Speaker 1: A zone media. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know. This is a compilation episode.
Speaker 1: So every episode of the week that just happened is
Speaker 1: here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package
Speaker 1: for you to listen to in a long stretch if
Speaker 1: you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every
Speaker 1: day this week, there's going to be nothing new here
Speaker 1: for you, But you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: This could be a giant disaster. Those were the words
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk texted biographer Walter Isaacson on a Friday
Speaker 2: evening in September twenty twenty two, claiming that the Ukrainian
Speaker 2: military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval
Speaker 2: fleet in Sebastopol. In the annexed region of Crimea must
Speaker 2: have been providing Starlink Internet to the Ukrainian military for
Speaker 2: months as part of their ongoing conflict against Russia's invasion,
Speaker 2: and the resourceful Ukrainians began using Stalink as a way
Speaker 2: to remotely control the Kamikazi drones. Musk, having spoken to
Speaker 2: a Russian ambassador, saw Crimea as a red line that,
Speaker 2: when crossed, would escalate the conflict, potentially even provoking a
Speaker 2: nuclear retaliation, and so he acted disabling or depending on
Speaker 2: who you ask, refusing to enable styling access in the
Speaker 2: Crimea region. When the Ukrainian drone serbs approached their targets,
Speaker 2: they suddenly stopped communicating with their operators and eventually washed
Speaker 2: up ashore, harmless and impotent. While the specific details of
Speaker 2: this episode are hazy, the core truth is unambiguously clear.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a supremely powerful individual and through action
Speaker 2: or inaction, has the ability to influence the outcome of
Speaker 2: combat operations in the bloodiest war inflicted upon European generations.
Speaker 2: It's a level of power typically only reserved for nation
Speaker 2: state actors, not tech company CEOs. Throughout history, we've seen
Speaker 2: plenty of examples of individuals and companies with outsized country
Speaker 2: like power and influence. Musk isn't unique in that regard,
Speaker 2: nor is he the sole cautionary tale about why this
Speaker 2: shouldn't be allowed to happen. As a private individual operating
Speaker 2: within his capacities as CEO, he's unconstrained by democratic accountability,
Speaker 2: and as a private businessman, he has his own conflicts
Speaker 2: of interest from Tesla's long history of sourcing aluminum from
Speaker 2: Russian companies to his contacts with the highest echelons of
Speaker 2: Russian leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself. Historically, the only real
Speaker 2: accountability mechanism for people like muscusbeed in the media, and
Speaker 2: yet in this case, the media is chosen instead to
Speaker 2: fate the Elon musk creation myth that he's a trailblazing
Speaker 2: real life Tony Stark that will take humanity to the stars,
Speaker 2: rather than asking him many hard questions of any kind.
Speaker 2: This situation is the product of a media industry dominated
Speaker 2: by journalists seeking access to popular public figures, pulling their
Speaker 2: punches in the process. The most notable access journalist is
Speaker 2: Kara Swisher, who has spent decades covering the tech industry
Speaker 2: with a pantomime like aggression, asking the quote unquote hard
Speaker 2: questions without ever really pushing the level of discover that
Speaker 2: might make a source um willing to pus aarticipate. Swisher famously,
Speaker 2: in an interview during the All Things Digital conference in
Speaker 2: twenty ten, convinced Meta CEO then called Facebook Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: to take off his hoodie after asking him a challenging
Speaker 2: question about Facebook's invasion of privacy, only to be distracted
Speaker 2: by the design of the inside of what he was wearing,
Speaker 2: effectively objecting to her own line of questioning for entertainment purposes.
Speaker 2: Eight years later, Swisher would interview Zuckerberg about Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 2: and Russian interference in the twenty sixteen elections, lobbing softball
Speaker 2: questions like make a case for keeping info wars on
Speaker 2: Facebook and responding to Zuckerberg outrights saying he wouldn't ban
Speaker 2: Holocaust and Sandy Hook deniers by asking how it made
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg feel when people said Facebook killed people Nyanmar. The
Speaker 2: Swisher house style is simple, ask a big meeting question,
Speaker 2: and then failed to interrogate a single answer in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form a round. A month later, Swisher would
Speaker 2: interview Elon Musk, who at that point had aided harassment
Speaker 2: campaigns against reporters, called a man saving children a pedo file,
Speaker 2: and had his companies faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment
Speaker 2: and racism. When asked about his fights with the press
Speaker 2: over Twitter must claim that the Wall Street Journal, whose
Speaker 2: Wisher used to work for, outright lied about investigation into
Speaker 2: Tesla's production figures, to which Swisher asked him if he
Speaker 2: realized the dangers of him saying such things about the press,
Speaker 2: and proceeded to help Must paper over his claims, saying
Speaker 2: that he quote just doesn't like falsehoods. One of the
Speaker 2: richest and most powerful men in the world sat before Swisher,
Speaker 2: and her interrogation involved asking him simple questions about why
Speaker 2: he was doing things, lightly teasing him, and saying that
Speaker 2: he looks and I quote rested in calm. To be clear,
Speaker 2: this is an ultra powerful billionaire, and this is a
Speaker 2: was at the time enterprising journalist who everyone looked to.
Speaker 2: In April twenty twenty two, the week that Must announced
Speaker 2: the Twitter acquisition, Swusher gave a strange interview to James D.
Speaker 2: Walsh of The New Yorker, defending Musk, who had of
Speaker 2: course waived you diligence on the acquisition, did not seem
Speaker 2: to have a single clear plan about how he might
Speaker 2: run the same. She claimed that you couldn't pin Musk down,
Speaker 2: that he was quite complex, and that we would be
Speaker 2: surprised about what he likes and doesn't like. Musk, who
Speaker 2: has invented none of the core products that make him rich,
Speaker 2: is a quote visionary that gave Swish a genuine answers
Speaker 2: and arguably the most damning thing she could have said,
Speaker 2: would call her back. That was her litmus test that
Speaker 2: he would return her calls. Her ultimate defense of Musk
Speaker 2: was that and I quote inventors were very difficult, problematic people,
Speaker 2: and the moderation on Twitter was not working at the
Speaker 2: time of acquisition. These are all, of course, demonstrably force
Speaker 2: based on the events that followed, the growth of hate speech,
Speaker 2: the lack of accountability, the biggest face on the platform,
Speaker 2: and the fact that every third post seems to be
Speaker 2: some kind of spambot, either selling T shirts or pornography
Speaker 2: or cryptocurrency scams. Swisher only turned on Musk when he
Speaker 2: emailed her calling her an asshole in November twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: including a screenshot where, according to Swisher, she was actually
Speaker 2: defending him, saying that the US government should pay Elon
Speaker 2: Musk for starling. Since then, Musk has gone from a
Speaker 2: difficult to pin down visionary to carver Swisher calling his
Speaker 2: social network a and this is agonizingly horribly written a
Speaker 2: thunderdome of toxic asininity. Swisher, it appears, only worried about
Speaker 2: what she called Musk's price of cocktail of ignorance and
Speaker 2: big ego until he was rude to her. One of
Speaker 2: the most famous tech journalists in the world who has
Speaker 2: failed to take any real shot at any of the
Speaker 2: people she's questioned across decades of doing this has now
Speaker 2: been reduced to making epic dunks that sound like a
Speaker 2: twenty one year old Harry Potter fan trying to cast
Speaker 2: a spell. It's embarrassing. Swisher isn't the sole media figure
Speaker 2: guilty of having treated Elon Musk with kid gloves or
Speaker 2: treating his bloviating with otherwise on ducrid duity. This is
Speaker 2: a problem that affects almost every news outlet and reporter
Speaker 2: that covers billionaires. The assumption is always the billionaires will
Speaker 2: act with empathy, patience, and grace, three things that Musk, Bezo, Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: and their ilk totally lack. Failing that, one would suppose
Speaker 2: they'd act like a normal person, a losing proposition. If
Speaker 2: you've ever read Jeff Bezos's texts, these people are not
Speaker 2: like us. They do not experience human struggle. They don't
Speaker 2: have bills or bosses or fear of anything, let alone authority.
Speaker 2: Each and every billionaire is effectively above the law, and
Speaker 2: that is the place that you must start to understand them.
Speaker 2: It's deeply frustrating, especially when you consider the myriad of
Speaker 2: opportunities where the media could have taken must task and
Speaker 2: held him accountable. Take high Poop, for example, Musk's concept
Speaker 2: for a high speed mass transit system where pressurized capsules
Speaker 2: would hurtle between cities through vacuum tubes at speeds as
Speaker 2: fast as seven hundred and sixty miles an hour. Hyperloop
Speaker 2: Musk promise would allow commuters to travel between San Francisco
Speaker 2: and Los Angeles in as little as thirty minutes, and
Speaker 2: with the network powered primarily by solar power, with no
Speaker 2: real environmental impact. If anything, this could have been a
Speaker 2: much bigger deal than Tesla. High speed transit that doesn't
Speaker 2: burn fossil fuels could truly have changed the world. So
Speaker 2: what do you think happened? Do you think that Must
Speaker 2: delivered on this on this product that helped play a
Speaker 2: vital role in cementing his image as a real life
Speaker 2: Tony Stark. Not only would it be faster and cheaper
Speaker 2: than anything currently in existence, but it'd be greener too.
Speaker 2: What followed was a gushing or at least gredulous flow
Speaker 2: of media coverage, including from The Washington Post and The
Speaker 2: New York Times, both papers of record. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: the hype gradually died down that people began asking serious
Speaker 2: questions about hyperloop's viability. An exhaustive report published by the
Speaker 2: Transportation Research Laboratory earlier this year raised a serious questions
Speaker 2: about the feasibility of hyperloop, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 2: passenger transportation. Riders, it noted, would be exposed to extreme
Speaker 2: physical and mental stress, with the noise, vibrations, and rapid
Speaker 2: acceleration and deceleration inflicting an unknowable toll on the human body.
Speaker 2: Questions about safety still linger, and then there's the thorny
Speaker 2: issue of cost, with high bloop requiring an all new infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Even the shortest routes would involve a multi billion dollar
Speaker 2: upfront investment. These points were for the most part absent
Speaker 2: entirely from the earliest coverage of high ploop. The media
Speaker 2: also missed the fact that hypeloop wasn't even a new idea.
Speaker 2: In the nineteenth century, countless invetors toyed with the notion
Speaker 2: of an atmospheric railway where vehicles traveled through a near
Speaker 2: vacuum environment on the momentum of pressurized air. A small
Speaker 2: demonstrator route was even built by Ismbard Kingdom Brunel, the
Speaker 2: legendary British engineer who designed the first transatlantic steamship. While
Speaker 2: Highpoloop differed in some meaningful ways, it was still nonetheless
Speaker 2: much like many Musk products, a derivative of an earlier idea,
Speaker 2: The Boring Company. Musk's hilariously named Tunnel Boring startup earned
Speaker 2: similar credulous coverage upon its inception, driven in no small
Speaker 2: part due to Musk's decision to raise working capital by
Speaker 2: selling branded flamethrowers dubbed the not a flame Thrower to
Speaker 2: anyone that paid five hundred dollars. This stunt, aside, the
Speaker 2: Boring Company one praise due to its stated mission to
Speaker 2: reduce the cost of digging tunnels, which are often an
Speaker 2: inevitable and expensive part of road and mass transportation development.
Speaker 2: Like hyperloop, The Boring Company fed into the Tony Stark
Speaker 2: image of a billionaire that could, through sheer force of will,
Speaker 2: change the world and fix once intractable problems. I quote
Speaker 2: Meashable when they said, Musk build machines to travel more
Speaker 2: efficiently on the Earth and above it, so traveling through
Speaker 2: Earth seems within the realm of his capabilities. If anyone
Speaker 2: can transform the seemingly absent minded half joke into world
Speaker 2: changing technology, it's Elon Musk, said The Guardian, And then
Speaker 2: reality here. The Boring Company's first commercial project, a one
Speaker 2: point seven mile tunnel in Las Vegas, where I in
Speaker 2: fact live, wasn't a traditional road tunnel or part of
Speaker 2: an underground metro system. It was, in fact far less impressive,
Speaker 2: a single lane loop where human driven tests, there's varied
Speaker 2: passengers between points of interest in the Las Vegas Convention Center,
Speaker 2: and where traffic jams are a routine frustration for passengers.
Speaker 2: Other projects in other cities, most notably Chicago and Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: have either been canceled or are on indefinite hiatus. There
Speaker 2: is nothing that the Boring Company has done. The tunnel
Speaker 2: in Vegas is useless. It's claustrophobic, it's ugly, feels like
Speaker 2: being in an airport lounge, except there's no food. It's strange.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like it solves a problem other than
Speaker 2: how can Elon must get more attention? And that really
Speaker 2: is what he craves Musk's wafer thin skin, his volatility,
Speaker 2: and his propensity to overpromise an under deliver has never
Speaker 2: been a secret. While he's been able with some success
Speaker 2: to obfiscate a misdirect through a well crafted media persona,
Speaker 2: the clues have always been there. Musk's reality distortion field
Speaker 2: goes some way to explaining how he has managed to
Speaker 2: amass the extent of the power he has and how
Speaker 2: he cemented himself into our nation's most vital industries like transportation, communications, infrastructure,
Speaker 2: and social media. He has a fairly consistent battle plan.
Speaker 2: He makes a big promise, he delivers enough to make
Speaker 2: the media believe he's for real, and then he relies
Speaker 2: upon the fact that very few parts of the media
Speaker 2: will ever follow up with him. There is no challenging
Speaker 2: Elon Musk in the media. The thinnest amounts of criticism
Speaker 2: are usually meant by a horde of crazed Tesla fans
Speaker 2: or at times Elon Musk himself. He's created a paper
Speaker 2: thin media image built on the smallest, thinnest s structures
Speaker 2: of reality. He has found a way to manipulate the
Speaker 2: media using his large amounts of power, money, and his
Speaker 2: few friends. Elon Musk is a danger to society. He's
Speaker 2: a capricious demagogue desperate for more power and attention, and
Speaker 2: he will do whatever he wants, whereever he wants, wherever
Speaker 2: he wants, because we are societally unprepared for billionaires. It's
Speaker 2: no longer healthy, or safe or honest to see Elon
Speaker 2: Musk as a dorky charlatan, carrying sinks into offices or
Speaker 2: destroying social networks to settle insular beefs. Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: a nation state level actor with a net worth larger
Speaker 2: than the GDP of Ukraine. He associates only with equally
Speaker 2: spurious reactionaries like Bill Maher, Ronda Santis and David Sachs,
Speaker 2: and he's easily influenced by anyone who agrees with his
Speaker 2: thinly backed beliefs. Musk isn't polarizing, He's polarization given life,
Speaker 2: an empty man made of contrarianism and grievances, and he'll
Speaker 2: happily change the world based on his own personal beliefs.
Speaker 2: As a result of our market driven government and compliant media,
Speaker 2: Musk has caused and will continue to cause human suffering.
Speaker 2: An actual death in his pursuit of fame, power and capital.
Speaker 2: It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: an investor, an executive, or an industry blow hard. As
Speaker 2: a result of our market driven government and compliant media,
Speaker 2: Musk has caused and will continue to cause human suffering
Speaker 2: an actual death in his pursuit of fame, power and capital.
Speaker 2: It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: an investor, an executive, or an industry blow hard and
Speaker 2: see him as a man who has used his incredible
Speaker 2: wealth and status to twist the world to his petty, ignorant,
Speaker 2: and selfish desires. It's important to realize with complete clarity
Speaker 2: that Musk makes electric cars that are sold around the
Speaker 2: world and sells rockets to NASA. He runs Twitter x
Speaker 2: or whatever it's called these days, one of the largest
Speaker 2: communication networks in the world, and of course Starlink, the
Speaker 2: satellite isp used throughout the world that is specifically marketed
Speaker 2: to places that are otherwise inaccessible to traditional broadband. This
Speaker 2: is not just the goofy redditor posting epic means and
Speaker 2: saying exactly anymore. Elon Musk has chosen to and will
Speaker 2: continue to choose to use his influence over these networks
Speaker 2: to interfere with global events, and because the media and
Speaker 2: the government has been so utterly tepid in their approach
Speaker 2: to him, he's accumulated such power and influence that he
Speaker 2: is on some level unstoppable. Since his acquisition of Twitter
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two and the subsequent layoffs of six
Speaker 2: thousand people, Musk has revealed to the world his deep
Speaker 2: seated reactionary beliefs and his noxious, pathetic victim complex. He
Speaker 2: has become obsessed with the woke mind virus, a term
Speaker 2: that he uses to vaguely refer to everything from progressive
Speaker 2: education on college campuses to San Francisco's growing homeless problem.
Speaker 2: He's made Twitter's box prob one that he tried to
Speaker 2: use to cancel the original acquisition, significantly worse, littering replies
Speaker 2: with bots trying to sell your t shirts or make
Speaker 2: you join the latest script ocurrency scam, some of which
Speaker 2: even include elon Musk's face. He took Twitter's verification system,
Speaker 2: a flawed yet workable solution to verifying whether a tweet
Speaker 2: came from the person who actually sent it, and turned
Speaker 2: it into an eight dollars a month premium account that
Speaker 2: verifies nothing other than whether someone is capable of completing
Speaker 2: a credit card transaction, and by destroying Twitter's trust and
Speaker 2: safety team, Musk has allowed the world's real time communications
Speaker 2: channel to become one rife with racism and other hate speech,
Speaker 2: leading to Fortune five hundred advertisers worrying that the network
Speaker 2: and I quote perpetuates racism, which was raised in a
Speaker 2: Semaphore story from earlier in this year, Musk has shown
Speaker 2: he is more than willing to do things based on
Speaker 2: not what's good for the world, his businesses, or his users,
Speaker 2: but on what will confirm his biases and protect his
Speaker 2: financial interests. As a result of these moronic and malicious choices,
Speaker 2: Twitter's valuation is tanked less than a third of the
Speaker 2: forty four billion dollars he paid for it, losing half
Speaker 2: of their advertising revenue and changing their name to X,
Speaker 2: which some have argued killed further billions of the original
Speaker 2: company's brand value. Being a selfish, ignorant, and gormous Charlatan,
Speaker 2: Musk has now blamed Jewish nonprofit the Anti Defamation League
Speaker 2: for ruining his company, claiming that the ADL had pressured
Speaker 2: advertisers into killing X slash Twitter. Musk had previously sued
Speaker 2: the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another nonprofit that published
Speaker 2: research showing the growth and hate speech on the platform.
Speaker 2: Musk is now fine with the ADL because they resumed
Speaker 2: advertising a deeply confused and utterly pointless exercise that only
Speaker 2: sought to further increase bigotry on his website. For all
Speaker 2: his statements around freedom of speech, Musk is the ultimate
Speaker 2: capitalist dictator, willing to use his money to intimidate and
Speaker 2: censor those who dared to criticize him. He's already done
Speaker 2: so on Twitter, banning an account that tracked publicly available
Speaker 2: records of private jet flights, censoring over four hundred tweets
Speaker 2: critical of Turkish President Erdigan in the week's running up
Speaker 2: to an election, suppress accounts critical of Indian Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Nearendra Modi, and cut access to links to newsletter platform
Speaker 2: Substack when they launched a network competitive to Twitter. Musk
Speaker 2: is a propagandist willing to work with any fellow reactionaries
Speaker 2: who feel scorned by progressivism, personally helping Republican presidential candidate
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis launch his campaign on Twitter and funneling money
Speaker 2: to alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate through Twitter's Creator program
Speaker 2: on our nation's roads. Muscus created another problem. In March
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, According to The Washington Post, a seventeen
Speaker 2: year old stepped off of a school bus on North
Speaker 2: Carolina Highway five point sixty one. As he stepped off
Speaker 2: a testa Model y allegedly with Tesla's autonomous autopilot engaged
Speaker 2: hit him at forty five miles an hour, throwing him
Speaker 2: into the windshield and leaving him lying face down on
Speaker 2: the pavement. He thankfully survived, but broke and fractured his
Speaker 2: leg in the process. Incident, which the National Highway Traffic
Speaker 2: Safety Administration is still investigating, is part of a growing
Speaker 2: list of victims of Tesla's open beta test of quote
Speaker 2: full self driving, a buggy dangerous software available on hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of Tesla vehicles allowing users to let the
Speaker 2: car drive, which has resulted in the deaths of seventeen
Speaker 2: people and led to seven one hundred and thirty six
Speaker 2: other injuries and crashes. In theory, activating Tesla's full self
Speaker 2: driving lets your Tesla take the wheel, making turns, avoiding
Speaker 2: other vehicles, maintaining speed avoiding objects and theoretically helping you
Speaker 2: arrive safely at your destination. The problem is that this
Speaker 2: has only ever been a beta, meaning that every new
Speaker 2: release involves some sort of new bug, such as the
Speaker 2: one that Electric Car blog editor Fred Lambert claimed tried
Speaker 2: to kill him in September twenty twenty three by trying
Speaker 2: to veer at highway speed into the median strip on
Speaker 2: the road. One might imagine that such a thing is illegal.
Speaker 2: Effectively unleashing beta software onto the world's road without sufficiently
Speaker 2: testing it would for any normal person lead to imprisonment
Speaker 2: and a lifetime of fines. Musk, thanks to his incredible
Speaker 2: wealth and power equivalent to that of a small nation,
Speaker 2: has managed to avoid much scrutiny with the occasional government
Speaker 2: investigations that never seem to go anywhere, and despite a
Speaker 2: well documented culture of racism and sexism, very little seems
Speaker 2: to happen to test the at all. This is because
Speaker 2: our society, in its government, its media, and its citizen
Speaker 2: try is woefully unprepared to deal with billionaires. Musk is
Speaker 2: able to operate as a noxious, abusive, and reckless monster
Speaker 2: in public, using his companies as vehicles to lend himself,
Speaker 2: money and political weapons with little scrutiny or punishment on
Speaker 2: their own. One might fob off these concerns as one
Speaker 2: time things, but the reality is there's a pattern of
Speaker 2: malicious and capricious acts or one after another, again and again,
Speaker 2: done in broad daylight for all to see. Musk has
Speaker 2: shown he will push what ever envelope he sees fit,
Speaker 2: and as Ronan Pharaoh's New York Magazine piece shows, there
Speaker 2: are very few people in the government, former and otherwise
Speaker 2: anywhere really, not investors, not other members of the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley elite, who are willing or able to get in
Speaker 2: the way. Musk is so unbelievably rich, well connected, and
Speaker 2: powerful that he can push around just about anybody, even
Speaker 2: if they work for the Pentagon. Yet Musk's desperation for
Speaker 2: attention and adulation mean that he can be pulled in
Speaker 2: any direction that feels like it scorns his critics, And
Speaker 2: when his critics are pretty much anyone who isn't a
Speaker 2: right wing lunatic, it almost guarantees he will continue to
Speaker 2: power around with authoritarian regimes that will influence his remarkably
Speaker 2: malleable brain. The actual solution will be to treat Musk
Speaker 2: as what he is, a dangerous entity with a higher
Speaker 2: GDP than Ukraine and an ego that rivals their invaders
Speaker 2: president regardless of what happened in crimea Musk is the
Speaker 2: ability to know when attacks are happening and influence their
Speaker 2: outcome as a result of his for profit, privately held
Speaker 2: satellite internet communications firm that the US government is paying for.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a nation state global threat and must
Speaker 2: be treated as such. He must be treated as if
Speaker 2: he will make decisions based only on what he believes
Speaker 2: will benefit or amuse him. He's the wish dot Com
Speaker 2: version of Bond's earned stavro Blofeld, an offensive, charmless, and
Speaker 2: boorish monster that has successfully bought his way into the
Speaker 2: elite and found that no matter what he does, their
Speaker 2: patience is unlimited and their scruples are few. Musk, like
Speaker 2: another high profile narcissist, the former President Donald Trump, routinely
Speaker 2: finds himself ensnared in litigation, both in regulators and private individuals,
Speaker 2: even though the government never really seems to actually do
Speaker 2: anything to him. The SEC is currently investigating Musk for
Speaker 2: securities violations concerning his acquisition of Twitter. This would be
Speaker 2: his third tryst with the Commission, the first in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: the second in twenty nineteen. In both cases, very little happen. However,
Speaker 2: at the same time, he faces actions from former employees
Speaker 2: stiffed on severance pay and from those who allege age
Speaker 2: and gender discrimination with factors in their dismissal from Twitter.
Speaker 2: For Musk, these lawsuits are unlikely to be anything other
Speaker 2: than the minor annoyance rather than any kind of existential
Speaker 2: throat or something that otherwise curbs is most egregious of behaviors.
Speaker 2: There are people who could help. There are people that
Speaker 2: could sway.
Speaker 3: You on Musk.
Speaker 2: You know, people as rich as him, Tim Cook, Mark Benioff,
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the world's
Speaker 2: billionaires feel no need to correct Musk's behavior. They don't
Speaker 2: need to interfere or even chide him for his disgraceful
Speaker 2: acts because doing so would potentially make their actions and
Speaker 2: wealth more conspicuous, which is far more important to protect
Speaker 2: than free speech or human lives really, anything that normal
Speaker 2: people face. They may act as if they have civic
Speaker 2: responsibility for the few people we have that could actually
Speaker 2: change things. The ones with the war chest to box
Speaker 2: out Musk. Blocking X from app stores and excluding him
Speaker 2: from their circles are sitting on their hands. One approach
Speaker 2: proposed by Stephen Feldstein in The Atlantic is to treat
Speaker 2: Musks businesses as they are vital to national security, and
Speaker 2: as a result, take them into public control when necessary.
Speaker 2: This wouldn't be without precedent. The legislation that allows this,
Speaker 2: the Defense Production Act, has been invoked fifty times since
Speaker 2: its inception, both in times of war and civil necessity
Speaker 2: like the twenty twenty two infant formula shortage. While Stalink
Speaker 2: would remain a privately held company, it would be obliged
Speaker 2: to prioritize the national need. Full nationalization, Falsteine noted, would
Speaker 2: also be a possibility if Musk failed to cooperate. Full
Speaker 2: nationalization would be a drastic measure. But at this point,
Speaker 2: what other options exist for Elon Musk? What other options
Speaker 2: exist for someone that is so reckless, so dangerous, so selfish,
Speaker 2: and so capricious. What options exist to deal with someone
Speaker 2: who has inserted himself into the most vital aspects of
Speaker 2: the American economy, making himself billions of dollars off of governments, subsidies,
Speaker 2: and contracts. How the hell do you handle someone who
Speaker 2: has insulated himself from media scrutiny despite holding immense nation
Speaker 2: state power. Musk is not a goofy weirdow or the
Speaker 2: real life Tony Stark. He's a fragile, meanhearted ogre one
Speaker 2: hell bent on seeing his whims brought to life at
Speaker 2: any cost. The only way to write about this man,
Speaker 2: the only fair coverage of Elon Musk, the only clear
Speaker 2: perception of this man, is to frame him as a villain,
Speaker 2: a bigot, a bully, and a crook. But what do
Speaker 2: you do about the man who has everything?
Speaker 4: Hello? Everyone, it's me James, and I am joining you
Speaker 4: today for another and long series of the little recordings
Speaker 4: where I ask you to give us your money. Once again,
Speaker 4: I am asking you to support the mutual aid work
Speaker 4: being done at the border. I'm recording this in November,
Speaker 4: and this week we have terrible weather forecasts that will
Speaker 4: make conditions in her Cumba extremely dangerous for people who
Speaker 4: are detained out there by the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 4: It will mean that it's no exaggeration to say that
Speaker 4: people's lives will be at risk and that the important
Speaker 4: mutual aid work that's already been done will only become
Speaker 4: more important as we get rain, we get snow, and
Speaker 4: we get cold temperatures, and people continue to be detained
Speaker 4: without shelter, food, water, or adequate clothing. If you would
Speaker 4: like to support those efforts, you can find the way
Speaker 4: to do so at link tree slash Border Kindness. There's
Speaker 4: a dot before the ee, so it's l I NK
Speaker 4: tr ee slash Border Kindness. I'll also post a link
Speaker 4: on my Twitter if you'd like to find it there.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Hello, everybody, Welcome to It could happen here.
Speaker 5: This is Sharene. I'm back to talk about Palestine because
Speaker 5: it's important, But when it comes to the history of
Speaker 5: the creation of Israel and the subsequent ethnic cleansing and
Speaker 5: mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, I feel like there's
Speaker 5: a part of history that often gets overlooked. People usually
Speaker 5: say Israel was created in nineteen forty eight, but the
Speaker 5: intent to create it actually started decades before that. We're
Speaker 5: going to be talking about the Balfour Declaration, which resulted
Speaker 5: in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians and
Speaker 5: was issued over a century ago. On November two, nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 5: The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish
Speaker 5: state in Palestine into a reality. The pledge is generally
Speaker 5: viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nekba,
Speaker 5: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in nineteen forty eight, and
Speaker 5: the conflict that ensued with the zion Estate of Israel.
Speaker 5: The Balfour Declaration is regarded as one of the most
Speaker 5: controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the
Speaker 5: Arab world. So what is it the Balfour Declaration It
Speaker 5: means or is translated to Balfour's Promise in Arabic. It
Speaker 5: was a public pledge by Britain in nineteen seventeen, declaring
Speaker 5: its aim to quote establish a national home for the
Speaker 5: Jewish people in Palestine. The declaration came in the form
Speaker 5: of a letter from Britain's then Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour,
Speaker 5: addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British
Speaker 5: Jewish community at the time. The declaration was made during
Speaker 5: World War One, which was just a reminder from nineteen
Speaker 5: fourteen to nineteen eighteen, and this declaration was included in
Speaker 5: the terms of the British mandate for Palestine after the
Speaker 5: dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. So on November two, nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 5: the Balfour Declaration became the basis for the movement to
Speaker 5: create a Jewish state in Palestine. A week later, the
Speaker 5: declaration was published in the Times of London for all
Speaker 5: the public to see. The content of the letter is
Speaker 5: rather short, so I'm just going to read some of
Speaker 5: it right now. It goes, Dear Lord Rothschild, I have
Speaker 5: much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His
Speaker 5: Majesty's Government, the following Declaration of Sympathy with the Jewish
Speaker 5: Zionist Aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by
Speaker 5: the Cabinet. His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment
Speaker 5: in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,
Speaker 5: and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement
Speaker 5: of this object. Keep in mind, at this time the
Speaker 5: British had no control over Palestine. It was still under
Speaker 5: the Ottoman Empire, but in this letter Britain was essentially
Speaker 5: preparing to take it over in the very near future.
Speaker 5: I also want to include that at this time Jewish
Speaker 5: people only made up six percent of the Palestinian population.
Speaker 5: I'm going to play audio from a video posted by
Speaker 5: former guests of the show The Amazing Sim Kern, where
Speaker 5: they break down the last part of the declaration. Sim
Speaker 5: is referencing in this audio Rashid Khalidi's book The one
Speaker 5: Hundred Years War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism
Speaker 5: and Resistance nineteen seventeen to twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which
Speaker 6: may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non
Speaker 6: Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights in political status
Speaker 6: enjoyed by Jews in any other country. That last bit
Speaker 6: sounds like, all right, well, he's saying we were not
Speaker 6: going to tread on the civil and religious rights of Palestinians.
Speaker 7: That's pretty good, right.
Speaker 6: But in The One hundred Years War on Palestine, the
Speaker 6: book by Rashid Khalidi that I am encouraging you all
Speaker 6: to keep reading along with me this week, Khalidi does
Speaker 6: a great job breaking down the rhetoric of this declaration
Speaker 6: and why it was actually a declaration of war upon
Speaker 6: the Palestinian people. Yes, they were promised civil and religious rights,
Speaker 6: but they were not granted political or national rights, and
Speaker 6: this meant that for the next fifteen years, as people
Speaker 6: in Palestine tried to resist the establishment of a zion
Speaker 6: Est state within their country, the takeover of all their
Speaker 6: land by Zionist groups, they were unable to find any
Speaker 6: audience in the halls of power because Balfour had declared
Speaker 6: them to not have these rights and to not really
Speaker 6: be people. They weren't even referred to as Arabs or
Speaker 6: Palestinians in the Declaration, just non Jewish. Ninety four percent
Speaker 6: of the people of this land had just been written
Speaker 6: out of existence as far as the Western powers were concerned.
Speaker 6: Kalidi describes how between nineteen seventeen and nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 6: almost all of the organized Palestinian resistance to Zionism was
Speaker 6: peaceful and legalistic. They would form political committees, but the
Speaker 6: British said, you're not allowed to have political activity and
Speaker 6: shut those down harshly. They would send delegations to the
Speaker 6: League of Nations, to other countries to try to get
Speaker 6: to support to Britain, but they would not even be
Speaker 6: seen in the halls of power. They would not even
Speaker 6: get audiences because they were told basically, as Palestinians, you
Speaker 6: have no rights allowed to have nationalistic interests.
Speaker 5: As I mentioned, the declaration was included in the terms
Speaker 5: of the British Mandate for Palestine. The so called mandate
Speaker 5: system set up by the Allied powers was a thinly
Speaker 5: veiled form of colonialism and occupation. In retrospective course, it's
Speaker 5: not a very thin veil at all. The mandate system
Speaker 5: transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by
Speaker 5: the powers defeated in the war Germany, Austria, Hungary, the
Speaker 5: Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria to those who were victorious in
Speaker 5: the war. The declared aim of the mandate system was
Speaker 5: to allow the winners of the war to administer the
Speaker 5: newly emerging states until they could become independent. The case
Speaker 5: of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the
Speaker 5: post war mandates. The main goal of the British mandate
Speaker 5: there was to create the conditions for the establishment of
Speaker 5: a Jewish national home, even though Jews, again at the time,
Speaker 5: constituted only six percent of the population. Upon the start
Speaker 5: of the mandate, the British began to facilitate immigration of
Speaker 5: European Jews to Palestine, between nineteen twenty two and nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty five, the Jewish population rose to nearly twenty seven
Speaker 5: percent of the total population. And even though the Balfour
Speaker 5: Declaration included the caveat that quote nothing shall be done
Speaker 5: which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the
Speaker 5: existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, the British Mandate was
Speaker 5: set up in a way to equip Jews with the
Speaker 5: tools to establish self rule at the expense of the
Speaker 5: Palestinian Arabs. Understandably enough, the document is seen as controversial
Speaker 5: for several reasons. First, it was, in the words of
Speaker 5: the late Palestine American academic Edward Zaid, quote made by
Speaker 5: European power about a non European territory in a flat
Speaker 5: disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native
Speaker 5: majority resident in that territory. In essence, the Balfour Declaration
Speaker 5: promised Jews a land where the natives made up more
Speaker 5: than ninety percent of the populace. Second, the declaration was
Speaker 5: one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British.
Speaker 5: Surprise surprise, when the declaration was released, Britain had already
Speaker 5: promised the Arab's independence from the Ottoman Empire in the
Speaker 5: nineteen fifteen Hussein McMahon Correspondents. However, the British also promised
Speaker 5: the French and a separate treaty known as the nineteen
Speaker 5: sixteen psychs Pico Agreement, that the majority of Palestine would
Speaker 5: be under international administration, while the rest of the region
Speaker 5: would be split between the two colonial powers after the war.
Speaker 5: This Hussain McMahon correspondence was a series of letters exchanged
Speaker 5: in nineteen fifteen to nineteen sixteen during World War One
Speaker 5: between Hussain and Beinnati, who was the Emir of Mecca,
Speaker 5: and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt.
Speaker 5: In general terms, the correspondence effectively traded British support of
Speaker 5: an independent Arab state for the Arab assistance in opposing
Speaker 5: the Ottoman Empire. However, the correspondence was later contradicted by
Speaker 5: two things, the incompatible terms of the sex Peco Agreement,
Speaker 5: which was secretly concluded between Britain and France in May
Speaker 5: nineteen sixteen, and Britain's Balfour Declaration in nineteen seventeen. The declaration, however,
Speaker 5: meant that Palestine would come under British occupation, that the
Speaker 5: Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence. Third,
Speaker 5: the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in
Speaker 5: international law, that of a quote national home. The use
Speaker 5: of the vague term national home for the Jewish people
Speaker 5: as opposed to state left the meaning open to interpretation.
Speaker 5: Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase quote the
Speaker 5: reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish state, but that was
Speaker 5: later changed. However, in a meeting with Zionist leader Heim
Speaker 5: Wizman in nineteen twenty two, Arthur Balfour and then Prime
Speaker 5: Minister David Lloyd George reportedly said that the Balfour Declaration
Speaker 5: was quote always meant to be an eventual Jewish state. Okay,
Speaker 5: let's take our first break here because.
Speaker 4: I have to.
Speaker 5: Okay, bye, and we're back. So we're talking about the
Speaker 5: Balfour Declaration. But who exactly is Arthur Balfour. Sim Kern
Speaker 5: in that same video that I played earlier, explains that
Speaker 5: he can be seen as the person most responsible for
Speaker 5: violence in the Middle East for the past century because
Speaker 5: when he wrote his declaration in nineteen seventeen, he effectively
Speaker 5: wrote Palestinian rights out of existence and surprising no one.
Speaker 5: Arthur Balfour was a terrible guy. He was a white supremacist,
Speaker 5: a racist, and an anti Semite. The Balfour Declaration is
Speaker 5: a statement that can fit into two tweets. As we mentioned,
Speaker 5: Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, announced
Speaker 5: that the British government would support establishing a national home
Speaker 5: for the Jewish people in Palestine, and more than one
Speaker 5: hundred years later, those written words continue to define the
Speaker 5: dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians. In twenty seventeen, marking one
Speaker 5: hundred years the declaration, Little Bitch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Speaker 5: and Yahoo went to London to commemorate the centennial occasion
Speaker 5: with Theresa May. I hope you know by now, though,
Speaker 5: that the declaration is really nothing worth celebrating, And though
Speaker 5: he may be most known for aiding the Zionist cause
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventeen, it's crucial to remember that Arthur Balfour
Speaker 5: was a white supremacist. He made that much clear in
Speaker 5: his own words. In nineteen o six, the British House
Speaker 5: of Commons was engaged in a debate about the Native
Speaker 5: blacks in South Africa. Nearly all the members of Parliament
Speaker 5: agreed that the disenfranchisement of the blacks was evil, but
Speaker 5: not Balfour, who almost alone argued against it. When talking
Speaker 5: about the black people in South Africa, he said, we
Speaker 5: have to face the facts. Men are not born equal
Speaker 5: the white in the black races are not born with
Speaker 5: equal capacities. They are born with different capacities which education
Speaker 5: cannot and will not change. But Balfour's troubling views were
Speaker 5: not limited to Africa. In fact, despite his now iconic
Speaker 5: support for Zionism that celebrated by Zionists everywhere, he was
Speaker 5: not exactly a friend to the Jews. In the late
Speaker 5: nineteenth century, Pagram's targeting Jews in the Pale of Settlement
Speaker 5: had led to waves of Jewish flight westward to England
Speaker 5: and the United States. Little insert here that the Pale
Speaker 5: of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire
Speaker 5: with varying borders that existed from seventeen ninety one to
Speaker 5: nineteen seventeen, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed,
Speaker 5: and beyond which Jewish residency permanent or temporary was mostly forbidden.
Speaker 5: So created by imperial decree. The Jewish pale of Settlement
Speaker 5: was that part of the Russian Empire within which Russia's
Speaker 5: Jewish population was required to live and work for more
Speaker 5: than one hundred thirty years between the late eighteenth and
Speaker 5: the early twentieth century. Although it was initially intended to
Speaker 5: forestall commerce between Jews and the general population of Russia,
Speaker 5: the restrictions imposed by the pale fostered the development of
Speaker 5: a distinctive religious and ethnic culture in an area covering
Speaker 5: roughly three hundred eighty six thousand square miles or one
Speaker 5: million square kilometers between the Baltic and Black Seas. The
Speaker 5: word pale as used in this sense, comes from the
Speaker 5: Latin polus or stake, one that might be used to
Speaker 5: indicate a boundary. A pale is thus a district separated
Speaker 5: from the surrounding country. It may be defined by physical boundaries,
Speaker 5: or it may be distinguished by a different administrative or
Speaker 5: legal system. The Jewish pale off Settlement was both a
Speaker 5: defined area within the Russian Empire and a legal entity
Speaker 5: regulated by laws that did not apply to the Russian
Speaker 5: Empire as a whole. So back to the main narrative,
Speaker 5: the targeting of Jews in the pale of settlement led
Speaker 5: to immigration of many Jews to the West, to England
Speaker 5: and the US. This influx of refugees led to an
Speaker 5: increase in British anti immigrant racism and outright anti Semitism,
Speaker 5: themes not unfamiliar to US today. Support for political action
Speaker 5: against immigrants grew as the English public demanded immigration control
Speaker 5: to keep certain immigrants, particularly Jews, out of the country.
Speaker 5: So this scared and xenophobic public found a sympathetic ear
Speaker 5: in Balfour. In nineteen oh five, while serving as Prime Minister,
Speaker 5: Balfour presided over the passage of the Aliens Act. This
Speaker 5: legislation put the first restrictions on immigration into Great Britain,
Speaker 5: and it was primarily aimed at restricting Jewish immigration. According
Speaker 5: to historians, Balfour had personally delivered passionate speeches about the
Speaker 5: imperative to restrict the waves of Jews fleeing the Russian
Speaker 5: Empire from entering Britain. So maybe it's not as astonishing
Speaker 5: as you would think that Balfour, whose support of the
Speaker 5: Zionist cause has made him a hero among Zionists, would
Speaker 5: have implemented anti Jewish laws. But the truth is his
Speaker 5: support of Zionism stemmed from the exis exact same source
Speaker 5: as his desire to limit Jewish immigration to Britain. Both
Speaker 5: of these things can be traced back to his white
Speaker 5: supremacist beliefs. Balfour lived in an area of stirring nationalism
Speaker 5: highly defined by ethno religious identity. Because of these sentiments.
Speaker 5: The early twentieth century was a time when seemingly liberal
Speaker 5: Western nations struggled with the challenge of incorporating Jewish citizens.
Speaker 5: Balfour wanted to keep the UK as a white Christian
Speaker 5: ethno state. What the Zionists provided Balfour with was a
Speaker 5: solution to the challenges Jewish citizens posed to his ethno
Speaker 5: nationalist vision, a solution that didn't force him to reckon
Speaker 5: with them. Instead of insisting that societies except all citizens
Speaker 5: as equals, regardless of racial or religious background, the Zionist's
Speaker 5: movement offered a different answer, separation. Balfour saw in Zionism
Speaker 5: not just a blessing for Jews, but for the West
Speaker 5: as well. In nineteen nineteen, he wrote the introduction to
Speaker 5: Nahem Sokolo's History of Zionism. In this introduction, Balfour wrote
Speaker 5: that the Zionist movement would quote mitigate the age long
Speaker 5: miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its
Speaker 5: midst of a body which it too long regarded as
Speaker 5: alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable
Speaker 5: to expel or to absorb. By both giving Jews a
Speaker 5: place to go and a place to leave, Zionism seemingly
Speaker 5: solved two problems at once in Balfour's mind. In other words,
Speaker 5: his support of Zionism was motivated by his desire to
Speaker 5: protect Britain from the negative effects or the miseries, as
Speaker 5: he said, of having Jews in its population. Rather than
Speaker 5: protecting the rights of one of its minorities, Britain could
Speaker 5: simply export them, or at least not import anymore. This
Speaker 5: is one of the many reasons Zionism itself is anti Semitic.
Speaker 5: We can even fast forward to now and see how
Speaker 5: Zionists are telling telling anti Zionist Jewish people that they're
Speaker 5: no longer Jewish for supporting Palestine. That belief and statement
Speaker 5: in itself is extremely anti Semitic. Criticizing Israel on the
Speaker 5: Israeli government, however, is not but putting that aside. We
Speaker 5: can see that from the very beginning, even in its origin,
Speaker 5: Zionists associated and allied themselves with the worst kinds of people,
Speaker 5: like people who believed that Jewish people are quote an
Speaker 5: alien and hostile body among them. Needless to say, Balfour's
Speaker 5: view of Zionism is steeped in the same kind of
Speaker 5: white supremacy as Balfour's view of South Africa's blacks, But
Speaker 5: his support of the Zionist dream had another problem. Rather
Speaker 5: than solving the problem of how to handle a minority
Speaker 5: living in a white majority country, the Balfour Declaration just
Speaker 5: shifted the same problem into a different geography. The tension
Speaker 5: between ethno nationalism and equality is definitely and equally present
Speaker 5: today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and see
Speaker 5: where the Israeli state rules over the fate of millions
Speaker 5: of Palestinians who either have no right to vote, are
Speaker 5: treated as second class citizens, or our refugees denied repatriation.
Speaker 5: Today it is Israel that views Palestinians as demographic threats
Speaker 5: and sees the quote presence in its midst of a
Speaker 5: body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile,
Speaker 5: by which it was equally unable to expel or to
Speaker 5: absorb let's take our second break here again because I
Speaker 5: have to so see you later and we are back.
Speaker 5: So that Balfour's legacy of supremacy persists as much as
Speaker 5: British support for Israel does is no accident. We have
Speaker 5: arrived at this point today because the white supremacist attitudes
Speaker 5: of Balfour informed policy lending imperial right to a project
Speaker 5: in pursuit of national self determination for Jews by trampling
Speaker 5: on the rights of native non Jews. Remarkably, by Telfour
Speaker 5: was unabashedly aware of the hypocrisy in his stance. In
Speaker 5: nineteen nineteen, he wrote a letter that said this to
Speaker 5: the British Prime Minister. The weak point of our position,
Speaker 5: of course, is that in the case of Palestine, we
Speaker 5: deliberately and rightly declined to accept the principle of self determination.
Speaker 5: We do not propose even to go through the form
Speaker 5: of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country,
Speaker 5: the seven hundred thousand Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.
Speaker 5: Those are his words and a letter that he wrote
Speaker 5: to the British Prime Minister. So there's no misconstruing that
Speaker 5: there those seven hundred thousand Arabs, of course, made up
Speaker 5: approximately ninety percent of the population of Palestine. Again bears
Speaker 5: repeating that Jewish people, before this declaration was implemented, made
Speaker 5: up only six percent of the population, and therein lies
Speaker 5: the fundamental problem that continues through this day, more than
Speaker 5: one hundred years later. Palestinians are denied the right to
Speaker 5: have rights because from the outset their views, their human
Speaker 5: rights and by extension, their very humanity, were consistently seen
Speaker 5: as inferior to those of others. That was clear in
Speaker 5: Balfour's perspective and the British Mandate's policy, and it persists
Speaker 5: in one form or another in many, if not most,
Speaker 5: of the policies of the Zionist State of Israel through
Speaker 5: this day. In modern times, as much as in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 5: the battle between ethno nationalism and equality has risen to
Speaker 5: the foreground. We saw this in Donald Trump's rise in
Speaker 5: America and in Theresa Mays brexited Britain. Rather than resolving
Speaker 5: this tension, Balfour's support for Zionism merely exported it to Palestine,
Speaker 5: and resisting the legacy of Balfour's racism is absolutely necessary.
Speaker 5: If there is ever to be peace in Palestine and beyond.
Speaker 5: A little bit more history here about why this declaration
Speaker 5: was issued. The question of why has been subject of
Speaker 5: debate for historians for decades, with historians using different sources
Speaker 5: to suggest various explanations. Some argue that many in the
Speaker 5: British government at the time were Zionists themselves. Others say
Speaker 5: the declaration was issued out of an anti Semitic reasoning
Speaker 5: that giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution
Speaker 5: to the quote unquote Jewish problem. In mainstream academia, however,
Speaker 5: there are a set of reasons over which there is
Speaker 5: a general consensus. One, control over Palestine was a strategic
Speaker 5: imperial interest to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within
Speaker 5: Britain's sphere of influence. Two, Britain had to side with
Speaker 5: Zionists to rally support among the Jews in the United
Speaker 5: States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to
Speaker 5: stay in the war until victory. Three, there was intense
Speaker 5: Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in
Speaker 5: Britain and the British government, as well as some of
Speaker 5: the officials in the government being Zionists themselves, for Jews
Speaker 5: were being persecuted in Europe and the British government was
Speaker 5: sympathetic to their suffering. I think that last point is
Speaker 5: usually used as a validation to why Israel exists today,
Speaker 5: but feeling sorry for a people and giving them someone
Speaker 5: else's land is really not a solution in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Of course, the Balfour Declaration was also not received well
Speaker 5: by Palestinians and Arabs. In nineteen nineteen, then US President
Speaker 5: Woodrow Wilson appointed a commission to look into public opinion
Speaker 5: on the mandatory system in Syria and Palestine. The investigation
Speaker 5: was known as the King Krane Commission. It found that
Speaker 5: the majority of Palestinians expressed a strong opposition to Zionism,
Speaker 5: leading the conductors of the commission to advise a modification
Speaker 5: of the mandate's goal. The late Anni Ebba Adhadi, a
Speaker 5: Palestinian political figure, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs,
Speaker 5: saying it was made by an English foreigner who had
Speaker 5: no claim to Palestine, to a foreign Jew who had
Speaker 5: no right to it. However, it's very important to mention
Speaker 5: here that the other vital important source for insight into
Speaker 5: Palestine opinion on the declaration at the time. AKA the
Speaker 5: press was closed down by the Ottomans at the start
Speaker 5: of the war in nineteen fourteen and only began to
Speaker 5: reappear in nineteen nineteen, but it was under British military
Speaker 5: censorship in November nineteen nineteen when the Alisti La Da Laivi,
Speaker 5: the Arab independence newspaper based in Damascus, was reopened. One
Speaker 5: article had a response to a public speech given by
Speaker 5: Herbert Samuel, a Jewish Cabinet minister in London, on the
Speaker 5: second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The article said quote
Speaker 5: our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must
Speaker 5: remain Arab. In nineteen twenty, the Third Palestine Congress and
Speaker 5: Haifa decried the British government's plans to support the Zionist
Speaker 5: project and rejected the declaration as a violation of international
Speaker 5: law and the rights of the indigenous population. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: pull audio from Sim's video here again. They kind of
Speaker 5: summarize in a really good way what happened in the
Speaker 5: years leading up to the Nukaba.
Speaker 6: So here is Sim and even still until nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 6: Palestinians are trying to peacefully, legalistically resist decolonization, which, unfortunately
Speaker 6: history teaches us doesn't work that great usually. However, inspired
Speaker 6: by the examples of Iraq and Syria, which had managed
Speaker 6: to overthrow their colonizers starting with a general strike, Palestinians
Speaker 6: organize a strike in nineteen thirty six. Again, this starts
Speaker 6: out as just a peaceful strike, but it is brutally
Speaker 6: repressed by the British overlords.
Speaker 7: We're like, no, you're not.
Speaker 6: Allowed to strike. You are our captive wage slavery labor
Speaker 6: for us.
Speaker 7: You have to go do your work.
Speaker 6: Khaleedi shows how Britain was also very strategically sowing internal
Speaker 6: divisions within the Palestinian leadership, turning people certain to their
Speaker 6: side by bribing them to work again one another. And
Speaker 6: so the strike fell apart in nineteen thirty six. But
Speaker 6: then only then in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 7: Did an armed revolt breakout.
Speaker 6: Much is made by Zionists about this Arab revolt and
Speaker 6: how this was justification for the Knukba, which would ultimately
Speaker 6: kill fifteen thousand Palestinians and displace hundreds of thousands more.
Speaker 6: But this was no religious massacre, and that's reflected in
Speaker 6: the casualties. Yes, several hundred Jews died during the revolt,
Speaker 6: but it took one hundred thousand British troops to suppress
Speaker 6: the revolt, and the fighting was mostly between the Arabs
Speaker 6: and the British. And it's estimated that between fourteen and
Speaker 6: seventeen percent of the adult male Arab population was killed.
Speaker 7: Wounded, imprisoned, or exiled.
Speaker 6: So the population of Palestinians was absolutely devastated by this
Speaker 6: revolt by the end of it. What struck me a
Speaker 6: lot reading the conclusion of this chapter was, you know,
Speaker 6: the Western media, which is so Islamophobic, portrays Palestinians as
Speaker 6: like inherently violent and bloodthirsty and anti Semitic, but that
Speaker 6: just isn't reflected in this history at all. In fact,
Speaker 6: as Khaldi mentioned, several scholars argue that, you know, the
Speaker 6: Palestinians really should have organized an armed revolt earlier. It
Speaker 6: was too late by the time they did, but they
Speaker 6: had spent fifteen years since the Balfour Declaration trying peacefully
Speaker 6: and legalistically to earn their rights, and that was ultimately
Speaker 6: a dead end. But Palestinians really clearly did not want
Speaker 6: to fight a war. It wasn't until they'd exhausted every
Speaker 6: single other option to them. They tried legal routes, they
Speaker 6: tried organizing, they tried a strike. You know, they had
Speaker 6: done everything they could. And this was a population that
Speaker 6: had been stripped of huge amounts of its land, that
Speaker 6: was destitute, that was impoverished, that was starving, that was
Speaker 6: shut out from any economic opportunity in the land they
Speaker 6: had lived on for millennia. They were farmers. They didn't
Speaker 6: want to wage a war. They wanted to make olive oil.
Speaker 6: But because this guy didn't want Jews moving to the UK,
Speaker 6: they didn't get to have their country anymore.
Speaker 5: Even prior to the Balfour Declaration in the British Mandate,
Speaker 5: Pan Arab newspapers warned against the motives of the Zionist
Speaker 5: movement and its potential outcomes displacing Palestinians from their land.
Speaker 5: Khalil Sakakini, a jerusalemit writer and teacher, described Palestine in
Speaker 5: the immediate aftermath of the war as follows. A nation
Speaker 5: which has long been in the depths of sleep, only
Speaker 5: wakes if it is rudely shaken by events, only arises
Speaker 5: little by little. This was the situation of Palestine, which
Speaker 5: for many centuries has been in the deepest sleep until
Speaker 5: it was shaken by the Great War, shocked by the
Speaker 5: Zionist movement and violated by the illegal policy of the British,
Speaker 5: and awoke little by little. And while Britain is generally
Speaker 5: and understandably held responsible for the Balfour Declaration, it is
Speaker 5: important to note that the statement would not have been
Speaker 5: made without prior approval from the other Allied powers. During
Speaker 5: World War One, in a war cabinet meeting on September
Speaker 5: nineteen seventeen, British ministers decided that the quote views of
Speaker 5: President Wilson should be obtained before any declaration was made,
Speaker 5: and indeed, according to the Cabinet's minutes on October fourth,
Speaker 5: the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour, confirming that Wilson was quote
Speaker 5: extremely favorable to the movement. France, surprise, surprise, maybe to
Speaker 5: no one, was also involved and announced its support prior
Speaker 5: to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. A May nineteen
Speaker 5: seventeen letter from Jules Cambon, a French diplomat, to Nahem Sokolo,
Speaker 5: the Polish Zionist, expressed the sympathetic views of the French
Speaker 5: government towards a quote Jewish colonization in Palestine. This letter,
Speaker 5: again the precursor to the Balfour Declaration, says it would
Speaker 5: be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist,
Speaker 5: by the protection of the Allied powers in the renaissance
Speaker 5: of the Jewish nationality in that land from which the
Speaker 5: people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago. The
Speaker 5: Balfour Declaration again is widely seen as the precursor to
Speaker 5: the nineteen forty eight Palestinian Nekba, when Zionist armed groups
Speaker 5: who were trained by the British forcibly expelled more than
Speaker 5: seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians from their homeland, and
Speaker 5: they massacred fifteen thousand Palestinians. Despite some opposition within the
Speaker 5: war cabinet predicting such an outcome was probable, the British
Speaker 5: government still chose to issue the declaration, and there is
Speaker 5: no doubt that the British mandate created the conditions for
Speaker 5: the Jewish minority to gain superiority in Palestine and build
Speaker 5: a state for themselves at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.
Speaker 5: When the British decided to terminate their mandate in nineteen
Speaker 5: forty seven and transfer the question of Palestine to the
Speaker 5: United Nations. The Jews already had an army that was
Speaker 5: formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created
Speaker 5: to fight side by side with the British in World
Speaker 5: War II. More importantly, the British allowed the Jews to
Speaker 5: establish self governing institutions such as the Jewish Agency, to
Speaker 5: prepare themselves for a state when it came to it,
Speaker 5: while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so, paving the
Speaker 5: way for the nineteen forty eight ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Speaker 5: We're going to end the episode with one more audio
Speaker 5: clip from Sim's video. I just think it really describes
Speaker 5: and summarizes why exactly Arthur Balfour is an extremely evil person.
Speaker 6: So here is Sim and the violence that has sprung
Speaker 6: from the creation of Israel goes so much further beyond
Speaker 6: its borders. I mean, the whole history of the Middle
Speaker 6: East and a Western imperial conquest in the Middle East
Speaker 6: hinges on Israel being there, all of US imperialism, the
Speaker 6: wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, I mean, all of
Speaker 6: that would have been impossible without the existence of Israel.
Speaker 6: So add Arthur Balfour to your list of the greatest
Speaker 6: war criminals of all time.
Speaker 5: It truly feels silly to be talking about anything else
Speaker 5: at this time. So I do want to mention here
Speaker 5: that at the time of this recording, there are over
Speaker 5: eleven thousand Palestinians who have been by the settler colony
Speaker 5: of Israel in their genocide that is currently happening. Nearly
Speaker 5: five thousand children are gone, have been slaughtered. Every time
Speaker 5: I open my phone, I see the worst thing I've
Speaker 5: ever seen in my life. And there are images that
Speaker 5: we're seeing of. I mean, you've seen them, children under
Speaker 5: the rubble, crying for help, parents losing their babies, and
Speaker 5: it doesn't make sense for me to describe the images.
Speaker 5: But my point is we have never seen a genocide
Speaker 5: take place right before our eyes. All the proof is there.
Speaker 5: Israeli leaders have been very clear in their intention for genocide.
Speaker 5: Just for example, Israeli Cabinet member Avidijkter. I don't care
Speaker 5: if I said his name wrong, but he said that
Speaker 5: they are rolling out Nekba twenty twenty three. That's one
Speaker 5: example of extremely genocidal language as being used by not
Speaker 5: just Israel but also American politicians as well. There are
Speaker 5: photos side by side of the nineteen forty eight Nekba
Speaker 5: to what's happening right now. It's happening again. The mass
Speaker 5: expulsion of Palestinians is happening right before our eyes. There
Speaker 5: are Palestinians who have experienced the Nekaba in nineteen forty
Speaker 5: eight who are experiencing it again, being displaced so many
Speaker 5: times in their own country, and right now over a
Speaker 5: million Palestinians have been displaced. We are also just being
Speaker 5: inundated with the most bizarre propaganda from the IOF. I've
Speaker 5: decided to call them the IOF from now on instead
Speaker 5: of the IDF because they are not defending anything. They
Speaker 5: are the Israeli offensive forces, not defensive. So just a
Speaker 5: disclaimer there over my choice of words. But it's strange
Speaker 5: they post photos of Arabic text saying it's something else.
Speaker 5: Just recently I saw that they posted a calendar that
Speaker 5: they found in a house that they say are a
Speaker 5: list of Hamas hostages. It's literally just a calendar with
Speaker 5: the words of the week written in Arabic. And that
Speaker 5: is just one example of many. And I feel like
Speaker 5: if I keep talking about this that will never stop.
Speaker 5: But my point in bringing us back to modern times
Speaker 5: is that this all started with a decision made by
Speaker 5: men who had no business making a decision. Arthur Balfour
Speaker 5: had no fucking business handing over a piece of land
Speaker 5: that had nothing to do with him. It was never
Speaker 5: his place. And what galaxy does that make sense to anybody?
Speaker 5: Zionism and Jewishness and Judaism are not equivalent, and I
Speaker 5: hope at this point in time people are realizing that.
Speaker 5: I hope that this episode sheds some light on how
Speaker 5: the roots of Zionism itself are rooted in anti Semitism.
Speaker 5: It's nobody's place to decide to play god and just
Speaker 5: pretend people don't exist in a place that you want.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work like that. That's not human. So I
Speaker 5: think it's important to remember history like this because something
Speaker 5: like this does not happen overnight. It did not happen
Speaker 5: or start on October seventh. This is something that has
Speaker 5: been decades in the making, and it all started with
Speaker 5: one stupid man making a decision with other stupid men
Speaker 5: that have way too much power that resulted in the suffering,
Speaker 5: the continued suffering of an entire people, the dehumanization of
Speaker 5: an entire people, We're seeing it play out right now.
Speaker 5: So I think as you learn about history, as to
Speaker 5: learn about things like this that maybe seem like they
Speaker 5: happen so far away, they really didn't. We are experiencing
Speaker 5: the ripples of those decisions. And that's the episode for today.
Speaker 5: I hope it was informative, and I hope the genocide
Speaker 5: of the Palestinian people comes to an end. So in
Speaker 5: the meantime, Free Palestine, No no dot Com.
Speaker 4: In the week since the end of October, the confie
Speaker 4: landscape in the AMMA has significantly changed. The Hunter and
Speaker 4: its alignment issues have taken unprecedented losses, and the PDF,
Speaker 4: as well as several ethnic revolutionary organizations, have swept across
Speaker 4: the country, seizing bases, weapons, tanks, and even towns and cities.
Speaker 4: As the offensive was ongoing, I spoke to Sire montine
Speaker 4: a leader in the madelid PDF, and Billy Ford of
Speaker 4: the United States Institute for Peace. What follows is my
Speaker 4: conversation with Billy and some insights on a situation on
Speaker 4: the ground with the Madelai PDF. You'll hear more from
Speaker 4: Sire Montiney in another episode that we're working on, but
Speaker 4: I wanted you to hear his personal on the ground
Speaker 4: perspective now as well. First, I let nine nine, the
Speaker 4: translator from Mandel a PDF, introduce our guest.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Layes, he is the leader of the Commanding
Speaker 8: and Cohesion team, and you can also say that he
Speaker 8: the leader of our organization.
Speaker 4: To start with, I asked Billy to explain for you
Speaker 4: the developments in the conflict in the last few weeks.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's really been just the past what is
Speaker 9: it since the twenty seventh, so thirteen days kind of
Speaker 9: a level change in the conflict trajectory, Whereas I'd say,
Speaker 9: I mean, you got coup February first, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 9: major military operate resistance operations began September seventh, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 9: and frankly since then it's been more or less incremental change.
Speaker 9: You can, I wouldn't characterize it as a stalemate as
Speaker 9: many have, but there's there's essentially been, you know, small
Speaker 9: pockets of progress where the resistance is capturing territory, but
Speaker 9: all almost exclusively rural areas of the country. And then
Speaker 9: things changed radically on October twenty seventh, when whereas Before
Speaker 9: the twenty seventh, you had a range of armed stakeholders
Speaker 9: involved in the conflicts, some under the deposed National Unity government,
Speaker 9: as well as what's called the K three C, which
Speaker 9: is four of the biggest ethnic armed organizations. But a lot,
Speaker 9: a lot of the reason why we hadn't seen the
Speaker 9: level change in the military balance of power was because
Speaker 9: of the absence of some of the biggest and most
Speaker 9: powerful armed organizations that had more or less state on
Speaker 9: the sidelines.
Speaker 7: I mean, they were.
Speaker 9: Arming and training resistance forces that were engaged in active combat,
Speaker 9: but they hadn't themselves in a meaningful way.
Speaker 7: But on the twenty seventh that totally changed.
Speaker 9: This alliance called the Brotherhood Alliance that involves three of
Speaker 9: the biggest armed organizations, initiated coordinated attacks in Northern Shan
Speaker 9: State on the border with China, and have since the
Speaker 9: twenty seventh.
Speaker 7: We're talking to.
Speaker 9: You on the tenth here of November, one hundred and
Speaker 9: fifty posts have been taken. Seven towns are now under
Speaker 9: full z distance control, seven others by my counter under
Speaker 9: partial resistance control. And the operation in Northern Shan State
Speaker 9: on the border has effectively spurred resistance operations in other
Speaker 9: parts of the country, and so now you essentially have
Speaker 9: operations in all corners of the country. I mean, you've
Speaker 9: seen PDFs taking towns in sagain along the Indian border.
Speaker 9: You've seen the kN you taking important towns on the
Speaker 9: logistics corridor on the Thai border. Kareni groups have moved
Speaker 9: into Meyse on the Thai border with Kareni State. The
Speaker 9: Chin National Front has initiated attacks in Balatwa and Southern
Speaker 9: Chin State near the Bangladesh India border.
Speaker 10: Yees.
Speaker 9: So it's really just the trajectory of conflict has gone
Speaker 9: from an incremental trajectory where it's like this is a
Speaker 9: slow burn that could last a long time, to a
Speaker 9: we need to start thinking about potentially day after. I mean,
Speaker 9: nothing is a given, and the minamoral military has been
Speaker 9: resilient in the past, but it does feel like this
Speaker 9: is a historic moment in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 9: the military is weakened in a way that we've really
Speaker 9: never seen in the history of the country.
Speaker 4: I asked Montiney to explain a little about how he
Speaker 4: got to a point where his force, who hadn't fought
Speaker 4: it all in twenty twenty one, we're able to fight
Speaker 4: alongside the Eros and deal a serious defeat to the junta.
Speaker 8: So in twenty one March he decided to go for
Speaker 8: the unrevolutions. And then he started reading the books about
Speaker 8: the military and tactics and then warfare things. And then
Speaker 8: he said that he is still learning and reading from
Speaker 8: the books about the military tactics till now. And one
Speaker 8: more thing is we we are having some problems about
Speaker 8: the other reverse Defense Force perdief that they don't have
Speaker 8: the well forming and then they don't follow the code
Speaker 8: of context or something like that. So we organize world
Speaker 8: that we won't become a blood dirsty organization, but just
Speaker 8: to fight for the military pool. And one more thing
Speaker 8: is we are following the two CEOC, which is a
Speaker 8: code of context and then chain of commands before we
Speaker 8: form up as these military organizations.
Speaker 4: A number of the Eros rightconas you won't have heard before,
Speaker 4: and that's because they haven't been part of the conflict before.
Speaker 4: So I asked Billy to explain who the Eros in
Speaker 4: the north were and how and why are they identityfied now?
Speaker 9: Sure, So, the Arakan Army is a Recine ethnic based
Speaker 9: armed organization. They're based on the China border, but for
Speaker 9: those who know MEMMR geography, Rakine State is actually on
Speaker 9: the complete other side of the country. But this like
Speaker 9: many were Like many newer armed organizations, they were essentially
Speaker 9: incubated by some of the longer term armed organizations. In
Speaker 9: this case, the Kachin Independence Army helped for the emergence
Speaker 9: of the Arakan Army, which has really grown in the
Speaker 9: past ten years into one of the strongest armed stakeholders
Speaker 9: in the country. Before the coup, under the on Sansuchil
Speaker 9: National League for Democracy government, they were in intense fighting
Speaker 9: with the MR military and on Sansuchi strongly supported the
Speaker 9: MEMR military's operations against the AA, and that kind of
Speaker 9: built some bad blood, as you might be might imagine,
Speaker 9: between the AA in the National League for Democracy and
Speaker 9: and that bad blood has made it difficult to build
Speaker 9: alliance across ethnic lines and with those resistant organizations that
Speaker 9: involve n l D folks. But the key point here
Speaker 9: is that the AA is operating in two places were
Speaker 9: kind State and in Northern Shan State on the and
Speaker 9: Kachin State also actually it's the GUY now, but and
Speaker 9: they're an extremely powerful armed organization, highly disciplined, highly effective.
Speaker 7: Well armed.
Speaker 9: The The second group is the Ta'ang National Liberation Army.
Speaker 9: This is a an ethnic based army in northern Shan
Speaker 9: State that also is a relatively a newer armed organization.
Speaker 9: They it's it's a pretty complex military environment in Northern
Speaker 9: Shan State because the t n l A are often
Speaker 9: in tension with other shn ethnic groups that are in
Speaker 9: Shan State and footing the RCSS or the Shan State
Speaker 9: Army South, which is competing for control in other parts
Speaker 9: of Shan State. We've also seen some tension between the
Speaker 9: t n l A and the s SPP, which is
Speaker 9: another Northern Shan army that's closely aligned with the Wah
Speaker 9: and Chinese. So that's a that's a pretty complex array
Speaker 9: of relationships there. But the TNLA is also an increasingly
Speaker 9: powerful armed organization, one that administer administers territory and has
Speaker 9: also been locked in conflict with the Memory military for
Speaker 9: some time. The last group is the m n d
Speaker 9: a A the MEMR National Democratic Alliance Army UH. This
Speaker 9: is a Ko Kong ethnic based armed organization that for
Speaker 9: a long time controlled territory along the China border. In
Speaker 9: two thousand and nine, Men Online, who is now the
Speaker 9: commit ender in chief and the head of.
Speaker 7: The sac.
Speaker 9: He essentially was leading commands in north, in the northeast
Speaker 9: and led operations to push the m n d a
Speaker 9: A out of that territory and replace it with a
Speaker 9: border guard force of.
Speaker 7: Another ethnic Ko Kong ethnic army.
Speaker 9: And we can get back to that, but that ethnic
Speaker 9: army became or is a criminal enterprise that's now operating
Speaker 9: massive scam and human trafficking operations with the support of
Speaker 9: the m R Military. They're commissioned under the MEMR Military.
Speaker 9: But I think a key point here is that there's
Speaker 9: it's very personal with the m n d a A
Speaker 9: and this border guard.
Speaker 7: Force and and men online.
Speaker 9: And so this is really the m n d a
Speaker 9: A is an organization that has been pushing for a
Speaker 9: very long time to retake this territory and particularly this
Speaker 9: city of Lau Kai. And so that that that three
Speaker 9: constitutes the Brotherhood Alliance. There's other stakeholders in this region,
Speaker 9: including the United Waw State Army, which is the largest
Speaker 9: armed organization in Meanmar, or non state armed organization as well,
Speaker 9: which is very closely tied with the Chinese. I mean
Speaker 9: they use Chinese currency, they speak Chinese they fully administer
Speaker 9: their territory and autonomously. And then the other organizations that
Speaker 9: are relevant here is the National Democratic Alliance Army and
Speaker 9: d a A, which is essentially you can think of
Speaker 9: it as a closely tied.
Speaker 7: With the law and the Chinese.
Speaker 9: And then the Kachin Independence Army, which is a Kachin
Speaker 9: ethnic based armed organization very much founded as a social
Speaker 9: services I mean, it's it's kind of got a different
Speaker 9: identity from some of these other groups. It's very much
Speaker 9: like a revolutionary organization with political intentions. There's kind of
Speaker 9: Christian beliefs that are embedded within the organization.
Speaker 7: So yeah, all to.
Speaker 9: Say, it's a highly complex array of actors with different
Speaker 9: intentions and motivations. But in this particular case, they came
Speaker 9: together to at least the Brotherhood Alliance came together to
Speaker 9: launch this coordinated attack.
Speaker 4: The T'ang National Liberation Army the group who received many
Speaker 4: of the young people of Mandalay who went on to
Speaker 4: form the Mandalaid PDF. Those young people started out as
Speaker 4: a strikeforce within Mandleay, but there are only weapons on
Speaker 4: Molotov cocktails, and every action they took with the risk
Speaker 4: of their whole families if they were caught by march.
Speaker 4: A few weeks into the revolution, Montenay and others took
Speaker 4: to the mountains with the Tang National Liberation Army to
Speaker 4: learn to fight. Before the revolution, he said he had
Speaker 4: no experience and he didn't even play fighting video games.
Speaker 4: I asked him how it felt to be joining a
Speaker 4: group he'd been raised to hate and how he got there.
Speaker 10: If all, we we formed many peria.
Speaker 8: We started as an mst which is a manually special
Speaker 8: task Force.
Speaker 10: It was the first training for our organizations and H.
Speaker 8: At the time we only have a SAM handmade weapons
Speaker 8: like Molotov, but we really don't use like handmade guns.
Speaker 8: But the after the support of T and L, we
Speaker 8: we got the automatic rifles with the help of our
Speaker 8: lines and UH. At first, when we act as a
Speaker 8: MSTF manally special tax force, we restrict the rooms for
Speaker 8: not attaching to the schools or hospitals or the civilians,
Speaker 8: and then after that we start using the handmade weapons
Speaker 8: like just like Molotov.
Speaker 10: We didn't use any handguns at the.
Speaker 8: Time, but after that we trained UH and we contact
Speaker 8: with the tn L. We have a We now have
Speaker 8: the automotic rifles and then others, uh, missiles or something
Speaker 8: like that.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 8: So when he decided to contact with the T and
Speaker 8: L and the End National what he expected were nothing
Speaker 8: else but some few problems that about the racists because
Speaker 8: of most of the ethnic groups, they most of them
Speaker 8: they hate Bumbis people and they even called the Bummy's army.
Speaker 8: So he was explaining that we will be having a
Speaker 8: racist problem. But when he actually reached to the End region, uh,
Speaker 8: he found out that there is no hatred to the
Speaker 8: Bombish people, and then there was no problem about the
Speaker 8: racist problem.
Speaker 10: Yeah. He also thought that it's because of the.
Speaker 8: Community condication between the bombies people and the plan racist Uh.
Speaker 8: Because Palan people they provide tea, leaves and the other
Speaker 8: things to eat bambished people and then they make some
Speaker 8: tradings and then some they do some business with barbised people.
Speaker 8: So that there was no problem about that. But the
Speaker 8: only other thing was about the weather. Because of the
Speaker 8: rough weather in the mountains, it's a very different weather
Speaker 8: from the like Manulee region. It's very cool for the
Speaker 8: people from the Manley region because Manley's yeah, and in
Speaker 8: mountains it's very cold in here. So we stay having
Speaker 8: problems about the weather problem, but now we are getting
Speaker 8: used to it. And he said that he is also
Speaker 8: surprised that TNLA, the a National Libation Army is a
Speaker 8: wealth am military and then they are also following the
Speaker 8: code of conduct and then the following the democracy way,
Speaker 8: and then most of the leaders from the TNLA of
Speaker 8: the liberal ideas and then they also one we work
Speaker 8: on to the young leaders from the Revolution Force US.
Speaker 10: So see, he was surprised about that.
Speaker 4: Billy told me that this same dynamic could occurred all
Speaker 4: over the country. And this is probably a good time
Speaker 4: to remind listeners that we've covered the formation of the
Speaker 4: PDFs and our two previous series about Membar and if
Speaker 4: he hasn't had the time to listen to those, I
Speaker 4: really hope you do because it'll make this one a
Speaker 4: lot more interesting and this one probably won't make much
Speaker 4: sense without it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I think this is really a key dynamic.
Speaker 9: And we can come back to the conversation maybe about
Speaker 9: day after or the political dimensions of the conflict.
Speaker 11: But there's frankly, before the coup, these sorts of coordinations
Speaker 11: would be uh like incomprehensible.
Speaker 9: I mean, you'd see the Arakan Army, the Kachin Independence Army,
Speaker 9: the T'ang National Liberation Army, all of them have deep
Speaker 9: connections with mostly Bamar ethnic pds, some of whom work
Speaker 9: in coordination with the National Unity Government, some which are
Speaker 9: slightly more independent. But the this is an inter ethnic
Speaker 9: collaboration that's that's very novel and demonstrates a shift and
Speaker 9: inter ethnic and intercommunal dynamics in the country that are
Speaker 9: is very positive in a lot of ways. So yeah,
Speaker 9: the t n l A, the has been provided weapons
Speaker 9: and training for PDFs in Mandalay, the k i O,
Speaker 9: the k i A has been providing weapons and training
Speaker 9: and tactical and strategic support to PDFs and sagain, the
Speaker 9: Arakan Army has been maybe more than any group, providing
Speaker 9: tactical UH support and weapons and training to PDFs in Bogo, Arowadi,
Speaker 9: Maguay and now more recently in Segaine, so really the
Speaker 9: the Burman heartland of the country. So yeah, all of
Speaker 9: these ethnic minority based armed organizations are now collaborating, sharing
Speaker 9: resources and knowledge with UH, with with Bamar ethnic PDFs.
Speaker 9: There's a so that I think the main question here
Speaker 9: is like what does this mean for intercommunal relations, What
Speaker 9: does this mean for the future uh of you know,
Speaker 9: of the country is there? Does this indicate there's potential
Speaker 9: for greater national solidarity in the absence of the MEMR
Speaker 9: militi very fracturing communities and so on. But yeah, it's
Speaker 9: a radical shift in those relationships.
Speaker 4: But he also shared that as we've heard from every
Speaker 4: single PDF fighter we've talked to, their time alongside the
Speaker 4: eros IS comrades in arms has changed the way they
Speaker 4: see ethnicity in the future of their country.
Speaker 9: And I think this is also manifesting a lot of
Speaker 9: the research that my organization, the US Institute of Piece
Speaker 9: has been doing at the among the general public. I mean,
Speaker 9: we've done three different studies over the past year to
Speaker 9: assess intercreminal relations in the post couperiod and to kind
Speaker 9: of see how relations have shifted, because there's a really
Speaker 9: dominant narrative that MEMR is kind of irreconcilably fractured and
Speaker 9: that the communities are loyal to their ethnic identities not
Speaker 9: their national identities and.
Speaker 7: So on, and.
Speaker 9: Frankly, all of our research has has pointed to a
Speaker 9: similar trend, which is one of inter ethnic relations are
Speaker 9: considerably better.
Speaker 7: There's a there's greater solidarity.
Speaker 9: There's actually one of the serv the experimental research studies
Speaker 9: that we did found that national identity, as in being
Speaker 9: from MEMMR was more was more important to respondence than
Speaker 9: ethnic identity, which totally cuts against narratives about MEMMAR. And Yeah,
Speaker 9: I mean, I think there's been considerable gains and inter
Speaker 9: ethnic relations, and it's you know, it's hard to determine,
Speaker 9: you know, the causal linkages here, whether you know, the
Speaker 9: improved inter ethnic relations are spurring greater military collaboration and
Speaker 9: collaboration on humanitarian assistants and governance and so on. But
Speaker 9: it does feel like there's a major shift and social
Speaker 9: dynamics in addition to these kind of military shifts that
Speaker 9: are taking place. I mean, I think that the research
Speaker 9: we've done has found there to be sort of extremist
Speaker 9: national perspectives still remain, but that they're they're the likelihood
Speaker 9: of them escalating to violence is reduced, in large part
Speaker 9: because the public's vulnerability to UH incitement or to highly
Speaker 9: devisive political speech.
Speaker 7: Most of what came.
Speaker 9: From Mailmar military run troll farms is is much I mean,
Speaker 9: there's much more resilience to those that that form of
Speaker 9: political violence, So you know, I think there's still a
Speaker 9: lot of work obviously to do to build intercommunal cohesion
Speaker 9: and understanding, but that the likelihood, you know, for example,
Speaker 9: in a post sac world, that you will be you know,
Speaker 9: see mass intercommunal violence, it seems much lower than a
Speaker 9: lot of people are presuming that it would be that
Speaker 9: the that the actual horizontal relationships across communities are not
Speaker 9: are not as bad as many presume. Actually, one of
Speaker 9: the surveys that we did found that Memar's intercommunal relations
Speaker 9: are no worse than countries with much lower levels of violence,
Speaker 9: which is kind of an indication of the fact that
Speaker 9: it's really vertical dynamics like violent political speech, highly exclusionary
Speaker 9: governance structures that are driving intercommunal violence, and so that
Speaker 9: those on that dimension at least that the person to
Speaker 9: person intercommunal relation or relationships, I think there's a lot
Speaker 9: to be.
Speaker 7: A lot of positive narratives there.
Speaker 4: Talking of positive narratives, here's some positive narratives about products
Speaker 4: and or services. Another aspect of the conflict that has
Speaker 4: played out in Operation ten twenty seven, it's the role
Speaker 4: of China and the massive crime empires that the junta
Speaker 4: has facilitated along the country's borders in recent years. I
Speaker 4: asked Billy to explain some of those.
Speaker 9: So this has become the major political dynamic between China
Speaker 9: and the SAC over the past year.
Speaker 7: Frankly, I mean, it's.
Speaker 9: Essentially what we've seen is the emergence of these massive
Speaker 9: scam operations that use foreign labor that's trafficked into MEMR
Speaker 9: into areas controlled primarily by MEMMR military commissioned border guard forces.
Speaker 9: So these are commissioned under the MEMR military, which is
Speaker 9: a very key point in most cases, and they are
Speaker 9: running scam operations at a global level that are scamming
Speaker 9: people using a scheme called pig butchering, which is long
Speaker 9: term relationship building.
Speaker 7: And then.
Speaker 9: You're yeah, theft at a large scale. This is like,
Speaker 9: these are sizable losses from individuals. So last year, for example,
Speaker 9: to give you a sense of that scale, China lost
Speaker 9: twenty billion dollars to these scam operations.
Speaker 7: Twenty billion.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: In the United State it's lost two billion dollars on
Speaker 9: scam operations emerging from Meanmar. I mean, the scale of
Speaker 9: this is wild. I mean there's more than there's more
Speaker 9: than one hundred thousand people being held in scam zones
Speaker 9: in Meanmar from forty six different countries. I mean it's
Speaker 9: a it's this is a total global operation because I
Speaker 9: mean this emerged actually before COVID, I mean in sia Hanookville,
Speaker 9: Cambodia and other places where there's you know, rule of
Speaker 9: laws is dubious. They have have the initiated kind of
Speaker 9: casino operations which are illegal in China and really targeting
Speaker 9: Chinese public. And during COVID, when China a lot of
Speaker 9: Chinese nationals were forced back to mainland China, these criminal
Speaker 9: enterprises were short on labor and so they shifted their approach.
Speaker 9: I mean they shifted to trafficking people into their zones
Speaker 9: and then operating out a global scale finding labor from
Speaker 9: around the world, you know, using not not low skilled labor.
Speaker 9: I mean this is these are high skilled kind of
Speaker 9: middle class workers seeking employment in the tech industry or
Speaker 9: some other scheme that they you know, eventually they're you know,
Speaker 9: held at gunpoint and forced to scam their co nationals.
Speaker 7: So that's a little bit of background.
Speaker 9: So this is happening in Ko Kong along the Chinese border,
Speaker 9: also in the Waw territories and in the n d
Speaker 9: A A territories. The largest areas are actually on the
Speaker 9: Thai Burma border with the Kren Border Guard Force and
Speaker 9: affiliated criminal organizations. So essentially, over the past year, the
Speaker 9: Chinese have have noticed not only the financial losses but
Speaker 9: the potential for social instability because as youth unemployment has
Speaker 9: grown in China, you know, these young people are seeking
Speaker 9: new employment opportunities, crossing the border in memr for high
Speaker 9: paying tech jobs and then being held at gunpoints. So
Speaker 9: you have you know, mothers on social media saying I
Speaker 9: haven't seen my son in three weeks, and you know
Speaker 9: he's being held in a scam operation. So you know
Speaker 9: this is this is diletarious at two levels, you know,
Speaker 9: the financial scam losses and the trafficking, and it's all
Speaker 9: being run by border guard forces that are commissioned by
Speaker 9: the Malamar military. And yet you see countries around the world,
Speaker 9: including China, going to the Malamar military and saying please
Speaker 9: shut this down. And of course the Malmur military has
Speaker 9: no intention to shut this down because these these scam
Speaker 9: operations are financing the border guard forces that are their
Speaker 9: key weapon against the resistance. So they need the border
Speaker 9: guard forces and so they will never shut down the
Speaker 9: scam operations, and so what what ensued was essentially earlier
Speaker 9: this year. I mean the Chinese came to the Malmour
Speaker 9: military and said, we will suppor you at every level.
Speaker 9: We will prop you up, provide you weapons, to provide
Speaker 9: you assistance if you can demonstrate the capacity to govern,
Speaker 9: the capacity to provide stability on our border, the capacity
Speaker 9: to provide to allow us to pursue our economic interests.
Speaker 9: And the SAC has completely failed this test. Scam operations
Speaker 9: have exploded China's economic interests. The Chupu Especial Economic Zone
Speaker 9: remains in a impact assessment phase. The Lepidon copper mind
Speaker 9: is non functional, the Mitzo dam is non functional. They're
Speaker 9: just not getting out of the SAC what they wanted.
Speaker 9: And so there was a meaningful shift recently, it appears,
Speaker 9: and I think by all indicators that we can see
Speaker 9: the Chinese greenlit Operation ten twenty seven that they at
Speaker 9: least did not stand in their way.
Speaker 7: And you'll see from.
Speaker 9: The MND, I mean they really were the leaders of
Speaker 9: the operation that in the statements that they issued about
Speaker 9: the operation itself and when they articulated their objectives, the
Speaker 9: first objective was to shut down scam operations. I mean,
Speaker 9: you can see that this is they're speaking to a
Speaker 9: Chinese public and the government indicating that we're a responsible,
Speaker 9: good faith actor that will shut down these enterprises that
Speaker 9: are trafficking your citizens and scamming the public.
Speaker 7: Out of billions of dollars.
Speaker 9: So this has become a really dominant dynamic in the
Speaker 9: relationship between the Chinese and the SAC, and it's it
Speaker 9: leads to a really weakened position for the SAC if
Speaker 9: they're not being propped up in the way that they
Speaker 9: have been for so long by the Chinese. So we'll
Speaker 9: have to see how this kind of unfolds, but it's
Speaker 9: not looking good for the military.
Speaker 4: When we do see how this unfolds, it'll be people
Speaker 4: like the mandol A PDF who we see leading the
Speaker 4: charge for a new and democratic MEANDMA. We don't exactly
Speaker 4: know what that means, but I asked them, if the
Speaker 4: weapons see is in operation ten twenty seven, we'd allow
Speaker 4: them to arm more fighters and get there faster.
Speaker 8: We are also now recruiting a new recruits, but we
Speaker 8: will we will have to recruit until the genter is gone.
Speaker 8: And we also need more soldiers to form up the
Speaker 8: better army than the gener after we want, even after
Speaker 8: we want, we are going to need some more human
Speaker 8: resources to form up the better army than the Malei Army,
Speaker 8: you know. And for the arms and ammunitions, we got
Speaker 8: a lot of arm and ammunitions from the Male like
Speaker 8: but we it's they use a different type of the ammunitions.
Speaker 8: And then because we for example, we use like a
Speaker 8: K types, we have the different So it is not
Speaker 8: very possible to arm the better weapons from the the
Speaker 8: Mali army. We only used some of the weapons, like
Speaker 8: for the artillery or something like that, but that's only
Speaker 8: a few we got from them. What we really need
Speaker 8: is about the better artillery or s A M or
Speaker 8: something like that for the a strights.
Speaker 10: So yeah, it's not very usedful for us.
Speaker 8: From the anthem ammunition we got from the Male army.
Speaker 8: He said that the main points in the arm revolution
Speaker 8: is it's about to catch up important points, not to
Speaker 8: catcha all the CDs or something like that, like to
Speaker 8: catchure the enemy sec quartas or the important places. We
Speaker 8: are going to need more plants, and then he say
Speaker 8: that he's unclear about that.
Speaker 4: I asked Billy what he thought we could expect in
Speaker 4: the new Mianma. I see points out here. Everything every
Speaker 4: Circled analyst has said has been proven wrong by the revolution.
Speaker 4: They've exceeded the wildest expectations of experts in London and Washington, DC.
Speaker 4: And where they go next is really up to them.
Speaker 9: Good question, and frankly, I don't have a lot of
Speaker 9: information about that. I mean, you've seen pictures over the
Speaker 9: past twelve days of the as the resistance has taken
Speaker 9: one hundred.
Speaker 7: And fifty posts.
Speaker 9: They've definitely captured a lot of heavy munitions and artillery,
Speaker 9: but yeah, I'm not sure service to air capabilities. I mean,
Speaker 9: I think the the fact that the meanmaur military is
Speaker 9: not able to push the resistance out of urban areas.
Speaker 9: I mean, this is the first time really that the
Speaker 9: resistance moved into urban areas and held them, including into
Speaker 9: guy and I mean Colon has been they're holding it,
Speaker 9: and so I mean that seems to be an indication
Speaker 9: to me that the essay c's capability is weakening. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 9: their their access to foreign currency and to purchase weapons
Speaker 9: is highly constrained now. I mean their primary providers Russia
Speaker 9: and China, you know, ones fighting their own war and
Speaker 9: the other is kind of is a little bit more
Speaker 9: skeptical as to whether they deserve their support. I mean
Speaker 9: they just last week the US initiated new sanctions on
Speaker 9: the Meanoma oil and Gas enterprise that provided half a
Speaker 9: billion dollars in revenue for the junta per year. Yeah,
Speaker 9: that's a major that's a major issue for them accessing
Speaker 9: US dollars which they need to buy weapons. I mean,
Speaker 9: the Ties can no longer pay the Memoir military and
Speaker 9: USD and the Memor military doesn't want bought. So they're
Speaker 9: literally negotiating barter agreements where they you know, sell gas
Speaker 9: for material goods. But now you have the Resistance controlling
Speaker 9: you know, part of Cocker Rig on the Asia Highway
Speaker 9: into Thailand. I mean, they control the borders, are the
Speaker 9: starting to in a way they hadn't before, So even
Speaker 9: this sort of bartering or material trade is is less viable.
Speaker 9: So yeah, I mean, I think they're just really asset constrained,
Speaker 9: and it does I mean just the fact that they
Speaker 9: haven't been able to retake these critical logistic coups. I
Speaker 9: mean the border crossings that the Resistance has have controlled
Speaker 9: constitute forty percent of the of the of the overland
Speaker 9: trade between China and Memar. It's you know, it's like
Speaker 9: four billion dollars in value that's being you know, that
Speaker 9: tax loss for the SAC it's considerable. It's considerable losses
Speaker 9: there as well. And how long they can really hold
Speaker 9: out and maintain their air assets is really questionable, particularly
Speaker 9: since they've had to massively diversify their air asset purchase,
Speaker 9: which really makes it more complex to service points. And
Speaker 9: so yeah, I mean, I think I'm not sure that
Speaker 9: the Resistance has much more capacity in service to air
Speaker 9: or air defense, but it does seem like there the
Speaker 9: SACS capacity to inflict atrocities in this way has also
Speaker 9: been constrained.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it sort of flies in the face of every
Speaker 4: sort of like analytical idea about the assets that you
Speaker 4: need to have in order to be successful in one
Speaker 4: of these Like they they've really proved a lot of
Speaker 4: people wrong in a really impressive way. I know, you
Speaker 4: have to go, I want to ask one more real
Speaker 4: quick the uh did these towns did the SAC pull
Speaker 4: out of the towns or did they like fight house
Speaker 4: to house or like how did they very across.
Speaker 9: Well, the I mean, the SAC was you know, in
Speaker 9: their barracks themselves.
Speaker 7: I mean, in these.
Speaker 9: Towns it's a national uprising. The public is you know,
Speaker 9: opposed to the presence this is an occupying force, and
Speaker 9: so yeah, it's just moving in and capturing military posts.
Speaker 9: And as one person, resistance fighter indicated, essentially you fire
Speaker 9: your gun in the air and they lay down their weapons,
Speaker 9: which is more you know, an indication of of where
Speaker 9: the military stands and the support that these these highly
Speaker 9: isolated I mean, this is a fractured light infantry force
Speaker 9: that's dispersed a posts all over the country, and you
Speaker 9: know they're resupplying from the Northwest Command in Monuoas to
Speaker 9: towns within thirty minutes drive by helicopter because they can't
Speaker 9: they can't move, so there's just not logistics support to
Speaker 9: these posts. And so yeah, you've got folks in there
Speaker 9: that just the will to fight is pretty small. Morale
Speaker 9: is shrinking from a very low base, and so I
Speaker 9: think there was the the general pattern is just resistance
Speaker 9: taking military barracks and posts.
Speaker 7: Rather than having to go house to house.
Speaker 9: I mean there's villages in towns where there's these groups
Speaker 9: called pew Sawtee that are like military aligned militias, but yeah,
Speaker 9: that's not really you know, a nationwide fighting force, and
Speaker 9: it's in most cases it really is just the resistance
Speaker 9: capturing posts and pushing out you know, or military personnel.
Speaker 9: And I mean there was a they're also using drones
Speaker 9: to a high degree of effectiveness.
Speaker 7: They recently killed a colonel who.
Speaker 9: Is on He was about to be become a brigadier general,
Speaker 9: the highest ranking person to have been killed in battle
Speaker 9: from the menmoral military through a drone strike in northern
Speaker 9: Shun State, I believe for kit Chen, and I think that, yeah,
Speaker 9: the resistance drone capabilities have also increased considerably.
Speaker 7: And this is also an.
Speaker 9: Area where you see nug collaborating a lot with the ROS.
Speaker 9: So yeah, it's it's it's just yeah, it's embarracked, you know,
Speaker 9: menomour military personnel and they just in many cases just
Speaker 9: lay down their arms because it's just moral so low.
Speaker 9: And the probability of them to be able to fend
Speaker 9: off indefinitely is when they have the public against them
Speaker 9: and a resistance movement against them. It's just really a
Speaker 9: challenging set of conditions for them.
Speaker 4: We don't know exactly what the future of MEA. Murray is,
Speaker 4: but it took an interesting turn the last few weeks
Speaker 4: with the k NDF the Saquareni National Defense Force Fish
Speaker 4: Battalion issuing a statement of solidarity with the people of
Speaker 4: Rejava and the people of Java in the form of
Speaker 4: the YPG and the YPGA, their defense units of men
Speaker 4: and women respectively, recording a response a great risk during
Speaker 4: the ongoing grown campaign expressing their solidarity and support for
Speaker 4: the revolutionary people of Myanmar, something will cover in greater
Speaker 4: detail on another episode, but it's yet another illustration of
Speaker 4: how the revolutionary people of Mianma have continued to defy
Speaker 4: everyone's expectations about how and where they will go next,
Speaker 4: and how they've managed to dream up a vision from
Speaker 4: more equal and just future, even as they face the
Speaker 4: injustice and inequality of fighting a war the world doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to care about. Without a single dollar of international
Speaker 4: military aid, little support other than strongly worded letters from
Speaker 4: the UN at sporadic intervals have come. To the end
Speaker 4: of the episode, I asked Sya Montine if he had
Speaker 4: anything else he would like to share with.
Speaker 8: Our Okay, he said that if he is able to talk,
Speaker 8: he wants them to know that we are not the
Speaker 8: white people. We most of them are educated we are
Speaker 8: only fighting for the democrats. But in some international news
Speaker 8: there will be some news that like pdf revolution forces
Speaker 8: are killing each other or something like that, but it's
Speaker 8: like not fully correct. Maybe some a few will be
Speaker 8: doing that, but most of us are not doing that way.
Speaker 10: It's just a propagona from the male.
Speaker 8: Like you know, we also say that we are no
Speaker 8: more expecting for the help from the other countries. We
Speaker 8: will be fighting our own and then with our spiritatively
Speaker 8: in And he also wanted to say that to the
Speaker 8: US government or the King of England or the other
Speaker 8: countries authorities that we are not wild ones. We are educated,
Speaker 8: and then we are just fighting to get the democracy
Speaker 8: back to our country. He's a little bit from words,
Speaker 8: you know, say that if other governments are not helping
Speaker 8: us because they can't get any benefits from helping us,
Speaker 8: even if they don't want to help us, just don't
Speaker 8: look as like we are the wild ones. We will
Speaker 8: be trying to get the level of the other countries.
Speaker 10: We will always be trying for that.
Speaker 8: If you have any chance to speak out in a
Speaker 8: seminar or the workshops or any other things or any meetings,
Speaker 8: he wants you to tell the news about killings. Each
Speaker 8: other of our revolution process is just a propagunnas of SAC.
Speaker 8: If there is no more SAC, there will be no
Speaker 8: issues like the anymore. Most of some issues are just
Speaker 8: because of SAC and then they spread in some rumors
Speaker 8: about that and then take news. You know, if you
Speaker 8: guys can can come and visit us, and then you
Speaker 8: can see how we treat people, and then how we
Speaker 8: respect the civilians, and then how we follow put of
Speaker 8: contexts in person.
Speaker 4: Do you want to follow the medal APDF? You can
Speaker 4: search them on Facebook where they post regular updates. We'll
Speaker 4: include the link in the show notes for you. If
Speaker 4: you want to hear more from Billy, I'll let him
Speaker 4: tell you how.
Speaker 10: Sure.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, we put out a paper at USIP
Speaker 9: dot org yesterday on the relationship between the scam operations
Speaker 9: and the.
Speaker 7: Conflict dynamics.
Speaker 9: I'm putting one out probably next week on the day
Speaker 9: after quote unquote dynamics, summarizing some of our research.
Speaker 7: I'm on Twitter at b I L L E E.
Speaker 9: The number four, the letter D, so you can try
Speaker 9: to stay up on some of the conflict dynamics there.
Speaker 7: But yeah, the USIP websites where we published most of
Speaker 7: our most of our stuff.
Speaker 4: In closing, I just want to share how much hope
Speaker 4: I found in the conflict in the MR in recent weeks.
Speaker 4: At a time when the world seems so full of cruelty,
Speaker 4: it's inspiring to see people relatively unified, committed to respecting
Speaker 4: life and civilians and succeeding against all the odds. This
Speaker 4: doesn't mean they don't need help. They do desperately, and
Speaker 4: I hope that this people continue to advocate to us
Speaker 4: millions in Gaza. They can include civillions and revolutionaries from
Speaker 4: me and Mark in their demands going forward.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Andrew Siege
Speaker 3: from YouTube channel Andrewism, joined today.
Speaker 4: By James Hi. Sorry, I'm doing my own track hire.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited to hear about something. I don't know
Speaker 4: what yet, So this should be a fun adventure.
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, today we are doing a little bit of
Speaker 3: time travel. Then we're gonna embark on a journey to
Speaker 3: explode movements of about two hundred years ago that I
Speaker 3: think is still quite relevant even today, particularly in our
Speaker 3: very technological, fast paced world. So when we put a
Speaker 3: new games in the early nineteenth century in England great,
Speaker 3: which you know, is a time of great change, of evil,
Speaker 3: disease or that jazz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I had thrived as a person with diabetes,
Speaker 4: that would have made it approximately, you know, a couple
Speaker 4: of weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. It hadn't
Speaker 3: quite reached that point yet as far as I know,
Speaker 3: but it was transforming the way that people lived and worked.
Speaker 3: It was a time of innovation, was also a time
Speaker 3: of great uncertainty, and amidst the classroom looms and rise
Speaker 3: of organization, a group of workers emerged to became known
Speaker 3: as the Latites. They were, you know, some early adopters. Ah, Yes,
Speaker 3: of resistance, Yes, resistance to the changes of the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 3: And you know, for that cardinal sin they've been missing
Speaker 3: too preton ever since. So today we're going to be
Speaker 3: explaining exactly who who the Lights were and why their
Speaker 3: actions resonate with us today in the twenty first century.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about their history and their motivations and their
Speaker 3: brave stand against the relentless march of capitalist progress. We're
Speaker 3: also such on some figures, some of their tactics, and
Speaker 3: the last impact they left on history. But most importantly,
Speaker 3: we'll be covering why they struggle Somatus today. So here
Speaker 3: we are. You know, in the nineteenth century indust Revolution
Speaker 3: souping through England, British working families were going through some
Speaker 3: very tough times as the economy was in turmoil and
Speaker 3: unemployment was spreading like wildfire. It really wasn't a good
Speaker 3: situation to be in. There was this never ending war
Speaker 3: with Napoleon's France, there was Drian resources and causing what
Speaker 3: Yorkshire historian Frank Peel described as the hard pinch of poverty.
Speaker 3: And to make matters worse, food was in short supply
Speaker 3: and the prices were shooting up. Not only were jobs
Speaker 3: hard to come by, but even putting basic food on
Speaker 3: the table was becoming a serious challenge. So it's a
Speaker 3: really tough period for these families and they were feeling
Speaker 3: that squeeze in every way possible. So that Light emerged
Speaker 3: as a response to these seismic shifts as a loosely
Speaker 3: organized group of textile workers and weavers who healed primarily
Speaker 3: but not exclusively, from the nottingham Shire region of England.
Speaker 3: At the heart of their struggle was the mechanization of
Speaker 3: the textile industry. Factories powered by steam engines and intricate
Speaker 3: machinery were replacing traditional cottage industries, leading to unemployment and
Speaker 3: a decline in working conditions. In the place of a
Speaker 3: cottage industry where cloth workers could work as many or
Speaker 3: as few hours and days suited them, the factory had
Speaker 3: a reseren where workers would work long hours at dangerous machinery,
Speaker 3: be fed meager meals, and submit to the punitive authority
Speaker 3: of the foremant Factory owners were winning. As I alluded
Speaker 3: to earlier, the rights were not blindly opposed to this
Speaker 3: idea of progress, as they've been misinterpreted, but they were
Speaker 3: seeking to protect their livelihoods and the quality of their craftsmanship.
Speaker 3: Many of the original rights were actually quite savvy when
Speaker 3: it came to technology. In fact, some were highly skilled
Speaker 3: machine operators that ended up smashing the very machines that
Speaker 3: they were accustomed to use in They had no issue
Speaker 3: with welcoming innovations that made their lives and their jobs easier,
Speaker 3: but they had an issue with the way that the
Speaker 3: new machinery is being used by the factory owners to
Speaker 3: reduce them to mare cogs in the industrial machine. And
Speaker 3: they didn't like that factory owners were using the machinery
Speaker 3: to kick out the trained and skilled cloth workers in
Speaker 3: fear of child laborers and other lower skilled workers would
Speaker 3: be easier to exploit. The cloth for these machines produced
Speaker 3: was of lower quality, but because it was so cheap
Speaker 3: to churn out and there was so much of it,
Speaker 3: the factory owners were still ted inner profit and so
Speaker 3: that you know, that sucks for them, which is why
Speaker 3: the rights to resist these changes embraced a distinctive form
Speaker 3: of protest. At the time, labor organizing was labor organizing
Speaker 3: was illegal, so they chose a suppose even more drastic
Speaker 3: method of targets in the newly introduced machines for destruction. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were.
Speaker 4: Is it E. P. Thompson who called it collective bargaining
Speaker 4: by riot?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I believe so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's an excellent way to understand it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure we'll get there, but it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 4: means of labor organizing when labor organizing is illegal.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, and then if no other options are available
Speaker 3: to you, you know, you're pressed against the wall. They
Speaker 3: have no other choice.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So these uh, these loot rights would gather together
Speaker 12: in the dead of the night, usually in secluded areas
Speaker 12: like forests or hillsides to plan their actions.
Speaker 3: To maintain secrecy, the Rights adopted a strict code of silence,
Speaker 3: making it very difficult for authorities to infiltrate their ranks.
Speaker 3: That secrecy was crucial to their survival and their ability
Speaker 3: to outwit the authorities, and so under this code they'd
Speaker 3: go on and break into the factories and smash the machinery,
Speaker 3: and occasionally leave an etching of the infamous ned Luod
Speaker 3: as a mark of their presence. Ned Luod, by the way,
Speaker 3: was a symbol, not their actual leader. He was a
Speaker 3: legendary weaver who was said to have been whipped for idleness,
Speaker 3: so he smashed two knit in frames in a fit
Speaker 3: of passion. More likely, Nedlood didn't exist. He was more
Speaker 3: of like a folkloric character, but the Rights named themselves
Speaker 3: after him and would call them King Lood and General Luod.
Speaker 3: Funny enough, the authorities actually thought he was the ringleader
Speaker 3: of the whole operation, so they tried to hunt him down. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: of course, the Ludites jokingly referring to the Lud's office
Speaker 3: and Shewood Forest, and some of the Luodites would actually
Speaker 3: cross dress as luds wives during their protests.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do, like every time you find an instance
Speaker 4: of like cross dressing in history. So it was just
Speaker 4: amusing to note that. I guess some people have decided
Speaker 4: that like either either like cross dressing or trans people
Speaker 4: were invented in like twenty sixteen, not that those two
Speaker 4: things are the same, but like, we can find literally
Speaker 4: thousands of instances of of course trans people and also crossdressing,
Speaker 4: like as a form of like deliberate sometimes it's transgression.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the thing that just people did. But yeah, you
Speaker 4: can see it in depictions of the Luddites, Like people
Speaker 4: even took the time to paint it into their paintings
Speaker 4: exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yees, so I mean the leader wasn't ned loud,
Speaker 3: the leader, well, it really was a lead less movement.
Speaker 3: The real instigators were just regular on the ground weavers
Speaker 3: and craftsmen, folks like, for example, George Mellow, a weaver
Speaker 3: from Huddersfield who played a pivotal role in organizing the
Speaker 3: right actions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, best known
Speaker 3: for the time that he fatally shot a mill owner
Speaker 3: in the balls. Yeah, chad move indeed, indeed, But these
Speaker 3: actions were not just you know, random acts of vandalism
Speaker 3: and violence. They were a desperate plea for change. In fact,
Speaker 3: they mainly confined their attacks to manufacturers who specifically use
Speaker 3: machines in what they called a fraudulent and sitful manner
Speaker 3: to get around standard labor practices. The lights wanted machines
Speaker 3: that made high quality goods, and they wanted these machines
Speaker 3: to be run by workers who had gone through an
Speaker 3: apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were really their
Speaker 3: main concerns. And besides the raids and the smashing, they
Speaker 3: also had a couple other tricks up their sleeves. They
Speaker 3: organized public demonstrations, They sent out letters to local industrialists
Speaker 3: and government officials to lay out their reasons for wrecking
Speaker 3: the machinery. They were just smashing flow reason with no messaging.
Speaker 3: And in different parts of England, you know, you had
Speaker 3: different approaches, different stances and different material conditions. So, for example,
Speaker 3: in the Midlands of England, the rights had the Company
Speaker 3: of Framework Knitters, which was this recognized public body that
Speaker 3: could talk to the capitalists through named representatives, and so
Speaker 3: they used that legitimacy as a recognized institution to back
Speaker 3: up their demands. But up in the northwest of England,
Speaker 3: textile workers didn't have these established trade institutions, so they
Speaker 3: used their letters to push for official recognition as a
Speaker 3: united group of trades people. You know, it's like an
Speaker 3: early union. The demands and just of course about smash machines.
Speaker 3: They also wanted high min on wages and again an
Speaker 3: end to child labor. They were playing the long game,
Speaker 3: and in Yorkshire, you know the tone shifts of it.
Speaker 3: They were going from letter writ into making more direct
Speaker 3: and violent threats against local authorities who they saw support
Speaker 3: in these nasty machines that messed with the job market
Speaker 3: the Yorkshire that writes meant business. In fact, they carried
Speaker 3: around these sledgehammers that they call the Great Enoch, named
Speaker 3: after local blacksmith who had manufactured both the hammers and
Speaker 3: also many of the machines they intended to destroy. As
Speaker 3: they declared Enoch made them, Enoch shall break them, which
Speaker 3: I think is just the division that gives me is like,
Speaker 3: you know, God of War style, you know, swinging around
Speaker 3: this sledgehammer smash of the machines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like I mean they broke some big things, right,
Speaker 4: Like they weren't. Uh, this wasn't like, I know, like
Speaker 4: some sort of trivial sabotage like frame breaking is. It's
Speaker 4: still a capital crime in the UK, but it's also
Speaker 4: a serious feet of strength.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I'm going to get into that.
Speaker 4: Excellent good. Yeah, I love coming from a country with
Speaker 4: normal laws.
Speaker 3: There's so many. Don't even get me started on strange
Speaker 3: laws around the world. I mean, yeah, you're ensuring that
Speaker 3: there are some really strange, strange laws. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure that could be a whole topic for a
Speaker 3: whole episode.
Speaker 4: It could be you could suggest that they're not connected
Speaker 4: to morality. Perhaps maybe maybe the law and right and
Speaker 4: wrong is not the same thing.
Speaker 3: M you might be onto something there, Yeah, ponder something
Speaker 3: to think about for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So a lot of these differences and approaches like I mentioned,
Speaker 3: really depending on their material conditions. It also depended on
Speaker 3: the background of the workers. Some of them were frameworkers,
Speaker 3: some of them were weavers, some of them were spinners,
Speaker 3: and so they conduferent tactics and styles depending on what
Speaker 3: they were experienced with and where you found them. Of course,
Speaker 3: they were sending out death threats to some industrialists as well,
Speaker 3: and in fact Some of these industrialists were so worried
Speaker 3: about let light attacks that they had secret chambers built
Speaker 3: into their buildings as escape plans in case things went
Speaker 3: south during an attack. Yeah, you could imagine them cowering
Speaker 3: in their holes. Yeah, just like as were outside.
Speaker 4: Imagine being like, yeah, I'm making excellent choices in life.
Speaker 4: I employ hundreds of people, and I've built a secret
Speaker 4: hole to hiding when They'll never be trying to kill
Speaker 4: me because I've made their lives so shit.
Speaker 3: Yes, like I am going to create conditions that are
Speaker 3: so terrible. These people are going to get so angry
Speaker 3: at me, and then I'm just going to make a
Speaker 3: place to hide, you know. Yeah, so of actually rectifying
Speaker 3: the reasons they're angry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Like you could simply take the money you
Speaker 4: spent on your secret escape hatch and distributed to people
Speaker 4: who are literally struggling to put food in their children's mouths.
Speaker 4: But I guess that's not the logic of capitalism, is it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'll be too that'll be too humane.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, you can't let them get you know,
Speaker 4: realize that you're afraid of them.
Speaker 3: Indeed, for all these tactics, the rights were truly fights
Speaker 3: not only for their own jobs, but also for us, say,
Speaker 3: in the future of their industry and their communities. Like
Speaker 3: regular people of today, they were just trying to provide
Speaker 3: for their families and defend themselves against the ever expanding
Speaker 3: incursions of the capitalists. I don't know, James, how do
Speaker 3: you think the government and factor and has responded to
Speaker 3: these ordinary people and their desperate and fair please for change. Yeah,
Speaker 3: surely it was a human response right.
Speaker 4: From Yeah, that's what I would expect as a British person.
Speaker 4: Throughout history of our government has really shown of humanity
Speaker 4: and compassion for people, so i'd expect they did something
Speaker 4: similar here. That's what I learned it.
Speaker 3: They're so compassionate that they created an empire that the
Speaker 3: sun would never set on m hm. And the reason
Speaker 3: is so considerate, you know, for people who are afraid
Speaker 3: of the dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's the real reason.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And of course they were doing it to uplift, civilize
Speaker 4: and christianize the other peoples of the world, and for
Speaker 4: their other reasons.
Speaker 3: Such philanthropists, such philanthropists.
Speaker 4: Kind people who bought tea and SCons to to the
Speaker 4: rest of the world. The British Empire and the British government.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Never am I going to learn something bad about them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hate to let you down, but the government
Speaker 3: and the factory and I was responded with, you know,
Speaker 3: deploying troops to quell the Lights uprisings and firing against
Speaker 3: the protesters. In one of the bloodiest incidents, in April
Speaker 3: eighteen twelve, some two thousand protesters marbed a mill there Manchester,
Speaker 3: and the owner ordered his men because in addition to soldiers,
Speaker 3: you also have these, you know, private militias that capitalists
Speaker 3: would hire. So the owner ordered his men to fire
Speaker 3: into the crowd, killing at least three and wound in
Speaker 3: eighteen and then soldiers killed at least five more the
Speaker 3: next day.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, that's that's not quite what we'd hope for,
Speaker 4: is it.
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Many of the Lights were arrested, many were tortured,
Speaker 3: some even faced execution or even worse, exile to Australia.
Speaker 4: Yeah. They're ultimate the ultimate crime, the ultimn penalty. Rather, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's sent to the land of kangaroos and where they
Speaker 4: put mashed potatoes inside their pies. What Yeah, have you
Speaker 4: not seen this? This is it's terrible.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately are you talking about like shepherd's pie or.
Speaker 4: No, they'll they'll take a meat pie like a normal
Speaker 4: meat pie, and then they'll cut a bit and then
Speaker 4: put mashed potatoes like into in the top of it.
Speaker 3: Just to what is called.
Speaker 4: I'd have to look now, like I've seen it on
Speaker 4: YouTube meat pie mashed potato Australia. You can get it
Speaker 4: like it in like you know, like like it's like
Speaker 4: instead of having fish and chips. You can get it
Speaker 4: at a van. Like someone will bring it to you.
Speaker 3: I think I'm seeing it.
Speaker 4: You found it and then they put like gravy as well.
Speaker 3: Oh man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like I've come from a country that does
Speaker 4: terrible things to food. But yeah, it's this one is
Speaker 4: really something else. You can see why people where it
Speaker 4: was the word.
Speaker 3: I have to say though, I do admire that it
Speaker 3: seems to be a very balanced you know, you get
Speaker 3: in the cobs, the fats and the proteins in it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like, yeah, and it's all in one.
Speaker 3: That's that's the gym bro and meats talking of course,
Speaker 3: but it seems like a very efficient meal.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's like it's not that the Cornish pasty is
Speaker 4: the truly the most efficient working man's power bar because
Speaker 4: you can you can hold onto the crust and eat
Speaker 4: the pasty and even if you have like dirty hands
Speaker 4: from working in a factory, you still get your lunch.
Speaker 3: Hmm. Yeah, but we're getting a little bit side.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we have. We've traveled a long way.
Speaker 3: From the exiles Australia. I shut out the thought, but
Speaker 3: some of them, despite that, kept their fighting spirit to
Speaker 3: the bitter end, like for example, John Booth and no
Speaker 3: offense to you, James. But you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: the names I read, like British history are the most
Speaker 3: generic sound in names. You just casually find someone in
Speaker 3: British named like John Doe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do. We're choosing from a limited palette. Like
Speaker 4: until very recently, we were really pretty pretty like pretty
Speaker 4: stodgy on the names, you know, Like.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, it's it's iconic, but at the
Speaker 3: same time it's also hilarious that you like everybody from
Speaker 3: like regular people to like some of the movers and cheapers,
Speaker 3: the leaders in the military and you know, politicians and stuff,
Speaker 3: just all of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, it's like they had yeah yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 4: some guy. Occasionally you'll get like a Cornelius or a
Speaker 4: Mama duke or just some absolute nons with like a
Speaker 4: really posh name. But yeah, otherwise, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Well apparently like an Enoch, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you got to respect Enoch. Like once you
Speaker 4: go outside of England you get some good names. But like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we were moving with a pretty pretty pretty playing with
Speaker 4: playing with a small deck. I guess when it came
Speaker 4: to names for a while there.
Speaker 3: For I mean, I can't even talk. My name is Andrews,
Speaker 3: so I think.
Speaker 4: My name is the most popular name for boys born
Speaker 4: in the year I was born. So I can't really
Speaker 4: can't really say much.
Speaker 3: Oh God, we're going off track again, right yeah. John
Speaker 3: Booth Right?
Speaker 10: So?
Speaker 3: John Booth was this nineteen year old apprentice who joined
Speaker 3: one of the light attacks. He was injured, detained, and
Speaker 3: died after being tortured to give up the identity of
Speaker 3: his fellow thelites. A local priest was in the room
Speaker 3: when he was passing, and his dying words became legendary.
Speaker 3: So John was like, can you keep a secret? And
Speaker 3: the priest was like, yes, my child, and then Booth
Speaker 3: was like, so can I and then he died.
Speaker 4: There you go, what a hero.
Speaker 3: Yeah, iconic, iconic.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, government officials by eighteen th eighteen, we're trying
Speaker 3: to quash the light movement by any means necessary, so
Speaker 3: they organize this massive trial in York after the attack
Speaker 3: on Cartwright's mill. A Rawford's near Clakheaton.
Speaker 4: I've got a right, yeah, clak Heaton. I think that
Speaker 4: seems about right. Where are we in the Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're in I'm signing it on the map, okay, in
Speaker 4: Ellits Yeah, yeah, Bradford. I've not actually spent much time
Speaker 4: in that part of the world, but if I had
Speaker 4: to guess, raw folds something like that. We do, like
Speaker 4: one of our ano Another great tradition in Britain is
Speaker 4: having names which don't bear any relation to the way
Speaker 4: they're spelled. We just write them like that. Actually can
Speaker 4: tell if you're local or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean we primarily use British spelling conventions.
Speaker 3: Internet in English, so I know all about your center
Speaker 3: with the R and then the E.
Speaker 4: Yeah, defense and yeah. I'm working on a book at
Speaker 4: the moment and my American Microsoft word is fighting me
Speaker 4: every step of the way on my spelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, can't they see that the U is
Speaker 3: absolutely essential in the word color.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and without it we wouldn't know what it meant.
Speaker 4: And that's what language does.
Speaker 3: So yeah. So, after this attack on Cartwright's Miller Ruffles
Speaker 3: mayor Clakheaton, the government accused over sixty men, including Mellow
Speaker 3: and his associates, of various crimes related to the Lights activities.
Speaker 3: It's important to note that not all of these charged
Speaker 3: men were actually the Lightes. Some had no connection to
Speaker 3: the movement, and while these trials were technically legitimateury trials,
Speaker 3: many were abandoned due to a lack of evidence laid
Speaker 3: in the acquittal of thirty of those sixty men, and
Speaker 3: it's evident that these trials were primarily intended as show
Speaker 3: trials to discourage other the Lights from continuing the activities.
Speaker 3: And then here's where we get to the important bit.
Speaker 3: Parliament went on to make a machine breaking I eat,
Speaker 3: industrial sabotage a capital crime with the Frame Breaking Act
Speaker 3: of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what a normal thing. And they've never repealed it,
Speaker 4: is that right?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I believe I don't think so. Ye're still in the books.
Speaker 4: Yeah, listen if you're listening. Since it was yeah, I
Speaker 4: was gonna say if someone's listening in the UK, just
Speaker 4: give it a try and see what happened. Stakes stakes
Speaker 4: are quite high, but yeah, you know, you never know,
Speaker 4: they might be might be able to get the Machine
Speaker 4: Breaking Act struck down.
Speaker 3: A frame brankingly. I wouldn't be surprised if, you know,
Speaker 3: since it was established in eighteen twelve, if by now
Speaker 3: a lot of the British colonies you know, might still
Speaker 3: have it in their books as well. Yeah, yeah, have
Speaker 3: inherited that common though and stuff. Yeah, and I'm not
Speaker 3: like a legal score. I don't know all the deeds
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 4: No, I can see Liz trust incorporating it to her
Speaker 4: platform to return to our leadership position. It's like a
Speaker 4: very insane kind of Tory position, Like there's there's still
Speaker 4: this bizarre British like any time we have a protest
Speaker 4: movement in the streets in the UK, you can like
Speaker 4: log onto like meta on Facebook or whatever and see
Speaker 4: like a certain type of British person being like sending
Speaker 4: the army. Like it's like a like there are people
Speaker 4: who have not reconstructed their opinions on labor organizing since
Speaker 4: the LA that period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, indeed, indeed they are the Conservative Party picture them
Speaker 3: like smoking cigars with top hats, except I know they
Speaker 3: were not capitalists. A lot of them are just like
Speaker 3: regular workers, just like what are you even doing?
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, like you've like, don't you understand that
Speaker 4: your economic interests line up with these people and not
Speaker 4: with like the Boris Johnson's of this world, and your
Speaker 4: social social interest too of course.
Speaker 3: But I mean speaking of of you know, interests aligning,
Speaker 3: there was actually a politician who did stand against that legislation,
Speaker 3: and that is you know, the well known English poet
Speaker 3: Lord Byron. Yeah, he was actually one of the few
Speaker 3: prominent defenders that it's especially after witnessing how the defendants
Speaker 3: were treated during the York trial.
Speaker 4: I mean, go ahead, bar Byron has some surprisingly like
Speaker 4: good and then he was part of this romantic movement, right,
Speaker 4: like the idea that the industrial revolution spoiled the innocence
Speaker 4: of the rural working people, which it's it's paternalist at
Speaker 4: its core, but like when at least he's not paying
Speaker 4: for their blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, Actually that attitude reminds me of Van
Speaker 3: go She was another all of his art was very
Speaker 3: obsessed with the peasants because he just saw it like
Speaker 3: a better way of life. Yeah, real romanticization of the person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. I think it was a thing that's
Speaker 4: sort of spread around Europe in their late nineteenth early
Speaker 4: twentieth century maybe like in the eighteenth centuries, no, they yeah,
Speaker 4: nineteen to twentieth century, like this idea that yeah, like
Speaker 4: the innocence of the rural peasants have been broken, and
Speaker 4: like it's just so reflected in so much art from
Speaker 4: that period.
Speaker 3: That is, that's literally just like the evolution of nostalgia. Yeah,
Speaker 3: fully think about it.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like it's kind of like our people today are like, oh,
Speaker 3: the nineties was so much better. Oh, the two thousands
Speaker 3: were so much better. Oh the eighties or the seventies.
Speaker 3: It's just that but with peasants. Yeah yeah, like disco whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, Like, yeah, it is. It's like doing like
Speaker 3: doing a ironic wearing a fanny pack, but with a peasant.
Speaker 3: Not even just in fashion. It's also like the angel
Speaker 3: like material reasons people feel nostalgic. Nostalgic as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like when think about you know, safety, when you think
Speaker 3: about the ways that our cities have changed, think about
Speaker 3: you know, all of the material realities that have changed
Speaker 3: in these decades, and it makes sense. But just like
Speaker 3: I wished for the simpler life of the present, our
Speaker 3: people now wish, you know, go back to these simpler
Speaker 3: times of.
Speaker 4: You have the minus strike when.
Speaker 3: The media posts gym through and colonial independent inspience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's uh I think also we
Speaker 4: forget the hardships. But yeah, like it's a way, and
Speaker 4: change accelerates so much quicker now because we've raally fucked
Speaker 4: the whole planet, and climate change accelerating and obviously to
Speaker 4: technological change accelerating, so our nostalgia cycles are much shorter.
Speaker 4: But yeah, this is just like when I had an
Speaker 4: estate and I could direct the peasants to trim my
Speaker 4: trees in a certain shape, life was better for them
Speaker 4: kind of, but like in a meaningful sense, right, Like
Speaker 4: the lives of working class people were not improved. Right
Speaker 4: we see, like the like GDP, which is a useless
Speaker 4: metric that, like the amount of of like value of
Speaker 4: goods the country produces an industrial revolution goes up and
Speaker 4: up and up, but the quality of life and even
Speaker 4: life expectancy does not, right, Like people are dying earlier
Speaker 4: and certainly like and chiefly life expectancy is dropping because
Speaker 4: children are dying, right, either from the industrial conditions or
Speaker 4: conditions in cities, and so like, in a meaningful sense,
Speaker 4: those people's life was not improved. The life of the
Speaker 4: bourgeoisis was improved.
Speaker 3: And like.
Speaker 4: We see that later in Britain with things like the
Speaker 4: Britain's forced to incorporate the bourgeoisi into into its politics, right,
Speaker 4: so that doesn't have a bigger revolution, that's what it
Speaker 4: does in the Great Reform Act. But like the working
Speaker 4: class people, it continues to suppress. Like after this, you know,
Speaker 4: we look, we see it with the chartists and like
Speaker 4: the violent suppression of chartism. But yeah, this nostalgia isn't
Speaker 4: it helps them, but I guess it's not really invested
Speaker 4: in their agency. It's more of a paternalist like it's
Speaker 4: I guess not dissimilar to the way Britain treated its
Speaker 4: colonies in many ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think another aspect of it as well is,
Speaker 3: you know, when we look at this sort of nostalgia,
Speaker 3: whether it's talking about this romantic nostalgia for the simple
Speaker 3: life of the peasant, always talking about the nostalgia of
Speaker 3: for example, an example from Trinidad, the oil boom period
Speaker 3: in the seventies and eighties, right, Yeah, we gain independence
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two, and in the seventies and eighties we
Speaker 3: got this oil boom, and you know, a lot people
Speaker 3: who live in lavish But whether you talk either of
Speaker 3: those cases, when you look at the reality of the
Speaker 3: situation on the ground, it's like, oh, you actually go
Speaker 3: back to that time, it wasn't also on Shannon Russ,
Speaker 3: you know, like it actually was not good to be
Speaker 3: a peasant. Actually, I mean there are certain things that
Speaker 3: you know a lot better than now in terms of
Speaker 3: perhaps the vibrants of culture or the ability to lean
Speaker 3: on a community for support and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But or take for example, this oil boom situation talking
Speaker 3: about with Trinidad. Yeah, like there was this massive influx
Speaker 3: of wealth and stuff, but there's also you know, a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of corruption. And also we had the whole
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy Black Power revolution that was born out of
Speaker 3: the frustration of the people at the time. There's an
Speaker 3: all sunshine and rainbows, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's just always this sense like
Speaker 4: you see it in like nostalgia as well, right, Like
Speaker 4: the nostalgia for East Germany that German people will talk
Speaker 4: about like you also had the starz e Like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I get it when I look at
Speaker 3: some of the maps of like like they're talking about
Speaker 3: with Germany, some of the data related maps sociological data
Speaker 3: of things like religiosity or things. Yeah, current with some
Speaker 3: other examples, but there's some like stark differences between the
Speaker 3: two sides of the country. Yes, yeah, yeah, very much so,
Speaker 3: so I completely understand people would feel like, oh, we
Speaker 3: feel so separate and distinct from you know, West Germany
Speaker 3: and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and when you've become like they went from
Speaker 4: being like a I guess, like a nation within the
Speaker 4: USSR to like the often the less economically advantage parts
Speaker 4: of a nation which is near liberal and capitalist, and
Speaker 4: like neoliberal capitalism is not kind to the less economically
Speaker 4: ad advantage people. It wasn't a great situation before either,
Speaker 4: to be clear, but like I can see how suddenly
Speaker 4: being incorporated into like not everyone's going through this, but
Speaker 4: you are are, and the state's not going to do
Speaker 4: fuck all to help you. It's like I can see
Speaker 4: how that might promote some nostalgia.
Speaker 3: Definitely, definitely, And I mean speaking of states doing nothing.
Speaker 3: At this time, Byron is making his speech before the lords,
Speaker 3: and in that speech last with sarcasm, of course, he
Speaker 3: was highlighting the benefits of automation, which he believe led
Speaker 3: to the production of inferior goods and unemployment. He concluded
Speaker 3: that the proposed law, the Frame Breaking Act of eighteen twelve,
Speaker 3: was only missing two crucial elements to be effective twelve
Speaker 3: butchers for a jury and a Jeffries for a judge,
Speaker 3: which was a reference to George Jeffries, an infamous hanging
Speaker 3: judge known for his very harsh judgments.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also mad that, like, but also not uncommon
Speaker 4: in this period that you are seeing like the leftmost
Speaker 4: political opinion being advanced within Parliament being advanced in the
Speaker 4: hereditary chamber, like the House of Law, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, as soon the the what's the word, the aristocratic, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the aristocratic realm is still you know, having to deal
Speaker 3: with this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very much tied to like a paternalism and
Speaker 4: a sort of feudal attitude. But it's just it's just
Speaker 4: fascinating to see, like, and it does happen especially and
Speaker 4: I think also there's this a deep, deep disdain for
Speaker 4: new money. That is a powerfully British vibe that that
Speaker 4: comes especially from the House of Lords, right, like like this,
Speaker 4: like they don't identify with the bourgeoisie at all and
Speaker 4: fucking hate them because they're they're they're turning up at
Speaker 4: the country club or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's so it's so funny about a lot
Speaker 3: of old money. And I'm gonna say this, and I'm gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, give her contrack. What's so funny about the
Speaker 3: old money folks is that a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of cases they don't even have of like as much
Speaker 3: money as the new money people. Yes, yeah, about money
Speaker 3: for them at this point, it's really just about linear
Speaker 3: and culture and whatever.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like Britain's class thing is like it's almost like a
Speaker 4: caste system, Like your cast is your class is inherited
Speaker 4: regardless of your actual financial means. Like they're like lord
Speaker 4: living in a castle that he can't afford to heat is.
Speaker 4: It's like a it's like a it's a trope for
Speaker 4: a reason in Britain, I guess.
Speaker 3: Indeed indeed.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the passing of that Act, and in the years
Speaker 3: had followed, the Light Movement came to an end, but
Speaker 3: the actions left a lasting mark on the labor movement.
Speaker 3: There's tactics of collective action even though Clandestine laid the
Speaker 3: groundwork for future labor unions, demonstrating the power of organized resistance,
Speaker 3: defenders of their way of life. Reminders the technology, while
Speaker 3: transforming to it, can also disrupt lives and communities. The
Speaker 3: lights experiences, the lights experiences echo even today, you know,
Speaker 3: in an era with the fear of technological unemployment, with
Speaker 3: discussions and the impact of automation and AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Before he had said his infamous last words, John Booth
Speaker 3: also said that the new machinery might be man's chief
Speaker 3: lesson instead of his curse, if society were differently constituted.
Speaker 3: In other ways, technology can either help common food or
Speaker 3: harm them, depending on not just what the technology is,
Speaker 3: but also what society the technology develops with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 3: So I'll leave you all with that for now, and
Speaker 3: next time will be shifting our focus to the present
Speaker 3: day and examining how Bloodism's principles have been applied by
Speaker 3: movements of the twentieth and twenty first century.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: Nice, that's all for me. You can find me on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Dot com slash Andrewism and support on Patreon dot com
Speaker 3: slash Saint Drew this husband, it could happen here. Welcome
Speaker 3: back to it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage and
Speaker 3: you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel, Andrewism.
Speaker 3: I'm joined once again.
Speaker 4: By James getting no less aw quid as we go
Speaker 4: behind Andrew, I'm excited to learn about what we're going
Speaker 4: to learn about today.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're picking up where we left off by tackling
Speaker 3: the bloodites of today. In our previous episode, we unravel
Speaker 3: the story of the Floodites who stood against the encroaching
Speaker 3: forces of the industrial revolution and more specifically, the abuses
Speaker 3: of workers by profit seeking capitalists. They were challenging the
Speaker 3: world view of lazier fair capitalism with this increase in
Speaker 3: amalgamation of power, resources, and wealth, rationalized by its emphasis
Speaker 3: on progress. Today, it seems this history as we have
Speaker 3: of repeating itself as we face a similar struggle against
Speaker 3: technological changes that come about to the detriment of workers.
Speaker 3: As some tech has been used by tech companies in
Speaker 3: various industries to drive down wages and worsen conditions for
Speaker 3: common workers. Say, for example, technological unemployment. Theladites who once
Speaker 3: resisted the encroachment her machines would find their concerns reflected
Speaker 3: in our modern world. As a technological advancements often come
Speaker 3: with the cost of those whose jobs can be automated away.
Speaker 3: For instance, in the manufacturing industry, robots and automated assembly
Speaker 3: lines of streamline in production lead into increased efficiency and
Speaker 3: lower costs for companies, but these efficiencies often meant the
Speaker 3: displacement of human workers, and such as in manufacturing, the
Speaker 3: ripple effects extend to various sectors like customer service, transportation,
Speaker 3: and data analysis, and so there's this fear of job
Speaker 3: displacement looms large. However, technological unemployment, which is the belief
Speaker 3: that as technology advances, human jobs are at risk potentially
Speaker 3: into widespread unemployment, has been described by some economists as
Speaker 3: a fallacy. Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: when the advance of mechanization began transforming various industries, and
Speaker 3: with workers fear and automation would render them job less
Speaker 3: and devalue their labor, the people took a stand, but
Speaker 3: as time passed, new industries and job opportunities emerged to
Speaker 3: replace some of the old ones. Ultimately absorbing that workforce.
Speaker 3: Fast forward to the twentieth century and the rise of
Speaker 3: computers and automation technology reignited concerns about technological unemployment, but again,
Speaker 3: new jobs were created in new industries. Today, the debate
Speaker 3: continues as artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation advance at an
Speaker 3: unprecedented pace, and it remains to be seen what the
Speaker 3: long term consequences of those technologies may be. My position
Speaker 3: has really always been that we should be working less anyway,
Speaker 3: but instead people are obsessed with creating new jobs, even
Speaker 3: when they're unnecessary. See you know, of course, David Graber's
Speaker 3: bullshit jobs. But you know, even if the idea of
Speaker 3: mass unemployment due to tech is not true, if we
Speaker 3: end up replacing the jobs that are eraised with new jobs,
Speaker 3: whatever the case may be, tech is nevertheless quite capable
Speaker 3: of destroying livelihoods, creating unintended consequences, and further concentrating power
Speaker 3: in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Tech advance
Speaker 3: when it makes a job more fulfilling and enjoyable. They
Speaker 3: are also those who make it more tea us and grinding,
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, tech and free us from some tasks.
Speaker 3: You know, accountants have digital spreadsheets to make their lives
Speaker 3: much easier. For example, writing is way easier now that
Speaker 3: the personal computers is more common. But while technological progress
Speaker 3: can produce prosperity, there's really no guarantee that the prosperity
Speaker 3: will reach the workers. In most cases on the capitalism,
Speaker 3: it very clearly doesn't. In fact, many of the benefits
Speaker 3: of the industrial revolution were really not felt by the
Speaker 3: workers until decades later, after many of them had been
Speaker 3: you know, crushed or poisoned or killed or you know,
Speaker 3: died in a factory fire or whatever they shut down
Speaker 3: when protesting, you know, like that, they didn't see the
Speaker 3: benefits until much later on. You know, it's not like
Speaker 3: you know, these things introduced and boom, everybody benefits. I
Speaker 3: mean even now, not everybody in the world is benefiting
Speaker 3: from you know, the computer age. There are still many people,
Speaker 3: like for example, in the Congo, who are endurance slavery
Speaker 3: and slave like conditions in order to you know, procure
Speaker 3: the materials necessary for the computer age totally, and yet
Speaker 3: they're not seeing those benefits and arranged we're scene when
Speaker 3: they'll see the benefits that many of us enjoy in
Speaker 3: various parts of the world, and particularly that there was
Speaker 3: enjoy in the global North. In our relentless pursuit of
Speaker 3: progress and technological advancement as defined by capitalism, we also
Speaker 3: end up losing our nature, our community, and in many
Speaker 3: cases are craftsmanship. I mean, I remember John Booth, the
Speaker 3: one who had said can you keep a secret? Or
Speaker 3: so can I? Yes? Other words, you know that the
Speaker 3: new machinery, right, Beman's chief blessing in Surface Curse. It's
Speaker 3: a side he were differently constituted. That's where I have
Speaker 3: to bring in the one and only the ls I've
Speaker 3: spoken about him before, of course, the Austrian philosopher, the
Speaker 3: theologia and the sort of everything Guy ivan Ilich.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, fun times, fun times.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He was a thinker ahead of his time. You know,
Speaker 3: it's really strange in some of his positions, I think,
Speaker 3: but a lot of his concepts resonate today in various movements.
Speaker 3: In fact, one of the foundational concepts in the modern
Speaker 3: movement of the growth is the concept of conviviality, which
Speaker 3: was redefined and introduced in the context of our tools
Speaker 3: in Elisio's book Tools of Conviviality. Eligious vision as explored
Speaker 3: by the book is one in which technology sales humanity,
Speaker 3: not supplant it. We had convivial tools empowered individuals and communities,
Speaker 3: fostering creativity and autonomy while preventing the concentration of power
Speaker 3: in the hands of the few. According to Ilig, conviviality
Speaker 3: is individual freedom realized in personal interdependence. It's basically the
Speaker 3: ability of individuals to interact and to interact creatively and
Speaker 3: autonomously with others and the environment to satisfy their individual
Speaker 3: and collective needs. Convivial tools, or those which are robust
Speaker 3: and durable, preserve or enhance ecosystems, level unequal power relationships,
Speaker 3: and give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity
Speaker 3: to enrich the environment with the fruits of their vision.
Speaker 3: And a convivial society is one in which tools, which
Speaker 3: according to Lag includes physical hardware, productive institutions, and productive systems,
Speaker 3: so tools will be factories, hospitals, schools, farms. All of
Speaker 3: those things are being included in his definition of tools,
Speaker 3: and a convivial society is one of which those tools
Speaker 3: operate on the humans scale and save the people instead
Speaker 3: of rulers. The idea of configual tools really challenges us
Speaker 3: to a few technology as a means to enhance our
Speaker 3: lives rather than displace our livelihoods. It's a call to
Speaker 3: harness innovation for the bettend of society instead of the
Speaker 3: perpetuation of radical monopolies, which I spoke about in a
Speaker 3: previous it could happen here episode. I think a Lodites
Speaker 3: like John Booth would have certainly appreciated that message.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and to the rights of.
Speaker 3: Today certainly do because yeah, I'm not the first nor
Speaker 3: the only person to see lessons to be learned from
Speaker 3: the La Lite movement. The concept of a Neolodite movement
Speaker 3: has been embraced by a variety of folks who may
Speaker 3: or may not understand what the original Ledite movement was about. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, you have these primitivists who embrace the Neoloodite
Speaker 3: cause because I think it means hate and technology, and
Speaker 3: you have the anarchists and the trade unionists and the environmentalists.
Speaker 3: We're looking more at the label, organized and roots of
Speaker 3: the original Latite movement, and of course even see echoes
Speaker 3: of Ogloodite action in the vandalism against self driving cars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Neolodite movement is composed of activists, workers, scholars, and
Speaker 3: social critics who stand against the predominant worldview that unbridled
Speaker 3: technology represents progress, point ins key, then critiques, and in
Speaker 3: some cases actual action against technologies and tech companies that
Speaker 3: desecrate our planet and our society. Philosopher Lewis Mumford, who
Speaker 3: had written the Myth of the Machine Pentagonic Power, reminds
Speaker 3: us that technology and compasses more than just physical objects.
Speaker 3: It also includes the techniques of operation and the social
Speaker 3: organizations that make up particular technology work. Technology reflects our worldview.
Speaker 3: The forms of technology we embrace, whether they be machines, techniques,
Speaker 3: or social structures, are seeply roots in our perception of life, death,
Speaker 3: human potential, and the relationships between humans and nature. Our
Speaker 3: choice of technology, in many ways, mirrors our outlook on
Speaker 3: the world. That outlook in the modern world is shaped
Speaker 3: by a rather mechanistic approach to life, characterized by rational thinking, efficiency, utilitarianism,
Speaker 3: scientific detachment, and a belief in humanities, ownership and supremacy
Speaker 3: over nature. That's how the end of getting texts like
Speaker 3: the Military Industrial Complex and they were and sprawl. Honestly,
Speaker 3: in a sense, the old lites kind of had it easy.
Speaker 8: Not.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously their conditions were horrible. When I say
Speaker 3: they had it easy, I mean it's in the sense
Speaker 3: that their machines could be destroyed by their sledgehammers.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Our technology is a lot more ephemoral. You know, it's
Speaker 3: in the cloud. It's as nebulous as microplastics in the soil,
Speaker 3: the water, and the breast milk. I mean, it's everywhere,
Speaker 3: and it's integrated into everything. It's like, where do you
Speaker 3: even begin?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: In the book When Technology Wounds by Psychologists Chellish Clendening
Speaker 3: by psychologists Chellis Clendening, she studied technology survivors, people who
Speaker 3: had suffered injury or illness in recent years after being
Speaker 3: exposed to various toxic technologies in their homes and workplaces,
Speaker 3: whether nuclear radiation, pesticides, asbestos, both control devices, or drugs,
Speaker 3: and covered how they had begun to question not only
Speaker 3: the processes that maimed them, but the world that indifferently
Speaker 3: forced those processes on them under the guise of progress.
Speaker 3: Glendening saw these victims as the basis of a new
Speaker 3: Bloodite movement struggling against what has been called the Second
Speaker 3: Industrial What has been called the Second Industrial Revolution alongside
Speaker 3: thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Ivan Ilich. Those survivors have
Speaker 3: gone on to create groups such as as Those Victims
Speaker 3: of America as part of ME, Victims of Their Friends,
Speaker 3: Citizens Against Pesticide Misuse, DALK and Shield Information Network, des Action,
Speaker 3: and National National Association of Atomic Veterans, National Committee for
Speaker 3: Victims of Human Research, National Toxics Campaign, and the VDT Coalition.
Speaker 3: All of these, of course are based in the US,
Speaker 3: and there are also actives groups like earth First that
Speaker 3: could have been classified under the Neololte cause and Earthful
Speaker 3: strategy was to stop environmental intrusions by any means available,
Speaker 3: legal and otherwise. So they will be slashing engines, slashing tires,
Speaker 3: disabling engines, blocking roads. Most famously, they would drilled spikes
Speaker 3: into trees and wilderness forests to prevent them from being
Speaker 3: logged by chainsaws.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But you know, while all these movements and organizations are
Speaker 3: happening in the Western world, it really wasn't just the
Speaker 3: Western world where this has happening. A positive undercurrent of
Speaker 3: the right spirit has surged where indigenous peoples have led
Speaker 3: the charges against the incursions of industrialism. Quncies of mainly
Speaker 3: resisting the machines and projects for industrialization, but also pushing
Speaker 3: back against its cultural impact. Peasants and farmers staunchly rejecting
Speaker 3: participation in the various development initiatives imposed upon them by
Speaker 3: compliant governments, often under the influence of entities like the
Speaker 3: World Bank or the US State Department. For example, during
Speaker 3: the early nineteen eighties, some farmers in Mali took a
Speaker 3: stand against the construction of dams and dykes for a
Speaker 3: rice growing program that they wanted no part of. Other
Speaker 3: communities elsewhere have rallied to hold dam projects that threatened
Speaker 3: to submerge the ancestral lands, and some of them successful,
Speaker 3: as seen of the villagers who protested the Narmada Dam
Speaker 3: in India and the early nineteen nineties, and others have
Speaker 3: faced more daunting challenges, like the people of eastern Java
Speaker 3: who protested against the Neper Irrigation Dam and faced deadly
Speaker 3: consequences at the hands of Indonesian security forces in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three. Yeah interous tribes have also organized to combat
Speaker 3: deforestation and road building projects that encroached upon their territories.
Speaker 3: The Chipco tree Huggan movement in India during the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties famously succeeded in stopping government clear cutting efforts,
Speaker 3: and similar projects have echoed across the globe, from Malaysia
Speaker 3: to Australia, Brazil to Costa Rica, Solomon Islands, Indonesia and beyond.
Speaker 3: Traditional fishermen in many regions, such as the Indians of continent, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Speaker 3: and multiple ports along the Pacific coast of South America,
Speaker 3: including Ecuador and Columbia, have also taken action against industrial
Speaker 3: fishing fleets encroaching on their waters and jeopardizing their livelihoods.
Speaker 3: In some cases, these protests may have involved the destruction
Speaker 3: of machinery, but sabotage, you know, is not unheard of,
Speaker 3: like in the case of a high tech chemical plant
Speaker 3: in Thailand in nineteen eighty six. The driving force behind
Speaker 3: these actions really mirrors to ethos you know, as they
Speaker 3: share this full un desire to preserve the ways of
Speaker 3: life and livelihood in the face of industrial capitalisms, relentless
Speaker 3: pull towards a wage and market system. And then, of course,
Speaker 3: outside these movers and shakers, these onderground activists, there are
Speaker 3: also you know, the philosophical litites like the aforementioned illage.
Speaker 3: The neololite spectrum is more diverse and intriguing than one
Speaker 3: might imagine. While it may not have crystallized into a
Speaker 3: more formal movement with clear representatives, as is expected of
Speaker 3: movements these days, it unites a wide array of individuals
Speaker 3: to share common awakening from the allure of unchecked technology
Speaker 3: and resist various aspects of the industrial monoculture. Perhaps of
Speaker 3: the connections between these separate groups strengthen we'd see a
Speaker 3: greater recognition of the interconnected challenges in this grand tapestry
Speaker 3: of all evolving world. But the thing is to address
Speaker 3: the challenges posed by these technologies. It's not enough to
Speaker 3: merely regulate orti vidual items like pesticides or nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: What's required is a profound shift in our thinking about
Speaker 3: humanity and in our relationship to life itself. We need
Speaker 3: to craft a new worldview that paves the way for
Speaker 3: a different way of interacting with our world, our technologies,
Speaker 3: and our felt human beings. We need to reconsider our
Speaker 3: place in the ground scheme of things and to imagine
Speaker 3: a world where harmony and balance take precedence of predomination
Speaker 3: and control. In notes toward a Neulrite Manifesto written in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety, also by Chelli's Clendoning. The author outlines three
Speaker 3: core principles and four prescriptions that could drive the Neulrite movement.
Speaker 3: In terms of principles, firstly, and I suppose most essentially
Speaker 3: to addressing the misconception, Neulorites are not anti technology. Actually
Speaker 3: says technology is intrinsic to human creativity and culture. But
Speaker 3: what they oppose are the kinds of technologies that are
Speaker 3: at root destructive of human lives and communities. The next
Speaker 3: principle two is that all technologies are political. Quote a
Speaker 3: social critic Gerrymander rights in four argumented Elimination of Television,
Speaker 3: a book I read some years ago, by the way
Speaker 3: that a premedians revisit. But continuing the quote, technologies are
Speaker 3: not neutral tools that can be used for good or
Speaker 3: evil dependent on who uses them. They are entities that
Speaker 3: have been consciously structured to reflect and serve specific, powerful
Speaker 3: interests in specific historical situations. The technology is created by
Speaker 3: mass technological society. Are those that serve the perpetuation of
Speaker 3: mass technological society. They tend to be structured for short
Speaker 3: term efficiency ease of production, distribution, marketing and profit potential,
Speaker 3: or for warmaking. As a result, they tend to create
Speaker 3: rigid social systems and institutions that people do not understand
Speaker 3: and cannot change or control. The last principle three is
Speaker 3: that the poisonal view of technology is dangers limited. Glendoning
Speaker 3: argues that the often hood message, but I couldn't live
Speaker 3: without my word processor, because of course she's writing this,
Speaker 3: you know, years and years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I have my word my automatic typewriter.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But this oftenhood message that I couldn't live up
Speaker 3: my word processor, and I guess you could substitute that
Speaker 3: for smartphone or computer. That message denies the wider consequences
Speaker 3: of widespread use of computers, for example, the toxic contamination
Speaker 3: of workers electronic plants, or the certifying of corporate power
Speaker 3: through exclusive access to new information and databases. As Manda
Speaker 3: points out, producers and disseminators of technologies tend to introduce
Speaker 3: their creations and upbeat utopian terms. You know, pesticides will
Speaker 3: increase yields to feed a hungry planet, nuclear energy will
Speaker 3: be too deep, too cheap to meter, et cetera. And
Speaker 3: of course you know you have to throw in that
Speaker 3: that potshot at nuclear energy. It's very very twentieth century
Speaker 3: coded text. Yeah, however, quote learning to critique technology demands
Speaker 3: fully examining its sociological context, economic gratifications, and political meanings.
Speaker 3: It involves asking not just what is gained, for what
Speaker 3: is lost and by whom. It involves looking at the
Speaker 3: instruct introduction of technologies from the perspective not only a
Speaker 3: few in use, but of the impact in other living beings,
Speaker 3: natural systems, and the environment. And then there's the neolodide program,
Speaker 3: which loses me a bit at some points, even where
Speaker 3: I may agree with some of their principles, and you know,
Speaker 3: you might say that's a sign of my propagandized mind
Speaker 3: in our technological society. But I'll leave you to be
Speaker 3: the judge of that. Here's what Glendening explicitly proposes one
Speaker 3: as I moved toward dealing with the consequences of modern
Speaker 3: technologies and preventing further destruction of life, the New Lotte
Speaker 3: movement should favor the dismantling of nuclear technology, chemical technologies,
Speaker 3: genetic engineering technologies, television, electuro wagnetic technologies, and computer technologies, which,
Speaker 3: according to them, you know, according to her course, disease
Speaker 3: and death, create dangerous me to gens in case of television,
Speaker 3: functions as a centralized mind, controlling force, poisons the environment,
Speaker 3: all these different things. And I mean I gets some
Speaker 3: of the justifications for some of these technologies, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: of course, disease, death, you know, pollution, social issues, right yeah,
Speaker 3: But I at same time, I don't believe in through
Speaker 3: and out entire sciences and technologies. Who will see like that,
Speaker 3: you know, it feels like it feels like a very
Speaker 3: myopic view being presented on some of these texts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess this was before really the
Speaker 4: decentralization of some of the means of dissemination of information
Speaker 4: that happened kind of later on with things like some
Speaker 4: parts of the Internet. I don't want to say by
Speaker 4: any means of the Internet decentralized, but at least the
Speaker 4: promise of that which we occasionally see deliver as well. Right,
Speaker 4: Like if you saw today that I was just watching
Speaker 4: a video of the Yeppe Gay in Syria that the
Speaker 4: people in Rojaba like talking about the importance of women
Speaker 4: in the revolution in Myanmar, and like just occasionally the
Speaker 4: internet or technology gives us the thing they were supposed
Speaker 4: to give us this ability to connect without barriers. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: but yeah, like you said that that's the computer or
Speaker 4: the cell phone and that was recorded on or whatever
Speaker 4: happened because somebody, somebody in the congo and in horrific
Speaker 4: conditions and the DC had to dig out some rare
Speaker 4: earth chemical and then got paid next to nothing and
Speaker 4: their ancestral homeland was ruined by some rabid company that
Speaker 4: makes billions of dollars and pays people like shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean, I absolutely agree that the
Speaker 3: supply side of a lot of these technologies to change drastically,
Speaker 3: and also the you know, just the supply chain as
Speaker 3: a whole, you know, from the raw materials to the
Speaker 3: finished product and how it gets to us. I mean,
Speaker 3: that might mean no more of certain technologies, or it
Speaker 3: might mean a different approach, but it really remains to
Speaker 3: be seen. We really haven't tried other approaches because you know,
Speaker 3: we live under this capitalist hegemony. The next step in
Speaker 3: the program to the New Write movement should favor a
Speaker 3: search for new technological forms and the creation of technologies
Speaker 3: by the people directly involved in their use, not by scientists,
Speaker 3: engineers and entrepreneurs who gain financially from mass production and
Speaker 3: distribution of the inventions, and who know little about the
Speaker 3: context in which their technologies are used. I don't necessarily
Speaker 3: believe in, you know, splitting it down the middle like that,
Speaker 3: as if you know, scientists and engineers are not going
Speaker 3: to be the people that are directly involved in their use.
Speaker 3: And in some cases that's true. But another case is,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, people who are using the pros
Speaker 3: sometimes the people who invented it, yeah, iterated on it
Speaker 3: and whatnot.
Speaker 4: Like when I think about before there were three D
Speaker 4: printing weapons in the revolution in the amber, they were
Speaker 4: three D printing presteses because land minds are so common there, right,
Speaker 4: and so like for those people where the engineer is
Speaker 4: a person whose brother or sister or non binary sibling
Speaker 4: or what have you needs a leg and so they
Speaker 4: have iterated or designed a leg, and like that person
Speaker 4: is very much both like benefiting from the end use
Speaker 4: and doing the engineering exactly.
Speaker 3: I get this is kind of like, you know, a
Speaker 3: screed against the Ivory tower types. But yes, I don't
Speaker 3: think that reflects on you know, all of the or
Speaker 3: even most of the scientists and engineers. A lot of
Speaker 3: engineers on the ground a lot of you know, barefoot scientists,
Speaker 3: as the expression is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Nick, when we talk about things like permaculture
Speaker 4: or the things we talked about before, like, some of
Speaker 4: that is a science too, right. We have a thesis
Speaker 4: and we test it and we prove it, and then
Speaker 4: we keep iterating on it like it's a hypothesis, I
Speaker 4: should say, Like, and that's certainly a science which is
Speaker 4: rooted in a place and people and respect for the environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the manifesto goes a little bit further
Speaker 3: on this particular point. You know, she's advocating for the
Speaker 3: creation of technologies that are of a scale and structure
Speaker 3: that makes them understandable to the people who use them
Speaker 3: and are affected by them. She's advocating for the creation
Speaker 3: of technology is built with a high degree of flexibility,
Speaker 3: so that you do want to impose a rigid and
Speaker 3: irrasible imprint on their users. And she's advocating for the
Speaker 3: creation technologies are foster independence from technological addiction and promise
Speaker 3: political freedom, economic justice, and ecological balance. They are I can't.
Speaker 4: Disagree, you know, Yeah, I know, I'm down with that.
Speaker 3: I'm absolutely down with advocating for that. Yeah, the third
Speaker 3: point in the program, She says, we feel creation of
Speaker 3: technologies in which politics, morality, ecology, and technics are merged
Speaker 3: for the benefits of life on Earth. For example, community
Speaker 3: based energy sources utilizing solar, wind and waters technologies, organic
Speaker 3: biological technologies and agriculture, engineering, architecture, art, medicine, transportation and defense,
Speaker 3: conflict resolution technologies which emphasize cooperation, understanding, and continuity of relationship.
Speaker 3: And decentralized social technologies which encourage participation, responsibility, and empowerment.
Speaker 3: Now you know, I'm the solar punk guy. I'm the
Speaker 3: you know, the anarchists on YouTube. Whatever he got me
Speaker 3: on these. You know, I agree with all of these obviously,
Speaker 3: But what I find interest in is that this list
Speaker 3: seems to ignore how, you know, the technology is being
Speaker 3: advocated here are linked to the previous technologies that would
Speaker 3: just be in decride. You know, like in one section
Speaker 3: she's talking about, you know, a fan of these chemical technologies,
Speaker 3: but chemistry is an inevitable component of the biological technology
Speaker 3: such you're advocating for. Are you saying that you don't
Speaker 3: like computer technologies, But when you're talking about like solar
Speaker 3: wind and water energy, which to be fair can be
Speaker 3: low tech too. Yeah, there is usually some involvement of
Speaker 3: a computer in those energy systems. So I think it's
Speaker 3: you know, sight inconsistency there. But I don't know, what
Speaker 3: do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think yeah, like we can't sort of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: some times we can't say that to like you say,
Speaker 4: to a degree, all of these systems will require a technology,
Speaker 4: and like I suppose we start to get into like
Speaker 4: what is the technology right before we get too far,
Speaker 4: and then I think that's probably a question worth asking.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think it's easy to throw to maybe
Speaker 4: out of bar water, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, like, like Momford said, technology is more
Speaker 3: than just physical objects, it's also techniques of operation organizations
Speaker 3: that reflects a worldview.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I suppose, as you said before, right,
Speaker 4: Like it's what I think about often, it's like what
Speaker 4: we need to change is the way we see the world,
Speaker 4: and then the other stuff.
Speaker 3: Well we can change in a midbe will fall into place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think again, I'm gonna get back. So I
Speaker 4: was just in Rojabo for the last few weeks. But
Speaker 4: one of the things that I heard from everyone there,
Speaker 4: right from like and not just from like people in
Speaker 4: the women's movement, but also from like random guy in
Speaker 4: the market who I'm having tea with, is like that
Speaker 4: this idea that we can't can't decolonize the country until
Speaker 4: we declonize our family, and the notion that like women
Speaker 4: were the first colonized group of people, which and so
Speaker 4: like if we can't do gender equality, what you know,
Speaker 4: what are we doing what we can't where where we
Speaker 4: find this revolution to liberate our country when we can't
Speaker 4: liberate our spouse, daughter or what have you. So definitely, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just it's a very powerful I know it's not
Speaker 4: like as fun as taking a sledgehammer to a cotton mill,
Speaker 4: but like if we if we replicate that kind of
Speaker 4: extractive extractive capitalism is what makes the supply side of
Speaker 4: these things so bad, and it's what also leads us
Speaker 4: to think about using them in a way that can
Speaker 4: extract the most value from the worker. So I would
Speaker 4: absolutely say that you know, the break the frame in
Speaker 4: your mind.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's a good point. And it's funny,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, you know, as going to be as
Speaker 3: fun as you know, smashing a cotton a cotton mill
Speaker 3: or whatever. It made me think that you know, perhaps
Speaker 3: in a revolutionary society. In guess society, you may see
Speaker 3: therapeutic rage rooms where people can smash out some of
Speaker 3: their last frustrations against the capitalist system. Yeah, consequences they
Speaker 3: have left for them to fix.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, to get that out before you you take
Speaker 4: that out on other.
Speaker 3: Go and rewild or something. You know, you have to
Speaker 3: get that energy outfit.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, remove the toxicity.
Speaker 10: I like that.
Speaker 4: Place where you can take that anger out.
Speaker 3: Right. So finally, the fourth and final element of the program,
Speaker 3: she says that we favor the development of a life
Speaker 3: enhancing worldview in Western technological societies. We open in still
Speaker 3: a perception of life, death, and human potential, and technological
Speaker 3: societies they will integrate the human need for creative expression,
Speaker 3: spiritual experience in community with the capacity for rational thought
Speaker 3: and functionality. We perceive the human role not as them
Speaker 3: of other species and planetary biology, but as integrated to
Speaker 3: the natural world with appreciation for the sacredness of all life.
Speaker 3: We foresee a sustainable future of humanity if and when
Speaker 3: Western technological societies restructure their mechanistic projections and foster the
Speaker 3: creation of machines, techniques, and social organizations to respect both
Speaker 3: human dignity and the nature's wholeness, and progressing towards such
Speaker 3: a transition. We are aware that we have nothing to
Speaker 3: lose except a way of living that leads the destruction
Speaker 3: of all life. We have a world to gain. Quote
Speaker 3: word that was.
Speaker 4: That was a nice, nice, a nice, very rhetorical flare
Speaker 4: at the end.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: I mean, in my opinion, coming to a close here,
Speaker 3: the neololites hits and a miss. They hit a lot
Speaker 3: more than they miss. There's things I have some slight
Speaker 3: quibbles with, and I really, of course I have to
Speaker 3: give them credit for doing a lot more to investigate
Speaker 3: and confront technology than the vast majority of people. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're asking the right questions, questions that you don't see
Speaker 3: being asked at all. You know, you see you get
Speaker 3: these announcements for new technologies, new innovations, new techniques, new whatever.
Speaker 3: It's always just like you know, marketing and advertising, and
Speaker 3: then it's just implemented. There's no say of people, there's
Speaker 3: no raising questions about what are the consequences of this?
Speaker 3: Be ten years on the line, twenty years on the line,
Speaker 3: fifty years on the line, hundred years on the line,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, yeah, and the lessons of letters are
Speaker 3: very clear. Technology should serve humanity, not the other way around.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that's that's a key take home, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's there to make our lives better. We don't have
Speaker 4: to not to allow us lands more exploited.
Speaker 3: Yeah, landscape is vast and it's constantly evolving. But the
Speaker 3: principles of the lights and the vision of contiviual tools,
Speaker 3: I think they can offer us some guide once and
Speaker 3: I hope you'll be able to take that away from
Speaker 3: this two parts. Yeah, and that's all I have for today.
Speaker 10: Great.
Speaker 3: Thanks, follow me on YouTube, Andraism support and Petreon, slash
Speaker 3: sent Drew, Thanks James for being parts of this and
Speaker 3: I thank you.
Speaker 4: That was good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: This has been It could happen here.
Speaker 12: Peace.
Speaker 10: Hey.
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 5: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 5: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5: You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
Speaker 5: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening,