Speaker 1: Through the time we were reporting this story, Robert and
Speaker 1: I walked miles and miles around the streets Maysot. Being
Speaker 1: the only two journalists in town and also both giant
Speaker 1: white guys, we kind of stood out and taking a
Speaker 1: taxi to a sensitive interview isn't always the smart choice.
Speaker 1: Even when it was, they frequently dropped us off in
Speaker 1: a wrong place and we'd end up walking anyway. Everyone
Speaker 1: in Masot rides scooters, but riding without a helmet can
Speaker 1: get you a fine. We figured that, as relative novices
Speaker 1: to the world of scooting, we probably fucked something up
Speaker 1: and we probably better off walking. When the time came
Speaker 1: to meet me out, though he offered us a ride
Speaker 1: that was very nice, but it put us in an
Speaker 1: interesting position. What exactly you say when a guy you've
Speaker 1: never met, who's a friend of a guy you DMed
Speaker 1: on Reddit who know is engaged in the illegal production
Speaker 1: and smuggling of guns into a war zone officers to
Speaker 1: pick you up at a cafe so you can go
Speaker 1: out for dinner. We decided to call our friend, a
Speaker 1: long suffering guy we go to when we have a
Speaker 1: security question, Paul. At his request, We're keeping him anonymous,
Speaker 1: but he works in security and has an extensive professional
Speaker 1: background dealing with situations just like this, or maybe mostly
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So basically, Paul, we're meeting with these people.
Speaker 4: We don't have an established human chain with them of trust.
Speaker 4: They're they're just a Reddit account that James has been
Speaker 4: talking with. But for like six or seven months. It
Speaker 4: doesn't really seem like there's much else we can do
Speaker 4: besides keep our eyes open and try to meet in
Speaker 4: a digital place.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, the big concern is they would be get
Speaker 6: the government, which is not from what you guys have said.
Speaker 6: The government simply doesn't have the wherewithal to do operations
Speaker 6: like this, and I mean rebel groups like this, they're
Speaker 6: they're trying, they want to get everything out there they can. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: is there a concern about the fact that you don't
Speaker 6: have a chain of people that can vouch for each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the situation therein.
Speaker 6: Everything's in their favor, they are, everything's in your favor.
Speaker 6: Even minor cultural faux pause shouldn't be an issue.
Speaker 3: With Paul's help, we came up with a watertight plan.
Speaker 3: I should note here that he was at least as
Speaker 3: concerned with our fate as he was with the fate
Speaker 3: of the pair of pants he'd loaned James for the trip.
Speaker 5: And I mean, yeah, it's a story that needs to
Speaker 5: get out.
Speaker 6: So being slightly lax on the rules while knowing that
Speaker 6: it's an everybody's favorite that it goes well.
Speaker 5: I guess you gotta been the rules sometimes.
Speaker 7: I guess we'll check in.
Speaker 8: We'll try to proof of life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll do a proof of life.
Speaker 2: I will.
Speaker 4: I will send you a picture of James holding a
Speaker 4: piece of paper that says big wife guy. And if
Speaker 4: if we are kidnapped, I'll send you a picture of
Speaker 4: me that says Elon Musk will be a good custodian
Speaker 4: of Twitter.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll know that that's the that's the sign.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I'll yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I'll figure out something. Yeah, me and me and a
Speaker 5: few friends will be on our way. That sounds awful.
Speaker 5: James has my favorite pants.
Speaker 4: Yea, yeah, you gotta get those pants bag.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, this is all about the pants.
Speaker 6: If I find James dead body, I'm getting those pants off.
Speaker 1: Luckily, both I and Paul's trousers made it back that night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any damage was to several delicious plates of food. Milk.
Speaker 1: His fiance and their godfather were the most gracious hosts,
Speaker 1: and we decided not to record that first night. Instead,
Speaker 1: we met up the next day. But there is one
Speaker 1: thing from that night that I want to share with you.
Speaker 1: Rather than explaining it, I'll let the song me out
Speaker 1: played for us talk to you through the beautiful medium
Speaker 1: of punk music. Bella Choo, of course, is an anti
Speaker 1: fascist anthem. Then it's original version tells the story of
Speaker 1: a young partisan who says goodbye to his girlfriend before
Speaker 1: he goes off to fight Italian fascist. If he dies,
Speaker 1: he says he wants to be buried under a flower
Speaker 1: in the mountains so people will see it and remember him.
Speaker 7: Oh boo, no, no, they do not all job a job.
Speaker 5: A job, job job.
Speaker 7: Day, No dog gonna do they.
Speaker 9: M away episode.
Speaker 2: Rather shy oh, I guess a job A job, a job,
Speaker 2: job job.
Speaker 7: I want a job as same job wall photo and
Speaker 7: a nod A job as a job.
Speaker 6: Had a job job John.
Speaker 5: Do bas oh john jay?
Speaker 2: Dad's all okay, y'all shabat a job rather jo a job.
Speaker 7: A job, job jack.
Speaker 1: Job. After a few months of revolution, all our characters
Speaker 1: found themselves mourning their friends and many of them were
Speaker 1: in the mountains. Their struggle is one they see in
Speaker 1: the same vein as the Italian partisans who fought fascism
Speaker 1: in their mountains and the anti fascists who came from
Speaker 1: around the world to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: I first heard that song Belachoo from a Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War veteran, and it's a strange closing of the loop
Speaker 1: to be here sitting hearing it with young people who,
Speaker 1: just like the Spanish Republicans, are fighting a coup with
Speaker 1: next to no international support and a critical shortage of weapons.
Speaker 1: But Miant was trying his best to fix that shortage.
Speaker 1: A month into what would become the Spring Revolution, and
Speaker 1: the stakes had become clear when the first protester would
Speaker 1: shot and they kept marching. When people decided to go
Speaker 1: back into the streets, they showed that the future of
Speaker 1: their country was worse dying for weeks later, some of
Speaker 1: them decided it was also worth killing for. It was
Speaker 1: about then that me Out's buddy and Keen Reddit use
Speaker 1: a Daddy UMCD said he'd been online we reckon they
Speaker 1: could use their three D printers, a steel pipe and
Speaker 1: the expertise and some strains on the internet to arm themselves.
Speaker 1: The promise of revolutionary technology would take quite some time
Speaker 1: to have any kind of battlefield impact in Meanmma, but
Speaker 1: the effects of a different kind of revolution would be
Speaker 1: felt immediately. But the nation's young activists took up arms
Speaker 1: against their government.
Speaker 2: Uh, I was like, I'm interested us in Horwest and
Speaker 2: three D printing especially my profession is a grand us
Speaker 2: some virtuariality and one the test three D prinding is
Speaker 2: my hobby. So I just do I just donload some
Speaker 2: five from thinking bus or other three D three D
Speaker 2: print in criminal dy and just do it for my
Speaker 2: dad's not specially especially.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, desk toys and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, just a twice.
Speaker 5: Yes, what do you think of guns? Then?
Speaker 2: I have never emergined a care because you know, we
Speaker 2: have been living in a military booth for a long time,
Speaker 2: so we're afraid of soldier, especially not the soldier, especially
Speaker 2: the care that they hold. So we are so afraid
Speaker 2: of that, so we never imagine, like like we are
Speaker 2: the same as in Korea. We're so afraid of that,
Speaker 2: so we never imagine making gan. But after that the story.
Speaker 1: Began at first and his team felt safe despite the
Speaker 1: dangerous nature of their work. He felt the Topmador was
Speaker 1: so behind the times they wouldn't even know what a
Speaker 1: three D printer.
Speaker 2: Was like at those tide the military didn't didn't know
Speaker 2: or didn't give out a funk about brind So it
Speaker 2: is okay at those time, it's really okay. And when
Speaker 2: when day can we need to hide the campus if
Speaker 2: they see three D printer, that that's okay because we
Speaker 2: were saying this is for our job or for some
Speaker 2: hobby that we can say at those times, but not
Speaker 2: this time. If this time, if they found trainder, yes,
Speaker 2: cam can go to day like yeah or hashot headshot.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Soon that headshot became a lot closer to being a possibility.
Speaker 2: It's like as soon as we we we finished the
Speaker 2: second second APCNI, we try and to do tasted in
Speaker 2: Yangon and we send it to our warehouse. But unfortunately, uh,
Speaker 2: this warehouse is exposed and uh ambushed by the military
Speaker 2: and this gun is taken by the military. Uh. And
Speaker 2: they they did announced this on the new by pataring
Speaker 2: this uh like like Hamdmaigins and Podle give fun about
Speaker 2: this just a ham again they just stay at the
Speaker 2: very first time. But later and later later and Lada
Speaker 2: when they were uh the second time they were arrest
Speaker 2: there a this time that they arrested my revolutionary from
Speaker 2: my team. So I told hand about the efficiency and
Speaker 2: how do you use and the history. Also the gamp
Speaker 2: at the time maybe maybe he was, you know, investigator
Speaker 2: and he told the crew I was that He says
Speaker 2: like the nine yeah, and now and now was the
Speaker 2: name nine like this before before the at the very
Speaker 2: first antee and now the gamp from the Turkish gap.
Speaker 3: From if you missed that, they thought the guns were Turkish.
Speaker 3: The reason we giggled at this is that whenever we
Speaker 3: see videos of combat in me and mar James and
Speaker 3: I send them to a group chat and try to
Speaker 3: work out what the weapons are and where they came from.
Speaker 3: Nearly every time we're stumped. The guns turned out to
Speaker 3: be some kind of niche Turkish shotgun made to look
Speaker 3: like an AR fifteen. It seems the military were operating
Speaker 3: on the same assumption, only this time they were very wrong.
Speaker 3: Like Allan's k Yok started this second, more deadly phase
Speaker 3: of the Spring Revolution by taking a trip out to
Speaker 3: the jungle, and he stayed for several months to learn
Speaker 3: some of the skills he was going to need to
Speaker 3: fight back against the top Madar.
Speaker 2: I was going the Mandai as a culminated data so
Speaker 2: I'm not like the I'm not have a video training
Speaker 2: or something like that. I just going as a culminated aga.
Speaker 2: So I met with Gan specially or Sam Trena, and
Speaker 2: I said, I want to know how to shoot Gan,
Speaker 2: how to ask Mber the gang. So they teach me,
Speaker 2: I said, saying, I'm an acuminadaga. I can't do the trainer,
Speaker 2: but I want to lamb the books out of things.
Speaker 2: So they sent me some videos that ideas to lamb
Speaker 2: by myself.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, Later he went back to carry prototype printed guns
Speaker 3: to the EAOs for testing. We asked if it was
Speaker 3: scary being an undercover gun runner in a dictatorship. He
Speaker 3: says it was, but he found that he had a
Speaker 3: powerful ally in his fire. Homophobia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we need to discus it, so you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: disguises though. I just that I have a long hair,
Speaker 2: so I act like a day So you know that
Speaker 2: the military has sold China and equality, so.
Speaker 1: They hate gays.
Speaker 7: That's why.
Speaker 2: Just just our advantage.
Speaker 3: The military assuming Miok was gay and therefore incapable of fighting,
Speaker 3: let him go. Miok kept his mouth shut and let
Speaker 3: their homophobia help him smuggle the guns with which he
Speaker 3: hopes to help topple the regime that places so much
Speaker 3: stock and values like these. Miok said he had to
Speaker 3: go to the jungle to prove that his guns worked
Speaker 3: because at first the eeos didn't believe him.
Speaker 2: About again, no one, no one believes believed that. No
Speaker 2: one believes that. So we have to make made it
Speaker 2: first and show them. So we made it first. I
Speaker 2: wish that we got again. It's it's a sulfu. We lie,
Speaker 2: we need to lie, and we send this to the EO.
Speaker 2: Then they made it and it didn't walk out and
Speaker 2: the achas and it walk out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: How do they feel.
Speaker 2: When they oh, oh, oh my my one of my
Speaker 2: revolutionary and EO s. They said, oh, they're really really happy.
Speaker 2: They said all that, all of the brand that and
Speaker 2: campaigns for this, let's do it right now. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, almost everyone we met spent time in the jungle.
Speaker 3: Rooney that's a nom the gear, not a given name,
Speaker 3: started off as a protester, and just like everyone else,
Speaker 3: he fled into the jungle to avoid being murdered by
Speaker 3: the government and to learn from the ethnic armed organizations
Speaker 3: how to fight back.
Speaker 2: When we try and make peaceful protesting and it's really
Speaker 2: break down. Then he decided like he also we, so
Speaker 2: we decided to choose to have a hands and to
Speaker 2: make it to make a revolution. So at this times
Speaker 2: he goes to the e or stays and he lands
Speaker 2: the trainings, you know, even especially the explosive trainees, and
Speaker 2: he got back to the town and he's started making
Speaker 2: this explosive with the head of teachings.
Speaker 3: After learning from the eeos, he came back to Yangon
Speaker 3: to put his knowledge to use. Of course, just like
Speaker 3: Miyok's gun making team and the street protesters who learned
Speaker 3: from Hong kongers, he took to YouTube and Google to
Speaker 3: try and find a better way to build killing machines.
Speaker 2: So it's like the EO teach us the very business
Speaker 2: exposed just kembaumb like this, but after the land a
Speaker 2: very business then and they want to improve. So the lambindself,
Speaker 2: it's just like Di I y the lam googear with YouTube,
Speaker 2: so later and later even they can make tan T
Speaker 2: and DN.
Speaker 11: Yes.
Speaker 3: Of course, nearly everyone we met at some point googled
Speaker 3: something like how to make gun or how to make bomb.
Speaker 3: Now this is not ideal opsect, but it speaks to
Speaker 3: the desperation of the times. They used crowdfunding websites to
Speaker 3: raise money for ingredients, and Rooney soon started putting his
Speaker 3: knowledge into practice. What that meant was that people died.
Speaker 3: He killed human beings with the explosives that he made. Now,
Speaker 3: those people would have killed Rooney or anyone else we've
Speaker 3: spoken to in this series. He was defending himself and
Speaker 3: others by making killing machines. But still, if you're a
Speaker 3: decent person, it's not easy to watch your work result
Speaker 3: in a stranger being blown into a pink mist.
Speaker 2: He is not proud of that, but you know he
Speaker 2: is never trying to ky event a cat on any man.
Speaker 2: He is sad, but he had to do because of revolution.
Speaker 3: Yes, revolution was in Rooney's blood. The military had stolen
Speaker 3: his house as a kid, and he'd grown up with
Speaker 3: his uncle sharing memories of the nineteen eighty eight pro
Speaker 3: democracy uprising and its violent repression. He'd seen his family,
Speaker 3: his cousin brothers, and their parents harassed for his whole life.
Speaker 3: Now he had a chance to fight back. He carried
Speaker 3: out hundreds of missions before he eventually had to flee
Speaker 3: the city when an accident led to serious injury.
Speaker 2: To Jone Saba. There is a nine mission, so he
Speaker 2: has to be made nine bone. Yeah, really bit bone.
Speaker 2: So they did trying to assembly this bowl as one
Speaker 2: of his friends smoking and this this famy is called Gamhau.
Speaker 3: After the blast, he had to run away from his
Speaker 3: house before the police arrived. His friend was not so
Speaker 3: lucky and is in jail now. Rooney is mostly recovered,
Speaker 3: but it's not safe for him to go back, so
Speaker 3: he's hoping to make a new start in Massont.
Speaker 1: The fight didn't stay in Yangon, in Napid or either.
Speaker 1: For villages living outside, the coup was just as real,
Speaker 1: and so was a desire to fight back. People outside
Speaker 1: of town found themselves in the crosshouse at the Topmador
Speaker 1: as well. The military employs a strategy which they call
Speaker 1: four cuts. It's designed to alienate the rebels from local support.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work. His kind of SCORCHDF stuff has never worked.
Speaker 1: Didn't work when the Nazis tried in Europe, did work
Speaker 1: when the US tried it in the Middle East of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Doesn't work when Israel keeps doing it, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: work in Meanmar. What it does do is drive people
Speaker 1: who lose their families to pick up a gun and
Speaker 1: kill soldiers. And it's not hard to see why. I
Speaker 1: just want to play you our conversation watching one of
Speaker 1: Andy's videos about one of hundreds of masacrets that have
Speaker 1: happened since last February, and as a warning, the stuff
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, it's about horrible as stuff
Speaker 1: can be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, basically about I think twenty eight people would
Speaker 2: kill that day.
Speaker 5: They just came into a village and shot everyone.
Speaker 2: That's a handmade guns that these villagers had, but it
Speaker 2: was just they weren't shooting anyone.
Speaker 5: Though, they just had that's all that. Everyone died. All
Speaker 5: these guys died.
Speaker 10: Look at that his hands tied. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 10: what electrical.
Speaker 5: Game it looks like.
Speaker 11: And they burned the whole village. Now yeah they do,
Speaker 11: yeah you guys, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, hell, And that's why we say massacre because it's
Speaker 8: fucking look at all the brains up, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all these kids, they weren't even eighteen.
Speaker 2: So all the villagers that run away, they took a
Speaker 2: photo of the village from Afar, and.
Speaker 10: They burned their relatives and then left.
Speaker 11: Yeah, O Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 1: And he says a nonprofit called Liberate Mianba supports the
Speaker 1: families every month, keeping them fared and sheltered, because however
Speaker 1: hard the government tries to divide the people from one another,
Speaker 1: it always seems to fail. Instead, it just pushes them
Speaker 1: closer and closer together. While we were in Thailand having
Speaker 1: a drink on a rooftop actually and talking about some
Speaker 1: kind of meditation retreat that a guy we'd met had
Speaker 1: gone on, we got to see some of the action
Speaker 1: for ourselves. That night was a fun one. We were
Speaker 1: hanging out with some nonprofit folks and we'd acquired some
Speaker 1: pretty terrible whiskey. At various points in the evening we
Speaker 1: would ambush one of the boys and tell them they've
Speaker 1: been shot in the arm or the leg, and have
Speaker 1: the others rush into practice they stop the bleed skills.
Speaker 1: Robert and I demonstrated some improvised carrying techniques and how
Speaker 1: to effectively turn and drop to the floor when you're
Speaker 1: in the intimate presence of a grenade. Everyone else at
Speaker 1: the party probably thought we were pretty strange, but we
Speaker 1: were having fun. Then in the distance we saw a
Speaker 1: huge yellow flash. It took a few seconds of us
Speaker 1: all wondering if that whiskey had sent us blind before
Speaker 1: the boom reached us. At first we thought it's one
Speaker 1: of the air strikes that have been happening in the
Speaker 1: border region. But it was close and it was just
Speaker 1: one huge boom, not the rockets had cluster bombs the
Speaker 1: Tupma door liked to drop on civilians. Within minutes, minutes
Speaker 1: of nervously waiting on the rooftop to see what was
Speaker 1: coming next, and his phone started buzzing. It was a
Speaker 1: car bomb and it had gone off about one hundred
Speaker 1: yards from the border where we stood earlier that day.
Speaker 9: A camera or something let me see, Yeah, right, scam,
Speaker 9: How did they fucking get it in there?
Speaker 1: Immediately we had questions, but very few answers. Car bombs
Speaker 1: hadn't been the thing thus far in the revolution. This
Speaker 1: was new. Car bombs are also extremely scary. It's hard
Speaker 1: not to be around cars in a city, and when
Speaker 1: any one of those cars might kill you, it's hard
Speaker 1: to do anything feeling any semblance of safety.
Speaker 7: I want to know who's did what I mean in
Speaker 7: the air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no car bombs. I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1: It hasn't yet.
Speaker 7: Is it somebody who driving it?
Speaker 8: Or do they like I don't think if someone driving it?
Speaker 8: Is it like you don't see anything there?
Speaker 4: Like uh no, I mean it could have Wait is
Speaker 4: it by the because if if there was a person,
Speaker 4: there wouldn't be anything left.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, no, no, But the thing is, Look, there's the
Speaker 8: fence like that that looks like it was there when
Speaker 8: it was Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's the shocks. Yeah, it's right by
Speaker 1: the bridge.
Speaker 8: But I don't know why what this what happened.
Speaker 3: We still aren't sure who set off the car bomb,
Speaker 3: or if anyone died. In a conflict like the one
Speaker 3: in Meanmar, it's sometimes as confusing as it is scary.
Speaker 3: The military are more than capable of a false flag
Speaker 3: style attack, killing civilians and then blaming the PDF, and
Speaker 3: it has done this before. That's what totalitarianism does. It
Speaker 3: aims to control every aspect of everyday life, even the truth.
Speaker 3: The jungle haunted us the whole time we were there, unattainable,
Speaker 3: but right next door, just a few miles away, in
Speaker 3: lochhe Kaw, the fight was raging. Lakee Kaw is what's
Speaker 3: called a friendship town. It was built with Japanese money
Speaker 3: as a place for k and U fighters to live
Speaker 3: after they put down their arms. It was supposed to
Speaker 3: be a symbol of hope in a new, peaceful and
Speaker 3: democratic mianmar Now it's a battlefield. But while we couldn't
Speaker 3: get there, we could walk along the river bank and
Speaker 3: look at the jungle and imagine what it must be
Speaker 3: like up in those mountains, which we did almost every day.
Speaker 3: Myanmar itself looms like a mountain over the town of Maysaut.
Speaker 3: It's a border town without a border, but the city
Speaker 3: is surrounded by refugee camps, non profit offices, and even
Speaker 3: museums for political prisoners that can't exist on the other
Speaker 3: side of the river. One day, we took a cab
Speaker 3: to see a monastery on a bluff overlooking the river
Speaker 3: down into Myanmar. We could see a casino still doing
Speaker 3: business with Chinese tourists despite the bombing. Nearby. On the
Speaker 3: walls of the monastery were a colorful but horrific scenes
Speaker 3: of rape and murder Buddhist stages of Hell, a reminder that,
Speaker 3: according to the Four New noble truths of Buddhism, All
Speaker 3: life is suffering and greed is the cause of suffering.
Speaker 3: The same thing could be said for the refugees and
Speaker 3: fighters forced to hide in the endless green of the jungle,
Speaker 3: driven away from their homes by the greed of men
Speaker 3: who worship.
Speaker 12: Power O Yeah, Demo, Crazy dig wandream my Josh hold on.
Speaker 10: Oh do.
Speaker 5: Ye.
Speaker 12: It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 12: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 12: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 12: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 12: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 12: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.