Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is Mia.
Speaker 3: So before we get to today's episode, last Friday, the
Speaker 3: rank and file of the Burgerville Workers Union, which is
Speaker 3: the country's first successful fast food union, went on strike
Speaker 3: against a campaign of disciplinings and firings of primarily trans
Speaker 3: and POC workers by the bosses who are once again
Speaker 3: trying to crush the union. The strike has worked so far,
Speaker 3: but they need support from the community to help pay
Speaker 3: workers and help these people feed their families so they
Speaker 3: can continue fighting the bosses, capitalism and building democracy in
Speaker 3: the workplace. You can go to Bitley's Slash Burger Defense
Speaker 3: to do it. To their funds, we will have linked
Speaker 3: to that description. And yeah, thank you all so much,
Speaker 3: and now onto the.
Speaker 2: Show, Ba and welcome to it. Could happen.
Speaker 4: Sheer part of wool Zone Media. I am one of
Speaker 4: your hosts, DJ Daniel, and I am joined by three
Speaker 4: wonderful people, one of which is actually going to lead
Speaker 4: us to the problem. I didn't press record on my
Speaker 4: own device that I cannot believe that everybody to press record?
Speaker 5: Should we all make a fine No?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's gonna I'm so fucking stupid.
Speaker 3: Second, we're gonna do it again if this is good.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I'm keeping all of this.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 4: Yes, I am bah.
Speaker 2: And welcome to it could happen.
Speaker 4: Sheer, part of the wool Zone Media network. I am
Speaker 4: one of your hosts, DJ Daniel, but really I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna be listening as someone else walks us through. I
Speaker 4: am joined by three wonderful co hosts, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to let them introduce themselves. How about we start with
Speaker 4: the person leading this conversation, James, How you doing?
Speaker 6: I'm wonderful, Dinna, I'm very excited.
Speaker 2: And who are we?
Speaker 6: Joined by Cherene? Do you want to say hi?
Speaker 5: Do I want to say hi? This is what I
Speaker 5: sound like today? Everybody, I apologize they're not part of
Speaker 5: the plan, but hopefully this is a fun episode to
Speaker 5: listen to me sound like this. This is Charene. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm here.
Speaker 4: Charen is doing her plague cosplay right now, and we
Speaker 4: are joined by one other wonderful person.
Speaker 2: Would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 7: Hi?
Speaker 3: Ged Mia and Mia also here Yay knows nothing about sheep.
Speaker 2: Very excited.
Speaker 5: I'm very excited, even though I sound like this, I
Speaker 5: need to be here because I learned so much about
Speaker 5: chickens last time. Now it's shape.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so proud that you fought through to pain.
Speaker 4: By the way, ba, sheer and wool is the full
Speaker 4: extent of my sheep knowledge. So you know we got
Speaker 4: it all out of the way right there.
Speaker 6: Great, all right, But anyway, let's get going because I've
Speaker 6: got four pages of bullet points.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it.
Speaker 6: Could be a week of sheep content.
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
Speaker 6: All right, Yeah, so talking about sheep. The reason we're
Speaker 6: talking about sheep is A because it's it's passionate mine
Speaker 6: and b because someone on the subreddit who's I'm just
Speaker 6: going to get their username quickly. I can't say the
Speaker 6: catiff cassif we had one of those, they posted sheep
Speaker 6: every day until until they guessed the breed of sheep
Speaker 6: that I had in my mind. And when they guessed
Speaker 6: that the sheep, I said I would do a sheep episode.
Speaker 6: That was two months ago. I think they did it
Speaker 6: while I was away in the.
Speaker 2: Desert before they got it. They got it quick too.
Speaker 6: They got to like, day, I just searched sheep on
Speaker 6: the subreddit. One of my friends, Like they were like, oh,
Speaker 6: I look at the subreddit for your work stuff the
Speaker 6: other day and it's just a lot of sheep. Man,
Speaker 6: what do you do? Yeah, but yeah, they did very well.
Speaker 6: They eventually picked the sheep, which was a Scotch black
Speaker 6: face famous for being just In Trudeau's favorite sheep. And
Speaker 6: I got to get a man, why you can strike
Speaker 6: a Canadian? I think it's impossible to say that on
Speaker 6: a podcast and not not try, I think. But yeah, hopefully,
Speaker 6: hopefully we've sailed through that one. So when are we
Speaker 6: talking about sheep? Right When you're thinking of getting sheep,
Speaker 6: the first thing I think you have to ask yourself
Speaker 6: is why. And that is a good question because obviously
Speaker 6: they're a lot of work, and they are like born
Speaker 6: ready to die, and every point in the sheep owning
Speaker 6: process you are. You can't say that we are all
Speaker 6: born ready to die. We're just here temporarily postponing.
Speaker 2: The because they're covered in war and we die.
Speaker 4: The war smart incredible.
Speaker 2: I'm many air horns and bombs right there.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I was going to say, Dan, if you could
Speaker 6: give yourself like a big old symbol, but that would
Speaker 6: be great. Okay. So yeah, So when you're looking at sheep, right,
Speaker 6: it's a lot of work. But they're also very lovely.
Speaker 6: I enjoy sheep a lot. They can be very friendly.
Speaker 6: They're a nice animal. They're not like cattle. Sheep seem
Speaker 6: more personable to me. And you know, they're soft, which
Speaker 6: is nice. So when you think about getting sheep, you
Speaker 6: got to think, do I want these sheep for meat?
Speaker 6: Do I want these sheep for wool? Or do I
Speaker 6: want these sheep for milk? Those are the three main reasons.
Speaker 6: They are also a thing called park sheep. When we're
Speaker 6: talking about parks here, we're not talking about like that
Speaker 6: they live in central Park. We're talking about like the
Speaker 6: it's a big field in front of a rich person's house.
Speaker 6: I think this is probably a specifically British thing, and people, Yeah,
Speaker 6: people are looking at me, like it's a British thing.
Speaker 6: So big stately homes for rich people in rural England
Speaker 6: will have a big field in front. At the home,
Speaker 6: it's a long driveway on it. That driveway is generally
Speaker 6: planted with big trees leading up to the house and
Speaker 6: it's like you've watched down to TV. Yeah, so if
Speaker 6: you can, yes, a country of state exactly. So like
Speaker 6: in that country estate my dad, by both my parents
Speaker 6: and agriculture and my dad works. Someone had a large
Speaker 6: country estate one point in my childhood. They would have
Speaker 6: sheep in that park. But like those she aren't really
Speaker 6: there to like make money, they're there to look fancy.
Speaker 6: So that's where you get some really crazy sheep. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: parksp Yeah. If you if you want to go and
Speaker 6: have a look up Jacob's Jacob sheep, there's some there's
Speaker 6: some audience participation. So if you guys get opened up
Speaker 6: a tab and google a Jacob sheep.
Speaker 2: Classic like old Jacob je.
Speaker 6: Whoa, yeah, oh god. It's it's called a polyserate sheep
Speaker 6: because it has multiple horns. I don't know the ones
Speaker 6: you're seeing have four horns, but that's a classic Jacob sheep.
Speaker 6: And they're piebald, right, multiple colors, and that's I didn't.
Speaker 5: Know horns can look like that.
Speaker 6: On a sp Oh yeah, there are quite a few
Speaker 6: poly serrot sheet Hebridean sheep sometimes Navajo Tura sheep if
Speaker 6: you're in the United States, so like that too. So yeah,
Speaker 6: that's an option for sheep, you.
Speaker 4: Know, just to paint a picture for anybody who's not
Speaker 4: also actively googling this right now.
Speaker 2: So you're driving in your car going for a stock
Speaker 2: dog and you can't can't google something.
Speaker 4: This is honestly, this is the sheep image that I
Speaker 4: think was thought of when people think of like a
Speaker 4: devil sheep or like these have sheep like two long
Speaker 4: horns out the top and horns out the sides. I
Speaker 4: may just be playing a lot of Diablo for right now,
Speaker 4: but I immediately was like, ah, demon sheep.
Speaker 6: If you check out Hebridean sheep, they look like in
Speaker 6: like a very death metal sheep. There there, they're all black.
Speaker 2: Hebridean hebrid h E b R I D E A
Speaker 2: N sheep yep. Whoa oh yeah, same thing, yeah.
Speaker 6: Real baha met looking sheet. Yeah oh yeah. And at
Speaker 6: the same time, yeah, that's what you want to strive
Speaker 6: for in life. That's what I go for every time
Speaker 6: I get dressed in the morning too. Yeah, yeah, good.
Speaker 6: So you're looking at three different types of sheep, right,
Speaker 6: basically your meat breeds, so they're going to grow quickly.
Speaker 6: They're going to be bigger, which is going to be
Speaker 6: something you have to take in consideration when you're handling
Speaker 6: the sheep, right, and they're going to have more lambs.
Speaker 6: You got your wool breeds, so they might be a
Speaker 6: smaller They may need shearing twice a year though, so
Speaker 6: that's something you're either going to have to do or
Speaker 6: find someone to do, and they'll give a more desirable wool, right.
Speaker 6: And there are different types of wolf for different things,
Speaker 6: so that's something you might look into it. Like, g
Speaker 6: if you're considering spinning or you know you're getting these
Speaker 6: sheet primarily so you can go from like farm to jumper,
Speaker 6: then you need to look into that. And I don't
Speaker 6: actually know how you sell wool in the US and
Speaker 6: the UK. It was kind of a centralized sale. It's
Speaker 6: not it's not worth all for the most part, at
Speaker 6: least unless you've got something like the Reno sheep. So like,
Speaker 6: don't be getting wools sheep and thinking like, oh, hell yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm going to make my fortune in the wall market
Speaker 6: that ship. That ship has sailed centuries ago. So kind
Speaker 6: of the classic sheep you're looking at for Like, a
Speaker 6: lot of the sheep that you're going to see, at
Speaker 6: least in the UK are very often mules. So that's
Speaker 6: a cross breed of sheep. It's a blue face or
Speaker 6: border lester ram over a hill breed. You So hill
Speaker 6: breed sheeps are sheep? Are there more hardy?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 6: They're the ones that live out on the Yorkshire Dales
Speaker 6: or up in the Lake district. Right when you see
Speaker 6: sheep up there, there's going to be hill breed sheep.
Speaker 6: One of the advantages of hill breeds is they can
Speaker 6: often be hefted. Are we familiar with hefting?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: Never, Okay.
Speaker 6: Hefting is when a sheep knows where it's home is,
Speaker 6: so it doesn't have to necessarily be fenced in. It
Speaker 6: will come back there. So yeah, yeah, it's but it's
Speaker 6: so it's a animal that lives out on the hills,
Speaker 6: but it knows where to come back to. It's not
Speaker 6: just going to be like sort of go mincing off
Speaker 6: to try and explore somewhere new, like it will come back.
Speaker 6: That is not a characteristic of all breeds of sheep.
Speaker 6: Like you will talk about fencing, definitely, most sheep need
Speaker 6: to be fenced in or they will just get out.
Speaker 6: Some of them are very acrobatic. But yeah, these guys,
Speaker 6: they can be hefted hill breeds, some hill bredes can
Speaker 6: be hefted so well. That means it's passed down the
Speaker 6: maternal line. So you're going to have to to retain
Speaker 6: that maternal line. Right, So as you're breeding your sheep,
Speaker 6: going to have to keep the U to the you lamb,
Speaker 6: and you're going to have to keep that line because
Speaker 6: they will teach their lamps to where to come back to. Basically, right,
Speaker 6: ask a really dumb question, please, sar.
Speaker 5: I recognize it's dumb and I can google it later,
Speaker 5: but I need to know. Okay, I don't as someone
Speaker 5: that doesn't eat a lot of meat. Okay, do we
Speaker 5: only eat lamb? Does anyone eat sheep meat? Sheep meat?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's called mushian.
Speaker 2: I've never thought of it much. I have heard of
Speaker 2: mutton so much sheep.
Speaker 6: Yeah, have you heard that from Have you heard the
Speaker 6: phrase mutton dressed as lamb. No, no, I think it's right.
Speaker 5: That was like a British one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's definitely probably British, right. I think it's rather sexist.
Speaker 6: Is used in a condescending way for people who you
Speaker 6: think are dressing too young for their age. I guess
Speaker 6: so you might be familiar with that. I thought it
Speaker 6: might be a good but no, I thought I had
Speaker 6: a way to explain to you. But no, mutton, Yeah,
Speaker 6: mutton is the oldest sheep. So there are some breeds
Speaker 6: that you get for mutton. It's not very popular, like
Speaker 6: like Americans don't eat as much lamb as British people do.
Speaker 6: And I think New Zealanders eat a lot of it too,
Speaker 6: but it's not as common here. So it's relatively common
Speaker 6: in the UK. Like if you went to Azoopermarket, you'll
Speaker 6: see it mutton not so much you have to cook
Speaker 6: it for longer in search, yes they do.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, eat a lot of sheep too, interesting.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, there are lots of It's it's a
Speaker 6: very hardy like you can have sheep and a lot
Speaker 6: of places where you can't have cattle. They're much tougher
Speaker 6: animals like and they don't need as much grazing, right,
Speaker 6: It's just not as much biomass on a sheep. So
Speaker 6: like that's why when you go to hillier parts of
Speaker 6: the UK, you're going to see sheep and not cattle
Speaker 6: because that's the place where sheep can live. They don't
Speaker 6: need is quality of grazing for the most part. So
Speaker 6: let me go through a few breeds of sheep and
Speaker 6: I'm going to go for what to look for when
Speaker 6: you're buying a sheep, right, So just just some breeds
Speaker 6: that I've sort of gone off the top of my
Speaker 6: head here texels, and you guys can look these up
Speaker 6: as we go. I think that will add add to
Speaker 6: the entertainment factor for the listeners at home. So texels,
Speaker 6: they are big units and not as big some of
Speaker 6: the other such we're going to talk about. They're thick
Speaker 6: that they're mostly like a meat sheep lean meat. Yeah, ugly,
Speaker 6: they're kind of wide face and kind of the big
Speaker 6: dominating eyebrows.
Speaker 2: They kind of look like someone.
Speaker 3: Stuck stuck like a sheep pat on a dog.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're actually nice sheet They're not
Speaker 6: like we had textles growing up. There is mostly a
Speaker 6: meat sheep with a bit of wool. Your next one
Speaker 6: might be a border leicester, sometimes called a blue leicester.
Speaker 6: They're very recognizable that like the blue speckling on their
Speaker 6: face and then a big Roman nose I suppose like
Speaker 6: a domed nose.
Speaker 2: They got a big, big round one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, a big, big snoot on them. So that's a
Speaker 6: very recognizable sheep. They again like a meat and wool
Speaker 6: sheet with slightly probably more desirable wool than texels. They're
Speaker 6: also very good mother, so that's something you're looking at
Speaker 6: with sheep. Rais is it going to raise it's young?
Speaker 6: Is it going to stick around? Look after a boarder lester?
Speaker 6: It's good for that, which is why they use in
Speaker 6: those mules that I spoke about. It's one of the
Speaker 6: reasons that you cross breathed them with a hill sheep
Speaker 6: to make them more hearty. Right, And this one is
Speaker 6: a clean l l e y n because you probably
Speaker 6: would have got that spelling organically. That that's a Welsh
Speaker 6: word and I'm probably mispronouncing it, but it's that's a
Speaker 6: it's a meat sheep. It's it's also got desirable. Well,
Speaker 6: it's also a good mother. They are big, They're like
Speaker 6: they're big units. My mom had those. And so when
Speaker 6: one of the things you're going to have to do
Speaker 6: when you have your sheep is you're going to have
Speaker 6: to clip their little feet. Other words, they grow too long,
Speaker 6: just like just like you have to clip your own fingernails, right,
Speaker 6: otherwise you need to do that. So and there's a
Speaker 6: way to do it by sort of grabbing the front
Speaker 6: leg and sort of dropping your knee a little bit.
Speaker 6: Like you're you're not just superlexing the sheep.
Speaker 2: It's a light sup lex.
Speaker 3: When you originally talking about hafting, I assumed it was
Speaker 3: something to do with picking the sheep up for some reason.
Speaker 4: The newer term is r kao ing your sheep. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: So this lean sheep looks like like to me, to me,
Speaker 4: the lean sheet, is it lean clean?
Speaker 2: Clean?
Speaker 6: Mm hmmm yeah, that double L sounding. Well, she's it
Speaker 6: comes at you hard.
Speaker 4: It's interesting clean. Well, either way, this sheep to me
Speaker 4: looks like standard sheep. You're like run of the mill sheep.
Speaker 4: When I google sheep, this is what I think of.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what once I was sending you some pictures
Speaker 6: of yesterday. Sometimes I'll send pictures of sheep to the
Speaker 6: to the group chat just for the increase in the
Speaker 6: general's well being.
Speaker 5: That's the only time I like the group chat.
Speaker 6: I'm kidding, it's true. Keep it up for you, just
Speaker 6: just for using I will keep keeping sheep content coming.
Speaker 6: You got the Jacob sheep, we'll be spoken about, right,
Speaker 6: So that's more of a park sheep.
Speaker 2: It's a rare breed.
Speaker 6: So if you're interested in like a rare breed, it's
Speaker 6: a good thing to do, right. If you're just a
Speaker 6: person who's like, yeah, it'd be cool to have some sheep,
Speaker 6: I have some pasture. Maybe you want them on a
Speaker 6: horse field, because horses will mess up the grass on
Speaker 6: their own. Horses will will shift in an area and
Speaker 6: that will kind of sour the grass, and horses will
Speaker 6: then not eat that grass. Horses are not really you know,
Speaker 6: great ship where they eat. On the other hand, yeah,
Speaker 6: the horse knows, the sheep doesn't. So sometimes you have
Speaker 6: a few sheep with horses. They can be companions as well.
Speaker 6: They can be nice companions.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 6: That's where the phrase get you know, the phrase gets
Speaker 6: your goat. Something gets your goat. Oh yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 6: where it comes from. Keeping a goat with a horse
Speaker 6: to keep it company.
Speaker 2: Nice is a sheep of goat.
Speaker 6: No different, different animals similar similar. I'm sure there's some
Speaker 6: kind of genus species thing. I don't understand.
Speaker 10: There maybe a different species somewhere. Yeah, they're they're Yeah,
Speaker 10: they're not a million miles apart. So you've got doorpers
Speaker 10: I think that's a cross between of a Dorset and
Speaker 10: a Persian. They're they're raised for mutton, so that's if
Speaker 10: you're looking for your mutton seeing that's where that's where
Speaker 10: you get that. They have multiple lambs a year, so
Speaker 10: some of these sheep will have can land more than
Speaker 10: once a year. Herdwick is a good hill breed. They're
Speaker 10: a very hearty. A lot of those up around my
Speaker 10: dad where my dad lives. Like I said, there are
Speaker 10: some rare breeds.
Speaker 6: Which if you're interested in like having rare breed sheep
Speaker 6: just to preserve like a type of sheep, because obviously,
Speaker 6: like the more heritage breeds are not as commercially viable,
Speaker 6: so sometimes they get lost, right because they don't give
Speaker 6: you a better same return on investment. So if you're
Speaker 6: interested in having sheep just because it's cool and it
Speaker 6: looks funky, the rare breed survival trust is a place
Speaker 6: to like, look, I used to enjoy going there as
Speaker 6: a kid and seeing different sheep and learning about But.
Speaker 5: That's not a good reason to get a sheep.
Speaker 6: But if you decide you want to have sheep anyway, right,
Speaker 6: let's say you're like, I don't know when a casts dispersion.
Speaker 6: So it's going to say a horsey person, a person
Speaker 6: who owns horses, you know, like if that is your thing,
Speaker 6: and you yeah, a horse person, yeah, like a centaur
Speaker 6: if you're a centauri. Yeah, if you are half horse,
Speaker 6: then you know you want to you want to have
Speaker 6: sheep maybe to check to improve your pasture or to
Speaker 6: not let the horses syr up or the grass. Then
Speaker 6: why not?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 6: Like why not? Because like if you get a if
Speaker 6: you get a meat sheep, it's gonna be bigger, it's
Speaker 6: gonna be more work. If you get a very sheet
Speaker 6: that a lot of wool, you're gonna have to share
Speaker 6: that a lot. So maybe you just want a sheep
Speaker 6: that can kind of cruise and be by yourself, then
Speaker 6: you know why not? Yeah, So we're going to talk
Speaker 6: very leafily about what to do when you buy a sheep,
Speaker 6: and then we're going to pivot to some other things
Speaker 6: that you can buy which are not as rewarding as sheep. Yeah,
Speaker 6: which is which is? That's an ad break that will
Speaker 6: do after that downal thanks understood.
Speaker 4: I miss I missed that part. Afterwards I was like, wait, no, James,
Speaker 4: don't move on quite yet. I understand now, very well.
Speaker 6: Done, thank you, Daniel. So when you're buying sheep, I
Speaker 6: think probably what you want to do is buy some
Speaker 6: yews that have already been bred, or a couple of
Speaker 6: yews with twins that they're a flock animal, right like sheep.
Speaker 6: They don't want to be on their own, So you
Speaker 6: don't just go and buy like one sheep and be like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I've got a sheep. Now that's not very nice. That's
Speaker 6: not that they'll be insecure and anxious, so they like
Speaker 6: to be with other sheep. So I think the way
Speaker 6: we used to do it when I was a kid
Speaker 6: was to get orphan lambs and so like that the
Speaker 6: mother either rejects the lamb or she dies giving birth
Speaker 6: right well, which can happen. And we used to them
Speaker 6: bottle feed those lambs and like you know, when they're
Speaker 6: very little, if you go out on the hill, do
Speaker 6: people have Argus in America. Sorry, you're looking at no, okay,
Speaker 6: Like it's a type of oven that like it's always on,
Speaker 6: it's a range cooker. Oh no, people, people, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: I can remember, like where I don't know.
Speaker 5: What sheep are. If you want me to know whatever
Speaker 5: the fuck you're talking about.
Speaker 6: You know, it's good. It's so much learning. It's it's
Speaker 6: type of oven that like it's in old houses and
Speaker 6: also rich people's houses. Now it's become like a training thing.
Speaker 6: But like way back in the day, I remember like
Speaker 6: putting lambs in the bottom oven, which is like warm,
Speaker 6: but like not cooking warm, just like like warm warm
Speaker 6: when they were very little and they need to warm up.
Speaker 6: So with often lambs, right, you're going to bottle feed them.
Speaker 6: You're going to do the stuff that their mother does
Speaker 6: for them. So that's a lot of work, but you know,
Speaker 6: it's a way to get going. But they are more
Speaker 6: fragile when they're young. So what it was suggest is
Speaker 6: buying a couple of yews that have been bred and
Speaker 6: then you just want to either like if you go
Speaker 6: locally to somewhere, then you'll you'll know this is a
Speaker 6: type of sheep that can survive and the type of
Speaker 6: pasture that's near you. This is the type of sheep
Speaker 6: that can survive in the climate that you have with
Speaker 6: the food sort of available where you are, So that's
Speaker 6: probably a good thing. And then you just want to
Speaker 6: check that the sheep has some weight on it, right,
Speaker 6: and you want to check its teeth of course, like
Speaker 6: any livestock, you want to be checking the teeth when
Speaker 6: you're buying them. And then a thing I've run into.
Speaker 3: What do you sorry, what are you looking for on
Speaker 3: the teeth.
Speaker 6: If they're all fucked up like that sheep is not healthy, right,
Speaker 6: like receding gums or like kind of if it's much older,
Speaker 6: that's you can tell. You can normally age an animal
Speaker 6: by looking at its teeth, right, like if you find
Speaker 6: a if you find the remains of an animal, to
Speaker 6: one way to see the aig of it. So yeah,
Speaker 6: you go to the auction, right, and you don't want
Speaker 6: to check the vaccine status as well. I've only really
Speaker 6: come across this in the United States recently. Some people
Speaker 6: will rage posting on the place I go to to
Speaker 6: buy chickens because it didn't want to buy vaccinated pickens,
Speaker 6: which is just h Yeah, because Bill Gates wants to
Speaker 6: know what your chicken is thinking, right, which is why
Speaker 6: he micro chips. Yeah, absolute pricks. Yeah, if you don't
Speaker 6: want to buy back. So I don't know if you're
Speaker 6: listening to the show that this is not a concern
Speaker 6: of ours. I don't think, but yeah, check the vaccine
Speaker 6: statu is just in case you got some who are
Speaker 6: trying to sell you some sheep which are more likely
Speaker 6: to get sick. So yeah, would would if you I
Speaker 6: can't come up with and I don't know if you
Speaker 6: want to buy something that's no use to you and
Speaker 6: won't give you joy instead of sheep. Here are some adverts. Okay,
Speaker 6: so we're back and we're still talking about sheep, probably
Speaker 6: will be for quite some times from page one. So
Speaker 6: sheep are actually they're quite clever. Sheep can recognize human faces.
Speaker 6: They'll know who you are. I've definitely definitely known that,
Speaker 6: Like especially the sheep that we bottle fed from when
Speaker 6: they were babies, right, they definitely knew who we were
Speaker 6: and they could be very friendly. Yeah, it's nice, it's no.
Speaker 6: It will come up to you and they'll sort of
Speaker 6: nuzzle you and you can rub them. Our sheep were polled.
Speaker 6: That's another thing to think about when you're getting a sheep. Right,
Speaker 6: a pole sheep, it doesn't have horns where it's some
Speaker 6: people have horns. Some people have more horns. So yeah,
Speaker 6: they can recognize your faces. They can learn names, so
Speaker 6: they have a name. They can learn their name. They
Speaker 6: also like knows it they're sheep, so like, I know,
Speaker 6: my mum would just go out and go look sheep
Speaker 6: and then she'd feed them and they'd come. So you're thinking,
Speaker 6: you know, they've got a positive reinforcement mechanism. You can
Speaker 6: train sheep to go on a lead. So another reason
Speaker 6: you might want to get sheep is you're getting into
Speaker 6: into showing. Right, a nice thing to do if you
Speaker 6: you know a strange like me. I suppose it's go
Speaker 6: to like an agricultural show and look at different types
Speaker 6: of sheep. I like to do that. They can be
Speaker 6: really expensive now because it's also the County Fair and
Speaker 6: so like people are going in to eat like deep
Speaker 6: fried stuff, which doesn't interest me as much. But if
Speaker 6: you want to go and see it, yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 6: could go together down I'll get.
Speaker 2: A super sailor at the end, be like, how is
Speaker 2: your day?
Speaker 6: You won't be saddled with regret if you look at
Speaker 6: sheep and indigestion. So yeah, consider yeah, but it's nice
Speaker 6: to go right, see see the breeds that are popular
Speaker 6: in your area, see different types of sheep and what
Speaker 6: people will do. At least I've never been to it,
Speaker 6: like an actual sort of showing sheep. I'll just go
Speaker 6: to the to the San Diego County Fair and look
Speaker 6: at the animals. But I've not been to a show
Speaker 6: where you walk around with them in the US. But
Speaker 6: I used to do that when I was a kid.
Speaker 6: I think of, you know, go to the village show
Speaker 6: or whatever and take the sheep and walk it around
Speaker 6: and then they'll judge your sheep right if it's up
Speaker 6: to the breed standards or what have you. So yeah,
Speaker 6: they can go on a lead they like more of
Speaker 6: like a halter look around the nose, so not not
Speaker 6: like a collar. So that's the thing that you can
Speaker 6: do that's that interest you. If you want to get
Speaker 6: into sheep showing. If that's the case, you're going to
Speaker 6: want to get like a pedigree sheep right and really
Speaker 6: get it to it. You're going to drop some money.
Speaker 6: It's not really like I was never a very serious
Speaker 6: sheep show, to be clear, It's just a thing for
Speaker 6: your child to do when you go up in a
Speaker 6: rural area. They like I said, they like to be
Speaker 6: together in groups. They're pretty docile. Like sheep an't going
Speaker 6: to fight you. It's definitely, definitely like when I was
Speaker 6: at University of stuff, friends would come home and they'd
Speaker 6: be very scared of the sheep. There's no reason to
Speaker 6: be scared of sheep. I don't think I've ever heard
Speaker 6: of anyone being hurt by a sheep. Yeah, I mean what,
Speaker 6: they're going to come at you a bit. Sometimes they're
Speaker 6: angry or whatever, but like it's a sheep, Like it's fine,
Speaker 6: you know, like I would back you serene if it
Speaker 6: came to it. Yeah, Like yes, And their horns are
Speaker 6: mostly like not pointed towards you. I have been gored
Speaker 6: by a bolt right, like I've experienced like livestock related injury.
Speaker 2: Sheep is definitely on the list of animals I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure I could take.
Speaker 6: Yeah, sure, this.
Speaker 5: Next fact is fascinating to me. Can we get to
Speaker 5: this fact?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Sure, So definitely if you're thinking breeding getting rams, about
Speaker 6: like eight percent are going to be gay It's just
Speaker 6: a thing that's going to happen, right, getty sheep sheep? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: you wait till we get to the next do one.
Speaker 6: Beres just a thing, right, You're going to get a
Speaker 6: sheep that's gay. It's it's a natural part of the
Speaker 6: diversity of any species. Kind of definitely know people who
Speaker 6: just spent a lot of money on pedigree rams and
Speaker 6: they've turned out to be gay. It's what it is, right, Like,
Speaker 6: I love that gets me about this weird, stupid American.
Speaker 6: It's not just an American thing, but it's like, oh,
Speaker 6: it's not natural whatever. Like I know, anyone who's worked
Speaker 6: with livestock in their life, well for a number of
Speaker 6: years will tell you that they've come across a gay
Speaker 6: sheep or cow or what have you. Some you're also
Speaker 6: going to get. Sometimes some sheep are called free Martins.
Speaker 6: It's a trans mask sheep for the most part. It
Speaker 6: actually has some biological diferences. So like, yeah, what it
Speaker 6: is is is a female that's been accompanied so like
Speaker 6: they're twins or triplets or quads sometimes that has been
Speaker 6: accompanied by male featurists in utero, so they behave in
Speaker 6: a masculine way and they might lack functioning ovaries. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you're going to get those two right there, So they're
Speaker 6: going to be a bit more agro like a ram
Speaker 6: about you and stuff. But it's just to think is
Speaker 6: part of natural diversity in species. You're going to see it.
Speaker 6: You know, you might have a gay sheep. Lucky you, right,
Speaker 6: you know, cherish it, take it, you know, be nice
Speaker 6: to it. So white fleeces, right, generally we think of sheep,
Speaker 6: but Dana was saying, you have to think of a
Speaker 6: white fleece. That's that wild cheap are often brown, right,
Speaker 6: it's being white. It's not a great camouflage trait. So
Speaker 6: when we see a when we see a white sheep,
Speaker 6: that's because it's generally been selected.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: So when you look at the Jacob sheep, they were bibaled, right,
Speaker 6: they had bits of brown on them on the white fleece.
Speaker 6: Being white have a pispid trait, so it's for very quickly.
Speaker 6: And then if you if you're looking at the wall
Speaker 6: of a sheet, you want to consider you want fine
Speaker 6: medium of course, wool, long wool sheep. Right, if you
Speaker 6: look up sheep with long walls. Some amazing reeds out there,
Speaker 6: those are mostly for breeding to get more desirable wall
Speaker 6: characteristics like long wool sheep. It's going to be quite
Speaker 6: hard to look after that sheep. Right stop, it's wall
Speaker 6: getting matt in stuff. So now we're going to get
Speaker 6: it to fencing. It's an important topic. So you want
Speaker 6: your fencing to be about chest high. Obviously, it depends
Speaker 6: on your height, like if you're a smaller person a
Speaker 6: bit higher or whatever. But like we were, generally use post
Speaker 6: and rail fencing. You don't see that as much in
Speaker 6: the US, but it names pretty self explanatory. Right, Bang
Speaker 6: in a post rail across the middle. Bang in a
Speaker 6: post rail across the middle. And then you're going to
Speaker 6: want some netting you don't have to use like with chickens,
Speaker 6: we talked about using construction netting right, like very thin
Speaker 6: wire just so like things like snakes and rats don't
Speaker 6: get in with cheap you need that. The you can
Speaker 6: go with a wider mesh four or five inches across
Speaker 6: and that's going to be cheaper for you as you're
Speaker 6: building the fence. You can also use electric fences and
Speaker 6: you can use those to rotate the pasture, which is
Speaker 6: a good idea. So the sheep kind of graze one area,
Speaker 6: then you move them across to another area. That area recovers.
Speaker 6: You move the sheep to the next area, they graze
Speaker 6: that area where the other areas recover. Okay, you learned
Speaker 6: about this in the school, surely, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, surely.
Speaker 4: I'm curious. How does the electric fencing do that? Are
Speaker 4: you constantly moving it? And is that just like when
Speaker 4: the sheep touch it, they're like, oh, not that way
Speaker 4: and go back like.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, well they're not thick. They'll touch it once and
Speaker 6: then they won't go here maybe twice and oh yeah, no, precisely,
Speaker 6: but so how is it doing that? It's so that
Speaker 6: the electric fences are like plastic posts that you stick
Speaker 6: in the ground and then it has a metal spike
Speaker 6: on the end, and then it's got this it's about
Speaker 6: that wide, about inch wide. It's it's a ribbon with
Speaker 6: little metal pits in it, and you the post has
Speaker 6: a way of securing that ribbon to it so you
Speaker 6: can move that fencing around.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
Speaker 4: So so the reason I mean it being electrified is
Speaker 4: kind of like secondary. It's mostly that it's a movable
Speaker 4: fence post. That's why you yeah, crazing purposes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it doesn't have the same the same structure as
Speaker 6: a normal fence, so it has gaps which a sheet
Speaker 6: probably could slip through if it was just whirre. Because
Speaker 6: it's electric, it's not going to try and nuzzle its
Speaker 6: way through because it's going to get shot. So if
Speaker 6: you're using electric fence, just like you know, the classic
Speaker 6: way to tell of it's on, right, it is you
Speaker 6: pick up a piece of grass and then you just
Speaker 6: touch the fence with the grass. Because the grass is
Speaker 6: a poor conductor, you're going to feel a little.
Speaker 2: Bit of a shock trolling right now.
Speaker 6: No real, that's what you do. Like, yeah, no, you
Speaker 6: touch it with a piece of grass, and that's gonna
Speaker 6: you're going to get like a slight like tingle, but
Speaker 6: you're not going to get a full whack. Growing up,
Speaker 6: the electric fences all over the place, right, I've run
Speaker 6: into them when I was a kid and taken a
Speaker 6: whack or like you know, the post have a big
Speaker 6: spike on the end, so that's very fun to throw
Speaker 6: at your friends, you know, lasting in But yeah, electric
Speaker 6: fancy gives handy. You just took it up to a
Speaker 6: car battery basically, so you like, yeah, no, it's a
Speaker 6: it's a good way to segment your field. You have
Speaker 6: one field, you know, if you're not rotating the sheep.
Speaker 6: Did you alreally not learn about field rotation? Sorry, I'm
Speaker 6: constantly amazed by the things that I did in school
Speaker 6: that Americans don't do, not at.
Speaker 4: All agriculture in any capacity. Yeah, there was no agriculture training.
Speaker 4: I mean at least way.
Speaker 5: Far I saw. It was unlike the tub of butter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like that's literally what the think.
Speaker 3: I think I grew up closer than YouTube, which I
Speaker 3: had a corn fi in my backyard and they were Okay,
Speaker 3: we didn't have agricultural education yet like my school, but
Speaker 3: like there were schools so like I went to to
Speaker 3: do like play chess classic out I was, I was
Speaker 3: a nerd, but like there were lots of schools that
Speaker 3: like did stuff like that because they were like war
Speaker 3: Royal Ports of Illinois, So that is a thing here.
Speaker 3: I think it's just you didn't go up.
Speaker 2: In the agricultural.
Speaker 6: I think I learned it in the context of the
Speaker 6: enclosure of the commons in the fore field rotation and
Speaker 6: like using lagoons to fix nitrogen in the soil. Again
Speaker 6: blank hollige, Okay, okay, well, yeah, different strokes for different folks.
Speaker 6: You know me on Twitter dot com. If you learned
Speaker 6: about lagoomes in school.
Speaker 4: So too would have preferred to learn about that, just
Speaker 4: to be clear, like algebra two, forget it.
Speaker 2: I would much rather learn aboutlagoons.
Speaker 6: Whenever you use algebra, not don someone else is using it.
Speaker 6: But you know you, Yeah, think of what you could
Speaker 6: be doing with nitrogen right now, if you if you
Speaker 6: were growing some peas, what if incredible things? Yeah, So
Speaker 6: with your sheep, depending on the breed, you're going to
Speaker 6: need shelter, right, So that shelter could be something like
Speaker 6: a cops a little cops of trees. That's a small
Speaker 6: it's big, smaller than a wood.
Speaker 2: It is a copse.
Speaker 6: So you're going to need a decent amount of trees
Speaker 6: for shelter. Some will need more shelter than others, right,
Speaker 6: depending on how hardy they are. Some of them will
Speaker 6: want to lamb inside and some of them are able
Speaker 6: to lamb outside. That they all will need some shelter
Speaker 6: and foul weather. Right. You'll see that they're very good
Speaker 6: at like knowing where to shelter. But then you've got
Speaker 6: to you can't leave them, out, like when I'm in
Speaker 6: agricultural states in America where these giant prairies, you know
Speaker 6: that you don't have hedgerows in the same way that
Speaker 6: we did where I grew up. Then you if you
Speaker 6: are there and you're trying to have some sheep, you're
Speaker 6: going to need to build a little shelter for them.
Speaker 2: That's a question about the shelter. Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: What's the shape of the shelter? Is it kind of
Speaker 4: like is it like a house? Is it more like barn.
Speaker 6: Like's depending on the breed. No, not like barn. You
Speaker 6: have a bard to bring them in. Like so we
Speaker 6: used to lamb inside, right, and then you just use
Speaker 6: palette to divide it up, and the palettes you put
Speaker 6: each of you in there with her lamb.
Speaker 4: And we'll get onto Thats are barnes jokers, not going
Speaker 4: to happen.
Speaker 6: Sorry, Daniel, I'll let you down again that it's not
Speaker 6: on you. But yeah, you'll see all kinds of things.
Speaker 6: You'll see thanks, you'll see it like people just put
Speaker 6: a little stone shelters. You know, if you have a
Speaker 6: if you have a prevailing wind that like rips through
Speaker 6: and it's cold wind, then you know you might want
Speaker 6: to build something just to shelter them from that prevailing wind.
Speaker 6: But they just you know, if it's like a big
Speaker 6: undifferentiated prairie. And especially lambs, right, they're more fragile. They're younger,
Speaker 6: and sometimes you'll see the lambs wearing the little coats
Speaker 6: and little little jackets that they can wear. Yeah, you
Speaker 6: can google that, just like google lamps, orange jacket. You
Speaker 6: can get these little little plastic jackets for them. But
Speaker 6: that you do, you do need to be cautious with
Speaker 6: lambs when they're young. Sometimes, like I said, you'll have
Speaker 6: the midside thing with sheep regarding feeding is that they
Speaker 6: are ruminants. Do we know what rumin animals are?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 6: Yes, massively failed by your education.
Speaker 2: And it's a.
Speaker 6: Ruminant. It chooses the cud. So when it eats the food, right,
Speaker 6: it goes to the roomen and then it holds the food.
Speaker 6: The food is regurgit.
Speaker 4: What are the cow It has like multiple stomachs yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: like the first stomach yeah, so the rooman's a big stomach, right,
Speaker 4: and it's in there that it's like a storage space really,
Speaker 4: So the food goes in their chills for a bit
Speaker 4: and then it's regurgitated, chewed back up and then re swallowed.
Speaker 2: And that is the cud that that process is called
Speaker 2: chewing the cud. Chewing the cud, that is the right.
Speaker 4: So is that entire process chewing the cud like it
Speaker 4: going into the ruminant and then being regurgitated, or is
Speaker 4: it strictly just the chewing that happened before they eat
Speaker 4: it again.
Speaker 6: It's a chewing that happens when they eat it again. Right,
Speaker 6: So like the first eating, it's just eating. The second
Speaker 6: eating she reads having a physical reaction.
Speaker 2: It is hardly. It's extremely harly.
Speaker 6: That's how they get the most out of like this
Speaker 6: relatively lean pasture. Right, it's a very clever adaption. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so yeah, that's how that's how sheep eat. So that
Speaker 6: means that they need to have access to pasture. They
Speaker 6: also need lots of water. So again, if you're in
Speaker 6: like a desert place, I should ask Navaho folks. I
Speaker 6: know Navaho folks, I should ask them how they do
Speaker 6: with their tury sheep because it's not a densely watered
Speaker 6: place there, but generally that they need access to water.
Speaker 6: I'm sure they have places where they have good access
Speaker 6: to water and then you, like I said, you do
Speaker 6: want to rotate them around. Right, You can feed them,
Speaker 6: you can supplement with like hay or halage or silage
Speaker 6: stuff like that, but you shouldn't really, like you can't
Speaker 6: keep your feet sheep in a place where there's no pasture. Really,
Speaker 6: you don't want to be feeding them allyet. They need
Speaker 6: varied pasture right with different things, you know, clovers and
Speaker 6: grasses and the stuff that's poisonous for them, so that
Speaker 6: there are different weeds sort of poisonous for them. You're
Speaker 6: just going to want to It depends where you live, right,
Speaker 6: you're listening to this in the UK. It's different to
Speaker 6: North America, probably different to South America. So you'll want
Speaker 6: to check that out again. When you're buying a sheep,
Speaker 6: you can ask these kind of questions and go ahead
Speaker 6: and pull those out so so you can you can
Speaker 6: feed them grain. But you really only want to do
Speaker 6: that sort of durin or just before lambing. It can
Speaker 6: lead to overfeeding. It's too rich for them, right, Like
Speaker 6: they're designed with this ruminant system to you know, have
Speaker 6: these green leafy things. People can use bagged feeds too.
Speaker 6: You know, again, you don't want to rely on those
Speaker 6: whole time. They're expensive. Don't use cow food like bagged
Speaker 6: cattle food. It's not going to work for sheep. And
Speaker 6: they need like a mineral lick too, So you're like,
Speaker 6: I'm sure you're all familiar with salt licks. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 6: that's it's a similar thing, right, they'll just come up
Speaker 6: and lick that. They know when they need the salt
Speaker 6: or the minerals or do they just they know, so
Speaker 6: they'll just come come and look it. So you just
Speaker 6: put that out in the field. It's pretty chill, don't
Speaker 6: let So A big problem we had was like we
Speaker 6: had some sheep in the field next to our house,
Speaker 6: and they were our sheep, there was someone else's sheep,
Speaker 6: but like forever getting into the garden, mainly because I'm
Speaker 6: terrible at closing gates and doors, and so they would
Speaker 6: get into the garden. You do want to be careful.
Speaker 6: They will go ham like it is the time of
Speaker 6: their lives when they get in your garden, and they
Speaker 6: can eat all your plants. But you do want to
Speaker 6: watch out for things like rhododendron, which can be dangerous
Speaker 6: to them and they can be poisonous. So if you've
Speaker 6: got stuff in your garden. Either don't have stuff as
Speaker 6: poisonous to sheep or or be aware, you know, if
Speaker 6: they're getting in there, head to the rhododendrons. Some head
Speaker 6: them off at the past. Sharene would you would you
Speaker 6: like to insert your Well.
Speaker 5: You're just the shepherd and we are the herd following you.
Speaker 7: And so.
Speaker 5: To everyone that wants to be a sheep, listen to
Speaker 5: these ads.
Speaker 6: We're back my Sheep and Unparalleled. Yeah we need Dan
Speaker 6: a little more podcast. It's kind of energy is magical.
Speaker 6: So yeah, shearing right, sharing sheep a very important part
Speaker 6: of having sheep. So this can be hard to mask.
Speaker 6: If you're trying to get the wool off in like
Speaker 6: a full fleece, which is ideally how you want to
Speaker 6: do it, right, you don't. You're not just like it's
Speaker 6: not like when you go to the barbers, you know,
Speaker 6: and they just go at you and his hair on
Speaker 6: the floor. You're looking to take it off as a
Speaker 6: complete fleece, and there's a technique to that. It's you're
Speaker 6: just not going to fucking get it straight away, like
Speaker 6: you're going to have to learn or you're going to
Speaker 6: have to pay someone to do it. I don't really
Speaker 6: know how that works in America again because like there's
Speaker 6: not such a density of sheep, so maybe that's not
Speaker 6: someone who does it. And lots of this stuff are
Speaker 6: getting your use ultrasounded when they're pregnant. I'm not sure
Speaker 6: how you go about that in and of affordable manner
Speaker 6: in the United States. Like if you have a large
Speaker 6: animal vet, you can ask them, but you do want
Speaker 6: to do that right to check that how many lambs
Speaker 6: you've got and stuff, of course, But yeah, so if
Speaker 6: I guess you're just going to have to learn or
Speaker 6: give it a try. Like as long as you're not
Speaker 6: hurting the sheep, if you're taking it off in clumps,
Speaker 6: I suppose it's not that bad. Just you know, if
Speaker 6: you don't want to be nipping and hurting the sheep
Speaker 6: itself when you're shearing, right, And it's just like if
Speaker 6: you if you're a person who shaves or you know,
Speaker 6: cuts her own hair or what have, you know, it's
Speaker 6: not pleasant if you nick the skin.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so sheep need to get rid of the hair. Yes,
Speaker 5: then if we did it exist, how would they do that?
Speaker 6: Well, we wouldn't have bred them selectively to have such
Speaker 6: dents and long fleeces if we didn't exist. So there
Speaker 6: are hair sheep which which have hair instead of wool,
Speaker 6: and those sheep don't need to don't need to be shorn,
Speaker 6: but because for centuries we've bred them to be woolier,
Speaker 6: because we like the wool they're now we have, we've
Speaker 6: made our bed and we have to lie in it,
Speaker 6: right like we the sheep depend on us, and we
Speaker 6: depend on the sheep. It's like it's like the Yin
Speaker 6: and yang and you know of sheep husband.
Speaker 4: That we created without their permission, yea, yea, yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: the sheep sheep that has been forced upon there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's it's not a not a consensual relationship.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that what happens here. And if you don't
Speaker 6: share them, and some some you'll need to do twice
Speaker 6: a year, some once a year, some you worn't at all.
Speaker 6: If the hair sheet right, but they'll get like matted walls,
Speaker 6: so like the like the who and other things will
Speaker 6: like just if you like, if you don't wash your
Speaker 6: hair for a long time, you know, it gets kind
Speaker 6: of knotted and matted, got it?
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah? So that and also they can get over heat,
Speaker 6: say no more to go further.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that makes sense though, that makes sense.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know how you sell well in the USA. Uh,
Speaker 6: you know, just get on Etsy and do something with
Speaker 6: it if you want to sell. I suppose, you know,
Speaker 6: learn to learn to spin to get a spinning wheel,
Speaker 6: you learn to card card the wool and then spin
Speaker 6: it and then knit it and then sell it. I
Speaker 6: suppose it will keep things for yourself. It'd be fun,
Speaker 6: you know if you have free time.
Speaker 2: What is carding?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's when you're like like taking the wool and
Speaker 6: like like combing it. Uh huh, like pulling it. I'm
Speaker 6: not superaviny with stuff. I remember again. See it's just
Speaker 6: a different world, isn't it. See we would go to
Speaker 6: like the Black Country Museum when I was a kid
Speaker 6: in school. Not a racial thing, it's just a uh
Speaker 6: it's it's a part of it's part of Britain where
Speaker 6: there was a lot of industry. And one of the
Speaker 6: things I would do was like, oh, this is how
Speaker 6: people used to do wool, you know, like the spinning
Speaker 6: Jenny and like before that, like in cottage industry when
Speaker 6: people would make it a home, or like when you
Speaker 6: go to the Rabberry Survival trust, and I think I
Speaker 6: bet they'll let you do some spinning or cutting when
Speaker 6: you're going there.
Speaker 2: I got a quick explanation for you. I got a
Speaker 2: quick explanation for you.
Speaker 4: So if for those folks at home who have hairy animals,
Speaker 4: you know those kind of like brushes that have fine
Speaker 4: little metal bristles on them, and you're brushing, you just
Speaker 4: take off like a huge clump of hair. Now that
Speaker 4: made you take a imagine you take a fresh piece
Speaker 4: of wool straight off of the sheep and you put
Speaker 4: it on there, and then you just kind of tease
Speaker 4: it out to form it into what looks more like
Speaker 4: like raw wool that you're used to as opposed to
Speaker 4: looking like it was just taking off a sheep. You're
Speaker 4: turning into the raw wall that will then be spun.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at it right now, and it looks absolutely exhausting.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 2: Fun, sorry, yes, fun yeah?
Speaker 6: Fun? Good thing to do, you know, like get Once
Speaker 6: Twitter inevitably collapses, we can return with a v to
Speaker 6: tradition and do this sort of stuff instead.
Speaker 2: There, you know, yeah, I'm sure texting everybody.
Speaker 6: Video male return to tradition. People already do it. It's
Speaker 6: nice for your hands it's very nice for your hands
Speaker 6: just generally handling because they have lanolin. Right, Lanelin this
Speaker 6: kind of natural. I think it's like a soap thing
Speaker 6: like it makes lathering, but it's very good for softening
Speaker 6: your skin. So you'll see you'll notice it's nice for
Speaker 6: your hands when you're handling the sheep, right, you'll notice
Speaker 6: that's nice hand feeling. It's not expensive like hand cream.
Speaker 6: You're going to have to make sure that you train
Speaker 6: your sheep's hooves. So depending on your size and the
Speaker 6: sheep size and yeah, and your sort of skill handling sheep,
Speaker 6: you might want to get a sheep flipper. We got
Speaker 6: one from my mum a couple of years ago. It's
Speaker 6: just a device that helps you turn the sheep so
Speaker 6: that you can clip its hooves instead of just getting
Speaker 6: in there with the knee. And there's a way to
Speaker 6: do it, and a lot of the stuff you can
Speaker 6: learn on YouTube, like I've I checked before this, and
Speaker 6: there's definitely videos on how to turn them over and
Speaker 6: klip the hoofs. So yeah, you you can give it
Speaker 6: a try. That doesn't work, you can get a sheet flipper.
Speaker 6: You you sort of yeah, you sort to drop your kneeto
Speaker 6: it and turn it over.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy that there is an advice that exists
Speaker 3: called the sheep flipper. This has made my day measurably better.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll send you some videos. There's
Speaker 6: some good videos of me trying to turn my mum's
Speaker 6: sheep like so we can click their hooves and it
Speaker 6: was like a wet and slippery and me just fetching
Speaker 6: myself on my ass into dead and the sheep just
Speaker 6: like making a bid for freedom. So yeah, you watch
Speaker 6: a couple of videos. You can work it out and
Speaker 6: if it doesn't work for you can get a seat
Speaker 6: sheet flipper. You're going to have to do things like
Speaker 6: dipping and deworming your sheep too. It's your the wormer.
Speaker 6: You just put in their mouth. It's like a It
Speaker 6: goes in the mouth and you squeeze. It looks a
Speaker 6: bit like a gun, I suppose, or like a it's
Speaker 6: like a little tiny pipe, like maybe a quarter of
Speaker 6: an inch size. You're pinky and it goes in and
Speaker 6: you press the thing and it dispenses a dough. It
Speaker 6: kind of gets it behind their tongue, so don't spit
Speaker 6: it out. Dispensed it's a bit of wormer.
Speaker 4: Gun was the perfect word to use for my American
Speaker 4: ied brain. I'm totally yeah.
Speaker 6: I thought, yeah, yeah, I was going to you know,
Speaker 6: thinking gun, hot dog, bulld eagle or what reference would
Speaker 6: you understand? Right, So you know you're gonna also have
Speaker 6: to dip your sheep to prevent things like scab and
Speaker 6: so that's just literally when the sheep dipped in this
Speaker 6: stuff that sort of cleans them. Right, So there are
Speaker 6: mobile sheep dips, or you can just go to a
Speaker 6: sheep dip. Take your sheep to a sheep They can
Speaker 6: do it there. Again, I'm not I've never seen one
Speaker 6: in the US. I'm sure there are some, but I'm
Speaker 6: not sure how you do that. I think you can
Speaker 6: also spray them for this, and you'll want to check obviously,
Speaker 6: all kind of dips a legal legal, and you don't
Speaker 6: want to be dipping them with cuts. So like if
Speaker 6: you have just been through your shearing and you've cut
Speaker 6: them up, that's not a good time to do it.
Speaker 6: And you don't want to dip thirsty sheep either for
Speaker 6: obvious reasons. Right, what they're going into is not suddenly
Speaker 6: wanted to be drinking. So predation. Predations are an interesting topic.
Speaker 6: Sheep are not really great at defending themselves, and they
Speaker 6: just kind of big flufs. They can sort of butt
Speaker 6: a little bit with their heads and then they do
Speaker 6: do that, and they'll defend their their their little lambs.
Speaker 6: And when we were little and we had dogs, if
Speaker 6: the dog, when it was a puppy, would chase sheep,
Speaker 6: you could put the dog in a little pen with
Speaker 6: a U and her lambs and the U would be like, heay,
Speaker 6: get away, get away, go away, leave my lambs alone,
Speaker 6: and that then the dog would would be less likely
Speaker 6: to chase sheep again because it's had this probably not
Speaker 6: great to get a dog a traumatic experience and the U,
Speaker 6: I suppose, but they'll defend their their lambs like that.
Speaker 6: But you know, when you've got especially if you're in
Speaker 6: North America, right, you've got like mountain lions, you've got coyotes,
Speaker 6: you've got bobcats, all kinds of bigger stuff than I'm
Speaker 6: used to. So a couple of options there. You've got
Speaker 6: guys in animals, right, so something like a lama, a donkey,
Speaker 6: or like a livestock guardian dog. Me is enjoying the
Speaker 6: idea of a guardian donkey, but the couple of different
Speaker 6: badeffits to each one of lama lama can be pretty mean.
Speaker 6: I'm sure you guys have seen them. Like I've been
Speaker 6: spat on by a few lama. They'll then they'll kick, yeah,
Speaker 6: then theyre bitey, and it's just really sort of obnoxious creatures.
Speaker 6: But that yeah, that they don't mess about, so those
Speaker 6: are decent. You know, it looks like one of the
Speaker 6: sheep is just wildly deformed. If it's running around with
Speaker 6: the sheep, you can get donkey. Donkey's also quite defensive
Speaker 6: and very loud, so you know, if your sheep are
Speaker 6: in a field near your house and you have a donkey,
Speaker 6: it's going to kick off. At night, something happens making
Speaker 6: its characteristic donkey noises, and that will give you chance
Speaker 6: to respond, and then you've got your livestock. Indian breeds
Speaker 6: right like like Pyrenees is a great example. People will
Speaker 6: probably have seen my pictures of the statis Udicorn rutch.
Speaker 6: They have Pyrenees dogs very helpful as you when you're
Speaker 6: being attacked by biggots because the dogs dogs will bark.
Speaker 6: But guardian dogs are like inherently they want to guide
Speaker 6: your sheep. So they'll just go out there and they'll
Speaker 6: move among the flock and they'll bark and run off
Speaker 6: any attackers and they're very again, it's entirely in their
Speaker 6: breeding to do it. It's very funny actually, because chuds
Speaker 6: have this like I'm a sheep dog thing, you know
Speaker 6: when when they walk around with like five knives and
Speaker 6: two guns and pepper spray, and then they always have
Speaker 6: a picture of border collie that is not what the
Speaker 6: border collie dogs. A border Collige is like a dog
Speaker 6: with extreme anxiety that it's obsessed with collective security. And
Speaker 6: we'll just like border collie is naturally heard things, right,
Speaker 6: So I'm sure like you've seen people seen like One
Speaker 6: Man His Dog the TV program Again, it used to
Speaker 6: be honest Sunday nights when I was little. It's it's
Speaker 6: a competition as a sheep herding with dogs, competition there rules, yeah,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, perhaps one of them. I've met American people
Speaker 6: who do this competitively, but I think it's more of
Speaker 6: a hobby than a way of life. But yeah, so
Speaker 6: if you can google One Man this dog and watch
Speaker 6: different competitions. Obviously it's not gendered and it can be
Speaker 6: a person and their dog. But yeah, that's what border
Speaker 6: colligues do, right, they heard the sheep and when they're little,
Speaker 6: like you can start them out with herding chickens or
Speaker 6: ducks in your in your like if you have a
Speaker 6: farm yard, they'll they'll go out there and heard ducks
Speaker 6: just by themselves. They want to do it just in
Speaker 6: their breeding. But a guardian dog does not do that.
Speaker 6: It did just protects. But I think, like this is
Speaker 6: one of the things that we spoke about with with chickens, right, Like,
Speaker 6: if you want to have sheep, you're probably going to
Speaker 6: have to either like well, if you're not willing to
Speaker 6: defend them for predatives, probably shouldn't have them because it's
Speaker 6: a bit mean to just put them out there, is
Speaker 6: like coyote bait, a lion bait or whatever, Like you
Speaker 6: might have to shoot something that looks like a dog
Speaker 6: if you don't want your sheep to die, and like
Speaker 6: it's just how it's going to go down, you know,
Speaker 6: Like it's like not everyone has to have livestock. I'm
Speaker 6: not a person who eats animals, so like it's.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think similar to chickens, most people shouldn't
Speaker 5: have chickens or sheep, you know what I mean. The
Speaker 5: vast majority of people, in my opinion, are better off
Speaker 5: not doing that, just because, like I don't think people
Speaker 5: realize the responsibility even with all this information. I think
Speaker 5: some people get too they jump the gun for lack
Speaker 5: of a better fucking term.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, totally, Like don't be rushing
Speaker 6: into getting livestock. Like it's very like I've seen people
Speaker 6: do that before. I've seen people do the whole like
Speaker 6: you know, I'll quit my job as a banker and
Speaker 6: come and live on a farm thing, and like they
Speaker 6: just don't go and work on someone's fun. Right, if
Speaker 6: you want to do that, you learn if you didn't
Speaker 6: grow up in this Like there are a million things
Speaker 6: that I'm not telling you, and I'm forgetting to tell
Speaker 6: you that I take for granted, and like it just
Speaker 6: it takes time and it's complicated and and sometimes it's
Speaker 6: very sad, right, Like I said, she get sick and
Speaker 6: they die and that's sad, and they get predated, and
Speaker 6: that's very sad. Lambs get predated. It's really sad. So like,
Speaker 6: I don't know, it's not for everyone. It's certainly having
Speaker 6: a flock of sheep is quite a big and you
Speaker 6: can't you know, can't just be like, oh right, I'm
Speaker 6: off to well.
Speaker 5: Right, I don't think why people have the land even
Speaker 5: necessary for that, so I don't know. Yeah, anyway, a
Speaker 5: few I'm so passionate about this that I actually have
Speaker 5: to go now Okay, I believe it, Yes, Okay, I
Speaker 5: have to record something else that's ays, so yeah, until
Speaker 5: next time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, keep on parking.
Speaker 2: By thanks.
Speaker 6: By Okay, We're going to briefly cover lambing and then
Speaker 6: we're we can be done. So, like I said, you can.
Speaker 6: You can pick up orphan lambs, a good way to
Speaker 6: add to your flock. The thing with little baby lambs
Speaker 6: is when when they're first born, right, if the mother
Speaker 6: is either won't feed them sometimes she won't feed them,
Speaker 6: or if she dies, they're going to need what it's
Speaker 6: called colostrum. Familiar with colostrum.
Speaker 2: That name sounds more familiar. I feel like it was.
Speaker 6: I'm looking at briefly it was like an athletic performance
Speaker 6: supplement tread, but like it's it's the milk that comes
Speaker 6: in the first twenty four hours, the sexual rich we'll
Speaker 6: need Yeah, from whatever animal, right, and any man or.
Speaker 6: I would imagine.
Speaker 4: Milk produced by the memory glands of humans and other
Speaker 4: mammals immediately following delivery of the newborn.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's so better summary than I made. Thank you do.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Always, So they're gonna need about five hundred mills on
Speaker 6: the first day. I think it's about a pint. It's
Speaker 6: you want it to be warm, so you can buy
Speaker 6: frozen clossrum. You can buy powdered classroom, but you don't
Speaker 6: want to microwave it. The colossroom has some antibodies in
Speaker 6: it which help the little sheeps, like stomach I suppose
Speaker 6: get ready for the world. So it's why you don't
Speaker 6: want to microwave it. So generally they're pretty easy to
Speaker 6: bottle feed. Like if you stick your finger in, the
Speaker 6: lamb will just like start sucking on that. It's a
Speaker 6: good sign that it's you know, it's ready to bottle feed,
Speaker 6: and it's easy to bottle feed, so that you can
Speaker 6: sometimes do that's kind of a way to lure them
Speaker 6: in and then start bottle feeding them. Sometimes you have
Speaker 6: to sort of rub them a bit to get them
Speaker 6: to feed, and then they like to have their milk
Speaker 6: powder of the if you're doing powdered milk, right if
Speaker 6: with these awful lambs, but every four hours, and you're
Speaker 6: just going to gradually increase the amount you feed them.
Speaker 6: And you know they'll need things like a heat lamp
Speaker 6: right to keep them warm because they don't have that
Speaker 6: big heat sink of their mum embedding and water and
Speaker 6: you know, a bit later you can it's a bit easier, right,
Speaker 6: you can get a bucket with teats, so you just
Speaker 6: you're literally screwing the teats that go on a milk
Speaker 6: bottle onto the bucket instead so they can drink of that.
Speaker 6: But it's a lot of work getting awful lambs. Like
Speaker 6: they'll want to eat about every four hours. It doesn't
Speaker 6: matter if you're sleeping, they still want to eat it.
Speaker 6: Like I can remember doing that a lot where it's
Speaker 6: little and you can get like once the lamb gets
Speaker 6: a bit older, you're going to want to do things
Speaker 6: like you might want to castrate it, depending, you might
Speaker 6: want to dock its tail depending, you might want to
Speaker 6: vaccinate it or you do want to vaccinate it. But
Speaker 6: also like they need time to be social with other sheeps,
Speaker 6: so you can't just get one orphan lamb and raise
Speaker 6: it like some kind of sheep person that they need
Speaker 6: to play with other sheep. They need time to run around.
Speaker 6: They can be quite fun that they'll follow you around often,
Speaker 6: but the lawf and sheep like you can sort of
Speaker 6: run around and they'll follow you around, so that's kind
Speaker 6: of fun. And then you do eventually, like if you
Speaker 6: especially if you're raising a lot of orphan lambs, you're
Speaker 6: going to have ram lambs, right, and so you're either
Speaker 6: going to have to castrate those or sell them because
Speaker 6: you're going to create an issue of inbreeding within your flock.
Speaker 6: Otherwise if you just keep all the lambs right, and
Speaker 6: so that's the thing to think about. If you're going
Speaker 6: to have sheep, at some point you're either going to
Speaker 6: need to buy more or breed them. And if you're
Speaker 6: going to breed them, what are you going to do
Speaker 6: with the ram lambs so you can castrate them? They
Speaker 6: become weathers And that's generally where meat comes from that
Speaker 6: people eat. You don't want to particip that, you're just
Speaker 6: going to pass it on someone else, right, you you know,
Speaker 6: think the unfortunately this is commercial agriculture, even if you
Speaker 6: don't eat meat, like it's about killing animals, which is
Speaker 6: why I don't like to do that. Yeah, so with lambs,
Speaker 6: when you've got pregnant use you'll want to scan them
Speaker 6: see how many lambs there are, and that helps you
Speaker 6: make feeding decisions for the pregnant you. And that's sort
Speaker 6: of when you can look at like how many lambs
Speaker 6: are coming right, how much does she need to eat?
Speaker 6: And then once you've done this, you want to get
Speaker 6: your barn ready for lambing. Just put We used to
Speaker 6: use palletts, you know, palettes things come on when you
Speaker 6: buy like a lot of sheep food for instance, you
Speaker 6: know it comes on a palette with a forklift and
Speaker 6: get under. You can just use those to separate out
Speaker 6: little stalls from to lamb in, put some straw in there,
Speaker 6: and then when they lamb just because again they've been
Speaker 6: bread selectively for so long, they can sometimes strugger struggle
Speaker 6: to deliver and if you're of the means to do so,
Speaker 6: having a vet of course is lovely right, like a
Speaker 6: large animal vet, But generally people who have find me
Speaker 6: commerce you don't have the resources to do that. It's
Speaker 6: just it's just not doesn't fit with you know, the
Speaker 6: cost of doing that, so you mostly do it yourself,
Speaker 6: like I've done it a lot. You and you want
Speaker 6: to get yourself a full arm glove, like a full
Speaker 6: plastic glove that gets like a sleeve glove, and then
Speaker 6: you can you can do a lot in terms of
Speaker 6: like turning the lamb around if it's coming out the
Speaker 6: wrong way, or helping the delivery. And I'll leave you
Speaker 6: to google that on your own time. You just need
Speaker 6: to do all that one. No, it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 6: miracle of life, Daniel.
Speaker 2: Then you just beautiful, beautiful in its own ways.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's really sweet when you get the lamb out
Speaker 6: and you're like, ah, yeah, I turned it around and
Speaker 6: it's get it pops up and it does a little
Speaker 6: shake and it stands on its litlf feet. It's very sweet.
Speaker 6: It's kind of amazing compared to human babies. Human babies
Speaker 6: come out and like I've seen a few human and
Speaker 6: they're just like not particularly useful or capable in their
Speaker 6: early life. But lambs come out and they like they
Speaker 6: get up and they can run around and they can
Speaker 6: suckle and like you know, within twenty four hours they're
Speaker 6: like a functional tiny sheet. So that that's going up nice.
Speaker 6: So you do want to when they're when they're when
Speaker 6: they're born, right, you just sort of get into the
Speaker 6: little little nose and mouth area and just clear that
Speaker 6: from anything that might be blocking it, just so they
Speaker 6: can breathe. You can use a bit of straw to
Speaker 6: get into the little nostrils just just to sort of
Speaker 6: get any any mucus or whatever out, and then you
Speaker 6: cut the umbilical cord up staying and disinfect that just
Speaker 6: with somemodine. I think you can see actually that I
Speaker 6: send you one picture of a lamb last night where
Speaker 6: it's you can see where it's been disinfected and it's
Speaker 6: umbilical cord. Sometimes you just want to strip a couple
Speaker 6: of like you just want to check that you can
Speaker 6: give milk. Sometimes the teats can get plugged up in
Speaker 6: their pregnance. You just give it a little little squeeze, yes,
Speaker 6: and then then within a week and I want to
Speaker 6: do things like docking tails and castrating. Some some breedscin
Speaker 6: lamb outside, but some can't. So again, this is all
Speaker 6: stuff to consider it when you're trying to buy your sheep. Right.
Speaker 6: The last thing I've got about lambing is sometimes you
Speaker 6: use will reject the lamb you can either try and
Speaker 6: like hold the u in place so the lamb can suckle,
Speaker 6: or if she's really hurting them, then you take them
Speaker 6: away and then you have to look after them yourself,
Speaker 6: and then they become your little friends and you can
Speaker 6: give them names. Yeah, it's very sweet, fine, like I said,
Speaker 6: unfortunately sweet, yeah, yeah, right, this is a thing with
Speaker 6: commercial agriculture, right, Like it's the nature of the thing.
Speaker 6: Like if you're you have cattle, what are you going
Speaker 6: to do with the with the you know, any male
Speaker 6: offspring of any species, right, even if you just had
Speaker 6: the sheep and you want to have them for milk, cool,
Speaker 6: but they're not going to continue lactating for their whole life,
Speaker 6: so they're going to have to have lambs and then
Speaker 6: they're going to have to have lamb. You're going to
Speaker 6: have decide what you want to do with the ram lambs,
Speaker 6: and so it's a difficult thing. It's not for everyone.
Speaker 6: But yeah, sheep wonderful creatures, very friendly. You know, if
Speaker 6: you're walking past, you could you could see if someone
Speaker 6: to train them to come to the words sheep just
Speaker 6: by shouting sheep at them. And if not, you know,
Speaker 6: passes by will think you've correctly identified the species, so
Speaker 6: big dub for you either way. Yeah, the sheep is
Speaker 6: a wonderful animal, the very friendly of all the farmer animals.
Speaker 6: I think they're my favorite, and just growing up around them.
Speaker 6: If you're small, like you know, only do it if
Speaker 6: you're a very little human, probably not old enough to
Speaker 6: listen to some of the content we broadcast. If your
Speaker 6: agent want to be in like single digits, but you
Speaker 6: can ride them. You can sort of sit on them,
Speaker 6: fall on their shoulders and ride them around.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 6: Really it's not a controlled experience, like it's just going
Speaker 6: to run because it doesn't doesn't want you on its back,
Speaker 6: and you know, it might not be very nice for
Speaker 6: sheep thinking about it, But yeah, many many wonderful things
Speaker 6: you can do with sheep. They're very rewarding to have,
Speaker 6: I will say, But yeah, it's sad. It's also a
Speaker 6: difficult thing. So yeah, it did some big too. Consider
Speaker 6: if you if you do milk, then they make good cheese.
Speaker 6: I think that's the primary reason that people dairy sheep
Speaker 6: is for cheese. I don't think many people are drinking
Speaker 6: sheep milk, you know, please don't let me know if
Speaker 6: you are it's fine. I'm happy for you. No need,
Speaker 6: there's no need to share.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, sheep.
Speaker 6: Every every wool pair of socks, very wool jumper that
Speaker 6: you have, every sheep's cheese that you eat, comes from
Speaker 6: these wonderful animals. Now you know a little more about
Speaker 6: and you can get sheep soaked too. That's my last
Speaker 6: plug for this sheep. So it looks like a sheep,
Speaker 6: but in the middle of it, it's so cute. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's very good for washing your hands. And maybe one
Speaker 6: day we will have Colson Media sheep soap for you
Speaker 6: to buy.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I saw pictures of it and it was that's a
Speaker 4: past for me. But you know what, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people, so more power, more power to them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, disappointing dan anti sheep. Actually, yeah, put post pictures
Speaker 6: of your sheep and tag me and various social media
Speaker 6: someone some people already do. But yeah, that's that's about
Speaker 6: what I got on sheep and any sheep questions before
Speaker 6: we go.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I will say each new sheep
Speaker 4: fact brought up another sheep question. But I think you
Speaker 4: did a great job of explaining owning sheep, taking care
Speaker 4: of sheep, rearing, sheep lambing. I mean I've I've.
Speaker 2: Come away.
Speaker 4: With with a with a whole bale full of knowledge
Speaker 4: about sheepis me?
Speaker 2: What about you?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I've I've learned.
Speaker 2: There's the sheep flippers. I cant getting sheep flippers r KO,
Speaker 2: and your sheep to is great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we can do one way. You teach me one
Speaker 6: r KO, it's down.
Speaker 4: I will teach you by showing you as opposed to
Speaker 4: performing it. But yes, I will. I will definitely teach you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's our next live show. But yeah, I enjoy
Speaker 6: the stuff that you now know about sheep. Everyone.
Speaker 4: Yes, and this has been It could happen here find
Speaker 4: us on the internet at cool Zone Media, or it
Speaker 4: could happen here pod. Right, I never do that happen here, pod,
Speaker 4: but I know it needs to happen. Happen here pod.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it is. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, put it put into the search engine of your choice,
Speaker 6: it'll come up. Do you guys want to plug anything
Speaker 6: before we leave?
Speaker 2: Mia you go first?
Speaker 3: Oh, I got nothing, I got I got elon musk
Speaker 3: got me so I don't have social media anymore?
Speaker 2: Here you go?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I guess if you're in the US, check
Speaker 6: out Navajoate. You're a sheep every cool Navajatre a sheep association. Hey,
Speaker 6: you know it's good to support indigenous folks. The rest
Speaker 6: of us will be sheep farming. I'm Stolen Land, so in.
Speaker 4: Facts, it's all everything we're doing is all Stolen Land.
Speaker 4: You can check me out on Twitch. I'm twitch dot
Speaker 4: Tv slash DJ Underscore Danel that's.
Speaker 6: It magic, Thank you, danil Cool.
Speaker 7: All right, let's end it.
Speaker 3: It's it's a solo Meda episode if it could happen here,
Speaker 3: the podcast where things fall apart and sometimes we put
Speaker 3: them back together. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about why the rent is
Speaker 3: so high. Now, okay, There's there's a lot of sort
Speaker 3: of ways that you could in theory approach this question,
Speaker 3: and I decided that I think one of the most
Speaker 3: useful approaches to it is you take a sort of
Speaker 3: a more a more sort of historical and theoretical approach.
Speaker 3: And I think the start of any kind of sort
Speaker 3: of theoretical approach to rent is by asking what rent
Speaker 3: actually is and the answer to this and this is
Speaker 3: something that is that is relatively consistent across most of
Speaker 3: sort of classical political economy, and you see this in
Speaker 3: some sort of geoclassical economics, is that the thing that's
Speaker 3: special about rent is that rent, unlike you know, anything else,
Speaker 3: is money that you get because you own something, not
Speaker 3: because you you know, have produced anything. And this means
Speaker 3: that you know, the landlord does not produce anything of
Speaker 3: value at all. All they do is extract value from
Speaker 3: other sectors of the economy. Now, this has a wide,
Speaker 3: wide variety of sort of political and social effects. Mark
Speaker 3: saw the landowning class as an obstacle to the development
Speaker 3: of capitalism, and this is an idea. The idea of
Speaker 3: that again, landowners specifically as a class that is different
Speaker 3: from the sort of capitalist class or the working class,
Speaker 3: hinders the growth of capitalism is an idea that a
Speaker 3: lot of different people across the basically the entirety of
Speaker 3: the political spectrum have shared at various times, and this
Speaker 3: causes some very very strange alliances. Particularly in places like
Speaker 3: Latin America, you still have economies that are not entirely based,
Speaker 3: but economies that have enormous landowners who drive sort of
Speaker 3: vast portions of both the economy and of the sort
Speaker 3: of political process and in Latin America, and this is
Speaker 3: true in a lot of other places. It was not
Speaker 3: uncommon for you to get what's known as developmentalism, which
Speaker 3: is an ideology based on using essentially protectionist measures, things
Speaker 3: like terriffs, sometimes capital controls, restrictions on kinds of investment
Speaker 3: that foreign companies can do.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I mean just straight up.
Speaker 3: The nationalization of natural resources in order to develop an
Speaker 3: industrial economy. Now, developmentalism, as our most sort of alliances
Speaker 3: against the land and elite, are politically messy. It draws
Speaker 3: on a range of ideologies from you know, like pretty
Speaker 3: right wing nationalists, some very very very scary people technically developmentalists,
Speaker 3: to liberal and also centrist factions whose sort of productive
Speaker 3: and social base is in a specific kind of sort
Speaker 3: of domestic capitalist who's interested in sort of producing stuff locally,
Speaker 3: and also to people like Bolivia's Evo Morales, who is
Speaker 3: you know, broadly considered a socialist, although I think his
Speaker 3: commitment to anything like socialist politics is tenuous at best.
Speaker 3: But all of these sort of political groups can and do,
Speaker 3: and have various times work together. This is actually one
Speaker 3: of the bases of Morales as well. I guess it's
Speaker 3: not really Moralys's party anymore, but Evan Morales's MS, which
Speaker 3: was a very sort of explicit alliance between sort of
Speaker 3: left wing social movements and then more sort of moderate
Speaker 3: centrist factions who were effectively developmentalist. This is sort of
Speaker 3: a representation of a very common like kind of developmentalist politics,
Speaker 3: which is again this alliance between sort of left and
Speaker 3: capitalist factions who ally gets like large landowners on the
Speaker 3: basis that feudalism, which is which is usually the way
Speaker 3: that like the sort of the power of large landowners
Speaker 3: is conceived, is an enemy to both of them. Now,
Speaker 3: this isn't how sort of develop like states that use
Speaker 3: developmentalist strategies have to work. Germany, for example, uses a
Speaker 3: lot of developmentalist techniques to industrialize in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: But you know, the old landowning class, the old sort
Speaker 3: of like like German aristocracy, is allied with the capitalists
Speaker 3: in Germany, and the two you know, the two classes,
Speaker 3: the sort of German aristocracy and the capitalist class effectively birge.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, land owning classes are often implacably
Speaker 3: hostile to industrialization and coundreds that essentially annihilated the landowning
Speaker 3: classes by carrying out land reform tend to perform better
Speaker 3: economically than their counterparts who left a landowning class intact,
Speaker 3: which contributed to the enormous success of the economies of
Speaker 3: countries like China and Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam, who, despite
Speaker 3: their enormous sort of ideological and political differences, all carried
Speaker 3: out lander for in the twentieth century were rewarded with
Speaker 3: eventually by very very powerful in large scale industrial economies.
Speaker 3: But you know, you might be saying me, you've kind
Speaker 3: of put the cart in front of the horse here.
Speaker 3: You've talked about, you know, you've gone into some of
Speaker 3: the sort of political effects of rent first, but you
Speaker 3: haven't actually, you know, explained how rent actually works. And
Speaker 3: so that is what I'm going to do next. And
Speaker 3: to explain how rent works, I'm going to turn to
Speaker 3: an unusual source, the work of the great Venezuela and
Speaker 3: anthropologist Fernando Corneal. Corneal's a fascinating character. He studied anthropology
Speaker 3: at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, under Terrence Turner,
Speaker 3: a guy who I think ninety nine percent people have
Speaker 3: never heard of before, but is probably most famous now
Speaker 3: for being also you know, also teaching David Gray and
Speaker 3: being a sort of major influence on his work. Now,
Speaker 3: unlike David Graver. While Corneal was at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 3: he tried to get permission from the Cuban government to
Speaker 3: go do field work in Cuba, and you know, so
Speaker 3: he gets to Cuba and he's like negotiating with the
Speaker 3: government and the government tells him to fuck off. So okay,
Speaker 3: he tries to go back to the US. But Immigration
Speaker 3: and Nationalization Services, the i INS, which is basically the
Speaker 3: predecessor of like Immigration Services ICE in the Border Patrol
Speaker 3: i INS was sort of dissolved in two thousand and
Speaker 3: three when the sort of like I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what the technical term for it is, but with the
Speaker 3: consolidation information of the Department of Homeland Security, which is
Speaker 3: really truly a thing that I think we tend to
Speaker 3: think it was only present, but is actually about twenty
Speaker 3: years old, and I am older than.
Speaker 8: There was.
Speaker 3: Also, you know, this sort of outside of this episode
Speaker 3: is like an enormously fascist institution that centralized an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of sort of political power in these like terrifying
Speaker 3: valance and police bureaucracies. But you know, okay, so they're
Speaker 3: back back, back, back, back to the Fernando Coordineal story.
Speaker 3: So he guy used to go back to the US,
Speaker 3: but an asked is the predecessor for all this stuff?
Speaker 3: Like arrest him immediately, and they deport him and ban
Speaker 3: him from the US on the grounds that he he
Speaker 3: was that they suspected him of being a quote subversive agent.
Speaker 3: Now and again, I cannot emphasize this enough. The sequence
Speaker 3: of events here is that he tries to go to
Speaker 3: Cuba and the Cuban government tells him to fuck off.
Speaker 3: So he goes back to the US and the US
Speaker 3: government is like, oh, yeah, no, this guy through the
Speaker 3: Cuban government just refused to lent to do field work.
Speaker 3: This this this guy is definitely a Cuban agent. So
Speaker 3: his his entire sort of like life gets derailed by this.
Speaker 3: He wants up, I think back in Venezuela for a while.
Speaker 3: I think it takes like twenty almost like twenty years
Speaker 3: for him to be able to get back to the
Speaker 3: US to finish his PhD. But you know, when he
Speaker 3: does and sort of be in the process of this,
Speaker 3: he becomes a very very famous and well respected anthropologist.
Speaker 3: Now when I was it U Chicago, like all of
Speaker 3: the people who sort of trained Corneal that that whole
Speaker 3: generation and really like the whole sort of school of
Speaker 3: anthropology that he came from, which is a very very
Speaker 3: interesting school that you know, if if you want to
Speaker 3: like read about this kind of stuff, I read David
Speaker 3: Graeber's Towards an Anthopological Theory of Value. I might do
Speaker 3: an episode on it at some point later, but.
Speaker 2: All of that stuff is gone.
Speaker 3: But but I ran into a professor who knew him
Speaker 3: back in the day, and he told us that Corneil
Speaker 3: was you know, on the one hand, very is back
Speaker 3: to the academic like very sort of like upstanding, like
Speaker 3: member of the academic communitee also incredibly popular, as like
Speaker 3: a partier who just get absolutely wasted and start dancing
Speaker 3: on tables. This guy absolutely rips, you know, and I
Speaker 3: think a very few people outside of anthropology you've ever
Speaker 3: heard of him. But in anthropology O'Neil is important enough
Speaker 3: to like, if you write about the state, you at
Speaker 3: least have to like mention him. And you know, that
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily mean that like most of the people who
Speaker 3: say the words that the Magical State, which is the
Speaker 3: name of his sort of famous book. Actually have read it,
Speaker 3: but I did read this book. I've read this book
Speaker 3: multiple times and it's really really interesting.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The Magical State, Nature, Money, and Majority in Venezuela is
Speaker 3: probably most famous as a history of the Venezuelan state,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean that it's sort of exclusively about
Speaker 3: that history, and in fact, you know it, it really
Speaker 3: can't be. In order to think about the Venezuelan state,
Speaker 3: you have to think about oil. But you also can't
Speaker 3: think about oil in the way that most histories of
Speaker 3: oil think about it, which is a story about sort
Speaker 3: of like high geopolitics.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: If you look at history of oil, right, it's about
Speaker 3: like hygeo politics and like prospecting and like trekking oil
Speaker 3: prices over time, and you know, the sort of most
Speaker 3: famous book of this genre is Daniel Jurgen's The Prize,
Speaker 3: which is a fine book, but it shares in this
Speaker 3: sort of tendency to you know, kind of you know,
Speaker 3: unless they're writing about like a die going prospecting, right,
Speaker 3: there's this tendency to sort of ignore the sort of
Speaker 3: material characteristics of oil and the sort of political effects
Speaker 3: of the extraction process, and a lot of other aspects
Speaker 3: of oil that are very very important. And what Corineal
Speaker 3: realizes is that oil is intricately tied to sort of
Speaker 3: the political conception of nature, to systems of land ownership,
Speaker 3: and also to Venezuela and state craft. Now this may
Speaker 3: seem a bit far afield, but in order to understand oil,
Speaker 3: you have to think about rent and rent extraction. And
Speaker 3: that's what Coroneal does in ways that are both sort
Speaker 3: of profoundly interested and I think, in a lot of
Speaker 3: ways profoundly ahead of his time. So Corneal, like us,
Speaker 3: ask the question what actually is rent now? For for
Speaker 3: you know, Corneal goes through rent in a lot, you know,
Speaker 3: and it like goes goes through what you could, I
Speaker 3: guess called economic history of concessions of rent, right starting
Speaker 3: with the classical economists. Uh, we're not that interested in
Speaker 3: the classical economists, because quite frankly, if you're if I
Speaker 3: don't know if you're running into a neo Ricardian analysis
Speaker 3: of what rent is like, I don't know, you're you're
Speaker 3: already a specialist, like stuff is stuff, Stuff is happening
Speaker 3: for you, thus quite interesting, quite odd but we're we're
Speaker 3: mostly going to ignore them because the original classical economists'
Speaker 3: work has it's it's largely not the way people think
Speaker 3: about this now, and to the extent that people sort
Speaker 3: of claim to be derivatives of like these people, like
Speaker 3: people claiming age of Adam Smith, like e that's kind
Speaker 3: of sketchy. Is that we're going to turn to Corneals
Speaker 3: analysis of the way that neoclassical economics thinks about rents now.
Speaker 3: Corneal someone who has spent a lot of time in
Speaker 3: the sort of literature of like oil pricing and sort
Speaker 3: of theories the sort of price formation and the state
Speaker 3: of the market or the effect of political actors on it,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and he argues that
Speaker 3: there's basically two ways of thinking about rent. In terms
Speaker 3: of a commodity like oil. There is a macroeconomics view
Speaker 3: in which the rent someone who owns oil extracts when
Speaker 3: people have to buy it from them, you know, Okay,
Speaker 3: So like like if if you're a landowner, right, you
Speaker 3: get rent because you own the thing, and then people
Speaker 3: have to like take it, like people need it. You
Speaker 3: have it, so you get to extract rent from it
Speaker 3: just by virtue sort of having it in the In
Speaker 3: the microeconomics view, when someone like pays the rent, right,
Speaker 3: what that is is they're paying for what's called natural
Speaker 3: capital or capital that's you know, provided by nature that
Speaker 3: someone now owns through like the miracle of private property.
Speaker 3: And so for these people, rent isn't something that's extracted
Speaker 3: at all, right, It's just someone getting paid for their capital.
Speaker 3: Because the way that they think about, you know, about
Speaker 3: something like oil, is that they think oil is just
Speaker 3: sort of natural capital. Now, okay, it's like this is
Speaker 3: this is in some sense, you know, I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: what like who cares about this? This is kind of like
Speaker 3: this this seems very obvious. But there's also a macroeconomics
Speaker 3: perspective which is very different. And the macroeconomics perspective holds that,
Speaker 3: you know, rent isn't a payment for capital at all.
Speaker 3: It's something paid to landowners by capitalists. And the rent
Speaker 3: that these landowners get is basically the difference between you know,
Speaker 3: what it costs you to get the oil out of
Speaker 3: that you use sort of the landowner to get the
Speaker 3: oil out of the ground, and what it costs the
Speaker 3: person who has the highest price of production to get
Speaker 3: the oil out of the ground. Now, okay, for reasons
Speaker 3: that are very complicated that I can't get into here. Basically,
Speaker 3: the person who is like the worst at getting oil
Speaker 3: out of the ground is the person who sets what
Speaker 3: the price of oil is. So you know, the sort
Speaker 3: of like highest possible extraction price tends to be the price.
Speaker 3: And then you know the micro the sort of macroeconomic
Speaker 3: analysis of what rent is, right is that it's a
Speaker 3: thing that capitalists pay to landowners who own natural resources,
Speaker 3: and the amount of money they get is based on
Speaker 3: how much cheaper it is for like that you know,
Speaker 3: that landlord to get their oil out of the ground
Speaker 3: than it is for like the landlord who's like the
Speaker 3: worst at this. And this is a real question, right.
Speaker 3: The question is is someone who's getting rent paid to them,
Speaker 3: is that rent payment for capital that they own or
Speaker 3: is it money from capitalists that capitalists have to pay
Speaker 3: to a non capitalist class. And cornials answer is like, well,
Speaker 3: obviously rent is distracted from surplus value because out because
Speaker 3: landouners don't produce value. But there's two different sort of
Speaker 3: places that they can get this value from. And this
Speaker 3: is where we have to get into something that's kind
Speaker 3: of weird, and that is the two different kinds of rents.
Speaker 3: But okay, before we get into the two kinds of
Speaker 3: different rents, do you know what else there's two different
Speaker 3: kinds of Yeah, that's right. It is the products and
Speaker 3: services that support this show.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 3: I hope you have enjoyed both of the different kinds
Speaker 3: of products and services that support the show. And okay,
Speaker 3: I promise you two kinds of rents, and I'm now
Speaker 3: going to give you two kinds of rent. So the
Speaker 3: two kinds of rent, there is something called differential rent,
Speaker 3: and differential rent is kind of close to the sort
Speaker 3: of macroctive we talked about earlier. So differential rent is
Speaker 3: rent that's set by the price of production on the
Speaker 3: market right now, as we sort of mentioned, prices tend
Speaker 3: towards the highest price of production e's scept by the
Speaker 3: people who are worse to producing it. And differential rent
Speaker 3: is the rent that the rest of the market gets
Speaker 3: by costing it by you know, by it costing less
Speaker 3: for them to extract oil than it does, you know
Speaker 3: for someone who's like the worst at extracting oil. Corneil
Speaker 3: explains these in terms of it. For a long time,
Speaker 3: the US was sort of the price leader of oil,
Speaker 3: and it was the price leader of oil because the
Speaker 3: American like property right system is so absolutely bonkers that
Speaker 3: it makes it.
Speaker 1: Really really hard.
Speaker 3: You have to like you have to like individually negotiate
Speaker 3: with like every person who owns a cow pasture a
Speaker 3: Nebraska in order to sort of like extract oil from them.
Speaker 3: And this makes the production process like very expensive. And
Speaker 3: so everyone else in the world is getting this differential
Speaker 3: rent because they have like a less completely like just
Speaker 3: wild system of.
Speaker 2: Property.
Speaker 3: So the product of this that everyone else is getting
Speaker 3: differential rent because it's way cheaper for them to produce
Speaker 3: oil than it is for the US to produce oil.
Speaker 3: So differential rent is a product of your efficiency, right,
Speaker 3: It's how it's an amount of money that's based on
Speaker 3: sort of the price of oil, and it's based on
Speaker 3: how much better you know, because you're still selling the
Speaker 3: oil at that like the same price, right, But the
Speaker 3: amount that you get, you know, the amount of rent
Speaker 3: that you get is the difference between how much it
Speaker 3: costs you to get this oil out of the grant
Speaker 3: and how much it costs like some sort of American
Speaker 3: dip shit. You have to spend all this time negotiating
Speaker 3: with like thirty thousand individual landowners in the US to
Speaker 3: do it. So that that's differential rents. But there's also
Speaker 3: something called absolute rent. Now, absolute rent is very, very
Speaker 3: very different from from differential rent because absolute rent is
Speaker 3: not really determined by sort of production prices or like
Speaker 3: the market or supply and demand at all. Absolute rent
Speaker 3: is determined by the social power of the landowner. And
Speaker 3: this has really interesting effects, right, because again, absolute rent
Speaker 3: isn't based on the production process and is instead based
Speaker 3: on you know, the social it's it's a social product
Speaker 3: of power. And this, you know, this means that landlords
Speaker 3: and rent extractors can do something that capitalists aren't supposed
Speaker 3: to be able to do. They can get profits that
Speaker 3: are larger than the general rate of profit, and they
Speaker 3: could do it just by virtue of being powerful and
Speaker 3: owning land. And this has a bunch of very very
Speaker 3: weird knock on effects.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen landlords talk about rent, right, you've
Speaker 3: seen the consequences of this. These people genuinely believe that
Speaker 3: they have a sort of moral right to returns with
Speaker 3: no risk all of the time, and that all of
Speaker 3: society should be structured in such a way as to
Speaker 3: guarantee that they have this free income that they do
Speaker 3: fucking nothing to do other than own buildings, and it
Speaker 3: should be guaranteed, you know, it should be structured to
Speaker 3: guarantee this by forcing tenants to pay rent no literally,
Speaker 3: no matter what is happening, you know, like regardless of shit,
Speaker 3: like I don't know, a pandemic.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The other sort of important difference is that is the
Speaker 3: absolute rent does not obey the laws of supply and demand.
Speaker 3: It is a product of social power, you know, it's
Speaker 3: the power of landownership itself. And it's also sort of
Speaker 3: the power you know that the social power. It's not
Speaker 3: just purely the product of light ownership. It's also a
Speaker 3: product of the organization of the landowning class and the
Speaker 3: extent to which they're backed by the state and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of militaries as polices. And this causes economists who
Speaker 3: are attempting to use supply and demand to explain rent
Speaker 3: to get very very important events very wrong. One of
Speaker 3: the things that Corneal points out is that Maurice Adelman,
Speaker 3: who is a very very famous oil economist predicts in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two that the price of oil is going
Speaker 3: to collapse based on over supply and competition. Instead, the
Speaker 3: price of oil between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: four increases by four hundred percents because oil produces banded
Speaker 3: together to exercise their power, and this organization, known as
Speaker 3: OPEK becomes a genuine world power. Here's how Corineil puts it.
Speaker 3: The sharp increase of nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: four in oil prices did not result from a world
Speaker 3: shortage of oil. It was rather the outcome of a
Speaker 3: long historical process by which OPEC nations, acting as landowners,
Speaker 3: developed the means to extract a rent on the basis
Speaker 3: of their ownership of the oil fields, an absolute rent
Speaker 3: in addition to the differential rents they collected in the past.
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy three, a seat of converging political and
Speaker 3: economic conditions helped establish their collective ability to restrict the
Speaker 3: world's supply of oil. With this power, OPEK felt entitled
Speaker 3: to set market prices of oil, thus freeing the level
Speaker 3: of rent from the previous constraint of the market price
Speaker 3: now rent itself absolute and differential would come to determine
Speaker 3: the market price of oil. Now you may be asking yourself, Bia,
Speaker 3: this is all well and good for describing the price,
Speaker 3: for describing how the price of oil changes, but what
Speaker 3: does this have to do with me? And the answer
Speaker 3: is that while Corneal is specifically focused on resource rants
Speaker 3: for obvious reasons, he is doing a study of the
Speaker 3: state of Venezuela, you can apply his analysis to the
Speaker 3: kind of rent that we all pay.
Speaker 5: If you follow.
Speaker 3: Corneal's conclusions about absolute rent through to the American rental market,
Speaker 3: it produces startlingly different conclusions about the source and sort
Speaker 3: of nature of the so called housing crisis that are
Speaker 3: traditionally presented. If rent levels are a product of the
Speaker 3: social power of the landlord class, the behavior that's otherwise inexplicable,
Speaker 3: like landlords sitting on empty properties instead of renting the
Speaker 3: amount at lower rates, suddenly become clear. Armed with the
Speaker 3: backing of the state's secure at social power by carrying
Speaker 3: out evictions, and with the state's implicit backing to carry
Speaker 3: out technically illegal evictions, landlords can extract both differential and
Speaker 3: absolute rent, allowing them to tell the market to take
Speaker 3: a hike and setting ever increasing rents that renters have
Speaker 3: no choice but to pay or be swept aside in
Speaker 3: brutal anti homeless rays. This has massive consequences on any
Speaker 3: potential strategy to reduce rent. Opek, remember, was able to
Speaker 3: use its social power to increase the price of oil
Speaker 3: by four hundred percent even in a period where the
Speaker 3: actual supply of oil was enormous, by pure virtue of
Speaker 3: organization and the power of their landownership. While American landlords
Speaker 3: are certainly weaker unless organized than OPEK, their social power
Speaker 3: is still such that increasing supply is not guaranteed to
Speaker 3: drive down prices, because in a situation governed by the
Speaker 3: extraction of absolute rent, rent is not determined by prices.
Speaker 3: Prices are determined by rent. On the other hand, this
Speaker 3: means that you can reduce rent by breaking the social
Speaker 3: power of the landlord, and indeed, even in very hot
Speaker 3: housing markets like Toronto and Los Angeles, this strategy canon
Speaker 3: has worked. Tenants unions which deploy the power of collective
Speaker 3: bargaining and the social solidarity of renters to combat the
Speaker 3: power of landlords, have succeeded in reducing rents, and can
Speaker 3: and will continue to do so. But these efforts are
Speaker 3: only the beginning of a process that finally answers the
Speaker 3: question why are rents so high. If rents are high
Speaker 3: because of the social power of landlords, the way to
Speaker 3: bring rents down is to crush the batters completely and
Speaker 3: appropriate them, to seize every last building and plot of
Speaker 3: land from every landlord in the country and drive them
Speaker 3: as a class from the political mainstream into the pages
Speaker 3: of history. And then, and this is crucial, not to
Speaker 3: replace them with another landowning class, or, as the Leninists
Speaker 3: proposed that it actually did, replace them with the state.
Speaker 3: Only by destroying the category of landlord, not by regulating
Speaker 3: it or nationalizing it. Can we finally escape the long
Speaker 3: nightmare of rents and enter a world where people's ability
Speaker 3: to live is determined not by the sort of capricious
Speaker 3: and arbitrary will of a small class of landowners put
Speaker 3: on their human need for housing. This has been it
Speaker 3: could happen here. You can find us in the usual places,
Speaker 3: and yes, go into the world and make the world
Speaker 3: without rented reality.
Speaker 7: And everyone.
Speaker 6: It's me James today, and I'm talking to Derm Cosgrove
Speaker 6: about Wagner and Wagner, they the Russian Mercenary Group and
Speaker 6: their actions in Africa. This is something that I've kind
Speaker 6: of tried to pitch for several years with not much
Speaker 6: success in the United States media, and I'm sure lots
Speaker 6: of other people have two by no means unique in that.
Speaker 6: And suddenly, obviously everyone in the corporate media has become
Speaker 6: something of an expert in their action when things started
Speaker 6: happening in Ukraine. And so what we wanted to do
Speaker 6: here was kind of paint a picture of how they
Speaker 6: have a long record of human rights abuse, and Dermot's
Speaker 6: more expert in Africa, so that's what we're talking about,
Speaker 6: but also in Syria, of course, and I just wanted
Speaker 6: to give some more information. So we recorded this on
Speaker 6: last Friday. Today it's Tuesday, the first of August, and
Speaker 6: we talked a little bit about the Coup Nijier, which
Speaker 6: has continued and since we recorded, Getty Pregausian, who of
Speaker 6: course is the head of Wagner, the founder of Wagner
Speaker 6: that Oligarch is in charge of that private military contracting group,
Speaker 6: made a statements sort of not exactly saying like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: we did this coup, but more like saying oh cool,
Speaker 6: I see you've had a coup. What you could use
Speaker 6: is a group of mercenary Russians who are prepared to
Speaker 6: do incredible and horrific violence on your behalf and let
Speaker 6: us know. We'll roll up. Also, since then Ekowas, which
Speaker 6: is the Economic Community of West African State, it's a
Speaker 6: West African block there threatened intervention in Nize if they
Speaker 6: don't sort of return to a democratic process. And then
Speaker 6: Mali earned Bookina Faso to other countries that are run
Speaker 6: by military government's military more or less hunters have threatened
Speaker 6: have said they'll stand with Niche, stand with the Niza coup.
Speaker 6: So it threatens to destabilize again the whole region. Right,
Speaker 6: You'll see lots of misinformation about this on Twitter. I've
Speaker 6: seen a ton of stuff from like oh just tanky
Speaker 6: accounts who don't fully have a grasp on what's happening
Speaker 6: in this part of the world. And I think it's
Speaker 6: quite dismissive to just use Africa to further your whatever
Speaker 6: your political agenda is, rather than treating this as a
Speaker 6: tragedy that will impact people living in these countries. Rights
Speaker 6: between Niche, where people are already often struggling to get by,
Speaker 6: really struggling to make ends meat like sanctions on this
Speaker 6: country will hurt them. Tanctions on this country will hurt
Speaker 6: the poorest people in this country. A military dictatorship rarely
Speaker 6: delivers a better quality of life for people, and I
Speaker 6: would like to see people focusing on that and not
Speaker 6: on some stupid argument about decononization, like it's that's not
Speaker 6: what's happening here. What's happening is the powerful people have
Speaker 6: wanted more power, and they've taken that at the expense
Speaker 6: of the quality of life and often the lives of
Speaker 6: other people. Obviously, with Mali and Bikina Faso saying that
Speaker 6: they would like support Nizia, those are both governments that
Speaker 6: struggle to support themselves and defend their own people and
Speaker 6: capitals from Islamist insurgencies and other like our movement. So
Speaker 6: you know, not a hugely I guess serious threat, but
Speaker 6: still very destabilizing and again like this will have negative
Speaker 6: impacts for everyone living there, which is the thing I'd
Speaker 6: like to focus on. So we're going to start here
Speaker 6: with introducing himself and then we'll go from there.
Speaker 8: My name is Jermat Koskov. I'm a French front Legion veteran.
Speaker 8: I was six years French Foreign Legion and since nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety six I've worked across Africa and the Middle East
Speaker 8: and a little bit of South Asia as a security
Speaker 8: consultant and field security advisor, mainly with oil and gas
Speaker 8: companies infrastructure companies, but also some work with the media. Nice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I've been a journalist covering that field for
Speaker 6: not quite long. But one of the things that I
Speaker 6: remember seeing in a pre pandemic is this rise of
Speaker 6: this Russian mercenary group, bargainer group in Africa. It was
Speaker 6: just not an area of interest in any US publication. Generally,
Speaker 6: stories in Africa are very hard to sell. But I
Speaker 6: know that you are obviously on the ground looking at this,
Speaker 6: So can you maybe just start with when you sort
Speaker 6: of first became aware of them and what you were seeing?
Speaker 8: Well, I first became aware of them with their activities
Speaker 8: and the cent African Republic when the when the the
Speaker 8: Mayhem broke up there a few years ago and the
Speaker 8: EU started sending in troops, There's quite a lot of
Speaker 8: heavy fighting. Then it's it stabilized a little bit, but
Speaker 8: there was still quite a lot of fighting going on.
Speaker 8: Next thing, these Russians shot up and it was just
Speaker 8: a little bit kind of Yeah, I'd heard about them
Speaker 8: in operating in Syria, but you know, next thing, they're in,
Speaker 8: of all places, the Central African Republic, which you know
Speaker 8: is a it's kind of is you know a little
Speaker 8: bit of a backwater in the middle of Africa. It's
Speaker 8: it's squashed in between Chad, Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, places
Speaker 8: like that, and it's historically it's it's been there's always
Speaker 8: been a French French presence there, but it's always been
Speaker 8: a place where there's been quite a bit of conflict
Speaker 8: around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, not like a consolidated like nation state really yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 6: a lot of a lot of different people and it
Speaker 6: is not an identity that like fixed with with identities
Speaker 6: on the ground and necessarily so yeah, what was their
Speaker 6: role there? What were they they doing as like a
Speaker 6: mercenary or private military contracting group.
Speaker 8: Well, they they were really operating a bit in the shadows.
Speaker 8: They were they had come in Apparently they were supposedly
Speaker 8: there to train the governments, the Republican Guard, of the
Speaker 8: of the presidential Guard, but they were also there was
Speaker 8: also words starting to leak out where they were involved
Speaker 8: in the diaming mines and they you know, they were
Speaker 8: they were moving all over the country. They were heavily
Speaker 8: involved in militias. Then words started coming out about, you know,
Speaker 8: there was murders on checkpoints that were joint checkpoints between
Speaker 8: government militias and Wagner Group operatives. And next thing, this
Speaker 8: story broke where three journalists, three Russian journalists disappeared. They'd
Speaker 8: been following the activities of Wagner in Central Africa, and
Speaker 8: I think the last thing that we've seen of them
Speaker 8: was that they were stopped at a checkpoint and then gone.
Speaker 8: There was just they disappeared in the bush, and that
Speaker 8: was I suppose that was kind of the first peak
Speaker 8: that these are a nasty bunch of operators. And there
Speaker 8: had been a company in Russia years ago who were
Speaker 8: the Alpha Group, and they had basically they were basically
Speaker 8: the Afghan veterans. Well they operated kind of in the
Speaker 8: shady Ali Guard section of Royal security in Russia itself.
Speaker 8: But Wagner Group were a completely different animal. You could
Speaker 8: tell from the right from the start these were they
Speaker 8: had a different model.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very much so, and like a different model to
Speaker 6: even like there are various I guess, like national perspectives
Speaker 6: to private military contracting. Like there was a time when you,
Speaker 6: like you could sit down in a hotel, bar and
Speaker 6: lots of places in Africa and be assured that someone
Speaker 6: with a South African accent or someone who would claim
Speaker 6: to be from Rhodesia would like come and talk to
Speaker 6: you and that was their industry and they would say
Speaker 6: some racist shit. It's hard for me to not like
Speaker 6: hear a South African accent and be like, oh, fucking
Speaker 6: I don't want to have anything to do with this.
Speaker 6: But obviously that doesn't define everyone from South Africa by
Speaker 6: any means. But yeah, like there was that, there was
Speaker 6: there were a lot of Colombian people in that industry
Speaker 6: as sort of the civil warring Columbia became. But these
Speaker 6: guys are kind of different, right, Like they seem to
Speaker 6: be operating more like on behalf of governments or people
Speaker 6: who would be in government, who would like to be
Speaker 6: in government. Yeah and m yeah, explain how they do
Speaker 6: shit just differently.
Speaker 8: Well, they seem to have taken the well you'll be
Speaker 8: familiar with executive outcomes the South African Mercenary Organization and
Speaker 8: executive oucomes business model was when they operated, they went
Speaker 8: to the client and said, right, okay, we'll sort out
Speaker 8: your problem, but we want a percentage. It wasn't a
Speaker 8: paycheck or a contract kind of a grade dollar sum
Speaker 8: for for a contract. It was they wanted a percentage
Speaker 8: so they would clear like executive ocomes cleared out some
Speaker 8: of the diamond fields in and Gola, and I think
Speaker 8: they're going rate with something like fifteen percent. Wagner Groups
Speaker 8: seemed to have done that, taken that model, but at
Speaker 8: the same time they've rolled in a little bit of
Speaker 8: the Blackwater type idea in Iraq where they were operating
Speaker 8: us an arm of Blackwater, operating us an RMS government.
Speaker 8: They were Paul Bremner's personal guard and or Wagner seemed
Speaker 8: to have of combined the two along with making Hollywood movies,
Speaker 8: because they've made they've made a couple of movies, one
Speaker 8: about Central Africa and there you know, these Rambo esque
Speaker 8: kind of movies, and it's it's just it's like, what
Speaker 8: the hell is going on here?
Speaker 6: It's very strange. It's like, I think we maybe can't
Speaker 6: divorce it from that kind of like global war on
Speaker 6: terror for one of a better phrase like era kind
Speaker 6: of cult that developed around the US Special Forces and
Speaker 6: they're like, it's why you can buy Navy seal soap right,
Speaker 6: and like they've they tried to do a similar thing
Speaker 6: but with a private military contractor do you know, like
Speaker 6: the what's the composition of these most like PMCs from
Speaker 6: I guess Western nations will be ex military people. Is
Speaker 6: that the case with Wagner or where are they getting
Speaker 6: people from?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's from what I've seen there. The people
Speaker 8: that brought in is that you've got a core group
Speaker 8: of Russians who come from the more elite units. Now
Speaker 8: they've been they've been really assigned to be the money
Speaker 8: making contracts in in Africa, so you know, they they've
Speaker 8: operated alongside Malian truce and the whole idea there is
Speaker 8: that if they do take control of zones in the
Speaker 8: Marian government dissing them a percentage of mineral, mineral section
Speaker 8: and whatever in the in the region, they've there's also
Speaker 8: been talk of there are blatant intimidation and protection rackets
Speaker 8: of other Western you know, Western companies working in the Sahel,
Speaker 8: so they'll rock up and kind of we'll look after you.
Speaker 8: Isis or I kinda won't get you if you pay
Speaker 8: us a fee, and then if the company goes well,
Speaker 8: you know that's crazy, then you know, suddenly attacks started happening.
Speaker 8: But they seem to be a core in in Africa
Speaker 8: police and in Libya where they were heavily involved, there
Speaker 8: was a core group of Russians who were there, and
Speaker 8: then surrounding them there was kind of lesser specialized, lesser
Speaker 8: specialized troops, lesser elite troops. And then in Libya, especially
Speaker 8: during the during the fighting there when they fought for
Speaker 8: half darkly for a half there, you had you know,
Speaker 8: they brought in Syrians, they were known to have got
Speaker 8: in a few other different nationalities of basical eyes. They
Speaker 8: gathered in other countries and offered jobs. Yeah, so you
Speaker 8: had I think there was about fifteen fifteen hundred two
Speaker 8: thousand Syrians at one point. Because there's these huge numbers
Speaker 8: of Wagner kind of been bandied about on maps and
Speaker 8: stuff like that on the Internet, and it's smoking mirrors.
Speaker 8: Actual proper Wagner personnel are wouldn't be massive numbers what
Speaker 8: they've got. You know, they're bringing these almost auxiliaries from
Speaker 8: the like to Syria or other places that they've been.
Speaker 6: In, right, Yeah, and they Another thing I guess there
Speaker 6: was unique about them was like with that they were
Speaker 6: obsessed with posting on telegram like I've never seen just
Speaker 6: incredibly online to include like evidence of their war crimes, right,
Speaker 6: which which I guess sometimes not at war at all,
Speaker 6: human rights abuses would probably be more accurate. Yeah, we
Speaker 6: should probably talk about some of those, just so people
Speaker 6: can get a sense of I think what I'd like
Speaker 6: people to take from this, just to like be explicit
Speaker 6: about it, I suppose, is that, like all this stuff
Speaker 6: was happening in Africa, there was no lack of evidence
Speaker 6: or people trying to say and it was not paid
Speaker 6: attention to by the government or media really, especially in
Speaker 6: the US, but also elsewhere. And then every already suddenly
Speaker 6: got sad when it happened in Ukraine because it was
Speaker 6: happening to people who were more valued. And I think
Speaker 6: we can we'll keep sucking up like that if we
Speaker 6: keep ignoring.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 8: shocked in a way that there hasn't been heavier sanctions
Speaker 8: put on because there's been there's been two UN investigations
Speaker 8: to their activities.
Speaker 11: There was the they murders, they were complicit in the
Speaker 11: murder or actively participated in the murder of over three
Speaker 11: hundred millions in a village only a few months ago.
Speaker 8: There's been a UN investigation. They've been found to have
Speaker 8: been there been participants in it, and there's nothing And
Speaker 8: you know, you're not seeing any UN sanctions, You're not
Speaker 8: you know, you're not seeing anything going on. The world
Speaker 8: seems to be turning a blind eye to it. In Libya.
Speaker 8: I mean, the BBC had had a report, a special
Speaker 8: report where they'd actually found the iPad of one of
Speaker 8: the Wagner operators with tons and tons and tons of
Speaker 8: evidence as to what they were doing, numerous human rights abuses,
Speaker 8: and again it's just like, yeah, that's fine, we won't
Speaker 8: really worry about it. Ops Ukraine.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's it seems shocking to people. I think
Speaker 6: if you're just a consumer of you know, the New
Speaker 6: York Times or something, Wow, where did these guys come from?
Speaker 6: They're terrible, But they've been there for years, decade maybe,
Speaker 6: and because our news is very focused on certain countries
Speaker 6: and certain things, it came as a shock to people.
Speaker 6: And maybe it just explained like obviously the human rights
Speaker 6: abuses began in Syria. I don't think I need to detail.
Speaker 6: There are videos that people can find on their own
Speaker 6: time if they want to, some brutal executions and such.
Speaker 6: But yeah, could you like at least sort of enumerate
Speaker 6: some instances where where they've done that in Africa? I
Speaker 6: can think of three or four countries at the top
Speaker 6: of my head.
Speaker 8: Well, there's there's Valley as the instant one. There's the
Speaker 8: big one, which I think was three hundreds of Itdians
Speaker 8: were murdered. They basically locked up in a village I
Speaker 8: think was it's Moon or Mooney Money as the name
Speaker 8: of the village in Mali. They rocked up with the
Speaker 8: with Malian troops and proceeded to hunt for terrorists and
Speaker 8: murdered three hundred people, including beheadings and whatnot. And that
Speaker 8: was there was absolutely, one hundred percent guaranteed there was
Speaker 8: Wagner operators did murder and behead local villagers six weeks ago.
Speaker 8: Eight weeks ago there was there was an attack against
Speaker 8: a convoy which included Wagner personnel, and their response was
Speaker 8: to rock into a village and execute ten people. So
Speaker 8: you know, that's two cases that again, unless you're looking
Speaker 8: unless you're kind of aware of the certain sources that
Speaker 8: are available and looking at local, local journalists who are
Speaker 8: in these in these countries, it's not popping up anywhere.
Speaker 8: It's just not coming to life. You know, there's Central
Speaker 8: Africa there there's been rapes, murders, there's been mass rapes,
Speaker 8: there's you know, there's been executions, torture. You know, it's
Speaker 8: just off the charts. In Mali there is actually unknown
Speaker 8: and it's becoming famous in Mali. There is a torture
Speaker 8: house inside one of their bases in Mali and it's
Speaker 8: becoming it's widely known as there. You know, it's the
Speaker 8: multinational organizations, the UN, the EU all know about its presence,
Speaker 8: they all have the evidence, and yet there's nothing. There's
Speaker 8: still nothing being done.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think it's easy. I think that happened.
Speaker 6: If you remember when they were riots in France, was
Speaker 6: that people would be like, oh, well, like you know,
Speaker 6: France is in all these countries in Africa, which obviously
Speaker 6: comes from a legacy of colonialism, which was violent and terrible,
Speaker 6: but yeah, there are other forces. Like I remember someone
Speaker 6: positing that like Mali had been liberated from French control
Speaker 6: uh France left, but like these guys came like it
Speaker 6: wasn't as if you know, there was say, you know,
Speaker 6: a democratic transition of power or you know, the desirable outcome.
Speaker 8: And I think, yeah, well, I mean, I mean, I
Speaker 8: mean even this morning, the with the with the coup
Speaker 8: in Niger, you know, there was a twileet put up
Speaker 8: by one of the Russian Twitter accounts claiming that the
Speaker 8: coup had been orchestrated and managed by by Wagner who
Speaker 8: were liberating these from the from the coloniness. It's just like, yeah,
Speaker 8: they actually believe there are you just do they actually
Speaker 8: believe their own stuff? It's just amazing.
Speaker 6: Well it's very well I don't know if they believe it,
Speaker 6: but it seems to be very well targeted to get
Speaker 6: people to believe it online. Right, Like there's this whole
Speaker 6: sort of hammer and sickle in biocommunity that thinks that
Speaker 6: what Russia is doing in Ukraine is denazifying. And when
Speaker 6: you couple with a lack of media coverage of Africa
Speaker 6: and a lack of knowledge of what's happened there, it's
Speaker 6: very understandable that people sort of don't quite grasp it.
Speaker 6: And I think that's that's that's an education thing, an
Speaker 6: a media thing. Yeah, but it's I think I think
Speaker 6: people may not be aware of. Is the one thing
Speaker 6: that has been reported a lot is the heavy, heavy
Speaker 6: losses have taken in Ukraine, right often in like they
Speaker 6: called the almost piano battalions that they have like that,
Speaker 6: they'll have convicts and things like that, Right, can you explain,
Speaker 6: Like I think this might lead people to believe that
Speaker 6: they're not capable of doing what they've done in Africa
Speaker 6: for a long time, But that's that's not correct, right,
Speaker 6: They're still sending I guess operators to Africa. They're still
Speaker 6: doing their terrible shit in Africa.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's been even recently, there was a lot of
Speaker 8: flights being being picked up moving in and out of
Speaker 8: Africa which were Wagner associated aircraft. And at first it
Speaker 8: was you know, this happened around the time that they
Speaker 8: made them move towards back into Russia, towards towards Putin,
Speaker 8: and there was a lot of questions as to a
Speaker 8: pullout of personnel to support their what's going on in Russia,
Speaker 8: And then it stopped and the flights started coming back in.
Speaker 8: So it looks like there's been a ramp up again
Speaker 8: in a lot of African countries, so they it looks
Speaker 8: like they're upping the personnel now. Whether it's they've they've
Speaker 8: cut some kind of deal where they're now just going
Speaker 8: to be a money maker, I'm not quite sure, but
Speaker 8: you know that'll remained to be seeing if they have
Speaker 8: orchestra Nicher, which is possible, then it's clearly kind of
Speaker 8: a ramp up of operations. They're very, very skilled in
Speaker 8: whipping up local population because they whipped up anti French
Speaker 8: assettlements in both Mali and in Brookino Fasso. And even
Speaker 8: though and you're the French did the French did arm
Speaker 8: kind of drone strikes which you know, did kill civilians
Speaker 8: and stuff, but they they the massive reaction to two
Speaker 8: reasons stunts was definitely by Wagner at the time.
Speaker 6: It is a very lucrative almost informal empire for Russia, right,
Speaker 6: It's a very lucrative way for them to continue this
Speaker 6: process of extractive colonialism and violent subjugation of African people,
Speaker 6: and often in ways that are not that distinct from
Speaker 6: the colonialism that we saw you one hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: two hundred years ago and with real like you've detailed
Speaker 6: brutal human rights abuses and all extends, all to extract
Speaker 6: wealth and resources from Africa get in a very similar
Speaker 6: way to what we've seen before, but in a less
Speaker 6: formal way, I guess than you know with French and
Speaker 6: British colonialism.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is, it's it's it's very much a corporate
Speaker 8: im period as opposed to a nationalistic imperialism in a way.
Speaker 8: And it's you know, the money is flowing into the
Speaker 8: pockets of the you know, the oligarchs and stuff in Russia.
Speaker 8: I mean they there was a I was in a
Speaker 8: bit of a discussion this morning about about Niegire and
Speaker 8: someone had a comment about there being oh, there's not
Speaker 8: the if you look at them, the Sahel map and
Speaker 8: the mineral wealth that there's there's more attractive kind of
Speaker 8: mineral kind of extraction further south into the Congo. But
Speaker 8: the thing is in and I've worked in Mauritania. You know,
Speaker 8: you had Mauritania, which is three times the size of
Speaker 8: France with a population of four million, and yet only
Speaker 8: one percent of the country has actually been surroted for
Speaker 8: its mineral wealth, and it already has massive gold, iron
Speaker 8: and iron ore deposits and copper deposits. If you take that,
Speaker 8: if you go over into Burkino Faso, it has huge
Speaker 8: gold gold deposits which are under explored. It's relatively the
Speaker 8: vast majority would be artizanal mining. The same with Mali.
Speaker 8: And if you go across into Niger you've got the
Speaker 8: huge uranium mine which is a keystone of the of
Speaker 8: the French nuclear industry arlet, which would be worth a
Speaker 8: fortune to whoever would control the territory. So it's it's
Speaker 8: a very colonialist. I suppose manual to what the what
Speaker 8: Wagner are doing, but it's a very it's it's very
Speaker 8: much a corporate model as opposed to coming in and
Speaker 8: establishing governance. They're they're quite happy to leave kind of
Speaker 8: administration and governments and stuff like that too and go,
Speaker 8: but they want the mineral wealth and they'll you know,
Speaker 8: they will manipulate and embed themselves with local military who
Speaker 8: you know, if you you know you've got Mali, it's
Speaker 8: it's governed now by a military military junta. Niger is
Speaker 8: likely to be the same. And you can get Brookino Fasso.
Speaker 8: It's not quite far off that either. And yeah, so
Speaker 8: they're if you don't in these countries, if you don't
Speaker 8: have the backing of the military, you've got nothing. You're
Speaker 8: not going to be in power.
Speaker 6: So yeah, and then if they could draw the military
Speaker 6: and then they control it in power, right and as
Speaker 6: long as that's amenable, like you say, to their desire
Speaker 6: to extract wealth, and they don't care and.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it's and you know, the the other part
Speaker 8: of it is they're they're bringing in all the toys
Speaker 8: for the for these god for these governments as well.
Speaker 8: They're importing drones, they're importing weaponry, helicopters. You know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's talk about it a little bit, because that's
Speaker 6: something they seem to have. Like Eric Prince tried to
Speaker 6: himself a plane, right and he didn't really do very well.
Speaker 6: And that, like their access to military hardware is it's unprecedented.
Speaker 6: So like where they're able to obtain all that, Oh.
Speaker 8: They're definitely, they're definitely collusion with I mean, whatever tensions
Speaker 8: there are in Ukraine between the Russian military and Wagner,
Speaker 8: there's definitely not any tensions between Wagner and the Russian
Speaker 8: military when it comes to secure hardware for Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean, they there was brand new twenty fours unloaded
Speaker 8: in in Mali only last year and they met a
Speaker 8: very very big show of the French leaving and these
Speaker 8: and these helicopters arriving. So you know, there's there's been
Speaker 8: Turkish built drones are starting to are coming in left,
Speaker 8: right and center across all with the aid and shipment
Speaker 8: by Wagner. So they're they have incredible with Russian produced equipment.
Speaker 8: They have incredible access access to it and it can
Speaker 8: only come from one place, it only it can only
Speaker 8: come from the military. And you know, you know, we've
Speaker 8: seen Russian troops arrive in Ukraine with weapons that are
Speaker 8: fifty years old because there's nothing on their basis. Well
Speaker 8: kind of it's very clear that there was nothing on
Speaker 8: their basis because these weapons are shown are being transported
Speaker 8: for use in Africa.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they've done the same in Myanmar, right, They're still
Speaker 6: selling planes, they're still selling munitions there, and it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's almost like a I don't know, there's like
Speaker 6: a corporate and a state structure, and sometimes it seems
Speaker 6: like especially well we see that in the US too,
Speaker 6: I guess, but they're competing, they're competing desires that parallel.
Speaker 6: One doesn't one doesn't have sort of a video that.
Speaker 6: One thing I do want to get into is this
Speaker 6: culture that exists was in Wagner. That is, it's an
Speaker 6: extreme glorification of violence, right and in a glorification of
Speaker 6: sometimes of Nazism, yeah, of other sort of related kind
Speaker 6: of things that I guess they see as like warrior societies.
Speaker 6: And you can see a lot in the telegram. Can
Speaker 6: you speak a little bit to that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's been there's definitely been an element of these
Speaker 8: guys have been recruited from right wing in the in
Speaker 8: the Russian military, and we already know there was some
Speaker 8: of these units were heavily involved with the with the
Speaker 8: Russian football hooligans who had a very hard right leaning anyway,
Speaker 8: and you know, we've seen across like it's been hugely
Speaker 8: in evidence across some of the some of the said
Speaker 8: towns where there's been fighting in Libya where Wagner had
Speaker 8: left graffiti of you know, the sonon Rand and a
Speaker 8: lot of these other Nazi symbols, and there is this
Speaker 8: whole mass glorification of violence from the top down. I mean,
Speaker 8: the executions, the beatings, you know, the torture of local
Speaker 8: non white people in there, you know that they're coming
Speaker 8: upcoming contact. But we've seen it in Syria, brutal executions.
Speaker 8: It's a very much of white supremacist far right. It's
Speaker 8: not even undertones because it's so it's so blatant, it's
Speaker 8: right in your face. I mean, they just don't hide
Speaker 8: it on their telegram channels, they don't hide it where
Speaker 8: they go. You know, we've seen military patches that they're wearing,
Speaker 8: which are you know, extreme right, graffiti they leave behind
Speaker 8: which is extreme right. You know, even I haven't seen
Speaker 8: the movies they've met, but I believe they're they're actually
Speaker 8: there's there's a lot of image there as well, which
Speaker 8: would be you're right up the street of kind of
Speaker 8: neo fascist organizations as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it certainly seems that they're pretty explictive about it,
Speaker 6: and no one they don't care. I mean, for those
Speaker 6: you're not supposed to be called it Wagner because it
Speaker 6: was Hitler's favorite composer.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, Yeah, but yeah, there's like some of the
Speaker 8: there's there's crossover between some of the other far right
Speaker 8: or organizations and some of the you know, some of
Speaker 8: these units, these far right, units who being who are
Speaker 8: in in Ukraine and Wagner. There is a kind of
Speaker 8: cross pollination personnel as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, it's only seems they sort of go back
Speaker 6: and forth with the military. It's not like I think
Speaker 6: people would say there's more of a distinct entity than
Speaker 6: it perhaps is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they're they're not They're not a there's guys from
Speaker 8: Wagner will show up with with other organizations from time
Speaker 8: to time, but then they seem to kind of drift
Speaker 8: back to Wagner. And seeing that especially in Ukraine in
Speaker 8: sort as well in Libya, there was there was guys
Speaker 8: that have identified who were operating in you know, with
Speaker 8: Agner in Libya who definitely had you know, had operated
Speaker 8: with other organizations as well. You know, they've been I
Speaker 8: think there was a number of them work had been
Speaker 8: photographed that had actually been id during some of the
Speaker 8: football violence in Marcia during the European Coupled a few
Speaker 8: years ago. So you know, they're they're in this in
Speaker 8: this circle and they're they are moving over and back
Speaker 8: between different organizations. But again it's it's a massive shower identity.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's yeah, it's part of this giant cluster of
Speaker 6: the sort of armed extreme right. Yeah, has been yeah,
Speaker 6: sort of festering for a long time, unnoticed by a
Speaker 6: lot of people. I wonder like, yeah, yeah, yeah, You've
Speaker 6: mentioned that if people aren't paying attention, they won't see things,
Speaker 6: which I think is right because it's not you know,
Speaker 6: it's not on primetime TV or TV at all. Where
Speaker 6: would you like, where would you go for coverage, especially
Speaker 6: let's say that you know parts of Africa are you working?
Speaker 8: I use I would use Twitter quite a lot to
Speaker 8: to look at what what local journalists are doing in
Speaker 8: you know, in places like Mali and the chair. I
Speaker 8: think I started off. I started off using Twitter in
Speaker 8: Yemen when I was working there because the you know,
Speaker 8: I was fifty kilometers from a town that was entirely
Speaker 8: controlled by al Qaeda, and one of them was on
Speaker 8: Twitter that they were all posting on Twitter. And you know,
Speaker 8: there was some fantastic local journalists who were posting on
Speaker 8: Twitter as well, so you got to see in almost
Speaker 8: real time what was happening in these places. Yeah, and
Speaker 8: when there was no other media really and I carried
Speaker 8: on using Twitter. And then because I do write security report,
Speaker 8: you know, digging around and you had there's a couple
Speaker 8: of online and analysts and awesome people around who cover
Speaker 8: kind of global conflicts, but they do cover quite a
Speaker 8: lot in the heel. Okay, Yeah, so you would have
Speaker 8: like the likes of war and War and people like
Speaker 8: that were very good on the arm side of things.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's very good at he keeps an eye on
Speaker 6: me mr as well.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a few useful accounts. I think you do
Speaker 6: share them on your own accounts sometimes as well.
Speaker 8: I've seen I do. Yeah, from time to time, I'll
Speaker 8: share them on my own.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what is yours? If people want to follow along,
Speaker 6: pitch your feet.
Speaker 8: It's Dermott and Couse Growth all right, so d or
Speaker 8: Mot and and then coss Growth cosg RB.
Speaker 6: Yeah. It is one of those things that like we
Speaker 6: talk about, you know in many ways, you know what
Speaker 6: people spend too much time on Twitter and that you know,
Speaker 6: when it dies it will be nice. But it is
Speaker 6: something I was talking to colleagues in Rwanda a while ago.
Speaker 6: But I remember when going to Rwanda, one of the
Speaker 6: things that they ask you is that you've verified on Twitter.
Speaker 6: This was before you could buy a verification for seven
Speaker 6: dollars or whatever. It actually allows a lot of people
Speaker 6: to work, especially in parts of Africa. It gives them
Speaker 6: sort of like especially in place with the government's hostileity journalism,
Speaker 6: it gives them an outside audience that will, one hopes,
Speaker 6: you know, make them a little bit safer also to
Speaker 6: be able to share these things. Yeah, yeah, and losing
Speaker 6: that like there's no other platform that does that.
Speaker 8: No, there isn't that. It's a pity that it's that
Speaker 8: it's actually gone down the road. It's gone down. I mean,
Speaker 8: I would be I work a month on, month off,
Speaker 8: so I would be a big Twitter user when when
Speaker 8: I'm at work, because you know, gathering information from my
Speaker 8: reports and so yeah, and then at home I'm not
Speaker 8: on it so much. But you know, for local journalists
Speaker 8: and activists, it you know, it's a fantastic The whole
Speaker 8: idea is fantastic because they are able to get that
Speaker 8: message out. They are more visible in countries where they've
Speaker 8: got repressive regimes, and it keeps an eye on them,
Speaker 8: and you're the more visibility they have. It wouldn't be
Speaker 8: one hundred percent safe, but they are a little bit safer.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've seen it with colleagues in me and mar
Speaker 6: as well, just sort of it's aroundly out there to
Speaker 6: the world, you know, the Irrawady and all these other
Speaker 6: publications which are able to get things out, and lots
Speaker 6: of those people are in hiding, you know, like they
Speaker 6: can't operate in cities, and they're able to get things
Speaker 6: out to the world. So for that alone, it's valuable.
Speaker 6: And yeah, it's a shame that it seems to be
Speaker 6: go anywhere it's going.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think I think there was even the you know,
Speaker 8: during the well even currently, there's still some still some
Speaker 8: people in Afghanistan who are it's their only outlet to
Speaker 8: get information out about what's happening under the Taliban.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, I've in touch with a few people in
Speaker 6: Afghanistania that it's you know, that would all be lost.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't have ever found them otherwise, or some of
Speaker 6: them through friends. Yeah, and I want a piny up
Speaker 6: by asking, like the stuff that Wagner has done in
Speaker 6: Africa is repulsive. Stuff done in Syria is disgusting, Like
Speaker 6: what if if you had your your like if you
Speaker 6: had your way, Like, how can people or how can
Speaker 6: governments or what can we do to stop this kind
Speaker 6: of you know, human rights abuse.
Speaker 8: I think there's as much pressure should be can that
Speaker 8: can be put on in states obviously with congressmen and
Speaker 8: senators that if people go to them there in the
Speaker 8: UK government, you know, I'm Irish. You know, we have
Speaker 8: a long history of peacekeeping and stuff like that, and
Speaker 8: you know, investigations of human rights abuses, so you know,
Speaker 8: it's putting pressure on your politicians that action needs to
Speaker 8: be taken, you know. And the U n I'm but
Speaker 8: I'm not a massive vanity win because they have been
Speaker 8: so ineffectual in places. I mean, my my brother was
Speaker 8: in was in Lebanon on three separate occasions with the
Speaker 8: with the U Utiful Force and came home described with this,
Speaker 8: you know, one hand clapping because they they even ham
Speaker 8: strung their own people. But you know, there there isn't
Speaker 8: outside of the EU which can enforce sanctions on them.
Speaker 8: You know, there needs to be massive sanctions on anyone
Speaker 8: associated with Wagner. Yeah, and there needs to be more.
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, the the EU has pretty much
Speaker 8: been kicked out of the Sahel. There needs to be
Speaker 8: more a better relationship built up with these with these
Speaker 8: organized these governments. As repulsive as some of these governments are,
Speaker 8: there is no real other choice. But there has to
Speaker 8: be a way where Wagner have to be highlighted. If
Speaker 8: you know, journalists, get to journalists, ask them, why isn't
Speaker 8: he Why aren't these questions being asked? Is it? You know,
Speaker 8: why is it only being the focus? And I'm a
Speaker 8: big supporter of Ukraine, but why is it only since
Speaker 8: Ukraine that we're seeing wave televisions? Yeah, yeah, they've been
Speaker 8: They've been murdering people, they were putting you know, they
Speaker 8: were boobly trapping kids, toys and literally as they retreated
Speaker 8: out of out of western Libya. Yet none of that appeared,
Speaker 8: you know, the one BBC report and it came out
Speaker 8: and it died afterwards, which you know, is you know, horrendous.
Speaker 8: You know, this needs to be They need to be
Speaker 8: hammered left for the center.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think a lot You're right, a lot
Speaker 6: of that comes from if you find editors, you can
Speaker 6: ask them why they haven't come at this what it
Speaker 6: was happening in Affrica, like they were putting human beings
Speaker 6: and holes in the ground.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're on Twitter, jump
Speaker 8: on Twitter, follow the follow editors news organizations and you know,
Speaker 8: tweet at them. Just why aren't you covering us?
Speaker 6: Yeah, make them say or make people explain why this
Speaker 6: doesn't matter as much. In the same with your politicians.
Speaker 6: I know sometimes writing to politicians can seem ineffectual, but
Speaker 6: like I can't put sanctions on them, you know, and
Speaker 6: I can't. I don't have the ability to project force.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I don't think there's nothing that Wagner produced
Speaker 8: that you can kind of go, well, I'm not going
Speaker 8: to buy you know, I'm not going to buy this
Speaker 8: product because it impacts They don't care, They're they're not
Speaker 8: selling to the consumer. They're you know, they're stealing to
Speaker 8: put in their own buckets.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, Yeah, Yeah, I think it was. That was wonderful,
Speaker 6: Dare That's Is there anything you want to else you
Speaker 6: on a plug or anywhere else people can find you
Speaker 6: learn out more, learn more about the stuff.
Speaker 8: Well, well, I'm on Twitter is probably the best beast.
Speaker 8: I have kind of promised myself to do a little
Speaker 8: bit more kind of on the highlighting the conflict in
Speaker 8: because because I work in North Africa, and even though
Speaker 8: I'm not in the hell itself, the the hell has
Speaker 8: been It's always been a massive area of interest for me.
Speaker 8: So I've kind of I probably will kind of flip
Speaker 8: my my Twitter around a bit more to reflect what's
Speaker 8: going on in across the cell. Yeah, so I'm on there.
Speaker 8: I've got I've got an Instagram account, but that's only
Speaker 8: really if you like pictures of dogs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's that's what it's good for.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much for your time, debit. We
Speaker 6: appreciate it. And yeah, I already learn a bit more
Speaker 6: about this.
Speaker 5: Hello, welcome to It could happen here. Yes, this is
Speaker 5: what I sound like today. This is Sharine. Just go
Speaker 5: with it. If you listen to the Sheep episode, I
Speaker 5: sounded much worse. So this is I sound great today,
Speaker 5: I amo, But yeah, thank you for listening today. I'm
Speaker 5: excited to talk about what I want to talk about
Speaker 5: for the next two days because it's something that I've
Speaker 5: always wanted to kind of just like open up as
Speaker 5: more of a conversation. And I'm so grateful to have
Speaker 5: an author and amazing person. They've just written a book
Speaker 5: called To the Ghosts Who Are Still Living and it's
Speaker 5: out now you can go get it. I'm the Wine Traub.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited
Speaker 5: to talk to you.
Speaker 9: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to
Speaker 9: you too.
Speaker 5: There's a particular reason why I asked you to come
Speaker 5: on the show. I specifically wanted to talk to a
Speaker 5: Jewish anti Zionist. So I want to approach the conversation
Speaker 5: as if people are really unfamiliar with Zionism, because I
Speaker 5: think most people are. Can you maybe just start by
Speaker 5: telling me, like what is Zionism?
Speaker 9: Definitely? Yeah, And I said to sharing before as well,
Speaker 9: like I am not particularly like an expert on Zionism
Speaker 9: or Israel Palestine. So also just want to recommend that
Speaker 9: listeners also go out and find the experts, find the
Speaker 9: materials that you're interested in, if this conversation sparks your interest,
Speaker 9: and take my thoughts as just one thought in the
Speaker 9: mix of all the thoughts. So yeah, when I was
Speaker 9: thinking about like defining Zionism, I was thinking about sort
Speaker 9: of like the origins of Zionism and like how did
Speaker 9: we even get to that place? And Zionism for me
Speaker 9: reflects and I think is like this political desire to
Speaker 9: have a Jewish state, and to have that Jewish state
Speaker 9: like on the land of Israel. Is how is how
Speaker 9: Zionism has materialized in its formation, and prior to like
Speaker 9: the actual political movement of Zionism, there has been like
Speaker 9: a connection of the Jewish people to that specific land,
Speaker 9: it just hadn't materialized into like an actual movement to
Speaker 9: establish a state on that land. So there's like there's
Speaker 9: been like a yearning and like a memory and like
Speaker 9: a collective sense of connection to like Jerusalem, to that
Speaker 9: piece of land. But it was only in like the
Speaker 9: eighteen hundreds, when there was nation state building occurring in
Speaker 9: general in Europe, specifically in Eastern Europe, that the movement
Speaker 9: for Zionism started to develop in the form that we
Speaker 9: have today. And a lot of that was because one reason,
Speaker 9: like Jews were saying, oh wow, like German people are
Speaker 9: creating a state or French people are creating a state,
Speaker 9: like we are a people, we should have a state.
Speaker 9: And at the same time, Jews were also being excluded
Speaker 9: from citizenship in a lot of the actual like newly
Speaker 9: formed countries that they were living in, So there was
Speaker 9: like this dispossession also from place where they were and
Speaker 9: matched with a general like rise of anti Semitism as well.
Speaker 9: So I think all of those things kind of crystallized
Speaker 9: into creating actual political movement around that kind of nascent
Speaker 9: like more like religious spiritual yearning. Yeah, and then that
Speaker 9: formed into like many different types of Zionism, like more
Speaker 9: militaristic Zionism, more socialist scions, religious Scionism, et cetera. And
Speaker 9: that's all kind of yeah, make its way to become Israel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how would you differentiate all of those, like the
Speaker 5: cultural versus religious versus political, Like how would you personally
Speaker 5: differentiate them? I know you're not an expert, but just
Speaker 5: like speaking.
Speaker 9: Of experience, Yeah, I have to think on that. It's complicated,
Speaker 9: I would say, because it feels like.
Speaker 5: To me from just reading about the history of Zionism,
Speaker 5: it did kind of start in a religious like origin,
Speaker 5: but it became more political. Am I reading that right?
Speaker 5: Or yeah?
Speaker 9: Yeah? I think like, yeah, that's what can be pretty confusing.
Speaker 9: I think about understanding like Zionism in general is just
Speaker 9: like where does this even come from? Like how do
Speaker 9: these like especially Zionism like originating more from like Ashkenazi
Speaker 9: like European Jews. How did this even come to be
Speaker 9: and seen as something that like the longing and the
Speaker 9: connection to the land being part of Jewish culture and religion,
Speaker 9: but that only turning into a desire for a nation
Speaker 9: state like at that certain moment. So the like different
Speaker 9: categories of like religious Zionism versus political versus militaristic versus
Speaker 9: socialists were kind of like the ways that Zionism was.
Speaker 9: There was like different movements of Zionism in Europe and
Speaker 9: Eastern Europe at the time of its origins. So it's
Speaker 9: kind of like referring to more of its historical relationship
Speaker 9: and then that still influences the politics today in contemporary
Speaker 9: like I'll just say a state of Israel and also
Speaker 9: many like Israel Palestine, but speaking about Zionism that feels
Speaker 9: more relevant. So you still have like socialist scientists who
Speaker 9: are more on the left than you have like more
Speaker 9: like right wing religious scientists, you probably have more historical
Speaker 9: origins and like more militaristic Scionism and religious scientists who
Speaker 9: maybe are like we are here for the religious reasons
Speaker 9: of being Jews on this land versus like a socialist scientist,
Speaker 9: Like their framework was more like we want to create
Speaker 9: this more socialist utopia sort of vision versus a more
Speaker 9: political moltastic scietists. Their original vision was like want to
Speaker 9: dominate this land and right. Yeah, political power.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it feels like in recent times it's kind of
Speaker 5: leaned more in that direction only because of the I
Speaker 5: don't know the state of the world. But when you
Speaker 5: when you look up Zionism, it's defined I'm just going
Speaker 5: to read what I found and please entrupt me if
Speaker 5: you're like, actually no. When you look at Zionism was
Speaker 5: defined as an organized nationalist movement, generally considered to have
Speaker 5: been founded by Theodor Herzel in eighteen ninety seven. However,
Speaker 5: the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with
Speaker 5: the Jewish history and Judaism as a whole. The organizations
Speaker 5: of I'm going to probably mispronounce this Hoveve Zion the
Speaker 5: lovers of Zion. How you save? Yeah, yeah. This organization
Speaker 5: was held as like the forerunner of the modern Zionist ideals,
Speaker 5: and they were responsible for twenty Jewish towns in Palestine
Speaker 5: between eighteen seventy and eighteen ninety seven. This is from
Speaker 5: just online history. And at the core of the Zionist
Speaker 5: ideology was this traditional aspiration for a Jewish national home
Speaker 5: through the re establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, and
Speaker 5: this was to be facilitated by the Jewish diaspora. Herzel
Speaker 5: apparently sought an independent Jewish state, usually defined as a
Speaker 5: secular state with a Jewish majority population, and he wrote
Speaker 5: a eighteen ninety six pamphlet to describe exactly what he wanted.
Speaker 5: And though he did not live to witness it, Israel
Speaker 5: was established and so what he wanted did come to fruition,
Speaker 5: even though in my opinion it was not done in.
Speaker 2: A just way.
Speaker 5: But that's history for you. But yeah, I think the
Speaker 5: actual core of it is really understandable and true. You know, like,
Speaker 5: of course, every marginalized community wants a safe haven and
Speaker 5: a place where they can all go to. I think
Speaker 5: my biggest what I really dislike about where it is now,
Speaker 5: where Zion is now, is just how much it erases
Speaker 5: everyone else that's already there. It's almost as if Palestine
Speaker 5: was like an empty field, you know. And I think
Speaker 5: a lot of zion Is today kind of erased that
Speaker 5: history and a race that like they massacred hundreds of
Speaker 5: people and they displaced over seven hundred and fifty thousand people.
Speaker 5: It's called the neckbut it's called a catastrophe. That's what
Speaker 5: Palestinians refer to it as and I feel like Zionists
Speaker 5: tend to not. I mean, from what I understand, it's
Speaker 5: as if that isn't like real history. And from what
Speaker 5: I've read or like from what I've heard from people
Speaker 5: that have grown up in Israel, the history that they
Speaker 5: learn is also a little bit selective in what they learn.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, that's I've just been I've been reading
Speaker 5: a lot about Zionism for a long time. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: it's nice to have someone actually, like with experience in
Speaker 5: it because I can only learn so much from the
Speaker 5: Internet and from like secondhand stuff.
Speaker 9: I feel like that, like like when we look at
Speaker 9: like the early Zionists and it's like, oh, yeah, like
Speaker 9: these desires to like have sovereignty and have autonomy and
Speaker 9: agency for your people who are being marginalized in your
Speaker 9: country like or in these lands that they live reasonable,
Speaker 9: Like that totally makes sense and that and then it
Speaker 9: has to, like you said, be also seeing through the
Speaker 9: lens of like the actual history that occurred, which is
Speaker 9: materially trying to like build a nation state as like
Speaker 9: part of your people's liberation is going to involve lots
Speaker 9: of oppression and violence. And that's kind of where I
Speaker 9: ended up, like, yeah, like understanding the history of Zionism,
Speaker 9: like being able to have empathy for that original message,
Speaker 9: and then just really being like that's what led me
Speaker 9: into like anarchism ultimately, was saying that this desire for
Speaker 9: a nation state to be like a liberatory project is
Speaker 9: kind of always going to be flawed in a way.
Speaker 9: So actually, like and I kind of said, like, you know,
Speaker 9: Jewish like agencies, sovereignty and like liberation, like we actually
Speaker 9: deserve better than that, you know, being deserve to not
Speaker 9: actually be like held within the confines of like what
Speaker 9: is possible in a nation state, as I think like
Speaker 9: all people deserve.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 9: So that's kind of how I've come to this point now.
Speaker 5: No, and I really want to talk to you more
Speaker 5: about how you've landed where you are with your beliefs,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I think what also gets forgotten is that
Speaker 5: pre nineteen forty eight, there were Jewish people in Palestine,
Speaker 5: you know, and Christian people everyone got along. I'm from Syria,
Speaker 5: but even in Syria, everyone, like in all in most
Speaker 5: Middle Eastern countries, there was a mix of all these
Speaker 5: religions and they all got along and I think that's
Speaker 5: what really angers me when it comes to like basically
Speaker 5: like the news saying it's like this ancient religious conflict,
Speaker 5: because that's just simply not true. And I think that's
Speaker 5: a huge defense that a lot of like militant Zionists have,
Speaker 5: where it's like this eternal cultural religious war and it's
Speaker 5: simply just false. I think that's something that always bothers me.
Speaker 5: I just want to give a little bit more history
Speaker 5: just to bring us to like current day. Just I
Speaker 5: think it's this stuff is a little bit interesting. So
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy five the UN General Assembly, they passed
Speaker 5: Resolution three three seventy nine, which designated Zionism as a
Speaker 5: form of racism and racial discrimination. However, this resolution was
Speaker 5: repealed in nineteen ninety one by replacing Resolution three three
Speaker 5: seventy nine with Resolution four to six Slash eighty six,
Speaker 5: and this new resolution it was adopted on December sixteenth
Speaker 5: and nineteen ninety one. It revoked the determination in the
Speaker 5: previous resolution three three seven nine determining Zionism as racist,
Speaker 5: and Israel had made the certification of this resolution a
Speaker 5: condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference, which
Speaker 5: was a conference that was held at the end of
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety one, and it was also raised under pressure
Speaker 5: of the administration of President Bush. Papa, I just find
Speaker 5: that funny, No, hw Bush, I'm sorry, this is not
Speaker 5: funny stuff. I just this is how I cope. But
Speaker 5: basically the revocation was simply this one sentence, the General
Speaker 5: Assembly decides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution
Speaker 5: three three seventy nine of tenth of December nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 5: And this motion was supported by one hundred and eleven nations,
Speaker 5: including the ninety nations who had sponsored it in the
Speaker 5: first place, and it was opposed by twenty five nations
Speaker 5: and abstained by thirteen nations. And I just thought that
Speaker 5: was incredibly fascinating. It also just like illustrates the power
Speaker 5: that Israel has always kind of like held like as
Speaker 5: far as like a political state in like world affairs.
Speaker 5: And if you've listened to my previous episodes, then you
Speaker 5: know that at the current saying time, and like for
Speaker 5: decades leading up to this, the government in Israel is
Speaker 5: extremely far right and Zionist to the point where it's
Speaker 5: extremely racist, and they've built in apartheid state based around
Speaker 5: their Zionism basically, Dianis values serve as the ideological foundation
Speaker 5: of Israel. I think that's kind of a big part
Speaker 5: of why Israel was created in the first place, was
Speaker 5: this hope for a place where everyone was safe. Obviously
Speaker 5: that kind of became twisted and they went about it
Speaker 5: in a terrible way. But I do understand what you
Speaker 5: mean also by having empathy for the original feeling of it,
Speaker 5: because I feel the same. I think every marginalized community
Speaker 5: wants what the original idea of Zionism had. I think
Speaker 5: Zionis today is defined so differently, and I think that's
Speaker 5: really unfortunate because it didn't have to become a racist ideology,
Speaker 5: but it did. I've been rambling too much, and we're
Speaker 5: going to take our first break. When we come back.
Speaker 5: I want to talk to you about you, so br
Speaker 5: B and we're back, Ammie take it away what he
Speaker 5: had a response for the thing I said about how
Speaker 5: Zionist values they serve as the ideological foundation of Israel.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I think one of the things I try
Speaker 9: to like make a point of kind of as like
Speaker 9: a Jewish anarchist specifically, like what I was saying prior
Speaker 9: is that that's again like kind of just the inevitable, well,
Speaker 9: in my mind, like the inevitable outcome of like a
Speaker 9: state is that there is going to be some amount
Speaker 9: of like division of population, like oppression of a certain
Speaker 9: class of people or certain group of people, a consolidation
Speaker 9: of power in the hands of a few. So again
Speaker 9: me like that's where this like the original idea of
Speaker 9: like let's have a place where Jews can have like
Speaker 9: safety and sovereignty and cultural like flourishing. Like attaching that
Speaker 9: to a state was like kind of always bound to fail,
Speaker 9: but not inherent like not exactly, like not innatially, because
Speaker 9: that desire is like a wrong desire. Yeah, and then
Speaker 9: when we pile in kind of like like other people's
Speaker 9: interests in terms of like the West having like an
Speaker 9: interest in having like Israel being like a friendly like
Speaker 9: I consider like a proxy state for the West like
Speaker 9: in the Middle East where they can you know, like
Speaker 9: we've seen like send their police officers to be trained
Speaker 9: in these ways. But also the West is benefiting from
Speaker 9: that exchange. They have a little hold in the Middle
Speaker 9: East like they always wanted to exactly, So their interest
Speaker 9: is to like maintain Israel like as something that they
Speaker 9: can have influence in and have this kind of control
Speaker 9: over and like to make it creepier like the Christian
Speaker 9: like Evangelical Zionism, like Christian Zionism is also like a
Speaker 9: huge influence in the US. There was just a really
Speaker 9: interesting documentary I can't remember the name now that that
Speaker 9: was released like a year or two ago about this,
Speaker 9: and Christian Zionists actually make up like a larger lobbying
Speaker 9: body than like Jewish Zionists in the US just because backwards,
Speaker 9: because they there's just so many more evangelicals and their
Speaker 9: interest in the state of Israel is that Jews will
Speaker 9: return there and then the rapture will happen.
Speaker 5: Wait can you Yeah, I actually want to talk to
Speaker 5: you about this because I one hundred percent think you
Speaker 5: know more about this than I do, because I do.
Speaker 5: I have heard that there are a lot of evangelical
Speaker 5: Christians that are huge supporters of Zionism. Yeah, one, can
Speaker 5: you to like if you know how that even like
Speaker 5: where that uh, I don't know, not solid I guess
Speaker 5: like solidarity with Zionism came about, and also what they
Speaker 5: believe like the whole rapture thing. Please, I would love
Speaker 5: to know more.
Speaker 9: Yet again, like I highly recommend people like watch whatever
Speaker 9: this documentary is. You just google like Christian Zionism, because
Speaker 9: I've mostly learned from that and from my own like
Speaker 9: internet wormholes.
Speaker 5: I've just looked it up, and I think it's Till
Speaker 5: Kingdom Come, a twenty twenty film, right, Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 9: And so what I understand is there is this like
Speaker 9: somewhere in the Christian world that like it has roots
Speaker 9: at least in the evangelical world. Right now, this idea
Speaker 9: in the Rapture, which I don't know that much about,
Speaker 9: but apparently the Rapture will involve Jews returning to the
Speaker 9: land of Israel and Jesus returning and killing all of
Speaker 9: the Jews.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. Yeah, for Zionism.
Speaker 9: That is why they support Zionism. So they walked up. Yeah,
Speaker 9: so they want Jews to go back to the land
Speaker 9: the state of Israel in order for them to ultimately
Speaker 9: like be killed and go to help all.
Speaker 5: In one place and be conveniently killed.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And so that and that is one of the
Speaker 9: major lobbying arms, like when we're talking about like the
Speaker 9: US like sending money to to Israel, and like I
Speaker 9: just saw recently, like like most of the Republicans are
Speaker 9: like supporting this, yeah, the aid going to Israel, And
Speaker 9: it's like why are they doing that when generally they
Speaker 9: don't really support Jews, you know, like Republicans are not
Speaker 9: like BFFs with Jews.
Speaker 5: Like they don't really I mean inherently that way of
Speaker 5: seeing Zionism is one racist. Like it's like people are
Speaker 5: or not not even just that anti semitic, you know,
Speaker 5: anti that's really the defense all the time when you
Speaker 5: have like a Palestinian politician talk about Israel or anything,
Speaker 5: not even Zion as a managements in Israel, and then
Speaker 5: they get labeled at tes semitic, but that is one
Speaker 5: percent anti Semitics, it's actually anti Semitic.
Speaker 9: Well, and it's like it doesn't get noticed because like
Speaker 9: I feel like so much that like white Christians do
Speaker 9: in this country just like gets very overlooked as like
Speaker 9: something that actually has something that's actually worth like noticing
Speaker 9: and something that's actually worth like critiquing. So I am
Speaker 9: trying to understand like how did we get to this place,
Speaker 9: Like how did we get to this point where like, yeah,
Speaker 9: Israel is being supported and doing what it is doing
Speaker 9: right now to Palestinians. It has moved, in my opinion,
Speaker 9: so far away from like an actual like vision of
Speaker 9: like Jewish liberation. And then you look at like who's
Speaker 9: actually really supporting this project right now, and it's people
Speaker 9: who actually just want us to die. It becomes very convoluted,
Speaker 9: and it again motivates my anti Zionism in a lot
Speaker 9: of ways too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, can you tell me as little and as many
Speaker 5: details as you want, But how did you come to
Speaker 5: identify as an anti Zionist? How did you become how
Speaker 5: did you embrace that definition for yourself?
Speaker 9: I guess there's a lot of like aspects to that answer.
Speaker 9: One thing is like I do really care about like
Speaker 9: Jewish people being safe and Jewish people having our culture,
Speaker 9: like Jewish will be able to express our culture and
Speaker 9: be able to express who we are. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 9: like being two or three generations from like the Holocaust
Speaker 9: and just like feeling like the intensity of that loss
Speaker 9: of life and land and place has just like given
Speaker 9: me that feeling of like this is really important. And
Speaker 9: then also like living out a time right now in
Speaker 9: the US where like anti Semitism is violent and I've
Speaker 9: experienced that violence and it is like a threat to
Speaker 9: like my sense of safety and my ability to express
Speaker 9: my culture. I've just been like very obsessed with, like
Speaker 9: what does actually achieving those goals look like? Yeah, And
Speaker 9: when I look at the state of Israel and I
Speaker 9: see all eighteen year olds are conscripted into the army,
Speaker 9: which is like literally like my great grandfather left Russia
Speaker 9: because he didn't want to be conscripted into the Russian army.
Speaker 9: And a lot of Jews Aushraazi Jews in the US
Speaker 9: like have that story Like that's not liberation when I
Speaker 9: see that, like a lot of Jews in Israel have
Speaker 9: the choice of either being like very secular or being
Speaker 9: extremely religious. When even like a lot of more diverse
Speaker 9: like Jewish cultures have been assimilated into like this one
Speaker 9: monolithic culture. Languages have been lost, like practices have been lost,
Speaker 9: Like that's not like our culture being able to flourish.
Speaker 9: And also the violence done to Palestinians, like in the
Speaker 9: name of the state and the name of this liberation,
Speaker 9: like nothing, nothing is worth that violence. Ever, so all
Speaker 9: of those things have kind of coalesced into my Jewish
Speaker 9: anarchism of also analyzing that through the state apparatus itself
Speaker 9: and being like, oh, yeah, states will do this. We
Speaker 9: need to think more creatively, We need to think in
Speaker 9: a way that builds actual solidarity between Jewish community and
Speaker 9: Palestinian community and other marginalized people. And all of that
Speaker 9: has kind of just coalesced into Jewish anti Zionism, like
Speaker 9: just making sense on all of those levels.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I thank you for saying all of that.
Speaker 5: It's true. I think nothing is worth all that violence.
Speaker 5: And also I think unfortunately, like when you have any
Speaker 5: kind of desire, no matter how pure it is, because
Speaker 5: I think the basis of Zionism has a pure desire
Speaker 5: of safety and sovereignty. But when you have a desire
Speaker 5: and you add politics to it, or you add I
Speaker 5: don't know, any kind of like country war anything. When
Speaker 5: you add like modern day limitations and structures, that's when
Speaker 5: it becomes something else. It devolves into something that it
Speaker 5: really shouldn't be. Like, I think what disturbs me the
Speaker 5: most is how many young people are like rallying in
Speaker 5: the streets, like a lot of like far right groups
Speaker 5: in Israel will be like death to all Arabs or
Speaker 5: like they'll say the most heinous things as well as
Speaker 5: do the most heinous things. But I think it's unfortunate
Speaker 5: because I think even they kind of lost what zion
Speaker 5: is supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be
Speaker 5: about being only there just you and killing everybody else,
Speaker 5: or or seeing someone else as second as second citizens
Speaker 5: or anything. But no, I yeah, thank you for saying
Speaker 5: all of that. The arm thing is a really good
Speaker 5: thing to bring up as well, just because Palestine has
Speaker 5: no army, so it's a little bit silly to demand
Speaker 5: everyone and even join the army for this fake, imaginary
Speaker 5: bad guy. Not that there is not. There's definitely terrorist
Speaker 5: like activity on both sides, I would say, but the
Speaker 5: vast majority is like this imaginary big bad wolf that
Speaker 5: does not exist and is like powered by US and
Speaker 5: Western media totally.
Speaker 9: And that's where I start to think, like I don't
Speaker 9: know if this is like conspiracy or if this is real,
Speaker 9: but I start to think, like who is this actually serving,
Speaker 9: you know, Like who is it serving to, like, literally, yeah,
Speaker 9: put young people into a war every in every generation
Speaker 9: that comes through this country, And like, is it mostly
Speaker 9: serving like US and other like Western interests to be
Speaker 9: able to, yeah, have that land be their proxy state.
Speaker 9: And I don't have enough research to like back that
Speaker 9: claim up in a way that I would like to
Speaker 9: That's that's like my next like research wormhole is to
Speaker 9: try and yeah, just understand like that dynamic because I
Speaker 9: think something else that I have a lot of questions
Speaker 9: about you and like the formation of the state of
Speaker 9: Israel is like yeah, understanding that like England did or
Speaker 9: like I don't great Britain. In England, I think England
Speaker 9: they were the ones who like practitioned that land and
Speaker 9: like they were the ones who ultimately signed it over.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the British are rest possible for of the world. No, no,
Speaker 5: thank you no.
Speaker 9: And sometimes like forgetting that part of the story kind
Speaker 9: of almost like contributes to this kind of like anti
Speaker 9: Semitic rhetoric of like, oh the Jews are this like
Speaker 9: all powerful people who were just able to conquer this
Speaker 9: land on their own.
Speaker 5: It's like a conspiracy theory fuel.
Speaker 9: Yeah, when it's like no, like actually, like the Jews
Speaker 9: at that time did not have like global power in
Speaker 9: that way like England. Britain was like here you go,
Speaker 9: here's this land in the same way that they did
Speaker 9: like so much of the other colonized places in that
Speaker 9: world in the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the British are responsible for every bad thing, and.
Speaker 9: Like for me, like that bigger lens feels harder to
Speaker 9: talk about sometimes because I also like am also holding
Speaker 9: that like Jewish American support for the State of Israel
Speaker 9: like Fuels. Also the atrocity is happening against Palestidian's Jewish
Speaker 9: support for the IDEF in Israel, et cetera. Like obviously
Speaker 9: are responsible, and like I worry that if we don't
Speaker 9: look at these broader influences, that we're not actually going
Speaker 9: to understand like how to systemically stop this.
Speaker 5: You know, Yeah, you have to understand how you got
Speaker 5: somewhere to like determine how to get out of where
Speaker 5: you are, right, yeah, not to be too morbid or
Speaker 5: like to make this connection, but like Britain doing that,
Speaker 5: it's almost what the evangelical Christians want to do, right, like, oh,
Speaker 5: all you guys just stay here, Let's just shove them
Speaker 5: on this place that we don't really care about, and
Speaker 5: here you go, Like it doesn't even feel like genuine support,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean? Like I think in an
Speaker 5: alternate universe, Jewish people were welcomed into nations and Britain
Speaker 5: was like opening their doors to immigrants, I think that
Speaker 5: is a much more kind notion in my opinion, but
Speaker 5: what I do understand the desire to do otherwise. But
Speaker 5: it is interesting to connect those two now that we've
Speaker 5: talked about both of them, and how similar that is.
Speaker 9: And on that too, like the most like disturbing like
Speaker 9: thing that I've figured out in a while in relation
Speaker 9: to like this origin history of Zionism. So like in
Speaker 9: the beginning of like the Nazi power in Germany, in
Speaker 9: Germany specifically, before they wanted to like kill the Jews,
Speaker 9: they just wanted the Jews to leave, so they were
Speaker 9: like go, just go. And I saw this. I was
Speaker 9: in Berlin last summer, and I saw this picture of
Speaker 9: Nazis creating like a travel agencies in the right word,
Speaker 9: but like a travel depot that was specifically said like
Speaker 9: go to Palestine and was like directing Jews to go
Speaker 9: to Palestine. So like in that context, like the state
Speaker 9: of Israel then has like a totally different like frame
Speaker 9: of the George story almost yeah, of being the place
Speaker 9: where like the world could send their Jews when they
Speaker 9: didn't want them in their home countries. And and for me,
Speaker 9: that's also like a place that I've really fixated on
Speaker 9: is Like wait, wait, you can't just like say you're
Speaker 9: in solidarity with Choose because you've created this country and
Speaker 9: we all have to go there. Like you actually have
Speaker 9: to stop being anti Semitic, you know, you actually have
Speaker 9: to like you should work on that for yeah, like
Speaker 9: let us like live in your countries and be safe.
Speaker 9: And and it relates back to the evangelicals too, right,
Speaker 9: It's like they're all about like being Christian Zionists and
Speaker 9: like supporting Israel, but they're also like very anti Semitic
Speaker 9: in this country. So it's like it feels like a
Speaker 9: similar sort of dynamic of like yeah, yeah, we support
Speaker 9: you because we want you to go there, We want
Speaker 9: you to leave this country and go there, and we're
Speaker 9: not going to actually make it better for you in
Speaker 9: the place where you want to be, which is your
Speaker 9: family's home here, you know. So like that's another frame
Speaker 9: that I've been working in, which makes me just kind
Speaker 9: of have a bigger question of like global responsibility for
Speaker 9: what's happening in Israel Palestine right now, and how does
Speaker 9: this global resistance to actually addressing anti semitism like play
Speaker 9: into the continued violence against Palestinians.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Just to be clear, being an anti Zionist
Speaker 5: is not anti Semitic. However, it is important to remember
Speaker 5: that just because someone is an Antizionist doesn't mean they're
Speaker 5: not anti Semitic. It's an important reminder for those engaging
Speaker 5: in anti Zionists organizing to also be doing work around
Speaker 5: anti Semitism both internally and the world at large, because
Speaker 5: both solidarity with Palestinians as well as ensuring that we're
Speaker 5: interrogating the anti Semitism in our lives and the world
Speaker 5: is vitally important in this moment. Now, I was trying
Speaker 5: to divide these two episodes up. You already know this,
Speaker 5: I've told you, but just for the audience, like I
Speaker 5: wanted to this first episode to be a little bit
Speaker 5: more about the history and about how we got here,
Speaker 5: and tomorrow's episode you'll hear about what I really want
Speaker 5: to talk to you about. It is like your work
Speaker 5: and ancestral healing and how that's a huge part of
Speaker 5: your work, and also the community that you've built in
Speaker 5: certain organizations. I think that is so critical when it
Speaker 5: comes to anti Zionism or having solidary of Palestinians, because
Speaker 5: that's what you need to even make change happen. Right.
Speaker 5: So on that note, I'm going to wrap it up
Speaker 5: here for now, Amy, can you plug? Like if people
Speaker 5: want to know more about you and your work, where
Speaker 5: they can find you.
Speaker 9: Yeah. So again, I'm Ami Wintrab and I just came
Speaker 9: out with this book To the Ghosts who are Still Living.
Speaker 9: You can buy it through my publisher, Strangers in a
Speaker 9: Tangled Wilderness, or you can also look up my website
Speaker 9: amiwintrab dot com. And the book touches on like, not
Speaker 9: Zionism specifically, but kind of the themes of like place
Speaker 9: and land and where do you choose belong in the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and their website also has a list of their
Speaker 5: other works, which I highly recommend you seek out. I
Speaker 5: think voices like amis like yours are really important when
Speaker 5: it comes to talking about I don't know, changing the
Speaker 5: world for the better in general, not even about anti Zionism,
Speaker 5: but like even just trying to assess something in a
Speaker 5: more critical way, in a more personal way, even thinking
Speaker 5: about it being ancestral healing, I think is so critical.
Speaker 5: So thank you so.
Speaker 9: Much for coming on, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course I'll talk to you tomorrow. For you guys,
Speaker 5: I'm going to keep talking to them right now for me,
Speaker 5: but but yeah, tune in tomorrow for a continuation of
Speaker 5: this lovely conversation. Bye, hello everybody, and welcome back to
Speaker 5: it could happen here. Yes, I still sound like this.
Speaker 5: It was the same day for me, but thank you
Speaker 5: for joining me again. Today is part two of a
Speaker 5: conversation I'm having with Amy Wine Traub about anti Sionism
Speaker 5: and why it's important. And today I want to talk
Speaker 5: about their work and how much of anti siism is
Speaker 5: actually based in ancestral healing. And yeah, I want to
Speaker 5: just tell you guys a bunch of good stuff because
Speaker 5: AMI's work I think is really important. So welcome back, Hi,
Speaker 5: thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Hello.
Speaker 5: Of course, I think when we first started talking about
Speaker 5: wanting to record together, you mentioned that talking about ancestral
Speaker 5: healing was really integral and even your definition of Tai Zionism.
Speaker 5: Can you kind of explain why.
Speaker 9: Sure, Yeah, I feel like maybe it's also like the
Speaker 9: other way around, like my coming into like anti Zionism
Speaker 9: led me into a path of ancestral healing, because I
Speaker 9: think something that we talked about, like in the last episode,
Speaker 9: is that a lot of the motivation for at least
Speaker 9: like the early origins of Zionism was the desire for
Speaker 9: safety and the desire to like have cultural expression, like
Speaker 9: Jewish cultural expression, be possible. And so I started to think,
Speaker 9: like why were those the desires at the time, and
Speaker 9: sort of moving back into my family's history, which so
Speaker 9: much of it has been like silenced because of like
Speaker 9: the pain of the history and also in some ways
Speaker 9: because you've been told, you know, like you have a
Speaker 9: you have the home you live in now, and you
Speaker 9: have the state of Israel, and you don't have to
Speaker 9: think about where you came from, you know. And so
Speaker 9: a lot of my work has been kind of like
Speaker 9: opening up that conversation of the like, but where where
Speaker 9: did my great grandparents like actually come from? Like what
Speaker 9: was that place?
Speaker 5: Why do they leave?
Speaker 9: What is the longing that we have for safety, longman
Speaker 9: we have for home? And what does it look like
Speaker 9: to actually turn that longing back to yeah, for my family,
Speaker 9: like our homes in Eastern Europe. And That's kind of
Speaker 9: where I've been positioning a lot of my work these days.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you bring up a good point about
Speaker 5: how even having Israel there almost eRASS like the the
Speaker 5: history of a lot of Jewish people, right, because it
Speaker 5: kind of just like, yeah, it's almost as if like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is where we all come from and this is
Speaker 5: where we all end up, and it's just simply not true.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me, well, first, could you define and
Speaker 5: esctual healing to me? And like what that means to you?
Speaker 9: I feel like for me, and secial healing has been
Speaker 9: the process of opening up to the voices of my
Speaker 9: ancestors and allowing them to really speak to me and
Speaker 9: starting to see that like the pain and the grief
Speaker 9: and yeah, just the sorrow that I was carrying in
Speaker 9: my own body wasn't just my own Yeah, And that
Speaker 9: sort of growing awareness has become like the avenue to
Speaker 9: which I can do ancestral healing, which sometimes looks like
Speaker 9: learning a ton about like a specific Jewish practice that
Speaker 9: perhaps someone in my family at some point did and
Speaker 9: we've now forgotten. Or sometimes it looks like researching on Wikipedia,
Speaker 9: like the flowers that grew in my family's like Stuttle
Speaker 9: in Eastern Europe. And sometimes it looks like just crying
Speaker 9: and being sad about like the things that we've lost.
Speaker 9: And sometimes it looks like talking to my ancestors like
Speaker 9: in meditation or trance states and offering them back the
Speaker 9: healing that I'm doing in this generation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love that. I love especially the flowers I
Speaker 5: think really got me, just like those little details are
Speaker 5: so important and really defined a place. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think it's astual healing is so important for like most
Speaker 5: people in general, I think it's kind of taken maybe
Speaker 5: not taken too seriously by some normies, I don't know,
Speaker 5: but even for me, I mean, our histories are very different.
Speaker 5: But I think what you said about like recognizing that,
Speaker 5: like your pain is not just your own, Like you're
Speaker 5: carrying a lot of a bird in generation from generation
Speaker 5: to generation, and I think think acknowledging that and learning
Speaker 5: more about yourself anyone can do that.
Speaker 8: You don't.
Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be a certain I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think that's what I always kind of want to
Speaker 5: get across that, Like, even for me, I found ancestral
Speaker 5: healings to be really important. I define it in a
Speaker 5: different way, but it's still like I don't know a
Speaker 5: lot about my family's history, so that's been a little
Speaker 5: bit like a huge origin of that is because like
Speaker 5: there's a lot of confusion there, but I love that
Speaker 5: you are taking as like an internal journey and also
Speaker 5: like recognizing that there's a connection there. I think people
Speaker 5: don't look at it as much as I want them to.
Speaker 5: I guess I think it's a little bit too petty
Speaker 5: for people, and it really isn't. It's just about like
Speaker 5: evolving and knowing yourself better, like when you really when
Speaker 5: it really comes down to it, totally.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and for me too, Like so a lot of
Speaker 9: in my book, I talk a lot about like birch
Speaker 9: trees and the flower that grow and this places of
Speaker 9: my where my ancestors were in, like the lakes and
Speaker 9: the frogs. And a big reason for that too is
Speaker 9: because like my ancestors aren't there anymore, Like there are
Speaker 9: no more like Jewish people in those places necessarily to
Speaker 9: like tell the story. So when I think about, like
Speaker 9: how do I really learn about who my ancestors were
Speaker 9: or what their practices and their culture was, It's like, oh,
Speaker 9: at least I can see what they saw, you know.
Speaker 9: I can see the trees, I can see the frogs,
Speaker 9: and the land is holding that story for me if
Speaker 9: I can just open up and listen to it. So
Speaker 9: that's also been like part of it for me as
Speaker 9: well as like opening up like opportunity for like connection
Speaker 9: and joy even in the face of a lot of destruction.
Speaker 9: And again, also like you're saying, I really think this
Speaker 9: is something that like most people can do in is
Speaker 9: really enriching and would help us like all kind of
Speaker 9: metabolize like so much of what has happened in the
Speaker 9: twentieth century. Before the twentieth century, just like there's been
Speaker 9: so much like disruption and violence like that's happened for
Speaker 9: so many people. Yeah, and still happening obviously, and in America,
Speaker 9: in like the dominant American culture, I think there's like
Speaker 9: a really big emphasis on like forgetting and just kind
Speaker 9: of being in this like present moment and not realizing
Speaker 9: that we've come from somewhere. And I just really resist
Speaker 9: that that like urge to forget, and I for me
Speaker 9: that's also part of ancestral healing is like how do
Speaker 9: we learn to remember?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that so much.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 5: I think the thing that really made me realize that
Speaker 5: a cecil healing is extremely real and necessary was maybe
Speaker 5: like a on a how long ago was it, like
Speaker 5: ten years ago? I learned something about a family member
Speaker 5: that really put into context something that I was going
Speaker 5: through and that I have always felt, and I just
Speaker 5: part with who I am. And I'm being vague about
Speaker 5: it because it's just personal. But we could talk off
Speaker 5: Mike if you want, but for audience purposes, the point
Speaker 5: that I'm trying to get across is I learned something,
Speaker 5: and I learned more about myself, and I was almost
Speaker 5: more at peace with how much I was struggling with
Speaker 5: what it was, and I let myself be okay with
Speaker 5: how much I was struggling and the pain I was
Speaker 5: carrying because I recognized it wasn't just mine, it was
Speaker 5: it was hers. So yeah, I think if you ask
Speaker 5: me what the whole point of life is, it's self.
Speaker 5: Maybe not improvements the right word, but like self discovery
Speaker 5: and like I don't know nature and leaving a place
Speaker 5: better than you found it. I think it's as simple
Speaker 5: as that. I think it gets really convoluted with other things.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, as you said, I think anyone could
Speaker 5: benefit from learning more. Because I agree. I think what
Speaker 5: you said about forgetting really resonated with me.
Speaker 9: So yeah, I really like that. And like America has
Speaker 9: built on forgetting, like we're supposed to forget, like the
Speaker 9: genocide of indigenous peoples on this land. We're supposed to forget,
Speaker 9: like the horrors of slavery. You're supposed to just forget,
Speaker 9: like even what's happening right now in our country. So
Speaker 9: I think the act of remembering is like has so
Speaker 9: much power to shake like the current moment and to
Speaker 9: bring us to a new place.
Speaker 5: It's ironic that like the biggest slogan of one of
Speaker 5: America's most tragic events is don't forget when you about Yeah, totally,
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, this is the one thing you're gonna say, Yeah,
Speaker 5: let's forget about everything else though, totally.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And it's such like that's our memory. Like in Germany,
Speaker 9: they do have a lot about like memory culture. It's
Speaker 9: like a really like specific term that they have and
Speaker 9: like we don't even have that. Yeah, we don't even
Speaker 9: have that term here in the US.
Speaker 5: Wait, can you explain that to me a little bit,
Speaker 5: if you know, if you know about it.
Speaker 9: So Germany does have like a big like culture around
Speaker 9: like remembering the atrocities of the Holocaust, right, and they
Speaker 9: call it like memory culture. So that's like monuments or
Speaker 9: museums just like how is like World War two discussed?
Speaker 9: How is the Holocaust remembered? And yeah, like they remember
Speaker 9: a lot more than we do, which is ironic and
Speaker 9: also not in some ways. But yeah, we don't even
Speaker 9: have that concept here in the same way of like
Speaker 9: memory culture, like what is our cultural of remembering? And
Speaker 9: and I think obviously there has been some amount of
Speaker 9: that or and like yeah, like indigenous history and like
Speaker 9: Black history in relation to like monuments and Thanksgiving and
Speaker 9: like all of those things, but we don't have like
Speaker 9: really like memory culture like integrated into like a day
Speaker 9: to day existence, and in fact it's obviously being even
Speaker 9: fought against, like in Florida and other places like that.
Speaker 5: Oh, I just love that that idea of memory culture
Speaker 5: in general. I've never heard of that love that so much.
Speaker 5: And I mean just even thinking about it, just as
Speaker 5: we're talking Germany, has they refuse to forget an atrocity
Speaker 5: that they did, right? I think it's it's a little
Speaker 5: bit interesting that in America they've forgotten about the atrocities
Speaker 5: they did and they want to not forget about an
Speaker 5: atrocity that was done to them. So it's almost like
Speaker 5: very victimy of America if you ask me, because it's
Speaker 5: really easy not to get when someone wronged you, but
Speaker 5: I think it's really convenient to forget when you, you know,
Speaker 5: destroy the entire civilization. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: To put it lightly exactly? And I'm not trying to
Speaker 5: say to take nine to eleven lightly at all. I
Speaker 5: think what happened was atrocious and terrible. But when you
Speaker 5: think about memory culture and what Germany is so committed
Speaker 5: to remembering versus America, just a little interesting to me
Speaker 5: now that I think about it, and who committed who
Speaker 5: or who committed what? Rather, Yeah, before I get it
Speaker 5: to Rambley, let's take our first break and we'll be
Speaker 5: right back, and we're back with Amy. Amy. When we
Speaker 5: were talking about recording together, in addition to ancestral healing,
Speaker 5: you talked about the importance of building a diasporus Jewish
Speaker 5: community that has committed to solidarity with Palestinians and other
Speaker 5: marginalized people, generally through an anarchist lens, and also building
Speaker 5: a safe community for Jews outside of Israel to counter
Speaker 5: the rhetoric that the only place that's safe for Jews
Speaker 5: is Israel. And as you said, it generally leads to
Speaker 5: a large focused on anti fascism and cultural reclamation, So
Speaker 5: can you talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: And then there's certain communities that you're a part of
Speaker 5: that I really want to get into, but let's start there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So kind of in this journey, I would say
Speaker 9: of saying, okay, like if we're going to be a
Speaker 9: Jewish antiesionist, so we're going to be Jewish anarchists, Like
Speaker 9: what does that materially look like? Like how do we.
Speaker 5: Put that into practice?
Speaker 9: And so yeah, I kind of honed it on those
Speaker 9: two aspects again of safety and culture, and so a
Speaker 9: lot of my work now is around thinking about, like
Speaker 9: how do we create safety for Jews in the places
Speaker 9: where they are lithid in diaspora? Development into like growing
Speaker 9: to this like Jewish antisigonism and Jewish anarchism, trying to
Speaker 9: understand like what does it mean to like actually put
Speaker 9: this into practice and or what I was thinking of
Speaker 9: that I was trying to think of, like how do
Speaker 9: we create safety for Jews in the places where they
Speaker 9: want to live in diaspora and also create the environment
Speaker 9: where Jewish culture is able to flourish. And that's led me,
Speaker 9: Like you said to developing and supporting and working with
Speaker 9: a lot of Jewish communities that are like committed to
Speaker 9: like anti fascism, committed to solidarity with other marginalized peoples,
Speaker 9: and also really committed to like reclamation of Jewish traditions,
Speaker 9: specifically by like more marginalized people within the Jewish community
Speaker 9: as well. And I really see like those projects as
Speaker 9: like part of my like solidarity work, even though it
Speaker 9: is supporting like Jewish people peoples in the day to day,
Speaker 9: but ultimately it's creating a spaciousness where Jews don't feel
Speaker 9: like they have to like cling on to Zionism in
Speaker 9: the ways that they were before. And I'm really curious
Speaker 9: also of like how to sort of make that practice
Speaker 9: more visible to the general left, because I do like
Speaker 9: a big part of like the book I'm writing, like
Speaker 9: there's a whole section of me talking about what it's
Speaker 9: like to have lived in Pittsburgh like before and after
Speaker 9: the Tree of Life shooting, where I was a teacher
Speaker 9: at the synagogue at the time that had happened. So
Speaker 9: my life was like very impacted by this like really
Speaker 9: like horrible like active violence, like antisemitic violence, And the
Speaker 9: most shocking part was that like anti Semitism was occurring
Speaker 9: before that happened, and it still continued after, like in
Speaker 9: Pittsburgh specifically. So like the question left me with is
Speaker 9: like are we actually addressing like the rise of anti
Speaker 9: Semitism in America today? And that's why I want to
Speaker 9: like really talk about this praxis of like addressing anti
Speaker 9: Semitism and allowing in creating space where Jewish culture can flourish,
Speaker 9: like as a practice that I'm curious for more people
Speaker 9: on the left to understand as like vitally important like
Speaker 9: for Jewish people and also for solidarity with Palestinians too.
Speaker 9: So that's that's my topic that I'm very interested in
Speaker 9: right now.
Speaker 5: No, I love that. I think it's so important what
Speaker 5: you're saying and so necessary to build a community where
Speaker 5: Jewish people feel safe that so yeah, exactly, they don't
Speaker 5: have to cling on to Zionism as a way to
Speaker 5: feel accepted or safe or belong or have belonging anywhere.
Speaker 5: And in that way, it's it's really simple to see
Speaker 5: how that's intertwined with solidarity of Palestinians because it ultimately
Speaker 5: is saying like Israel is all the end, all be all,
Speaker 5: Like we're at the end of the day, people going
Speaker 5: through shit have We have our cultures and we have
Speaker 5: to stick by each other. Maybe that's a little bit elementary,
Speaker 5: but I think what I'm trying to say is I
Speaker 5: really appreciate that you have built this community and are
Speaker 5: so committed to continuing to enrich it and develop it,
Speaker 5: because I think that's so essential, especially just considering like
Speaker 5: the idea of Zionism in the first place, like that
Speaker 5: really pure intention that was there. I think it's okay
Speaker 5: to still live on in certain areas because it was pure.
Speaker 5: It wasn't it wasn't about Israel at all. Israel has
Speaker 5: today rather, Yeah, so can you tell me about this
Speaker 5: organization Rage?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so RAGE is this small collective called that CRADEM
Speaker 9: stands for Rebellious Anarchist Young Jews. In the most basic sense,
Speaker 9: we formed this as like a sort of response to
Speaker 9: like the Zionism that we were experiencing around us, and
Speaker 9: a lot of it, like the word rage being like
Speaker 9: anger of like wow, I can't believe, like this is
Speaker 9: what's being sold to us as like our liberation and
Speaker 9: what it formed into was like after the Tree of
Speaker 9: Life shooting my sibling pretty much text memes like let's
Speaker 9: make this thing happen again, and we started to create
Speaker 9: like more like political like Jewish anarchist like art and
Speaker 9: writing and putting it out on Facebook and people started
Speaker 9: responding to it, and it really felt like a piece
Speaker 9: of like the rising of like a Jewish anarchist movement
Speaker 9: in this country right now, a piece of many, but
Speaker 9: something that kind of was like a light or like
Speaker 9: what's the phrase, like like a bat signal is the
Speaker 9: only way I can put it of. Like, hey, like
Speaker 9: all of you out there who are thinking about like
Speaker 9: what Jewish anarchism might mean, are thinking about like what
Speaker 9: like organizing could look like when it's based on our
Speaker 9: culture and our practices and has like deep reverence for
Speaker 9: that instead of like an embarrassment around our practices. All
Speaker 9: of you who are like creative and artistic, and that's
Speaker 9: your mode of engagement of engaging, like we can come
Speaker 9: together and we can like create something new, and that
Speaker 9: has just like that desire has just grown since then
Speaker 9: and is being reflected and so much organizing right now.
Speaker 9: Enrage itself is like not we're not really doing as
Speaker 9: much as a collective anymore, but definitely that spirit is
Speaker 9: like living on in a lot of like in the
Speaker 9: book and writing, and like the work that my sibling's doing,
Speaker 9: and in a lot of like the artistic creation that's
Speaker 9: happening around Jewish anarchism.
Speaker 5: I love that. That's so cool. I'm really grateful that
Speaker 5: out of something so horrific that you went through, you
Speaker 5: were able to come together with your sibling and almost
Speaker 5: use that as fuel to really come together. I think
Speaker 5: it's really beautiful.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I think that's like that felt like the
Speaker 9: challenge in that moment was like, are we gonna use
Speaker 9: this as a moment to support the police who you know,
Speaker 9: killed the shooter. We're going to use us a moment
Speaker 9: to like buddy up with the politicians who are trying
Speaker 9: to like befriend the Jewish community now all of a sudden.
Speaker 9: Or are we going to use as a moment, like
Speaker 9: a big phrase that was being thrown around in Pittsburgh
Speaker 9: was like safety and solidarity, or we're going to use
Speaker 9: as a moment to like really affirm that message and
Speaker 9: to really like speak to the danger that we are
Speaker 9: feeling as Jews in this country and the resilience that
Speaker 9: we have and the resistance and the revolutionary power we
Speaker 9: have to like sort of call out the systems that
Speaker 9: are creating that. And I'm really grateful, yeah that my
Speaker 9: sibling and others around me were able to like create
Speaker 9: that path through a more revolutionary mode.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh it's important, especially, Yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 5: see your community use as a tool for politics. I
Speaker 5: think having that be a product of such a tragedy
Speaker 5: is shameful, and so fighting against that, I think is
Speaker 5: really necessary to maintain a sense of like reality, to
Speaker 5: be honest, like and not get caught up in like
Speaker 5: whatever reality I don't know, politicians or the media or
Speaker 5: whatever the ship wants you to believe in.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah, So a few years after rage kind of
Speaker 9: continued to grow, I was able to found this community
Speaker 9: center called ret Zone Center for Healing and Resistance in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 5: And it's a.
Speaker 9: Queer Jewish anarchist community center. The only one, believe it
Speaker 9: or not, in the US maybe in the world.
Speaker 5: Also sad, do you know what I mean? Like I
Speaker 5: love it, I also have disappointed it.
Speaker 9: Yes, And it was like obviously a lot of community support,
Speaker 9: Like like i'd say, like I founded it, but it
Speaker 9: was more like I had the ability to like kind
Speaker 9: of pulled people together, pull together a space, get grant money,
Speaker 9: like do that type of work.
Speaker 5: And the idea is really like when we are like.
Speaker 9: In political struggle, we need to resist, but we also
Speaker 9: need to heal. And I think I was just also
Speaker 9: feeling like a lot and this was like in twenty
Speaker 9: nineteen ish, so the like integration of like healing and
Speaker 9: more like therapeutic techniques I felt like into like political
Speaker 9: frameworks like wasn't happening as much at the time as
Speaker 9: I think it is now even and just really claiming
Speaker 9: like we can't do political work without like our like
Speaker 9: healing work, and again like that creating a space where
Speaker 9: we could engage in like anti fascists organizing, we could
Speaker 9: engage in solidarity with other like marginalized people, and we
Speaker 9: could also really honor Jewish tradition and let that be
Speaker 9: like a foundation for us. And yeah, I ended up
Speaker 9: leaving the community this time last year to like pursue
Speaker 9: other things, But it still is existing in Pittsburgh and
Speaker 9: is still like very much like a hub for not
Speaker 9: just Jewish people too, but like a lot of people
Speaker 9: who are engaging in land and resistance work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just I love that it exists and also
Speaker 5: just I was thinking, actually, I'm gonna hold that thought
Speaker 5: and I want to take our second break. Are you
Speaker 5: gonna have to to cut back and see what I
Speaker 5: was gonna say, So enjoy these ads. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 5: I had a coffee of it, and now I'm back.
Speaker 5: I was going to say that I love that all
Speaker 5: those things can be true at the same time, like
Speaker 5: Jewish solidarity and Palestinian solidarity, and remembering and practicing like
Speaker 5: traditional rituals and culture and traditions and practices and all
Speaker 5: this stuff. I think it's nice to remember that all
Speaker 5: of those can be true at the same time because
Speaker 5: I think, especially now, people identify anti Zionism with anti Semitism,
Speaker 5: and I think it's really important to see community of
Speaker 5: Jewish people like embracing their religion and culture and loving
Speaker 5: it and at the same time supporting Palestine, because it's
Speaker 5: just the clearest example of how Zionism is not a
Speaker 5: factor and your love of your culture and and your religion.
Speaker 5: I think it's a really good example of just I
Speaker 5: don't know, demonstrating how much of a falsity that is
Speaker 5: in the first place, to equate those two together when
Speaker 5: really Zionism itself is antismitic. As we mentioned in the
Speaker 5: last episode. I also want to give us plenty of
Speaker 5: time to talk about your work, and as much as
Speaker 5: you want to tell us about your new book, To
Speaker 5: the Ghosts Who Are Still Living, It's out and now
Speaker 5: everybody go get it. It's a book of essays and yeah,
Speaker 5: can you if you want to tell me how you
Speaker 5: came about even starting to write these essays and like
Speaker 5: what motivated you to embark on this journey?
Speaker 8: Yees.
Speaker 9: So I just came out today with this book To
Speaker 9: the ghost to Us Still Living, and it's my first
Speaker 9: book that I've read, and it's pretty much a collection
Speaker 9: of essays that is broken up into three sections. The
Speaker 9: first section is like stories of my ancestors in Eastern
Speaker 9: Europe and their lives and them coming to America and
Speaker 9: like that process. The second section is my stories of
Speaker 9: living in Pittsburgh during the rise of antisepitism. And the
Speaker 9: third section is returning back to my ancestors Shuttle, which
Speaker 9: the village in Lithuania last summer with my sister and
Speaker 9: kind of yeah, grappling with these questions of like do
Speaker 9: I belong here? Like what is this land? Where am
Speaker 9: I from? Like where do I where can I be
Speaker 9: in the world. So I guess like the clearest moment
Speaker 9: of when I felt like I needed to write this
Speaker 9: was during the summer of twenty twenty, and there was
Speaker 9: an incident that I write about in the book of
Speaker 9: Nazis coming to like the anarchist bookstore in Pittsburgh, which
Speaker 9: was like a few blocks from my house at the time,
Speaker 9: and they were I don't even remember like exactly what
Speaker 9: their posters said, but they were handing out these like
Speaker 9: anti anarchists posters that like probably had something anti Semitic
Speaker 9: on them also or just like that vibe was there
Speaker 9: and they were just flying, and the cops came up
Speaker 9: and shook hands with these Nazis and let them stay.
Speaker 5: Wow and but sail out exactly.
Speaker 9: And then the Nazis actually ended up pulling a gun
Speaker 9: on some of the anti fascist protesters who were there
Speaker 9: and didn't actually end up like shooting anyone.
Speaker 8: But.
Speaker 9: That was the scene of what had happened.
Speaker 5: But still the fact that that he whoever that was,
Speaker 5: was able to do that in the cops, any buddy,
Speaker 5: yeah exactly, just to make it more clear how shit
Speaker 5: the cops are totally.
Speaker 9: And so yeah, I just witnessed that all happen, and
Speaker 9: it just kind of felt like the last the last straw,
Speaker 9: I guess, the last thing.
Speaker 5: And I just felt like.
Speaker 9: Kind of ripped open inside realizing that the anti Semitism
Speaker 9: that I had been researching, like in my own family's
Speaker 9: history was like happening right now, like to me in
Speaker 9: this moment, and I just had this feeling that like
Speaker 9: I was like, I don't know if people on the
Speaker 9: left or people in general are like really seeing what's happening,
Speaker 9: you know, really like understanding like the fear that I have,
Speaker 9: like as a Jewish person right now, and I'm not
Speaker 9: sure if people are like understanding that connection to like
Speaker 9: the contemporary fascism that's happening in the US, to the
Speaker 9: fascism that my ancestors experienced. And it made me really sad,
Speaker 9: and it made me like really feel so much pain
Speaker 9: because I just didn't want my family stories to be
Speaker 9: like forgotten or not to be remembered in this moment
Speaker 9: when I think we're trying to understand what's happening in
Speaker 9: this country, and like my family has already gone through
Speaker 9: a lot of what's happened, you know, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 9: we're being attacked now in that way.
Speaker 5: I mean, as far as our history books go, an
Speaker 5: dis Semitism ended when all of us ended, right exactly,
Speaker 5: so in the US, like saved the day.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Exactly. I think that's literally the narrative that a lot
Speaker 5: of people believe in this in this country, which is
Speaker 5: so unfortunate because it just, yeah, it's so what incidents
Speaker 5: like this happen. It's not just like out of the blue.
Speaker 5: It's because there's this lingering hatred and fascism that's been
Speaker 5: there and just growing and evolving and going undetected. Even
Speaker 5: though it's so obvious, it's just become I don't know,
Speaker 5: maybe I was gonna say more subtle, but at this
Speaker 5: point it's not subtle at all. They're very outright about it.
Speaker 9: But I think it's like almost become like normalized, just
Speaker 9: exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: But no, I thank you for sharing that, uh, And
Speaker 5: I I mean I can imagine that potentially this book
Speaker 5: was like maybe healthy process or like heal a little
Speaker 5: bit yourself. Did that happened definitely?
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like at a certain point I was writing these
Speaker 9: essays and I was like, I don't even need to
Speaker 9: do anything with this, Like this has been like the
Speaker 9: most healing project that I've already done, and so like
Speaker 9: also my hope with this book is that the healing
Speaker 9: that it's offered me like perhaps it can offer to others.
Speaker 9: And I've kind of been thinking of it as like
Speaker 9: in Jewish myth, there's like this idea of like a
Speaker 9: golum or a gollum that's like this monster created from
Speaker 9: the mud with like the word Emmett written on its forehead,
Speaker 9: which means truth, and this monster is like raised from
Speaker 9: the mud to protect the Jewish community of Prague against
Speaker 9: anti Semitism.
Speaker 5: WHOA, yeah, it's a really cool story.
Speaker 8: Cool cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So I've kind of been like, oh, I wonder if
Speaker 9: like this book can I kind of be like a gollum,
Speaker 9: you know, like this kind of anti fascists monster mud
Speaker 9: creature made from words that can like offer healing and
Speaker 9: maybe offer some like protection in this moment. So that's
Speaker 9: that's my greatest hope for this book right now.
Speaker 5: That's first of all, sick about the monster. I love that,
Speaker 5: Love that for you, and love that for me everybody.
Speaker 5: It's second, I think that's a beautiful intent and I
Speaker 5: think it one hundred percent will help others heal. And
Speaker 5: even if the person reading it is not Jewish, I
Speaker 5: think it's important to remember and to realize that you
Speaker 5: still have very real fear being a Jewish person living
Speaker 5: in America or anywhere else, you know, because anti Semitism.
Speaker 5: Did it get solved when Hitler shot himself? If I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 5: and so I think this book can help a lot
Speaker 5: of people, and I really encourage everyone to go buy
Speaker 5: it now. We're recording today on August first, and today
Speaker 5: is when it was released, so by the time you
Speaker 5: hear it, it'll be out and ready to be read.
Speaker 5: I just highly encourage you to really dive into Omni's
Speaker 5: work because it's just so important and so healing for everybody.
Speaker 5: Thank you, of course, I really appreciate you taking the
Speaker 5: time to open yourself up and because I know a
Speaker 5: lot of these things have really painful origins and appreciate
Speaker 5: that you're willing to talk about them.
Speaker 9: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And I also hope that like, yeah,
Speaker 9: like this book also can sort of be like a
Speaker 9: window for like leftists who want to like integrate more
Speaker 9: like Jewish history into their anti fascism, that it can
Speaker 9: be like a window for that, and I do hope
Speaker 9: like also that it can like also build bridges with
Speaker 9: like other peoples who have experienced genocide, experience displacement from lands,
Speaker 9: experienced like experience ongoing like fear for their safety where
Speaker 9: they are in the world. And I hope it also
Speaker 9: like sharing like my family stories that like those bridges
Speaker 9: can start to like be built and we can start
Speaker 9: to create more community around that shared history as well.
Speaker 5: To really build strong allyship with the Jewish community. Actually
Speaker 5: understanding what that means and actually understanding what the Jewish
Speaker 5: community is going through and the fears they have. I
Speaker 5: think that is where you have to start. So so yeah,
Speaker 5: I just I'm so glad to have had this conversation
Speaker 5: and I know people will benefit from it, and I
Speaker 5: one percent no people will benefit from your book again,
Speaker 5: that is to the ghosts who are still living. You
Speaker 5: can buy it now through your publisher, which.
Speaker 9: Is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
Speaker 5: Nice, and I'll put all the links in the description
Speaker 5: of the episodes on these website and all the good stuff.
Speaker 5: But yeah, thank you again for joining me today. I'm
Speaker 5: gonna probably drag you back at some point just to
Speaker 5: continue talking to you because You've been lovely.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm happy to be back on.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah I did a good job. If you said that,
Speaker 5: I'm kidding. Do you have any kind of social media
Speaker 5: you want people to follow you at or just the book?
Speaker 5: I do?
Speaker 9: Yes, let me. I'm really bad at social media. I'm
Speaker 9: trying to be better. Okay, you can also follow me
Speaker 9: on Instagram, Ammy Wintraub three. That's a M I W
Speaker 9: E I N T R A U B and the
Speaker 9: number three. And I'm, like I said, like the work
Speaker 9: I'm doing, I hope is like conversation starters, is like
Speaker 9: ways to build connections. So also this was interesting to you.
Speaker 9: Feel free to like reach out and say hey and yeah,
Speaker 9: and my voice is just like one of many on
Speaker 9: this topic. And I hope that, yeah, people continue to
Speaker 9: study and learn and explore the nuances of of what
Speaker 9: I've shared today.
Speaker 5: Thank you And a big reason why I wanted to
Speaker 5: have these conversations and have them as conversations. Stillso illustrate
Speaker 5: that it's possible to talk about these these like Zion
Speaker 5: is a particular which is this very taboo almost like
Speaker 5: weird word to say out loud. Just a lot of people.
Speaker 5: It's really helpful to talk about it casually and openly,
Speaker 5: because that's how we're going to understand it. That's how
Speaker 5: we're going to understand the anti Zionism and why Zionism
Speaker 5: isn't great right now and all this other stuff. So
Speaker 5: I hope that someone took that away and we'll continue
Speaker 5: to have these conversations in their personal lives, because this
Speaker 5: is just a fucking podcast, you know, but real life
Speaker 5: is what matters. So yeah, that's all I have to say.
Speaker 5: Thank you again, you are the best, and go buy
Speaker 5: AMI's book to the Ghost Source to Living Go buy
Speaker 5: it now.
Speaker 1: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 5: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 9: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 9: Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 5: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 9: Thanks for listening.