Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm jess Mi Lady Confetti Here. Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: Psyche and I am Hey Shady Lady, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Boss Level podcast, where we feature conversations with gas tube
Speaker 1: leveled up, bringing an X by boost to the table.
Speaker 1: We picked the brains of professionals, creators and bosses and
Speaker 1: industries across the globe to help our listeners achieve their
Speaker 1: own boss level. We are not just creating a podcast,
Speaker 1: but a gamified an engaged community. Listen to Boss Level
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Raised by Wolves the podcast is
Speaker 1: back for season two. I'm Holly Fry and as host
Speaker 1: of the companion podcast to the hit HBO Max sci
Speaker 1: fi series Raised by Wolves, i am unwrapping the latest
Speaker 1: season of this cosmic space opera for fans by talking
Speaker 1: directly to some of the incredibly talented folks who helped
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Speaker 1: we got it. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know. This is a compilation episode.
Speaker 1: So every episode of the week that just happened is
Speaker 1: here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package
Speaker 1: for you to listen to in a long stretch if
Speaker 1: you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every
Speaker 1: day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you,
Speaker 1: but you can make your own decisions. Everyone. I'm Robert
Speaker 1: Evans and this is Myanmar printing the Revolutions and it
Speaker 1: could happen here. Special mini series, an in depth documentary
Speaker 1: investigation with me and journalist James Stout. Over the next
Speaker 1: four days, you're going to learn about the gen Z
Speaker 1: militias of the mean Mar Civil War, three D printed weapons,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other really fascinating stuff. Besides, so,
Speaker 1: without any further ado, here's James. Ever since the first
Speaker 1: person built the first fence, took land from everybody and
Speaker 1: annexed it to themselves, property rights and violence have gone
Speaker 1: hand in hand. With property grew the state, and when
Speaker 1: the state came the police. Today most of us grew
Speaker 1: up under the control of states, and they're so ubiquitous
Speaker 1: that their violence is often overlooked until a particularly agreed
Speaker 1: to this incident occurs. But all states, even the most benign,
Speaker 1: rest on a monopoly on violence. State to the entities
Speaker 1: that imposed laws on a given area, and if you
Speaker 1: break those laws, state can beat you up, a lot
Speaker 1: you up, or shoot you up. When the state loses
Speaker 1: the monopoly on violence, it ceases to be able to
Speaker 1: enforce its laws, charge its taxes, and enforce its will
Speaker 1: on the people at rules. We've seen this all over
Speaker 1: the world, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to briefly
Speaker 1: downtown Seattle. Our state in the USA speaks the language
Speaker 1: of rights and liberties. When we want to appeal to
Speaker 1: the state, we tend to use that language. Even though
Speaker 1: our state, as we saw in it's backed by plenty
Speaker 1: of violence as much as any other. It goes a
Speaker 1: long way to camouflage that violence. Some states are a
Speaker 1: bit more mask off. They speak to their citizens more
Speaker 1: or less exclusively through violence, and when citizens need to
Speaker 1: respond to that state, they respond to the language it
Speaker 1: uses to speak to them. That's how a teenager from Yangon,
Speaker 1: Myanmar ended up on Reddit in summer of one asking
Speaker 1: strangers how to use a three D printer and computer
Speaker 1: to make a rifle. Me and Ma isn't a country
Speaker 1: that is on the radar for most of the US.
Speaker 1: If it is at all, it's probably because the State
Speaker 1: Council and Foreign Minister on Scien Succhi. She managed perhaps
Speaker 1: the history's fastest pivot from Nobel Peace Price winner to
Speaker 1: head of a government accused of genocide. But Suki is
Speaker 1: in jail now and the Rahania, the muslimmethnic group that
Speaker 1: the military attempted to eliminate from the east of the
Speaker 1: country under her rule, are just one of many ethnic
Speaker 1: and political groups. They're an open armed conflict with the military,
Speaker 1: who now hold control of the government of Myanmar, known
Speaker 1: luckily as a tapmad or the military sees power. In
Speaker 1: early one you might have seen a video of a
Speaker 1: woman doing an aerobics workout as the vehicles rolled in
Speaker 1: behind her to seize power. Ever since that day, they've
Speaker 1: been committing crimes against humanity all over the country. Miama
Speaker 1: has a longer history of dictatorship than democracy. The British
Speaker 1: East India Company occupied the area that now represents the
Speaker 1: country in the nineteenth century. As always they talked about
Speaker 1: civilizing missions and freedoms, but in practice the occupation was
Speaker 1: extractive and only benefit the Anglo Burmese and a few
Speaker 1: Indian civil servants they brought with them often. But this
Speaker 1: month led to resistance that manifested itself in hunger strikes
Speaker 1: and everyday acts of disobedience, small ways of saying no.
Speaker 1: In a few instances, it became open and unbrest builed
Speaker 1: into the streets. The country became a major battle ground
Speaker 1: during the Second World War, with Japan evading and seizing
Speaker 1: the country before Allied forces took it back In a
Speaker 1: fierce campaign in nineteen as many as a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Japanese troops died. Burmese people fought on both sides.
Speaker 1: A son, Ang San Suki's father demanded that Britain granted
Speaker 1: him and his fellow Burmese people independence if they fought
Speaker 1: for the Allies. The British refused. A Son then went
Speaker 1: first to China and eventually Japan for support, and eventually
Speaker 1: he fought against the British with his Burmer Independence Army.
Speaker 1: But after two years of occupation, a signed his comrades
Speaker 1: changed sides under a broad alliance called the Anti Fascist Organization.
Speaker 1: They turned on the Japanese and they once again to
Speaker 1: gup arms to liberate their country. On the fourth of January,
Speaker 1: Burma became an independent republic. The new republic's territory combined
Speaker 1: three British territories and over a hundred distinct ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: For the next fourteen years, these groups struggled to find
Speaker 1: a democratic Burma and an identity for themselves within it.
Speaker 1: Mostly they failed. The period was characterized by the Chinese
Speaker 1: Civil War, spilling it to Burma, ethnic arm insurgencies and
Speaker 1: repeated demands for a federal republic with a weak central
Speaker 1: government in the military. A rate at new demands for
Speaker 1: a federal republic stage to coup. Burma spent the next
Speaker 1: twenty two years under the military rule of a council,
Speaker 1: pursuing what they called the Burmese Way to socialism. Burma's
Speaker 1: planned economy left it largely isolated from the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. Home the press was censored, and a type
Speaker 1: of nationalism that combined nominal socialism and Burman ethnic identity
Speaker 1: became the official state ideology. During this period, Burma became
Speaker 1: one of the world's poorest countries. Sporadic protests were met
Speaker 1: with overwhelming force, and the eighth of August and uprising began.
Speaker 1: It started among his students in Yangon, but it took
Speaker 1: real quickly around the country. The so called eight Uprising
Speaker 1: because of the date, began with the general strike and
Speaker 1: huge nor violent protests. These were met with gunfire. Protesters
Speaker 1: fought back with Molotov cocktails and rocks. The military fired
Speaker 1: into hospitals, and by September eighteen they launched a coup
Speaker 1: to take the country from a one party state back
Speaker 1: to a military dictatorship. It was during these protests on
Speaker 1: San Suki, the daughter of independence hero On Son, emerged
Speaker 1: as a national figurehead, especially in the west. Amatov g
Speaker 1: the Indian writer, wrote the following about eight across Burma,
Speaker 1: people poured out in thousands to join in the protests,
Speaker 1: not just students but also teaches, monks, children, professionals, and
Speaker 1: trade unionists of every shape. It was on this day, too,
Speaker 1: that the Hunter made its first determined attempt at repression.
Speaker 1: Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators and hundreds of unarmed
Speaker 1: marches were killed. The killings continued for a week, but
Speaker 1: still the demonstrators continued to flood the streets. After the
Speaker 1: uprising had been suppressed, multi party elections were later held,
Speaker 1: while the new National League for Democracy party of Ansan
Speaker 1: Suki won the most votes, the Hunter refused to seed power.
Speaker 1: Protests continued off and on for decades, with the two
Speaker 1: thousand seven Saffron Revolution, which the government violently cracked down
Speaker 1: on monks, resulting in the most international condemnation. Following the
Speaker 1: Saffron Revolution, the government's isolationism hindering aid After extensive cyclone damage.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, the military government finally implemented
Speaker 1: the roadmap to discipline flourishing democracy that had developed in
Speaker 1: If you're wondering about the aim of the country, it's
Speaker 1: officially changed in as well, but like much of the
Speaker 1: nation's history, a grand proclamation from the government didn't mean
Speaker 1: much on the ground. Both words derived from Barana, a
Speaker 1: name that the majority ethnic group who we're calling Burman
Speaker 1: here he used for themselves. Many opposition groups still use
Speaker 1: Burma instead of Myanma. It's another small way of saying
Speaker 1: no to the military's attempt to control every aspect of
Speaker 1: their lives. Finally, on the eighth of September, the army
Speaker 1: took to the streets and the coup, led by their
Speaker 1: Chief of Staff, General Sormon. The next day the killings
Speaker 1: began again. Yeah. The army later described these people as looters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was not until two thousand eleven that the military
Speaker 1: junta finally stepped down and passed on power to the Union,
Speaker 1: Solidarity and Development Party in an election that was widely
Speaker 1: seen as fraudulent. A year later on San su Chi
Speaker 1: was released, and by two thousand fifteen her National League
Speaker 1: for Democracy won an absolute majority. While she was barred
Speaker 1: from holding the presidential office, she took on the role
Speaker 1: of State counselor, and Myanmar entered a period of liberalization, which,
Speaker 1: although never the federal democracy promised when the country gained
Speaker 1: its independence in nineteen forty seven, allowed for significant freedoms
Speaker 1: of communication and speech, especially for the Burman majority ethnic group.
Speaker 1: Not everyone was reconciled to the change. Many of Myanmar's
Speaker 1: A hundred and thirty five ethnic groups feel marginalized by
Speaker 1: the state, which tends to be dominated by the Burman ethnicity.
Speaker 1: Some of these groups have armed in surgeon wings, often
Speaker 1: more than one per ethnic group, as they disagree on
Speaker 1: politics or religion. These groups have fought various Burmese governments
Speaker 1: since the nineteen forties, but many of them reached to
Speaker 1: cease fire with the government as the country passed from
Speaker 1: military to civilian rule. One group, however, saw a huge
Speaker 1: uptick in violence. The Rohinga ethnic group have been persecuted
Speaker 1: by Buddhist nationals since the nineteen seventies, but the campaign
Speaker 1: against them increased in violence and scale in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: when the Totma Daw began a huge crackdown against Rohinga
Speaker 1: people in Rakin State. The persecution began in response to
Speaker 1: attacks by the Arkan Rohinga Salvation Army on Burmese border outposts,
Speaker 1: but the campaign that followed had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the small insurgent group and a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the desire of the Totma Daw to destroy or drive
Speaker 1: out all Rohinga people who they claim are undocumented migrants
Speaker 1: from Bangladesh and not citizens of Myanmar. While the world
Speaker 1: praised Suki, her government looked the other way as the
Speaker 1: military carried out a genocide that displaced over a million
Speaker 1: people and killed tens of thousands. It was in the
Speaker 1: context of growing international condemnation of the genocide that Myanmar
Speaker 1: went to the polls in November of The November twenty
Speaker 1: election was only the nation's second since the official end
Speaker 1: of military rule. On San Suchi's National League for Democracy
Speaker 1: won a resounding victory. The military backed Union, Solidarity and
Speaker 1: Development Party holds twenty five percent of seats under a
Speaker 1: constitution that Suchi wanted to change. It didn't take defeat well.
Speaker 1: The election was neither perfectly free nor fair. The Rhinga
Speaker 1: have been almost wholly disenfranchised. The government claims they are
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and thus unable to vote. Areas
Speaker 1: with ethnic armed organizations which opposed the government often had
Speaker 1: poles canceled and internet cut off. According to Human Rights Watch,
Speaker 1: The Carter Center estimates that one point four million citizens
Speaker 1: couldn't vote. The one opposition party that was certainly not
Speaker 1: short changed was the militaries However, it was the Union
Speaker 1: Solidarity and Development Party USDP which had been calling for
Speaker 1: election delays due to COVID before polls opened. Once the
Speaker 1: elections concluded, they immediately began questioning the results. They continued
Speaker 1: to attempt to undermine the vote for months before they
Speaker 1: resorted to force on the first of February, the day
Speaker 1: before the newly elected legislators were due to be sworn in.
Speaker 1: The world largely ignored the situation, apart from the one
Speaker 1: viral video where a masked fitness instructor dances in the
Speaker 1: foreground as a PC's roll through a roadblock and into
Speaker 1: the parliament complex behind her. On Sang Suchi was arrested,
Speaker 1: charged with breaching COVID nineteen restrictions and illegally importing a
Speaker 1: walkie talkie, and General min On Lang was installed at
Speaker 1: the head of a military junta. If this sounds a
Speaker 1: little like a stop the Steel fantasy, that's because it
Speaker 1: is eerily similar to one. Myanmar's democracy is not what
Speaker 1: academics call a consolidated one, which is to say that
Speaker 1: democracy has never been the only game in town there,
Speaker 1: but the United States seems to be rapidly deconsolidating its
Speaker 1: own democracy. The allegations of election fraud and Meanmar were
Speaker 1: no more credible than those in Arizona. However, the military's
Speaker 1: tradition of political engagement there removed many of the barriers
Speaker 1: in between electoral defeat and the death of a lived democracy.
Speaker 1: Within twenty four hours of the coup, the people of
Speaker 1: Myanmar had fought back. Healthcare workers and civil servants were
Speaker 1: on strike by February third, and a boycott of junta
Speaker 1: owned businesses had begun. Protests began with a handful of people.
Speaker 1: The memories of massacres of pro democracy protesters in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties kept many away, but a younger generation who
Speaker 1: had grown up with relative liberty, internet access and basic freedoms,
Speaker 1: had not seen blood in the streets like their parents.
Speaker 1: They had seen activists in Hong Kong, the USA, and
Speaker 1: Ukraine take on violent state apparatuses, and they had often
Speaker 1: seen them win. By the six of February, twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people in the streets of Yangon, the largest city, and
Speaker 1: the internet was shut down. Nationwide. Protests began peacefully, with
Speaker 1: memorable signs like my eggs is bad, but the miniitary
Speaker 1: is worse, and we are protesting peacefully, but with the
Speaker 1: W a P capitalized, so it said whack. These signs
Speaker 1: were designed by generation of kids who grew up with
Speaker 1: access to the Internet to attract international attention. Despite the ban,
Speaker 1: they used vpn s to shore him due to their struggle.
Speaker 1: Once sound read you've messed with the wrong generation. Now
Speaker 1: will never be allowed to ruin our own lives, the
Speaker 1: tapped the door showed its cards pretty quickly, police began
Speaker 1: a suppression with sling shots and clubs, then tear gas
Speaker 1: and flash brag, and quickly they moved to rifles and
Speaker 1: rocket papel grenades. By the ninth of February, myth Way Way,
Speaker 1: a twenty year old woman had been shot in the street.
Speaker 1: Soon those young protesters have switched signs for shields. By
Speaker 1: the mid march. On m forty His day, a hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen civilians were killed in a single day, including
Speaker 1: sixty five in Yangon who were kettled by police, surrounded
Speaker 1: and then shot quickly. Shield walls were set up, Medics
Speaker 1: identified themselves in the protest movement, and hard hats and
Speaker 1: goggles were distributed, but this didn't tip the balance of
Speaker 1: power in their favor, so all in a former student
Speaker 1: union leader was there from the start. In the text message,
Speaker 1: he told me I did not miss a single day
Speaker 1: as a member of the KaiA State National Strike Committee.
Speaker 1: I later became more involved in anti authoritarian protests. In
Speaker 1: the early protests, you see him in photos walking in
Speaker 1: the front of the group carrying flags and banners with
Speaker 1: his student I D card on a lanyard around his neck.
Speaker 1: But by March he's wearing a black shirt, goggles and
Speaker 1: a hard construction hat. Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy
Speaker 1: politicians who had escaped to tension joined other parties and
Speaker 1: set up a National Unity Government in April. The National
Speaker 1: Unity Government contained members of the National League for Democracy,
Speaker 1: but significantly or hinder activists was appointed and advisory the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Human Rights and the National Unity Government has
Speaker 1: announced it would for the first time accept the jurisdiction
Speaker 1: of the International Criminal Court with respect to all international
Speaker 1: crimes committed in Myanmar since two thousand and two. This
Speaker 1: would include the Ring genocide. By May, both the National
Speaker 1: Unity Government and so well In had realized that no
Speaker 1: amount of non violent protests was going through this large
Speaker 1: regime that was happy to gun down kids in the street.
Speaker 1: So on the fifth of May, he left for the jungle.
Speaker 1: That same day, the National Unity government announced the formation
Speaker 1: of the People's Defense Force or PDF. Within a month,
Speaker 1: eight hundred soldiers had affected to these pro democracy guerilla units.
Speaker 1: Many put their guns with them, but what didn't join
Speaker 1: the PDF. Instead, he joined one of me and MARS.
Speaker 1: Any ethnic armed organizations groups opposed to a central state
Speaker 1: and its domination by the Burman ethnicity. To understand these groups,
Speaker 1: you need to understand that my m R is composed
Speaker 1: of dozens, not hundreds, of ethnic groups, but that the Burman,
Speaker 1: who make up about two thirds of the population, have
Speaker 1: always controlled the state and used it as a tool
Speaker 1: in furthering their interest. Some of these groups, like the
Speaker 1: current National Liberation Army and the Kachin Independence Army, have
Speaker 1: been fighting for decades since the country emerged from British
Speaker 1: colonial rule at the end of World War Two. All
Speaker 1: of these groups drown a combination of ethnic and political grievances.
Speaker 1: Many of them administer semi autonomous territories like the current state.
Speaker 1: In two thousand thirteen, thirteen ethnic armed Organizations or e
Speaker 1: a o s came together to form the Nationwide Ceasefire
Speaker 1: Coordinating Team in c CT and signed an eleven point
Speaker 1: Common Position of Ethnic Resistance Organizations on national Ceasefire or
Speaker 1: the Lisa Agreement. Most of them seem to agree that
Speaker 1: they would accept a federal system rather than complete autonomy.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, a ceasefire was signed, but conflict
Speaker 1: between ethnic armed organizations and between e a o's and
Speaker 1: the government continued. Since the coup began, EO membership has skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: and in October, the National Unity government announced alliances with
Speaker 1: several groups under a central chain of command. Some political
Speaker 1: organizations who played a part in the nineteen eighty eight uprising,
Speaker 1: like the All Burma Students Democratic Front, have been revived
Speaker 1: as armed groups. The A B s DF recently attacked
Speaker 1: Tatmadach ships using an RPG. Attacks on military basis have
Speaker 1: also stepped up. PDF units have ambushed and killed policemen
Speaker 1: and raided police and military outposts. Each time they do,
Speaker 1: they steal valuable weapons and ammunition. The Tatmadau has responded
Speaker 1: with shellings and air strikes against residential areas, executions, mass
Speaker 1: physical retribution, and the murdering of civilians and aid workers
Speaker 1: and burning of their bodies. As a result of all
Speaker 1: this ethnic armed organizations have joined forces with anti authoritarian
Speaker 1: Roman people under the auspices of the People's Defense Forces,
Speaker 1: which are under the command of the exiled National Unity Government.
Speaker 1: We have never experienced such kind of brutalities from the
Speaker 1: military as well as a strong resistance from the people.
Speaker 1: They try to make sure the whole country submit to them,
Speaker 1: but we still refuse to allow them to be our rulers.
Speaker 1: This defiance has led to the formation of the People's
Speaker 1: Defense Forces or PDF, a coalition of thousands of resistance
Speaker 1: fighters were carrying out surprise attacks on Hunter checkpoints, bombing
Speaker 1: army convoys, and supporting ethnic armies in their fight against
Speaker 1: the regime. Twelve months ago, these men and women were
Speaker 1: students and office workers protesting the coup. Today they're training
Speaker 1: to overthrow the military. Bennesota is the tough choice, but
Speaker 1: the young people um they are ready to defend the community.
Speaker 1: They have to, of course, sacrifice their own daily life
Speaker 1: ordinary life. Since March of the influx of new recruits
Speaker 1: has changed these groups. Generation Z militias like the Karinni
Speaker 1: gen Z Liberation Army have sprung up, founded by kids
Speaker 1: who were holding memable signs at protests just a few
Speaker 1: months earlier. They care less about ethnic independence and more
Speaker 1: about beating the junta. Many Burman kids join these groups.
Speaker 1: These organizations of young fighters received training from the experienced
Speaker 1: guerillas hiding in the jungle, but they tended to adopt
Speaker 1: a less top down military structure and armed themselves by
Speaker 1: scavenging whatever weapons they could find, often twenty two caliber
Speaker 1: rifles better suited to shooting squirrels than soldiers. It was
Speaker 1: these kids who grew up online and knew that there
Speaker 1: was nothing you couldn't learn about on Reddit, who tipped
Speaker 1: the balance of force away from the state. Unlike the
Speaker 1: ethnic armed organizations and other more experienced guerrillas in Myanmar,
Speaker 1: these kids have little military experience. Their organizations have few
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. They're made up entirely of young people.
Speaker 1: As a result, there are certain things that they're less
Speaker 1: proficient at, but they're much better at things like grasping
Speaker 1: the use of new technologies, which has led to me
Speaker 1: Amar being the first country in the world where three
Speaker 1: D printed weapons have taken part in a revolution against
Speaker 1: the government. We're going to hear more about that and
Speaker 1: many other things as this series continues. Hey there, I'm
Speaker 1: Jess Milady Confetti here. Hi, I'm Psyche and I am
Speaker 1: hey Shady lady, and welcome to Boss Level podcast, where
Speaker 1: we feature conversations with gas Tube leveled up bringing an
Speaker 1: X feed riost to the table. That was always my response,
Speaker 1: because is like, I am like a unicorn here right like,
Speaker 1: because there's not allowed of like out of the closet
Speaker 1: female gamers. I know a lot of them. Like it
Speaker 1: was like a battlefield. They're like, this is our cool
Speaker 1: boys club and be here. No. Sorry, Hey, this is
Speaker 1: a very dark corner and I'm a lot of light
Speaker 1: and right quarter. We picked the brains of professionals, creators
Speaker 1: and bosses and industries across the globe to help our
Speaker 1: listeners achieve their own boss level. We are not just
Speaker 1: creating a podcast, but a gamified an engaged community. Listen
Speaker 1: to Boss Level on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Katy Lows.
Speaker 1: You might also know me as Quinn Perkins from Scandal
Speaker 1: for Rachel from Inventing Anna. I'm also a mother to
Speaker 1: my son Albi and my daughter Vera. I wanted to
Speaker 1: create a space for open and honest conversations about all
Speaker 1: things parenting, and I thought a podcast was the best
Speaker 1: way to do just that. Check out season five of
Speaker 1: my podcast, Katie's Crib. It is super raw, vulnerable, and hilarious.
Speaker 1: Katie's Crib in no way shape form is judgmental or
Speaker 1: telling you exactly how to parent or exactly how you
Speaker 1: should be. I think it really just makes you feel
Speaker 1: less alone and gives you a community. We're going deep
Speaker 1: with guests like inventing Anna's Anna club Ski, how to
Speaker 1: Get Away with Murders, Asian Naomi King, and Yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: my funality when he burst into my studio, so that's cool.
Speaker 1: Listen to Katie's Crab every Thursday on the I Heart Radio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the
Speaker 1: Art of Accomplishment podcast. We love anxiety, anger, sadness, and selfishness.
Speaker 1: Most people do everything they can to get rid of
Speaker 1: these emotions, but nothing makes them go away. We, however,
Speaker 1: welcome them because they give us a healthy advantage if
Speaker 1: we know how to interpret their signals. Listen to the
Speaker 1: Art of Accomplishment podcast on the Heart Radio, Apple, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. To understand yourself and
Speaker 1: be who you were meant to be. Hey, everybody, I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and this is me and mar printing The
Speaker 1: Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms, regular people
Speaker 1: all over the world have had the same basic idea,
Speaker 1: Maybe if I made myself a gun, the government wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to be such a dick to me. Historically,
Speaker 1: this has had little impact on the willingness of governments
Speaker 1: to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun
Speaker 1: manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a
Speaker 1: gun in your home was really no different from making
Speaker 1: it in a shop, as long as you had the
Speaker 1: proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on
Speaker 1: their own, and we're best fired in a volley by
Speaker 1: a shipload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were
Speaker 1: extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some
Speaker 1: poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a
Speaker 1: threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield
Speaker 1: prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fudel
Speaker 1: lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology
Speaker 1: led to a change in warfare and helped to change society.
Speaker 1: As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle,
Speaker 1: they required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity.
Speaker 1: Nations and peoples without the know how or infrastructure were
Speaker 1: at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came
Speaker 1: into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways
Speaker 1: to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity
Speaker 1: their foes enjoyed. Indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often
Speaker 1: consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in
Speaker 1: South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and
Speaker 1: Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the
Speaker 1: French during the Coach in Chaia, a campaign of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler
Speaker 1: fortifications in the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the
Speaker 1: months that led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 1: the men who fought to create the United States busied
Speaker 1: themselves building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities
Speaker 1: to resist the English. This trend has never really stopped
Speaker 1: in warfare. The day before we recorded this, James, my
Speaker 1: partner in this series, sent me a screen grab from
Speaker 1: a live stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for
Speaker 1: a K forty seven's on a three D printer. Firearms
Speaker 1: manufactured outside the arms industry have played a role in
Speaker 1: every conflict of the modern era, but as you've probably guessed,
Speaker 1: they have had the greatest influence in the little wars
Speaker 1: of colonialism. European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms
Speaker 1: ownership in their colonies except the individuals and ethnic groups
Speaker 1: that adopted its local enforces. Since most of these places
Speaker 1: had never developed their own industrial base for arms industry,
Speaker 1: colonial rebellions often relied on home made weapons in their
Speaker 1: early stages, along with modern firearms pilfered by deserting local soldiers.
Speaker 1: Where domestic productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out
Speaker 1: of their way to relocate it, along with the profit
Speaker 1: it generated, to the metropol All were reflected on this
Speaker 1: in his novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: the Indians cast guns are at any rate up to
Speaker 1: the European standard. Now, after we've been in India a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years, you can't make so much as
Speaker 1: a brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among
Speaker 1: the colonizers, being armed became almost a synonym for being
Speaker 1: a man. This was particularly true for the colonial police
Speaker 1: forces and militaries, but it was also true domestically. Most
Speaker 1: people are broadly familiar with the US Second Amendment the
Speaker 1: robust gun culture that it spawned, but during the higher colonialism,
Speaker 1: English citizens are also free to earn themselves. In Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Robert gascoyne cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a speech
Speaker 1: in which he claimed he would laud the day when
Speaker 1: there was a rifle in every cottage. In England, firearms
Speaker 1: were utterly unrestricted at this point. The first chaine to
Speaker 1: this came in with the first Law that required a
Speaker 1: permit to carry a handgun and restricted children from buying guns. Still,
Speaker 1: firearms were widely available until a red panic gripped the
Speaker 1: nation in following the ball strict revolution in Russia. Across
Speaker 1: the ocean in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly
Speaker 1: restricted where all well himself would learn what it was
Speaker 1: to fire a rifle at someone who shot back. Arm
Speaker 1: Unions and working people served as the only bullwalk to
Speaker 1: a military coup. In ninety six in Madrid, one officer
Speaker 1: opened his armory to the union militias, but another refused
Speaker 1: to hand over for the bolts for the guns they
Speaker 1: had been issued. The Barcelona, where the anarchists left, had
Speaker 1: a long tradition evample at violence. The coup was repelled
Speaker 1: by workers with guns, and the general leading troops there
Speaker 1: was imprisoned and executed. The same pattern played out all
Speaker 1: across the country in July, when the military rose up
Speaker 1: to topple the elected government. In the cities where the
Speaker 1: government opened the armories to the people, the coup was repelled.
Speaker 1: In the cities where the government did not, the coup succeeded.
Speaker 1: Reflecting on this in nine or WORLDWARID, the totalitarian states
Speaker 1: can do great things, but there is one thing they
Speaker 1: cannot do. They cannot give the factory worker a rifle
Speaker 1: and tell him to take it home and keep it
Speaker 1: in his bedroom. That rifle on the wall of the
Speaker 1: laborers cottage or working class flat. It's a symbol of democracy.
Speaker 1: It's a job to see that it's days there, despite
Speaker 1: Orwell's please. The years that followed the Second World War
Speaker 1: led the greater restrictions of the ability of the public
Speaker 1: to arm itself. By the nineteen fifties, carrying any weapon
Speaker 1: for self defense was illegal. Semi automatic center fire arms
Speaker 1: were banned in nineteen eighty eight, and pistols were banned
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six after a mass shooting killed sixteen
Speaker 1: children in Dunblane. This was all utterly infuriating to a
Speaker 1: man named Philip A. Looty. Loody, born in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five grew up on a farm in West Yorkshire, England.
Speaker 1: We don't have a tremendous amount of detail about his upbringing,
Speaker 1: but by the time he was in his early thirties
Speaker 1: he'd become a committed crusader for an unrestricted right to
Speaker 1: bear arms. A skilled machinist with a well equipped shop,
Speaker 1: Loody began the long process of learning how to craft
Speaker 1: homemade firearms. Soon he was building semi and fully automatic weapons.
Speaker 1: Now these were not military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled,
Speaker 1: which made them terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be
Speaker 1: crafted from widely available things like sheet metal washers and screws.
Speaker 1: The person assembling a looty gun would need to be
Speaker 1: a skilled craftsman, but they would not need access to
Speaker 1: welding rig forges or rather expensive industrial equipment. Booty published
Speaker 1: a book Expedient Homemade Firearms the nine millimeter Submachine Gun
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight through Paladin Press. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Paladin was one of the places you could
Speaker 1: go to mail order fringe political literature and guides for
Speaker 1: stuff like trapping human beings or disabling the drive system
Speaker 1: of an Abrams tank in the United States. Nothing about
Speaker 1: Ludy's book was or is illegal, but Phil didn't live
Speaker 1: in the United States. He was arrested several times, starting
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen nineties when a pair of illegal
Speaker 1: home built guns were found on his property. Ludy spent
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, which ended in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: operating a website where he raged against gun control. His
Speaker 1: main argument was that England was headed for totalitarianism, and
Speaker 1: like Orwell, he believed only public ownership of arms could
Speaker 1: prevent this. Unlike Orwell, Ludy was firmly on the right
Speaker 1: wing He traced society's problems to quote a combination of
Speaker 1: political ractness and anti freedom of speech laws legislation governing
Speaker 1: how we speak about such subjects as religion or a
Speaker 1: person's race being just two examples. Words and phrases that
Speaker 1: have been used for centuries without malice are now insipid
Speaker 1: in people's mouths and said to cause offense by those
Speaker 1: very same speech police, who, on the other hand, turned
Speaker 1: a blind eye to the violence, foul language, and sexual
Speaker 1: references blasted daily through our TV sets, a phenomenon that
Speaker 1: really does cause offense to many people. Loody never succeeded
Speaker 1: in sparking a renaissance in civilian arms ownership in the UK,
Speaker 1: but his ideas were adopted by organized criminal groups all
Speaker 1: around the world. In Brazil, looty guns can go for
Speaker 1: as much as twenty five hundred dollars. From two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven to two thousand twelve, nearly half of the submachine
Speaker 1: guns seized by police and salpolo were homemade. Most of
Speaker 1: these arms were certainly used as tools by drug dealers
Speaker 1: or other gangsters, but some of them were surely also
Speaker 1: the tools of citizens who simply sought a way to
Speaker 1: defend themselves in a place with no real rule of law.
Speaker 1: Looty guns have long been popular among motorcycle gangs in Australia,
Speaker 1: and in October of two thousand nineteen, a fascist terrorist
Speaker 1: carried out the last of that year's eight Chan shootings
Speaker 1: in Halla, Germany with a looty gun. His weapons, thankfully
Speaker 1: did not work well. As a general rule, looty guns
Speaker 1: were never going to be of much use to anyone
Speaker 1: besides organized criminals. They aren't great in a gunfight, but
Speaker 1: you can use them to spray bullets into a room
Speaker 1: or a vehicle at close range pretty well. The year
Speaker 1: after Phil Looty died two thousand twelve, a fellow named
Speaker 1: Cody Wilson decided to carry on his work. Cody felt
Speaker 1: three D printing carried the possibility of eventually manufacturing arms
Speaker 1: of equality that might rival traditionally produced guns. He started
Speaker 1: simple with a single shot three eighty handgun based around
Speaker 1: the old Liberator pistol from World War Two. The Liberator
Speaker 1: had been a single shot forty five caliber handgun meant
Speaker 1: to be dropped into Nazi occupied territories, used by insurgents
Speaker 1: to stealthily kill single German soldiers and take their guns.
Speaker 1: Cody Wilson described himself as a crypto anarchist, and when
Speaker 1: his ideas began to draw attention, he dropped out of
Speaker 1: law school to create Defense Distributed. This organization was dedicated
Speaker 1: to the development and distribution of plans to craft three
Speaker 1: D printed weapons. It used a platform called deaf CAD
Speaker 1: to allow users to develop and share blueprints. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and thirteen, the first CAD gun file became available
Speaker 1: online to everyone. It was downloaded more than a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand times in two days. I'd like to quote now
Speaker 1: from an article on the website three D Natives. This
Speaker 1: prompted the US government to demand that Defense Distributed removed
Speaker 1: the file from their site. What followed as a legal
Speaker 1: battle between Cody Wilson and the U. S Government, consisting
Speaker 1: of back and forth lawsuits. It lasted five years until
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, the Trump administration legalized three D
Speaker 1: printed guns. The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual
Speaker 1: assault of an underage girl and had to step down
Speaker 1: from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless, the organization did not cease to
Speaker 1: exist without Cody. Today, for a yearly fee of fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: users of the Deaf CAD website can access the files
Speaker 1: containing different designs of three D printed guns. And I
Speaker 1: should note here that it's probably more accurate to say
Speaker 1: the Trump administration legalized sharing the plans and printing the
Speaker 1: files and whatnot of three D printed guns, not legalized
Speaker 1: three D printed guns. Homemade firearms have been federally legal
Speaker 1: in the United States since forever. The fighting in the
Speaker 1: courts over all this has continued ever since, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen a federal judge and Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD.
Speaker 1: This sparked the creation of a new group, Deterrence Dispensed,
Speaker 1: which was even less centralized. The basic idea was that
Speaker 1: this would make them harder to take down via lawsuits
Speaker 1: or police action. Not stated was that this might also
Speaker 1: protect their reputation from a Cody Wilson situation. The debate
Speaker 1: over the legality of three D printed firearm plans continues
Speaker 1: on to the present day, but the development of these
Speaker 1: arms has continued at an ever faster pace. The best
Speaker 1: modern three D printed arms can even rival inventional guns.
Speaker 1: It's worth emphasizing that these are not purely plastic tools.
Speaker 1: The Liberator pistol used a metal nail, and the better
Speaker 1: three D arms have metal barrels rifled using other craft
Speaker 1: methods that require some nohow but arguably less than it
Speaker 1: took to manufacture a looty gun. Three D printed arms
Speaker 1: have been confiscated by police around the world, but in
Speaker 1: recent months they've begun to crop up somewhere new in
Speaker 1: the arms of revolutionaries fighting against a military coup. Me
Speaker 1: and Ma Burman before that has adversively strict gun control
Speaker 1: laws for decades. When Georgie Orwell was a policeman there
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, he may have carried a gun,
Speaker 1: but the people he was policing did not. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, the British leaders allowed tact organizations similar to
Speaker 1: militias to form and drill, but they weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: carry guns. Gun licenses under the dictatorship were issued primarily
Speaker 1: to party members, but most revoked after failed pro Democian uprising.
Speaker 1: The only civilians who were permitted to earn armed with
Speaker 1: the Chin, the nation's poorest ethnic group, who rely on
Speaker 1: guns to hunt for food. In many cases, these guns
Speaker 1: were flint locks that would not have looked that out
Speaker 1: of place in a battlefield two centuries before. In practice, though,
Speaker 1: things are very different. The current conflict is best seen
Speaker 1: as a flare up in violence has been ongoing since
Speaker 1: Britain left the country in the Tapma door has consistently
Speaker 1: used violence against marginalized ethnic groups in the country, and
Speaker 1: they have consistently taken up arms in response. But unlike
Speaker 1: civil wars in the Middle East, wealthy nations in the
Speaker 1: West have not been flooding Meanmar with weapons for decades,
Speaker 1: and the various E a O S or ethnic armed
Speaker 1: organizations have had to turn to much more unorthodox routes
Speaker 1: to arm and equip themselves against the government. To get
Speaker 1: a better idea of what things are like on the ground,
Speaker 1: we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial
Speaker 1: volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought
Speaker 1: with the people in the early two thousand's. Yes, so
Speaker 1: the ammunition is a constant problem. The shortage is absolutely permanent.
Speaker 1: And yes there is two sources and for the for
Speaker 1: the for the weapons, there is the black market, and
Speaker 1: the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive. This is why
Speaker 1: I would like to have my notebook here with me
Speaker 1: because I think I wrote down the conversation I had
Speaker 1: with some leaders of the kind of at the time
Speaker 1: asking them why we didn't do more persons. Well, like,
Speaker 1: we just can't afford it, uh, you know, uh, we
Speaker 1: just can't afford it. Like strictly we we don't we
Speaker 1: we don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of
Speaker 1: uh of operation we need to. So all the operations
Speaker 1: with you were always focused on if we could capture
Speaker 1: some ammunition, if we could geture like weapons, but especially immunition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there is you know, that's that's the second source
Speaker 1: of of course of uh of weapon. Uh let's say
Speaker 1: source is the is the captures of course, then the
Speaker 1: black market. The black market used to be huge in Cambodia.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the situation now. That was in
Speaker 1: the nineties. There was it was a bit of the
Speaker 1: Albania of some STEA at this time, right, And so
Speaker 1: there is also the other ethnic groups that received sometime
Speaker 1: say a lot of uh of of arms and ammunition
Speaker 1: from sponsor of STU. Some of them, like the West
Speaker 1: the dummies are sponsored by China. So like their supply
Speaker 1: of munition, it's pretty good of of weapons. I think
Speaker 1: it's even cartigo and stuff. Um. Then there is other
Speaker 1: groups that also produced locally quite good their own on arms,
Speaker 1: light arms usually so yeah, these are the different sources
Speaker 1: of welcomes the okay in in the time I was
Speaker 1: there in the early weeks of the protests. Once you
Speaker 1: a claim clear that non violent demonstrators were going to
Speaker 1: be met with state violence, protests began to fashion weapons. First,
Speaker 1: they thought soldiers with the salt rifles, using catapults and
Speaker 1: bos and arrows. It was incredibly brave, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: very effective by the twenty eight so much protesters are
Speaker 1: taken a step first, a group calling itself the Calais
Speaker 1: Civil Army set up barricades and defended them using pressurized
Speaker 1: air rifles that fired marbles and bicycle wheelbearings. The rifles
Speaker 1: all used the same design and the same components. They
Speaker 1: were based on a video someone found on YouTube, but
Speaker 1: they weren't lethal. They helped protesters defend their space, albeit
Speaker 1: at great cost. In that first clash, four protesters and
Speaker 1: four soldiers were killed. The protesters and Calais were able
Speaker 1: to hold out a few days using old hunting rifles
Speaker 1: and air guns. The ambush military patrols and they took
Speaker 1: four police hostage. Then they exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters.
Speaker 1: But nearly April, the Tapmador returned to the protest camp
Speaker 1: in Calais with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns and
Speaker 1: killed eleven people. We must fight back against them. If not,
Speaker 1: our generation will face a worse situation than us. They
Speaker 1: have no laws, a neighborhood villager who battled the regime's
Speaker 1: forces told the Irrawaddy, a local paper. The air guns
Speaker 1: spread around the country quickly to avoid surveillance. Protesters talked
Speaker 1: about cooking up yanny on telegram channels, and what they
Speaker 1: meant was desperately scaring the internet for a way to
Speaker 1: fight back and finding a way to make an air
Speaker 1: rifle out of a beautane canister, a pipe and a
Speaker 1: cigarette lighter, combined with fireworks and smoke bombs made of
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate. The air rifle gave protest is just enough
Speaker 1: cupboard to escape police charges, but they also gave the
Speaker 1: hunter an excuse to further escalate the violence. Attitudes are
Speaker 1: hardening among the protesters too. In Mandalay, they took air
Speaker 1: rifles to the barricades on Saturday, hardly a match for
Speaker 1: the weapons of war they face, but now they know
Speaker 1: this is a fight to the death and more destruction.
Speaker 1: After a fire raged and Pgdalgon Township Overnight, people living
Speaker 1: there but kept away by security forces were turned to
Speaker 1: find sixty homes burned to the ground. Now all they
Speaker 1: can do is pick through the ashes, trying to save
Speaker 1: anything from the military's policy of scorched Even the Tatmadaw
Speaker 1: makes its own weapons, a highly unusual move for a
Speaker 1: relatively small nation. Totmadaw troops and police can be seen
Speaker 1: with a bewildering array of indigenously produced copies of HIM
Speaker 1: sixteen s ouzies and even five five six Galil pattern
Speaker 1: A K style rifles, as well as in three light
Speaker 1: machine guns, which are slightly updated copies of the MG
Speaker 1: forty two used by the Nazis in World War Two.
Speaker 1: After the failed eight eight eight eight uprisings in Night,
Speaker 1: the military offered concessions to China and return for more
Speaker 1: advanced weapons. They got them, but it didn't stop China
Speaker 1: from also supplying Ethnic armed organizations e a o s
Speaker 1: don't have access to the same munitions factories that the
Speaker 1: government does, but there is a long tradition of homemade
Speaker 1: weapons in Myanmar. In more remote parts of the country,
Speaker 1: homemade air rifles and shotguns seem to have been relative
Speaker 1: commonplace before the start of the conflict, and they were
Speaker 1: mostly used for hunting. The country has also covered with
Speaker 1: land mines, which the E. A O S used a
Speaker 1: great effect against the Totmadaw. We spoke to Pierre, a
Speaker 1: former combatant with the Karin who no longer lives in Myanmar.
Speaker 1: His experience is not that recent, but it helps us
Speaker 1: to understand the way this conflict has been fought for decades.
Speaker 1: What we used to produce A lot of land mines,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's produced at the base. Yes, with like
Speaker 1: you know, very very lot of systems with a little
Speaker 1: bit of of type of plastic explosive pt of bomboom
Speaker 1: for contactors and like your batfield. That's it. Pellet guns
Speaker 1: are not good for combat and E A O S
Speaker 1: mostly relied on weapons imported from Thailand, India or China.
Speaker 1: Overwhelmingly these were A K or In sixteen pattern rifles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mostly in my and the units have been there is
Speaker 1: probably a majority of a K platforms in this time. Yes, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean it's more reliable and you know, simple to operate.
Speaker 1: It's very adapted to the to the to the type
Speaker 1: of it was. It was quite correct. I mean I
Speaker 1: swee from the moment that I switched to a case
Speaker 1: at least because at TOST I tried to use this
Speaker 1: scurperency M. Sixteen and it was a nightmare of malfunctions.
Speaker 1: So I switched back to a case, which is what
Speaker 1: you best know and used or my idea doesn't have this.
Speaker 1: I never really had any any malfunction with the case.
Speaker 1: Maybe one time. It's a faulty lot of communition. But
Speaker 1: let's see, not the rifles. The fight, Pierre says, has
Speaker 1: never been restricted to the battlefield for the top medal
Speaker 1: violence against civilians as part of their four cuts doctrine
Speaker 1: that cuts off funding, food, intelligence, and recruits for the
Speaker 1: e a O. S now they are moving that same
Speaker 1: outlook to the cities like literally uh literally by by
Speaker 1: absolutely no laws of well ass I mean like one
Speaker 1: of the first things that I saw when we went
Speaker 1: going battle and in the in the Karen villages, huh
Speaker 1: around the house one of operation is that there was
Speaker 1: absolutely no girl between the age of eleven to the
Speaker 1: age of seventeen. I was like, I asked, you know,
Speaker 1: my my uh commander about it, and he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: like obviously it's if they stay as they will be
Speaker 1: rapped by the that model and the first patron the
Speaker 1: first time they will will come. You know. So this
Speaker 1: this gives you a little bit of the tone of
Speaker 1: what they are about. They constantly ransom civilians when they
Speaker 1: don't model them, like you know, shell villages for no
Speaker 1: reason or because there had been an operation of the kind,
Speaker 1: and they take evenge and who they can take evenge
Speaker 1: and is the civilians. You know. This is this is
Speaker 1: how the b This is what they are basically. The
Speaker 1: top the doll is a large army and many of
Speaker 1: the conscripts are hardly high speed operator types. But that
Speaker 1: hasn't stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians. I
Speaker 1: mean they have as many army defined units with different
Speaker 1: military value. Uh let's say, uh, you know, um, many
Speaker 1: times the units that they stuck on hilltop in the
Speaker 1: middle of rebel zone are not like the most combative,
Speaker 1: let's say, but sometimes we will get surprised resistance. But yeah,
Speaker 1: except of that, when they to an operation in uh
Speaker 1: in a place they bring in like more elite troops.
Speaker 1: Let's say, by contrast, the k and l A, the
Speaker 1: Karni National Liberation Army and other e aos relied on
Speaker 1: civilian support to survive. The Canada operates in uh in
Speaker 1: karen H territory and the civilians are karen I mean
Speaker 1: pretty much when we when we arrive in uh in
Speaker 1: the village. As as medics, you know that we us
Speaker 1: that the kind of the population distribute medicine. Uh No,
Speaker 1: like I don't know what it was like quite uh
Speaker 1: it's quite a fun new acquisition coming from the Tonto.
Speaker 1: This attitude has helped them pierces and they have always
Speaker 1: been open to non current recruits. First of all, is
Speaker 1: not absolutely not um let's say some kind of ethnicist
Speaker 1: or organization or ethno nationalist like you know, with some
Speaker 1: hate for US. I think group including the Obama echnic
Speaker 1: group that like traditionally you know is the is our
Speaker 1: the leaders of the model that have been oppressing them
Speaker 1: for seventy years. But they have absolutely no resentment that
Speaker 1: are extremely open to work with the Democrats, democratic forces
Speaker 1: from from every ethnical But yes, since nine said, the
Speaker 1: k and l A had been linked to link up
Speaker 1: with democratic rebels, providing them with training and shelter in
Speaker 1: order to further their shared goal of a federal and
Speaker 1: democratic country that treated all ethnicities with respect. So so
Speaker 1: these Obama rebels, let's say, uh so trained by the
Speaker 1: currents and so by people I know very well since
Speaker 1: it was my commander then never so I've seen, I've
Speaker 1: seen the currents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the
Speaker 1: Obama opposition, meaning the Obama the main ethnic group. I'd
Speaker 1: say this for me for people that might not know
Speaker 1: the difference. So and so the currents always had representation
Speaker 1: and they took like you know, political refugees, let's say,
Speaker 1: from from inside the Boma in the territor is the
Speaker 1: control mano close I was like the Students Association, the
Speaker 1: exact name I contricle right now. But all these are
Speaker 1: organization of position. And so now they keep this tradition
Speaker 1: by helping the uh these new rebails of the PDF
Speaker 1: to get military training. And yes, by the summer of
Speaker 1: young people had flooded into the jungles, and many of them,
Speaker 1: even the ones of Burman ethnicity. We're fighting alongside the
Speaker 1: Karin and Corenni rebels. They had previously seen as troublemakers
Speaker 1: and terrorists. Just a year or two before. We spoke
Speaker 1: with one of these people, Zall Lynn, who left his
Speaker 1: home in May. There was students, friends, but also young
Speaker 1: people from just the neighborhood. Most people were just above twenty.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were single. You know, there's women
Speaker 1: as well, people whom new technology, young people from the
Speaker 1: from the technology computer uh apologists why called university. A
Speaker 1: lot of these people who knew modern technology went into
Speaker 1: the jungle too, go into Chundle to train and be
Speaker 1: able to overthrow the men online government. So there was
Speaker 1: it was very tiring. We had to go up and
Speaker 1: down unlocks of hills. It was two days of walking
Speaker 1: get there, so up and down the hills and back down,
Speaker 1: up and down until we got to the training plant. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Stacy Wilson Hunt, your host for Inventing Anna, the
Speaker 1: official podcast from Shonda Rhymes and the creators at Shawonda Land.
Speaker 1: Inventing Anna tells the story of a young woman who
Speaker 1: charmed her way into the pocketbooks of New York's elite.
Speaker 1: Why is she gonna take off with that twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars from the banks or was she going to pour
Speaker 1: it into this foundation. You know, people look at Anna
Speaker 1: and see what they want to see. On this podcast,
Speaker 1: you'll get v I P access to the real people
Speaker 1: who inspired the television series and to the actors and
Speaker 1: creatives like show runner Shaunda Rhimes who brought them to life.
Speaker 1: We were working on the show while the trial was
Speaker 1: going on. I remember doing a dramatic reading of Todd's
Speaker 1: opening statement for the Writer's Room. Who is the fake Heiress?
Speaker 1: Anna Delvi join us as we unraveled the stories behind
Speaker 1: the story. Everything's true until it's not, basically in Anna's world.
Speaker 1: Listen to Inventing Anna, the official podcast every Wednesday on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. From Cavalry Audio. The studio that brought
Speaker 1: you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls comes a
Speaker 1: new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Us. The local
Speaker 1: sheriff believes there may be more than one killery. It's
Speaker 1: been four days since those bodies were found and there's
Speaker 1: no arrest as it this morning. They were afraid it's
Speaker 1: face it out in that area, what if they come
Speaker 1: back or whatever. It scared me to death, like it
Speaker 1: scared me. I was very, very intimidating to live here.
Speaker 1: Crazy to think you go to sleep one night, maybe
Speaker 1: snuggling with your loved one, and never wake up, or
Speaker 1: maybe you wake up in a struggle for your life,
Speaker 1: which you lose. Joint host David Raderman as he explores
Speaker 1: one fateful night when evil descended upon small town, Ohio
Speaker 1: killed eight members of an Ohio family in a pre
Speaker 1: planned execution. The family was targeted, most of them targeted
Speaker 1: while they were sleeping. Follow the Pink Moon murders on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. What grows in the forest trees, Sure
Speaker 1: no one else grows in the forest. Our imagination, our
Speaker 1: sense of one day, and our family bonds grow too,
Speaker 1: because when we just connect from this and connect with this,
Speaker 1: we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than
Speaker 1: you think. Find a forest near you and start exploring.
Speaker 1: I Discover the Forest dot Org. Brought to you by
Speaker 1: the United States Forest Service and the AD Council. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, and welcome to episode three of Printing
Speaker 1: the Revolution. Here's my partner, James Stout. In the spring
Speaker 1: and summer of millions of Americans had versions of the
Speaker 1: same experience. State forces killed the helpless man, Protesters took
Speaker 1: to the streets in anger, and armed agents of the
Speaker 1: state responded with mass violence. A lot of people's lives
Speaker 1: changed for ever and fairly short order. What happened in
Speaker 1: Me and Marra after the military coup was that story
Speaker 1: turned up to eleven within days. The military had used
Speaker 1: live fire and demonstrators or a source for today's episode,
Speaker 1: were twenty two years old at the time. He spent
Speaker 1: his days working as delivery driver hang out with his
Speaker 1: girlfriend playing video games. On the day the coup started,
Speaker 1: he was playing pub g after a long shift. Soon
Speaker 1: he and his girlfriend took to the streets with thousands
Speaker 1: of other gen z Burmese kids. The state responded with massacres,
Speaker 1: often firing automatic weapons into the crowds. So I had
Speaker 1: them been particularly politically active before this moment. In fact,
Speaker 1: he felt pretty poorly towards revolutionary supposing the government in
Speaker 1: the jungle, seeing them as rebellious troublemakers. Um in the past,
Speaker 1: we thought that the military is a group that loves
Speaker 1: all the people, that all the different groups in the
Speaker 1: in the country, and then there's just a few people
Speaker 1: who ate the moltree, but especially after the cool we
Speaker 1: face it with our own foreheads and home with the guns.
Speaker 1: We can face the evil the military and all the
Speaker 1: human rights and things that people who hated the military
Speaker 1: before we're talking about. We understand it now because we
Speaker 1: had to face it ourselves. And then they're gonna tell
Speaker 1: us terrorists, and however, must fix all us. We know
Speaker 1: that we're finding for human rights, and we know that
Speaker 1: each person deserves these basic things, you know. So so
Speaker 1: even when we capture a soldier, we don't kill them
Speaker 1: immediately as they're unarmed, you know. When they have sure PDF,
Speaker 1: they torture and kill them very very horrifically or horrendously,
Speaker 1: and they kill and to hurt all the citizens and
Speaker 1: ordinary bystanders. So for us, what they're telling at rebels before,
Speaker 1: we're not rebels. They're the ones that are rebels. So
Speaker 1: we have to call down rebels. They're the terrorists. But
Speaker 1: as violence against protesters escalated, Zull began to see through
Speaker 1: the lives he'd been told by the military of his life.
Speaker 1: What we were calling as rebels are what we kind
Speaker 1: of become. But we know why we are now rebels
Speaker 1: that's because of their terrorism there, oppressive reviews, and their
Speaker 1: violation of human rights. That's why we have to revolt
Speaker 1: against them. For a time, protesters responded creatively with giant
Speaker 1: potato guns meant to fire less lethal protect ours long distances.
Speaker 1: These homemade guns will be fired in volleys well. Other
Speaker 1: protests protected them with shields. Some of these tactics were
Speaker 1: effective a points, but it quickly became clear that the
Speaker 1: government was willing to massacre everyone standing up to them.
Speaker 1: So his girlfriend and their friends quickly decided that non
Speaker 1: violent resistance wasn't going to work, but they didn't give up.
Speaker 1: As we get onto into June, there's two paths, right.
Speaker 1: We can be normal, we can go on the streets.
Speaker 1: We can not ask for the people's power back, and
Speaker 1: since that's not working, we know that what we have
Speaker 1: to do is we need to hold these guns. Get
Speaker 1: these guns. And on the military side, all they know
Speaker 1: is that they will solve this by holding guns. So
Speaker 1: the only thing, the only path that's left for us
Speaker 1: is to take those guns for ourselves. So around the
Speaker 1: end of May we started entering training school. So the
Speaker 1: downtour is what the word he used, and it's something
Speaker 1: like this corner part um so one corner part one
Speaker 1: to two. So talking, what that means is that in
Speaker 1: the funtings, funt things that we were doing, hunting rifles
Speaker 1: that we were using for that. So we kind of
Speaker 1: start started and we fought first in Dimoso. If we
Speaker 1: can ask the military nicely, then there's no reason for
Speaker 1: us to be using guns. But since they don't listen
Speaker 1: to our demands or our request at all, then the
Speaker 1: and since that all we can do, all they are saying,
Speaker 1: all they're doing is using the guns and being terrorists
Speaker 1: trying to shoot us. So the only thing that we
Speaker 1: can do to get what we need and what we
Speaker 1: want is to take the guns for ourselves. And so,
Speaker 1: like hundreds of people his age, it's all headed into
Speaker 1: the jungle in May. The decision wasn't an overnight one
Speaker 1: or an easy one. But after protesting non violently, then
Speaker 1: meeting state violence with community defense, then seeing his peers
Speaker 1: gunned down in the street, he didn't have many other choices.
Speaker 1: He picked up a megaphone, then a shield, and now
Speaker 1: he was heading in the jungle to pick up a rifle.
Speaker 1: The only problem was that there weren't any rifles. He
Speaker 1: left with his girlfriend and quote with blessing of his parents.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind for later. When he first went
Speaker 1: to the jungle, Zall went to a two week training
Speaker 1: camp where the Karinny People's Defense Force taught him the
Speaker 1: basics of guerrilla warfare, but they didn't have enough weapons
Speaker 1: to arm him and his friends. So these gen Z
Speaker 1: militants began their fighting careers with twenty two caliber rifles.
Speaker 1: If you aren't a gun person, the twenty two was
Speaker 1: one of the smallest widely available bullets. Like any bullet,
Speaker 1: it can kill, but as a caliber it's better suited
Speaker 1: for shooting rabbits than soldiers. These twenty two rifles were
Speaker 1: handmade locally and only fired one shot at a time.
Speaker 1: But it was those rifles that Zaw, his girlfriend, and
Speaker 1: their friends carried into their first gunfight with the Totmadaw.
Speaker 1: After battling like that for about three weeks, the shooting stopped,
Speaker 1: he said in an interview we conducted over signal. After
Speaker 1: the shooting stopped, we grouped together money to buy arms
Speaker 1: by asking for donations. They were massively outgunned, but determined
Speaker 1: to fight on with the weapons they could make and
Speaker 1: buy on the black market. Until they could find something better,
Speaker 1: even if that meant taking guns from dead soldiers. The
Speaker 1: military's guns are extremely good, of course, compared to point
Speaker 1: two two's, he said. We fight with the mindset that
Speaker 1: we must win. Our minds are always prepared to take
Speaker 1: their guns when a soldier falls. It's a mindset to
Speaker 1: want the enemy's arms to beat your own arms. You
Speaker 1: need to want to resist injustice because we are fighting
Speaker 1: for what is right. We do not get sad even
Speaker 1: if we die. We are happy, even when wounded. We
Speaker 1: no longer care if our arms are matched unevenly. Now,
Speaker 1: despite their enthusiasm PDF units all over the country, we're
Speaker 1: finding themselves in the same desperate situation. When thousands of
Speaker 1: young people in myanm Are decided to take up arms
Speaker 1: against the government, they're just weren't enough guns to go around.
Speaker 1: A K pattern rifles sell for three thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: the black market, and a RS sell for up to
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars. The g d P per capita in
Speaker 1: twenty was just twelve hundred and eighteen dollars and thirty
Speaker 1: five cents per person, and unlike militias in Syria and Iraq,
Speaker 1: the Pro Democracy E a o S and Myanmar don't
Speaker 1: have the benefit questionable benefit of the US flooding the
Speaker 1: region with its fire hose of guns and money. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: Zall and his squad took to YouTube, where they found
Speaker 1: videos explaining how to make two to three caliber bolt
Speaker 1: action rifles. Again, if you're not a gun person, two
Speaker 1: to three may not sound very different than twenty two,
Speaker 1: But whereas twenty two is commonly used to shoot squirrels,
Speaker 1: two to three is the standard rifle round more or
Speaker 1: less for the US military. These new bolt action two
Speaker 1: two three's All and his friends were making could not
Speaker 1: match the rate of fire of a modern rifle, but
Speaker 1: they could at least match those rifles in stopping power.
Speaker 1: Once these gen z insurgents had the technique down, they
Speaker 1: created a detailed album on Facebook showing how everything from
Speaker 1: the stock to the barrel could be made with pipes, lumber,
Speaker 1: and hours and hours of detailed hard work. Unlike their
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare instructors, these kids had grown up on the
Speaker 1: Internet rather than the jungle, so they knew that if
Speaker 1: it exists, there's a subreddit for it. It was the
Speaker 1: Internet that came to their rescue. Three D printed guns
Speaker 1: have been around for a decade, but the early models
Speaker 1: didn't work well and suffered from a pretty bad reputation
Speaker 1: due in part to Cody Wilson, the pedophile libertarian activists
Speaker 1: we discussed last episode. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has
Speaker 1: covered the printed gun movement extensively. Cody Wilson made his
Speaker 1: whole thing like, I'm the guy with the three D
Speaker 1: printy guns, and he was on this moral cru side.
Speaker 1: The three D printed gun lads, particularly Deterrence Dispense, We're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't give a ship about that. We're
Speaker 1: just putting our stuff out into the world. Obviously they
Speaker 1: got the ideas, but they weren't really wedded to this
Speaker 1: idea of it being one person. Deterrence Dispensed was a
Speaker 1: group of anonymous activists who were more concerned with making
Speaker 1: printed guns that worked than making a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: Hanrahan was connected to one activist who used the pseudonym
Speaker 1: Jay Stark, through the group, and after three years of
Speaker 1: conversing online, Hanrahan met Stark in Germany to produce a documentary.
Speaker 1: Jay Stark died of a heart attack following a police
Speaker 1: raid last year, so we spoke to Hanrahan about actual
Speaker 1: world deal. His whole worldview comes from this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, it's everybody should have the right to be
Speaker 1: able to fight tyranny. And if you can't fight tyranny,
Speaker 1: like you're fucked. And the way to fight tyranny in
Speaker 1: the modern era is firearms. We know that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's no you can't argue it's that no peaceful
Speaker 1: march gets rid of a fascist dictatorship or whatever. But
Speaker 1: he he was, he he was you know, there's some
Speaker 1: people would say he was far right. Some people say
Speaker 1: it was an anarchist. Some people say he was a
Speaker 1: US patriot. I mean, first, he wasn't even from America,
Speaker 1: and he had a lot of he liked the laws
Speaker 1: in America, but he wasn't like some of the American
Speaker 1: kind of fan boy or anything in that sense. He
Speaker 1: liked the gun lawds. He liked the freedom of speech lords,
Speaker 1: which I do as well. You know that personally, I
Speaker 1: in this country, you know, if you tweet the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: even in jest, like police will literally come to your
Speaker 1: house in Britain like it's happened, it's fucking mental um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he liked that kind of thing, um, And
Speaker 1: I think I think for him it was he was
Speaker 1: very tunnel vision, you know, he was very tunnel vision.
Speaker 1: It was just freedom, freedom, freedom, and if he said,
Speaker 1: well what about this, what about that, he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't care about that. Until the freedom is there,
Speaker 1: there's no point looking at anything else. And so his
Speaker 1: brain was always on people that are living on the tyranny,
Speaker 1: you know, and it genuinely would. I know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people, even leftist, particularly leftist, have tried to
Speaker 1: completely smear him as a white supremacist. They were saying, oh,
Speaker 1: everything he said in that dog that I made was
Speaker 1: really it was secret um, anti Jewish white supremacy. And
Speaker 1: then it came out that he wasn't even white, you know.
Speaker 1: It was like very good, very good, you fucking idiots.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of that going around. But
Speaker 1: I honestly believe that deep down he was just tunnel vision,
Speaker 1: focused on this idea of every until everybody is not
Speaker 1: living on the tyranny, I must go on this mission.
Speaker 1: And okay, if if someone shoots up at school with
Speaker 1: what I've invented, so be it, you know, which I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's good but that was just his idea.
Speaker 1: You know, he was like, so be it, fuck it
Speaker 1: if I can. You know, he was very genuine when
Speaker 1: he was done about the wigas or he was on
Speaker 1: about the mistreatment of Kurds from Turkey, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was like, look, if we can build something that
Speaker 1: can help them, well, sorry that the West might get
Speaker 1: funked up because of it, but I'm focused on this now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: in in practice that would be chaos probably, but you know,
Speaker 1: he just saw it the way he saw it, and
Speaker 1: that was that. The cavalier attitude Stark seems to have
Speaker 1: had to how his invention might be used is of
Speaker 1: course worthy of criticism, but the revolutionaries on the ground
Speaker 1: in Myanmar were not concerned with ideological debates over the
Speaker 1: ethics of homemade firearms. They needed guns, and they needed
Speaker 1: them now. J Stark's f GC nine, which stands for
Speaker 1: Fuck Gun Control nine millimeter, was simple to make, easy
Speaker 1: to use, and relied entirely on parts you could print
Speaker 1: or buy in any hardware store. In September, a post
Speaker 1: popped up on the fosse cads subreddit, which is dedicated
Speaker 1: to the manufacturing of three D printed guns. Stark is
Speaker 1: a hero there. The post said, I wanted to say
Speaker 1: thanks to this community, the creators of f GC nine
Speaker 1: and the various mods when we could. You guys are
Speaker 1: literally empowering the armed revolution against dictators and one of
Speaker 1: the most underdeveloped countries. We are now equipped with f
Speaker 1: GC nine and starting the armed revolution to the cool
Speaker 1: leader dictator. As one poster comments, the account quote went
Speaker 1: from posting about mobile games to how to three D
Speaker 1: print SMG S two, desperately asking people to pay attention
Speaker 1: what was happening in my and mar Then after the
Speaker 1: f GC nine post, it was deleted entirely. J Stark
Speaker 1: never lived to see this. He would have loved it.
Speaker 1: What everything that he was doing, that was the main
Speaker 1: focus in my opinion, that like, it couldn't be a
Speaker 1: more perfect, like practical actual realization of his project. You
Speaker 1: couldn't pick a more perfect version of it to happen
Speaker 1: like that, you know. And there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: of all where there's a lot of drug dealers in Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: of FCC nines. There was a Nazi recently arrested with one.
Speaker 1: You know, these people are awful, of course, but the
Speaker 1: most prevalent use of the f GC nine, and at
Speaker 1: least from what I've observed, has been from the rebels
Speaker 1: in MYRMA making them. I think that I've seen like
Speaker 1: thirty of them so far. You know, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and there was one was found stashed in
Speaker 1: a bush. My theory is they're left around for ambush
Speaker 1: attacks and areas that are not as fully controlled by
Speaker 1: the rebels. First CAD, a community of mostly US based
Speaker 1: gun printers, lost its collective mind, and it didn't take
Speaker 1: long for people to make the connection between the post
Speaker 1: and a desperate plight of me and my spring revolution.
Speaker 1: Soon after the post, the tap the Door started posting
Speaker 1: pictures of f GC nine, often without sits, captured from
Speaker 1: fighters in Yangon, and the twenty one September, the Tapmo
Speaker 1: Door's Ministry of Information released a statement, I'm thea th
Speaker 1: way yea mint. We're found with an f GC nine
Speaker 1: Mark two pistol five rounds of nine millimeter any nisition.
Speaker 1: They were arrested along with their drone. The military alleged
Speaker 1: they were an urban unit from the same generation Z
Speaker 1: Freedom Army that's all was a part of. That same month,
Speaker 1: the military posted pictures of three more captured FGC nins,
Speaker 1: suggesting that at least five have been captured by late September.
Speaker 1: Then two months later, a new post popped up in
Speaker 1: the Fosse cat sebreddit. Hey, I'm back and the guy
Speaker 1: who posted a thank you note back in September here.
Speaker 1: Now that the f GC nines are ready known by
Speaker 1: the dictator, I can proudly announce the We're from me
Speaker 1: and Mar. Yes, we are mass producing FGC nines to
Speaker 1: fight back against the Dictator. More intfo about our production
Speaker 1: will be published later this time. The user you slash
Speaker 1: daddy u m c D hung around to answer questions.
Speaker 1: Those bastards didn't know we had the tech back then.
Speaker 1: Now that everything is in public, we can proudly say
Speaker 1: we're from me and Mar. We are mostly responsible for
Speaker 1: production in R and D, even though we also involved
Speaker 1: in other ground missions. We distribute the FDC nine to
Speaker 1: a lot of different urban guerrillas in urban and rural areas.
Speaker 1: Some of the units got arrested a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: which you might have already seen on the sub credit.
Speaker 1: Apart from the FTC nine, there are other equipments and
Speaker 1: weapons that are being produced with three D printers, he wrote.
Speaker 1: He said his team were residing in ethnic armed organization areas,
Speaker 1: mainly the current National Union and the Kachin Independence Army
Speaker 1: controlled zones. He posted that they tried other three D
Speaker 1: printer designs, such as the plastic of which is a
Speaker 1: printed a K forty seven receiver, but getting the other
Speaker 1: parts made it impractical. By contrast, the FTC nine can
Speaker 1: be made entirely using a three D printer and some
Speaker 1: hardware store parts. According to another source, me and Must
Speaker 1: motorcycle repair shops made quick work of the metal barrels
Speaker 1: and bolts. Electro Chemical machining was used to make more barrels.
Speaker 1: They also had the chance to buy a few glock
Speaker 1: barrels from Thailand, Daddy U m c d said, but
Speaker 1: those cost a lot more than the FDC nine barrels.
Speaker 1: While his account continued to post, the military continued to
Speaker 1: share photos of captured FCC nines. Three workshops that have
Speaker 1: been using lathes to make the barrels are raided. The
Speaker 1: photos of three more captured guns popped up in November,
Speaker 1: alongside bolt action rifles. It's still had stickers on their
Speaker 1: stocks from what looked like US gun shops. Production and
Speaker 1: decentralized locations continued despite the raids, while other groups fought
Speaker 1: on with homemade revolving rifles, crude homemade wooden stocks, another
Speaker 1: improvised weapons. A telegram channel with instructions in Burmese on
Speaker 1: how to make the guns made sure that even when
Speaker 1: one shop or gunsmith was taken out of the fire,
Speaker 1: the knowledge wasn't lost. Although filament for their three D
Speaker 1: printers were becoming harder to get, they'd stock powered a
Speaker 1: lot in advance. Daddy U M C D try to
Speaker 1: manufacture automatic FTC nights and another printiple model called Professor
Speaker 1: Parabellum square tubes of machine gun. But nothing else seemed
Speaker 1: as easier as reliable as the FTC NIGHTE of course
Speaker 1: read it. Being read it, people questioned the veracity and
Speaker 1: utility of his posts, he responded, FDC nines are just
Speaker 1: part of the game because they could be produced with
Speaker 1: what we have at the lowest cost available rifles of
Speaker 1: four thousand to seven thousand U S dollars at our border,
Speaker 1: f gcs are under one hundred dollars. Rifle parts are
Speaker 1: ten times more expensive than lock parts. To all those
Speaker 1: who are saying these photos of Suss, we don't want
Speaker 1: to blame the suspicion. If any of you remember the
Speaker 1: threat I posted in September, you will remember that we
Speaker 1: are mass producing FDC nights. The ones in the photos
Speaker 1: you've seen were supplied by us. There are many groups
Speaker 1: like this now we do the main production, just like
Speaker 1: I explained in September. Then, Daddy U m c D
Speaker 1: went on to thank the other members of the subreddit,
Speaker 1: claiming their active help with the only reason he and
Speaker 1: other revolutionaries have been able to overcome certain technical issues.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be here without you guys, especially someone who
Speaker 1: shared with me. The buffer spring and fire control groups
Speaker 1: bring measurements, he said. By late November, photos of f
Speaker 1: GC nines in the hands of fighters emerged and they
Speaker 1: showed sights. This time they had longer barrels and home
Speaker 1: made suppresses too. The f GC nines were apparently used
Speaker 1: by urban units for close up fighting and for the
Speaker 1: training of new fighters, since they have essentially the same
Speaker 1: controls than they are fifteen or M sixteen rifle, both
Speaker 1: of which are common in ME and mis rebel units.
Speaker 1: We have successfully streamlined variety of techniques to produce f
Speaker 1: GC nine one thousand plus efficiently. Our primary forces are
Speaker 1: equipped with proper rifles. F GC nines are a guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 1: We started using those in Hit and Run and Special
Speaker 1: Task Force missions too. We don't share much about the
Speaker 1: mission to the public yet. It will definitely come and
Speaker 1: when it does, are updated here if I'm still alive
Speaker 1: ha ha wrote Daddy U m c d on the
Speaker 1: False cat Sebreddit. Even with production in False Wing, ammunition
Speaker 1: remained a problem. Although some regions can produce twenty two
Speaker 1: and nine millimeter at home. According to Daddy U m
Speaker 1: c D, five six can be purchased in large quantities
Speaker 1: at the border with Thailand, but it isn't cheap. Instead,
Speaker 1: the PDF alid and raiding police and military outposts in
Speaker 1: the same way the e O has had for years.
Speaker 1: Nine millimeter is the most common center fire pistol around
Speaker 1: in the world. That's why the Turrents Dispense picked it
Speaker 1: for the f GC nine sees weapons often only have
Speaker 1: a handful of rounds, but that's enough to kill a
Speaker 1: soldier and take his weapon. Jay Stock might not have
Speaker 1: been around to see his invantion used to fight Tyranny,
Speaker 1: but Hammerhan thinks he would have been happy with the results.
Speaker 1: He would have been made up. I think that's everything
Speaker 1: he wanted to achieve. You know what I'm saying, That
Speaker 1: really is everything you wanted to do. Even the National
Speaker 1: Unity government me and mus government in exile has come
Speaker 1: around to at least some of Jay Stock's ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: According to Daddy U m c D Ministry of Defense
Speaker 1: Minister already promised about the right to bear arms at
Speaker 1: the first day of the revolution. Promises made by revolutionary
Speaker 1: governments are not exactly solid commitments, but it's not hard
Speaker 1: to see why a generation of kids like Zaw, forged
Speaker 1: by an asymmetrical conflict with a government that possessed a
Speaker 1: near absolute advantage in armaments, might be committed to staying
Speaker 1: armed even if they win. At the moment, the future
Speaker 1: of their struggle is very much end doubt. Scrolling through
Speaker 1: Facebook photos of Zol and his comrades is a surreal experience.
Speaker 1: They look not just to young soldiers mostly look young,
Speaker 1: but they look like students kids from some weirdly militarized university.
Speaker 1: Photos on Facebook show them sprawled out together in the
Speaker 1: grass and camo fatigues bearing rifles, but each glued to
Speaker 1: their phones as they cuddle in together. Zaw and his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: who he described to us as the girl I love,
Speaker 1: fought alongside each other until January seven of this year.
Speaker 1: The battle that we started, she was coming within and
Speaker 1: you know as EPA. Since weapons landed near her and
Speaker 1: hit her like so ther bone broke so so she
Speaker 1: had to go to hospital. Three D printed and homemade
Speaker 1: guns have helped, but Zoll and his friends are still
Speaker 1: fighting against a modern military with planes, night vision goggles,
Speaker 1: and tanks. Despite this, more than a year after the coup,
Speaker 1: they're still fighting and more soldiers deffect to join them weekly.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see what victory looks like. The cities
Speaker 1: will be another battle altogether. But the jungle camp where's
Speaker 1: all video calls us from, it's impossible to see what
Speaker 1: giving up might look like. Either he's still fighting, his
Speaker 1: girlfriend is healing, and they both committed to staying out
Speaker 1: in the jungle until they are in their freedom back
Speaker 1: or diet trying. And we're live here outside the Perez
Speaker 1: family home, just waiting for the and there they go
Speaker 1: almost on time. This morning. Mom is coming out the
Speaker 1: front door strong with a double arm kid carry looks
Speaker 1: like Dad has the bags daughter he's bringing up the rear. Oh,
Speaker 1: but the diaper bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh,
Speaker 1: but mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle
Speaker 1: for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks
Speaker 1: to be about nine or ten, has secured herself and
Speaker 1: the booster seat. Dad zips the bag clothes and they're off. Ah,
Speaker 1: but looks like mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is
Speaker 1: still on the roof of the car and there it goes. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
Speaker 1: sweat the small stuff, just nail the big stuff, like
Speaker 1: making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right
Speaker 1: seat for their agent's eyes. Learn more n h t
Speaker 1: s a dot gov slash the right Seat. Visits dot
Speaker 1: gov slash the Right Seat, brought to you by NITZA
Speaker 1: and the ad Council. What grows in the forest trees?
Speaker 1: Sure you know what else grows in the forest Our imagination,
Speaker 1: our sense of wonder, and our family bonds grow too,
Speaker 1: because when we disconnect from this and connect with this,
Speaker 1: we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than
Speaker 1: you think. Find a forest near you and start exploring.
Speaker 1: I discover the forest dot org brought to you by
Speaker 1: the United States Forest Service and the AD Council. Look
Speaker 1: to your children's eyes to see the true magic of
Speaker 1: a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You look
Speaker 1: and see a tree. They see the wrinkled face of
Speaker 1: a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They see
Speaker 1: treasure and pebbles. They see a windy path that could
Speaker 1: lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide
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Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, and this is part four of me
Speaker 1: and mar printing the Revolution. And then once we got there,
Speaker 1: we couldn't rest, you know, reign side or whatever. Women
Speaker 1: as well, we were all like try when they came,
Speaker 1: when we were leaving, they were all like very fair
Speaker 1: skin beautiful. And then we went in and then everyone
Speaker 1: got tamped in the jungle. We're training all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, people in training camp. We were driven apart.
Speaker 1: And then the reason that we were all doing business
Speaker 1: because of an Aline coup as students and how much
Speaker 1: he has terrorized the public and the people, and that's
Speaker 1: why we were We have this morale and the ability
Speaker 1: to get through the training and be able to wield weapons.
Speaker 1: Zora and his friends went into the junglist students, programmers
Speaker 1: and kids. Now they're fighters. They were tech savvy young people,
Speaker 1: he says. They grew up online and that generational divide
Speaker 1: which the internet brought here came much later in Mihama.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until twenty eleven the people really gained access
Speaker 1: to the Internet and with it the new ideas and
Speaker 1: identities that it brought. Those generation are among the first
Speaker 1: to embrace global connectivity, and now after having it taken away,
Speaker 1: they're refusing to give it up. The start of the
Speaker 1: coup in February, the military, well gen Z was organizing online,
Speaker 1: social media and all that so and they were kind
Speaker 1: of I think this is from my experience, but um
Speaker 1: kind of organizing around like gen Z is going to
Speaker 1: be different than the generation because we have the Internet,
Speaker 1: and also we know more about the world and can
Speaker 1: come communicate to the rest of the world. I think
Speaker 1: one thing that was big was that in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: it just took one video leaking out of the country
Speaker 1: for there to be big international repercussions. It's worth noting
Speaker 1: that when people in Burma talk about the Internet, they
Speaker 1: mean Facebook. Phones come with the Facebook app installed and
Speaker 1: it's sometimes exempt from data charges. For many people in Burma,
Speaker 1: using the Internet means using Facebook. Zor and his friends
Speaker 1: are different from their parents in many ways, not at
Speaker 1: least in their perceptions of authority. This has led to
Speaker 1: a situation where the PDF people's defense force units are
Speaker 1: much less hierarchical than units of the Townmador. So when
Speaker 1: we make decisions in our group, there's no master and students.
Speaker 1: There's no teacher and student. But you know the way
Speaker 1: that it works, there are people who are good, they're older,
Speaker 1: people who are more trained, and then their new recruits,
Speaker 1: new people who just came in. So of course the
Speaker 1: people who were there for longer and know more about
Speaker 1: the situation have more voice. And when we discussed, especially
Speaker 1: people who were there when we founded this group, there
Speaker 1: were only really eight people from when we group. So
Speaker 1: those eight people kind of discussed on the bigger strategy.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't really vote there. He says he
Speaker 1: wants to do it. He thinks it's good. We are
Speaker 1: there's the seven of us we think is good, or
Speaker 1: we support him, or someone says, well we don't really
Speaker 1: like that idea, then we don't do it. They try
Speaker 1: to achieve more gender quality as well. There's are explained
Speaker 1: that in his unit the women are not always the
Speaker 1: frontline fight is that's the place there's no discrimination. You know,
Speaker 1: we're men can women and men were training whoever could come.
Speaker 1: But like on the battlefield, people, we don't use women
Speaker 1: that much on the battlefield. That's one thing that we
Speaker 1: do know is that it is not it's not really discrimination.
Speaker 1: But if women are with us together, we have a
Speaker 1: confusion about whether we need to protect them or we're
Speaker 1: just fighting with with them or they're fighting in front
Speaker 1: of us. And that there's one thing that is very different.
Speaker 1: It is that in terms of mentality, we we can't.
Speaker 1: We never take the women out really far into very
Speaker 1: dangerous fights. So often they're in the back as back
Speaker 1: up or two supplies or things like that. But as
Speaker 1: you know, the military government, the military terroristists are very
Speaker 1: very it's very unethical. They don't follow the rules, so
Speaker 1: you know they're gonna shoot whoever they see. So even
Speaker 1: if they're hanging back and they're sending medical supplies there.
Speaker 1: They can still get hit for ZOR in particular, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stake. After almost an hour and a
Speaker 1: half of talking, I asked about his parents. I've heard
Speaker 1: of retribution attacks against the families of fighters and wondered
Speaker 1: if he was worried about that. So mom and dad
Speaker 1: are both they support me fighting against the military. They're
Speaker 1: very happy. Is that really wants to do cdium, but
Speaker 1: he can't run away because the military has taken his
Speaker 1: uh mother and his sisters. He's still has five sisters.
Speaker 1: They're all still in that military command and they're worked
Speaker 1: there in the military stool schools, so it's very hard
Speaker 1: for them to run away, right, So he really wants
Speaker 1: to leave the military, but he can't though whole so
Speaker 1: that the fact that I am they're trying to fight
Speaker 1: against the military. He's very happy, and but he tells
Speaker 1: me to be careful about my own life. They're supportive
Speaker 1: and they really want to come fight themselves, but they
Speaker 1: can't because of my sisters and my mother. So him
Speaker 1: seeing that I can do it, it's really wonderful for them.
Speaker 1: So his father, his other brother and other people, but
Speaker 1: are three of them below him they've all usually just
Speaker 1: lived together with his grandfather and stuff in the military.
Speaker 1: Compounds are near the military, so he really wants to
Speaker 1: call all the people that are still there, but they
Speaker 1: can't leave. This is what civil wood does, trapped us
Speaker 1: in a situation where we can't make the right choice
Speaker 1: even when we know what it is. In many situations,
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to discern right from wrong in the
Speaker 1: midst of so much violence. Zool has been able to fight,
Speaker 1: but his dad is stuck fighting against people like his
Speaker 1: son in order to protect his daughters. Thousands of families
Speaker 1: across the country divided in the same way by circumstance
Speaker 1: or ideology. The military is something of a separate society,
Speaker 1: has its own schools in its own culture, but ethnic
Speaker 1: armed organizations have not been close to open populations either,
Speaker 1: and so whole new identities have been forged by Generation
Speaker 1: Z while their families often struggle to abandon all certainties.
Speaker 1: As we record this, Zoo is still fighting, his girlfriend
Speaker 1: is still healing. Every few weeks a video of him
Speaker 1: and his friends pops up on redditor Facebook. They have
Speaker 1: optics on their rifles now and are taking long range
Speaker 1: shots at the TOTMODA who rely on iron sights. They
Speaker 1: shoot and reload like soldiers, and they laugh like kids.
Speaker 1: The Totmada still controls the cities, but to move between
Speaker 1: them they have to travel in convoys at breakneck speeds,
Speaker 1: using ambushes, mines and knowledge of the terrain. E A
Speaker 1: O S and the PDF are able to deny the
Speaker 1: military access to large portions of the countryside. Without a
Speaker 1: serious change in the conflict, it might stay like this
Speaker 1: for years. A report published this month detailed the attacks
Speaker 1: in the Karini state by the Totmada on churches, residential homes,
Speaker 1: camps for displaced people, which killed sixty one and the
Speaker 1: months since Saw left the city. On Christmas Eve. In
Speaker 1: Uprusso's township, they killed at least forty civilians. Autopsies show
Speaker 1: some were gagged and burned alive. In recent months, the
Speaker 1: Totmodal has increased its use of air strikes against targets
Speaker 1: that it deems legitimate. Ming Anhlang, the junta's leader, flew
Speaker 1: to Russia twice. In twenty twenty one, he was proclaimed
Speaker 1: an honorary professor of the Military University of the Russian
Speaker 1: Armed Forces. Quote. We are determined to continue our efforts
Speaker 1: to strengthen bilateral ties based on the mutual understanding, respect
Speaker 1: and trust that have been established between our two countries,
Speaker 1: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with
Speaker 1: the coup leader on June twenty second. We pay special
Speaker 1: attention to this meeting as we see me and mar
Speaker 1: as a time tested strategic partner and a reliable ally
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific region. He went on.
Speaker 1: Min On Plange was equally lavish with his praise, saying
Speaker 1: that he saw Russia as a friend forever. Myanmar relies
Speaker 1: heavily on Russian hind M I thirty five helicopter gunships,
Speaker 1: transport helicopters, Mid twenty nine and s U thirty fighter
Speaker 1: jets and Yak one thirty ground attack aircraft to carry
Speaker 1: out bombing raids and straight civilians. All of these weapons
Speaker 1: systems have been seen more recently in the fighting in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: One prominent Burmese Irish family, the Kiyotongs, has helped the
Speaker 1: junta avoid an international arms embargo using their global connections
Speaker 1: and a network of shady shadow companies. They have purchased
Speaker 1: helicopters under the pretense of using them for tourism and
Speaker 1: the oil and gas industry and handed them over to
Speaker 1: the Topmadaw. They've also helped shuttle coastal radar to Menmar,
Speaker 1: which the Topmadal used to track Rohinga refugees and provide
Speaker 1: cover for several aircraft purchases. To fund these arms purchases,
Speaker 1: the Totmada has found willing markets for luxury goods abroad,
Speaker 1: according to Justice for Menmar, since the coup in February,
Speaker 1: the United States has imported fifteen hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: metric tons of teak from the Anmar, using intermediaries to
Speaker 1: avoid sanctions. And the two thousand seventeen two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: financial year, the last year for which data is available,
Speaker 1: the government received one hundred million US dollars in revenue
Speaker 1: from taxes and royalties applied to the timber tradee There
Speaker 1: were more shipments than two thousand eighteen, offering the top
Speaker 1: Medaw the chance to make enough money to continue purchasing
Speaker 1: weapons to use against their population. The conflict in Myanmar
Speaker 1: remains complicated. It's easy to reduce the alphabet soup of
Speaker 1: rebel groups to E A O S and the PDF,
Speaker 1: but these groups and their motivations are diverse. Pierre explained
Speaker 1: to us that even within the Kuran there are deep divisions. Well,
Speaker 1: first you have to know that historically the Karen Rebellion
Speaker 1: that started in nineteen forty eight nineteen, so quite a
Speaker 1: long timeable was led by by Christian by the Christian minority, okay,
Speaker 1: of the of the current people because obviously that was
Speaker 1: the most Western educated people UM at the time. And
Speaker 1: so this elite kind of reproduced itself in the canoe.
Speaker 1: Who is out being the canoe is the current National
Speaker 1: Union is a democratic movement. But you know, our elites
Speaker 1: tend to reproduce themselves. And so most of the leadership,
Speaker 1: let's say, of the Karen National Union and the current
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army was Christian like. And so the Burmese Junta,
Speaker 1: the Burmese military government UH, decided to use this to
Speaker 1: create a wedge between between the Karen Christians and the
Speaker 1: Karen Buddhists UH and sent monks to say, agitate and
Speaker 1: try to cause this split on religious grounds no UH,
Speaker 1: and they succeeded in parts and succeeded to to separate
Speaker 1: a part of Karen Buddhists that created the democratic Karen
Speaker 1: Buddhists Army, which then allied themselves, of course to the
Speaker 1: to the junta and to h to attack the to
Speaker 1: attack the kind of and the manner of flow, which
Speaker 1: of course they knew all the all the words there
Speaker 1: on the defenses and where was the defense situated, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and succeeded in destroying the capital of the Canon National
Speaker 1: Union in Manaplo. In So that was the situation pretty
Speaker 1: much when I arrived. It was pretty like there was
Speaker 1: not so much territory anymore held by the Callen. And
Speaker 1: more more importantly, they lost a lot of income because
Speaker 1: a lot of their income come from a tax at
Speaker 1: the border that they can control, you know. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the situation. Not every e a O has
Speaker 1: embraced the National Unity Government directly, after all, many of
Speaker 1: its members were enthusiastically running cover for the Rohinga genocide
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Many of the eos remain technically
Speaker 1: under a ceasefire with the top Medon, and the top
Speaker 1: Meadon knows that if it pushes too far into EO territory,
Speaker 1: it risks provoking a full blown response. The a O s, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: have been aiding and training the PDF and still maintaining
Speaker 1: enough deniability that Natapmada has not been forced into a
Speaker 1: confrontation e a O PDF. Alliances look different in different regions,
Speaker 1: and often realities on the ground bear little relationship to
Speaker 1: the back door diplomacy and official stances embraced by leadership
Speaker 1: and public The war continues to have a huge toll
Speaker 1: on civilians, According to the United Nations, in total, some
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty thousand people have been newly displaced
Speaker 1: since the coup happened in February one, adding to an
Speaker 1: existing three hundred and seventy thousand who had fled their
Speaker 1: homes from earlier waves of violence and over a million
Speaker 1: people who had fled the Regina genocide. More than half
Speaker 1: the population of Corenni State has fled. Humanitarian access is hard.
Speaker 1: Much of the relief effort for displaced people occurs within
Speaker 1: local communities. Thousands of refugees at camp along the border
Speaker 1: with Thailand, which is defined by rivers. Initially, many people
Speaker 1: fled into Thailand, but terrible conditions in refugee camps led
Speaker 1: some of them to return to Myanmar. Now they wade
Speaker 1: across the river for international aid donations of food and water,
Speaker 1: but they can't bring themselves to stay in the crowded
Speaker 1: camps overnight, so they wade back to sleep on the
Speaker 1: Burmese side of the bank. The UNHCR, the High Commission
Speaker 1: on Refugees, it's been unable to access camps in Thailand
Speaker 1: or My and ma to check on the conditions. But
Speaker 1: it has urged the Thaire government, which has been incredibly
Speaker 1: accused of forcing people back across the border, to move
Speaker 1: people to better conditions further into Thailand instead of keeping
Speaker 1: them in camps near the border. And here we find
Speaker 1: the unfortunate, unavoidable reality of the civil war in Mi
Speaker 1: and Maa. For all the uniqueness of aspects of the conflict,
Speaker 1: the innovative ways of gen Z militias have interfaced with
Speaker 1: older ethnic military forces, the three D printed arms, et cetera.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, this is another brutal,
Speaker 1: horrific conflict between large numbers of people who want to
Speaker 1: be free and a small number of people who want
Speaker 1: to control them. From me and Marto our media, Ukraine
Speaker 1: to Syria, Ethiopia, to Iraq and beyond. The novelty is
Speaker 1: the twenty one century conflict. Don't change the fact that
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, each war brings with
Speaker 1: it what might be the truest symbol of our current age,
Speaker 1: parents saying goodbye to their kids, camps filled with deathperate
Speaker 1: people fleeing violence, and government's all over the world willing
Speaker 1: to send nothing more than kind words and stern warnings.
Speaker 1: This is a PostScript to episode four. It's not one
Speaker 1: that we've been intending to record, because it's not news
Speaker 1: that we'd ever hoped to have to share, but here
Speaker 1: we are. Unfortunately, we found out that about ten days
Speaker 1: after we last spoken, a couple of weeks before we
Speaker 1: released our podcast, Zor died. And he died in battle
Speaker 1: fighting with the top my door. He's really was, I suppose,
Speaker 1: an amazingly brave and courageous young man and Um. I
Speaker 1: think that his loss is one that reflects the realities
Speaker 1: of of what war is, which is not great and
Speaker 1: glorious and exciting. It's young men and sometimes young women,
Speaker 1: young non binary folks. I imagine too, um dying when
Speaker 1: they had no quarrel with anyone, when they just wanted
Speaker 1: to live their lives. Two years ago, a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, even he was just loving the people
Speaker 1: he loved having fun, being a kid, riding his motorcycle,
Speaker 1: speaking to his girlfriend on his phone, living a happy life.
Speaker 1: And then someone who had power decided that they wanted
Speaker 1: to have more power, and they decided that it didn't
Speaker 1: matter how many kids had to die so they could
Speaker 1: have what they want. And he decided to say no
Speaker 1: to that. And that's brave, and I think all of
Speaker 1: us would agree that what he did was right and
Speaker 1: morally courageous, and that that we would hope to be
Speaker 1: brave enough to do the same if the same thing
Speaker 1: happened to us. This one's hit me quite hard, honestly.
Speaker 1: I know this is my job, and it's happens, that's
Speaker 1: happened before and it will happen again. But he was
Speaker 1: such a happy, polite, kind young man. He never didn't
Speaker 1: pick up the phone, He never got tired of explaining
Speaker 1: stuff that we didn't understand, and he always answered our questions.
Speaker 1: There was nothing that was off the table. There was
Speaker 1: nothing that he wouldn't talk about with us. He was
Speaker 1: completely open, And yeah, we will miss him greatly. He
Speaker 1: died fighting the thing that we all have to fight, right, fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism,
Speaker 1: military horization, and yeah, we'll will grieve his loss. Both
Speaker 1: Robert and I. We've just spoken on the phone and
Speaker 1: we found out because of contact of mine on the
Speaker 1: ground sent me a Reddit message with a link to
Speaker 1: a Facebook post and it's very clearly zorin no doubt
Speaker 1: about that it names him, and unfortunately it also shows
Speaker 1: him dead. So we were not in any doubt that
Speaker 1: it was him who died, and we're not in any
Speaker 1: doubt that we will gravely miss him either. We both
Speaker 1: hoped to go over and record with him, to speak
Speaker 1: with him, to meet him. I've spoken to him several
Speaker 1: times on video, sometimes just to chat, not even to
Speaker 1: to record anything, just just to chat, just to catch
Speaker 1: up and and look at what each of us was
Speaker 1: doing that day. So it's a hard loss for me
Speaker 1: and for Robert too. As I said, we've just spoken. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's the news that we hadn't hoped to
Speaker 1: end on. Obviously, though, this is the reality of war,
Speaker 1: and as the world is looking at the conflict in
Speaker 1: Ukraine now, I'd urge you too to look at the
Speaker 1: conflict in Myanmar. To another Russian bomb killed, another nice
Speaker 1: kid who never had any quarrel with anyone, who just
Speaker 1: wanted to live his life and I didn't want to
Speaker 1: live the rest of his life with a boot on
Speaker 1: his neck, and so he decided to stand up against it.
Speaker 1: As you can probably hear my voice, I'm quite upset
Speaker 1: by by his loss and will be probably for a
Speaker 1: few days. So I'm sorry to have to end this
Speaker 1: podcast on such a sad note. I'm sorry for his
Speaker 1: family who are now caught between the loss of their
Speaker 1: son and trying to protect their daughters. I'm sorry for
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, who's dealing with shrapnel in her own leg
Speaker 1: and now the loss of the person she loved. And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for his comrades. And they've said they'll go
Speaker 1: on fighting, and I hope they do. And I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any point really pretending to be objective at
Speaker 1: this stage in the games, and I hope they win, um,
Speaker 1: But I mostly just hope that like one day, young
Speaker 1: men and women and everyone else just gets to live
Speaker 1: their lives without having to kill and die, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: no one should have to and no parents should have
Speaker 1: to bury their kids. So yeah, as much as we're
Speaker 1: all focusing on Ukraine and what's happening there is terrible,
Speaker 1: Please don't forget Zoro his comrades. Please don't forget his legacy,
Speaker 1: and please don't forget him. We won't and we obviously
Speaker 1: want to dedicate this podcast to him and what he
Speaker 1: stood for. So yeah, he's sending a message anyone anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world, I can get you and it will hurt.
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Speaker 1: ever felt depressed about work only to have your dad
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Speaker 1: We've all felt left out, and for some that feeling
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Speaker 1: how it Belonging begins with us dot org, brought to
Speaker 1: you by the ad Council. Welcome out of us, Oh,
Speaker 1: welcome to it. Could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, recording
Speaker 1: from a deeply unsettling airbnb right near the border of
Speaker 1: Texas and Mexico. UM. I'm here with my good friend
Speaker 1: James Stout. Say hello to the people. Hi everyone, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about well, let me let me introduce briefly.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll see the episodes soon enough. We're down here
Speaker 1: reporting on um a mixture of of of right wing militancy,
Speaker 1: government militarization of the border, and the attempts by people
Speaker 1: trapped in the middle to survive and avoid those authoritarian structures.
Speaker 1: So today, James and they're going to talk about molotov cocktails. Um.
Speaker 1: But first, James, you want to talk about this airbnb.
Speaker 1: We're in for a second because you book this motherfucker deeply.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. So what happens when you have like
Speaker 1: less than twenty four hours before you arrive and need
Speaker 1: a place for more than two people is uh, you
Speaker 1: really get into the depth of Airbnb. And I've found
Speaker 1: this place which how to describe it? Um? Yeah, yeah, unsettling?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it it just feels wrong. I can't put
Speaker 1: my finger quite on where there is a basement which
Speaker 1: definitely has like murder vibes, and there's not basements in
Speaker 1: Texas normally, and it's it's it's crumbling and unsettling. There's
Speaker 1: a some pump that doesn't appear connected to anything. There's
Speaker 1: puddles of standing water. Um. I think there's like nine
Speaker 1: bedrooms in this house. Yeah, but only one like is upstairs,
Speaker 1: and it seems to have like like to be designed
Speaker 1: to command an arc of fire around the house. Then
Speaker 1: there are other bedrooms which are like kind of in
Speaker 1: this stable block. What else is weird? Like three of
Speaker 1: the bedrooms are separate from the main house and in
Speaker 1: a built in a way that it looks like a
Speaker 1: roadside motel. And then there's a main house that has
Speaker 1: like four living rooms for We're sitting at a large
Speaker 1: kitchen table right now, which spins around a central access.
Speaker 1: For some inexplicable reason, we have the overwhelming feeling that
Speaker 1: something horribly wrong was done in this space because it
Speaker 1: doesn't everything is a little off. None of the decorations
Speaker 1: look like people. This is some sort of trap house,
Speaker 1: but we cannot identify the kind. I think you describe
Speaker 1: it best when you said it's like one of those
Speaker 1: this person does not exist photos, but of a home
Speaker 1: and you can't work out what's wrong. But it's not
Speaker 1: human and it's not right. So we just had to
Speaker 1: get that out of our systems because it's been deeply
Speaker 1: unsettling the last couple of days. We're here now, James,
Speaker 1: you wrote an article about Molotov cocktails that got you
Speaker 1: in a bit of a fascinating situation. I want to
Speaker 1: just kind of walk me through what happened there and
Speaker 1: what the fallout was. Yeah, well, the one that started
Speaker 1: it was about how to tear down statues, and that
Speaker 1: was for Popular Mechanics. In In that article, I interviewed
Speaker 1: a couple of experts and one of them explained how
Speaker 1: to make something called thermite. Thermitees like an exo thermic reaction,
Speaker 1: and you mix a couple of things, they get hot,
Speaker 1: They get hot enough to melt some metal. So if
Speaker 1: you were interested in bringing down a statue of a bigot,
Speaker 1: that might be helpful to you. By the way, it's
Speaker 1: legal basically all of the US to possess thermite and
Speaker 1: pretty simple to make. Not that you know, you can
Speaker 1: google it. You can figure that out yourself. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not telling you how to make it. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: that it exists, exists, and is surprisingly legal. Yes, and
Speaker 1: if you need to weld some ship underwater or join
Speaker 1: together some train tracks, it's the right tool for the job. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you happen to be I know a lot of
Speaker 1: the Russian Army in Ukraine listens to this podcast. If
Speaker 1: you happen to be in the process of abandoning hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in armor, thermite can allow you
Speaker 1: to stop Ukrainian farmers from towing it back to their homes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but don't do that if you're a soldier. Just just run, um,
Speaker 1: go to the Ukrainians. I'll let you call your mom.
Speaker 1: They're nice. Um. Okay. So I write the story for
Speaker 1: Pop Mac Right. It's just a useful guide to people
Speaker 1: who are looking to safely dispose of a racist statue. Right.
Speaker 1: And when I write it, I think their readership might
Speaker 1: lean pretty conservative, or they felt like that was a
Speaker 1: safe space. Anyway. It immediately became like the epicenter of
Speaker 1: the culture War for like a week, including triggering one
Speaker 1: Benjamin Shapiro, who then sub tweeted me like a coward
Speaker 1: and asked when I'll be writing my story about Molotov cocktails,
Speaker 1: which I subsequently wrote. So that that gets us to
Speaker 1: the Molotov cocktail story. I was in Russia today as well,
Speaker 1: now band media outlet no no no. I wrote it
Speaker 1: for a British magazine called Huck. I just I've like
Speaker 1: Huck is like like Vice but less tragic, like device
Speaker 1: went bad, Hu Hut school um, And so yeah, Ben
Speaker 1: Ben was upset. Ben orchestrated this kind of right wing
Speaker 1: panic around the story. Uh, they canceled pop mac for
Speaker 1: a while. And I wrote a piece about the history
Speaker 1: and I guess chemistry of molota and they're rolling democratization movements.
Speaker 1: That was really fascinating to me. So yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: we got to the Molotov story. And you want to
Speaker 1: give me kind of some cliffs notes on the history
Speaker 1: of the Molotov and it's rolling because what I know
Speaker 1: about Molotov cocktails, I assume it's named after Molotov, of
Speaker 1: the Molotov ribbon trop packed right, the slav Molotov. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And I know I have been near a couple of
Speaker 1: them going off. I nearly got lit on fire by one,
Speaker 1: and I watched a colleague get let on fire by another.
Speaker 1: So I am aware of what they do. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: why don't you walk us through kind of the close
Speaker 1: notes of the history of molotovs. Yeah, absolutely, so. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of times you're going the Internet and you're
Speaker 1: readingthing about history and it will turn out not to
Speaker 1: be right, and that that's often the case of Molotov cocktails. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they're named after the love Molotov. We can get to
Speaker 1: why they're named that way in a second. But they
Speaker 1: their origin is actually with Franco's nationalist fascist, national fascists,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, national Catholic troops in
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War. So early on in the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War nineteen thirties seven ish, the Republic had some
Speaker 1: Soviet tanks and they were using these against the At Fentybro.
Speaker 1: They were using these against the nationalists, and nationalists were
Speaker 1: throwing what they then called petrol bombs at the tanks
Speaker 1: too great effect. Those old tanks had rubber on the
Speaker 1: wheels that turned the tracks and those would melt. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's when they were first used. And if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with what a Molotov cocktail is, it's an
Speaker 1: improvised incendiary device. It's a glass thing filled with a
Speaker 1: flammable thing topped with some kind of cloth with a
Speaker 1: flame that the goth is burning. And when you throw it,
Speaker 1: obviously the glass thing breaks, the flammable liquid comes out,
Speaker 1: and the flame catches a liquid and you have a fireball.
Speaker 1: So the first time we kind of see them is
Speaker 1: used it in the Spanish and war. We see references
Speaker 1: to them in like British media in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: when British reporters were going out to watch the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War and they were like, Wow, what a development,
Speaker 1: what a technology, and so they used there. But where
Speaker 1: they get their names in Finland, right when the Soviets
Speaker 1: invade Finland. Why they got their name is that Molotov
Speaker 1: claimed that his planes were not dropping bombs. You'll see
Speaker 1: like a history of gas lighting in Russian foreign pol
Speaker 1: or Soviet foreign policy here. Um he claimed they weren't
Speaker 1: dropping bombs. He claimed that they were bringing aid to
Speaker 1: the people of Finland, right, And Finland was like, this
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. So they kind of started calling the bombs
Speaker 1: Molotov's bread baskets, and pretty soon everything that was shipped
Speaker 1: was associated with Molotovs. Bombers were Molotov's chickens, blackout items
Speaker 1: for Molotov's curtains, and so the they switched many of
Speaker 1: their state alcohol factories to making Molotov cocktails, and so
Speaker 1: they started calling these these petro what work called petrol
Speaker 1: bombs Molotov cocktails, and that's how the names dug. It
Speaker 1: is neat that Russia has such a long history of
Speaker 1: causing other nations to retool their domestic liquor production towards
Speaker 1: making bombs to throw at Russian soldiers, and like, how
Speaker 1: what do we now eighty odd years on from from
Speaker 1: nineteen six seven, Like it's it's not always Russian tanks,
Speaker 1: but it's nearly always Russian tanks, right like Spain, and
Speaker 1: the Russian tanks are obviously like in Republic in Spain
Speaker 1: is much preferable to Franco Finland, Hungary in nineteen fifty six, right, um,
Speaker 1: and today in Ukraine you see people throwing bottles of
Speaker 1: petrol with flames on top of Russian tanks. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have a long history. Yeah, I mean it's it's among
Speaker 1: other things like especially if you don't have easy access
Speaker 1: to firearms and and no access to explosives and stuff,
Speaker 1: like it's it's not a force equalizer, but it does
Speaker 1: allow you to to do certain things militarily that that
Speaker 1: would be harder to do, um if you were like
Speaker 1: trying to manufacture something a little bit more like it's
Speaker 1: easier than making a grenade, right, Like, yeah, and it
Speaker 1: does much more damage than a rock, but it's not
Speaker 1: much harder to come by for most people. Right. And
Speaker 1: one really interesting thing I read about them was by
Speaker 1: this academic who I really like his work. It's called
Speaker 1: Ali Cadiva, and he's Iranian, and he's looked at like
Speaker 1: democratization movements all over the world, right, so, how do
Speaker 1: authoritarian regimes collapse? And his research suggested that like peaceful
Speaker 1: extreme like extreme like quote unquote peaceful protests tend not
Speaker 1: to work, and insurgencies hadn't had that high of a
Speaker 1: success rate. But his paper is called stick, stones and
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails, and like his research suggested, like, if you're
Speaker 1: prepared to do violence against property by hidding it with stick,
Speaker 1: throwing a stone, throwing a monotor of cocktail, then you
Speaker 1: are more likely to have success in toppling a regime.
Speaker 1: So like, because they're accessible to people who don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have guns, aren't doing insurgencies. They've had this really interesting
Speaker 1: role in arming nonstate actors or arming liberation movement throughout history.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really interesting because it would seem to suggest,
Speaker 1: like a reading of that paper would seem to suggest that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not so much like being willing to carry out
Speaker 1: like a militant movement, but being willing to destroy things
Speaker 1: as one of the primary signs that like you have
Speaker 1: a chance of actually overthrowing an authoritarian regime is like
Speaker 1: your your ability to prepare to to do damage, um,
Speaker 1: like of a financial nature. Like is that kind of
Speaker 1: the argument is making. I think the argument he's making
Speaker 1: is that, like, and it's an argument that can't be
Speaker 1: made enough. Right, the damage to property is not the
Speaker 1: same as damage to people, and violence against property in
Speaker 1: the name of liberation or justice is okay and tends
Speaker 1: to work. And but yeah, you have to have some
Speaker 1: skin in the game. You have to be prepared to
Speaker 1: fun some ship up if you if you want to
Speaker 1: bring down a ratime which is prepared to use violence
Speaker 1: against you. That's kind of talking about the use of
Speaker 1: these tools within liberatory struggles, but they're not I guess
Speaker 1: the liberatory struggles, and I have the beholder that's talking
Speaker 1: about the use of these tools and kind of like
Speaker 1: street movements that are agitating for change. But we also
Speaker 1: have this military history UM, which I think is much
Speaker 1: more muddled in terms of its actual efficacy as a
Speaker 1: as a weapon, its ability to deny area, it's ability
Speaker 1: to destroy UM or damage like enemy uh like combat ability.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have any kind of sense of
Speaker 1: like how effective Like we're seeing all these people in
Speaker 1: Ukraine arming themselves with cocktails UM, evidence of of of
Speaker 1: you know, the efficacy of these in combat is a
Speaker 1: lot murkier UM, at least within the present conflict. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sense of how historically they useful they
Speaker 1: tend to be for that, Yeah, I think depending on
Speaker 1: the age of the and and then the type of
Speaker 1: the vehicle you're attacking. Right, So like these old Russian tanks, UM,
Speaker 1: what they would do a lot always make something which
Speaker 1: is not quite what we would see of the Monotov cocktails.
Speaker 1: I had a whole blanket that was soaked in petrol
Speaker 1: and that would get caught up in the track and
Speaker 1: then it would destroy that. There was a bit of
Speaker 1: rubber on on the wheels interface with the tracks that
Speaker 1: it would melt and that would immobilize the tank and
Speaker 1: then folks could swarm it from all angles. That was
Speaker 1: kind of the move there, and then I think they've
Speaker 1: been more useful in Ukraine than one might have expected.
Speaker 1: Because of the nature of some of the Russian military vehicles,
Speaker 1: they tend to carry their fuel on the outside. They
Speaker 1: also because of the mud, they'll carry lots of pieces
Speaker 1: of wood that they can use to put under their
Speaker 1: wheels like you would you know, like sand ladders on
Speaker 1: the truck, and so those tend to catch fire more easily.
Speaker 1: I know the b MPs also have fuel storage on
Speaker 1: the back door, which is is pretty optimal for if
Speaker 1: you want to walk up behind someone and set something
Speaker 1: on fire. So that they've worked pretty well there. In
Speaker 1: other places, yeah, they seem to be more of annoyance,
Speaker 1: Like I know, I've spoken to people who have been
Speaker 1: in the military in the in the UK and like
Speaker 1: the big thing in Northern Ireland right again right, you
Speaker 1: have a sort of a liberatory movement there, and so
Speaker 1: they were very popular, but they didn't seem to do
Speaker 1: much of them. Cause people distress, cause people personal injury
Speaker 1: sometimes but not particularly too they weren't game changing in
Speaker 1: terms of like the monopoly on violence there, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they seem to be very very I think they're better
Speaker 1: when you have a ton of people throwing them. I
Speaker 1: think you have a lot of people setting things on fire,
Speaker 1: that tends to be it causes people to stop. And
Speaker 1: I think with Russia being lacking in excellent leadership, it
Speaker 1: seems like we could say in Ukraine and some of
Speaker 1: their soldiers maybe lacking in training, and with the fact
Speaker 1: that they tend to carry fuel externally so their vehicles
Speaker 1: catch fire. If you can just convince some conscripts that
Speaker 1: their vehicle is on fire, they are going to get out,
Speaker 1: run away. And we've seen that a lot, right, a
Speaker 1: lot of people running away. Yeah. I think when I
Speaker 1: think about, like outside of military users, where I've seen
Speaker 1: molotovs be most effective in like the time I've been covering,
Speaker 1: can't for the first thing that comes up is the
Speaker 1: Maidan Revolution Ukraine, l where people were throwing some of
Speaker 1: the same people throwing molotops at Russian troops. Now we're
Speaker 1: through a mix of throwing by hand and like catapult
Speaker 1: devices were launching sometimes hundreds of molotovs in a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes and like melting tank treads to the ground,
Speaker 1: which is definitely like that's a that's obviously it was effective.
Speaker 1: It's also almost a different kind of weapons system when
Speaker 1: you're when you're dealing with that kind of volume grad
Speaker 1: molotov launcher. Yeah. Yeah, but then I can think about, like,
Speaker 1: there's this really amazing video that you can find if
Speaker 1: you look of Greek anarchists on bicycles swarming past a
Speaker 1: Greek police station and throwing it looked like about a
Speaker 1: dozen molotovs at once, and and just like sacking a
Speaker 1: police station that way and then biking right the funk
Speaker 1: off and like disappearing into the city um, which is
Speaker 1: which you know, seemed like a more effective tactic than
Speaker 1: some of the ways I've seen them used, where it's
Speaker 1: like a person throwing a molotov um and then the
Speaker 1: cops get really fucking angry, but it doesn't really do
Speaker 1: that much damage to them, and then people get or
Speaker 1: they hit the wrong person. Like it is, it is
Speaker 1: a tool with a high degree of chance for error
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, it's there's
Speaker 1: a decent skill requirement. You also really don't want to
Speaker 1: have like anything flammable on your hands or shirt or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Like I've seen people really end up
Speaker 1: badly after trying to make a molotop and just hurting
Speaker 1: themselves trying to light it or throw it or drop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not. It's not one of those things that
Speaker 1: like you want to casually suggest people use because the
Speaker 1: odds of actually injuring yourself with it are pretty high
Speaker 1: if you're not being careful. Um, and if you if
Speaker 1: you're going into a situation where you think people might
Speaker 1: have Molotov's natural fibers. People natural fibers, not synthetics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well if your friend welding gloves, your friend like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be caught on fire. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how, like what are the
Speaker 1: different kinds of constructions of molotops you've seen people using
Speaker 1: and how they changed over time. You talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about kind of the early Spanish were like full
Speaker 1: blankets and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the interests
Speaker 1: where we go from Spain to to Finland, right where
Speaker 1: we're seeing the same thing basically petrol or maybe ethanol
Speaker 1: or something like that inside a bottle with with just
Speaker 1: a wig orright something sort of. I know in Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War they were using jars a lot like jam jars.
Speaker 1: But when things started to develop, a thinker is in
Speaker 1: the UK, so in Britain, and you actually have this
Speaker 1: guy called Tom Wintringham who went to Spain as a
Speaker 1: war correspondent, decided to become a soldier and then returned
Speaker 1: to the UK and tried to share what he had
Speaker 1: learned with British people right in this article he wrote
Speaker 1: for Picture Post, and he was very much into Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktails is a great way of fighting an invasion, much
Speaker 1: like actually the old guy you heard, did you hear
Speaker 1: the guy who called into NPR recently, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was outstanding, just just turning NPR into our how
Speaker 1: to do gorilla warfare. And so what they did they
Speaker 1: made this thing called the number seventy six grenade, and
Speaker 1: they made six million of them, I think Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And they still find them. It's funny, they'll still find
Speaker 1: them in like when they'll be digging the foundation for
Speaker 1: a building, they'll be like, oh shit, this is not
Speaker 1: a box of beer. And what those had was a
Speaker 1: strip of rubber that they dropped in it. It was
Speaker 1: in a bottle with a cap, and it had a
Speaker 1: phosphorus ignitor actually, so you didn't have to light it,
Speaker 1: you just hosted it. And yeah, and those are extremely effective.
Speaker 1: The rubber dissolves and then that allows the flaming liquid
Speaker 1: to adhere better to the person or thing that is hit. Right,
Speaker 1: and you're almost like making a napalm bark, yes exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the phosphorus will last for a long time. It's
Speaker 1: much less risky to the thrower. And you can also
Speaker 1: have a whole box of them and just keep throwing them, right.
Speaker 1: You don't have to light each one, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have someone else like each one. So those seem
Speaker 1: pretty effective. I don't know if they were ever really
Speaker 1: used in Anger, because obviously the Nazis never landed in
Speaker 1: the UK, but yeah, that was that was a pretty
Speaker 1: big development, and that kind of set the tone for
Speaker 1: the other developments which I've seen, at least. I'm not
Speaker 1: like a molotov expert. But people put sugar in them,
Speaker 1: people put polystyrene in them or what do you call that?
Speaker 1: What does sugar in them do? I think it gives
Speaker 1: it a higher viscosity, and I think they sort of
Speaker 1: it maybe melts when they are like sticks in it,
Speaker 1: like creates like a sticky kind of hot, like like
Speaker 1: if you're making toffee. I would imagine, Um, the big
Speaker 1: thing I've seen people putting in them is various like plastics. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you look at the You've seen these videos
Speaker 1: of old ladies in Ukraine with cheese graters just grating
Speaker 1: like packing styrofoam, and they put that in there, and
Speaker 1: that that does the same thing, right, creates a more
Speaker 1: viscous kind of napalm which adheres to the thing that
Speaker 1: you throw it at. And that I think if you're
Speaker 1: talking about persuading someone that their tank is on fire,
Speaker 1: if it keeps burning for ten twenty seconds, you know
Speaker 1: you don't have a very long time to get out
Speaker 1: of a BMP, so you're going to getting out, I
Speaker 1: would imagine. Well, that does point to like an interesting
Speaker 1: reality of like not just this war all war, but
Speaker 1: like specifically in the context of territorial kind of volunteers
Speaker 1: who are on paper terribly out gunned. Um. But the
Speaker 1: psychological dimension is that, like you said, if you can
Speaker 1: convince people they may be in an armored vehicle that
Speaker 1: has unquestioned supremacy over the partisans attacking them. But if
Speaker 1: you can convince them they are on fire, they will
Speaker 1: make decisions that lead them to no longer have the
Speaker 1: advantage in terms of firepower. It's not impossible to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you saw that. I think there's some footage
Speaker 1: from my dan of them sort of ambushing some armored vehicles.
Speaker 1: And yet once you throw half a dozen molotov cocktails
Speaker 1: from above at windows, you can only get those people
Speaker 1: to abandon their vehicle and run away. That's the goal.
Speaker 1: If they get out, there are a lot more vulnerable
Speaker 1: to further attacks from molotov cocktails or anything else. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it. It really plays into that
Speaker 1: kind of guerrilla or sort of like underdog side of conflict. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting them about me. I mean,
Speaker 1: you and I just finished this series that dealt heavily
Speaker 1: with like three D printed weapons, homemade guns and stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a lot that you, as the
Speaker 1: state can do to reduce people's access to firearms, or
Speaker 1: even to reduce people's access to like knives that are
Speaker 1: bigger than kitchen knives. A lot you can do to
Speaker 1: reduce people's access to conventional arms, but everywhere has got liquor. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to stop people having them. Right, If
Speaker 1: you have gasoline, diesel, alcohol, and glass things and fabric
Speaker 1: and lighter, you have access to these. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: accessible to everyone, and they are incredibly effective. Like, they're
Speaker 1: probably the most effective thing that you could make in
Speaker 1: your home if you were doing an insurgency. You're fighting
Speaker 1: Russian invaders in this case. Yeah, well, James, was there
Speaker 1: anything else you wanted to get into on the subject
Speaker 1: of molotobs or other forms of cocktails? Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: think I should probably say that it's probably illegal to
Speaker 1: make them in the United States, And I mean there
Speaker 1: are specific ways you legally can, but you you need
Speaker 1: a number of different permits. Yeah. Yeah, you do have
Speaker 1: to ask the government. So I probably wouldn't suggest to
Speaker 1: do Yes, you have to, I probably wouldn't suggest doing that,
Speaker 1: But no, I think it's always interesting to look at
Speaker 1: these like, if we want to move towards a world
Speaker 1: where there is less authority more freedom, then these things
Speaker 1: which take away the state's monopoly on the ability to
Speaker 1: do violence should always be not necessarily like things that
Speaker 1: we want that. It's interesting. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's fascinating to me. Obviously, Ukraine is a pretty
Speaker 1: standard government within the global or at least up until
Speaker 1: this point, has been like they are. They are a
Speaker 1: state that has done a number of ugly things in
Speaker 1: its past, and we'll do them in the future. But
Speaker 1: they're in this fascinating moment where the government has really
Speaker 1: set down any claim to a monopoly on force in
Speaker 1: a lot of fascinating ways, the kind of widespread here's
Speaker 1: how to make molotov here's had a disabled And one
Speaker 1: of the things that's fascinating, the Ukrainian government very famously
Speaker 1: sent around sheets which are like, here is where to
Speaker 1: throw molotovs to do the most damage different Russian vehicles,
Speaker 1: which are also Ukrainian vehicles. Yeah. Yeah, and also those
Speaker 1: vehicles now belong to random farmers. Like I saw that.
Speaker 1: It was a thing with the Ukrainian equivalent in the
Speaker 1: I R S who said, like, don't worry, you don't
Speaker 1: need to declare this tank on your income tax. Right,
Speaker 1: how does one tax a person who has a tank? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or in the case of some of them, has a
Speaker 1: twenty million dollar anti aircraft system. Yeah, who is the
Speaker 1: tax man who is willing to go and collect that?
Speaker 1: Like they have become ungovernable, right, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: we're they are in the thick of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: for the rest of all of our lives. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: how long this thing is going to last. But if
Speaker 1: if the war does end in any kind of reasonable
Speaker 1: time frame, the what's Ukraine going back to. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they go back to being a normal state
Speaker 1: when they have when they have opened the udgates to everyone.
Speaker 1: Is the army now? Well? I think it's Yeah, it
Speaker 1: calls into question number things, right, like that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily always need is very strict disciplinary and structure
Speaker 1: to fight very effectively. But also yeah, that like do
Speaker 1: you need the state? Right? People are just doing their
Speaker 1: own thing right now, and I yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you really take that back, Like how do you
Speaker 1: go and collect the tanks from people? They know how
Speaker 1: to kill tanks, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government in the future, if we imagine a time
Speaker 1: of people piece, it will be quite a while before
Speaker 1: there's any chance of like, well we better send in
Speaker 1: the riot troops to crack down on this protest. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get those riot troops to go
Speaker 1: anywhere near there. Yeah, Like, yeah, it's testing out this
Speaker 1: armed society as a polite society thesis. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know how the police return to a country which
Speaker 1: is seemingly at least holding off, if not defeating, a
Speaker 1: military superpower. Yeah. It is a fascinating question, and and
Speaker 1: no one really has a clear answer, but I do
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. Of course they have embraced the Molotov
Speaker 1: as you've kind of made the case here that's it
Speaker 1: really has this history as this great kind of democratizing
Speaker 1: force within the conflicts between people and governments and governments
Speaker 1: and governments. Yeah, and and people in capital, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you're prepared to destroy capital goods like people have
Speaker 1: done for centuries, and that that seems to be the
Speaker 1: way to make change, right, It's kind of interesting, I think,
Speaker 1: to reflect on from our me and my podcast, I
Speaker 1: thought was that they had very strict gun ownership laws
Speaker 1: before this, very very strict apart from from one ethnic
Speaker 1: group called the Chin. But what they've promised to do afterwards,
Speaker 1: at least according to our sources is to allow people
Speaker 1: to keep and bear arms, right, because I guess they
Speaker 1: kind of have to write because a they can't stop
Speaker 1: them anymore. These people are three D printing guns and
Speaker 1: be the only way they got freedom or if this
Speaker 1: is if the if they're able to defeat the Tapmador,
Speaker 1: then the only way they've they've become free is through
Speaker 1: fighting for their freedom. And it's seems that they're not
Speaker 1: going to be willing to give that up, especially for
Speaker 1: the ethnic groups there. So yeah, it's really interesting to see,
Speaker 1: like what kind of a state emerges from a sort
Speaker 1: of uh, what's the sorts of word? Like like it's
Speaker 1: it's not an authoritarian structure, right, the military is are
Speaker 1: not like a lot of people in Ukraine are not
Speaker 1: necessarily authoritarian instructures. So what emerges for the state when
Speaker 1: we've had this horizontal resistance? Yeah, these are These are
Speaker 1: fascinating questions and ones that I think will all be
Speaker 1: continuing to ask and answer for for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: For now, do you have anything you want to plug
Speaker 1: before we were all out? James M No. You should
Speaker 1: listen to our podcast on MIAMA. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. That's my name at James Stout Patreon. I
Speaker 1: wripe some other things I teach at the community college.
Speaker 1: If you want to take some history courses, we can
Speaker 1: learn about molotovs. Have a lecture about that. But otherwise, no,
Speaker 1: that's about all. Well, that's going to do it for
Speaker 1: us here until next time. Don't make a molotov if
Speaker 1: it's illegal where you live. But but do think about
Speaker 1: molotops because, as the last couple of weeks have shown us,
Speaker 1: you could buy next week be living in a state
Speaker 1: where it's very legal to make molotov cocktails. That could
Speaker 1: happen to any of us. You never know, you know,
Speaker 1: you never know, So you know, do some reading online,
Speaker 1: use a use of VP a VPN to do that
Speaker 1: reading browser. If you're gonna be how to make molotov,
Speaker 1: do some very careful reading, and um, you know, keep
Speaker 1: an eye on the world. Hey, we'll be back Monday
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the universe. It could happen. Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 1: find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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