Speaker 1: Thinking of doing a Korean perm.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll bite. What's a Korean perm?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just a berm, Like, it's just
Speaker 1: a berm. It's just like I think, you know, Korean
Speaker 1: women are like allergic to having the hair that they
Speaker 1: were born with, which is straight, and so am I
Speaker 1: and I want to mix it up and I think
Speaker 1: that in my heart of heart, I am like a
Speaker 1: curly haired person. Does that make sense? Like I know,
Speaker 1: I feel like curl is like fun. There's like fun,
Speaker 1: you know, like.
Speaker 2: These Japanese people that gets dreadlocks.
Speaker 1: Well, this is the thing about me. I used to
Speaker 1: be into jam bands. It was very sad because I
Speaker 1: could never my hair is too straight to dread Now
Speaker 1: it's like it's never gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Oh so wait, a Korean perm is to take your
Speaker 2: straight hair and give it a little flair.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that done by Koreans.
Speaker 2: Oh but I don't know Korean as a modifier. I'm
Speaker 2: just like, oh, that shit probably bangs exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: No, it does. It's like a it's like a wave perm.
Speaker 1: Like you don't go full eighties mom, you just go like.
Speaker 2: My mom had this fucking.
Speaker 1: Problem Asian mom right, Asian.
Speaker 2: Curly as hair. What is this looking like wolverine or
Speaker 2: some shit? It was crazy. It was the way it
Speaker 2: was shape my mom had like it was almost like
Speaker 2: a flat because it was so curly.
Speaker 1: Oh did she have rocked short hair with the curly.
Speaker 2: It was like short long, but like the way I
Speaker 2: just remember always being like that was. That was a moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know my mom would do that and then
Speaker 1: it'd be like a big old side clip just like whoa.
Speaker 1: It was like the most.
Speaker 2: Eighties Yeah, shout out a permanent Hello the Internet, and
Speaker 2: welcome to season three eighty two, episode two of The
Speaker 2: Daily's Eye Catcher production. If iHeartRadio, this is the podcast
Speaker 2: where we take a deep dive into America's sword did
Speaker 2: share consciousness? It is Tuesday, April second. Oh no, that
Speaker 2: was the worst April Fool's joke I could have done.
Speaker 2: And I will see my milk. It's April first, don't
Speaker 2: fucking I don't know. I'm sure there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: corporate foolery going on in the Internet because they love
Speaker 2: to do dumb shit or like McDonald's just like you
Speaker 2: can now drink Ronald's blood in a milkshake.
Speaker 1: Finally it's legal to do jokes on April first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Did you see that there's a headline about how.
Speaker 1: We're asking every woman if she's pregnant today? Okay, I
Speaker 1: saw you have put on a little weight.
Speaker 2: I see the thing that was like, oh white, this
Speaker 2: new season, the White Lotus is the first great piece
Speaker 2: of media in the post woke era, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck are we talking about here? Anyway? I'm
Speaker 2: Myles Gray aka the Showgun with no Gun, the Lord
Speaker 2: of lancrasham out here trying to just scream into the void,
Speaker 2: and I'm thrilled to be joined by my guest co host.
Speaker 2: You already know her from many fantastic places, look the
Speaker 2: situation room. Uh. You probably know her from doing stand
Speaker 2: up comedy, her activism and where you've seen her. You
Speaker 2: know her. She is a powerhouse. Please welcome my Calls
Speaker 2: of your.
Speaker 1: Today aka Mirror Mirror on the Wall, who is the
Speaker 1: frantist of them all? Good to be here, Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me?
Speaker 2: Who is the frandiest of the moment pressure Oh okay,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: No, I mean that's true if the Francescas would be me,
Speaker 1: but yeah, franchise is probably the franist friend.
Speaker 2: But also, like we're not keeping score. She wasn't she
Speaker 2: running the Screen Actors Guild? She was? Yeah, Okay, anyway,
Speaker 2: that's not relevant. What is relevant is introducing our guest
Speaker 2: for today. We are very, very very lucky to have
Speaker 2: this fantastic journalist, someone who covers a lot of stories
Speaker 2: that don't get enough coverage. If you obviously listen to
Speaker 2: this show, there's probably a very good chance that you're
Speaker 2: already familiar with him from his work with Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: It could happen here, et cetera. If not, maybe you
Speaker 2: know him from his work with places like The Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal, National Geographic, et cetera. Uh. Not only is
Speaker 2: he a fantastic abbot cyclist, he's a polyglot and has
Speaker 2: a PhD in modern ear European history, where I merely
Speaker 2: know trivia from antiquity. Okay, so together we create one
Speaker 2: of the best trivia teams of all time. Please welcome
Speaker 2: to the Microphone James.
Speaker 3: So Hey, that was great intro. I feel very hyped
Speaker 3: up on thank you. That was amazing. Yeah, if I
Speaker 3: ever die, if you could just do the like you know,
Speaker 3: the initial bait when they're coming into the funeral. I
Speaker 3: presume I will die here.
Speaker 2: He is, Oh you think so?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I didn't feel like I'm immortal.
Speaker 2: I had a friend recently, like really confessed to me
Speaker 2: that they were so afraid of dying in like the
Speaker 2: most real way. And I was like, yeah, man, the
Speaker 2: thing about that is it's pretty automobile. Do it? Not
Speaker 2: much we can do. I would. I would try and
Speaker 2: sort of have a reckoning with a therapy. I don't know, however,
Speaker 2: you need to.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why people turn to religion, you know,
Speaker 1: for sure, for sure the idea that. But then then
Speaker 1: I started getting my head about living forever. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want that either. I ever my friend that
Speaker 1: would suck me up as a kid, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was like thinking about that, This my.
Speaker 2: Friend, he's like the sort of I don't know if
Speaker 2: like the old Ricky Gervais radio show with Carl Pilkington
Speaker 2: where you're just kind of a straight like he's just
Speaker 2: like a uniquely strange guy. And and he said it
Speaker 2: to me so earnestly. I just don't because he was
Speaker 2: I saw I hit some weird ass supplements and his
Speaker 2: kids What the fuck is this? He's like it's like assault.
Speaker 2: They're like your body absorbed. I'm like, what is that?
Speaker 2: Live forever guy? No, like he's he's he's getting a blood. Boy,
Speaker 2: he's getting his head is turning that way. But he
Speaker 2: would never actually go through with it. He's just like healthy,
Speaker 2: Like it's never like.
Speaker 1: But then he'll be also like not's not your friend
Speaker 1: is this? But it's very funny that sort of like
Speaker 1: in the genre of like like techie, billionaire, crypto fascists, whomever, whomever,
Speaker 1: who are like obsessed with being you know, like the
Speaker 1: most alpha male that they're like also trying to live forever,
Speaker 1: meaning they're just like pussy's about dying. Like okay, so
Speaker 1: you think you're so fucking hard and you're like.
Speaker 2: Straight up brouck exactly.
Speaker 1: Not up and die, yeah, sooner than later if you're elon.
Speaker 2: No, like it's no. His is more like a childlike
Speaker 2: fear of like what happens after. It's not even like, bro,
Speaker 2: I'm too fucking hard to die, Like he's like what if?
Speaker 2: But then what happened? I'm like, Bro, you are forty
Speaker 2: years old and you just stop fooling with these supplements man,
Speaker 2: and I was like, did you you would really go
Speaker 2: through the act of seeing many people you know die
Speaker 2: over and over because you're immoral? He's like yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, man, maybe you should read some
Speaker 2: vampire books. They seem pretty fucked up and they can
Speaker 2: live forever, you know, just as like a primer. Anyway, James,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us. I think we're
Speaker 2: gonna have a like. You have such a fantastic coverage
Speaker 2: of things that have happened everywhere from the Darien Gap
Speaker 2: and how much of a tumultuous journey that is for
Speaker 2: people who are you know, being displaced by our policies
Speaker 2: in the United States and how this is sort of
Speaker 2: being completely put out of our minds. Just how awful
Speaker 2: this journey is for people. But also your coverage of
Speaker 2: what is happening in me and mar I think is
Speaker 2: really fantastic and also something that regrettably I only have
Speaker 2: just very superficial knowledge about in terms of what I've
Speaker 2: read headline whise and I go, yeah, coup and now
Speaker 2: civil war and it's bad and many other things. But
Speaker 2: most recently, there was a terrible seven point seven magnitude
Speaker 2: earthquake there that, you know, with an unfathomable death toll
Speaker 2: that is still rising as we speak. So we'd love
Speaker 2: to just sort of have you offer us a bit
Speaker 2: of perspective on all of that, because there's a lot
Speaker 2: with me and mar that I think you also have
Speaker 2: drawn inspiration from, as probably you compare what is happening
Speaker 2: in the United States to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that I.
Speaker 2: Think I'm very much looking forward to picking your brain
Speaker 2: because we're like, I feel like everybody here's I'm not.
Speaker 1: I enjoy not knowing is it? Is it sad? Sad?
Speaker 1: I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: Is it gonna bum me out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I feel bad about that because like all the
Speaker 3: stuff I'm most proud of is shit that makes people
Speaker 3: cry on their drive to work, Like yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: is the genre of media I produce.
Speaker 2: No, but I mean, like it's so on the other
Speaker 2: side of that coin, hearing like or hearing from journalists
Speaker 2: like you reading your work and hearing the way you
Speaker 2: speak about it, it's also very life affirming. I think
Speaker 2: it's very like the kind of journalism you do is
Speaker 2: very noble, especially in an era we live in now
Speaker 2: where people are just like being like uh huh, and
Speaker 2: do you want to have a third term? Okay, how
Speaker 2: would you make that happen? Rather than be like it's
Speaker 2: unfucking constitutional, shut the fuck up, You're not gonna just
Speaker 2: shut up about it. So anyway, we will get to that.
Speaker 2: But first, James, we like to ask all of our guests,
Speaker 2: what's something from your search history that's revealing about who
Speaker 2: you are?
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this, could you send me any
Speaker 3: about it? I think like this weekend, right, I was
Speaker 3: building for a friends, some like raised beds, like plant
Speaker 3: to boxes, you know, you can grow vegetables in, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to kill grass underneath because they didn't want
Speaker 3: a grass to grow up. But I I didn't want
Speaker 3: to like put plastic down because I wanted the roots
Speaker 3: to go down. So I put cardboard down. And then
Speaker 3: I was like, because it's eventually it's kind of compost,
Speaker 3: it's kind of rot, right, And I was like, shit,
Speaker 3: have I invented this incredible life hack? And then I
Speaker 3: googled it and in terms of I didn't invent it,
Speaker 3: which is the story of my life. You know, you
Speaker 3: think you got something cool and someone's already done it
Speaker 3: on the internet.
Speaker 1: Very yeah, that's like it's affirms I think maybe it's affirming,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I've innovated.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if it's out there already and other
Speaker 3: people are enjoying it, Like that's better in a sense
Speaker 3: that I love.
Speaker 1: I would love to think like that, like meaning like
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm the first, especially on that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff I love. I don't have that brain, but
Speaker 1: i'd love to have that brain. When I was little,
Speaker 1: I wanted to like invent stuff, and I would just
Speaker 1: take like a dead light bulb and like attach a
Speaker 1: show so you know, like go so so like it's
Speaker 1: fun though to be like, uh, innovating, especially with something
Speaker 1: with your hands or you're building something and that's just
Speaker 1: so feeling. Yeah, And then but I never have the
Speaker 1: idea that like I'm the first to do this, So
Speaker 1: it says a lot about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe not in a good way. Maybe I'm not
Speaker 3: like maybe I shouldn't assume that no one else would
Speaker 3: have on the ground.
Speaker 2: That's the excitement though, you know what I mean, that's
Speaker 2: the that's the dragon we're chasing that we get bit
Speaker 2: by as children. Like it's so funny you say that
Speaker 2: franchise because I remember I got a hold of a
Speaker 2: soldering iron when I had like oh dah, and I
Speaker 2: was trying to I was trying to hack my PlayStation
Speaker 2: to play Japanese games too, and you had to like
Speaker 2: mod it yourself, and I had I had no business. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I had no business at thirteen opening up a PlayStation
Speaker 2: and soldering ship onto a mother just fucking stupid. But
Speaker 2: then the childlike thing inside was like what if I could,
Speaker 2: Like what if I take my old boom box and
Speaker 2: like wire this thing to this other part. I didn't
Speaker 2: do ship, but I was like, this is gonna be whatever.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 3: Boom station combined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It has a CD drive. I mean
Speaker 2: basically the same thing I thought. Maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The closest I got was I had a very
Speaker 3: shit car who didn't have much money to buy a
Speaker 3: car when I was younger. And one other issues was
Speaker 3: it was the heater would always be stuck on the
Speaker 3: other one was stereo didn't work. So I dramled out
Speaker 3: that whole front panel with a heater and everything, and
Speaker 3: I duct taped a boom box in there. That was
Speaker 3: pretty sick. And then yeah, yeah, going to get back
Speaker 3: in there, You're going to go through the firewall from
Speaker 3: the front of the car.
Speaker 2: Right, holy shit. Oh man, James, what is something you
Speaker 2: think is underrated? Underrated? You know what I think is underrated.
Speaker 3: What I've been enjoying recently is like Burmese rock music
Speaker 3: from Memo. One of the sick things about the different
Speaker 3: resistance organizations, different groups in the revolution at MEMBA is
Speaker 3: that they make like theme tunes and they do a
Speaker 3: lot of like music videos, and some of them are
Speaker 3: really good. I've been enjoying them recently.
Speaker 1: This reminds me is if you google me and Mark Who,
Speaker 1: one of the things that comes up is me and
Speaker 1: Mark who dance? Oh yeah, the lady what is the dance?
Speaker 1: And is it? It seems like obviously you're not talking
Speaker 1: about people who did the kup mongering, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like music and culture is very much a
Speaker 1: part of also the civil unrest there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think people are just like a lot of
Speaker 3: the revolutionary music is that folks are just zoomers and
Speaker 3: they enjoy a TikTok dance and they're going to continue
Speaker 3: enjoying their life. Like not everything stops when the revolution happens.
Speaker 3: The lady who was doing I forget her name now,
Speaker 3: which is really bad. She's a pe teacher. She was
Speaker 3: like doing a why but I think like a dancer size,
Speaker 3: Jazzus size maybe something like that. And she was doing
Speaker 3: it like as a live stream because at that time
Speaker 3: that there was a COVID lockdown, right, so you remember,
Speaker 3: people got really into that stuff where some everyone was
Speaker 3: doing workouts at home. She was doing that, and then
Speaker 3: behind her you can see all these APCs rolling in
Speaker 3: because they're they're doing a coup and she just could
Speaker 3: sold it on bravely. Yeah continue, true.
Speaker 2: Entertainer, true, Yeah, show must go on. I was listening
Speaker 2: to some show recently and they had a fucking insanely
Speaker 2: good like sixties psych me and like Burmese rock band
Speaker 2: in it. But like it was interesting because it sent
Speaker 2: me down this rabbit hole where like so much of
Speaker 2: this stuff is not available digitally and like people have
Speaker 2: had to like painstakingly preserve a lot of this music,
Speaker 2: especially from the sixties and seventies that I listened to. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm like, Yo, this shit is fucking It's like, this
Speaker 2: is amazing, really really cool stuff. What's something you think
Speaker 2: is overrated?
Speaker 3: Change overrated? I'm thinking about it. So recently, I think
Speaker 3: it's skittles is the answer, you know, Yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 3: had an issue where like I like to go trail
Speaker 3: running on the weekends, like to run around listen to
Speaker 3: my Bermese rock music, and like, Jeremy, what I'll do,
Speaker 3: And I'm now realizing this isn't the healthiest approach. Like
Speaker 3: I'll go to the store and buy whatever discount candy
Speaker 3: they have and then like when like seven or eight miles,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, I'll just open it and put it,
Speaker 3: put it all in my mouth and then chew it
Speaker 3: like a dip, like if you're like if you're chewing sugar, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just pack it in there. So I was doing
Speaker 3: that one day, just enjoying my run, and I felt
Speaker 3: like a crunchy bit. I thought it's maybe like a
Speaker 3: hard skittle, swallowed it, not a concern. It later transpired
Speaker 3: that that was a tooth. So I skiffled my tooth out.
Speaker 1: Man, and then you swallowed it and then you found
Speaker 1: it in your poopoo.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I was really debating this, like do I
Speaker 3: want a poop tooth back in my mouth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure the dentist will be like no, when
Speaker 2: that happens. It's for a reason, even.
Speaker 3: If the body is rejecting it. The dentist straight up
Speaker 3: laughed at me. They I went in there and they
Speaker 3: were like, we've got on your notes lost tooth whilst
Speaker 3: eating skittles, And I was like, yeah, that's how it
Speaker 3: went down. Like that's that's more.
Speaker 1: I mean, skittles are do your teeth up? But okay,
Speaker 1: so what which tooth was it? How did was it not?
Speaker 2: Po smoller back there.
Speaker 3: I didn't really notice until like the blood, you know,
Speaker 3: you taste, but you taste the blood anyway when you're
Speaker 3: running in the cold, you know, you get that like
Speaker 3: blood in your mouth.
Speaker 2: No, I don't because I'm not I'm have.
Speaker 1: Terrible I'm what No, I do know that feeling because
Speaker 1: every every like you know, eighteen months, I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: I run, maybe that's the thing I do. And then
Speaker 1: I get like, what not even a mile and I
Speaker 1: can feel blood in the lungs because you're like, lungs
Speaker 1: are pump and heavy. Yeah, it's a taste, It's a
Speaker 1: running taste. It kind of feels cool. I By the way,
Speaker 1: my whole reaction to the story was like, can believe
Speaker 1: you fucking trail run for eight miles. Trail running looks
Speaker 1: like the most fun video game flash hardest thing you
Speaker 1: could possibly do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are hot things, but like it's
Speaker 3: really fun. But you can't be looking at your phone.
Speaker 3: You can't be like checking the notifs. You're just in
Speaker 3: the zone and like you feel like a little antelope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't even check if that's a tooth in
Speaker 2: your mouth. I have fuck it, I just got it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was unconcerned, but yeah, they pulled it right out.
Speaker 3: I left it for about six months to see. I
Speaker 3: guess I was wondering if a tooth would come back,
Speaker 3: or maybe the whole would heal, but that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: So you just put a skittle there and yeah, I done.
Speaker 3: Good night. Yeah I could have plugged it with a
Speaker 3: skittle or like a candy corn I've always felt would fit. Well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was gonna say because I just thought
Speaker 1: you were just saying skittles generally, because I do feel
Speaker 1: like they are like mostly bad flavors.
Speaker 2: There's like I don't like the red ones.
Speaker 1: I just yeah, I'm like, pink and red are good,
Speaker 1: Yellow and orange suck. I love lemons. Lemons.
Speaker 2: I like orange flavor.
Speaker 1: I don't like lemon or orange candy. It's the same
Speaker 1: starbirds like give me a blue, gimme a green. Skittles
Speaker 1: does have green, right, so it's yeah, but like the
Speaker 1: skittle's tropical. Now, I just want skittles tropical. Those are
Speaker 1: good as shit.
Speaker 2: Those are good like those. That's a good except there's
Speaker 2: one with banana, and I'm like, fuck that. I don't Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: simulated banana offensive And isn't that what bananas used to taste? Like?
Speaker 3: This might be.
Speaker 2: Legend, No, I remember something like this that that flavor
Speaker 2: is derived from what a banana used, Like bananas did
Speaker 2: taste like that.
Speaker 1: Banana's had a different flavor before.
Speaker 3: Woke and then uh woke take it away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see, there's there was a whole thing anyway.
Speaker 2: This is like the kind of stuff that would have
Speaker 2: been on crack dot com. That's where Jack would have said,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I heard him say that. That's the
Speaker 2: quality of information you can come to expect on this
Speaker 2: a second rate podcast. However, we are going to class
Speaker 2: up the joint. In one moment when we come back
Speaker 2: from this break with a very fantastic conversation with James
Speaker 2: Stout right after this and we are back. So James, like,
Speaker 2: in the build up to having you on, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I wish we talked about. You had many topics that
Speaker 2: you wanted to discuss. I think the one that absolutely
Speaker 2: is front of mine. I think, even if people don't
Speaker 2: realize or not, is Me and Mar because on Friday
Speaker 2: right there was a just devastating magnitude seven point seven earthquake.
Speaker 2: As of right now, the death toll has passed two thousand,
Speaker 2: and people say it's probably gonna be much higher, but
Speaker 2: maybe even five times. And again for me, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people unless people you know who
Speaker 2: are very much like knowledgeable about it and keeping their
Speaker 2: eye on the story. To me, me and Mar has
Speaker 2: been this thing where it's like, Okay, there was a
Speaker 2: coup and since then there has been a civil war
Speaker 2: and things have become very terrible. And I get drips
Speaker 2: and drabs to either like weird videos on Twitter when
Speaker 2: you see some of like the gorilla fighting or other
Speaker 2: just occasionally you'll see things about the workers in Me
Speaker 2: and Mar being like a huge force for change and
Speaker 2: other many all kinds of stories. But I guess to
Speaker 2: take it from the earthquake, can you kind of just
Speaker 2: paint a picture of how sort of how destabilizing the
Speaker 2: civil war has beginned to to begin with, and now
Speaker 2: adding on top of that a catastrophic earthquake and what
Speaker 2: that means for the people living there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I like to conceptualize it in terms
Speaker 3: of a revolution, not a civil war.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, I think, thank you, thank that's.
Speaker 3: A word, and like reporting it because what happened right
Speaker 3: there was a coup in twenty twenty one where effectively,
Speaker 3: like it's not a direct one for one, but you
Speaker 3: can imagine like what if the US military supported the
Speaker 3: j sixth thing and then they stuck the landing on
Speaker 3: that right, like, an election happened. The election was not
Speaker 3: what I would call free and fair, like there were
Speaker 3: problems with the elections, but it was broadly the best
Speaker 3: election that Miamar has had. Mianmar was moving towards a
Speaker 3: sort of neoliberal pacted democracy, and that democracy had some
Speaker 3: deep issues right, as we can see in the Hinda genocide,
Speaker 3: which we're going to circle back to. But what happened
Speaker 3: was that the military seized power in a rested most
Speaker 3: of the members of the National League for Democracy, which
Speaker 3: was the sort of pre eminent neoliberal party in Myanmar,
Speaker 3: and it began to rule like a in a military
Speaker 3: hunter kind of way. Right, people went out into the
Speaker 3: streets when like fuck that, no, like, we're not having
Speaker 3: this because me and Marris has had military dictatorships for
Speaker 3: most of its independent history, right, and every generation there's
Speaker 3: this uprising for democracy and every time they get killed
Speaker 3: in the streets. So they came out, like a lot
Speaker 3: of people in this country came out in twenty twenty yere.
Speaker 3: They came out with science at first, and then the
Speaker 3: cops tier gast them. So they came out with like
Speaker 3: hard hats and gas masks, which they learned about from
Speaker 3: folks in Hong Kong. And then they got shot with
Speaker 3: rubber bullets. So they came out with shields, and then
Speaker 3: they got shot with real bullets. And they at that
Speaker 3: point decided that like they weren't going to be then
Speaker 3: another generation that died in the streets, So they went
Speaker 3: to the mountains. And in the mountains there are ethnic
Speaker 3: resistance organizations. There are more than fifty different ethnic groups
Speaker 3: in Myanmar. Many of them have been fighting against the
Speaker 3: majority group, the Bama, who dominate government and have done
Speaker 3: since ninety forty eight when the UK left or Britain
Speaker 3: left in the traditionally like the Burmese government and by extension,
Speaker 3: the Burmese military had used like a divide and rule strategy,
Speaker 3: just the way that other empires do, right, being like, oh, you,
Speaker 3: young Bama people can't be friends with the Koren because
Speaker 3: the Karen fucking hate you and will kill you, and
Speaker 3: they're like savage, wild mountain people. I'm using heavy air
Speaker 3: quotes there for people who don't see me this podcast.
Speaker 3: But these young folks were like, well, fuck it you.
Speaker 3: The military is pretty savage. They're killing my friends. They
Speaker 3: went to the mountains and they of course found that
Speaker 3: these folks were perfectly accepting to them, or that they
Speaker 3: shared a common enemy. Right. Since then, they've formed units
Speaker 3: called PDS People's Defense Forces, which are mainly composed of
Speaker 3: young people from the cities, and they fight alongside the
Speaker 3: ethnic revolutionary organizations. And they've been fighting the military since
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, so we're four years into the revolution.
Speaker 3: More than half the country is now it's liberated, right,
Speaker 3: considered to be controlled by the erros or the PDFs.
Speaker 3: My friend Robert Evans and I have done a couple
Speaker 3: of podcast series. We went over in twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: to meet some young people. One of the biggest hues
Speaker 3: they faced was that they didn't have any guns to
Speaker 3: fight back, right, so they told they all sold all
Speaker 3: their shit to try and buy guns. But guns are
Speaker 3: very expensive there. It's not like here, and so what
Speaker 3: they started doing was three D printing guns using just
Speaker 3: like two hundred dollars three D printers. And the way
Speaker 3: we came across this story was that I found a
Speaker 3: guy on a reddit who was in the gun three
Speaker 3: D printing subreddit posting pictures and I was like, you're
Speaker 3: not in America, Like those pictures aren't in America. So
Speaker 3: I DM the guy and cay Man, I think you
Speaker 3: might maybe be in Mema, Like can I come hang out?
Speaker 3: And you know, we chatted for a while and then
Speaker 3: it kind of worked out roughly the area they were,
Speaker 3: and I went over and we visited them and we
Speaker 3: talked to them about like what it was like to
Speaker 3: kind of they had no support from anyone, right, like
Speaker 3: all the governments of the world, the un the US,
Speaker 3: EU or these places where we talk about democracy, like,
Speaker 3: they didn't do shit when people were being killed in
Speaker 3: the streets. On twenty fifth of April Armed Forces Day,
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifteen people were killed in a single
Speaker 3: day at a protest unarmed, right, not aggressive, not that
Speaker 3: it matters, they shouldn't be killed anyway, but that was
Speaker 3: kind of the big changing point for people, and they
Speaker 3: realized that, like, if they needed to fight back, they
Speaker 3: needed to fight back with guns, and the word wasn't
Speaker 3: going to give them to them, but so people on
Speaker 3: Reddit did, and so they went into the jungle with
Speaker 3: their three D printers and set up these print farms
Speaker 3: in the jungle, and they started out with printer guns.
Speaker 3: Those guns allowed them to acquire better guns, and they fundraised.
Speaker 3: The way they fundraised is fascinating too. They have these
Speaker 3: hued Telegram channels for the revolution right, and they use
Speaker 3: pay per click adverts, So they do YouTube videos or
Speaker 3: write stories with pay per click adverts in them and
Speaker 3: then direct like ten thousand, one hundred thousand people to
Speaker 3: go to the article and click the advert, and that
Speaker 3: they generate revenue.
Speaker 2: All these yeah the guys like yeah gaming basically paid media,
Speaker 2: like for the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ye, selling mud coffee is like, well, I'm helping the
Speaker 1: mean Mar revolution. Uh no, that is why it's it's
Speaker 1: like the most gen Z revolution and and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that just thinking about how things
Speaker 1: got this way and just like watching like in preparation
Speaker 1: for this, watching like a quick little explainer and realizing, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the international community has been, despite a lot of
Speaker 1: cries from the UN, kind of a zero on this,
Speaker 1: and there's been no coordinated response, unlike the response to
Speaker 1: you know, Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, you know,
Speaker 1: and on and on. It's like that me and Mar
Speaker 1: has largely been left to its own devices, and China
Speaker 1: and Russia are actually fueling the obviously the military side
Speaker 1: of it, and and so they've got plenty of weapons there.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy it's also learn about like the history
Speaker 1: is that the the army has representation in parliament like.
Speaker 2: Y heats, which is just fucking like.
Speaker 1: Any kind of like, you know, any kind of country
Speaker 1: trying to be a democracy, like that's wild. That's so terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like for years the US kind of boosted
Speaker 3: this kind of Enson Succi like way of transitioning to democracy.
Speaker 3: It's going to be the next growth economy in Asia.
Speaker 3: They called them tiger economies for a while, and the
Speaker 3: US really didn't demand inclusion for those different ethnic groups,
Speaker 3: right that they stood up and fort fit themselves. And
Speaker 3: I think in a sense, like it don't get me wrong,
Speaker 3: it fucking sucks how many people have died. Some of
Speaker 3: those people are people I really cared about, and it
Speaker 3: was really hard to lose them. And like the revolution
Speaker 3: has been hard for a lot of people, right, like
Speaker 3: four years at war. It is not a joke. Like
Speaker 3: some of these people, you know, they're nineteen twenty now,
Speaker 3: they were sixteen years old when they started seeing people
Speaker 3: die every day, and that they shouldn't have to anyone.
Speaker 3: But like because they haven't had so much of this,
Speaker 3: like his aid from the United States, his aid from
Speaker 3: the European Union, and then you will have a nice
Speaker 3: neoliberal democracy afterwards. Like they've done it themselves and they
Speaker 3: found their own way, and like that gives me a
Speaker 3: lot of hope because like nobody came to help them, right,
Speaker 3: they did it all by themselves, and they built something
Speaker 3: really beautiful as a result. That like isn't you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure there's someone on Twitter dot com he thinks
Speaker 3: it's a fucking color revolution. But those people are done.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 3: These people entirely from their own refusal to be like
Speaker 3: under the boot heel of the state, have created this
Speaker 3: beautiful revolution that's liberated half the country. And in the
Speaker 3: process they've like so to give an example, right, the
Speaker 3: Rahinja genocide happened in Mianda, and it happened largely because
Speaker 3: Facebook doesn't have any content moderation in Burmese, right yep,
Speaker 3: and that allowed for horrific Islamophobic lies to spread through
Speaker 3: the Hunter's botnet for a large part, right, the huge
Speaker 3: network of bots. You can see them in their replies
Speaker 3: to my tweets. This happened less than a decade ago,
Speaker 3: right like in Islamophobia was like and there's a massively
Speaker 3: British nationalist movement in me Ammar which draws inspiration from
Speaker 3: groups of the English Defense League like right wing anti
Speaker 3: immigrant groups. And this was pretty much the population, with
Speaker 3: some notable exceptions from the anarchist, the punk movement and
Speaker 3: other groups who are posted in the genocide. Let it
Speaker 3: happen right now. This earthquake that happened is sagang In
Speaker 3: on Friday, right seven point seven earthquake. It happened during
Speaker 3: Friday prayers, the day before Eid, right, Id being the
Speaker 3: festival at the end of Ramadan. If people aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like church at Easter for Christians. Right.
Speaker 3: So a lot of people are at mosques now because
Speaker 3: the country has fundamentally sort of aligned Buddhism with being
Speaker 3: Burmese for decades. Mosques haven't been allowed to build or
Speaker 3: repair their structures since nineteen sixty two. So all the
Speaker 3: fucking mosques fell down right prayers and like, this is horrific.
Speaker 3: It would have been inconceivable five years ago for twenty
Speaker 3: three year old Bama Buddhist people to be like, hey man,
Speaker 3: this happened during Friday prayers and all the mosque had
Speaker 3: been destroyed, and like, what can we do to help
Speaker 3: the Muslim community in these places? How can we reach
Speaker 3: out to solidarity groups from Muslim communities around the world,
Speaker 3: Like that would never have happened five years ago, right,
Speaker 3: And like that they've built that solidarity now and just
Speaker 3: from like sharing experiences, right and realizing that there's a
Speaker 3: lot more that unites them that divides them.
Speaker 1: You know likewise, So that's happening now, that's a conversation
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Rohinga obviously genocide the Muslim
Speaker 1: minority and the fallout and the Hunter turning people against them.
Speaker 1: That now when this happens and these mosques are you know,
Speaker 1: disportionately so many Muslims have been killed, that like there's
Speaker 1: solidarity now because of their revolution and what it has built.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they began they were the same.
Speaker 3: They were attacked by the Hunter the same way that
Speaker 3: Muslim people were, right, and they saw the Hunter doing
Speaker 3: the same shit and they realized, like, this is how
Speaker 3: the state operates. It turns up against each other, so
Speaker 3: we don't turn against it and like not there are
Speaker 3: resistance groups which are still Islamophobic and will still like
Speaker 3: there's been there have been serious problems with killing of
Speaker 3: Hinja people and then the Hunter has trying to turn
Speaker 3: and co op the Rehinder people, Like it's absolutely insane
Speaker 3: that the people who did the genocide have now got
Speaker 3: Hinjia people fighting alongside them. Some of those people are
Speaker 3: forcibly conscripted, but some of them are not. So like that,
Speaker 3: there are still definitely issues, but yeah, to have young
Speaker 3: Burma folks like messaging me concerned about Muslim people, and
Speaker 3: this has happened, Like this isn't just a Muslim Buddhist thing, right,
Speaker 3: Like you'll see it with for instance, women fighting on
Speaker 3: the front line now, which would have been inconceivable five
Speaker 3: or six years ago.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: One of my friends told me a story that I
Speaker 3: like to repeat, where like in Burmese culture, it's really
Speaker 3: to boo for men to walk under a woman's like
Speaker 3: under garments. I guess like they would they would like
Speaker 3: lose their masculine energy if they did that, if they're
Speaker 3: like drying across the street. You know, have people tried
Speaker 3: to clo oh.
Speaker 2: I was like, how would you walk on? Like you're
Speaker 2: violating it?
Speaker 1: They yeah, you're doing the limbo underneath someone's skirt. Like
Speaker 1: what's happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, important context missing. It's taboo to do the limb
Speaker 3: like someone's skirt, I think in most parts.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like it's like like like walking under
Speaker 1: a ladder seven years bad luck. But if you walk
Speaker 1: under a clothesline with panties.
Speaker 2: Like you're nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah immediately, so your matro energy. So like they were,
Speaker 3: they had a barricade, right, and they had set some
Speaker 3: tires on fire and they were trying to stop the
Speaker 3: cops coming in, but the cops are still coming in.
Speaker 3: And then they were like, oh, ship, what about this
Speaker 3: taboo thing? And so the girls like picked off their
Speaker 3: ship put it on the washing line, right, and the
Speaker 3: cops didn't come in.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, use their own homophobia and misogyny against it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And like for like, you know, twenty year old guys
Speaker 3: that don't generally like the great at this but like
Speaker 3: to have like twenty year old guys being like and
Speaker 3: that's how sexism hurt to everyone.
Speaker 1: Is like, yeah, you know, that's what I want to Sorry, Miles,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I just like wanted to ask because like
Speaker 1: the headline I woke up to today was that the
Speaker 1: government is has bombed the areas that were affected by
Speaker 1: the earthquakes. So every day really But okay, so can
Speaker 1: you just explain how since the earthquake the war hasn't stopped?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, well, and how is that turning people
Speaker 1: against them? Possibly?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the PDF, which is the mainly Bama sort
Speaker 3: of revolutionary forces that's slightly distinct in their command structure
Speaker 3: from the ethnic revolutionary organizations, and there was something called
Speaker 3: a National National Unity Government which was formed of the
Speaker 3: people who were elected and then deposed by the coup. Right,
Speaker 3: not everyone is fighting necessarily to install the ENUG, but
Speaker 3: ENUG and the p F declared the ceasefire for two
Speaker 3: weeks after the earthquake. Some of them even offered to
Speaker 3: go into Hunter control territory to help a risk to
Speaker 3: their own.
Speaker 1: Lives, right, because they were fighting each other.
Speaker 3: They were no, the NUG and the PDF and the
Speaker 3: e ROS are fighting against the Hunter.
Speaker 1: Right, but they they were like, we won't we'll start.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, we won't bring our weapons. We want
Speaker 3: to come help. That was denied. They So what the
Speaker 3: Hunter is dying response is continue to bomb civilian targets, right,
Speaker 3: which is something that it has done since the coup began.
Speaker 3: It's because they get their ass handed to them in
Speaker 3: like small arms combat. Right, Like if they're fighting, if
Speaker 3: two groups of soldiers are fighting, the Hunter soldiers are conscripts.
Speaker 3: Their weapons are absolutely shipped here, like I've never seen
Speaker 3: worse maintained weapons. But they just rely heavily on drones,
Speaker 3: artillery and air strikes. Right, And they've continually as struck
Speaker 3: civilian targets. They as struck Karni Christians during Christmas celebrations, right,
Speaker 3: they as struck kitchen civilians during a Kagen music festival
Speaker 3: like Jesus. They like they are on some like a
Speaker 3: sad regime level shit, but the world just doesn't report
Speaker 3: on it, like or it doesn't get reported on it
Speaker 3: as much. So, Yeah, they did continue air striking even
Speaker 3: when so it looked like in the day of the
Speaker 3: earthquake like that afternoon. I don't know if their runways
Speaker 3: were damaged. It seems like maybe not because they've been
Speaker 3: doing regular asteroiics since they used fucking paramotors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw you post about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah ye yeah, like to drop bombs like they couldn't
Speaker 3: take a break like a half day on rhyming civilians.
Speaker 3: It continue to keep bombing shit. And now they're demanding
Speaker 3: international aid, right, Like, I think we need to be
Speaker 3: really careful that what they will do is holt that aid.
Speaker 3: They will use it against a revolution and they did
Speaker 3: this with cyclone nargets in two thousand and eight. Right,
Speaker 3: they have declined they won't let certain aid come in.
Speaker 3: They didn't let a Taiwanese rescue team enter, Like they'll
Speaker 3: let Chinese, they'll let Russian, right, that's an Indian group, Vietnamese.
Speaker 3: They're fucking down with North Korea sometimes, but I don't
Speaker 3: think North koreole sending help. But like they get weapons
Speaker 3: from North Korea, they'll let those people come in, but
Speaker 3: they wouldn't let other international aid come in. And they
Speaker 3: did this with Nagats a US warship south of the coast,
Speaker 3: and they were like, no, we don't want the stuff
Speaker 3: that you have. So like they will continue to use
Speaker 3: this as an opportunity. They don't care how many civilians
Speaker 3: for dying. It will be very hard for you to
Speaker 3: get accurate numbers on how many civilians have died a
Speaker 3: because they don't care, and be because they don't want
Speaker 3: to look bad, you know, they don't want to put
Speaker 3: that out there.
Speaker 1: Are there estimates, I mean, are there entities that do
Speaker 1: kind of an estimates of the toll, that's all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw the US Geological Survey had said that
Speaker 3: a quake of that magnitude and that location would result
Speaker 3: in between ten and one hundred thousand death, which is
Speaker 3: obviously a pretty big number. We can expect to see
Speaker 3: the death toll go up I've heard from people in
Speaker 3: everyone's still sleeping outside and lots of places because of aftershocks.
Speaker 3: People have left their neighborhood because of the smell of
Speaker 3: rotting bodies in the collapsed buildings, right, And they've been
Speaker 3: trying to get people out themselves, right, pulling stones off.
Speaker 3: The National Unity Government and the PDF have a large
Speaker 3: number of elephants that they liberated from the Hunter's timber camp.
Speaker 3: So they'd be, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you didn't mention that freed elephant.
Speaker 1: I love this.
Speaker 3: They have an elephant unit. They have like an elephant.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to go and spend some time with them,
Speaker 3: Like I feel like it's one of the last chances
Speaker 3: in human history for someone to ride an elephant to war,
Speaker 3: like put it on their resume. But also like, of course,
Speaker 3: the elephants are like a symbol of Burma, and they
Speaker 3: were being mistreated by the Hunter, right, and they didn't
Speaker 3: want them to fall into the black market, so they
Speaker 3: liberated these elephants. And they're living with a PLA now,
Speaker 3: which is one of these registriance groups. But yeah, they
Speaker 3: use their elephants to clear the rebble. They've used whatever
Speaker 3: vehicles they have, but they desperately need international support and
Speaker 3: the Hunter's not going to let them get it. And
Speaker 3: as a result, way more people will die than need
Speaker 3: to die. Plus you combine that with fucking we've cut
Speaker 3: USAID now, right, Yes, eighteen case officers I believe got
Speaker 3: laid off the day of the earthquake, like the I know,
Speaker 3: the World Food Program already scaled back operations in Myanmar
Speaker 3: because of this, like and globally there's kind of a
Speaker 3: reduction in funding for humanitarian aid, right, so that's it's
Speaker 3: like a double whammy. I know that, like when they
Speaker 3: shut down USAID funding. You know, when Elon Musk and
Speaker 3: his little kids went into the USAIDA and shut it down.
Speaker 3: Like I'm aware that they literally turned off life support
Speaker 3: machines in some refugee camps. I'm aware of women having
Speaker 3: to give birth outside of like locked clinics.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a lot of Burmese refugees end up
Speaker 3: living just across the border in Thailand, and USAID has
Speaker 3: and this is wrong, Like it's institution itself kind of
Speaker 3: as the only provider in some of those cases, or
Speaker 3: it's like one of the main ways to get medical care.
Speaker 3: So when it pulled out, at least people really in
Speaker 3: a shit situation.
Speaker 2: Well, let's take another quick break. I have a couple
Speaker 2: of questions and you know, and also a bit of
Speaker 2: optimism to offer, I think, James, because you do you
Speaker 2: do see that there is something inspiring about everything that's happening.
Speaker 2: So let's take a quick break and we'll come right back.
Speaker 2: And we're back, James. I think first, one of the
Speaker 2: main things that I really think about in anything when
Speaker 2: we see people trying to liberate themselves and you know,
Speaker 2: engage in some kind of violent conflict in order to
Speaker 2: do that for the betterment of their own lives, is
Speaker 2: you see how media responds to it, especially in the
Speaker 2: United States, and like to your point, right, like, I've
Speaker 2: ingested so many headlines that I'm using the term civil war,
Speaker 2: and that's what I see constantly in every What is
Speaker 2: the what does the earthquake mean for the civil war?
Speaker 2: What does the civil war? Or can you sort of
Speaker 2: just from your perspective, the importance of really describing this
Speaker 2: as a re and why sort of the coverage of
Speaker 2: sort of characterizing this as a civil war, it does
Speaker 2: a disservice to not only the reader, but the people
Speaker 2: that are actually struggling for liberation in MMR.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. So there's been war in Memma since nineteen
Speaker 3: forty eight, right since the British left and the Panglong Agreement,
Speaker 3: which is complicated and I won't describe here, ended up
Speaker 3: being dishonored. Basically in the Bama majority took control of
Speaker 3: the government and the military. What happened in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one is distinct from that. It is people rising up
Speaker 3: against the dictatorial government and choosing not to be swayed
Speaker 3: by violence, not to be pushed back, right, and to
Speaker 3: go and join into or join up with these ros.
Speaker 3: And at that point, like it stopped being a war
Speaker 3: between two different organizations and it became a revolution all
Speaker 3: over the country. Right, we didn't have different Like I
Speaker 3: think it's wrong to characterize the ethnic groups only fighting
Speaker 3: for the independence of their ethnicity. They're not. They're fighting
Speaker 3: to do away with the dictatorial government in the Enma.
Speaker 3: So like when we see it as a civil war
Speaker 3: and there's been this, like you say in headlines, this
Speaker 3: consistent language. You see it a lot used by analysts too.
Speaker 3: I don't understand how you become an analyst. You just
Speaker 3: just bloviate and say shit, that isn't true, and you
Speaker 3: become richer than I am, which is not very rich.
Speaker 3: And so like this language of civil war, I think
Speaker 3: it fits neatly into like the securitization kind of disclosed
Speaker 3: that people in the West one and like it. It's
Speaker 3: a lot easier to ignore a civil war than a revolution, right.
Speaker 2: Like right, and they're like, ah, they're fighting amongst themselves again, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like, hold on, these people have had it with
Speaker 2: the treatment that the treatment that they receive under this government,
Speaker 2: and their response is this, and I think that yeah,
Speaker 2: probably seed some ideas that they don't want to really
Speaker 2: have out there.
Speaker 1: I mean that's sort of what we see. And I
Speaker 1: feel like there is obviously it is in countries where
Speaker 1: there is a Muslim population, they're also there are brown people.
Speaker 1: I mean, we saw it in you know, can't Assyrian
Speaker 1: civil War, right, which you know, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: as the civil war is also a massive uprising was
Speaker 1: part of the Arab Spring initially, Yeah, and so there
Speaker 1: are some corollaries, but yeah, I guess I'm also curious
Speaker 1: on like, why aren't we covering this is it because
Speaker 1: there are these religious minorities, or is it because it's
Speaker 1: just seen as you know, yeah, like brown people on
Speaker 1: brown people crime, like you know, there's no outside invader.
Speaker 2: It feels like it's all of that, right, It's like
Speaker 2: the narratives don't conform to what like a sort of
Speaker 2: like American imperialism wants out there, or there are people
Speaker 2: to be thinking about.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, and like there's this whole thing like when
Speaker 3: Chomsky writes about manufacturing consent, like they don't tell you
Speaker 3: what to say because you know what they're going to
Speaker 3: say already, right, And like that is definitely true of
Speaker 3: a certain class of people who are editors of big
Speaker 3: newspapers in this country. Like I've tried to picture to me,
Speaker 3: it's it's just a good story, Like it's a fucking
Speaker 3: great story, and they're not there's this idea that people
Speaker 3: aren't interested or they won't take the time to learn
Speaker 3: all that background. But the people are interested actually, Like
Speaker 3: like I got my job at iHeart because I wanted
Speaker 3: to make podcasts about this, Like people are really interested
Speaker 3: and people who listen to our podcast who've done amazing
Speaker 3: things to show the solidarity, and so I think part
Speaker 3: of it is editors being like condescending and thinking that
Speaker 3: their readers won't pay attention, which is bullshit. I think
Speaker 3: it doesn't fit with these kind of general narratives that
Speaker 3: we have, right, that we like to frame anything into.
Speaker 3: And it's affirming to me at least, because like I
Speaker 3: was in Rajava in northern East Syria in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: and there was a message sent from the Karreni Nationalities
Speaker 3: Defense Force for one of these revolutionary organizations in Memba
Speaker 3: to the people of Rajava because at that time that
Speaker 3: I was there, we were being bombed heavily by Turkish drones,
Speaker 3: like expressing their solidarity with the people of Rajava. And
Speaker 3: then the people of Rajaba sent a message back expressing
Speaker 3: their solidarity with people in Myanmar. There've also been statements
Speaker 3: from Memba in solidarity with Palestine and Ukraine. Like even
Speaker 3: if we're not paying attention to it, it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that like the whole world isn't right. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 3: lots of people are that perhaps people who can understand
Speaker 3: what is to like, I mean, we're starting to learn
Speaker 3: what it is to live under a tyrannical state, I guess.
Speaker 3: But you know, people who can take inspiration from people
Speaker 3: standing up to a state that doesn't care they live
Speaker 3: or die.
Speaker 1: Well, that's sorry, Miles. I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: I just want to jump in there because when you
Speaker 1: talk about today, you know, I've been thinking about obviously
Speaker 1: the crack down here in the United States on actual
Speaker 1: free speech and the rounding up of people, deporting you know,
Speaker 1: innocent folks, all this, and you know, it is interesting
Speaker 1: that you see the breaking point of the people of
Speaker 1: me and mar being like, look, we've done military dictatorship.
Speaker 1: We've done putting our heads down. It doesn't work. So
Speaker 1: the only option is to fight. And I see, you know,
Speaker 1: as you see both media, civil society, not everyone obviously,
Speaker 1: but like, I don't think that Americans are truly prepared for,
Speaker 1: you know, this anti fascist fight that we currently find
Speaker 1: ourselves in. And there is like a crossroads of okay,
Speaker 1: so what happens when they actually start really repressing, you know,
Speaker 1: And sadly, I think maybe what happens is people kind
Speaker 1: of stop resisting and you know, TBD on this, like,
Speaker 1: you know, look, not is not a done deal. But
Speaker 1: you know, you talk to like, you know, some friends
Speaker 1: who are like, you know, Egyptian or folks where there
Speaker 1: is like a very you know, not complacent, but a
Speaker 1: very controlled society under a military dictatorship. That's just like
Speaker 1: we just don't resist, you know there, you know, And
Speaker 1: so that is that is an avenue versus you know,
Speaker 1: the one that me and mar has taken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and James, I know you said from just your
Speaker 2: time speaking with the people there and your coverage of it,
Speaker 2: that it does you are able to draw some kind
Speaker 2: of inspiration from them. Is do you look at that
Speaker 2: just in terms of globally of like what human beings
Speaker 2: are capable of, or do you also see that sort
Speaker 2: of in the context of just sort of spreading authoritarianism
Speaker 2: and what our human capacity is to sort of resist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think all of us have this desire
Speaker 3: to like live free and not live under the boot
Speaker 3: of the state, right, And it's that desire that it
Speaker 3: is the most powerful resource for the people of Memmo.
Speaker 3: It's not like they have a great deal else, right,
Speaker 3: they don't have, you know. It's this isn't one of
Speaker 3: those revolutions which benefits from having access to oil, for instance,
Speaker 3: or any of those things. Right, Like, and I've watched
Speaker 3: a I've watched some change and grow, which is really cool.
Speaker 3: I've watched people consider their opinions. I've watched you know,
Speaker 3: like young people consider their opinions on gender, consider their
Speaker 3: opinions on like LGBTQ people and be like, hey, I
Speaker 3: was wrong about that. These people are my comrades and
Speaker 3: the revolution and that's cool. It's really it's really beautiful
Speaker 3: to watch people grow. But it's been beautiful to watch
Speaker 3: them build something out of nothing based entirely on solidarity
Speaker 3: and a refusal to give in. And like, I think
Speaker 3: we'd be really look, we should see ourselves in that
Speaker 3: more than I think we probably do. They have a
Speaker 3: long history of revolutionary organizing, right, Like if we look
Speaker 3: back to AAA, which was eighth of August nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: when they had big Protomoxcy protests that were violently put
Speaker 3: down by the government. People were killed. Every generation have
Speaker 3: had these movements, and they will talk about that. We
Speaker 3: don't have that, right, but we do have a we
Speaker 3: have a long history of street movement, right. We had
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty Uprising. We've seen like Act Up for
Speaker 3: HIV AIDS, right, the civil rights movement in this country.
Speaker 3: We have a real problem with how we teach about
Speaker 3: the civil rights movement. I think we like we talk
Speaker 3: a lot about nonviolence, but like non violence does not
Speaker 3: encapitulate the entirety of the activism that they gave the
Speaker 3: one civil rights for black people in the United States,
Speaker 3: And I think we're kind of doing it a service
Speaker 3: to young people, or maybe we're doing a service to
Speaker 3: the state by ignoring that. But we have a long
Speaker 3: history of people taking that is into their own hands
Speaker 3: and seizing rights back from the state, right, And I
Speaker 3: think if we see things in those terms, then we
Speaker 3: can take inspiration from the people of Myanmar, because they
Speaker 3: have that too, and they acted on it right, and
Speaker 3: they refused to comply, like you were saying, Francesco, that
Speaker 3: they didn't want to just go along with it and
Speaker 3: keep themselves down, like they've seen other people do that
Speaker 3: for too long, and they'd seen where it got them
Speaker 3: and that they were done with it. And I think,
Speaker 3: like and the way they like they have so much
Speaker 3: joy in what they're doing makes me so happy, Like
Speaker 3: like you know, they make their music videos, they dance
Speaker 3: like that, they that you know that like that. I
Speaker 3: think people like who report on conflicts sometimes we only
Speaker 3: focus on the sad stuff, and I get that, but
Speaker 3: like there's a sense of joy in these moments when
Speaker 3: you stand up to the state and you're like, now,
Speaker 3: fuck you, I'm not doing this anymore, and like and
Speaker 3: then you realize that like you can push them back.
Speaker 3: And I've seen it in Rajavre and I've seen it here,
Speaker 3: Like like there's a sense of joy that people get
Speaker 3: when they liberate themselves, like in that moment, and it's
Speaker 3: really beautiful. And like, I think if more people here
Speaker 3: could understand and experience that, maybe they'd be a little
Speaker 3: more confident or a little less despairing that, like, there
Speaker 3: are things that we can do and it doesn't we
Speaker 3: don't need fucking predator drones and ten billion dollars or
Speaker 3: whatever like that. There are things that that people have
Speaker 3: done all over the world to stand up to Turney.
Speaker 1: Well, that's really kind of my other question, just sort
Speaker 1: of geopolitically, like can this revolution win is so long
Speaker 1: as China, Russia, so long as the hunter gets this
Speaker 1: funding and or do they need some kind of international
Speaker 1: support and what does that look like in a country
Speaker 1: at a time when let's say the United States, which again,
Speaker 1: if it had any shred of good faith internationalism left.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like that's kind of flying into the
Speaker 1: win now. But I mean, you know, I always like
Speaker 1: to think sort of in the future, like foreign policy wise,
Speaker 1: like what should we be advocating for. I don't know what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like there's internationalism that supports Mema. Right, it comes
Speaker 3: from people not from the States, So they're volunteers who
Speaker 3: fought in Russia, but who are fighting in Meama. Now
Speaker 3: get a dictatorship there. Right, the revolution has succeeded that
Speaker 3: the will the revolution succeed in cities? Right? And that's
Speaker 3: a different question because is ay urban more throws a
Speaker 3: different thing. But they have taken big cities. The three
Speaker 3: major cities would be Napid or Yangon and mandal A. Right,
Speaker 3: mandal haven't just been devastated by the earthquake. A lot
Speaker 3: of that would depend on their ability to shoot down
Speaker 3: aircraft and like the states of the world have been
Speaker 3: very reticent to give non state actors anti aircraft missiles
Speaker 3: for for a long time. Right, it would make your
Speaker 3: holiday in Thailand a lot Let's say, if people just
Speaker 3: running it, running around the whole area with anti aircraft systems,
Speaker 3: So like, some of it depends on how can they
Speaker 3: do that? But there are other ways to achieve that, right, Like,
Speaker 3: if the Hunter can't get jet fuel, it can't fight
Speaker 3: it's aircraft if it can't get weapons to drop from
Speaker 3: its aircraft. Israel has also supplied the Hunter with weapons.
Speaker 1: That's pretable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't include that one better
Speaker 3: little nugget included during the range of genocide, So like,
Speaker 3: can we stop them getting jet fuel another way? Right,
Speaker 3: that's something that like the neoliberal countries could do real easy.
Speaker 3: Right now, if Russia and China want to keep supplying them,
Speaker 3: then that becomes a different question. It's it's how quickly
Speaker 3: can the revolution scale up its capacities to deal with that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: What they have done so far is like US drone
Speaker 3: civilian over the counter drones to drop bombs on aircraft
Speaker 3: for they're hanging out at their fields. Right, they have
Speaker 3: a couple of surface to wear missiles. They shut down
Speaker 3: a helicopter, but to my note, they have shot down
Speaker 3: some fast yets, but only one or two. So like
Speaker 3: that is an important question. But if in the answer
Speaker 3: to can succeed like the answer is yes, right, Like,
Speaker 3: eventually all those jets have pilots, and those pilots aren't bulletproof,
Speaker 3: but like they.
Speaker 1: Were also in a really interesting moment with the sorry interrupt,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, this massive earthquake and your government
Speaker 1: is still bombing people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are we doing exactly?
Speaker 3: Like, I mean, people know that their government is shipped
Speaker 3: for the most part in me, right, but it's I
Speaker 3: think that that's the other thing, right, most people support
Speaker 3: the revuls, even people with family in the military to
Speaker 3: support the revolution, right, And so like the Hunter's morale,
Speaker 3: it's military morale is so low. You have these mass
Speaker 3: surrenderings of thousands of troops, right wow, and often these
Speaker 3: troops that they'll bargain them back, so the Hunter will
Speaker 3: get them back and they'll deploy these guys again and
Speaker 3: they'll get captured for a second time. Right, Like you know,
Speaker 3: like morale is not high, and so I think it
Speaker 3: can win because you can only go on for so
Speaker 3: far with this with this morale, right Like, and over time,
Speaker 3: one of the ways that they've armed themselves is people
Speaker 3: from the Hunter defecting and so like they can continue
Speaker 3: to get armaments, including anti air capability. That way, China
Speaker 3: has kind of flipped and flocked on the revolution, but
Speaker 3: there's a possibility of China continuing to support it if
Speaker 3: it gets more mad with the Hunter. There's a whole
Speaker 3: issue of scam compounds, which we haven't talked about, but
Speaker 3: you know, when you get those text messages so like hey,
Speaker 3: we mean for lunch, it's Karen or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, when are we playing golf? I saw a
Speaker 2: tex thread of someone really kind of being like are
Speaker 2: you okay? And all this other information came out from
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Chinese nationals or other foreign nationals who have
Speaker 3: been kidnapped and they are in these scam compounds along
Speaker 3: the Burmese borders, and they yeah, they It started in
Speaker 3: COVID when the casinos sort of used to be like
Speaker 3: casinos kind of operated outside of the rule of Burmese
Speaker 3: law there, and Chinese nationals would go imagine like kind
Speaker 3: of Las Vegas on steroids, right, like, I mean seriously,
Speaker 3: on steroids, you've got like white tigers and shit. But
Speaker 3: and COVID people didn't want to go to casinos, so
Speaker 3: they started running these scams. They called it pig butchering.
Speaker 3: They like fatten up the pig and then butcher it.
Speaker 3: They develop their relationship with you and then scam you.
Speaker 3: So a lot of Chinese nationals are basically enslaved in
Speaker 3: these compounds right doing this scamming work, and that that
Speaker 3: has been a major issue between China and the Hunter
Speaker 3: because the Hunter has done nothing about it, and most
Speaker 3: of the groups it's that run those scam compounds support
Speaker 3: the Hunter or at least rely on it to sort
Speaker 3: of give them sovereignty in those areas. So there's this
Speaker 3: whole other and like you can even see them from
Speaker 3: from the Tai side, like across in reality in that area.
Speaker 3: And thousands of people they a number a number of
Speaker 3: them just released thousands of people because a famous Chinese
Speaker 3: actor was scammed. So they'll put like a job posting
Speaker 3: like hey come this tech job interview. It's really well paying,
Speaker 3: the benefits are great, and then kidnapped people and force
Speaker 3: them to do these these pig butchering schemes.
Speaker 1: And the money is going where.
Speaker 3: To the people who run scam compounds that these that
Speaker 3: they're making. I think I saw it. It's like in
Speaker 3: the in the order of tens of billions of dollars. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a massive. They'll actually let you. So they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm starting a business, can you loan me a thousand dollars?
Speaker 3: And the person loans them a grand and they'll pay
Speaker 3: them back and then they'll be like, hey, can you
Speaker 3: get twenty.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a very well thought out thing.
Speaker 2: There's so many scams like that using you know, fake
Speaker 2: jobs and crypto and people having to pay to unlock
Speaker 2: more payments and they're like, well, I got a little
Speaker 2: bit of money from when I started.
Speaker 3: And then it's you till you're confident, and then you
Speaker 3: really find exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've given it all the way. Well, James Stout,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us on the dailies.
Speaker 2: I guess eye opening is probably the understatement of the year.
Speaker 2: I would say for this conversation, where do people find you?
Speaker 2: Follow you, read your work, hear you all of that
Speaker 2: good stuff? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Cool, so I do. It could happen here with my
Speaker 3: colleagues there. We make a podcast five days a week,
Speaker 3: and so that's a lot of content. If you're not
Speaker 3: getting enough here, you can find us anywhere. That could
Speaker 3: podcast given away for free. I have a Patreon. It's
Speaker 3: just my name you can search it and I write there,
Speaker 3: write a lot about Memm. That's where I started writing
Speaker 3: about Memma. Those are two big things. You can also
Speaker 3: find me doing mutual aid at the Southern Boarder of
Speaker 3: the United States, So if you want to come help out,
Speaker 3: you can, and I would encourage you to do so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, oh. I was going to ask you
Speaker 2: what is a piece of media? And I know when
Speaker 2: we were asking you, like, is it okay if it's
Speaker 2: not in English? I said, absolutely, put us onto something different, please, please,
Speaker 2: What does the work of media that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 3: So I enjoy a lot of stuff from me and
Speaker 3: try and keep up to date with that. Recently, I've
Speaker 3: just been going back to the music I listened to,
Speaker 3: like when I was a lot younger. I've been listening
Speaker 3: to like early stereophonics and Manatory Preachers shit. When I
Speaker 3: was like sixteen, I volunteered in an orphanage for your
Speaker 3: diversity kids in Romania and we had like a boom
Speaker 3: box and two CDs, you know, and so like that
Speaker 3: takes me back to that time in my life.
Speaker 1: Jeez, it been lifelong on this. It's so dope too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: finally actually meet you. I've been listening to your pod
Speaker 1: oh for a while now, so cool.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, it's nice, but of course very weird
Speaker 3: to meet people who listen because you do. I know.
Speaker 2: It always is like I'm always I always think people
Speaker 2: are lying when they're like, yell yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2: I get into my closet and I yell for yeah,
Speaker 2: and then I don't know. I mean, I know, I
Speaker 2: see that people do listen, but.
Speaker 1: It's as if that's not what the intention of our
Speaker 1: shows is.
Speaker 2: Howay, what are you the cops? You're like what, I
Speaker 2: don't know? I'm a fan? What the fuck? Oh? My
Speaker 2: bad man? Sorry, I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm
Speaker 2: on it. Uh. Francisco, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2: Where do people find you? Follow you here you see
Speaker 2: all of the.
Speaker 1: Great work Situation Room podcast and come see me and
Speaker 1: Matt Leeb live in San Francisco on Wednesday, May seventh,
Speaker 1: that Cops Comedy tickets. Fan Jessica Fioranndini dot com.
Speaker 2: Boom boom boom. Is there a work of media that
Speaker 2: you've been enjoyed? Shit, it better be in a foreign language.
Speaker 1: I forgot to prepare.
Speaker 2: Something in Catalan. I saw James James Beak Catalan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. My PhD was in I write about
Speaker 3: the anti fascist Olympics. Oh my god, yeah, I've written
Speaker 3: done by my book. By the way, this is the
Speaker 3: beast time you hey, someone say it's not a podcast.
Speaker 3: I've written a book about that. It's very of a price.
Speaker 3: It's an academic book. I wouldn't pay for it by
Speaker 3: it's too much money. Just so just go to the
Speaker 3: library if you want to read about that. And awsin
Speaker 3: too awesome to get it.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is old or not, but
Speaker 1: there is a video of somebody or I think it's
Speaker 1: a TikTok of somebody trying to get into a an
Speaker 1: LA fitness with a fish using the scanning the fish,
Speaker 1: and someone just put it brought into my attention because
Speaker 1: they retweeted it with a like, you know how I'm
Speaker 1: going to get into all the like anti trans you know,
Speaker 1: gems or whatever. But it doesn't whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But it's the fucking funniest video. And she's like, that
Speaker 1: is not an LA fitness, that is a fish.
Speaker 2: He just goes up to the thing and goes bbee.
Speaker 2: I don't know I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get in with this cod She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: calling the cops. The fucking funniest I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Okay, first piece of media like is from at Jeremy
Speaker 2: Kappoliz dot com. It's on Blue Sky. It's the like
Speaker 2: quote like a clearly a tweet from over there, the
Speaker 2: shitty website, and it says it has like a picture
Speaker 2: of sunglasses where it's like looking down the street, but
Speaker 2: through the lenses it looks like sort of gibbly esque
Speaker 2: through the lenses of like the city scape. And it says,
Speaker 2: could we have Apple, Google and open Ai working together
Speaker 2: to give us Google Glass tech with a jibly switch please?
Speaker 2: And then Jeremy quote t too that said getting hit
Speaker 2: by a bus because I think it's a big fuzzy
Speaker 2: cat with fucked up hands sounds yeah, that's how that
Speaker 2: would end. There's no such thing as a mecal bus.
Speaker 2: Also at Victor winstout dot psky dot social posted I
Speaker 2: bought Twitter for forty four billion and sold it back
Speaker 2: to myself for thirty three billion. I have forty three
Speaker 2: kids and no friends. Everything I make explodes, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Because Elon sold himself or Grock bought tweets, sold yeah
Speaker 4: to Xai and then said, but we bought it at
Speaker 4: thirty three billion, So now that means the price is
Speaker 4: that's what it costs.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: It's so.
Speaker 1: It's there used to be laws.
Speaker 2: There used to be fucking laws, and this is clearly
Speaker 2: just self dealing in order to help your stock price
Speaker 2: so you can avoid your debts. Anyway, guys, let's all
Speaker 2: strive to be a billionaire as we haven't say something.
Speaker 3: James, No, I'm not a billion arrow dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well one day. Yeah, you're not sweating on your
Speaker 2: what time do you wake up? James?
Speaker 3: Sorry?
Speaker 2: And I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't you know, I didn't even duct take my
Speaker 3: fucking mouth.
Speaker 2: So yeah, exactly, I was gonna say, you didn't enter
Speaker 2: this with a nose strip and a duct tape and
Speaker 2: then emerging from an ice bucket of Saratoga Springs ice water. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm ready.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I need to get on my grind set
Speaker 3: and do that. Yeah, you'd be very painful. I feel
Speaker 3: like I've got like facial hair.
Speaker 2: In the d tail. Yeah yeah, but that's how you
Speaker 2: know you're on your grizzy. Okay, So yeah, I worried
Speaker 2: about that, you know. Yeah, you can find me at
Speaker 2: Miles of Gray pretty much everywhere they have at Symbols,
Speaker 2: you can find me and Jack talking about basketball Miles
Speaker 2: and Jack. I'm Boosti's I also talk about ninety day
Speaker 2: Fiance on four to twenty Day Fiance my escape from
Speaker 2: talking about the news and everything else. So check me
Speaker 2: out there. You can also find us at Daily Zeitgeist
Speaker 2: on Twitter, at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We're also
Speaker 2: at Daily zeis Geist on Blue Sky everywhere. You can
Speaker 2: also if you're listening to this episode, just check out
Speaker 2: the little notes section where you can find all the
Speaker 2: links to this show. It's also called the Photos Thank You,
Speaker 2: as well as a song We're Gonna Ride Out on.
Speaker 2: We're Gonna Go Out on a track from LA's very
Speaker 2: Own Georgia and Muldreau. She's like one of those like
Speaker 2: avant garde musicians who has been in the scene like forever.
Speaker 2: Like if you went to Low End Theory, you're probably
Speaker 2: familiar with her. She's now signed to Flying Lotus's Brain
Speaker 2: Feeder label. This track is called Woo Punk. It's very
Speaker 2: dope heer. She's just like, she's just so talented. She's
Speaker 2: like a producer musician, so she does it all in
Speaker 2: This track is just so bidy and nice, nice to
Speaker 2: just kick back to. So this is Woo Punk by
Speaker 2: Georgia and Muldreau and that's it. You can find us
Speaker 2: pretty much everywhere on you wherever they give away the
Speaker 2: podcast for free. As James said, that's going to do
Speaker 2: it for us today. We will be back later on
Speaker 2: to tell you what is trending. So until then we
Speaker 2: will see you. Be safe. Bye bye bye heye