Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Oh boy, it's nine eleven,
Speaker 1: but a day after it's you will be listening to
Speaker 1: this on nine twelve, after you have um finished whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you do on nine eleven either either
Speaker 1: be sad or uh tell jokes or nothing at all. Um,
Speaker 1: it's all fine. There's no wrong thing to do when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about a day where a really fucked up
Speaker 1: thing happened. But that's actually untrue. There is one wrong
Speaker 1: thing to do, and we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: wrong thing today because most people, I think, I think
Speaker 1: back to the day after nine eleven as oh, everybody
Speaker 1: was like out of their minds with like grief and
Speaker 1: fear and saying some really fucked up shit and generating
Speaker 1: a kind of fury that acted as propulsion and justification
Speaker 1: for a lot of very very bad things. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's not in general a time that we should look
Speaker 1: back on with particular pride or or certainly what's the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for here? Um, nostalgia? Everyone that is,
Speaker 1: except for Glenn Beck. Um. Now, James, we've got James
Speaker 1: do out here. Chris, Hey, Chris, what do you what
Speaker 1: do y'all know about Glenn Beck? Because James, you are
Speaker 1: This is controversial to say, but I think we should
Speaker 1: rip a vand aid off British. Um. And Chris, you're
Speaker 1: very young, so I'm wondering how much do you know
Speaker 1: about Mr? Beck? He was like the my memory of him,
Speaker 1: he was kind of like the well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: or is not quite the right word, but he was
Speaker 1: like he was like like the guy in sort of
Speaker 1: like right wing ship head like punditry for a while.
Speaker 1: My memory of him, he was like he was like
Speaker 1: a slightly more put together Alex Jones, Like he had
Speaker 1: like the weird pinboards and ship and like it is
Speaker 1: this the right guy? Yeah, he's Alex Jones with a
Speaker 1: budget in terms of kind of the space he fills. Um, James,
Speaker 1: did you know, did you catch much of him. No,
Speaker 1: So my engagement with Glenn Beck is mostly through like
Speaker 1: teaching American history classes and trying to explain like the
Speaker 1: explosion in lies and bullshit and hate that immediately follows
Speaker 1: nine eleven. Yeah, and so no, they've never really heard
Speaker 1: his stuff. Yeah, Glenn Beck, he's he's doing radio, ship
Speaker 1: and stuff before nine eleven. By the time he actually
Speaker 1: comes on the scene, it's a few years after nine
Speaker 1: eleven and he gets a show on Fox News. Um
Speaker 1: and Glenn Is. You know, I watched him every night.
Speaker 1: My parents always watched him. My dad considered him to
Speaker 1: be like a really good historian um, which is bleak
Speaker 1: um a lot, but he was. He was He was
Speaker 1: a unique sounding figure. So when Glenn Beck comes onto
Speaker 1: the stage, right, the biggest dude in right wing media
Speaker 1: is still Rush Limbaugh. But rush Is has kind of
Speaker 1: taken a back seat in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: especially right after nine eleven. Two guys like um, Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity and Bill O'Riley, you know, and those are kind
Speaker 1: they are kind of like they are powerhouses in right
Speaker 1: wing media. And then you've got well those guys are
Speaker 1: on TV. You've got this cast of people who are
Speaker 1: like bargain Basement Discount Rush Limbaughs on the radio that
Speaker 1: are all kind of waiting in the wings for their
Speaker 1: chance to be the next big TV hero. UM. And
Speaker 1: those guys include people like UM, UM, like Glenn Beck,
Speaker 1: and also folks like Michael Savage. UM. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of a lot of maniacs that you probably have not
Speaker 1: heard of that we don't need to dredge up. But
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck kind of sales out of the fever swamps
Speaker 1: of the right wing media UM and gets a fucking
Speaker 1: TV show on Fox News, and in very short order
Speaker 1: he is the biggest fucking thing on the network. Fox
Speaker 1: News is the most popular network in the country, and
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck is their number one host. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: he's pulling in something like three million viewers a night.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's he's he's very very influential. UM. And
Speaker 1: this is the point in time and two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: by the way, the other thing that's happened that's big
Speaker 1: in right wing media circles is Barack Obama has been
Speaker 1: elected president. Now, yeah, you've got Birtherism happening, But in general,
Speaker 1: I think one good way to think about it is
Speaker 1: that nine eleven super charges the right, but in a
Speaker 1: very like populist way in a because there's this expectation,
Speaker 1: like we talked about in the last episode, this expectation
Speaker 1: that people are coming back to God because there's been
Speaker 1: a big disaster, We're going to war, and war all
Speaker 1: ways benefits you know, the conservatives in the in the
Speaker 1: you know, the party, like we're gonna win this war
Speaker 1: and that's gonna be huge for US. Um. And you
Speaker 1: also have like just this this sense because Bush becomes
Speaker 1: the most popular president anyone can remember having that the
Speaker 1: type of history is with conservatism, you know, in the
Speaker 1: immediate wake of nine eleven, and then that all goes
Speaker 1: to ship because conservatives have terrible ideas for everything. Um
Speaker 1: and they launched two disastrous wars, and by two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine there's not a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: gonna like admit in public, No, I think we both
Speaker 1: those wars were good ideas that were handled well right.
Speaker 1: Even the people who were who were real bullish about
Speaker 1: that stuff are like, well, you know, they didn't do
Speaker 1: this right or that right, or it's impossible to win
Speaker 1: in that part of the world. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was that's the I heard different versions of that from
Speaker 1: from different family members and stuff. But there's this this
Speaker 1: real sense of aggrievement and in the wake of Bush,
Speaker 1: like it's it's kind of taken for granted because about
Speaker 1: how disastrous his his presidency had been. At um he
Speaker 1: was not. You know, it's not going to be a
Speaker 1: Republican who won that election. Um. But the fact that
Speaker 1: it is Barack Obama, a black guy, they lose their
Speaker 1: goddamn minds. I think they've been ready for I think
Speaker 1: even they would have been fine with Hillary Clinton. Obviously
Speaker 1: they would have liked gone nuts on her like they
Speaker 1: did on Bill, but like I think they would have,
Speaker 1: I don't think that would have caused them to go
Speaker 1: crazy the way that Obama did. Um. It is it
Speaker 1: is not wrong to compare the impact to nine eleven
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, because it's this massive shock
Speaker 1: that shakes the center of their world that they view
Speaker 1: as an attack, as an assault on like white middle
Speaker 1: class Americans, and the shock waves of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're still dealing with them. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that's that's happening here is that after nine eleven they
Speaker 1: had this sense that history is with us, momentum is
Speaker 1: with us. And after Obama gets elected, you see the
Speaker 1: conservative movement get much more insular and much more conspiratorial
Speaker 1: and much more focused on like grievance and anger and
Speaker 1: revenge um because they know they're nothing's going to bring
Speaker 1: back the people. So there's there's kind of nothing but
Speaker 1: but vengeance um. And Beck is the guy who's going
Speaker 1: to tap most effectively into this feeling, this feeling of
Speaker 1: fear and this need to feel like you're like you
Speaker 1: were right after nine eleven when it felt like everything
Speaker 1: was surging forward in the rights direction. And so in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine he launches what he calls the We
Speaker 1: Surround Them campaign. Now, the we in this I think
Speaker 1: is supposed to be conservatives and them is the government.
Speaker 1: But I think you can assume other you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about the urban rural divide in this country,
Speaker 1: there's another meaning to that sort of thing. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: this this is a series of segments and specials on
Speaker 1: beck show that grew very popular, so popular, in fact,
Speaker 1: that a lot of local right wing organizations start hosting
Speaker 1: viewing parties. And this becomes like the earliest stirrings of
Speaker 1: the Tea Party movement. Right all of these right wing
Speaker 1: radio stations and stuff. These local talk radio stations and
Speaker 1: other organizations are holding viewing parties for to watch Glenn
Speaker 1: Beck talk about you know, his do his we surround
Speaker 1: them act. And I'm gonna play a clip for you
Speaker 1: now from one of these viewing parties. We're gonna play
Speaker 1: a couple of clips. This is from one filmed by
Speaker 1: a talk radio station in Fort Wayne, Georgia. Um and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's it's it's something else, all right, So
Speaker 1: I want to um, I want to play this for you.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fascinating artifact. And how the radio
Speaker 1: host chooses to introduce the event is noteworthy, as is
Speaker 1: the man's appearance with six hundred six freaks watching Glenn
Speaker 1: Beck on Fox News for nine project it's amazing. So well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me. I think it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: worth going over a couple of things there because that's
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem like a lot. But the fact that
Speaker 1: he he describes the guy the people in there is
Speaker 1: sick freaks and and and then like we're sick freaks,
Speaker 1: but like kind of taking pride, and that that's what
Speaker 1: he assumes Brules would call them for watching Glenn Beck.
Speaker 1: You can see a shade in this of a lot
Speaker 1: of liberals because they're dumb. We're taken by surprise when
Speaker 1: like Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a basket of the plurables,
Speaker 1: and they immediately adopted that name for themselves. Now you
Speaker 1: see the stirrings of it here right like this is
Speaker 1: this is what the movements turned into. Um, you're taking
Speaker 1: pride in the fact that you're outnumbered and and despised.
Speaker 1: Also the project I'm intrigued. Oh yes, that's that is
Speaker 1: that is coming. We're we're building to that. Um. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we get some rock and guitar licks, just just some
Speaker 1: some of the best preloaded writes, free guitar music I've
Speaker 1: ever heard. And then we pan into this very full
Speaker 1: conference room. There's like six people in this thing and
Speaker 1: they are, as far as I can tell, all white. Um,
Speaker 1: it is certain that the only people they talk to
Speaker 1: when they do like because you know, the camera goes
Speaker 1: around to get people's statements on the event, the only
Speaker 1: people who are featured on camera are white, like a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of them. And I'm gonna play a clip
Speaker 1: from that now, good by, and I'm glad you're doing this.
Speaker 1: I'd like to get our constitution back. I love you,
Speaker 1: You're doing it. We're all behind you. Thank you. Land.
Speaker 1: We are Jackie and Bill Better. We're from Angle, Indiana
Speaker 1: and we would like to thank you that you are
Speaker 1: helping us, we the people, to take back our America.
Speaker 1: Thanks you're the man, Glan. What you're doing is great
Speaker 1: for America. You're and encouragement that all of us were
Speaker 1: fed up with the federal government. Now they were like,
Speaker 1: it's impossible. I know video I have not seen since
Speaker 1: I was James. James might die. Yeah, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of extinct kinds of white guy in that video.
Speaker 1: The very last of them died to COVID when they
Speaker 1: cut a hole in the middle of their mask and
Speaker 1: went to a Luby's. It's missed. Now here's the thing
Speaker 1: I want to acknowledge something that is impossible to deny,
Speaker 1: which is that the fact that we are laughing at
Speaker 1: them in this way is part of why they got
Speaker 1: so angry and put Trump in office right, part of
Speaker 1: why liberal tears is a thing, part of why there's
Speaker 1: so much focus on this desire of hurting the enemy. Um.
Speaker 1: But also they just all look like impossibly American, like
Speaker 1: like these people I used to see in Barcelona. From
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, people would be like, how do
Speaker 1: you know in American? And like my friends would be like,
Speaker 1: first of all, you've come dressed as a fucking tree
Speaker 1: yourself and this book these are some of the people
Speaker 1: who raised me. Are are not? You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up around these people. I grew up with these people.
Speaker 1: I am. I am of these people. Um, I think
Speaker 1: I wear better shirts. But but but it is like
Speaker 1: you you see in this these people who feel like
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the thing they're communicating. Something has
Speaker 1: gone wrong with the country. And the thing that's gone
Speaker 1: wrong is they are looking out and people don't look
Speaker 1: like them, and in fact, people are looking at them
Speaker 1: like they look weird, and people are making fun of
Speaker 1: their ways and their customs, and this has taken them
Speaker 1: by surprise, and they're extremely angry about it and seeing
Speaker 1: a black man as president, which is the least anyone
Speaker 1: could look like them, right, Barack Obama many flaws two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. There was not many cooler looking dudes than
Speaker 1: Barack who Obama like and that you have to understand,
Speaker 1: like the bar is so low here that like a
Speaker 1: reasonably well dressed person is like dropping a nuclear weapon
Speaker 1: on like six cavemen. It is. Yeah, yeah, OK. So
Speaker 1: the show ends with Beck because they're watching Glenn Beck
Speaker 1: on a fucking projector, and it ends with him near tears.
Speaker 1: He would cry on his show, consly telling everybody there
Speaker 1: that they were all going to meet back together in
Speaker 1: six months to find some ways in which they've managed
Speaker 1: to to to add some nine twelve energy to their lives.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to this more. But the thing he's
Speaker 1: saying is that the day after nine eleven, we were
Speaker 1: the best version of ourselves as a country. Everyone was
Speaker 1: so godly and so loving and so united. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing that we need to get to deal with
Speaker 1: the horror of Barack Obama being the president um and
Speaker 1: obviously the other thing happening. I shouldn't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be unfair here. It's not just that they're scared
Speaker 1: about Barack Obama. This is two thousand nine. The economy
Speaker 1: has just completely shadow fucking brick. The housing market is
Speaker 1: through the goddamn floor. Some actually scary things are happening too.
Speaker 1: It's just that they're kind of grafting all of them
Speaker 1: onto the specter that is Obama. You know. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So after this we pan out to widespread
Speaker 1: applause in this very full room, and then we cut
Speaker 1: two interviews. This time. I know everyone's gonna be really excited.
Speaker 1: Here there's a baby. It's pretty cute. It's pretty it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cute baby of the youngest Glenn Beck fans.
Speaker 1: Look at that child has my reaction to this, it's
Speaker 1: so funny. It's so funny. Look at this. Let's get
Speaker 1: this baby's statement. Just shine it blinded with a light
Speaker 1: until it weeps. Yeah, that's the good stuff. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this this video has paused on a freeze frame of
Speaker 1: a guy in a suit that when they talked to
Speaker 1: this guy they call him the best dress. I'll just
Speaker 1: play it, I will I will just play I wasn't
Speaker 1: planning to play this, but I will play it. Sorry,
Speaker 1: the best dress. Uh, guy here, did we have a
Speaker 1: good time today? Why did you think of the presudation?
Speaker 1: I thought it was nice and it's nice to get
Speaker 1: together with great turnout. I know that so many people
Speaker 1: still care, know that guy. Okay, that that that exact
Speaker 1: kind of person was like the political class of like
Speaker 1: the town I grew up in, Like these are the
Speaker 1: people who were like like this is the guy? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the thing the things they get up to were
Speaker 1: like like there was a guy who was taking money
Speaker 1: from the sheriff's department to try to abolish the police
Speaker 1: so that he could install the Sheriff's department as the
Speaker 1: only law enforcement like division in this town. While he
Speaker 1: tried to sell like, oh god, that that is a
Speaker 1: kind of person night like he has he has some strong,
Speaker 1: strong Republican city comptroller energy from for like a town,
Speaker 1: for like a town of thirteen thousand people. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: dressed much like Ricky Gervais dressed in the original Office.
Speaker 1: Yeah dump piece mean he is literally the guy Ricky
Speaker 1: Gervais is making fun of. Yes, yeah he is. So.
Speaker 1: Beck paired his message of government accountability, as he framed
Speaker 1: it with and this is what we're talking about the
Speaker 1: nine twelve project, which follows. We surround them with nine
Speaker 1: principles and twelve values, which, if followed, would help bring
Speaker 1: your heart back to the mythical nine twelve. This moment
Speaker 1: in which America was was beautiful. This this we've gone
Speaker 1: from the fifties, like there's this, there's this twenty twenty
Speaker 1: year Golden Era to like, we had one great day
Speaker 1: and if we could just get back to that, everything
Speaker 1: will be fine. Um. So here's here's the nine value
Speaker 1: or nine principles. Sorry, it's nine principles and twelve values.
Speaker 1: I want you to hold me accountable if I fucked
Speaker 1: this up in the future. The nine principles are Number one,
Speaker 1: America is good. Number two, I believe in God and
Speaker 1: he is the center of my life. Number three, I
Speaker 1: must always try to be a more honest person than
Speaker 1: I was yesterday. Number four. The family is sacred. My
Speaker 1: spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
Speaker 1: And I say this a lot, but in the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: the father of the family used to be able to
Speaker 1: execute his wife and children. And you're a fool if
Speaker 1: you think that's not what these people want things to
Speaker 1: be like. Um. Well, and there's slaves too, that's also invariable,
Speaker 1: and the slaves are a critical aspect of this. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Number five, if you break the law, you pay the penalty.
Speaker 1: Justice is blind and no one is above it. This is,
Speaker 1: by the way, confusingly a reference to all the people
Speaker 1: who lost their homes in the house and crash. Um,
Speaker 1: that's what he's talking about. That they didn't. They didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't like bail people out. Um. Number six,
Speaker 1: I have a right to life, liberty in the pursuit
Speaker 1: of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
Speaker 1: Number seven. I work hard for what I have and
Speaker 1: I will share it with who I want to. Government
Speaker 1: cannot force me to be charitable. Number eight. It is
Speaker 1: not un American for me to disagree with authority or
Speaker 1: to share my personal opinion. And number nine, the government
Speaker 1: works for me. I do not answer to them. They
Speaker 1: answer to me. Now that's fun. There's there's some interesting
Speaker 1: things they're including. The government can't force me to be charitable,
Speaker 1: you know I will, which like the side of that.
Speaker 1: That is something that actually happened on nine twelve is
Speaker 1: a bunch of people showed up and volunteered to, like
Speaker 1: at great personal cost because many of them got sick
Speaker 1: and died, to help pull bodies out of the rubble
Speaker 1: and try to save people. Right, And that the government
Speaker 1: literally did not need to tell people to do that
Speaker 1: because a bunch of cops actually refused to go do
Speaker 1: anything at all, And and the like the government, the
Speaker 1: government knew about like like that the when when the
Speaker 1: government did do something, it was they they put a
Speaker 1: bunch of firefighters like inside of the range. It was
Speaker 1: the dusk was toxic and then just fucking got them killed,
Speaker 1: which and then spent the next we had to have
Speaker 1: John fucking Stewart fight for them to get some kind
Speaker 1: of recompense from the federal government, which credit where it's
Speaker 1: due is a legitimately cool thing that he helped do.
Speaker 1: But like, why did it fall upon the Daily Show
Speaker 1: guy to share that the guy who's doing transphobic bits
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, yeah, Like it's kind of
Speaker 1: didn't Ted Cruz vote against healthcare benefits for these people? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Which again it's very funny that like the government can't
Speaker 1: force me to to to be charitable. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: what that actually ends with is people actually volunteering and
Speaker 1: risking their lives and then the government, the conservatives in
Speaker 1: the government callous lea voting to let them die in
Speaker 1: agony because like, well, why should I have to pay? Oh,
Speaker 1: you do was rescue people during our country's darkst hour?
Speaker 1: Why should I have to pay? Like it's this, it's amazing. Shit. Um,
Speaker 1: now that I'm sure you're curious about those twelve values,
Speaker 1: they're really boring, Like it's boy, It's like boy scout ship.
Speaker 1: It's like honesty, reverence, thrift, courage, Like it's not worth
Speaker 1: focusing on the thing this entire time think I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about. This is the exact naming scheme that like,
Speaker 1: like if you just walked up to someone on the
Speaker 1: street and like asked it, what what what are what
Speaker 1: are the nine principles and twelve values? Like this? This
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like like that. This sounds exactly like what
Speaker 1: like a like a a a mid level like a
Speaker 1: mid level Chinese bureaucrat would name their campaign to like
Speaker 1: make sure the water restoration is done properly. Like it
Speaker 1: is the exact naming scheme of like like campaign style
Speaker 1: stuff and like fucking like post post vours China, I
Speaker 1: mean well ended. And Beck is Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to say about that and about Glenn Beck. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, so I got that list of twelve principles
Speaker 1: from Glenn Beck dot com. What I find interesting is
Speaker 1: that the principles as are up on his website right now,
Speaker 1: because this is a thing he still gets into every
Speaker 1: now and again. Are somewhat different from the ones that
Speaker 1: he debuted on the episode of his show in which
Speaker 1: he introduced the nine twelve Project. And I found the
Speaker 1: way he worded point eight point eight is it's not
Speaker 1: un American for me to disagree with authority or to
Speaker 1: share my personal opinion. I found the way he actually
Speaker 1: worded that in the show very interesting, And I want
Speaker 1: to play that for you now because it's it's quite
Speaker 1: a bit different. Do you agree with this. It's not
Speaker 1: Unamerican for anyone to disagree with my opinion, but my
Speaker 1: opinion or others opinions maybe anti American. Anti American rhetoric
Speaker 1: would be anything that's destructive to the Constitution and our
Speaker 1: country as the Founders understood it, unless you want to
Speaker 1: change that. There it is, Yeah, there we go, There
Speaker 1: we go. That's the real good grievance. Yeah, yeah, I respect.
Speaker 1: You're right to say anything unless you're disrespecting the Founders,
Speaker 1: of course, which which case, Yeah, like swat teams will
Speaker 1: convince immediately, etcetera, etcetera. We were we are reading the
Speaker 1: wrench Moobs. Now. After introducing those principles, he asks his
Speaker 1: audience to mail him personal photographs so he can put
Speaker 1: them together into a big we surround them graphic, which
Speaker 1: you can find if you really want to. Um, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's if you want to get an idea of like
Speaker 1: the people who are listening to Glenn Beck, that will
Speaker 1: give it to you. Now here's what happens. Immediately after
Speaker 1: he gives the email address for people to send this
Speaker 1: to calm all right, the climate change people are pulling
Speaker 1: a page from nazis what are your kids learning at school?
Speaker 1: Perfect moment in American television. Yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really incredible, right, it's. It's also it's also thing like
Speaker 1: you couldn't do this any word, not because you not
Speaker 1: not not actually because you can't say that about climate change,
Speaker 1: but because if you tried to say that about the
Speaker 1: Hitler youth people will get mad at you. Oh yeah no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll get in trouble. Oh yeah yeah, I hate the
Speaker 1: youth defenders will be a day with very very pro environment.
Speaker 1: I can hear Tucker Carlsson saying that, Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: I just want to share with everyone that manned by
Speaker 1: Number five by Bob the Builder hit the UK number
Speaker 1: one spot on September twelve, two thousand and one. You
Speaker 1: know what, you know what James never forget. And the
Speaker 1: Queen was still alive, then she must have loved Mambo
Speaker 1: number five. I bet there was a little bit of
Speaker 1: Monica by her side, a little bit above the builder
Speaker 1: in the queen, A little bit of Rita's all she needed,
Speaker 1: um get it died very sad. So the nine twelve project,
Speaker 1: as it kind of grew out of the weas around
Speaker 1: Them campaign, if you kind of I don't know. I
Speaker 1: found it written online. I can't exactly confirm this, but
Speaker 1: it seems like it kind of started um when Beck
Speaker 1: took a call on his talk radio show. And this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a couple of years earlier
Speaker 1: from a guy named Ed in New Haven, Connecticut who
Speaker 1: expressed feeling out numbered as a conservative on the American
Speaker 1: political stage right. And that's that's really like what the
Speaker 1: all of this kind of grew out of. It's this
Speaker 1: response to the feeling like out numbered. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that's an important thing to understand if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get to like the thing that the thing that
Speaker 1: they want to go back to when they talk about
Speaker 1: wanting to go back to nine isn't anything to do
Speaker 1: with the actual terrorist attack. It's the fact that everyone
Speaker 1: was so frightened that they unthinking Lee, uh, that they
Speaker 1: unthinking Lee submitted to the right wing that was in
Speaker 1: power at the time, right, Like like that it was.
Speaker 1: That's what nine twelve is to them. Yeah, like it
Speaker 1: it was. It was the last time conservatives were able
Speaker 1: to like effectively cancel like mask cold, like they like
Speaker 1: the only time cancel sulture has ever been real was
Speaker 1: like the Dixie Chicks and could just do that like
Speaker 1: if if you if you didn't start all of your concerts,
Speaker 1: like if it's like my Miley Cyrus didn't go on
Speaker 1: stage and like say something about the troops at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a concert, like they would just destroy you
Speaker 1: and you would never be heard from again. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was literally, like legitimately scary to not be unthinkingly
Speaker 1: pro America and like wildly so. And and that's what
Speaker 1: they want to get back to, right, is that the
Speaker 1: fear of actually questioning conservative hegemony. Um So, I want
Speaker 1: to play a clip from the episode in which Glenn
Speaker 1: Beck first introduces his nine twelve project to his audience
Speaker 1: of millions on March fifteen, two thousand nine. Here's how
Speaker 1: Here's how this introduction goes. Hello America, they're waiting. I'm
Speaker 1: backstage right now at Fox. I'm getting ready to show
Speaker 1: you that you are not alone. This Uh, this is
Speaker 1: your country. You're still in control. But it seems today
Speaker 1: like nobody gets it. Now that is a fascinatingly blatant
Speaker 1: statement of white conservative supremacy. Right you, you're in charge,
Speaker 1: but nobody gets it. They don't understand that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be running things right. Um, It's it's incredible how
Speaker 1: blatant it is. But it also like you do have
Speaker 1: to understand he's speaking to this real frustration. This is
Speaker 1: like where we get Trump is these millions of people
Speaker 1: are like, why don't they understand that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be in charge? Um, there's there's an incredibly I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're going to get to this like later
Speaker 1: there's the next video on the fucking YouTube thing is
Speaker 1: from Vices. Glenn Beck is a conservative and exile. After
Speaker 1: Trump chat a little bit about that at the end,
Speaker 1: I'll do a whole Glenn Beck episode behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: But I really I want to keep digging into this
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna I'm gonna press play again here. You know,
Speaker 1: you've lived your while life in a responsible way. You
Speaker 1: didn't take out a loan that didn't require any kind
Speaker 1: of per proof of income, yet now you're being forced
Speaker 1: to bail those people out. You've been concerned about this
Speaker 1: country through the last administration and this administration. If you're
Speaker 1: like most people both administrations, it's not about politics. You
Speaker 1: actually believe in something, and you thought for a while
Speaker 1: they're your politicians did as well, and now you kind
Speaker 1: of realize, well, maybe maybe they don't. When you come
Speaker 1: home after a hard day at work, all you want
Speaker 1: to do is put your feet up. All you want
Speaker 1: to do is just relax and just watch a little
Speaker 1: television catch up with what's happening in the world. But
Speaker 1: every time you turn that television on, it just seems
Speaker 1: like the whole world is spinning out of control. The war,
Speaker 1: Islamic extremism, Europe on the bring even pirates now closer
Speaker 1: to home. Mexico isn't safe for vacations or kids anymore.
Speaker 1: Six thousand were killed or be headed on our border
Speaker 1: just last year, and Phoenix now has the second highest
Speaker 1: rate of kidnapping in the world. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on there. But I think the thing that is
Speaker 1: most fascinating to me is that like the way he
Speaker 1: just me is like cartel violence. It's a problem because
Speaker 1: it's not safe for our kids to vacation in Mexico anymore.
Speaker 1: Mexico only exists for spring break. That all problems are
Speaker 1: at their root about Americans, right, Like that's that's what's
Speaker 1: going on here. Well, the other thing that's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is like that he throws into like Europe under
Speaker 1: siege thing, which was like like one of like the
Speaker 1: big like fascist things in like that period, like word
Speaker 1: for word, Europe under siege, like fortress Europe Ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is when Andy andy No started his like no
Speaker 1: ghost zone. Yeah exactly. I think so right around here,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit late, members of my family who
Speaker 1: are extremely Caucasian living in some of those dog zones,
Speaker 1: like I lived in Europe in this period. It's it's
Speaker 1: just so ridiculous. Yeah, and it's it's incoherent, like if
Speaker 1: you look at the specifics of everything. Because he's yelling
Speaker 1: about the financial crash because he has to be angry
Speaker 1: with it because half of his market is terrified and
Speaker 1: losing money or has have lost jobs and stuff as
Speaker 1: a result of the crash. Um, But you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't portray it as a problem of like corporations rapaciously
Speaker 1: destroying and hollowing out the middle class. So instead the
Speaker 1: problem is that like foreign there's a line in there
Speaker 1: about how like foreign corporations are just treating Americans like
Speaker 1: a market, which is like, well, how do Americans treat
Speaker 1: everything like? Of course they treat them like a market.
Speaker 1: It's capitalism. Um, it's not very coherent, But like, what
Speaker 1: is coherent is this sense of grievance, right that we
Speaker 1: have been we as Americans have been specifically wronged. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not and and we as When he says americans,
Speaker 1: obviously he's only referring to a specific kind of American. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna press play again here.
Speaker 1: The forgotten man is you the voice that no one
Speaker 1: seems to hear, just quietly saying, enforce the law, take
Speaker 1: responsibility for yourself. You can't have it all. And anybody
Speaker 1: who promised you that was a liar. Cren economic downturn,
Speaker 1: worst economic crisis, worst month of job loss, Like something
Speaker 1: is happening in America. Paradigm's about to change your friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors. Republicans, Democrats, Independence, They're all beginning to wake
Speaker 1: up and wonder how did this happen to us? M hm.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the words September two thousand and one just
Speaker 1: hit the screen as soon as he finishes that. But
Speaker 1: I mean, what you're seeing in that is like the
Speaker 1: stirrings of what becomes Trump is um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's very m h. And there's just like photos of
Speaker 1: white people up on the left and right. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: one of the most hideous like two columns I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in a video. It's one and a half of
Speaker 1: each king. Yeah, yeah, it's not done well. Their graphic
Speaker 1: design was science had just simply had simply not advanced
Speaker 1: to that level yet, like a people to understand this,
Speaker 1: there are supposed to be three lines of pictures going
Speaker 1: across the screen. The middle cut, Yeah, the middle line
Speaker 1: is cut in half. The was half of one person's
Speaker 1: face on each side of of of the screen. And
Speaker 1: what they're what's being done here, What Beca is doing
Speaker 1: here is he's trying to take the anger and like that.
Speaker 1: People still felt about nine eleven and turn it kind
Speaker 1: of towards in a different direction, right, because what it
Speaker 1: actually happened on nine eleven was that a group of
Speaker 1: terrorists had attacked the literal center of American capitalism UM
Speaker 1: and of the American military industrial complex. Right. Those targets
Speaker 1: were picked specifically because of what they were. UM. The
Speaker 1: Twin Towers contained one tenth of all office space in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Their largest tenant was Morgan Stanley, which lost over eight
Speaker 1: of its market value in the two thousand eight crash.
Speaker 1: Worst yet in Beck size, the victims of the attacks
Speaker 1: are all New Yorkers. Now, I don't know, if you're
Speaker 1: not in the conservative media bubble, you may not get it,
Speaker 1: but like New Yorkers, that was like a slur, Like
Speaker 1: they literally like a slur to call somebody a New
Speaker 1: Yorker values exactly. So Beck can't focus on the actual
Speaker 1: victims of nine eleven because they are people that it
Speaker 1: is in his best interest to train his audience to
Speaker 1: to despise. So instead he focuses on how nine eleven
Speaker 1: was basically an act of disrespect against the this forgotten man, right,
Speaker 1: who's now kind of surging up like that's what he's
Speaker 1: doing here, right, that's what you have to do if
Speaker 1: you're Glenn Beck, because again, you can't actually focus on
Speaker 1: the real victims of this, which is why it's not
Speaker 1: incoherent ideologically for conservatives to talk the way they do
Speaker 1: about nine twelve and then vote not to help people
Speaker 1: who were first responders and had their fucking lungs filled
Speaker 1: with poison. Um. Yeah, it's good stuff. So obviously, because
Speaker 1: Beck has to thread this needle, he focuses instead on
Speaker 1: how the attack hit American prestige and confidence. I remember
Speaker 1: how picture perfect the day was. It wasn't a cloud
Speaker 1: in the sky, and America seemed invincible, and yet in
Speaker 1: the blink of an eye that airplane appeared to hit
Speaker 1: a little bit down the building, around the fifty or
Speaker 1: six floor. Again, it's struck flush. The skies were filled
Speaker 1: with black clouds, and our hearts were full of terror
Speaker 1: and fears absolute disaster. We realized for the first time
Speaker 1: how fragile we really were. Then something happened. So now
Speaker 1: in September twelve, and the first image we see after
Speaker 1: disaster and destruction is a group of firefighters holding a
Speaker 1: gigantic American flag with roughly the footprint of a school bus. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is this is good, right, this is and
Speaker 1: also it's a it's interesting that this is what he
Speaker 1: chooses as like the image of America, like rebounding from
Speaker 1: this great defeat, as opposed to like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: firefighters pulling people out of the rubble and saving their lives.
Speaker 1: Like no, they got a big flag and say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be okay. It makes sense though, right, like
Speaker 1: like the actual lives are unimportant. The thing that's important
Speaker 1: to save is the image of America. It's the slag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this on the region. So yeah, well look yeah about us.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna continue here. And we promised ourselves that we
Speaker 1: would never forget on September twelfth, and for a short
Speaker 1: time after that, we really promised ourselves that we would
Speaker 1: focus on the things that were important our family, our friends,
Speaker 1: the eternal principles that allowed America to become the world's
Speaker 1: beacon of freedom. I can carry you out the arrested,
Speaker 1: the wire and people are not the haling down. Well
Speaker 1: here all of us now. I want to point out
Speaker 1: here the choice of that clip. It's both because that
Speaker 1: was a very famous speech that Bush gave that really
Speaker 1: made his presidency in or at least the early part
Speaker 1: of it. In a lot of ways, you could argue
Speaker 1: that a significant amount of the the kind of the
Speaker 1: political capital that he expended invading Iraq came from this
Speaker 1: particular speech and generally how he handled the days after
Speaker 1: the attacks. But it's interesting that they picked this because
Speaker 1: it really is it's very much in line with this
Speaker 1: this feeling and talking about the forgotten man, talking about
Speaker 1: they're not listening to us, they don't know that we're
Speaker 1: in trouble. What Bush is saying here is literal words
Speaker 1: are um, I hear you, and the people who knocked
Speaker 1: these towers down are going to hear you. Right you.
Speaker 1: Your your anger will have a reaction in the world.
Speaker 1: Right it will be met with fire and fury, right like?
Speaker 1: That is that is the promise being made. And it's
Speaker 1: this this undercurrent and everything Beck's doing here of the
Speaker 1: thing that he is working with, the clay that he
Speaker 1: is molding is the fact that these people don't feel
Speaker 1: listened to and like and that they deserve to be
Speaker 1: listened to, and that the when they're angry at something,
Speaker 1: it should be hurt, right like. That's that's the undercurrent.
Speaker 1: He's talking about family and togetherness, but like that's what
Speaker 1: he's actually promising people. I'm really interested in this, Like,
Speaker 1: like I don't this is probably like nine twelve or
Speaker 1: wheneveryone he's getting this speech. I think I always come back.
Speaker 1: It's weird given where conservatism has gone, right, and like
Speaker 1: he's taken this in very much a clash of civilizations direction.
Speaker 1: But like Bush was giving that, like Islam is the
Speaker 1: fabric of America speeches that week he was speaking in
Speaker 1: mosques and two Muslims and being like that, like this
Speaker 1: is not a clash of civilizations. Obviously, fucking he even
Speaker 1: went and fucking killed millions of Muslims, right, most of
Speaker 1: them innocent symbidians who had nothing to do with nearly
Speaker 1: all of them, right, But yeah, it's just interesting that
Speaker 1: like he's Bush who was giving this like this isn't
Speaker 1: a clash of civilizations thing, and it's become a clash
Speaker 1: of civilizations thing like eight years later, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's become but in a very different way. Right, Because
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think is happening here
Speaker 1: is the problems that Americans, regular Americans are facing in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, are this massive economic strife caused by
Speaker 1: predatory lending, outright fraudulent business practices by major banks, the
Speaker 1: fact that the legal system had been changed in order
Speaker 1: to allow this massive con to go on, um, and
Speaker 1: then it had been followed by this massive chrony capitalist
Speaker 1: bailout that ignored regular working people. Glynn doesn't want his
Speaker 1: viewers to focus on all of that, right, because those
Speaker 1: are his backers, right. But what so instead, what he's
Speaker 1: doing is he's taking they feel disrespected and vulnerable because
Speaker 1: they have been right now, there's unreasonable aspects to that,
Speaker 1: but they have been disrespected by the people who are
Speaker 1: stealing like all of the money in the country and
Speaker 1: fucking them over too, and leaving their homes hollowed out,
Speaker 1: piledicted waste lands. Um. But you can't focus on that.
Speaker 1: The cure is, the cure that Beck offers them is
Speaker 1: not materially improving anyone's conditions. It's not altering the systems
Speaker 1: that people cannot prey upon others that way. It's by
Speaker 1: striking someone else. It's by striking back at that sense
Speaker 1: of agreevement. Right, it's by this is what's going to
Speaker 1: turn into owning the Libs, right, just hurting the left.
Speaker 1: Conservatism now is purely about harming groups of people they
Speaker 1: view as opposed to them. Um, that's part of why
Speaker 1: trans people are so focused on by the right right now,
Speaker 1: is that it's the symbol of liberalism to them, and
Speaker 1: they want to hurt that symbol. Right. This is this
Speaker 1: is the answer Beck is offering, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be adopted by the thought leaders of conservatism. We don't
Speaker 1: need to focus on doing any Nothing can be done right,
Speaker 1: Nothing can be done. The grift is running out, collapses coming.
Speaker 1: All that we can do is redirect the anger they
Speaker 1: feel it being fucked by us towards hurting other people.
Speaker 1: That's that's the magic that Beck is pulling off here.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. It's interesting too, I hope pretty well.
Speaker 1: Like it's interesting to compare this, I think to like
Speaker 1: both Reagan and um, like Reagan and Nixon, because this
Speaker 1: is very very similar to Nixon talking about like the
Speaker 1: silent majority and the stuff. But it's like those people
Speaker 1: have an actual political project, like like Reagan, Reagan is
Speaker 1: to trying to completely annihilate the welfare state and like,
Speaker 1: you know, dude, like they have stuff they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: But like post Bush was like, but but Bush was
Speaker 1: the time they tried to like do stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: like like Bush is so hated by this point that
Speaker 1: like like even Glenn Beck at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: is being like, well, we had concerns about the last
Speaker 1: administration too, and I was like, well, yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: like just by by every conceivable metric, just completely like
Speaker 1: annihilated the United States. But yeah, it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: this interesting thing that like, yeah, it's like like this
Speaker 1: is the first time they've talked like this, But the
Speaker 1: level of nihilism is just like so much like the
Speaker 1: politics has been emptied of content to like such a
Speaker 1: greater extent, and I think I think part of it
Speaker 1: to also what's happening here is that like there's like
Speaker 1: the like the the only thing left like for sort
Speaker 1: of like the capitalist who are backing back, like the
Speaker 1: only thing left for them that they could possibly win
Speaker 1: is getting rid of Social Security and they kind of
Speaker 1: like Obama gave him the chance to do it, and
Speaker 1: they kind of like blew it. But like they don't
Speaker 1: like this is like the ages like they they actually have,
Speaker 1: Like they're there's like there's there's tax racils, like there's
Speaker 1: not actually anything for them really to do, but they
Speaker 1: still have to sort of like maintain this constant vigilance
Speaker 1: against anyone even remotely trying to make the world better
Speaker 1: by taking away some of their power. And I think
Speaker 1: that's like another angle of why all of this is
Speaker 1: just sort of like this like incredibly empty nihilism, because
Speaker 1: that's like that that's the only politics you can have
Speaker 1: to defending group people who have won. Yep. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's a good note to end on. Um. I hope
Speaker 1: you have all enjoyed getting to meet Glenn Beck in
Speaker 1: the nine twelve project. I know I've enjoyed it. Uh, goodbye.
Speaker 1: So I'm here today with Aria and an Aria. She
Speaker 1: lives at the Eden House over there in Kenya and
Speaker 1: is the chair of the management board at trans To
Speaker 1: Rescue and has over forty years of trans rights activism,
Speaker 1: and they're going to explain today a little bit of
Speaker 1: what trans Rescue is, what Eden Houses, and the threats
Speaker 1: and attacks that they've been facing in the last couple
Speaker 1: of days here and so preps and you could explain
Speaker 1: what Eden House is. And I think I really liked
Speaker 1: in the website where you explain the difference between like
Speaker 1: a Heidie hole and a haven. So if you could
Speaker 1: get into that, that that would be wonderful. Sure, um uh
Speaker 1: Eden House is a uh there's a trans haven in
Speaker 1: in Kenya. It's our primary mission is that we helped
Speaker 1: trans people escape from dangerous places. That implies that we
Speaker 1: help them go somewhere, because of course they have to
Speaker 1: have a safe place to go too, which means we
Speaker 1: often end up renting an apartment short term or doing
Speaker 1: something like that while they get established in their new place.
Speaker 1: The problem and of course that that was getting expensive
Speaker 1: in Kenya where we can move a lot of people
Speaker 1: because some areas of Kenya are quite dangerous, but the
Speaker 1: major cities are not quite so dangerous, so we move
Speaker 1: people into the major cities. But we were trying to
Speaker 1: be efficient and save money and Uh we thought about
Speaker 1: making a kind of temporary doss house or a place
Speaker 1: with bunk beds to the ceiling and what have it.
Speaker 1: But we realized that would still cost his money and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a very positive experience or affirming ex
Speaker 1: variance for the folks living in it. And we realized
Speaker 1: for that we could instead do a trans haven that
Speaker 1: is a place where a person could come and if
Speaker 1: they chose never leave live there the rest of the
Speaker 1: life if they want. So when someone comes to Eden
Speaker 1: House and expect to receive help to find some income
Speaker 1: producing activity, and as time goes on, they will eventually
Speaker 1: be expected to contribute to the running of the house.
Speaker 1: Our plan is we just started a month ago, but
Speaker 1: our plan is by about the end of the year
Speaker 1: to have the house no longer be requiring funds from us,
Speaker 1: and then we can do it again. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: space freight people. When we get up to eight and
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like it's going to bleed as dry,
Speaker 1: we can do it again, and we can and in
Speaker 1: the end we end up with something that I think
Speaker 1: many trans people in any country would love to have,
Speaker 1: because that's uh, you know, that's something as long as
Speaker 1: I've been around, there have been many discussions of building
Speaker 1: such places. Yeah, it's it's a very admirable project. And
Speaker 1: I know Gary and I just used to be Tenacious
Speaker 1: Unicorn Ranch I've been before, and it's really powerful to
Speaker 1: see like how empowering those spaces are and how they
Speaker 1: can help people. So I can see that you set
Speaker 1: up in Kenya. Was there a reason that you picked Kenya?
Speaker 1: It was that it was was a very large trans
Speaker 1: community there or something that led you to uh frankly,
Speaker 1: in in such places people often have um uh there
Speaker 1: is the old queer Uh I know somebody who knows
Speaker 1: somebody a lot uh system and people have kind of
Speaker 1: webs of trust. And as a result, where we get
Speaker 1: people coming from to ask us to move them, it's
Speaker 1: very irregular. Uh. There are some countries we never hear from,
Speaker 1: and we certainly know there are queer people there. We
Speaker 1: know the conditions are bad and would you know, and
Speaker 1: we'd be happy to move people, but we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of penetration. And others like Kenya, we're in
Speaker 1: the network and people are telling giving each other, are
Speaker 1: uh contact info. Um. Also we have some capabilities we
Speaker 1: had built up kind of center there, so we decided
Speaker 1: to focus on Kenya. Kenya is relatively easy to get
Speaker 1: into as far as visas and so on, and so
Speaker 1: um it's a place we can send people when they
Speaker 1: when we might have trouble getting them into uh say
Speaker 1: Europe or the United States. Um, we can with and
Speaker 1: so we're perfectly happy to end up with. Lots of
Speaker 1: folks would like to make the place attractive enough that
Speaker 1: it's also a place that we even have people coming
Speaker 1: who aren't particularly in immediate danger. We'd be We're working
Speaker 1: from a philosophy of abundance that we want to grow
Speaker 1: and we have a rule of we don't want to
Speaker 1: make a place that we wouldn't want to live ourselves.
Speaker 1: And honestly, Eden House is a nice place. It was
Speaker 1: the personal home of of a rather wealthy family. It's
Speaker 1: looks nice. Sorry, would you maybe like to describe for
Speaker 1: us at your experience at the house, what it's like
Speaker 1: and how places like this are important so that people
Speaker 1: can understand. Maybe if you could start with how you
Speaker 1: became aware of the Eden House and that that this
Speaker 1: was an option that was available to you. Okay, So
Speaker 1: um I met um um. We got in touch with
Speaker 1: Anne ali this uh this year, yes, Alicia around February generally,
Speaker 1: if I'm not wrong, so um we if that was
Speaker 1: before Eden was formed. So we really had a long
Speaker 1: discussion on us moving from where we are. Were at
Speaker 1: the coast and things were really really brutal at the
Speaker 1: coast side of Kenya, like we were going a lot
Speaker 1: of stress, even lost to one of our friends, and
Speaker 1: um yeah, it wasn't really good it was really bad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we had a discussion about moving to um
Speaker 1: to Eden House and that it was a working progress.
Speaker 1: So we took some time working on that. So eventually
Speaker 1: it happened and so we came to Eden House and
Speaker 1: it's a very beautiful place. I would agree with that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and also flew all the way to hear
Speaker 1: because we were new here and there were some things
Speaker 1: that we needed done. And yeah, we are three of
Speaker 1: us currently in Eden House. UM. I got in touch
Speaker 1: with Anne and the rest of the team. There was
Speaker 1: dooris on board. Actually she's the person who was like
Speaker 1: you know, responsible for the Malindi team. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: two sisters that I have like okay, they're my sisters
Speaker 1: because we've been through a lot of help together. So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: we come all away from Malindi. Also we are here
Speaker 1: together and so far. Um when we got here, UM,
Speaker 1: the place it's very beautiful, but just needed a little
Speaker 1: you know here and their decoration and you know, clarifications
Speaker 1: and modifying and you know, precusuals were by you know
Speaker 1: putting on security lights and the security wires. Yeah, still
Speaker 1: some things need to be upgraded, but you know, um,
Speaker 1: we still need to resource for a lot so that
Speaker 1: we can have something's being done by So far, so good.
Speaker 1: Everything is good. I'd interject that we're trying to foster
Speaker 1: a spirit of self sufficiency and so we've been Um,
Speaker 1: we've got everybody to make the furniture. Yeah, the furniture
Speaker 1: in the house has been made by the residents. And
Speaker 1: we're starting some various sort of fundraising, you know, our
Speaker 1: income activities. We're we've made a chicken coop and we're
Speaker 1: in the process of getting chickens, getting chickens and and
Speaker 1: uh sewing machine. And one of our residents is a
Speaker 1: talented artists. We're going to set her up to have
Speaker 1: a place to sell her artwork. Ah, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of things we're doing. Thank you. Um all. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: really curious, kind of on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: what are the things that you and the other people
Speaker 1: who are at the Eden House do in order to
Speaker 1: like protect yourself, like when you're going about town, when
Speaker 1: you're doing errands. Um, is there like a degree of
Speaker 1: operational security that you have to keep in mind? Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: we have a rule whereby we don't go anywhere without
Speaker 1: letting each other know, especially if we're going to a
Speaker 1: long distance UM. Putting in mind, we are very new
Speaker 1: into this area, so we don't know a lot of places.
Speaker 1: So currently we are just in the house trying to
Speaker 1: get to understand a few things. Actually, we've been doing
Speaker 1: um um the repairing we have. We have a chicken
Speaker 1: coope at the back. It's kind of a small um
Speaker 1: as a small place whereby we needed to fix some things.
Speaker 1: So we've been working on that so that we have
Speaker 1: the place ready for the chicken when they're ready to
Speaker 1: come in and all. So for me, I've been um
Speaker 1: going around to see at least allocate some few places
Speaker 1: where by, you know, we can feel safe, like the hospitals.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get in touch with people like
Speaker 1: around here. I haven't been easy, but at least now
Speaker 1: I can say I can go to an hospital that
Speaker 1: at least it's kind of familiar with me. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also have a place where we buy what are
Speaker 1: these things that the house supplies and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: We're really trying as much as possible to like minimize
Speaker 1: our moving around from places to places to draw attention.
Speaker 1: So we're just trying to go with time and see
Speaker 1: how people will accept us existing to these community, So
Speaker 1: we don't want to bring any attentions whereby people who
Speaker 1: start asking questions like you know, what's happening there? What's
Speaker 1: not happening there? Yeah? Yeah, I noticed as well that
Speaker 1: the house is to belong to a politician. It's right.
Speaker 1: So I have some measures of sort of external physical
Speaker 1: security as well, Yeah, which is good. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: talk about I know, you can use a big country
Speaker 1: and it differs vastly depending on where you are and
Speaker 1: who you're with. How is the climate towards trans folks?
Speaker 1: I haven't been in Kenya for probably ten fifteen years.
Speaker 1: How is the climate towards trans people? Have things? Have
Speaker 1: it become like a big topic like a culture war
Speaker 1: thing recently or is it sort of can you explain?
Speaker 1: But I guess what it's like. You're saying. It seems
Speaker 1: like it can be really just to go outside, which
Speaker 1: is pretty sad. Yeah, yeah, it is. That is to
Speaker 1: go outside, you know, um here and Kenya um in
Speaker 1: different sides of kind of like at the coast, okay,
Speaker 1: taking example at the coast side from where I come from.
Speaker 1: It's um it's really bad for the trans community because
Speaker 1: now they're they're very transphobic and homophobic people that like
Speaker 1: most of the transphobic and homophobic people come at the
Speaker 1: coast side. Because these are people that tend to keep
Speaker 1: their culture and religious like you know, more of more
Speaker 1: of a key thing in in someone's life, more of
Speaker 1: like they use, They use the Quran and the Bible
Speaker 1: to Prinsius to crititize the trans people and the gay community.
Speaker 1: So being in that area it's very very bad and
Speaker 1: very very risky for trans community. Comparing to the other
Speaker 1: side of Kenya, I wouldn't say it's not risky, but um,
Speaker 1: their level of understanding of the trans community and the
Speaker 1: gay community, it's um, it's more of an it's more
Speaker 1: of an away that they're kind of confused, not sure
Speaker 1: where to understand. But it depends with also the air
Speaker 1: that you are you might find you end up. For example,
Speaker 1: now we're eating house is like for the few for
Speaker 1: the man that we've been here. The feedback that I
Speaker 1: can say I have from the community around here is
Speaker 1: there like more of people that are come and more
Speaker 1: of people who are you are more of used to
Speaker 1: their own personal things. They don't like, you know, put
Speaker 1: their nose into the to the things that they're not
Speaker 1: involved with, if you get what I mean. Um, in
Speaker 1: other towns having new people, people who like you want
Speaker 1: to know why they're there and don't you know all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But in this town that we have, we
Speaker 1: are in eating house. It's it's kind of safe in
Speaker 1: a way that people are not putting their nose in
Speaker 1: into us, like more of wanting to know about us
Speaker 1: rather than they're welcoming us. Moreover, you know, the landlord
Speaker 1: is kind of friendly. I would say that, Um, the
Speaker 1: cubander cubander, it's more of a small grocery shops. So
Speaker 1: the cubanders around here, the small grocers the show are
Speaker 1: the people who are selling the you know, the groceries
Speaker 1: and other stuff. They're friendly. I haven't, Um, I haven't
Speaker 1: in carred or you know, engaged or seeing any trans
Speaker 1: abic or homophobic reaction towards demand that I've been here.
Speaker 1: Most of the people here are much of welcoming. Like
Speaker 1: I would say that. End up. Yeah, it's really different
Speaker 1: from where I come from. Trust me, from the town
Speaker 1: that I come from, you can't walk with makeup or
Speaker 1: with anything that makes you look galish or anything that
Speaker 1: makes you look resemble to the transgender or maybe gay
Speaker 1: or something. It will be a bad thing for you
Speaker 1: in the day. Yeah, a little bit of the geography
Speaker 1: of Kenya. Remember that U on Kenus coast up in
Speaker 1: the north uh is the border with Somalia and um,
Speaker 1: so the culture naturally mixes over the border. And um
Speaker 1: this is also an area where lots of folks are
Speaker 1: coming over because of the political instability and Somalia, and
Speaker 1: it's an area of al shabab uh terrorist activity. So
Speaker 1: so makes particularly the north part of the coast rather
Speaker 1: dangerous plighte Yeah, just if people are interested, I know,
Speaker 1: like the State Department sort of has it do not
Speaker 1: travel like north of Lama pretty much, so like people
Speaker 1: can sit on the map, but yeah, there are certain
Speaker 1: areas where risk would be higher. And fortunately talking of that,
Speaker 1: like it it hasn't. There have been some attacks, right
Speaker 1: threats against Eden House in the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: So if either of you would like to explain exactly
Speaker 1: what happened as far as you're comfortable, I think that
Speaker 1: would be great. Yeah, let me explain, because I think
Speaker 1: I'm the right person to explain that. So, um there, there,
Speaker 1: there there, Okay, this happened when Amazon around here. Actually
Speaker 1: we had an attack and now one of the windows.
Speaker 1: People people breaked into their house, not inside the house,
Speaker 1: but instide the compound and they tried getting in the house.
Speaker 1: But yeah, thank god the place has secured doors and windows.
Speaker 1: But they took off one of the glass from the
Speaker 1: window and they tried to like they had a stick
Speaker 1: that was was was holding um, yeah, a magnet on
Speaker 1: the end. So they were trying to use the stick
Speaker 1: with the magnet to pull out the keys so that
Speaker 1: they can have and clear entrance into the house. But
Speaker 1: thank god, we had removed the keys to where we
Speaker 1: used we normally used to put and kept it to
Speaker 1: somewhere else. So the kids that we are aware they
Speaker 1: were targeting, they were only the keys to the meter
Speaker 1: box and the fridge, so they took those and yeah,
Speaker 1: I presume they later realized that they wouldn't go through
Speaker 1: with those because we're not the right kids. So the
Speaker 1: next thing we wake up in the morning, the magnet
Speaker 1: was down on the floor and we noticed that the
Speaker 1: window had the piece of last missing. So that was
Speaker 1: the first incident that happened. So we reported that to um,
Speaker 1: to the to the landlord, and previous day before that happened.
Speaker 1: Those neighborhood came by and they said that someone tried
Speaker 1: to break into their apartment and they are kind of
Speaker 1: curious because they never knew if people moved into this
Speaker 1: house or they just wanted to check in what was
Speaker 1: going on, and that we can we kind of get
Speaker 1: into like you know, know each other, and that they
Speaker 1: kind of gave us a warning and that's why we
Speaker 1: removed the kids. And the day when they came, they
Speaker 1: couldn't get in. So yeah, after I left, Now this
Speaker 1: is a recent incident. That then then the next night
Speaker 1: they came back and found a couple of broken whendows
Speaker 1: in the morning, like they tried to price some windows
Speaker 1: out and ended up breaking glass and gave up. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's so. At the time, I think we
Speaker 1: all the start of this as ordinary, you know, theft activity,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty unclear. But this maybe more targeted attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it's silly of me to even ask this,
Speaker 1: but could you speak of it on what kind of
Speaker 1: help you can expect from law enforcement? If any um,
Speaker 1: I would say, if any I would say, like you
Speaker 1: see the place where we are staying, from the law enforcement,
Speaker 1: I would expect that they put some like you know,
Speaker 1: the they have a name that they put that that
Speaker 1: that the lights that normally the government's supposed to supply,
Speaker 1: like you know, the what what do they call that
Speaker 1: these lights that they normally have to support from the MS. Yes,
Speaker 1: street lights. So the place that you're staying, there's no
Speaker 1: street lights. So if if if, if if a police
Speaker 1: was to ask me or you know, any security measures
Speaker 1: that were to be put, like, I would say that
Speaker 1: they put the street lights. Those would help at least
Speaker 1: there will be more lights for like you know, that
Speaker 1: should scare people away, even if those people are thieves
Speaker 1: or anything. You see. So, yeah, that was that's what
Speaker 1: I would say. Okay, yeah, and I know two people
Speaker 1: were hurt in the most recent sort of active question right, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this was the day before yesterday. Okay, are they doing okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're fine actually, and one of them I helped myself, yes,
Speaker 1: and one of them I have my arm injured but
Speaker 1: not really deep. The other one is asleep. She had
Speaker 1: a really bad injured back stabbed and you know at
Speaker 1: the arm also catched. Yeah eight teachers at the back
Speaker 1: really bad. Yeah, sorry, yeah, that's not good at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that that's not great, have you since the attack
Speaker 1: is like an ongoing aggression against you and it's seems
Speaker 1: like someone's targeting the inn house, right, Um, if you
Speaker 1: ask me, I would say it's more of targeting the
Speaker 1: eating house, because, um, I don't understand why we would
Speaker 1: only be the only person, like the only people experiencing
Speaker 1: the same the same incident over and over like the
Speaker 1: next the next houses. They don't complain in such incidents
Speaker 1: like you know, like this guy literally if um, I'm
Speaker 1: just picturing the fact that we had to go out
Speaker 1: and you know, turn on the machine and we saw
Speaker 1: this guy and he just bumped into us with a
Speaker 1: knife and catching us home. So I'm just picturing if
Speaker 1: this guy was waiting for like I'm just seeing it,
Speaker 1: if he was waiting for more people to come so
Speaker 1: that they can attack coming inside the house. Why was
Speaker 1: even standing there in the first place? Because we found
Speaker 1: him there and he was like he came through me
Speaker 1: because I was the one who was in the front.
Speaker 1: So I just keep asking myself, like why was he
Speaker 1: standing there? What was he waiting for? Yeah? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I point out that to get there, to get there,
Speaker 1: he had to climb a high stone wall topped with
Speaker 1: razor wire and get into position without triggering the motion detectors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is you know, not impossible to do, but it it was,
Speaker 1: but they keep coming back. Yeah. Yeah, So I'm sure
Speaker 1: people listening will be upset by this. Is there a
Speaker 1: way that people can like express the solidarity or support
Speaker 1: you financially? Yes, we need funds to keep running the house.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the guy escaped through a hole that
Speaker 1: was left only because we ran out of razor wire.
Speaker 1: We need funds to keep the project going. We need
Speaker 1: funds to also to support our primary work. We're continuing
Speaker 1: to get people out of places like Saudi Arabia. We
Speaker 1: have people, we have people who are kind of who
Speaker 1: are in mid travel right now, and we have other
Speaker 1: people in the high de holes in dangerous countries, and
Speaker 1: we want to move all those people, and we'd like
Speaker 1: to start right now. We're not even taking new folks
Speaker 1: on because we just have such a backlog. I'd very
Speaker 1: much like to fix that situation. Um, So, for all
Speaker 1: these reasons you know, we're doing. We're happy with what
Speaker 1: we're doing, but but we do need funds at the moment.
Speaker 1: Let's get into that a little bit. You know the
Speaker 1: we here is trans Rescue, right, yeah, yes, Trans Rescue
Speaker 1: is a nonprofit and you're based in Europe and you
Speaker 1: move trans people out of dangerous situations. That's correct. We're
Speaker 1: based in Um. We're based in the Netherlands. We're a
Speaker 1: A sticking, which is the U in the US that
Speaker 1: would be a five oh one C three. We're an
Speaker 1: A n B I qualified sticking, which basically is a
Speaker 1: five O one C three. Okay, And you were telling
Speaker 1: us before we started the cool that you think it
Speaker 1: costs you about euros to move each person? Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the average. Um. The average is probably slightly going
Speaker 1: down because of course, to move somebody into eden House
Speaker 1: from the coast might be as cheap as uh eighty
Speaker 1: bucks to send them a ticket and then a few
Speaker 1: hundred dollars of settling them in eden House. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, getting people out of Sawdy oftentimes means not
Speaker 1: only flying of them, but sometimes flying our own personnel
Speaker 1: in and out on UM often kind of crazy roots.
Speaker 1: So a person might find themselves a long way from
Speaker 1: either Saudi or where they're finally going to end up,
Speaker 1: and as a result, and then so yeah, we end
Speaker 1: up having to spend a lot on plane tickets and
Speaker 1: then we also sometimes this takes months, we play paperwork games. Um,
Speaker 1: we are not people smugglers, but but we certainly are
Speaker 1: helping people get to a country where they can actually
Speaker 1: claim asylum for the most part, which means, um, you
Speaker 1: know and successfully claim this aylum. And that often means
Speaker 1: manipulating edge cases in the international travel system. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes it of sense. I can see whether it
Speaker 1: would be expensive and complicated. Yes, So it's great that
Speaker 1: people can do an h that is there anything like
Speaker 1: I noticed you asking before for some mutual aid help
Speaker 1: with your PR? Is that something you still need? Look
Speaker 1: at the things people can do, maybe they don't have
Speaker 1: the means today. We were a small organization, we're not
Speaker 1: very large, and we actually are just cranking up our
Speaker 1: PR operation. Um. We could use a press list, we
Speaker 1: could use We could also use amplification from organizations with
Speaker 1: more kind of online cloud. We're basically a little group
Speaker 1: of people and for two years we operated as an
Speaker 1: informal group of activists. We realized that was probably not
Speaker 1: ideal for this very serious work we're doing, and so
Speaker 1: last December we reorganized as a proper sticting, but yeah,
Speaker 1: help with boosting our signal at the moment would be
Speaker 1: very useful. Anyone who can, you know, can spread the
Speaker 1: word of what's happened and now, so we would be
Speaker 1: very much appreciative. Yeah, well we can definitely do that.
Speaker 1: Hopefully every facts come to It's just so people can
Speaker 1: find you. It's Trands Underscore Rescue on Twitter, It's trans
Speaker 1: Underscore Rescue on twitsure, it's Trands Rescued or dot org
Speaker 1: on the web. I will share that fundraising link when
Speaker 1: when this comes out. Are how have things been for
Speaker 1: you the last couple of days, Like I must be
Speaker 1: pretty rough, I imagine, not not feeling safe at the house. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: actually the advice that we got from the landlord and
Speaker 1: the neighbor. There's a neighbor here, a lady. She came
Speaker 1: by and I have a NUMBI called her the day
Speaker 1: we had an incident and she came in the morning
Speaker 1: when he had a tough So she suggested that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be going out late night and by time we
Speaker 1: make sure that all the doors are locked and yes,
Speaker 1: and stay safe inside in case of anything. She asked
Speaker 1: me to kla and also the landlord asked me if
Speaker 1: in case of anything, if I hear any movement or
Speaker 1: any suspicious thing happening outside the gates, I just give
Speaker 1: them a call. It's good. It's good to people are
Speaker 1: sticking up here in your commune. It's really good to
Speaker 1: hear really good. Yeah. Yeah, we appreciate that, and on
Speaker 1: their behalf, what y'all are doing is very important, and
Speaker 1: we're you know, sorry that you're encountering this kind of resistance,
Speaker 1: but we hope we can help at least get the
Speaker 1: message out about what you were doing it. I'm much
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Thank you, It's much appreciated. UM. I regret
Speaker 1: that we spent most of the time on security. I'm
Speaker 1: more I'm excited about, uh, many of the positive things
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're you know, we're trying to set up
Speaker 1: h a place where trans people can live their lives
Speaker 1: and thrive and and have you know, normal lives. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Let's talk about like, how many
Speaker 1: people do you have at the eating house right now?
Speaker 1: If you're comfortable sharing that. Sure, we just opened, so
Speaker 1: we've got three people, We've got one more person who
Speaker 1: UM went back to settle kind of settle his affairs
Speaker 1: and we'll be moving in UM. And we have UM
Speaker 1: and we've got space for eight at the moment um.
Speaker 1: We've had a couple of other people on choir but
Speaker 1: but haven't like, aren't there yet. We're kind of excited
Speaker 1: by the space we've got because there's actually room around
Speaker 1: us to grow, So we're expecting to get to get bigger. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you do. And how many peoples trying to
Speaker 1: rescue you been able to help, like as an organization
Speaker 1: overrule one way or the other, We've we've moved about
Speaker 1: two dozen people. Of that, roughly a half have been
Speaker 1: the serious kind of get people out of Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: type moves. The others have been folks that we helped
Speaker 1: in sort of less dramatic ways. Okay, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: it's a very meaningful contribution to a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 1: That is great. Yeah, I get you know, it's great. Uh,
Speaker 1: at least one person lives locally, and it's great to
Speaker 1: kind of occasionally have him over for dinner or you know,
Speaker 1: and know that we got him out. Yeah, that must
Speaker 1: be really nice. And I think, yeah, it's important not
Speaker 1: to just center like hatred but also about success. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that and it's cool that, like you have
Speaker 1: plans to grow. I've seen that you have agricultural areas around,
Speaker 1: so you're thinking of like growing some food around the house.
Speaker 1: And actually we have brought some poles. We have some
Speaker 1: vegetables like spinach, cabbage, to me, atoes, green paper. Yes,
Speaker 1: did they did? The gardens survived the flood? Uh? We
Speaker 1: Actually I was about to tell you that. Actually when
Speaker 1: the water was coming in the old all the spinach
Speaker 1: went and lied down, and we were kind of worried.
Speaker 1: But when it stopped, when the water stopped flowing down,
Speaker 1: the sun came out, they kind of started going straight.
Speaker 1: So I was much worried about that. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of freaking out because they all went down and were
Speaker 1: like they're dead. We have a drainage problem in front
Speaker 1: of the house and the recently there was a crrential
Speaker 1: rain is hard to kill things. I did not know
Speaker 1: about Kenya. It hails there. I did not expect. I
Speaker 1: did not like sort of imagine hail, but but it
Speaker 1: hailed several times while is there and everybody was cold
Speaker 1: while I was walking around. The T shirt Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can you add some of our best weather and
Speaker 1: can you for sure? Yeah? And looking at these pictures,
Speaker 1: it's great to see you guys are making your own
Speaker 1: furniture and doing all these things and really enjoying your
Speaker 1: time there as well as obviously we don't want to
Speaker 1: just focus on the threat. So hopefully you can go
Speaker 1: back to that. Hopefully people can support you. Area's onywhere
Speaker 1: online people can find you. Do you have a Instagram
Speaker 1: or Twitter or anything like that? Yeah? I do have
Speaker 1: a treat to account. My tutor handle is at rams
Speaker 1: hyphen area. How do you can you spell that out
Speaker 1: for us? At MS? Okay then hyphen lower, hyphen underscore, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: underscore then are I guess? Okay? Great? Yeah? And it's
Speaker 1: for for yourself and is it if it just trans
Speaker 1: Rescue it's our personal one and thing else you'd like
Speaker 1: to my mail if someone wants to contact me, is
Speaker 1: Annie A N N I E at trans Rescue dot org. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully And um we have a contact form on the
Speaker 1: website as well if people are interested in talking with us. Um, okay, great.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you'd like to get to before
Speaker 1: we finish up here? Yes, at on Fridays. We have
Speaker 1: a m we have office hours. So if you're in
Speaker 1: a country like the UK or the US and you
Speaker 1: would just like some advice or to explore your options,
Speaker 1: that's another service we offer as well. Are happy to
Speaker 1: talk with you on video about that. When would those
Speaker 1: be there? It's six pm Central European summertime, okay, which
Speaker 1: I think works out to midday in the U s
Speaker 1: okay some parts of the US. Yeah, and your fingers
Speaker 1: primarily in English. Those are primarily in English. If you
Speaker 1: speak Arabic and or Farsi or Urdu, contact us. We
Speaker 1: can arrange to have somebody who speaks those languages talk
Speaker 1: with you. We maintain a telegram group trans Rescue and
Speaker 1: if you get on there you can use machine translation
Speaker 1: and talk with us very well. And we have Arabic
Speaker 1: speakers the monitor that. Yeah, hopefully people can take advance
Speaker 1: to that if they need it. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time, Like our platform is here for you
Speaker 1: if you want to share anything else, If anything else happens,
Speaker 1: please let us know, and we really appreciate you taking
Speaker 1: the time a hopefully thank you, Yeah, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Al Right, Okay, goodbye everyone, thank you
Speaker 1: by thank you, Hey, welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about
Speaker 1: things calling apart. UH. And today we definitely have a
Speaker 1: thing's well, I don't know, hopefully not falling apart, but
Speaker 1: certainly getting fucked up episode for you. UM, this is
Speaker 1: going to be better part of the world that probably
Speaker 1: fairly few Americans spend much time thinking about. UM. It's
Speaker 1: certainly a conflict that's kind of been lost in everything
Speaker 1: that's happening in Ukraine right now. UM. But Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Speaker 1: their neighbor have been at a state of more or
Speaker 1: less regular war since UM since longer than that. But
Speaker 1: this kind of latest wave of it started in UM.
Speaker 1: It was over a breakaway real while what's often referred
Speaker 1: to as a breakaway region that both countries claimed and
Speaker 1: that stayed kind of independent for a very long time
Speaker 1: until invasion by the Azeris in this area which is
Speaker 1: majority Armenian UM. And it was kind of a military
Speaker 1: disaster for the Armenian side. The war went very badly,
Speaker 1: a lot of troops were killed, a lot of territory
Speaker 1: was taken, and ever since the Azeri military has been
Speaker 1: carrying out border strikes in and around areas that are
Speaker 1: kind of near their shared border with Armenia. UM. Over
Speaker 1: the last ten hours, as I record this, and and
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you all on Monday UHT of September,
Speaker 1: over the last about ten hours, UM, the Azeri military
Speaker 1: has launched a fairly unprecedented set of strikes within Armenian territory. UM.
Speaker 1: So not just kind of hitting border areas, and not
Speaker 1: just hitting military targets, but hitting cities, hitting civilian areas,
Speaker 1: trying to move troops across the border. There's video evidence
Speaker 1: of this. UM. To talk about what's happening, what's been
Speaker 1: happening in the past, over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: and what's happening now, UM, I'd like to welcome on
Speaker 1: Joe Kasabian. Joe you will know from his podcast Lions
Speaker 1: Led by Donkeys, from his book The Hooligans of Kandahar,
Speaker 1: and a number of other books that I think we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit at the end here from
Speaker 1: his appearances on the Behind the Bastard. Joe, you are
Speaker 1: an American citizen, but you're also Armenian and you're currently
Speaker 1: in our media. Yeah, UM, I moved here a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago permanently, UM citizenship is we kind of
Speaker 1: have like our own repatriation laws. But I'm still waiting
Speaker 1: on that. UM. And so to to go off a
Speaker 1: couple of things that you said, we've been at a
Speaker 1: state of war effectively since the nineties when we first
Speaker 1: gained independence from the Soviet Union. UM. Without going into
Speaker 1: the incredibly complicated history of Nagano Karaba or Artsach Um
Speaker 1: art so still exists. They did not take all of
Speaker 1: it in UM. But Tony Tony was a military disaster
Speaker 1: for Armenia unequivalably. So we lost over four thousand people. UM,
Speaker 1: huge swaths of territory where UH their population became the
Speaker 1: victims of a regional genocide. UM. There are no Armenians
Speaker 1: that have been confirmed to still be alive within that territory. UM.
Speaker 1: There's endless videos of a ZI troops beheading old men
Speaker 1: and women and and destroying homes and cemeteries and churches. UM.
Speaker 1: And ever since UH the war ended in a month
Speaker 1: has not gone by where UM either art Saw or
Speaker 1: Armenia itself has not been attacked. We've probably lost over
Speaker 1: a hundred soldiers since then. UM. These are kids, their conscripts.
Speaker 1: We have UM military mandatory service here. UM, so these
Speaker 1: are eighteen nineteen year old kids doing their two years
Speaker 1: of service. On top of the civilians that are currently
Speaker 1: being bombed. We we don't know how many people are
Speaker 1: dead at the moment um. And it's UM, it's truly aggravating.
Speaker 1: I mean, Armenians live with this all the time. It's
Speaker 1: a sort of hanging over our heads. When this is
Speaker 1: going to happen. Um happened with unpress attended international support
Speaker 1: and not only support, but willing willingly ignoring it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean NATO powers helped as er by Jean Doulas, UM,
Speaker 1: Turkey and Israel Israel, Israeli drone designers literally test flew
Speaker 1: as suicide drone into Armenian soldiers to sell it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's honestly kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know what what to say about it other than that's
Speaker 1: it should be another thing that the world should be
Speaker 1: united against and they never will. No. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's so frustrating. One of the things that I have
Speaker 1: had a lot of issue with because obviously I, as
Speaker 1: you are, I'm supportive of Ukrainian people's attempts to so
Speaker 1: far quite successful attempts to stop Russia from taking over
Speaker 1: their homes. Um. But one of the things that's happened
Speaker 1: alongside this is a kind of lionization of a specific
Speaker 1: kind of Turkish drone, the bractar Um, which was particularly
Speaker 1: effective in the opening stages of the war, and military
Speaker 1: technology military equipment. Walks can argue as to whether that
Speaker 1: was due to Russian kind of tactical failures and operational failures,
Speaker 1: or whether it was due to new realities about how
Speaker 1: drones function. But one of the things that was ignored
Speaker 1: in all of this kind of fetishization of this drone
Speaker 1: and people raising money to buy more of them, is
Speaker 1: that the drones were really combat tested for the first time,
Speaker 1: massacring Armenians. UM. Yeah, and it's I try not to
Speaker 1: get too mad when I see stuff like that, because
Speaker 1: I understand whether Ukrainians are happy, of course, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should point out unequivalently I support Ukraine's fight for independence,
Speaker 1: just like I wish people um supported ours UM and
Speaker 1: and the war. The wars effectively have the same kind
Speaker 1: of propaganda angle. Um. Obviously, before Russia invaded Ukraine, they're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, Denozi vacation or demilitarization. When when
Speaker 1: you look at their speeches and the rhetoric, it's that
Speaker 1: they believe that Ukraine does not have the right to
Speaker 1: exist and that Ukrainians are either are Russian or they
Speaker 1: also should not exist. And that's effectively what we're looking at. Two. UM,
Speaker 1: this is why Armenians constantly compare what is happening now
Speaker 1: to nine um. Ashba Jean continuously says they want art
Speaker 1: Sah or the Nogana Karabak, they they want it back.
Speaker 1: But that's not what they're attacking right now. UM. If
Speaker 1: you look at the rhetoric of Aliev and his government
Speaker 1: going all the way back to the nineties when his
Speaker 1: dad was in charge and a few other people. Um,
Speaker 1: their ideology is that Armenia is not a real state.
Speaker 1: They have claims over our capital Yerevan. They have they
Speaker 1: have claims over the south where they're invading right now,
Speaker 1: and everywhere those soldiers go they wipe out the local
Speaker 1: population of Armenians. There are no Armenian survivors and Hadrud
Speaker 1: or Shushi or any of these other places they took
Speaker 1: in there, they do not exist. And ever since then,
Speaker 1: they've been purposely going through and destroying any evidence that
Speaker 1: Armenians ever lived there, which is ridiculous. Armenians have been
Speaker 1: living in these places since before Rome was fucking established. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is obviously we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Armenian genocide, which occurred during kind of the in concurrent
Speaker 1: to the kind of late stages of World War One. UM,
Speaker 1: and uh was unrecognized by the United States until what
Speaker 1: was that now, two years ago Joe yeah something finally
Speaker 1: became the first president, first US president, to recognize it.
Speaker 1: And and this is because we We've mentioned Turkey a
Speaker 1: couple of times. There's a couple of reasons for this,
Speaker 1: but most of them boiled down to not wanting to
Speaker 1: piss up, piss off the Turkish government. Um. The Turkish
Speaker 1: government has strong attitudes that essentially everybody in Anatolia is
Speaker 1: Turkish and all. Yes, there were no Greeks, there were
Speaker 1: no Kurds, there were no Army, and this has led to,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's led to ethnic cleansings and genocides against
Speaker 1: the Armenians and against the Kurds. One of the things
Speaker 1: that was being done in ro Java, UM that I
Speaker 1: found so compelling was was an attempt to educate, an
Speaker 1: attempt to buy the Kurds there to educate people who
Speaker 1: were joining the YPG about Kurdish complicity in the genocide
Speaker 1: against Armenia because they recognize themselves as victims of the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, starting I think you know all
Speaker 1: of the it's hard to say starting in right, because
Speaker 1: we're trying to talk about concurrent conference. They all go back.
Speaker 1: Everything's going back quite a while. You mentioned Ali of
Speaker 1: a little bit ago, and I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about him. Um, we're talking about il Ham Aliev, who's
Speaker 1: the current president of Azerbaijan, the worth uh and of
Speaker 1: course the the son of the former leader, which is
Speaker 1: always a recipe for a good functional des Also his
Speaker 1: wife as vice president. Yeah, and his wife is vice president,
Speaker 1: which is nice. It's just like it's just like house
Speaker 1: of cars. Yeah, he's the Kevin spacey. Um. His his
Speaker 1: attitude and rhetoric towards Armenian in general is eliminationists at best. Um,
Speaker 1: like he's I mean, the country's put out stamps that
Speaker 1: show Armenia being fumigated like dirt went during the height
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, which like as a genocide scholar. You know, generally,
Speaker 1: when I see a picture of a place being gassed,
Speaker 1: I get suspicious. Um. Uh, they've talked, they've talked about
Speaker 1: how it was a good thing that in the nineties
Speaker 1: Armenians were driven from Buku and the Bukoprograms and a
Speaker 1: few other places. Um, I mean weren't there like literally
Speaker 1: like some of those drop these arms shows and stuff
Speaker 1: like pieces of captured equipment with blood on it and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they also had, um honestly one of the weirdest,
Speaker 1: like it's incredibly offensive and racist, uh, the these um
Speaker 1: caricatures of our of Armenian soldiers who like, at the
Speaker 1: same time they're like racist towards Armenians but also vaguely
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, Like they looked like a character of a
Speaker 1: Jewish person to come out of their sturmer um with
Speaker 1: like you know, and I understand how stereotypically people think
Speaker 1: Armenians look in like these racist art where we have
Speaker 1: you know, big hooked noses and big eyebrows and things
Speaker 1: like that, which admittedly I know I meet both of
Speaker 1: those personally, but that's besides the point of Like if
Speaker 1: you look at the pictures and they were taken down
Speaker 1: because like even like Israel was like oh that's a
Speaker 1: bit much, and like they help that happen. Um. But
Speaker 1: like also to talk you can't talk about as by
Speaker 1: genre without talking about Turkey because they have this ideology
Speaker 1: that's like two people, one state. They do believe in
Speaker 1: like pan Turranism, especially urd iwan Um. I mean he's
Speaker 1: been ever ever since, he's gone like full fascist, That's
Speaker 1: something he's been hammering the drum on and like this
Speaker 1: is an extension of that. He's effectively a neo Ottomanist.
Speaker 1: He wants to reunite the Oman Empire, which is fucking
Speaker 1: insane but also has real life things, you know, but
Speaker 1: also to bring us, you know, to the conflict that
Speaker 1: Americans are more focusing on. As we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: this is another similarity between what Russia is doing in
Speaker 1: Ukraine and what is Erbajon and Turkey are doing in Armenia.
Speaker 1: They're both these kind of um redemptionist dreams of people
Speaker 1: who want to bring back some sort of lost imperial splendor,
Speaker 1: right and are are utilizing kind of the tactics that
Speaker 1: the technics of genocide in order to try to make
Speaker 1: that happen. Yeah, I think for Turkey it's a lot
Speaker 1: of this lost splendor, especially as their economy, it's itself
Speaker 1: from mismanagement, and I think for Azerbaijan it's the other
Speaker 1: way around. In the nineties, when we fought the first
Speaker 1: car A bah War, Armenia one UM. I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't from being military's military, militarily superior, having more money.
Speaker 1: It had to do with two largely unorganized forces in
Speaker 1: the fallout of the Soviet Union, and Armenia end up winning. UM.
Speaker 1: And ever since then, that loss has been something of
Speaker 1: like national It's like it's kind of like the national
Speaker 1: mythos of Azebaijan, because before then Azerbaijan is a national
Speaker 1: identity simply didn't exist. It's relatively new UM. And that
Speaker 1: loss in that war became the defining moment. That's where UM,
Speaker 1: the lost Armenia was internalized and like it became school
Speaker 1: curriculum that Armenians were the were at fault for everything.
Speaker 1: We're sub human, we've been compared to cockroaches. Like for instance,
Speaker 1: if you have, say my last name, you cannot legally
Speaker 1: enter the country of Azebaijan. You cannot enter that country
Speaker 1: with an Armenian last name, it's racism, and fascism is
Speaker 1: state doctrine there. So when you know their oil production
Speaker 1: kicked back up from after the war damages and after
Speaker 1: the fallout of the Soviet Union, on top of military
Speaker 1: reforms that have been lasting for thirty years, they're the
Speaker 1: ones on the up swing now, not Turkey in my opinion,
Speaker 1: and it also helps their fighting someone like Armenia, which
Speaker 1: no Armenians that we have military history and everything, but
Speaker 1: we have no fucking money, we have no natural resources,
Speaker 1: we have no allies, we have no one's gonna air
Speaker 1: drop palettes of fucking high Mars and Yerevan like nobody's
Speaker 1: coming to help us. We have a k S that
Speaker 1: fought in the First War, we have BMP ones that
Speaker 1: have probably seen more combat than most people who are
Speaker 1: still alive, an armored personnel carrier. Essentially we we have nothing. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to speak about the cape bills of
Speaker 1: the Armenian military, but like you can imagine what a
Speaker 1: small landlocked country with a small population, not lot of money,
Speaker 1: can field. It's not a lot. Um, Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: a lot. And this kind of gets us to another
Speaker 1: topic that has to be broached with this which is
Speaker 1: kind of talking about the relationship of Russia to all
Speaker 1: this because one of the things that's very frustrating about
Speaker 1: this conflict is that Americans particularly tend to want things
Speaker 1: very simply. So you hear you've got a Russian client state,
Speaker 1: which is how it is, not what Armenia is. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that, Joe, obviously, but is how it's easy
Speaker 1: to especially like kind of in the boil out, sort
Speaker 1: of break things out as it's like, Okay, you've got
Speaker 1: this state backed by Russia and then you've got this
Speaker 1: other state fighting that that's backed by Turkey. Well, Turkey's
Speaker 1: part of NATO, they're part of, you know, the fight
Speaker 1: against Russia, so they must be the good guys. And
Speaker 1: none of that's accurate. But I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's important to explain why. So, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: really hard to explain Armenia and Russia's relationship other than imperialism. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Armenia has been conquered by countless countries throughout our fucking
Speaker 1: long history, but the most recent one being the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: which we did not join willingly. Um. And then after
Speaker 1: the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation. Um,
Speaker 1: we're solidly within Russia's fear of influences by no active
Speaker 1: choice of ours were members of the c tso were
Speaker 1: members of the Eurasian Economic Union, and neither of those
Speaker 1: were by choice. We were strong armed into it because
Speaker 1: there's no there's nothing else, there's no other option. Um.
Speaker 1: And as far as it goes, is is like the
Speaker 1: brotherly relationship or this client state. It would be exactly
Speaker 1: like someone blaming Ukraine for what happened in Maidan, or
Speaker 1: blaming Ukraine for what happened in or what happened now
Speaker 1: because they're trying to get away from that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't. We don't have the resources to do it.
Speaker 1: Just just for an example of how Armenia plays like
Speaker 1: tight ropes, this ship never once if we voted in
Speaker 1: favor of Russia during this war. We like they're like
Speaker 1: our representatives to the U n our our Ministry of
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs are prime. This there is solidly neutral because
Speaker 1: that's the best he can do. Um. Right, you know
Speaker 1: he's either voted against, uh, he's voted uh, he's abstained.
Speaker 1: He's never voted for to support Russia during this war
Speaker 1: at all. Um, Now, Obviously, back in there was a
Speaker 1: different Armenia. UM. We had a pro EU movement here
Speaker 1: that was quite strong. This is before I lived here,
Speaker 1: of course, UM that voted to declare our intentions to
Speaker 1: want to join the EU. I believe this is under
Speaker 1: President Sergisan UM and it passed overwhelmingly in the popular vote,
Speaker 1: because unlike the people invading us, we are a free
Speaker 1: and fair democracy with the freedom of speech and expression
Speaker 1: and everything else that people like to claim they want
Speaker 1: to defend, but they don't UM. And after a five
Speaker 1: minute meeting with Putin, it was gone. There's no more referendum,
Speaker 1: and we decided not to join the EU anymore. But
Speaker 1: we I mean the president. After that we had our
Speaker 1: Velvet Revolution which got rid of him UM and distance
Speaker 1: ourselves from Russia as much as we realistically could so
Speaker 1: inten I believe UH. For instance, Armenia UH kind of
Speaker 1: slightly supported Russia when it came to annexing Crimea. And
Speaker 1: now you can kind of see why the president was
Speaker 1: a fucking stooge. That's not the case anymore. We now
Speaker 1: have a parliamentary system and as much as I am
Speaker 1: not the biggest fan of Prime Minister or passion Yon,
Speaker 1: He's not that guy. That's not like the Armenia is
Speaker 1: a different world. Um. And I know, like like you said,
Speaker 1: people really like to simplify these things. They want this
Speaker 1: to be a team sport. They want this to be
Speaker 1: NATO versus Russia, and you know, people like Belarus or
Speaker 1: whoever else. But there's a there's a pretty big fucking
Speaker 1: difference here. We have not actively supported this war. There
Speaker 1: has been anti war protests outside my fucking window since
Speaker 1: the war has started. Ukrainians have flooded here by the
Speaker 1: thousands and they have met nothing but Armenians who have
Speaker 1: well come down with open arms. Russians have come too,
Speaker 1: and we're not the biggest fans of them, but what
Speaker 1: can you do about um. You know, like we're we're
Speaker 1: solidly neutral in this and it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that fucking and I mean granted neutral government wise, people wise. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we're not neutral. Um. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: pisces me off the most is that people can see
Speaker 1: the realities of the war in Ukraine where they can
Speaker 1: see right through Russian propaganda when it's like demilitarization, denification, whatever,
Speaker 1: and they can see on its face that's complete and
Speaker 1: utter bullshit. But like when because you know, Ukraine is
Speaker 1: fighting for their sovereignty, their independence, and the right to
Speaker 1: exist that we all have, um, and when it comes
Speaker 1: to us, we don't get that, like, oh, well, we're
Speaker 1: calling for both sides a de escalate and maybe our
Speaker 1: omnia shouldn't have started this. We haven't done anything. It
Speaker 1: was fucking midnight last night and the South started being bombed.
Speaker 1: What the fund is there to be de escalated? You
Speaker 1: can't deescalate self defense. So you have what is a
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable situation and one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't like talking about the reality of because essentially, when
Speaker 1: you have a country like Azerbaijan that is insisting on
Speaker 1: repeatedly violating the territory of its neighbor um and that
Speaker 1: has proven not just a willingness but an eagerness to
Speaker 1: engage and engage in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide,
Speaker 1: you have two options for dealing with that other than
Speaker 1: let them do it right. Option one is send in
Speaker 1: peacekeepers to stop the aggression. Now Russia has troops that
Speaker 1: were called peacekeepers in the area. Um. You know, there's
Speaker 1: you could debate prior to the invasion of Ukraine. How
Speaker 1: good they were at that job, um, but they certainly
Speaker 1: are not capable of doing it now. Um. So then
Speaker 1: the question is, okay, who else? Who? What? Who else
Speaker 1: is peacekeepers are gonna come in? Right? And if that's
Speaker 1: not a realistic solution and you don't want to let
Speaker 1: Azerbaijan just do a genocide, then what you do issue
Speaker 1: give them weapons Armenia weapons, not as people already doing
Speaker 1: that part unfortunately the US. Yeah, indeed, um. And again
Speaker 1: there's this we're all kind of in terms of like
Speaker 1: the discourse around this in the United States living in
Speaker 1: the shadow of the War on Terror, in which an
Speaker 1: irresponsible quantity of weapons were handed out to an irresponsible
Speaker 1: variety of groups. Um, and many of them went to
Speaker 1: bad ends in bad places. Um. The reality is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we're sitting on a fucking stockpile of weapons
Speaker 1: here in the United States as tall as the sky
Speaker 1: and handing over a tiny percent of that. When people
Speaker 1: talk about like that we're giving this much aid Ukraine,
Speaker 1: We're not spending that much cash straight on ad Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We're picking up ship we have in mothballs and we'll
Speaker 1: we're handing it to them because we've spent all of
Speaker 1: our treasure on on a pile of guns larger than
Speaker 1: you can conceive of in terms of its actual size
Speaker 1: and weight. UM. And I don't know, like when when
Speaker 1: I think about what is to be fucking done here realistically, UM,
Speaker 1: I would like for our Menia to have access to javelins.
Speaker 1: And I'm send some stingers. Even. One of the things
Speaker 1: that pisses me off is like, like you said, there's
Speaker 1: two options here, you do nothing, and you're complicit in
Speaker 1: a genocide. That's what this hits like. It's it's like
Speaker 1: being silent and you know, um and in ninet, it's
Speaker 1: being silent, in nineteen fifteen, it's being silent Rwanda, we
Speaker 1: were silent during most of those things, and we saw
Speaker 1: how they were, Like, there's only one way this fucking
Speaker 1: ends if we don't get guns, and that's with a
Speaker 1: lot of dead Armenians. That that that and by supporting
Speaker 1: Azerbaijan or sitting out that is what you explicitly support
Speaker 1: is thousands and thousands of dead civilians. Like that's the
Speaker 1: only way this ends. And it is again and I
Speaker 1: hate keep that. We keep going back to Ukraine, but
Speaker 1: it's relevant because it's the the the it's the conflict
Speaker 1: that we're actually focusing on the people who are counter
Speaker 1: on on anti side, providing weapons to the Ukrainian military
Speaker 1: and make claims about corruption, which they could also make
Speaker 1: about the Armenian government, um, and claims about you know,
Speaker 1: arms trafficking and all that stuff. But so far and Ukraine,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a country with a deeper history
Speaker 1: of corruption, significantly in the Armenian government even um, we
Speaker 1: haven't government is less corrupt than Ukraine's. Yeah, Um, you
Speaker 1: haven't seen a ton of that happening. What you have
Speaker 1: seen is the weapons that have been handed to them,
Speaker 1: blowing up invaders, tanks and aircraft. Um. And the sheer
Speaker 1: quantity that has been destroyed is evidence that that weaponry
Speaker 1: has been used pretty responsibly. And when you were talking
Speaker 1: about a group of people facing annihilation, I'm simply not
Speaker 1: worried that they're going to sell their stingers to fucking
Speaker 1: Isis or wherever are we going to sell them to Turkey?
Speaker 1: In one side the Georgia, that's actually fine, like you know,
Speaker 1: and that's I think people are fucking gutless. Um, you
Speaker 1: saw this happen in February before they're in January, before
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine started, when people like, oh, weapons
Speaker 1: are only gonna make it worse. No, they're fucking not.
Speaker 1: You know what's worse than than an armed population defending
Speaker 1: itself is an unarmed one being murdered anyway. And we
Speaker 1: in case nobody paid attention, because they probably didn't, you
Speaker 1: can go back and look at the video footage of
Speaker 1: what happens to unarmed Armenians, and it's the same fucking
Speaker 1: ship Isis did to yuz S. It's the same fucking
Speaker 1: ship they did occurreds, and it's the same fucking ship
Speaker 1: that will happen again if we do not get what
Speaker 1: we need to defend ourselves. And I don't give a
Speaker 1: funk if you don't like Russia. I don't fucking like
Speaker 1: Russia either. But it's the reality that we live in.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're fucking intelligent enough to realize the
Speaker 1: diplomacy and geopolitics of how Ukraine ended up in the
Speaker 1: war that they're in now, you should understand why we
Speaker 1: are in the situation that we are into. You cannot
Speaker 1: really sistickally believe we deserve what is happening unless you
Speaker 1: also believe Ukraine deserves what's happening to them. It's impossible.
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is obviously how could this not
Speaker 1: be like emotional and and and it is just feeling
Speaker 1: like I can't and it must be so much worse
Speaker 1: obviously just being there, but like this, this feeling of
Speaker 1: a fucking train coming at you, and people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: do ship because there's this fucking problem with optic And
Speaker 1: it's more complicated when we talk about I'm talking about
Speaker 1: we wanna talk about optics, I guess we're talking about discourse.
Speaker 1: When it comes about like why politically the United States
Speaker 1: is unlikely to do anything like what we've suggested, It's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, and a decent amount of it
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that we have what is it,
Speaker 1: thirteen nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey right now, which land
Speaker 1: stolen from Armenians from the genocide. Great stuff, America, well done,
Speaker 1: We really knocked that out of the park. What is
Speaker 1: it that people can do to help outside of you know,
Speaker 1: trying to become informed about the conflict, which I think
Speaker 1: we can talk about some sources at the end of this.
Speaker 1: Are there places, you know, Red Cross style things that
Speaker 1: people can donate to to help to the extent that
Speaker 1: that's kind of a thing is helpful. Yeah, Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, generally crowdfunding for weapons systems is illegal unless
Speaker 1: you're Ukraine nowadays, so I'm thinking more about medical. Um,
Speaker 1: the Armenian Red Cross is always a good option. They
Speaker 1: helped a lot, and they still help now we still
Speaker 1: have a ton of internally displaced people. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: the hind drum In Fund, which directly funds wounded servicemen
Speaker 1: because we really don't have a v A exactly here. Um.
Speaker 1: There's quite a few other ones, but the the Armenian
Speaker 1: Red Crosses of course the most reliable and easy to
Speaker 1: donate if you're in the West. For sure. You don't
Speaker 1: have to navigate any confusing Armenian language website. It's because
Speaker 1: it's it's hard and mean, it isn't great with the internet,
Speaker 1: so like most of them don't have translations. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know it's yeah, I understand I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: more emotional than most people. Probably hear me on podcasts,
Speaker 1: but like, um, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm fucking frustrated. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much longer people can let this
Speaker 1: kind of thing happen. Um, I hope the e use
Speaker 1: gas this winter is fucking worth it, because this is
Speaker 1: what you got. This is what that deal got us.
Speaker 1: So I hope you're nice and warm in the fucking
Speaker 1: winter because we probably won't have power or we'll have
Speaker 1: more dead or whatever. But real glad you pivoted away
Speaker 1: from Russian gas and sign a deal. Fucking as Jean,
Speaker 1: you spineless fox. And it's a I mean, it goes
Speaker 1: it's the spinelessness is deeper than that, right, because the
Speaker 1: reason why the fucking gas crunch that led to that
Speaker 1: deal happened in the first place was among a number
Speaker 1: of things, years of seeding to Russian government aggression in
Speaker 1: places like Georgia, in the places like Ukraine, and you've
Speaker 1: got that, you know, here you have the invasion by
Speaker 1: a Zerbaijan almost like two years ago now, and then
Speaker 1: there's that and and no pushback. Right, this is this
Speaker 1: is the thing is And this is not a popular
Speaker 1: kind of thing to go to talk about on the left,
Speaker 1: but but it's true. If you want to pay attention
Speaker 1: to why why that whole World War two situation got
Speaker 1: so goddamn bad, A big part of it is they're
Speaker 1: not being any kind of effective rules based international order
Speaker 1: to stop bigger countries or at least more aggressive ones,
Speaker 1: from fucking with their neighbors. And one of the things
Speaker 1: we were supposed to have learned from that war is
Speaker 1: that you don't let people do that. It's bad and right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it shouldn't be that hard. I don't care what
Speaker 1: your politics is. I mean, everybody knows that we're both
Speaker 1: very left wing. But when someone comes continuously fox with you,
Speaker 1: the only way to make them stop is by hitting
Speaker 1: them in the goddamn face until they realize it's not
Speaker 1: a good idea like this, Like diplomacy doesn't work when
Speaker 1: one side only wants you dead. You can't debate my
Speaker 1: right to live, or my neighbor's right to live, or
Speaker 1: these kids right to live. Very they're fucking schools bombed
Speaker 1: right now, there's no debate to be had. You have
Speaker 1: to hit them until they fucking stop. There's like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: there's not gonna be any de escalation of fucking genocide.
Speaker 1: Like that's not how this works. People tend to get
Speaker 1: this in the immediate sense when you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: some fucking bigot in front of you everybody everybody loves,
Speaker 1: you know, cheering on a video of some guy, you know,
Speaker 1: dropping a racial slur and getting knocked to the ground.
Speaker 1: Obviously those are a lot of um. But the moral
Speaker 1: is that if you let assholes. The actual moral of
Speaker 1: like why it's important to punch Nazis in the face
Speaker 1: when they're doing Nazi ship is that if you just
Speaker 1: let them do Nazi ship and you try to like
Speaker 1: appease them and calm them down, you'll often calm them
Speaker 1: down here and there, and they're like, back off, but
Speaker 1: they'll have gotten a little bit more, They'll have gotten
Speaker 1: a little bit of what they want, they'll have gotten
Speaker 1: a little bit further, and they just keep making shit
Speaker 1: worse until somebody actually does fucking drop them. And it's
Speaker 1: the same with you know. And again I I we
Speaker 1: just talked about with the great lesson of World War
Speaker 1: two should have been and the thing that actually happens
Speaker 1: the generation that took power in the United States and
Speaker 1: in a lot of other Western countries after that, not
Speaker 1: exclusively the West, but I think we're talking about our
Speaker 1: our our people here, um immediately went and fucked around
Speaker 1: and carried out acts of aggression all over the world. Um,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean the basic lesson is bad. The
Speaker 1: lesson is don't let pete. We should not have been
Speaker 1: allowed to do that, um, but we shouldn't like that
Speaker 1: should not be a thing that the world accepts, Like
Speaker 1: the you can't just sit back and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: all that countries gonna go do a genocide now, but
Speaker 1: it's far away, so there's nothing to be done other
Speaker 1: than continue to buy the oil of the people doing
Speaker 1: the genocide and thereby fund the genocide. Right like it's
Speaker 1: it's fucking unconscionable, man like, and even if you want
Speaker 1: to look at this as like the West also fund
Speaker 1: around during the Couldar, which like, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: everybody did, you know, stop them? They didn't funk around
Speaker 1: so much in Southeast Asia after the US got punched
Speaker 1: in the fucking face in Vietnam, did that? That's right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it was a lot less. The shouldn't be this
Speaker 1: fucking complicated. I don't I don't care what political ideology
Speaker 1: you subscribe to, Like it's self defense, like it's collective
Speaker 1: mutual self defense. When we need help, you give us
Speaker 1: fucking help. Like, yeah, it shouldn't be that fucking hard.
Speaker 1: I mean to be fair for for some people will
Speaker 1: never truly matter because they don't see countries like Armenia
Speaker 1: or countries like Azerbaijan is having agency to do their
Speaker 1: own things and thrown things. Um. And if that is you,
Speaker 1: I hope to see your house on scene end one day. Um.
Speaker 1: But like you know that does there should be like
Speaker 1: that sounds like, um, like an old Russian curse, like me,
Speaker 1: your house beyond the sea, and I believe it's from yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I can imagine yes, some little old ladies saying
Speaker 1: that to you. We we have the right to freedom
Speaker 1: as much as anyone else. And um, not only that
Speaker 1: we've achieved it. Like Armenia is a is a moderately
Speaker 1: progressive place. I mean, we're still working on some things.
Speaker 1: We have the freest democracy in the region. Um, we
Speaker 1: have great standard of living for most people. Um, and
Speaker 1: it was only getting better. This is a place has
Speaker 1: freer and fairer elections, and virtually anyone else over here,
Speaker 1: to include Russia, to include fucking Ukraine, to include Turkey,
Speaker 1: to include all these places that people insists are worth defending.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious why we're not like, why are like
Speaker 1: why are Armenians less than what did we for fucking
Speaker 1: do to deserve this? It's it's incredibly depressing. Um. And
Speaker 1: maybe we're not the right shade of white. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know anymore man Like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really weird to me. UM. Even like internationally geopolitically, you know,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State Blincoln urged both sides of de escalate.
Speaker 1: Suck my fucking dick. What are we de escalating? They're
Speaker 1: invading us? I would like to ask al Qaeda, would
Speaker 1: really like to ask the city of New York to
Speaker 1: de escalate when planes flew into the World Trade Center, like,
Speaker 1: get the funk out of here, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: de escalate this? They're bombing cities like it's it's maddening, um,
Speaker 1: And it's not gonna end. It's not gonna end until
Speaker 1: someone fucking ends it. We can't. We We just had
Speaker 1: a generationally destroying war two years ago that we have
Speaker 1: not recovered from. We have an entire society that's dealing
Speaker 1: with various forms of PTSD. UM. We don't have the
Speaker 1: the institutions to take care of all of the victims
Speaker 1: from two years ago. UM. We didn't get any help
Speaker 1: that either, and we're not gonna get any help now.
Speaker 1: I uh yeah, you know, I think again, there's this,
Speaker 1: there's this tendency towards isolationism and the left brought on
Speaker 1: by the Iraq War. But none of this, if nothing
Speaker 1: is done, if there's no international response to this, and
Speaker 1: if these areas aren't aren't stopped by you know, in
Speaker 1: auto cathonic resistance, um, then it won't stop with Armenia,
Speaker 1: because violence of this sort never does. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a book I'm interested in your thoughts on it, actually, Joe,
Speaker 1: but I found it quite eliminating a number of years ago,
Speaker 1: An Inconvenient Genocide by Adam hoss Child, which is about
Speaker 1: the Armenian genocide and its influence on Hitler, making the
Speaker 1: point that even though hit there never was anywhere close
Speaker 1: to Armenia, neither were any fucking German troops for that matter,
Speaker 1: particularly close Imperial German troops were, Oh well, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're very much in charge of a lot of different
Speaker 1: death squads. It's it's a it's a weird story. Hitler's
Speaker 1: Hitler's German. Of course, I apologize. I meant, I meant
Speaker 1: the Yeah. But the point that Hoschild was making was
Speaker 1: that Hitler was not engaged in the Armenian genocide, but
Speaker 1: he paid attention to it and the fact that the
Speaker 1: young Turks got away with it, um and and got
Speaker 1: to take that let take land that, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: is currently occupied by some US nuclear war heads. Um
Speaker 1: was was part of what emboldened him to do not
Speaker 1: just the Holocaust but everything he did in Europe. And
Speaker 1: there was a line specifically in reference to the Holocaust
Speaker 1: from Hitler, but it was during this table talk that
Speaker 1: was like essentially he was saying, well, of course we'll
Speaker 1: get away with it. Nobody remembers Armenians anymore. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: literally on the wall. Yeah. And that's the thing is
Speaker 1: like it goes back right, like everybody was saying, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the politics behind our sock are
Speaker 1: messy for people who are not from this region, and
Speaker 1: I'm I don't have enough time to go into them.
Speaker 1: The majority of Armenian population that was given to Azerbaijan
Speaker 1: by the Soviet Union with absolutely no process, and they
Speaker 1: attempted to vote to join Armenia while we were still
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, which is well within the rights
Speaker 1: according to the Soviet Unions constitution if such rights functionally existed,
Speaker 1: which they did not. Um, and that's what started the
Speaker 1: first war. But in every war has been about that
Speaker 1: ever since, effectively, at least politically on its surface, because
Speaker 1: internationally is recognized as part of Azerbaijan, because they go
Speaker 1: off old Soviet maps for fucking reasons. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can talk about Sikes Picaul, yeah exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: But like you know, in people were saying that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: if this will all end if Armenia simply gives up
Speaker 1: art Stock, which we don't claim art so nobody, I mean,
Speaker 1: some some people do. The government does not. Um, we
Speaker 1: don't recognize it as an independent country either, which they
Speaker 1: themselves have declared themselves. It's it's messy, I understand, but um,
Speaker 1: it's it's not within the Republic of Armenia to negotiate
Speaker 1: the non existence of the Republic of Artsch that is
Speaker 1: their right to self determination. That is politically what the
Speaker 1: government believes. Now they were saying, well, now that these
Speaker 1: areas have been taken over by age by John, we
Speaker 1: can finally move towards peace. There's fucking peace talks a
Speaker 1: week ago that the Prime Minister pashaon Yan met with Aliev.
Speaker 1: I believe in Belgium. I'm not entirely sure they literally
Speaker 1: met a week ago. Maybe it's two weeks ago, like
Speaker 1: it was very recent. But the thing is every time
Speaker 1: this peace process starts again, this happens because it's not
Speaker 1: about Arsa, it's not about Nagano Karaba, it's not about
Speaker 1: any of these. It's it's about our right, our fundamental
Speaker 1: right to exist. They do not believe in it, like
Speaker 1: it's not just like it wasn't about um Jews being
Speaker 1: involved in business. It wasn't about Jews marrying Germans. It
Speaker 1: was about their fundamental right to exist. Like it's it's
Speaker 1: all it is. It's the same can be said for Palestinians.
Speaker 1: This is this isn't about Palestinian I mean, thinking of
Speaker 1: which fucking Israelis are just just placing Armenians in Palestine
Speaker 1: as well. Like it's it's not about it's not about
Speaker 1: these these small little nibbles that they're taking. It's not
Speaker 1: about the freedom of movement. It's not about your right
Speaker 1: to date. Someone which came up recently is they made
Speaker 1: some Israelila against that you have to declare your romantic
Speaker 1: intentions before you go into the West Bank or whatever. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not about those things. Those are maybe that'll make
Speaker 1: maybe that'll make it easier to get the the American
Speaker 1: leftists on this one. Right, No, no guy, Israel is
Speaker 1: the bad the bad guys here we can genocide. Yet
Speaker 1: that's not entirely. He probably would. But the thing is
Speaker 1: that it's not about these small nibbles. It's not about
Speaker 1: your right to do X or you're right to do why.
Speaker 1: It's not about art socks, right, the freedom, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's they don't believe you should exist, and they will
Speaker 1: take and take and take and take until you're fucking
Speaker 1: powerless and they can wipe you out. That is their goal.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can see that in Palestine, you can
Speaker 1: see that, in Arsa, you can see that increasingly in Armenia.
Speaker 1: You can see That's what Russia's goal was in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: it was Russia's goal in Georgia. It's how imperialism fucking works.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to have an American flag or British
Speaker 1: flag over it for that to be what it's called.
Speaker 1: It's genocidal imperialism. And like if if you're too dumb
Speaker 1: to fucking see that, I don't know what else to
Speaker 1: tell you, Like, I don't know how else do you
Speaker 1: need me to draw and fucking crayon? Like yeah, And
Speaker 1: I I think we're both getting angry here, primarily at
Speaker 1: groups of people who I don't believe are the primary
Speaker 1: listeners that will have on this, not necessarily but but
Speaker 1: but I get it, Like no, it's it's this constant
Speaker 1: fucking thing you have whenever there's a war anywhere, And
Speaker 1: you are like, well, what is the solution, Well, the
Speaker 1: people who are the victims need to have access to weapons? Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're and if you're saying, which I agree with,
Speaker 1: sending in US or whatever troops to ex country usually
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out, then what are what is the
Speaker 1: option give them fucking weapons? Yeah? And honestly, like what
Speaker 1: would make the situation worse if we had American soldiers here?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I mean I just don't I just don't
Speaker 1: think that's a thing that logistically the US military can do. Well. Um,
Speaker 1: but like yeah, like there's some situations where, yes, military
Speaker 1: assistance could make a situation worse. Bad things will happen,
Speaker 1: You cannot deploy large amounts of weapons or soldiers to
Speaker 1: a specific area without there being some kind of negative effects. However,
Speaker 1: you have to realistically weigh the good and the bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world military the Allies bombed Germany flat, but they
Speaker 1: stopped the fucking holocaust. Yeah, we blew up a fair
Speaker 1: amount of people in the nineties, we stopped the genocide,
Speaker 1: like we blew up the ship out of Isis, And
Speaker 1: there was also some civilian casualties, which fucking sucked quite
Speaker 1: a few. You stop the Azite genocide with the assistance
Speaker 1: of the PKK and and the YPG and the y PJ, Like,
Speaker 1: you cannot unleash military power without the acceptance that innocent
Speaker 1: people are going to die. The way that you weigh
Speaker 1: that is more fucking people are going to die if
Speaker 1: you don't. That's that's I think the key of it,
Speaker 1: and probably the point to close on is that it's
Speaker 1: not a decision do we do we bring violence to
Speaker 1: this situation or not the situation. The question is how
Speaker 1: how lopsided will the violence be. Will the violence be
Speaker 1: one state armed by its allies massacreing an under you know,
Speaker 1: equipped military, and then civilians until there's no one left
Speaker 1: of the people who inhabited that area. Um or will
Speaker 1: those people have the equipment to defend themselves? Like that?
Speaker 1: That's the question. There's no, there's no the situation. The
Speaker 1: only way for the situation to not be violent is
Speaker 1: for Zerbaijan to not do what they're doing right now.
Speaker 1: Um And hey, if if some sort of fucking diplomatic
Speaker 1: pressure works, I will I will be unbelievably psyched to
Speaker 1: eat both of our words in this if the fucking
Speaker 1: blinken manages to I don't. I don't. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: no idea, like how how you actually have an impact here?
Speaker 1: But that would be lovely. I just don't think it's likely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I mean, don't be wrong. There's a time for
Speaker 1: diplomacy in that time ends when troops attempt across the
Speaker 1: border or they start cluster bombing our cities. Like there's
Speaker 1: there's a time for diplomacy and not that you can
Speaker 1: do two things at once. And and to be completely clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not calling for like the hundred and first to
Speaker 1: fucking land in Yovan or whatever. Like, I don't want
Speaker 1: the American military to come here. We'll take care of ourselves,
Speaker 1: but we need the tools to do so. And the
Speaker 1: fact remains is like you can be vehemently against war.
Speaker 1: I know I am. I fought in them. They fucking suck.
Speaker 1: I do not want war to happen to anybody, But
Speaker 1: when they when it comes, talking is over, or at
Speaker 1: least it it hits the back burner. Like there's negotiations
Speaker 1: going on in Ukraine and Russia that we don't hear about,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, Ukraine knows they have to
Speaker 1: continue doing violence in the meantime, Like you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't just like whoa, guys, let's just hit the brakes
Speaker 1: and let's like have a fucking peace conference in Belgium
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like Sun is being bombed, Gorgious is being bought,
Speaker 1: like our Meenians are dying, Like there's no words that
Speaker 1: will fix that, but we'll fix it as fucking artillery system,
Speaker 1: high mars, GPS, guided weapons, fucking body armor. We don't
Speaker 1: even have first aid kits, Like there's there's there's things
Speaker 1: that we need that can happen in addition to political pressure,
Speaker 1: because political pressure is great if we ever have it,
Speaker 1: but there needs to be something in the meantime, Like
Speaker 1: the Director of Doctors without borders. One time said, um,
Speaker 1: something that was incredibly controversial when he said, because he's
Speaker 1: a doctor and he runs you know, a charity. He said,
Speaker 1: you can't stop a genocide with doctors. And he meant
Speaker 1: that you need to give people fucking weapons because you
Speaker 1: know there's like like we already said, and then I'll
Speaker 1: promise they'll stop talking. Um, there's two ways that this ends.
Speaker 1: We defend ourselves and we survive, or you sit by
Speaker 1: and you do nothing, and uh, there's thousands of more
Speaker 1: graves full of Armenians by the end of this. That's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, once upon a time the world said never again,
Speaker 1: and that ship has had a big fucking asterix next
Speaker 1: to it ever since. And people need to prove themselves.
Speaker 1: You need to fucking prove the words actually mean things.
Speaker 1: If you want to defend democracies and ship like you
Speaker 1: do in Ukraine. I have a democracy for you to
Speaker 1: defend and we need weapons. Yeah. I think that's as
Speaker 1: good a note as I need to end on joke
Speaker 1: A sabian Um Host of Lions led by Donkeys, author
Speaker 1: of The Hooligans of Kandahar. You've got other bunch of
Speaker 1: other books that have come out now. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: the Victory of Death series out if you enjoy military
Speaker 1: sci fi. Uh, and I have another one coming out
Speaker 1: in October called The Frontier Corps. You can preorder it now.
Speaker 1: Um if you look on my Twitter, um, you can
Speaker 1: find a link to preorder it. It's free if you
Speaker 1: have um Kindle unlimited, so you know, if for the book.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. Also if you don't feel like giving
Speaker 1: me money, that's that's great to donate to the Armenian
Speaker 1: and Red Cross. They need it more than I do. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, everybody, that's the episode. Um, alright, hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to it could happen here podcast. But things falling apart
Speaker 1: and putting them back together. And this is another Andrew episode.
Speaker 1: So hello Ulu, yes, greetings, we have we have we
Speaker 1: have Chris, we have James, we have myself, and we
Speaker 1: have Andrew obviously, who I'm going to hand the reins
Speaker 1: off to. Awesome, So hello again to another episode of
Speaker 1: me talking about different stuff. Um and quite fittingly, considering
Speaker 1: to these the d that Queen Elizabeth has passed into
Speaker 1: the pits of hell. Um, we are we are deeply
Speaker 1: as as a citizen under the Commonwealth, we are deeply
Speaker 1: saddened by the lost colleagues have reached out to me
Speaker 1: today and I am okay, guys, is so funny. Today
Speaker 1: we will be discussing a current member of the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: um one of quite a few twin island nations in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, that being Antigua and Barbuda, and more specifically Barbuda.
Speaker 1: Barbuda is an example of African resilience. It's an example
Speaker 1: of a society in touch with this environment. It's an
Speaker 1: example of the capability of the commons as an institution,
Speaker 1: and it's an example of sticking it to the crown.
Speaker 1: To be quite honest as you, all right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to learn more about that. How how yes, So,
Speaker 1: I don't think many people know about Bobuda and its history.
Speaker 1: I doubt most people could place it on a map,
Speaker 1: but it's it. It represents quite the interesting story. So
Speaker 1: to begin, I should probably explain what what is a Bobuda.
Speaker 1: Barbuda is an island located in the Eastern Caribbean, forming
Speaker 1: part of the sovereign state of Antigua and Barbuda. It's
Speaker 1: located north of the island of Antigua and it's part
Speaker 1: of the Leeward Islands for the West Indies. It comprises
Speaker 1: about sixty two square miles, so it is about sixty
Speaker 1: two square miles which is a hundred and sixty kilometers
Speaker 1: and it's one of the flattest islands in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: It's soils are very shallow and in foods. Islands a
Speaker 1: very arid island with very little rainfall and very frequent routs.
Speaker 1: Its scrub willderness is roamed by day and pigs and
Speaker 1: descendants of the animals that early European traders and settlers
Speaker 1: would have imported. It also has a pre settlement ever
Speaker 1: green woodland that consists of white cedar, turpentine and white wood,
Speaker 1: alongside columnar cactus and thorny shrubs and grassy glades and
Speaker 1: soils that have been another species that have grown up
Speaker 1: in soils that have been degraded by the clearance of
Speaker 1: charcoal burning and grazing and just general human activity. Most
Speaker 1: bob Udan's i would say engage in shifting cultivation, but
Speaker 1: none of them are full time farmers. The countryside is
Speaker 1: mostly uninhabited because the law required that all barb Udans
Speaker 1: lived in or near the island's one village which is
Speaker 1: Quadrington and there, according to eleven census, there were roughly
Speaker 1: four people on the island. Of course, that has changed
Speaker 1: in recent times, and we'll get into that shortly. Barbuda
Speaker 1: is yet another example of a distinctive community emerging out
Speaker 1: of the colonial era that swept through the Caribbean. I've
Speaker 1: mentioned the Maroons before, the different marine communities that have
Speaker 1: existed on the different Caribbean islands and in Guyana and Surnam.
Speaker 1: But I think Bobuda and their story represents really the
Speaker 1: diversity of how colonialism manifested um in the region. Barbula's
Speaker 1: people have a sense of identity and attachment to locality
Speaker 1: that is I think very distinctive and very unique among
Speaker 1: people of the Caribbean. Not to say that the rest
Speaker 1: of us don't have a sense of identity or attachment locality,
Speaker 1: but their story and the tradition reaches back over two
Speaker 1: centuries of near independence and quite significant levels of autonomy,
Speaker 1: which was unheard of in most of the Caribbean due
Speaker 1: to the legacy of slavery. Representing a very close knit
Speaker 1: and traditional community probably runs approach to using and student
Speaker 1: the resources reflects that long legacy of isolation, of ecological
Speaker 1: constraint being on such a small island, of familial closeness,
Speaker 1: having such a small population, and of social interdependence. Considering
Speaker 1: the series of administrators that they had dealt with, and
Speaker 1: how each of those administrators neglect did or ignored them.
Speaker 1: Bob Dans, both whom and abroad, are still very much
Speaker 1: attached to their island because they have long held it
Speaker 1: in common. So we'll be diving into a brief history
Speaker 1: of exactly how they reached this point, what institutions they've
Speaker 1: developed for common ownership and community land use, and how
Speaker 1: emigration has played a role in that, and unfortunately, how
Speaker 1: the combination of Hurricane Irma and the doctrine and the
Speaker 1: shock doctrine have contributed to their current situation. So for
Speaker 1: more than two hundred years, from the late seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: Barbuda was leased by the crown to one family, the Cardringtons,
Speaker 1: hence the name of the village being Quadringtons. The originally
Speaker 1: c was a guy named Christopher Cauldring and he was
Speaker 1: the governor of the Leeward Islands and his ears lived
Speaker 1: in England, so they pretty much neglected it. After year died,
Speaker 1: Barbuda would have supplemented the lucrative sugar. States that Cardrickton
Speaker 1: had an antigua with timber and ground provisions and fish
Speaker 1: and livestock and draft animals. Barbuda, being surrounded by coral reefs,
Speaker 1: often had ships wrecked near the island, and so they
Speaker 1: also salvage resources from lewder ships and so as late
Speaker 1: as in the eighteen fifties, the Carrington's were getting four
Speaker 1: thousand pounds a year from Barbuda and stock, and three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds a year from salvage in operations on the island.
Speaker 1: That's just over sixty three thousand pounds today per year.
Speaker 1: And it just demonstrats, of course, and even though they
Speaker 1: were more independent than most other slave people, because the
Speaker 1: island wasn't as profitable, they were still being exploited. Initially,
Speaker 1: the island was only worked by a few indentured whites,
Speaker 1: but then when enslaved people were brought in from Africa,
Speaker 1: the enslave population began to rise, and they began to
Speaker 1: establish that sort of culture and community that received to
Speaker 1: this day. Because they were neglected because the island was
Speaker 1: very little inhabited, they housed and they fed themselves through
Speaker 1: their own efforts, and we're basically spared of the rigors
Speaker 1: of the plantation regiment because of how unprofitable the island
Speaker 1: was because it's soils were so sandy and arid and unfertile.
Speaker 1: So between eighteen hundred and eighty two, being free in
Speaker 1: many respects, probably this population was able to rise from
Speaker 1: three dred to five hundred, and they are able to
Speaker 1: a cohesive creole community whose solidarity was able to thwart
Speaker 1: the efforts of local overseers and absentee proprietors to try
Speaker 1: to get them to labor on anti unites states or
Speaker 1: to get them to be more quote and quote productive
Speaker 1: um for their overseers. Because they had such a several
Speaker 1: hundred strong community on that island that had established itself
Speaker 1: for generations, no overseers, no manager, could just pull up
Speaker 1: in there and just say try and cooce them into
Speaker 1: doing what he wanted them to do. This is installed
Speaker 1: contrast to a lot of the other Criban islands, where
Speaker 1: managers and overseers had a lot more presence and a
Speaker 1: lot more power to destroy families, to split up communities,
Speaker 1: to ferment divisions. Because the island just they basically neglected
Speaker 1: it and in that neglect, to advantage of that neglect,
Speaker 1: of the material conditions that created that neglect, to strengthen
Speaker 1: their community bonds and to strengthen their autonomy. As emancipation
Speaker 1: came around, car Drinton himself even was like, Wow, good
Speaker 1: for them pretty much because almost all of them, who were,
Speaker 1: like to quote him directly, one united family, so attached
Speaker 1: to bob Udell that force alone or extreme drought can
Speaker 1: alone take them from that island. In other words, as
Speaker 1: an exploit as a displaced indigenous African people, they reforged
Speaker 1: the connection to the new land that they inhabited and
Speaker 1: rooted themselves in that land. One one particular tradition they
Speaker 1: have is the burial of ones in Biblical code on
Speaker 1: the island itself, and so that's been going on for generations.
Speaker 1: With a new child is born and the Embiblical code
Speaker 1: is buried on the island. And so even Bobudens move abroad,
Speaker 1: they still have that strong tie to the island it's self.
Speaker 1: So after emancipation ruled around in eighteen three four, probably
Speaker 1: in life didn't change that much. That the transition from
Speaker 1: slavery to being free was not as abrupt or as
Speaker 1: consequential as it was in other parts of the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: They didn't become landowners, they didn't necessarily get any political
Speaker 1: power automatically because probably there was still being assigned to
Speaker 1: crown leases which had certain um agreements and contracts in
Speaker 1: place with the Crown, that kind of thing. But they
Speaker 1: were I mean, they were still being exploited, but things
Speaker 1: were a bit easier for them to transition compared to
Speaker 1: other places. In eighteen thirty five, agreements had secured probably
Speaker 1: the unemployment on conjuring turn empress enterprises at specific rates
Speaker 1: to pay. But after the contract had lapsed, it really
Speaker 1: revooted to a sort of relationship of of coersion. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay them, they wouldn't pay them their wages. They
Speaker 1: would take quote and quote ricalcutu and prob udans and
Speaker 1: transport them to Antigue and jails or plantations, and they
Speaker 1: would continue to just siphon off of the island. One
Speaker 1: of the only exports really on the island at the
Speaker 1: time was cattle, mostly for Carrington's estates and Antigua cattle, sheep,
Speaker 1: and firewood. And the people themselves were engaged in cultivating
Speaker 1: provisions yams, potatoes, corn, and supplying their own farmer history.
Speaker 1: They were including the necessities. So Abudans would continue with
Speaker 1: their different occupations, their hunting and they're fishing, their provision
Speaker 1: intending their cutting wood and put in charcoal and salvage
Speaker 1: and wrecks. Sometimes would they would be employed by proprietors
Speaker 1: with governments, but most times they either disregarded these authorities
Speaker 1: or acted in open defiance. And so as the state
Speaker 1: would often complain about bob Uduans and their disregard for
Speaker 1: the crowns property and the estates property, they would often
Speaker 1: be accused of poaching Cortinon's cattle, and so they will
Speaker 1: There was one attempt in particular to seize all their
Speaker 1: guns and send them off of the Ireland. And so
Speaker 1: when the government did step in and condemned Bobby Duns
Speaker 1: for you know, taking cattle when they wanted to take cattle,
Speaker 1: Bobby Duns basically pull an reverse card and demanded redress
Speaker 1: against interference with their livelihoods. They basically were like, I'll
Speaker 1: quote one petition that was written by Bob Dunces in
Speaker 1: eighteen we are deprived of the use of our firearms,
Speaker 1: where by most of us live in shooting any large fish,
Speaker 1: tootill or wild birds. We are told to take old licenses,
Speaker 1: yet if we are seen with a gun, not even shooting,
Speaker 1: we're taken before the Mages Street of Antigua and severely punished,
Speaker 1: punished for it. Our little gardens are gone to waste.
Speaker 1: And if such as still in a little cultivation was
Speaker 1: to be injured by weather and we by sickness are
Speaker 1: not able to have the fences repaired directly, it has taken.
Speaker 1: And Bruin say, our intention is willing to catch the
Speaker 1: wild beasts of Mr Cardrington's. Eventually, I guess the Cardring
Speaker 1: terms got tired of having to not profit as well
Speaker 1: as they could have, of having to deal with these
Speaker 1: independent people. Their relinquished on their least. In eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: they took all their horses and cattle of the island,
Speaker 1: leaving only the day and sheep because he currently round
Speaker 1: up day and sheep as effectively at that point, and
Speaker 1: they basically they left um. And I always find it
Speaker 1: interested when Europeans bring like a bunch of European animals
Speaker 1: wherever they go. It's like, let me just go and
Speaker 1: set up an estate here in a middle of no
Speaker 1: way and introduce a bunch of deer and sheep and
Speaker 1: rabbits and stuff. I mean, I think it happened in
Speaker 1: Australia as well. They just let a bunch of rabbish
Speaker 1: school loose just for hunting. It's like, oh, let me
Speaker 1: like get a hobby that's not shooting animals. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so because bubbly they were seen as unprofitable. Each lea
Speaker 1: see that you know, got their least from the Crown,
Speaker 1: got it its resources as much as they could and
Speaker 1: neglected its inhabitants. William and Robert Dougal of William and
Speaker 1: Robert Dougal's probably with the Island Company, never invested the
Speaker 1: annual one point five or one hundred pounds required by
Speaker 1: the least only seven hundred pounds rather than they promised.
Speaker 1: Six thousand worth of stock were introduced with Bailey. With Bailey,
Speaker 1: a score Pubulans employed as craeziers, and even though they
Speaker 1: allegedly attempted to plant u swetten, coffee, coola, cuckoo another fruits,
Speaker 1: they neglected that too, and eventually a derelict. Probably theo
Speaker 1: was forfeited to the Crown for a non payment of
Speaker 1: friend when a government official visited the island, we found
Speaker 1: the day were almost exterminated. The satin wood and log
Speaker 1: would be depleted, the cattle were famished, the fences would disrepair.
Speaker 1: They had four mens around up about on horses, ate
Speaker 1: a cattle and a bunch of cows, and the two
Speaker 1: products that existed on the island had long since become
Speaker 1: filthy and fariously overgrown, not only with bush but dense tickets.
Speaker 1: Dr Dougal's gunners also apparently had a really bad sense
Speaker 1: of aim because a lot of defences were just riddled
Speaker 1: with bullets. And so because the island and the people
Speaker 1: were starbed and degraded by the dow calls Um, the
Speaker 1: Colonial Office had you know, revoked their lease and basically
Speaker 1: excuse the few villagers who were taken some of the
Speaker 1: cattle for themselves. Babbulans had also protested the fact that
Speaker 1: whenever these leases would pull up on their island, they
Speaker 1: would always be taking their stock, closing their provision grounds,
Speaker 1: trying to evict them basically doing everything they could be
Speaker 1: hostile towards people on the island, and so only their
Speaker 1: own traditional hunting and farming and and stuff enabled Probbu
Speaker 1: Dans to survive of course, government being the government didn't
Speaker 1: really care what the people that much, so even though
Speaker 1: the lease holders were gone, didn't really get much out
Speaker 1: of it the people that is stain. After determination lease,
Speaker 1: the Cluonial government, the Leeward Islands Cluonial governments and Antigua
Speaker 1: basically took over the island and they established the Government
Speaker 1: stock Farm one some cotton plots in nineteen three UM.
Speaker 1: They gave some grants to pay for fencing and cutting
Speaker 1: wood and cotton experiments and cattle bud chases and mule breeding,
Speaker 1: and the Bobby runs took the government greens and lands
Speaker 1: with their own purposes and basically enclosed a portion of
Speaker 1: that land and left it for the government stock and
Speaker 1: left the rest of the pasture, the richest parts of
Speaker 1: the pasture for their own horses and cattle and donkeys.
Speaker 1: So while the government had to deal with like this
Speaker 1: small portion of land with like some very weak, insufficient meadow,
Speaker 1: the rest of the community was able to flourish with
Speaker 1: a nice, rich pasture for their cattle. And still despite
Speaker 1: that the stock farm, the Government stock farm, still flourished
Speaker 1: with during sixty whoses a hundred eight cattle and five
Speaker 1: mules and then the cotton surprisingly also became profitable on
Speaker 1: the island. Um I called a crop that really didn't flourish.
Speaker 1: They are told during slavery was now tating to pick up.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of the early twentie century. We began
Speaker 1: shipping caught note and employing a bunch of Barby Dan's
Speaker 1: and now Bobby there was being scheme is a superprofitable place. However,
Speaker 1: because of that cotton boom, Bobby Dan's were able to
Speaker 1: buy passage overseas, they were able to raise the standard
Speaker 1: of living, and it ended up causing a labor shortage
Speaker 1: that led to conflict. After a shipwreck off the island,
Speaker 1: the island manager went to check out what was going
Speaker 1: on with the salvage and and he caught a bunch
Speaker 1: of Bubu Dans salvage in but salvage and for their
Speaker 1: own profits instead of his profits. And so in retaliation,
Speaker 1: in retaliation for him trying to stop them from salvage
Speaker 1: and for themselves, the Bobby Duns burnt his boat and
Speaker 1: his wagon, and so in retaliation for that, the governor
Speaker 1: of Antigo started to impose these previously uninforced rents and
Speaker 1: cultivated plots. So like he wanted to charge like five
Speaker 1: shillings per equal per year, and he also doubled animal
Speaker 1: head taxes. And so by introducing these taxes, introducing these rents,
Speaker 1: the government's basically trying to get not just to punish
Speaker 1: the people for you know, daring to be free, but
Speaker 1: also trying to force them to work on their cotton plantation.
Speaker 1: Of course, Bob you Don's, having live so freely for
Speaker 1: so long, didn't want to work on these cotton plantations,
Speaker 1: especially not after slavery um. And so the people petitioned
Speaker 1: the crown against this kind of semi intentioned suitude that
Speaker 1: the governor was trying to introduce. And it seems that
Speaker 1: mother nature was on their side because they want their case.
Speaker 1: Due to drought, all the crops were basically ruined by drought,
Speaker 1: cutting on cotton profits, um cutting on cattle profits, cuttling
Speaker 1: on crops on corn profits. And all this happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen six and then in Barbado was hit by a
Speaker 1: hurricane more severe than they've ever seen before. And so
Speaker 1: that brief period where Barbido as seen as strike and
Speaker 1: google for the government came to an end, and bob
Speaker 1: Udans continued to cling on to their customary modes, subsistence,
Speaker 1: of self reliance, of survival of their plots and their
Speaker 1: livestock and their fishing grounds, of continuing to be their
Speaker 1: own masters, because two d and fifty years of experience
Speaker 1: had taught them how unreliable and exploitative all these other
Speaker 1: alternatives that bosses non natives that the government was trying
Speaker 1: to introduce woo to them, and they learned that only
Speaker 1: ownership in common would guarantee their access and guarantee the
Speaker 1: protection of their island from environmental exploitation. As as we
Speaker 1: get to the interesting part, because they're already long thought
Speaker 1: to themselves as owners of the island, as possessing the
Speaker 1: island for themselves, even though on peep but it wasn't
Speaker 1: the case, even though on people they were being handled
Speaker 1: between the Crown and the different leaseholders. That the Crown
Speaker 1: would introduce Barbuda to Barbudaans, being so small, being so homogeneous,
Speaker 1: having such meager soils, having such strong and type connections
Speaker 1: and bonds, they saw it as all of theirs collectively.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like and when I say strong connections, family bonds,
Speaker 1: I don't mean it in the sense that some of
Speaker 1: the other in lands in the Caribbean, and was sort
Speaker 1: of puzzled out because in the Caribbean there are lands
Speaker 1: that are held by certain families and it passes down
Speaker 1: the family and going on for generations. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: this idea that all these particular families owned the land.
Speaker 1: It was that all of them together wound the land
Speaker 1: serious real communal land ownership. They'd used the land for generations,
Speaker 1: to raise ground provisions to hunt there and wild pigs,
Speaker 1: to keep goats and sheep, to keep cattle, to cut firewood,
Speaker 1: to fish, and so on. They had no documents and
Speaker 1: said that they had these collective rights on the island.
Speaker 1: And yet they all insisted with one voice the Barbuda
Speaker 1: was theirs. Healin no outsiders could tell them other wise.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, they had proven again and again and again
Speaker 1: that outside proprietors were powerless in the face of their
Speaker 1: attempts to run the island for themselves, because they would
Speaker 1: continue to graze the cattle wherever they wanted to graze
Speaker 1: their cattle. They will continue to fish wherever they wanted
Speaker 1: to fish, salvage whatever they wanted to salvage, cultivate wherever
Speaker 1: they wanted to cultivate. Who's gonna stop them, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly nobody. They couldn't even get outside. I couldn't even
Speaker 1: get like a rent out of prob you done so.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty Bobby Duns hadn't gotten legal entitlement roughly
Speaker 1: half of the island, and by three they controlled futually
Speaker 1: all of its resources, basically the facto unfortunately against their will. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Antigua and Barbuda were joined together by putting live in
Speaker 1: the strators, and so Antiguan Barbuda is the country that existity.
Speaker 1: But one of the primary concerns of Abudan's we're that
Speaker 1: they were able whether they be able to maintain soul ownership,
Speaker 1: soul control, soul compunal control over the lands of Barbuda.
Speaker 1: Land ownership has been an issue that bob Udon's have
Speaker 1: had with Antigua for a very very long time now,
Speaker 1: for decades now, and really all bob Udan's want is
Speaker 1: to maintain their common ownership for themselves alone, and so
Speaker 1: they have maintained that through the Barbudan Council defending the
Speaker 1: land and declaring that no land in Barbuda can be
Speaker 1: sold or developed without the permission of the Bubbudan Council.
Speaker 1: And so now to explain basically how common land use
Speaker 1: works in Barbuda, there are two distinctive and useful moods
Speaker 1: of land use. Shifting cultivation for provision grounds and open
Speaker 1: range pastured for livestock. Because there's oil is so weak,
Speaker 1: shifting cultivation is a necessity. And so after one or
Speaker 1: two years of planting exhaustive soil, they move their fencing,
Speaker 1: they move their grounds of between half an acre to
Speaker 1: two or three acres, and plants they are sweet potatoes, yams,
Speaker 1: me is, beans, pigeon ps, squash, peanuts, etcetera. Elsewhere. So
Speaker 1: the old land could you know, regenerate, but this constant
Speaker 1: cultivation is something that occurs. The grants really no permanent
Speaker 1: rights any one individual. You do have use rights. It
Speaker 1: is the principle of use of fruct over the area're cultivating,
Speaker 1: but you don't have permanent ownership over that piece of
Speaker 1: land that you're cultivating. And they have that system in
Speaker 1: place because they recognize living on the island for the
Speaker 1: generations that bob ut As ecology is extremely fragile, extremely
Speaker 1: limited um its resources are limited, and so they have
Speaker 1: to safeguard there um, the as sustenance for generations to come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating, Actually, it's really I didn't know anything about that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. Similarly with them with the slash and
Speaker 1: bloom cultivation, they also had the management of open range
Speaker 1: livestock being very much unrestricted. Um. They're actually feral cattle
Speaker 1: that exists on the island in addition to the more
Speaker 1: teamed and pen animals. Um. And so how they basically
Speaker 1: they allow all their animals, you know, mixed and mingo
Speaker 1: of different families and different individuals would have their specific
Speaker 1: cattle or horses or sheep or whatever a marked or branded.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, they they've maintained this sort
Speaker 1: of open range husbandry because it helps to sustain their unity.
Speaker 1: It helps to maintain their strengthen their social bonds and
Speaker 1: their community solidarity, to basically ensure that everyone has taken
Speaker 1: care of in a place that is so scant resources. Lastly,
Speaker 1: through one of the ways that they maintain in the
Speaker 1: balance of the island is through is through emigration. The
Speaker 1: population has basically stayed at that level because they've stayed
Speaker 1: within the limits of the resources they have on the
Speaker 1: island and so young, Bob, you don't have had to
Speaker 1: leave um the island, um while still maintaining their communal
Speaker 1: use rights to the land. And then eventually they would
Speaker 1: make remittances of money or resources and periodic returns that
Speaker 1: would help to introduce you know, healthcare resources and housing
Speaker 1: resources and education resources to the island. Just another day,
Speaker 1: like completely isolated from the outside world, living in this
Speaker 1: sort of bubble. They do still have that exchange going on.
Speaker 1: Most of the immigrants live in three primary communities, seeing
Speaker 1: John's Antigua of course, seeing as it's the neighbor. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are in New York City, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of Korean people in general New York City,
Speaker 1: but Bob Dan's are in New York City. And all
Speaker 1: of them also live in Britain in Leicester as part
Speaker 1: of the West Indian exodus that took place all the
Speaker 1: way back in the late nineteen fifties. Yeah, so sort
Speaker 1: of wrap things here. Um. Their communities and their solidarity
Speaker 1: have allowed them to cope with a harsh environment and
Speaker 1: to successfully navigate a succession of misinformed aloof sometimes actually
Speaker 1: hostile and mostly incompetent proprietors managers and administrators. Being so
Speaker 1: unified and holding themselves in solidarity, they have managed to
Speaker 1: maintain their traditional resource ownership, their communal land tenure, and
Speaker 1: their fragile ecology completely and totally UM rejecting the assocutions
Speaker 1: that the economist carried hard and made about the tragedy
Speaker 1: of the commons, it has not been a tragedy for
Speaker 1: what you've done. It has been a triumph until recently. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in September, how Urricane Uma damaged and destroyed of the
Speaker 1: islands buildings and infrastructure, and as a result, all of
Speaker 1: the island's inhabitants had to evacuate Antiguo, leaving Babbuda empty
Speaker 1: for the first time in hundreds of years wow, I
Speaker 1: mean two years later. By February, most of the residents
Speaker 1: have returned to the island. However, the Prime Minister of Antiguo,
Speaker 1: Gaston Alfonso Brown he's been leader since UM, has been
Speaker 1: making moves essentially to privatize Barbuda. His background before entering
Speaker 1: politics was being a banker and a businessman, and he
Speaker 1: seems to be employing the shock doctor and tactic of
Speaker 1: using environmental catastrophe and social displacement. Two accelerate capitalism. Essentially,
Speaker 1: after you know, hurricaneum I swept through Um and posted
Speaker 1: residents became homeless, communication systems came went went down Um
Speaker 1: and taking Bobulda God relief pounds of relief for Barbuda Um.
Speaker 1: That's not very much, not very much at all, Um.
Speaker 1: But it would take over a hundred million dollars to
Speaker 1: rebuild the homes in the infrastructure in barb udell Um,
Speaker 1: the old critical infrastructure that existed, the food supply, the medicine,
Speaker 1: the shelter, electricity, water, communications, waste management and as one
Speaker 1: person said, UM the directive take in Barbula's National Office
Speaker 1: of the Disaster Services film Melon. He said, in my
Speaker 1: twenty five years of disaster management, I've never seen something
Speaker 1: like this. It is optimistic to think anything like this
Speaker 1: be rebuilt in six months. They have to rebuild entirely
Speaker 1: all of their public utilities UM. And so essentially what
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Gaston or funds who Brown is trying to
Speaker 1: do is revoke communal landownership, allow the residents to buy
Speaker 1: some land and use the rest to basically introduce UM
Speaker 1: resorts and who tells and other to risk attractions to
Speaker 1: help fund the rebuilding efforts, but of course we know
Speaker 1: the way that money is actually going to go. And
Speaker 1: that's as far as I know about the situation. UM. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: don't have any connections in Antihuan Barbuda yet. UM, But
Speaker 1: unfortunately that is what it's been going on in another
Speaker 1: example basically of disaster capitalism trying to cease and accumulates
Speaker 1: through violence and for exploitation as usual. I hope that
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen and been inspired by Barbula's efforts,
Speaker 1: and I hope that probably don't able to continue to
Speaker 1: prove themselves resilient in the face of this disaster. That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And do you know, like I'm interested in these like
Speaker 1: diasporic communities like you said, there's one in Lester and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like, do they still have like a very strong
Speaker 1: community coherents like when they when they go elsewhere and
Speaker 1: to like did like you said, they tend to gather
Speaker 1: in like certain spots. Be interested in like how those folks,
Speaker 1: I guess dealt with a very different life in like
Speaker 1: New York or Leicester or wherever right well, Um, like
Speaker 1: other Caribbean people who have emigrated, we do tend to
Speaker 1: concentrating cuittain places where we already have family connections. Um.
Speaker 1: I think most Scribbean people have at least a relative
Speaker 1: living abroad. Yeah, an uncle, a great uncle, second cousin,
Speaker 1: the cousin whatever. Um, And so it sort of builds
Speaker 1: from there. And so you try and be that, you
Speaker 1: create like a piece of home and sort of settle
Speaker 1: and concentrate in those areas and live in those areas
Speaker 1: and support each other in those areas. Yeah, and that,
Speaker 1: I would say helps with the adjustment. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Um. So you can
Speaker 1: find me on YouTube dot com slash andrewism on patre
Speaker 1: dot com slash scene true, and on Twitter dot com
Speaker 1: slash on discore scene true. If you are Bob, you done,
Speaker 1: Please don't have you to reach out to me. I
Speaker 1: would love to learn more about the situation going on
Speaker 1: and wish all all the best solidarity. Who's dying today,
Speaker 1: it's Queen, it's the Queen. Well correction, she's not dying,
Speaker 1: she's she's dead. That ladies said. Yeah, very sad, obviously,
Speaker 1: very sad. Grieving punk us today brought to you by
Speaker 1: it could happen here. It's all of us. It's it's me,
Speaker 1: it's Get, it's Chris, it's Robert, and it's the ghost
Speaker 1: of the Queen. We're talking about the queen. She's dead,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? Yeah, she's real dead. Um, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen. You know what I haven't seen that I'm
Speaker 1: disappointed of is a new version of the Monty Python
Speaker 1: Dead Parrot sketch involving her corpse. And it's and it's
Speaker 1: fancy casket. Um, but that's still time, still time we
Speaker 1: can change that. Now. My question is, James, is that
Speaker 1: legal in the UK? Now? Absolutely not. No, you will
Speaker 1: get so arrested, not even arrested. This is the worst
Speaker 1: part people have just like I don't understand what the
Speaker 1: funk is wrong with people, but they have become volunteer
Speaker 1: cops to like defend a guy who's been credibly accused
Speaker 1: of peedophilia. I am disappointed in us. Do not be
Speaker 1: policing your fellow people for exercising some of the very
Speaker 1: few rights at the conservative well because everybody how taken
Speaker 1: away from them. Actually, but yeah, you've only let yourself down.
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed. Yeah, they they they really really hating anyone
Speaker 1: who is not thrilled about the monarchy. They're arresting people
Speaker 1: of having not my king signs. I see that Jetwood
Speaker 1: is taking it to the fascist state, which is great
Speaker 1: to see. But we're gonna be talking about the Queen
Speaker 1: or former former queen. Um I do want to do
Speaker 1: want a note that you know, the day the Queen died,
Speaker 1: a big wave of condolences came in, including from Domino's
Speaker 1: Pizza UK, which which if you don't understand, the Queen
Speaker 1: had a very deep relationship with Dominoes, so this this
Speaker 1: does mean a lot um they were, they were, they
Speaker 1: were lovers. Among those who posted their condolences was Hamilton's
Speaker 1: West End, the Britain the Britain r MT, which is
Speaker 1: like the British Railway unions their strike, which I think
Speaker 1: is the most pissed at coward thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: The union do. British Cycling suggested to people not go
Speaker 1: out for a bike ride during the time of the Queens.
Speaker 1: Are you fucking serious? My god? They're literally was deal
Speaker 1: with the closing food. I think the funniest one was
Speaker 1: Labs Rob posted everyone is deeply saddened by the passing
Speaker 1: of her. Madnesty in the Queen and we offer our
Speaker 1: sincere conduleces to the royal family. We joined together with
Speaker 1: the people of the United Kingdom and all around the
Speaker 1: world and mourning her loss, which they then which they
Speaker 1: then deleted an hour later. If there's one thing that
Speaker 1: Mrs rob is about, it's about people all though for
Speaker 1: the world, mourning the loss of monarchy, it's the main
Speaker 1: thing about it. So yeah, most of on Twitter was
Speaker 1: definitely was definitely split between these companies posting how they're
Speaker 1: so sad. That also a lot of people pretty pretty
Speaker 1: thrilled that the queen died, because it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because we were all shocked by the nine year old
Speaker 1: woman who died. She was so young. It's she was.
Speaker 1: She was at an age that if you reversed her
Speaker 1: age and told me she had died, I still wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been surprised. Like she was at an age where
Speaker 1: like even if you flip the numbers, she's still all.
Speaker 1: She still Yeah, it's great to see the Telegraph today
Speaker 1: running a headline five mile Q to view Elizabeth's second coffin.
Speaker 1: We'll see horrible stories of suffering. This is a country
Speaker 1: where she said, will not be able to heat their
Speaker 1: homes this winter. It's a country an explosion in food insecurity,
Speaker 1: and this is what we're doing. It's like like the
Speaker 1: British like, okay, so the Crown did not call directly
Speaker 1: for a blood sacrifice. The British people are just bound
Speaker 1: and determined to have people die like they're like they're
Speaker 1: like they're lining up in the streets to sacrifice themselves
Speaker 1: for the dead. It is I mean, magical things don't
Speaker 1: do us all that way. There's some people sharing up
Speaker 1: with not my King signs and getting assaulted by mobs
Speaker 1: and people like regular as people. Yeah, yeah, most people
Speaker 1: are not that concerned. Most people are not like it's
Speaker 1: just like the Turfs in Britain. There are like a
Speaker 1: small minority of people who do nothing but tweet right
Speaker 1: for the Guardian, who misrepresent the opinions of most British
Speaker 1: people who are not that concerned. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of these British people do show up in person and
Speaker 1: like shut down like yes, it's it is not It
Speaker 1: is not the case that like there isn't widespread support
Speaker 1: for this kind of ship. It's just that it's it's
Speaker 1: not uniform and that's the people who do speak The
Speaker 1: people who do speak up also tend to get arrested,
Speaker 1: which its just like it's it's sort of amazing. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: Britain got industrial capitalism before like any other country to Earth. Right,
Speaker 1: the boy Josie has one job. One job there. One
Speaker 1: job is to destroy feudalism. And they could even the
Speaker 1: British couldn't do it. They had they had the largest
Speaker 1: head start of any country on Earth, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. It's incredible, it's miraculous. They were co opted
Speaker 1: into these few elites through things like the Great Reform Acts,
Speaker 1: which which used property as a proxy for land or
Speaker 1: capital as a proxy for land, and it's worked remarkably well.
Speaker 1: And now we just do false consciousness ship like this,
Speaker 1: Like how good is your false consciousness game? When people
Speaker 1: who can't heat their homes are sleeping on the street
Speaker 1: to say goodbye to presumably a billionaire who never cared
Speaker 1: about them. Yeah, it's like raculous. Yeah, you absolutely who
Speaker 1: was not equipped emotionally to have ever cared about them,
Speaker 1: who's soul would never have allowed her to care about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's like you know, as as lots of people
Speaker 1: were romanticizing the monarchy and the queen and doing their
Speaker 1: like performative more nings. Obviously, there was a way of
Speaker 1: other people being like, hey, you know, the Royal family
Speaker 1: is kind of kind of sucked up. You know, they've
Speaker 1: stolen billions of dollars and jewels from countries like India
Speaker 1: and across South Africa. Um, they're continuing to benefit from
Speaker 1: Britain's history of colonialism. The earlier earlier this year, during
Speaker 1: the during the during the Queen's jubilee celebration, an old
Speaker 1: Kenyan revolutionary fighter used the used the the occasion to
Speaker 1: call for an explanation from the Queen for why she
Speaker 1: hasn't been compensated after being tortured with axes by British troops.
Speaker 1: Look at the Britain treated. We're stuff on this. I
Speaker 1: have stuff on this later for this episode. Actually, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about that. Seventeen estimate found that the
Speaker 1: Royal family is estimated to be worth eighty eight billion
Speaker 1: dollars um. Yeah, and a lot of that's obviously not
Speaker 1: in straight cash, which is one of the ways like
Speaker 1: people are talking about, oh, Charles inherited half a billion, No,
Speaker 1: Charles billions of dollars. Like they own a lot of land, Yes,
Speaker 1: they own a huge amount of land. Um. Charles has
Speaker 1: his own real estate empire that he like created while
Speaker 1: he was waiting for his mom to fucking croak um.
Speaker 1: And they also have like a fortune and a really
Speaker 1: actually uncountable like you have to think about their wealth
Speaker 1: like the Vatican, Like there's no actual way, Like it's
Speaker 1: functionally limitless money because so much of what they own
Speaker 1: is like priceless antiquities, many of which were stolen from
Speaker 1: other people. Yeah. An it's hard to put a tangible number.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of their value and that sort of
Speaker 1: what if you want to go to celebrity status, Yes,
Speaker 1: what is that fucking diamond in the goddamn crown worth? Right?
Speaker 1: Like there's no real way to appraise that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I want to point this out, like if they
Speaker 1: tried to sell the diamond, almost certainly what would happen
Speaker 1: is like the British people would give her three billion
Speaker 1: dollars and they give her the diamond back they crowd funded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd stopped doing the subsidies for heating that they've just
Speaker 1: started doing and buy the diamond back. Here, let's talk
Speaker 1: about let's let's let's talk about the heating thing briefly
Speaker 1: because I think uh. An anchor on BBC was discussing
Speaker 1: how news of the Queen's passing basically interrupted all other
Speaker 1: news in the UK, UM including statements being given on
Speaker 1: the price increase in energy bills and the raising cost
Speaker 1: of living, um stating that that those topics, that the
Speaker 1: topics of cost of living and the rise of energy
Speaker 1: bills was quote insignificant. Now due to the gravity of
Speaker 1: this situation, we can we can insert this clip here
Speaker 1: I have I haven't saved for Daniel because it's just
Speaker 1: it's wild. Doctors in Scotland were concerned about the Queen's
Speaker 1: health coming um as liszt Trust was making a rather
Speaker 1: important statement concerning um the future of energy bills UM that,
Speaker 1: of course insignificant now given the gravity of the situation
Speaker 1: we see to be experiencing. An old lady died. She
Speaker 1: was not a very nice old lady. I've known old
Speaker 1: ladies who were nice that died, and I was sad.
Speaker 1: I've known old ladies who are night and not nice
Speaker 1: that died, and I didn't really care in any case,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not it's not a big deal because
Speaker 1: old people like that's what human beings do when they
Speaker 1: reach ninety six is they die a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: And it's it's okay, Like it's okay. Queen would see it.
Speaker 1: Of everything about her, it's fine. Queen Elizabeth was the
Speaker 1: longest reigning monarch in the history of Britain. Yeah, probably
Speaker 1: close to the longest. And like maybe Ramsey is the
Speaker 1: fucking second is up there, like sixty nine years. You
Speaker 1: don't run into a lot of competition in terms of
Speaker 1: length of two Yeah, And it's worth a lot of
Speaker 1: old ladies going to die in Britain this winter because
Speaker 1: of the okay, And it's also worth knowing you the
Speaker 1: queen tried to use a bunch of state poverty money
Speaker 1: that was earmorged for schools, hospitals and low income families
Speaker 1: to pay bucking camp houses heating bill. Oh wow, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's wild. That's great. Well, you wouldn't want an
Speaker 1: old woman like that to be out of out in
Speaker 1: the rain. Because I believe the Crown is States, and
Speaker 1: I'll have to check this real quickly. I believe the
Speaker 1: Crown of States did evict people during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: Talking of old folks being kicked out into the rain
Speaker 1: and for for around two weeks after the queen's death,
Speaker 1: basically all of Britain kind of grinds to a halt um.
Speaker 1: It's which which would honestly one of the base parts
Speaker 1: about this is that this does potentially cost the UK
Speaker 1: economy billions of dollars because they just shut down for
Speaker 1: two weeks um. So this is like the equivalent of
Speaker 1: the boat getting stuck in the canal, just the queen dying.
Speaker 1: I do want to I do want to make a
Speaker 1: quick note for everybody. The longest reigning, very refiable monarch,
Speaker 1: according to this Wikipedia page that I just skimmed is
Speaker 1: so Boosa, the second of Swaziland, which was a British
Speaker 1: protectorate until nineteen sixty eight. He reigned from eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine to August of nineteen eighty two, two years. So
Speaker 1: you know what, Elizabeth, not that impressive. I am a
Speaker 1: Sabooza the second stand now absolute chad ship. The fact
Speaker 1: that he just snuffed it before he got to see
Speaker 1: a part tight end very yeah. That is m yeah, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah. It's looking at some of the evictions
Speaker 1: of krown of states have done over the years. You
Speaker 1: can look it's pretty heartbreaking. Ship. Well luck luckily, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Queen actually did not die in Buckingham Palace. She
Speaker 1: died in a castle in Scotland. That's great because Buckingham
Speaker 1: Palace is a hideous monument of trash like the castle
Speaker 1: she died. It looks pretty cool that most of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thing you're supposed to get with a monarchy is
Speaker 1: like really rad looking castles. It is like neat the
Speaker 1: castles are cool, except for Buckingham Palace, which looks like yeah.
Speaker 1: So bucking a Palace is a building that dares you
Speaker 1: to go steal back all of the wealth if they
Speaker 1: stole from you to build it. So the plan for
Speaker 1: if the Queen died in this Scottish castle was called
Speaker 1: Operation Unicorn, which is wild. What is the unicorn? A
Speaker 1: ninety six year old woman dying is not a unicorn situation?
Speaker 1: Operations Squirrel or something more? How is this giving a
Speaker 1: couple of their third I don't get it, I I know, um,
Speaker 1: So the plan for this type of thing is so
Speaker 1: the queen died on last Thursday afternoon. It was announced
Speaker 1: the Friday following Friday morning. After the queen dies, Uh,
Speaker 1: they call Operation unicorn. They then call, they send like
Speaker 1: my emergency alerts all the British leaders, um, no, the
Speaker 1: new Prime Minister who was incredibly funny, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: all of all these people are notified and then press
Speaker 1: press gets notified that next morning as as as they did.
Speaker 1: So staff members in the castles and palaces all got
Speaker 1: sent home. Um. All parliamentary business gets postponed. Uh, every everything,
Speaker 1: everything shuts down, which means all of the stuff they
Speaker 1: were working on on energy bills gets shut down, like
Speaker 1: they were working on trying to figure out what the
Speaker 1: funk they're gonna do for this cost increase. All that
Speaker 1: gets shut down until late September. Um. So that's that's cool. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, this is actually kind of a unique thing
Speaker 1: because because of how long Elizabeth reigned, the last death
Speaker 1: of a monarch was in the fifties, so it's it's
Speaker 1: been a while since this has happened, so everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of rusty, like, no, like if we aren't as prepared
Speaker 1: for this, if if it's okay, My my hope is
Speaker 1: that we get a couple of we get people get
Speaker 1: a lot of experience with dead British monarchs in the
Speaker 1: next decade, King Charles the Third. I don't think we'll
Speaker 1: be around for too long. Yeah, I've seen that man's hands,
Speaker 1: and it's here's the thing. Every every time a monarch dies,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's like a top down, rolling general strike.
Speaker 1: So if we get enough of them in a row,
Speaker 1: we can start doing serious damage to capital. By the way,
Speaker 1: quick quick note about the chad so Booza, the second
Speaker 1: of Swazi Land died, died with a thousand grandchildren. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Wow, man and always pictured shirtless Elizabeth cannot compete. No,
Speaker 1: I'm fine without not being the case. Actually, I don't
Speaker 1: want to see any competion. Yeah, and he probably wasn't
Speaker 1: racist to any of their partners with no actually you
Speaker 1: can say about the real families. Here's a neat thing.
Speaker 1: He and he took all control of all non or
Speaker 1: of all Swazi land and mineral rights from non Swazi
Speaker 1: interests that had gained control during colonialism and indigenized all
Speaker 1: of that, which is dope. So there you go, So
Speaker 1: boost of the motherfucking second. Yeah, a god, king, I
Speaker 1: have to go and get injected with a small dose
Speaker 1: of a disease. Well, let's got everything, but injected in
Speaker 1: that Chris. Hey, Daniel's back, so let's take an ad break, um,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back to learn more about the Queen.
Speaker 1: You know what else will give you a small dose
Speaker 1: to a disease? That's right, that's right, Yes, these products
Speaker 1: and services. Yeah, I'll gonna say the Queen of England.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and we're back. So yeah, it's been a
Speaker 1: while since since the monarch died. Last time this happened
Speaker 1: in the fifties, mourners wore black arm bands to show
Speaker 1: respect for King George. That's the one who was like
Speaker 1: a big fan of Nazis. Right, But I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna see so I don't think that
Speaker 1: tradition is going to continue. I doubt we're gonna see
Speaker 1: a wave of black arm vants. If anyone was going
Speaker 1: to do it, it would probably be the Anglos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I suppose so yeah, it's uh oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Edward, Edward the Eight who abdicated um and and
Speaker 1: then was replaced by the guy who you were talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the guy like Nazis, Edward the Eighth. So all all, all,
Speaker 1: all the UK flags are gonna be flown at at
Speaker 1: half masted until the day of the funeral, and then
Speaker 1: the day of the funeral is going to be a
Speaker 1: bank holiday as well. So that's pretty exciting. That's great.
Speaker 1: I hope that the poor get to eat sweetmeats or something. No, no, again,
Speaker 1: they're just they're just closing down almost all almost all businesses,
Speaker 1: almost all businesses in the Okay will close. The Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange is going to close. Um like on on following
Speaker 1: present a prince is Diana's death in the late nineties, uh, Britain.
Speaker 1: Business owners in Britain quote felt that they were quote
Speaker 1: forced to close their shops or canceled sporting sporting events
Speaker 1: the day of the funeral lest they feel the rage
Speaker 1: of the tear stained hordes outside unquote. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: incredible that is an incredibly funny way to talk about
Speaker 1: monarchist though, like, thank you, thank you, thank you the
Speaker 1: Guardian for that amazing quote. It's unbelievable, and at least
Speaker 1: with Diana, it was actually sad like she was a
Speaker 1: nice person who was badly treated in her life by
Speaker 1: the royal family and died tragically and young, as opposed
Speaker 1: to somebody who got everything they want from the day
Speaker 1: they were born. And died at So then currently they
Speaker 1: are assembling the quote Ascension Council to formally declare Prince
Speaker 1: Charles the King, which he's he's already known as King Charles,
Speaker 1: but you know there's the whole separate formal process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he could pick another name. Still he says he's not.
Speaker 1: He says he's Oh, he's confirmed. That good because kings
Speaker 1: king's Charles have a good history in the UK, they
Speaker 1: don't often get executed. So the Council will make the
Speaker 1: proclamation of ascension to be to be read on Proclamation
Speaker 1: Day will be which will be soon after the death um,
Speaker 1: and that'll be somewhere somewhere in a London. How did
Speaker 1: you still have all the ship? Like, there's so many
Speaker 1: weird rituals that they still do. Both houses of Parliament
Speaker 1: are suspended are suspended until after the official state funeral
Speaker 1: um and both and and all politicians have to wear
Speaker 1: new allegiance to the to the newly ascended monarch. This
Speaker 1: is really like genuinely the world's most pathetic ruling class. Like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Jesus Christ, it's pretty funny. You have
Speaker 1: one job. Well, but also like back in the day
Speaker 1: before we had monarchs and capitalism. Whenever you know, you
Speaker 1: had a new coronation, whenever there was something big that
Speaker 1: happened with the monarchy, the thing they would do is
Speaker 1: make sure everybody had a shipload of food and nice stuff.
Speaker 1: The king would give it away. It's all over the world.
Speaker 1: Cultures would do this. Even you do. Yeah, it's what
Speaker 1: you do when you come to power. Because they were
Speaker 1: at least that scared of the people where it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta like do something to ring in
Speaker 1: this rain good so they don't start to wonder, why
Speaker 1: do we have a king now? So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: him a bunch of fucking food and then they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the king, he's the guy who gives us food every
Speaker 1: now and then. That's dope. It's amazing now that in
Speaker 1: the UK it's just like, all right, we've got a
Speaker 1: new monarch and the old one died, so you guys,
Speaker 1: a lot of you don't get to eat for a while.
Speaker 1: So King Charlie seventy three is the oldest person in
Speaker 1: British history to become king, which is I think a
Speaker 1: great side, very unsabosed the second of him. And then
Speaker 1: we're also getting a new queen. Technically, uh, the camella,
Speaker 1: the Duchess of Cornwall, which again all this sounds made
Speaker 1: up um is now is now the queen consort um.
Speaker 1: So that's exciting, that's thrilling. I'm I'm thrilled for a
Speaker 1: Queen Camilla. It is the Duchess of Cornwall or so
Speaker 1: and Queen Elizabeth's Queen Elizabeth's coffin is is being prepared
Speaker 1: to lie in state, meaning it will be presented from
Speaker 1: the public to view so they can cry on the coffin,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool, or crying near the coffin. They
Speaker 1: don't want the poorest to get too close. So Booza
Speaker 1: the second turned swasey Land into a major asbestos ex border,
Speaker 1: which Queen Elizabeth also never did. So wait, so when when?
Speaker 1: When when the Queen dies, do they like from like?
Speaker 1: Do they like preserve her from Aldehide or whatever? Do
Speaker 1: they fancy they've some fancy ass ship because they were
Speaker 1: probably embalminger while she was alive, says her limbs stopped working,
Speaker 1: squirting some in. The Queen's body will lie in state
Speaker 1: until the day of the funeral, will then become a
Speaker 1: public holiday. There's at least a ten day morning period
Speaker 1: starting the day after her death, um, and then should
Speaker 1: be transported to win Westminster Abbey by gun carriage for
Speaker 1: the state funeral. And then after the funeral she'll be
Speaker 1: she'll be buried in the King George the Sixth Memorial Chapel.
Speaker 1: I believe her the body of her late husband, Prince Philip,
Speaker 1: who died last year, will be moved from the vault
Speaker 1: that he's currently at to beneath the chapel to join here.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty funny. Yeah, um, I don't have nothing
Speaker 1: to say about that other than it's funny that they've
Speaker 1: just got that dude in a fucking freezer. It's really funny.
Speaker 1: The new coordination will cost billions of pounds. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a good because England's like doing great right now. They've
Speaker 1: got plenty of money for all the necessities. You know,
Speaker 1: everything's been going well great, cost of livings really down,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a good idea to spend billions of
Speaker 1: dollars making a little death cult about this elderly woman
Speaker 1: that's just like the last like big royal wedding costs
Speaker 1: between one point two billion and six billion pounds, which
Speaker 1: is quite quite the quite the spectrum there one two
Speaker 1: to six billion. That's like, huh, I feel like at
Speaker 1: that point all money's fake. Like the cost of the
Speaker 1: coronation is expected to be similar, if not a little
Speaker 1: bit higher. Right, Yeah, you gotta you gotta spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on a coronation for fucking Charles. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that you can, because that's what real countries do.
Speaker 1: In two, that's very real country ship. Speaking of money,
Speaker 1: new currency is already being printed, and in fact that
Speaker 1: that'll be cheap though, and in fact, uh, portraits of
Speaker 1: Charles have already been made on currency. There's like a
Speaker 1: reserve of money depicting the next king, just like it's
Speaker 1: being stored to like moving in from from when the
Speaker 1: queen died. It's like lots of this money saved. Just
Speaker 1: like how funny it would have been if, like six
Speaker 1: months before this happened, his seventy two year old ass
Speaker 1: had a heart attack. Have to like burn all that money.
Speaker 1: They're going to burn all that Charles bucks. He's not
Speaker 1: gonna be around long. Rice that Britain no longer has
Speaker 1: the world's reserve currency. Can you imagine? No, we we
Speaker 1: took on on this network on our various shows, we
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time digging into ugly aspects
Speaker 1: of American history and American culture. But let's all celebrate
Speaker 1: one thing that I'm legitimately proud of, which is that
Speaker 1: a long time ago people here were like that seems
Speaker 1: stupid to let those that family run everything. Why are we?
Speaker 1: Why are we doing that? Let's get those fuckers out
Speaker 1: of here? Um, at least we did at although now
Speaker 1: a bunch of Americans are being fucking boot liquors too,
Speaker 1: and in Oregon and a bunch of other states, we're
Speaker 1: putting in these flags at half staff, which, like, you
Speaker 1: don't know why this country exists. This is the one
Speaker 1: based thing we did. Yeah. Like, like even the US,
Speaker 1: which I probably has the most murderous borgeoisie in human history,
Speaker 1: at least we did our burge Revolution, damnit. Like, at
Speaker 1: least we destroyed feudalism. So now we're gonna move on
Speaker 1: to the next segment of the show, entitled an Incomplete
Speaker 1: List of the politicians, warmongers, generals and otherwise bastards who
Speaker 1: Queenlis put the second bestowed awards. So I have I
Speaker 1: have quite the collection of people here. Um, let's let's
Speaker 1: start with Palestine. So Shimon Perez served as Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of of of Israel. He got a Nobel Peace Prize
Speaker 1: in like the nineties for intern key steal that like
Speaker 1: failed in in the long run to turn into a
Speaker 1: um for assassinated. No, I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 1: was the one who you could argue might have deserved
Speaker 1: an award. He's he. But Perez is kind of known
Speaker 1: as more of like, uh, a peaceable leader. He's like
Speaker 1: uh compared to some of his like colleagues, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: specifically with like the various ethnic cleansings that they do
Speaker 1: in Palestine. Perez is kind of seen as like the
Speaker 1: the good guy UM. And then in the mid nineties
Speaker 1: he was facing a major right wing backlash UM in
Speaker 1: his home over over the peace deal with the Palestinians
Speaker 1: UM and in the middle of an election campaign which
Speaker 1: he was kind of losing. So during this time he
Speaker 1: unleashed Operation Grapes of Wrath, which caused four dred thousand
Speaker 1: Lebanese to flee their homes, with almost eight hundred of
Speaker 1: them fleeing into a United Nations base in uh Kawana.
Speaker 1: I believe it's called UH in South and South Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and he didn't really stop there in order to kind
Speaker 1: of appease the right and Aldrezier calls it UH in
Speaker 1: an attempt to shore up his military credentials before a
Speaker 1: general election which he then lost to Benjamin Nett, not Yahoo.
Speaker 1: He ordered the army to strike this u n A shelter,
Speaker 1: killing a hundred and two civilians, mostly women and children.
Speaker 1: AH At the time of the attack, Peres said that
Speaker 1: in my opinion, everything was done according to clear logic
Speaker 1: and in a responsible way. I am at peace. UM.
Speaker 1: Perez said that the compound had been hit due to
Speaker 1: an incorrect targeting based on erroneous data, but the United
Speaker 1: Nations investigations found it unlikely that the shelling was unintentional
Speaker 1: because they were severing the area heavily beforehand. So he
Speaker 1: did he didn't. He did this massacre, killed like a
Speaker 1: hundred a hundred people to boost his polls for the
Speaker 1: right wingers in this election. UM November two, as an eight,
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth awarded him with an honorary knighthood. He as
Speaker 1: knighted in the Grand Cross of the Order of St.
Speaker 1: Michael and St. George, and during his knighthood. Like that day,
Speaker 1: Perez spoke to the Queen about the escalating Israeli Palestine conflict,
Speaker 1: saying that quote, the British learned from the Bible, and
Speaker 1: we learned from the British democracy. Earlier that year, I
Speaker 1: d F launched Operation hot Winter, a military campaign targeting
Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip in response to a series of Homoss
Speaker 1: rockets that killed one forty seven year old Asraeli student
Speaker 1: um which that attack was in response to the I
Speaker 1: d S killing eight Home Mass members earlier that month.
Speaker 1: But during during the I d S Operation Hot Winter,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten Palestinians were killed, fifty four of
Speaker 1: them were children. Uh. And then a month, just one
Speaker 1: month after Perez was knighted, the two Essanate Gazo War
Speaker 1: broke out, also known as the Gaza Massacre, and that
Speaker 1: was started by the I d F, who called it
Speaker 1: Operation cast lead a three week large scale military campaign
Speaker 1: in the Gaza Strip. The massacre resulted in uh in
Speaker 1: like one thousand and four hundred Palestinian deaths and thirteen
Speaker 1: Israeli deaths, four from friendly fire. Um so it's just
Speaker 1: a Massacreeah. Yeah. So that that that was like a
Speaker 1: few weeks after, after Queen Elizabeth knighted knighted the then
Speaker 1: President of of of of of Israel, who previously served
Speaker 1: as the Prime Minister, which is more of like a
Speaker 1: real rule. UM. Anyway, moving on to more fun people.
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty nine, Queen Elizabeth awarded Ronald Reagan with an
Speaker 1: honorary knighthood. UM. Now, thankfully, the way honorary knight Knighthood's
Speaker 1: work is. You don't become a sir because sir is
Speaker 1: a title reserved for people from Britain. I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: You can't hold office in the United States if you
Speaker 1: are a knight. Oh I wouldn't. I think it's an
Speaker 1: old rule we have. Yeah, I reading something about that. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think isn't it No, it's not in the Constitution,
Speaker 1: but there's something about Yeah, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: even though you know, you can't become a sir because
Speaker 1: you're not from Britain. Um you okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: No title of nobility. This is Article one, Section nine
Speaker 1: closet of the Constitution is no constitution Yeah, no title
Speaker 1: of nobility shall be granted by the United States, and
Speaker 1: no person holding any office of profit or trust under
Speaker 1: them shall without the consent of the Congress, except of
Speaker 1: any present emolument, office, or title of any kind whatsoever,
Speaker 1: from any King, prince, or foreign state. Fascinating. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like again, the people who made this country, for all
Speaker 1: of their flaws, looked at the British monarchy and we're like,
Speaker 1: that's fucking nuts. Well, because because because Reagan was was
Speaker 1: night was received on airy nighthood. The one benefit he
Speaker 1: does get is that at dinner parties, Reagan was able
Speaker 1: to sit closer to the queen than the unknighted former presidents.
Speaker 1: That's good. I'm glad that we have to. Like, honestly,
Speaker 1: look again, I hate like like America flex shit, but
Speaker 1: I feel like any president of the US should be
Speaker 1: able to pull up Ryker style, flip a chair around,
Speaker 1: sit down next to you you, and say, look, we've been
Speaker 1: pulling your ass out of the fire for the last century. Like,
Speaker 1: you don't get to fucking make me sit somewhere. I'm
Speaker 1: the president of the United States and you're a doddering
Speaker 1: old queen of a fucking third rate power. Um. I
Speaker 1: hate that. I just went like, full fucking whatever they're
Speaker 1: But honestly, that's fucking ridiculous. It's like like maybe maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the only country ever that the US gets moral superiority.
Speaker 1: It's like, is the British Empire? Like don't you don't
Speaker 1: like what? Seriously, lady, unbelievable. One other president who was
Speaker 1: knighted was George H. W. Bush, who was knighted into
Speaker 1: the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Well,
Speaker 1: he did look like he could use one a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, where a rarely awarded top order of knighthoods.
Speaker 1: I'm glad he got that. British officials said that the
Speaker 1: knighthood marked the close relationship between the Republican president and
Speaker 1: Britain's conservative government, particularly during the Gulf War. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a real moment of of of trial and
Speaker 1: tragedy for the British royal family. They had they had
Speaker 1: to sit there and watch they were burned, conscripts alive,
Speaker 1: and they were really at risk there. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the book Royal Babylon by English poet and activist
Speaker 1: Heathcote Williams quote the fact that each US president's record,
Speaker 1: without exception, would earn them seats on the dock at
Speaker 1: Nuremberg or at the International Criminal Court on genocide charges
Speaker 1: doesn't deter the royal family from honoring them. For by
Speaker 1: an ironic twist, each US president morphs into George the Third,
Speaker 1: against whom their forebearers fought. Which is a nice and
Speaker 1: nice and nice little quote by by this this this English,
Speaker 1: this English writer and the pretty good book Royal Babylon
Speaker 1: if you want to if you want to learn about
Speaker 1: how fucked up the monarchy is, uh, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty a pretty fun book. Um, let's see who else
Speaker 1: who else should be? Uh, who else should be? Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about Norman schwartz and Covs Schwartzkof. Norman Schwartzkof,
Speaker 1: he was the head of the He was the guy
Speaker 1: who actually like ran the Desert Storm campaign. Yes, he
Speaker 1: said that the dead iraqis quote warn't worth counting and
Speaker 1: among like casualties of war and that quote, I want
Speaker 1: every Iraqi soldier bleeding from every orifice. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Schwartzkof was a guy who fought
Speaker 1: in Vietnam and took the loss hard, and I think
Speaker 1: he a big part of why, big part of what
Speaker 1: was going on with Desert Storm was a desire to
Speaker 1: quote unquote reclaim like our military pride by beating the
Speaker 1: ship out of a smaller country. Um, which is not
Speaker 1: to say that like I don't believe there was Like
Speaker 1: Iraq had invaded a neighbor and occupied it. That's bad,
Speaker 1: something should have been done. But the whole, the whole
Speaker 1: like masturbatory. I want all of their fucking conscript soldiers,
Speaker 1: these like teenage kids to die. Is is like sick lunacy,
Speaker 1: as was the masturbation over the anywhere whatever. We don't
Speaker 1: need to talk about the Gulf War here. He was anyway,
Speaker 1: he was. He also received a knighthood after all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, which is fun. Also, Elizabeth gave a knighthood
Speaker 1: to Colin Powell, Um, who facilitated, covered up, and justified
Speaker 1: many US war crimes in Vietnam. Hey hey, Garrison facilitated
Speaker 1: cover ups. Yes, yeah, most famously my Lie. Yes, the
Speaker 1: my Lie massacre is the biggest thing that he was
Speaker 1: that he was involved in. There were others. He also
Speaker 1: like that guy. I think he's like like the thing.
Speaker 1: I think it'sportant. He is probably the one person on
Speaker 1: earth in the Bush administration who could have stopped the
Speaker 1: Iraq war if he wanted to and he didn't like
Speaker 1: he he he knew that it was all bullshit, and
Speaker 1: he's like, nah, fuck it, let's do this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go lie to the U N. Quoting Powell, we burned
Speaker 1: down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with ronson and
Speaker 1: zippo lighters. Why were we torching houses and destroying crops?
Speaker 1: Ho Chi Ming said that his people were like the
Speaker 1: sea in which guerrillas swarm. We tried to solve the
Speaker 1: problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard
Speaker 1: logic of war, what difference does it make if you
Speaker 1: shot your enemy or starved him to death? So anyway,
Speaker 1: best night, night night, Colin Powell. So true, So true,
Speaker 1: Buddy um probably the least problematic person among this list.
Speaker 1: In the Queen approved on an airing right hood to
Speaker 1: a former U. S Secretary of State. Uh with Henry
Speaker 1: kiss kiss Ainger Kissing Kissinger. Yeah, he was. He was
Speaker 1: just kind of a functionary, very not not a big deal.
Speaker 1: We should probably, I think, I think that's how it's pronounced.
Speaker 1: He was. He was appointed an Honoring Night Commander in
Speaker 1: the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George.
Speaker 1: This is Christ's so funny. We must applaud the British
Speaker 1: for for for for honoring the most popular American in China.
Speaker 1: It's a very progressive decision for her. Yes Kissinger. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think a few of Kissinger's assistants also got unknighted.
Speaker 1: Uh Brent Scrollcroft scout Croft scout Croft, Um, he got
Speaker 1: he got knighted. Uh. I think people from the Iron
Speaker 1: contra drugs and arms affair stuff got knighted. H. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of like war criminal dudes got knighted
Speaker 1: in this in this like late nineties period. I wonder
Speaker 1: what was going on there also, Uh, j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: was was was knighted of, which is pretty funny. And
Speaker 1: then uh the the economic uh financier who endorsed uh
Speaker 1: really bad derivatives to make the housing bubble kind of
Speaker 1: blow up. Alan Greenspan another American. Oh he also green
Speaker 1: Span Like he's a horrible person. That that man, that
Speaker 1: man has killed more people than most generals. Like he
Speaker 1: has Oh boy, yeah he is. He is pretty bad. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I think we can do an ad break
Speaker 1: and then James is going to join us again. Uh
Speaker 1: to finish up by talking about Ireland and Kenya. Um,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of stuff in Ireland and Kenya.
Speaker 1: So anyway, do you know who won't receive a knighthood
Speaker 1: by Queen Elizabeth? That's these products and services Because I
Speaker 1: was going to say Queen Elizabeth because she's too dead
Speaker 1: to take that's a joke. She can't give them a
Speaker 1: nighthead because she's dead. Here's the adds, very funny. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back, and you know I need to keep the
Speaker 1: audience informed about important network business for cool Zone, so
Speaker 1: I want to let you all know that. As he
Speaker 1: was coming back from getting his shot, James texted us, all, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll be on in one sex and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of jokes that we could make about that as as
Speaker 1: a network, and I'm not going to make them, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna urge you to make them yourself in your
Speaker 1: own heart and head and then tweet them to James.
Speaker 1: James is at, James is At, I write okay on Twitter,
Speaker 1: that's my Twitter handle. I wrote, okay, you can see
Speaker 1: a picture of me. That's anyway. Uh So we're not
Speaker 1: gonna talk about mainly me. Two places where British colonialism
Speaker 1: and imperialism had devastating effects under Queen Elizabeth and a
Speaker 1: few a few uh, pretty pretty evil people that that
Speaker 1: Elizabeth then also united. Uh who were doing who were
Speaker 1: like directly doing this British colonialism. Uh, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Kenya a little bit. So during the nineteen fifties, British
Speaker 1: tried to get control of lands in Kenya that they
Speaker 1: that they had violently. They were trying to trying to
Speaker 1: keep keep control of land that they had previously stolen. Um.
Speaker 1: Native Kenyans fought back in the Mau Mau uprising. Now
Speaker 1: has we've historians Historians have documented widespread torture by British forces,
Speaker 1: including crushing of testicles with pliers um and the internment
Speaker 1: of up to three d and twenty thousand people in
Speaker 1: concentration camps where they then endured slavery, starvation, murder and rape,
Speaker 1: rape with blunt objects. Um. Meanwhile, one point five lean
Speaker 1: Kenyans were confined to a network of detention camps and
Speaker 1: heavily patrolled villages, as documented by a historian Caroline Elkins
Speaker 1: in her Pulitzer wise winning Britain's gulog. So this this,
Speaker 1: this was all overseen by the Queen as the head
Speaker 1: of state and by the way, she was thirty one.
Speaker 1: At this point, you don't you don't get to say, well,
Speaker 1: she just come and you know, I was just listening
Speaker 1: to her advisors. At thirty one years old. You are young,
Speaker 1: but you are old enough to not be complicit in
Speaker 1: a genocide. Yeah, especially when you're the head of state. Like,
Speaker 1: come on, as the Queen of England, she had some leverage.
Speaker 1: She is not like, oh, you came at you worked,
Speaker 1: You were a tax collector in fucking South fucking Shire, England,
Speaker 1: and you happened to be in doing that job when
Speaker 1: the Mau Mau we're being suppressed. No, no, no, she
Speaker 1: was and she she she knew about stuff was going on,
Speaker 1: was heavily involved because she was giving out like she
Speaker 1: was working with people who were doing the like, agreed
Speaker 1: to things um. According to Kenya's biggest newspaper, The Daily Nation,
Speaker 1: a British policeman named Ian Henderson was known in Kenya
Speaker 1: as the torturer in chief and was the kind of
Speaker 1: the the guy behind preparing a whole bunch of bogus
Speaker 1: evidence in the nineteen fifty three trial where six leading
Speaker 1: Mao Mao Uprising figures were convicted UM, including the future
Speaker 1: first president of independent Kenya now Queenlis but the second
Speaker 1: honored Ian Henderson again the Torturer in Chief, with the
Speaker 1: George Medal, Britain's highest civilian award, in September of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four for his work in Kenya. Because this is important,
Speaker 1: Like he wasn't military, he was just a policeman, which
Speaker 1: is why he gets a civilian award. Um. But like
Speaker 1: she knew what was going on was giving out individual
Speaker 1: police officers awards for their roles in crushing the crushing
Speaker 1: these uh independent uprisings. You know who never would have
Speaker 1: done that is supposed of the second absolute clown. I
Speaker 1: I do not know enough of the second I don't
Speaker 1: know how he acquired one thousand grandchildren. I'm not look
Speaker 1: to be fair, there's probably some shady ship and so
Speaker 1: boost of the seconds rain. But the main thing he
Speaker 1: was known for was taking back control of Swaziland's indigenous industries,
Speaker 1: being a good neighbor to the other African countries once
Speaker 1: they gained their independence, and of course exporting a shipload
Speaker 1: of asbestos. So and any any other notes on on Kenya. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just before I do want to like just briefly
Speaker 1: raised that, like elkins um it was that was a
Speaker 1: very unconventional and a very good book for young academic
Speaker 1: and she deserved a credit for writing it. In the
Speaker 1: process of writing that book and then trying to write
Speaker 1: her second book, obviously she dealt with a lot of
Speaker 1: backlash from rank her first book, she uncovered that Britain
Speaker 1: had hidden, classified, destroyed and refused to disclose a mountain
Speaker 1: of records about its colonial crimes in Kenya. And this
Speaker 1: is like an ongoing issue that goes on into the
Speaker 1: twenty teams that there were public records court cases about this.
Speaker 1: And it's so like we we can see that, like
Speaker 1: it's wrong to say that this is like a just
Speaker 1: a relic of another era, Right, Britain is has continued
Speaker 1: into this era. Like the ideology of the government from
Speaker 1: them to now is actually indistinguishable. Right, it's it's near
Speaker 1: liberal conservatives. They have continued to hide rather than face
Speaker 1: justice for these crimes. Right, rather than say sorry, rather
Speaker 1: than say what we did was wrong, they've tried to
Speaker 1: cover up this ship. And like we we need to
Speaker 1: remember that when we talk about like this is not
Speaker 1: a crime of the past, these are ongoing acts of genocide.
Speaker 1: And genocide denial that we keep doing. Yeah, as you mention,
Speaker 1: so I think we're talking on Operation Legacy als. Also
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of different instances of the British
Speaker 1: government like destroying other records. One of the other fun
Speaker 1: things they were covered they seen to have and cover
Speaker 1: ing up and we don't we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: was in those records because again they were just like
Speaker 1: they were destroyed. Um. But one of the other things
Speaker 1: that was in this record is about a second time
Speaker 1: that that the UK put a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: concentration camps while Queen Elizabeth was president, which was they
Speaker 1: did this. They also did this in Malaysia. They put
Speaker 1: a million president. They did this. They did this in
Speaker 1: a film. Sorry she was while she was clown president,
Speaker 1: which is to say, just to say, Queen, we're gonna
Speaker 1: actually be talking about Malaysia in justice sac that was
Speaker 1: an emergency on awards. Yeah, so so uh Ian Henderson,
Speaker 1: the torture in chief who received this award obviously had
Speaker 1: to leave Kenya shortly after the fifties because things happened,
Speaker 1: um and then he got he got moved to Bahrain
Speaker 1: um and during a wave of pro independence revolts in Bahrain.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eight, h Henderson was appointed the head of
Speaker 1: the Secret Police and served as so until um and
Speaker 1: over the course of his tenure he became known as
Speaker 1: the Butcher of Bahrain, quoting the Guardian quote. During his time,
Speaker 1: his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti government activists.
Speaker 1: Their activities are said to have included the ransacking of villages,
Speaker 1: sadistic sexual abuse, and using power drills to name prisoners.
Speaker 1: On many accasions, there have said to detain children without
Speaker 1: informing their parents, only to return them months later in
Speaker 1: body bags unquote. Yeah, and and the Barraine stuff. It's
Speaker 1: also worth mentioning like that never stopped like no, I
Speaker 1: mean it stopped being him in charge, but like like
Speaker 1: it only stopped him being in charge. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: and like in two thousand eleven there's another revolution against
Speaker 1: like the Bahraini barony like monarchy, and I mean it
Speaker 1: ended essentially with the Saudia's role tanks across the border.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that happened was that the
Speaker 1: British helped like the Bahraini government like hunt down dissidence.
Speaker 1: I just busted out my lecture on this hand slot
Speaker 1: park stuff. If we want to talk more about there
Speaker 1: were fifteen miles of files that they found hidden. I
Speaker 1: mean this that was That was also the case in Ireland,
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about later, the odd file.
Speaker 1: I lose emails all the time. That's similar to fifteen
Speaker 1: miles of paperwork. So in nineteen four, Ian Henderson was
Speaker 1: awarded by Queen Elizabeth with a CBE for services to
Speaker 1: British interests in Bahrain and uh he also received a
Speaker 1: knighthood in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Speaker 1: So this this was after he was already known as
Speaker 1: the Butcher of Bahrain. This this is this, he's well
Speaker 1: into his tenure. He is torturing children, killing them, kidnapping them,
Speaker 1: maiming people. And that's when he gets knighthooded uh for
Speaker 1: his services to the British interests in Bahrain. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's Ian Henderson. UM. Now. During Henderson's time in Kenya, UH,
Speaker 1: he was just a part of the small team that
Speaker 1: was developing a new form of counterinsurgency pseudo gangster tactics,
Speaker 1: UH kind of weaponizing like gang gang warfare for British interests. UH.
Speaker 1: The other person who was kind of running this operation
Speaker 1: was an Englishman named Frank Kinson. Um so he in
Speaker 1: uh he was also serving in Kenya UM and then
Speaker 1: on New Year's in nineteen fifty five, Kinson was awarded
Speaker 1: the British Military Cross in recognition of galleant and distinguished
Speaker 1: services in Kenya UM and three years later he gained
Speaker 1: a bar to that battle for his work in the
Speaker 1: UH Malaysian emergency quote unquote. So during Britain's brutal rule
Speaker 1: brutal war in Malaysia, um he he he played he
Speaker 1: played a part in the con tration camps which Chris mentioned.
Speaker 1: The process was known as vigilization as they forced people
Speaker 1: into these concentration camps all over the course of a famine.
Speaker 1: And they were invading Glasia to fund Britain's kind of
Speaker 1: post war reconstruction. Uh so he he was in Kenya Malaysia.
Speaker 1: He also went to Bahrain, just like Henderson did. He
Speaker 1: went to Yemen, Aiden and Cyprus, all places where the
Speaker 1: British state is uh known for doing the widespread use
Speaker 1: of torture. Um and then he went to North He
Speaker 1: went to Northern Ireland. Uh in not shocking turn of events,
Speaker 1: um he then was the professional head of the British
Speaker 1: Army during the Iraq War. Described Kinson as quote the
Speaker 1: sun around which the planets revolved, saying that quote he
Speaker 1: very much set the tone for the operational style in
Speaker 1: Belfast um the budd the notorious military Reaction Force the
Speaker 1: m r F, which was accused of being behind a
Speaker 1: string of illegal shootings of Catholic teenagers in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: was based at Kitson's headquarters outside Belfast, and one of
Speaker 1: the units under his command was nicknamed Kitson's Private Army UH.
Speaker 1: Its official name was one Pea. And these were the
Speaker 1: people that did bloody Sunday um So in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two in Dairy, fifteen thousand people gathered outside to protest
Speaker 1: against detention without trial. At ten past four, British paratroopers
Speaker 1: opened fire. Twenty eight people were shot, some in the
Speaker 1: back as they fled. Fourteen people were killed, seven of
Speaker 1: whom were teenagers, and it was Kitson's Private Army who
Speaker 1: fired all one d and eight shots UH in Dairy
Speaker 1: during winter of nineteen seventy two UH. One of the
Speaker 1: victims are the first teenager UH named Kevin. Seventeen years
Speaker 1: old he was shot from behind while trying to crawl
Speaker 1: to safety. Um. Yeah, anyway, Murphy massacre was at the
Speaker 1: same time as well. Like it's worth, people like these
Speaker 1: are very well documented things, so people that people can
Speaker 1: read about that we don't need to describe the detail.
Speaker 1: But so England in England Bad Elizabeth Queen. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, frank Kinson was knighted again same same year
Speaker 1: as the massacre, was knighted by the Queen for Galley
Speaker 1: into distinguished service in Northern Ireland and was promoted to
Speaker 1: Commander of the Order of the British Empire UM. A
Speaker 1: few years later he became a major general and the
Speaker 1: quote night Commander of the Order of the Bath again
Speaker 1: what is it? What is it? Is nice that he
Speaker 1: and former head of the CIA, George H. W. Bush
Speaker 1: got to hang out in their fancy club though these
Speaker 1: people are so fucked up. So later later Kitson serned
Speaker 1: as Commander in Chief of the UK Land Forces from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty five and was the
Speaker 1: Aide the Look was the Aide de camp general to
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth direct directly to Queen Elizabeth from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three to nineteen eighty five. So yeah, that's uh, that's fun.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that the Order of the Bath is
Speaker 1: like a I believe that some of those other honors,
Speaker 1: that queen's honors that you've talked about, like I was
Speaker 1: selected by committee your pressper government. I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1: The Order of the Bath is supposed to be like
Speaker 1: the personal the Queen's like specific selection. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the sovereign is head of the Order of the Bath
Speaker 1: like it's like yours. It's the big it's the big
Speaker 1: diamond shape mail. You're tortured so dreadfully well, I'd love
Speaker 1: to give you this fancy award for jamming screwdrivers into
Speaker 1: children turning the ball. Who do you do? Go off
Speaker 1: to go breed another coal. That's the ghost of the
Speaker 1: queen you have promised you at the start of the episode.
Speaker 1: So through throughout the two thousands, Kinson remained a key
Speaker 1: advisor on U S military strategy during the wars in
Speaker 1: Iraq and Afghanistan. There it's much that the US has
Speaker 1: done which is also wore crimes in torture in those wars.
Speaker 1: And we should also mention, Okay, there's there's a thing
Speaker 1: you'll get from insurgency nerds who were talking about the
Speaker 1: Mala like emergency quote unquote is like the one successful
Speaker 1: kind of insurgency, and that's just not true. Like they
Speaker 1: started again after they stopped in seconds. You can tell
Speaker 1: how well this went by the fact that that guy
Speaker 1: also was helping the U. S do a rock and
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and the only thing he's ever managed to accomplish
Speaker 1: is killing an enormous number of people. He doesn't it
Speaker 1: was just that he had dubs there. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: in all those countries. He was heavily involved in Aiden
Speaker 1: and Yemen, which led to two thousand deaths between nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two and nineteen seventy UM and and today British
Speaker 1: armies still continue the same This this the same process
Speaker 1: of of overseeing the bombing of Yemen. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: this isn't like me. There's definitely no one that US
Speaker 1: is innocent of. Just oh no, we're the ones arming
Speaker 1: h We need to Saudi coalition whatever you wanna call it.
Speaker 1: That's murdering people in Yemen. But I think doesn't have
Speaker 1: the capacity to to make as many bombs as the
Speaker 1: US is standing to Yemen. I would doubt. But all
Speaker 1: of these processes and all of these people are still
Speaker 1: continuing the same colonialism and the same yes, all of
Speaker 1: the same oppression. Like this isn't like this isn't like
Speaker 1: the past. It's it's an ongoing thing that the monarchy
Speaker 1: awards and perpetuates. They've had to downsize it a little
Speaker 1: bit because you know, it just doesn't work as well
Speaker 1: as it used to. And so the thing they decided
Speaker 1: to do to downsize it was stopped paying off the
Speaker 1: populace um and just start policing them harder. And but
Speaker 1: but the money has kept flowing to the royals. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, in the Malay emergency, that Britain did pioneer
Speaker 1: the use of agent orange. So that's another gift that
Speaker 1: we've given to the people of the United States. Ah well,
Speaker 1: thank you James for that. Yeah, welcome anytime. It's that.
Speaker 1: It's t Cosey's with the Queen on It's stuff coolgies.
Speaker 1: You know. I wanna suggest if you are looking for
Speaker 1: a way to properly mourn Queen Elizabeth Um, maybe check
Speaker 1: out the film Churchill The Hollywood Years, a truly exceptional movie.
Speaker 1: If you just type it into Google and look around
Speaker 1: on YouTube you can find a full copy of it. Um.
Speaker 1: It features Christian Slater as Winston Churchill and Nev Campbell
Speaker 1: as the recently deceased Queen UM and I don't know
Speaker 1: who it is that they got to play her father,
Speaker 1: the former king, but he's he's basically a portrayed as
Speaker 1: like a drunk and also like every time there's a
Speaker 1: big fancy party, he's just constantly staring at everyone's drinks
Speaker 1: because he's angry that they're drinking is champagne because he's
Speaker 1: a big fucking uh spinthrift. Very funny, very good send
Speaker 1: up of the royal family. Um. Also, Heinrich Himler condu
Speaker 1: it's a Satanic wedding and by replacing a crucifix with
Speaker 1: a chicken, it's It's a good movie watch in real life,
Speaker 1: just like in real life. I'll also recommend you check
Speaker 1: out the book Royal Babylon. I was able to get
Speaker 1: it a free copy online through great methods. Um So anyway,
Speaker 1: yeah that if you want a nice, like poetic history
Speaker 1: of how the queen is sucked up and the monarchy sucks,
Speaker 1: Royal Babylon is a nice easy read. Did you get
Speaker 1: into the balls lion sisters as well. Did you do that? Now?
Speaker 1: These two people who were disabled, they are the Queen's cousins.
Speaker 1: They the royal family basically announced they were dead, but
Speaker 1: they weren't dead. And they lived in an institutional home
Speaker 1: for I think it was it was called the Royal
Speaker 1: Earth word Institution for Mental Defectives. Great. They lived there
Speaker 1: more or less anonymously, completely discerned by the family on
Speaker 1: a very small stipend until they died. And that is
Speaker 1: not a nice way to treat your cousins. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only sentence my opinion that monarchy is bad, bad
Speaker 1: something about FUCO and boomerangs and colonialism. Abolish the monarchy.
Speaker 1: It's always okay to celebrate the death of a king
Speaker 1: or queen. Um, doesn't matter who they are, doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how it happens. Um, it's bad for the concept of
Speaker 1: monarchy is the only thing more toxic than the concept
Speaker 1: of inherited wealth. Um. And both are deeply tied to
Speaker 1: each other. Uh. Fuck the Queen and fun all of
Speaker 1: her relatives, except for the ones who give up their
Speaker 1: their positions in power. Those people are are cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't turn police people whose parents were killed by colonial
Speaker 1: regimes on Yeah yeah, and over overthrow the government of Britain. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: we always this podcast from the beginning has been directly
Speaker 1: in favor of an insurrection against the crown. The one
Speaker 1: thing that you do have to hand it to the
Speaker 1: for is seeing Liz Trust as Prime Minister and immediately dying,
Speaker 1: which is an appropriate response. I commute ritual suicide. And
Speaker 1: you know again, King Sebuto the second did destroy democracy
Speaker 1: in Swaziland, but then he replaced it with something that
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like democracy. And that's more than Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth did. We just started at point B something that
Speaker 1: kind of sounds I know, I know what King, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stand in the future. All right, but well that's
Speaker 1: a T shirt I'll be getting you for Christmas. Thank you,
Speaker 1: short short lived King Charles the Third. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 1: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the universe. It could happen here
Speaker 1: as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool Zone Media dot com Slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.