5: blown up from the outside, and they eventually determined that
Speaker 5: this boat, which is again a green piece boat that
Speaker 5: is doing non violence of with disobedience, has been sunk
Speaker 5: by limpet mines.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, oh, I love a good limp at mine.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that we're we're getting limpet mines in
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yea, we're getting we're getting limp at mines. We're
Speaker 5: getting there'll be some special Forces boats later or I
Speaker 5: say boats is one boat, but yeah, we're gonna we're
Speaker 5: going through all of the sort of naval combat bits here. Excellent,
Speaker 5: But this raises the question who would commit such an
Speaker 5: act of terrorism on the I can't actually say on
Speaker 5: the soil of news Land because it's technically in the
Speaker 5: water of New Zealand.
Speaker 4: In the waters of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, off the coast of New Zealand. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: we get it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But okay, So to answer this question, we need
Speaker 5: to talk about the anti nuclear movements. And you know,
Speaker 5: there's been a kind of rewriting of history about what
Speaker 5: the anti nuclear movement was actually about to basically like
Speaker 5: sort of purely focused on the anti nuclear movement as
Speaker 5: something it's just about nuclear.
Speaker 4: Power, but that was never true.
Speaker 5: The movement was always way more larger than that, and
Speaker 5: a huge part of it was about opposing nuclear weapons,
Speaker 5: both in terms of like opposing nuclear tests and in
Speaker 5: terms of fighting for nuclear disarmament. On the fairly simple
Speaker 5: principle that having weapons that can kill everyone on Earth
Speaker 5: around is a bad idea.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the bad idea if you don't want
Speaker 4: to destroy the entire earth. But yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to destroy the Earth, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea.
Speaker 5: Actually, unfortunately, I'm on a living kick right now, so
Speaker 5: I'm not anti destroying everything on Earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's good that you can admit your bio upfront though,
Speaker 1: that's yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a very important thing in journalism. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so you know, Okay, so when we were talking a
Speaker 5: bit about nuclear testing, because it doesn't it doesn't happen
Speaker 5: anymore nuclear testing. Okay, so we used to just like
Speaker 5: detonate nuclear bombs like in the.
Speaker 1: Addamn right, you're goddamn right, we did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it turns out this this kills enormous numbers
Speaker 5: of people. But the problem is that it kills them
Speaker 5: very slowly with increased cancer rates, which is very difficult
Speaker 5: to sort of track or like prove direct causality. And
Speaker 5: you know, this is aided by the fact that when
Speaker 5: countries are nuclear testing, they are almost always killing people.
Speaker 5: Well they're almost always dropping this the nukes on indigenous land,
Speaker 5: which means that they're killing people who are the government
Speaker 5: and most of the countries just like does not care
Speaker 5: about and you know, you can you can literally map
Speaker 5: colonialism and sort of the value that a given like
Speaker 5: a given state placed on people's lives by you know,
Speaker 5: where they test the nuclear weapons. So, for example, the
Speaker 5: US tests the nuclear bombs in places like the Bikinia Toll,
Speaker 5: the Marshall Islands, a former tribal land in Nevada, in
Speaker 5: New Mexico, and in Hatesburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 4: Okay, so Jesus Christ, all those are bad except except Mississippi.
Speaker 5: No, that was also bad because guess get guess get
Speaker 5: guess what race the population of Hatesville.
Speaker 4: Mississippi was.
Speaker 5: Okay, all right, yeah, they got paid ten dollars to
Speaker 5: get relocated quote unquote, yeah this is this is this
Speaker 5: is not a white it's not a white city.
Speaker 4: They are blowing up with a nuclear bomp. Not like
Speaker 4: it's not like a gated community for white men in
Speaker 4: their fifties or something.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, The only.
Speaker 1: Good nuclear testing we did was back in the day
Speaker 1: when they used to set off nukes right outside of Vegas,
Speaker 1: and so all of the Vegas people would watch the
Speaker 1: nukes go off and then get irradiated. That was that
Speaker 1: was kind of funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah. They also they also were radiated the area fifty
Speaker 5: one people one time, and that was also extremely funny.
Speaker 1: They shared did and there was that like guy I
Speaker 1: think it was uranium. There was like one of the
Speaker 1: dudes who was on the Manhattan Project. There was this
Speaker 1: like dude who there was like an accident and he
Speaker 1: just sucked down a bunch of nuclear fuel and they
Speaker 1: had to like he could never work in a lab
Speaker 1: again after that, and he every for like decades afterwards.
Speaker 1: His breath tested positive for like radioactivity, but he loved
Speaker 1: to be like eighty something like. It didn't him doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have heard him. He says it tasted kind
Speaker 1: of like like sour candy. Well, okay, so he's tasted
Speaker 1: there forbidden nuclear water. Yeah, no one else has to.
Speaker 1: Now we know what it tastes like. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Donald Mastic was he was sprayed in the face with
Speaker 1: liquid plutonium chloride and swallowed some. But apparently that's fine.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Everybody drinks some plutonium, you'll live
Speaker 1: a long life.
Speaker 5: So the US, I guess, I guess also tests it
Speaker 5: on their nuclear scientists. But yeah, so that those are
Speaker 5: the US. The USSR testa nukes in Kazakhstan, which there's
Speaker 5: an amazing story about.
Speaker 4: Barria going when there's nobody.
Speaker 5: Nobody lives in this part and nobody lives in Kazakstan,
Speaker 5: so we'll be fine.
Speaker 10: Mm hmm. It's like, okay, Baria people, in fact, you
Speaker 10: live there.
Speaker 5: China tests this nukes in a site called lop Nor,
Speaker 5: which is in shing John because of course it is.
Speaker 5: And the French do their test in the Sahara in
Speaker 5: Algeria until the Algerian revolution forces them out, which good
Speaker 5: for them, death of betrayers, the Algerian Workers councils et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. But this means that the French
Speaker 5: now no longer being able to bomb like their conorizsessions
Speaker 5: in Algeria. Yeah, they they they start testing the nuclear
Speaker 5: weapons on particularly the Moreau.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to pronounce this. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 4: What is a toll in the in the south the
Speaker 4: South Pacific?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that sounds close enough. Yeah, sure, yeah, And.
Speaker 5: So they they start these tests like in secret. So
Speaker 5: there are there are people on islands nearby who don't
Speaker 5: know what those nukes going off, like, the don't even
Speaker 5: a bomb shelters. Right, it's really loud these days.
Speaker 1: Anybody notice how loud it's gotten here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, you know, you could see the fucking
Speaker 4: mushroom cloud. Right.
Speaker 5: But like these people, you know, the French military sciences
Speaker 5: are like, oh, it's fine, they're not going to be
Speaker 5: in the fall out They're unbelievably in the fallout radius.
Speaker 1: If anyone ever tells you you're not in a fallout radius,
Speaker 1: that's your first sign that you are, in fact in
Speaker 1: a fallout radius.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's never it's never a great it's never a
Speaker 5: great sign. I don't think that's happening.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has ever assured a group of
Speaker 1: people that they're not going to be exposed to radiation
Speaker 1: and been telling the truth.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 5: If if they had merely gone to these people and
Speaker 5: said you're not going to be exposed to radiation, it
Speaker 5: would have been better, because then then at least it
Speaker 5: would have had a chance. They just didn't tell these
Speaker 5: people at all. They were testing a news sure, they
Speaker 5: just blew it up great, and so they detonate like
Speaker 5: they detonate.
Speaker 4: Nukes all over Polynesia.
Speaker 5: In Actually a few years ago there was a there
Speaker 5: was a thing called the Moreau Files, which was a
Speaker 5: bunch of investigative journalist goot together. They got a bunch
Speaker 5: of classified French military documents. They did, they got some
Speaker 5: scientists together, and they did a whole thing about the
Speaker 5: you know, the sort of influence that the effects of
Speaker 5: this nuclear testing has. And I'm just going to read
Speaker 5: from that quote. According to our calculations, based on a
Speaker 5: scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately one hundred and
Speaker 5: ten thousand people were infected, almost the entire Polynesian population
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 3: Good god, So they radiated.
Speaker 4: Like the entire population of Polynesia. This is this is great.
Speaker 1: So I mean that's not ideal. That's not ideal. I'll
Speaker 1: give them that.
Speaker 5: And Okay, so I obviously nuclear testing has negative effects
Speaker 5: on humans. I feel like I don't need to explain
Speaker 5: how nuclear testing has Dropping a nuclear bomb on a
Speaker 5: place has a negative effect on the environment, that seems sure,
Speaker 5: Are you sure?
Speaker 1: Pretty obvious? I think we're all more or less caught
Speaker 1: up on nuking things being bad for them, except well,
Speaker 1: except for underwater aquatic lizards, which seem to do really
Speaker 1: well when exposed to nuclear tests.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they look, they can. They have atomic breath. Now
Speaker 5: they've got absolutely yeah, big big.
Speaker 1: They get to star in a movie with a surprising
Speaker 1: number of members of the cast of Simpsons. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's all. It's all upsides. Oh and that Ferris Bueller
Speaker 1: I think was in it. So that's pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did these people get to star in a movie with
Speaker 1: Ferris Bueller.
Speaker 5: No, they died of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's unfortunate. That's unfortunate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so these tests and some other tests the US
Speaker 5: are doing, the Marshall Islands or the Origin of Green piece.
Speaker 5: So there have been environmental groups like the Sierra Club
Speaker 5: have been involved in anty nuclear activism because again, bad,
Speaker 5: bad for the environment, dropping dukes. But okay, so the
Speaker 5: activism that the Sierra Club people are doing is based
Speaker 5: on bearing witness, and the green Peace people rightly are like,
Speaker 5: fuck bury witness. They are dropping nuclear bombs. We are
Speaker 5: going to try to stop these bastards.
Speaker 4: The way you can beat a bad guy with the
Speaker 4: nuclear bomb is a good guy with the nuclear bomb.
Speaker 4: I'm introducing a new initiative to arm all green Peace members. Okay,
Speaker 4: the personal, personal tactical nuke, David Crocket.
Speaker 5: This is this is I am not kidding France's rationale
Speaker 5: for why they have nukes, which is that the thing
Speaker 5: is literally called like this, like the weak deterring the
Speaker 5: strong or something. And it's like, ma'am, you are France,
Speaker 5: Like come on, okay, yeah, sure, France is acting for
Speaker 5: the protection of the weak against the straw.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh my, I mean, look, I would if
Speaker 1: I had the option, I would keep a nuke in
Speaker 1: my basement, you know, just in case, yeah, someone someone
Speaker 1: comes to my house. You know, we've got I've got
Speaker 1: the option then, right, like what if because like right now, okay,
Speaker 1: say Pakistan decides to try to rob my house. I
Speaker 1: don't have a counter to their nuclear arsenal.
Speaker 3: But if I.
Speaker 1: Keep you know, and I'm not even talking to like
Speaker 1: six to ten megatons in my basement, that's enough, I
Speaker 1: think to discourage aggression, right or if like my neighbor
Speaker 1: decides to call the city on me, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got an option.
Speaker 5: There's a problem with this plan, which how are you
Speaker 5: getting the nuke from your apartment to Pakistan?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's if they come to my house. Right,
Speaker 1: that way I can I can nuke all of my
Speaker 1: stuff so that they won't want it, and that way
Speaker 1: they won't rob me in the first place.
Speaker 5: Right, this makes about as much sense as actual nuclear
Speaker 5: actual nuclear doctrine. Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Worked for decades, Mia, Like, I don't know what your
Speaker 1: problem is here. If it if it's worked for for
Speaker 1: all of these great powers, you know, it can work
Speaker 1: for me. Or I could do what the British do
Speaker 1: and send you know, some of my some of my
Speaker 1: people out. I could send James or Garrison out underwater
Speaker 1: with a nuclear weapon and just have them always waiting
Speaker 1: in the sea to nuke my adversaries if somebody takes
Speaker 1: me out, much like the British nuclear fleet. See, we we.
Speaker 5: As a human race are really good at coming up
Speaker 5: with good ideas. Yeah, we have our ideas. Our das
Speaker 5: are amazing, they rock. We never have any bad ones.
Speaker 1: It is funny that there's just like some guys who
Speaker 1: are expected to like follow a dead man's orders at
Speaker 1: the end of the world, uh, for for unclear reasons.
Speaker 1: Like there's just a letter and it's like, if all
Speaker 1: of your loved ones die, open this letter. And do
Speaker 1: whatever it says. You are really funny when you think
Speaker 1: about him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, okay, So in the late sixties and early seventy
Speaker 5: there's people who are like, this is a terrible idea,
Speaker 5: we should not in fact drop nuclear bombs. And these
Speaker 5: groups in the late sixties become green Peace in nineteen
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: Okay, great for them, good for them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, So we've talked about like the French
Speaker 5: having to move the nuclear program into the Pacific after
Speaker 5: being read out of Algeria. Green Peace starts doing direct
Speaker 5: actions against French nuclear testing, and so in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 5: Dave mctagger's one of the founders of Greenpeace, sails his
Speaker 5: boat into a French nuclear testing area. Now, okay, I
Speaker 5: have my issues sort of in principle with like nonviolence
Speaker 5: as you're like pure organizing political principle. But if you
Speaker 5: are willing to sail your boat under a new your
Speaker 5: bomb to stop it from going off, that is that
Speaker 5: is pretty based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I have trouble. I have trouble like coming
Speaker 1: up with any any any critiques of that.
Speaker 5: No, this rips, and like the other thing is like
Speaker 5: you know this isn't this isn't a stunt, right like
Speaker 5: they are they are actually prepared to get nuked.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, that's that seems like a pretty commitment.
Speaker 5: Yeah that it's it's sick. And so they refuse to
Speaker 5: leave and the French, the French Navy eventually gets so
Speaker 5: pissed off that a French Navy ship rams their boat
Speaker 5: like a fucking try rem in where to get them.
Speaker 5: So they're they're forced out because they're rammed by a
Speaker 5: tr ream.
Speaker 3: Us.
Speaker 5: We've all been there, so sometimes sometimes.
Speaker 10: You just get you just get rammed.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it happens so true.
Speaker 5: So they they green Peace tries to go to the
Speaker 5: International Court of Justice to get a ruling to force
Speaker 5: France to stop the testing, and the French government steaks
Speaker 5: out what I I I claim is like the primary
Speaker 5: status political principle, which is that what is justice to
Speaker 5: a man holding a gun? And they just absolutely ignore
Speaker 5: the International Court of Justice. So they in ninety seventy four,
Speaker 5: they're trying to do another set of nuclear tests and
Speaker 5: this time, you know, so green Piece is like, okay,
Speaker 5: well we're gonna we're gonna send like a flotilla of
Speaker 5: boats out this time.
Speaker 4: Did you just say a flotilla?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Is that a word?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a group of boats.
Speaker 4: Scarce, that's like a that's like a murder of crows thing.
Speaker 5: No, yeah, yeah, but it's a very common name for
Speaker 5: a bunch of boats.
Speaker 4: I've never I've never heard that before.
Speaker 3: Now you have flotilla. Yeah.
Speaker 1: L Ron Hubbard had a flotilla of boats that he
Speaker 1: made teenagers pilot and jump off of when he was
Speaker 1: angry at them.
Speaker 4: You know, I was thinking about this.
Speaker 5: I think this is actually the first flotilla of boats
Speaker 5: that we've had on any of our shows.
Speaker 10: That is good.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not commanded by l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or like the Moodies, it's it's a whole it's
Speaker 4: a whole sort of line of bad. But this is this is
Speaker 4: a good flotilla.
Speaker 5: But the Navy this time is like, Okay, we're not
Speaker 5: going to mess around with these people, like and you know,
Speaker 5: let them get inside the testing zone. Uh. They so
Speaker 5: they just bored mctabart ship and just beat the shit
Speaker 5: out of him and his crew. And so the the
Speaker 5: the French Navy claims that like, oh, the green Peace
Speaker 5: people just like turned around on their own and uh, McTaggert,
Speaker 5: you know, my tiger's like very badly visibly hurt. So
Speaker 5: he like shows up to the press and the French
Speaker 5: Navy goes, oh, I mean he's like mctigerant is like
Speaker 5: he is he he is like blind in one eye
Speaker 5: for several months, like he is very very badly beaten.
Speaker 5: And the French Navy claims that was actually the result
Speaker 5: of a fall, which I I I will allow you
Speaker 5: to draw your own conclusions are yeah, I'll I'll let
Speaker 5: you draw your own conclusions. But parallels between the state
Speaker 5: and domestic abusers. But yeah, Unfortunately for the French Navy,
Speaker 5: the Green Peace crew have managed to like get the
Speaker 5: beatings on camera, and they're able to smuggle like the
Speaker 5: film canister off the boat and get it to the newspapers,
Speaker 5: and so the newspapers the next day just have a
Speaker 5: bunch of like pictures showing the French Navy just beating
Speaker 5: the shit out of these like random Green Piece people,
Speaker 5: and this eventually actually works.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: There's there's there's sort of there's I mean, there's there's
Speaker 5: a sort of political pressure campaign that Green Pieces waging.
Speaker 5: There are these there are these campaigns in the French
Speaker 5: courts to get the government to stop, and eventually, in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy four, the French government agrees to stop conducting
Speaker 5: atmospheric tests and nuclear weapons. Now, Robert, do you know
Speaker 5: who else stopped conducting atmospheric testing after years of public
Speaker 5: pressure campaigns? The US and the USSR. Yes, but also
Speaker 5: the products and services that's.
Speaker 1: Oh, that supports this podcast. Yeah, No, I mean most
Speaker 1: most of them. Most of them. Ah, we're back, and
Speaker 1: you know that I'm hearing now that we we did
Speaker 1: have an ad from Blue Apron in there, who does
Speaker 1: continue like low earth orbit atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's the only way to get your food
Speaker 1: boxes to you in a timely manner. They have to
Speaker 1: use the Orion drive, which is a special spacecraft engine
Speaker 1: that relies on popping nuclear weapons out of the back
Speaker 1: of a spaceship and using them to accelerate it to
Speaker 1: near light speed. It's actually that's a you can look
Speaker 1: that up. It's a pretty cool idea. I think we
Speaker 1: should do it.
Speaker 5: It is very funny to me that it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: we have this incredibly convoluted drive that's powered by nuclear
Speaker 5: weapons and it gets you to around the speed of light.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's it's not even convoluted. It's literally just the
Speaker 1: spaceship poops out a nuke and it makes it go faster.
Speaker 1: It's a fun idea. I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fun idea, is.
Speaker 5: But like it can't even get you to like the
Speaker 5: next solar system very fast.
Speaker 1: Well, nothing probably ever can, which is why we're all
Speaker 1: doomed to die alone in the dark.
Speaker 5: Yeah, very sad. Other thing that's sad. Okay, So the
Speaker 5: French government agrees to stop doing tests in the atmosphere, right, however,
Speaker 5: this is just atmospheric tests.
Speaker 4: I never agreed to stop doing like non atmospheric tests.
Speaker 5: So in nineteen eighty five, the French government is gearing
Speaker 5: up to do another round of nuclear testing and green
Speaker 5: Peace is once again bringing a flotilla to try to
Speaker 5: stop them. Now green Peace are already in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 5: they've been involved in another anti nuclear well okay, really
Speaker 5: is it's all the same anti nuclear campaign. But so
Speaker 5: the other people who are dropping nukes in the Pacific
Speaker 5: are the US, and when they nuke the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 5: the people of this island called Runga Lap began suffering
Speaker 5: from radiation exposure, even though they were also once again
Speaker 5: told by the American government that they were fine, and
Speaker 5: so that the US is going to drop another nuke
Speaker 5: and they refuse to evacuate these people, and so green
Speaker 5: Peace like brings their boats, like brings the Rainbow Warrior,
Speaker 5: and so these people ask like green Peace for help.
Speaker 5: But so green Peace like evacuates them all to another
Speaker 5: island and like brings like construction materials and supply so
Speaker 5: they can like set up on a new island. And
Speaker 5: it's this really I don't know, it's it's a really
Speaker 5: sort of grim look into what, you know, like what
Speaker 5: this new Coro testing actually means, which is that a
Speaker 5: bunch of people who've been living in a place for
Speaker 5: hundreds of years are forced to flee for their lives,
Speaker 5: like you know, the state won't the state won't even
Speaker 5: like ethnically cleanse them right like they they are they
Speaker 5: are forcibly relocated from their homes, but the state won't
Speaker 5: even do it because the state's like, no, it's fine,
Speaker 5: where's You're just gonna die radiation poisoning, And so they
Speaker 5: have to get someone else to like move them and
Speaker 5: it's I don't know, it's it's really bleak.
Speaker 15: Uh.
Speaker 5: These people survive, which is good, but the US doing
Speaker 5: necrotesting in the Marshall Islands, which I'm betting at least
Speaker 5: forty percent of you don't know of the US control.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 5: So okay, So they get done with this evacuation, they're
Speaker 5: back in Auckland and then their flagship, they're Able Warrior,
Speaker 5: gets bombed and Greenpeace talks later about how they actually
Speaker 5: got really lucky because you know, I remember when I
Speaker 5: said earlier there are people who were still awake like
Speaker 5: playing cards. If those people had been in their cabins,
Speaker 5: a bunch of them basically would have drowned immediately because
Speaker 5: the cabins got flooded instantly by the first bomb. So
Speaker 5: they got very lucky. Only one person died. I to
Speaker 5: this day, I do not understand why the people who
Speaker 5: did this thought they could do this without killing anyone.
Speaker 4: It's baffling to me. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I at least they claimed they weren't trying to kill anyone.
Speaker 5: So New Zealand police start investigating. You know, hey, there's
Speaker 5: been a a like a terrorist attack on a boat
Speaker 5: in our harbor.
Speaker 1: Sure, and that seems like a thing you'd look into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 5: They get very, very lucky. And they get lucky because
Speaker 5: there are two people in this boating club who are
Speaker 5: like watching the harbor trying to see if it's like
Speaker 5: trying to catch someone who's been stealing diving equipment. And
Speaker 5: in the middle of the night they see a man
Speaker 5: in a black wetsuit carrying a Zodiac inflatable speedboat ashore
Speaker 5: and get into a van. Now, okay, so it's in
Speaker 5: goodna be wish bottle of Zodiac. This is for people
Speaker 5: not familiar with boats. Zodiac makes something called the mill Pro,
Speaker 5: which is a a like it's an inflatable speedboat that
Speaker 5: is used by like most of the world's special forces units.
Speaker 4: And so these two.
Speaker 5: Guys are like, this is really sketchy. They and and
Speaker 5: so they they're you know, they put two and two
Speaker 5: together when they realize that a boat's been blown up
Speaker 5: and they're like, oh my god, it was probably these guys.
Speaker 5: So they go to the police and they're able to
Speaker 5: get the license plate of the van, and so the
Speaker 5: staff at this like van depot have to like sit
Speaker 5: there and like stall the two people in the van
Speaker 5: and keep them from leaving long enough for the cops
Speaker 5: to show up, which something I really really desperately want
Speaker 5: a video of. That just sounds really funny.
Speaker 1: I do love the idea of like the average people
Speaker 1: who work at like a car rental company being asked like, hey,
Speaker 1: could you do like a little bit of counter terrorism
Speaker 1: for us today? Just like a SCOSHIVI it in between
Speaker 1: denying people rentals because they don't have a credit card.
Speaker 5: Amazing and Okay. So then the cops show up and
Speaker 5: they arrest these this couple who are claiming to be
Speaker 5: newly weds, but the New Zealand government quickly discovers that
Speaker 5: both these people have forged passports from Sweden, and so
Speaker 5: they discover their real names. And by god, is that
Speaker 5: the mercy? Is that is a man with the benguet.
Speaker 5: It is the French CIA. They have planted this bomb
Speaker 5: and there's the French CIA.
Speaker 4: Hold on, because we can't just say the French c
Speaker 4: i A.
Speaker 5: It's the Directorate General for External Security or g s E.
Speaker 5: That's a much worse, much less Definitely.
Speaker 4: We're gonna we're gonna go back to calling it the French.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna read the Secret Police. I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree. Secret police need to have three letter
Speaker 1: acrons C I, A, G, R, U, F B I Like,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work with four. You need to have
Speaker 1: one kind of sinister sounding name, like the macabat, but
Speaker 1: like the d G S E. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that sounds like a bank.
Speaker 5: It's a direction general.
Speaker 3: Trash.
Speaker 1: You have been You have been suppressing people for so long,
Speaker 1: and you don't have a better secret police name than that.
Speaker 3: That's shameful.
Speaker 4: By the way.
Speaker 1: Their address, that's a wait, fucking name. The name good,
Speaker 1: incredible or am I five whatever the real one is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Anyways, if you if you ever want to go, like
Speaker 5: take a visit to these people, they're at Their headquarters
Speaker 5: is on one forty one Boulevard Bartier, Paris, France. It's
Speaker 5: at forty eight dot eighty seven forty four north two
Speaker 5: four oh six seven YaST latitude. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't need to go back to France. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: go fuck with the dgsese. I'm not that big a
Speaker 1: wine guy. It's fine.
Speaker 5: So they catch these agents whose names are I shit
Speaker 5: you not Gene Camas and Jean Luke Castaire.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5: No, so the police catch these two, there's like ten
Speaker 5: to other well, there's like eight other people involved. Two
Speaker 5: of them get I think like maybe two one or
Speaker 5: two of them get caught in Australia, but the Australian
Speaker 5: police aren't able to hold them long enough for the
Speaker 5: forensic evidence to come in, so they have to release
Speaker 5: them and they flee. And there's this whole thing where
Speaker 5: like they flee at a yacht and then they get
Speaker 5: on a submarine and the submarine shoots the yacht to
Speaker 5: sink it.
Speaker 4: As it's a whole thing.
Speaker 5: And I actually, okay, it probably is worth mentioning here
Speaker 5: that as as silly as the French CIA's name sound,
Speaker 5: name sounds like, they have one of the most extensive
Speaker 5: networks of surveillance and sabotage of any intelligence agency in
Speaker 5: the world. It never gets talked about, but they have
Speaker 5: people everywhere.
Speaker 4: They are lethal. They absolutely suck.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so they get caught and the French order
Speaker 5: an investigation, and their first investigation concludes that like, well,
Speaker 5: we asked, well, okay, so these people are our spies, right,
Speaker 5: but we just asked the spy on green Peace. We
Speaker 5: didn't ask them to do a bombing, and everyone's like, okay, yeah, sure,
Speaker 5: French government.
Speaker 3: So the French we have been there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like, well, no, okay, so you you you
Speaker 5: may have caught two of our spies dragging a Zodiac
Speaker 5: boat well with a guy a guya a website, dragged
Speaker 5: a Zodiac boat into a van, but doesn't mean he
Speaker 5: did the bombing.
Speaker 4: And the French.
Speaker 5: Media does her own investigation and like quickly concludes that
Speaker 5: like not, not only did the French order the bombing,
Speaker 5: the bombing was personally signed off on by French Defense
Speaker 5: Minister Charles Herdu and also quite possibly French President Frenchois Mitterrand.
Speaker 1: And well, okay, at least Mita Arran's got a good
Speaker 1: name for an evil president.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well this is interesting, right because if you know
Speaker 5: your French history, for tho, those of you who know
Speaker 5: your French history, you will note that Midran is a
Speaker 5: man to the French left. He's he's he's the prime minister,
Speaker 5: he's the president from the Francis Socialist Party. Right, he
Speaker 5: has like, okay, he has a program of amnesty for
Speaker 5: Italian communist terrorists. Were like, if you're able to make
Speaker 5: it to France, they won't extradut you.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: The Communists would never have a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 5: So it's very famously Ontonio Negri, who's the guy who
Speaker 5: writes a bunch of books that are very famous in
Speaker 5: the early two thousands, he's like, he's one of the
Speaker 5: founders of the Autonomists. He flees to He uses this
Speaker 5: to flee to France after the Italian government accused him
Speaker 5: of being the mastermind of the Red Brigades who had
Speaker 5: just kidnapped and killed for Prime Minister Alden Morrow. So
Speaker 5: Negrid gets himself parliamentary immunity by getting elected as an
Speaker 5: MP and then flees to France, which is just very funny.
Speaker 5: And then Metiran refuses the extra d item. So okay.
Speaker 5: So on the one that you would think that Midrand
Speaker 5: is like, I don't know, kind of cool.
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't think so I don't. Yeah, so Midiirrand. Okay.
Speaker 5: So in terms of sort of being sympathetic, Midran is
Speaker 5: like a is a kind of different kind of neoliberal
Speaker 5: than the kind that we that we sort of know.
Speaker 5: So I would classify in terms of sort of neoliberal
Speaker 5: like neoliberal politicians, right, like neoliberal heads of countures. I
Speaker 5: think there's sort of like three kinds of them. There
Speaker 5: are sort of the right wing hardliners who people like Thatcher,
Speaker 5: like Pinochet and Reagan, the Reagan's Weirdly, Reagan is slightly
Speaker 5: less hardline than like Thatcher is, but yeah, so okay,
Speaker 5: So there's those people. There's the sort of like third
Speaker 5: way neoliberals like Clinton and Tony Blair, who are like
Speaker 5: I guess like liberals in the American sense, but are
Speaker 5: still sort of like real hardliners on economics. And then
Speaker 5: there's a group of people I would call like the
Speaker 5: quote unquote socialist neoliberals like Midterrans and Italy's longtime Socialist
Speaker 5: Party prime minister Bettino Croxy, Like I don't know if
Speaker 5: I can actually call him the most corrupt man in
Speaker 5: Italian politics, but like he's like at least in the
Speaker 5: top five, but he's prime minister for like twenty years, and.
Speaker 4: He's also like this.
Speaker 5: So these are these are people who are nominally socialists
Speaker 5: and we'll talk about like doing socialism, but then are
Speaker 5: also like implementing neoliberalism.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think.
Speaker 5: The closest thing to this in the US is like
Speaker 5: if Carter had beaten Reagan, we still would have gotten neoliberalism,
Speaker 5: but it would have been sort of like softer than
Speaker 5: it was under Reagan. So you know, you have your
Speaker 5: sort of kinder, gentular form of neoliberalism. And do you
Speaker 5: know who else advocates for a kinder ingentular form of neoliberalism?
Speaker 1: Oh not Blue Apron. No, they support going going right
Speaker 1: back to the old days. We're talking like East India
Speaker 1: Trading Company. In fact, as we speak, Blue Aprons flotilla
Speaker 1: is on the coast of India right now, ready ready
Speaker 1: to try their hand at making another raj in Calcutta.
Speaker 5: I wish you could all see Garrison's face. It's amazing, It's.
Speaker 4: Fine, it's fine.
Speaker 5: Ah, we're back.
Speaker 3: So all right.
Speaker 5: The consequence of this is that, you know, despite the
Speaker 5: fact that Midarin is like nominally a socialist, he is
Speaker 5: completely committed to nuclear testing as part of his nuclear
Speaker 5: deterrence program.
Speaker 4: Money funny, How that funny? How that always happens? Huh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: Now, supporting colonialism is not out of care Fromiteran, who,
Speaker 5: as part of a previous coalition government in the fifties,
Speaker 5: had presided over the guillotining of Algerian rebels, but his
Speaker 5: reaction to his government and possibly also him personally bombing
Speaker 5: the Rainbow Warrior is not good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's nice to hear, at least not a
Speaker 4: great look, buddy.
Speaker 5: Yeah so so, because French people are extremely normal, the
Speaker 5: reaction in the French public about their government carrying out
Speaker 5: a terrorist attack is that there's a giant nationalist upswell,
Speaker 5: and people get really angry because they're demanding that the
Speaker 5: two French intelligence agents who again are serving ten year
Speaker 5: manslaughter sentences in New Zealand for bombing a ship involved
Speaker 5: in non violent civil disobedience in the harbor of a
Speaker 5: country that France is not at war with. People are
Speaker 5: mad that they are like being held in prison and
Speaker 5: they're demanding they be released.
Speaker 4: That makes sense from like the.
Speaker 1: French national sides. It's the French fire right. They're pretty pretty.
Speaker 5: Amazing, right like like again, like they lots like lots
Speaker 5: of just like non far right people in France get
Speaker 5: involved in this, and they had this whole thing about
Speaker 5: the way they talk about it is amazing that they
Speaker 5: talk about it in terms of liberating them. It's like
Speaker 5: they just murdered a guy with a bob like multiple
Speaker 5: but they use two mines.
Speaker 4: To blow this ship up.
Speaker 5: It's like and and so the Minigan's government's response is
Speaker 5: they start putting sanctions on New Zealand's exports.
Speaker 4: That's funny, that's funny.
Speaker 5: And this is this is a huge deal for New
Speaker 5: Zealand because they're they have a you know, New Zealand's
Speaker 5: economy is like in large part agricultural based export economy,
Speaker 5: and they export just an enormous amount of cheese to France.
Speaker 4: I did not know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, so I New Zealand is like one of
Speaker 5: the words leading dairy producers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I thought they mostly just made those like elfin Dwarf
Speaker 4: and Wizard movies, but.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean they do make a lot of
Speaker 1: money producing limbus cakes, which which can keep you going
Speaker 1: for an entire week.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm realizing, I'm realizing now I'm not gared.
Speaker 5: Do you know a story of how of how New
Speaker 5: Zealand was was like dragged into supporting the Iraq war
Speaker 5: and sending troops to a rock No, okay, okay, I
Speaker 5: need to tell the story. So I'm realizing there's some
Speaker 5: of our listeners who might not have heard this. The
Speaker 5: last time I told the story. Okay, So in the
Speaker 5: Wiki leaks papers, it comes out that New Zealand, New
Speaker 5: Zealand sent troops to a rock because so New Zealand
Speaker 5: had had a milk for oil program where they would
Speaker 5: trade milk to a rock for oil. And the US
Speaker 5: threatened that after the after they invaded a Rock, they
Speaker 5: were going to cut off the milk for oil deal.
Speaker 5: And this was this was like Fonterra. They're like the
Speaker 5: giant like milk Cooperative in in New Zealand was so powerful.
Speaker 5: And the New Zealand government was like, fine, don't don't
Speaker 5: cut off our dairy, our milk for oil program. We
Speaker 5: will go to war. So yet New zeal Zealand. New
Speaker 5: Zealand did not go to war from oil. And New
Speaker 5: Zealand went to war for the milk market.
Speaker 1: And and that's why we called it a coalition of
Speaker 1: the willing yep.
Speaker 4: New Zealand is a truly a cursive place.
Speaker 1: And and you know, and the it is I don't think
Speaker 1: New Zealand's the cursed one, and that it's true.
Speaker 5: But they also like this is the this is the
Speaker 5: second time. But New Zealand is going to capitulate to
Speaker 5: like through the demands of a violating perialists in order
Speaker 5: to save their cheese market.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's like a fair criticism of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: But as an American, I do feel like I don't
Speaker 1: really have much room to like talk shit on this
Speaker 1: particular ship.
Speaker 4: It is, it is our fault, this is happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I'm not gonna blame New Zealand for this.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 4: I will kind of blame them for this one. This
Speaker 4: is also France's fault.
Speaker 5: So what what they're able to do is they're able
Speaker 5: to well, okay, partially also so like eight of the
Speaker 5: other people who are involved in this bobbing like are
Speaker 5: just got out free, and so New Zealand is like, hey,
Speaker 5: will you guys like send us these people so we
Speaker 5: can try them in fact, is like no, absolutely not.
Speaker 5: In fact, we will impost sanctions on you. And what
Speaker 5: they're able to do is they're able to force New
Speaker 5: Zealand to like enter un arbitration, even though again they've
Speaker 5: already arrested and convicted these two guys right because they
Speaker 5: obviously did it, and the un and typical un fashion
Speaker 5: goes okay, so France is powerful and New Zealand isn't,
Speaker 5: so fuck them, and they negotiate a deal where like
Speaker 5: these two French officers are going to be like released
Speaker 5: and stationed in this like tiny island at the French
Speaker 5: control for three years. And so the French doesn't. They
Speaker 5: don't even do that. They pull these guys out in
Speaker 5: less than two years. So New Zealand isn't. It doesn't
Speaker 5: go great.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I say it doesn't go great for them in the
Speaker 5: short term. They suffer a series of catastrophic defeats. In
Speaker 5: the midterm. French eventually get ordered to pay eight point
Speaker 5: one million dollars to Greenpeace, who use the money to
Speaker 5: make another boat called the Rable Warrior two and continue
Speaker 5: to like sale fleets to stop French nuclear testing. And
Speaker 5: I'm gonna I'm gonna reads with green Peace's website quote.
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety five, the Rainbow Warrior two was bordered
Speaker 5: by French commandos as it led further protests against nuclear
Speaker 5: testing a Moorea toll. When green Peace activists were asked
Speaker 5: for their names, they only gave one, Fernando Perieira, which is.
Speaker 4: The name of the guy who the French had.
Speaker 5: Killed earlier, so they have their I'm Spartacus moments, and
Speaker 5: you know, eventually it takes a very very long time,
Speaker 5: but they win. In nineteen ninety six, France and China
Speaker 5: do like one last nuclear test and then signed the
Speaker 5: Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty. Indian and Pakistan do a
Speaker 5: pair test each in nineteen eighty nine. But since then
Speaker 5: no country has tested a nuclear weapon except North Korea,
Speaker 5: who does it all the time. But you know, I
Speaker 5: don't know what green Peace is supposed to do testing
Speaker 5: nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, you can't and it is I
Speaker 1: will say this, like from a real politique point of view,
Speaker 1: you know, there's an argument to be made that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the kind of balance of nuclear power certainly provides
Speaker 1: a degree of protection to some countries. But my argument
Speaker 1: would be not having tested your weapons makes them more frightening.
Speaker 1: If you're France and you're like, look, man, anyone who
Speaker 1: tests us. We don't know what's going to happen when
Speaker 1: we fire these things. We don't know if they're going
Speaker 1: to go to the right place. We have no idea
Speaker 1: what will happen when we fire our nukes. So come
Speaker 1: on and fuck with us, but literally anything could happen.
Speaker 1: That just seems like a better threat to me.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to advocate that one, but I think
Speaker 5: that's the stance.
Speaker 1: I think that's the stance. You know, build increasingly large
Speaker 1: weapons and never test them so that we just know
Speaker 1: if shit goes down, we could all die.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 4: Okay, well it doesn't, it doesn't.
Speaker 5: It doesn't involve nuclear testing. So I got I'm coming
Speaker 5: around to this position.
Speaker 1: Never never test them. Just build increasingly large doomsday devices
Speaker 1: and be like, no one knows what'll happen if we
Speaker 1: have a war. Why not maybe none of them work,
Speaker 1: and we all get to really think about what we've
Speaker 1: been doing, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I I in all seriously though, this is a
Speaker 5: massive victory. There are there are millions upon millions of
Speaker 5: people across the world, and millions of people who have
Speaker 5: yet to be born who are going to live their
Speaker 5: lives free of the effect of radiation poisoning because people
Speaker 5: stood up and fought nuclear testing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 5: Know, this is the message that I want to sort
Speaker 5: of end Earth Day with with, which is the people
Speaker 5: who are destroying this world are incredibly powerful, and they
Speaker 5: are willing to kill protesters in order to keep their
Speaker 5: power and keep making the world further. But if you
Speaker 5: just keep fighting them no matter what they throw you,
Speaker 5: if you just every every single time they hit you,
Speaker 5: if you just come back and keep fighting again, you
Speaker 5: can win. And this is this is the way that
Speaker 5: it happens.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's so good. That's a nice that's a
Speaker 1: nice note to end on. So everybody get out there and.
Speaker 4: Get nuked once and then everything's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, get nuked once and you'll be okay. Like
Speaker 1: that scientist to drink the plutonium. It's surprisingly easy to
Speaker 1: not die when you get exposed to unbelievable quantities of radiation.
Speaker 1: That seems like a responsible note to end on. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 4: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 8: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 8: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 2: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 2: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com.
Speaker 4: Slash sources, thanks for listening.