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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and for the last two years,

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,

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Speaker 1: which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year

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Speaker 1: y'all raised more than twenty one dollars, which was able

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Speaker 1: to purchase one point one million diapers for children and

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Speaker 1: families in need in one um. And this year we're

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Speaker 1: trying to get two dollars raised for the Portland Diaper Bank,

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Speaker 1: which is going to allow us to help even more kids.

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Speaker 1: So UM, if you want to help, you can go

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Speaker 1: to bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank at go fund me.

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Speaker 1: Just type and go fund me b TB Fundraiser for

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Speaker 1: PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go fund Me bTB Fundraiser

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Speaker 1: for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the link in the

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Speaker 1: show notes. Thank you all, Ah, Behind the Bastards. That's

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Speaker 1: how I would say this show's name if we were

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Speaker 1: dry time radio DJs. This life of podcasting with me

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Speaker 1: get up at five am every morning and talk to

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Speaker 1: people on their well it's uh horn dog in the

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Speaker 1: apple here with you do do our morning buts days

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Speaker 1: travel thing. Here's a part sound that could be a Shearine,

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Speaker 1: that could be how we live our lives. Anything for you,

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Speaker 1: Robert Kings, We'll both get greatly addicted to cocaine, I mean,

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Speaker 1: Sharine problematically addicted to cocaine. And then I'll o d

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Speaker 1: and have to go to the hospital, and then I'll

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Speaker 1: become a born again Christian and I'll start another radio

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Speaker 1: show but it's super racist and right wing, and then

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Speaker 1: I'll become a congressman and then the vice president of

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Speaker 1: the United States. That's the logical timeline and route any

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Speaker 1: white man. So I'm gonna that's like like the shirt

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Speaker 1: I wear every day. I'm gonna just pensive. But everybody,

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Speaker 1: we all love we all of our former vice president

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Speaker 1: Michael Pitts. Yeah, bless God, bless well pin that I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're just talking about how God isn't really come on,

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Speaker 1: that's an obvious Joe. We we we we we we.

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Speaker 1: We were just talking about how Charles Taylor has invaded

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Speaker 1: Liberia or is like carrying out a liberation freedom civil

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Speaker 1: war yeada, YadA yda. Anyway, he's got his troops, they're

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Speaker 1: taking more and more of the country. Um, and there's

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Speaker 1: other warlords and there's other people like fighting against the government.

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Speaker 1: Like it's not all Charles Taylor, but his forces are

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Speaker 1: like gradually advancing on the Capitol. And as they advance

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Speaker 1: on the Capitol in April of nineteen ninety, one of

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Speaker 1: the places I was born in April nineteen ninety And

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Speaker 1: when you're a little baby, so recent and well, baby Sharie,

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Speaker 1: Charles Taylor's liberation forces reaching the outskirts of the Firestone

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Speaker 1: rubber plane invasion. Now the guy in charge of it,

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Speaker 1: this dude in Sminger, who's again like the ex pat

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Speaker 1: the white dude who's like running this plantation. Um, he

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Speaker 1: sends out a message to all of the Liberian like

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Speaker 1: the indigenous workers who live on the plantation, and he's like,

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Speaker 1: don't worry, be calm, there's nothing to fear. He says repeatedly, like, UM,

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Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, worried about what's going to happen. Um.

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Speaker 1: The rebels, you know, aren't gonna funk with you. Like

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Speaker 1: everything's fine, keep right on working. Um. Now you want

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Speaker 1: to guess if he's saying the same thing to the

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Speaker 1: ex pats, the white workers who live there with their families.

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Speaker 1: I don't like where this is going, he sends them

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Speaker 1: a confidential letter saying, due to the current unstable political

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Speaker 1: situation in Liberia, we believe it is prudent to plan

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Speaker 1: for the worst case scenario. He tells them to pack

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Speaker 1: emergency supplies to fill up their cars to meet its

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Speaker 1: secret rally points in case of an evacuation uh and

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Speaker 1: he states the information contained in this memo, even the

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Speaker 1: very existence of this memo, should not be discussed with

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Speaker 1: persons covered by it. Um. He also sends home the

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Speaker 1: wives and children of all the ex pats who worked there.

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Speaker 1: So here's the cool thing. They're fine because again, Charles

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Speaker 1: Taylor also not a stupid person. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: He's inventive converse. He did after inventing converse, he invades Liberia,

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Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm not going to murder a bunch

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Speaker 1: of like white people working at the Firestone. That's not

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Speaker 1: good for me. Like that's gonna piss off all of

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Speaker 1: these governments that I don't particularly want angry at me

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Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, because that's like that's the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing that's gonna get dough a bunch of weapons from

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Speaker 1: the whoever, right, Like, you don't want to murder? So

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Speaker 1: he has I don't think you ever had any intention

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Speaker 1: of harming the ex pats working there, just because it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a smart thing to do. But this

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Speaker 1: has become an ethnic war at this point. Right, Doe

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Speaker 1: is massacring the members of ethnic groups that are opposed

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Speaker 1: to him. Uh, Taylor is massacring Krown and members of

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Speaker 1: like other allied like ethnic groups that are allied with

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Speaker 1: Dough in his regime. Right, So when Charles Taylor's forces

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Speaker 1: reach the Firestone plantation, they start picking out all of

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Speaker 1: the people who are members of these groups that are

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Speaker 1: their enemies and massacring them. Quote from Republica. The first

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Speaker 1: person the rebels killed after crossing the river, according to

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Speaker 1: several witnesses, was a mentally handicapped man. He was gunned

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Speaker 1: down in the street. Next, the rebels began hunting down

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Speaker 1: people who belonged to tribes closely associated with the ruling regime.

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Speaker 1: Kevin Estel, a British expatriate who was Firestones agricultural operations manager,

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Speaker 1: recalled seeing piles of dead bodies of Liberians lying outside

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Speaker 1: the Harbell supermarket. He was told the rebels had executed

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Speaker 1: the men in public because they were from a rival tribe.

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Speaker 1: They had been stitched riddled with bullets from May case

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Speaker 1: forty seven, straight up and down their bodies. He said.

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Speaker 1: They were left in the street, their bodies swelling in

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Speaker 1: the sun. So that's good for Firestone, Like, hey, you

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Speaker 1: guys are fine, don't worry about it. White people get

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Speaker 1: the fun out exactly. Pretty messed up, pretty pretty bad stuff. God,

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Speaker 1: white people, Well, I would say, so, I would say,

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Speaker 1: none of that's good behavior. I would say both abandoning

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Speaker 1: your workers, not telling them they're in danger, only protecting

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Speaker 1: the white people. Firestone, Why why don't you know this?

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Speaker 1: I think there are things we do should to Firestone

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Speaker 1: property that would be good. But boycotting, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if that's the most effective thing that could. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I I I've gone there a bunch of times. I

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Speaker 1: don't needn't know this blunt diamond history, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean? Make a molotov out of a Chuck Taylor

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Speaker 1: converse and tucking through the window of a Firestone tire store.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, when Charles Taylor invaded Laboria, his problem. His

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Speaker 1: plan probably was not to spark the building of a

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Speaker 1: series of child militias filled with drug adult and heavily

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Speaker 1: armed kids. But it kind of happens as the invasion proceeds.

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Speaker 1: Right once his forces are in country, they're engaging with

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Speaker 1: those forces, he's running up into shortages of manpower. The

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Speaker 1: decision to arm kids just becomes militarily pragmatic. So at

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Speaker 1: this point Dough has spent like that half decade he's

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Speaker 1: been in power, sending his military two different provinces and

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Speaker 1: killing all of the men he can find, raping most

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Speaker 1: of the women, and then often killing them to write UM.

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Speaker 1: And as a result, there's a shipload of angry, starving

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Speaker 1: orphans in Liberia, you know whose parents got murdered by

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Speaker 1: the regime. Now, if you're Charles Taylor, you're always short

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Speaker 1: of dudes to hand guns. Um, what's a great source

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Speaker 1: of manpower? But a bunch of like twelve year old

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Speaker 1: kids who were piste off because their families died. Um.

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Speaker 1: If anything, they're like, they're potentially more loyal because you're

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Speaker 1: the loyal because the purpose starving and they need an

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Speaker 1: authority figure. Charles Taylor provides both. So he gives these

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Speaker 1: kids guns and he gives them cocaine, UM and other drugs.

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Speaker 1: But cocaine is the big one. Because man let me

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Speaker 1: tell you, I mean, this is just something I've learned

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Speaker 1: a lot. If you want to get a child to

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Speaker 1: fight for you, you've got to give him a lot

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Speaker 1: of cocaine. That's the best way to get kids to

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Speaker 1: fight with you or for you, um whatever, both. Really, so,

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Speaker 1: these kids have been exposed to the culture of human

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Speaker 1: sacrifice and corpse desecration engaged in by the most prominent

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Speaker 1: and powerful adults in their world. Again, these kids grow

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Speaker 1: up seeing all of both, kind of the president's signpost

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Speaker 1: aspects of this, and then after the Civil War they

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Speaker 1: see all of these warlords doing this ship. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're beyond traumatized. Can only there, It's not it's more

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Speaker 1: than traumatized. Certain aspects of this has become normalized. This

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Speaker 1: is what you do in the war. This is what

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Speaker 1: you do to exert power right and to take power

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Speaker 1: for yourself, to protect yourself. These are practices you engage in.

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Speaker 1: So as Taylor's men take more and more of the country,

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Speaker 1: journalists start to see roadblocks manned by small boys units

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Speaker 1: um draping their command posts with the bones and guts

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Speaker 1: of slaughtered enemies and civilians for like ritual purposes to

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Speaker 1: protect themselves. Um. Dough responds in the predictable way by

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Speaker 1: handing guns out to Krawn kids and kids of any

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Speaker 1: other allied ethnic groups in Monrovia and sending them out

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Speaker 1: in ad hoc death squads and platoons to attack Taylor's soldiers,

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Speaker 1: who by late nineteen laying siege to the capital UH.

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Speaker 1: These children that Dough arms in the city become known

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Speaker 1: as the nineteen nineties Soldiers. At one point, they attack

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Speaker 1: a Lutheran church that's filled with members of rival ethnic

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Speaker 1: groups UH, and using axes and machetes, they murder more

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Speaker 1: than six hundred refugees from these kind of ethnic groups

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Speaker 1: that they're seen as being opposed to the president. Um

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Speaker 1: like like kids just massacring six hundred people with axes

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Speaker 1: like and again these are like some of them are

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Speaker 1: like ten little kids. Often. Um. So, Taylor has a

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Speaker 1: lot of initial international support for obvious reasons, but it

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Speaker 1: becomes quickly obvious that he is just as vicious as Dough. Right,

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Speaker 1: there is not a real moral difference between these two dudes. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Liberian expact pet positions like Ellen Surleif, who had supported

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Speaker 1: Taylor initially, quickly dropped him, and she'll get like attacked

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Speaker 1: later on because she helps fund him early the economists.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but also like you know, he didn't start

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Speaker 1: off doing some of the ship he would later do. Um.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not going to weigh in on

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Speaker 1: that too much, but uh so, the good Dough Jackson

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Speaker 1: Doe tries to join up with Charles Taylor's forces at

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Speaker 1: one point, and Taylor like uses him a little bit

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Speaker 1: as like a billboard, like look at us, you know,

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Speaker 1: we're legitimate. This guy really won the election. He's on

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Speaker 1: our side. But then a couple of weeks later, Jackson

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Speaker 1: Doe disappears and nobody knows what happens to him, probably

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Speaker 1: because Taylor's like, well, I don't actually I'm going to

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Speaker 1: be the president. So this guy here, yeah, you're you're

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Speaker 1: not really needed, You're not really useful here. So as

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Speaker 1: all this killing continues um, the world just kind of

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Speaker 1: watches on in shock. Taylor's forces gradually boxed Dough into

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Speaker 1: pretty much just controlling the capital Um, and his overthrow

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Speaker 1: was only halted by the arrival of an international military

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Speaker 1: mission made up by soldiers from West African states. Although

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Speaker 1: Nigeria is basically a d percent of the effort, and

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Speaker 1: it's more or less Nigeria intervening in order to try

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Speaker 1: and have things work out in a way that's best

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Speaker 1: for Nigeria. Right, That's often what you'll hear people claim,

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Speaker 1: at least so because like Dough connected to the US

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Speaker 1: and Nigeria also wants some Yeah, there's a number of reasons.

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna attempt to lay

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Speaker 1: into like, but yeah, this is supposed the International Mission

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Speaker 1: is primarily Nigeria, and it's primarily Nigerian forces. So they

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Speaker 1: set up shop in the capital to like monitor things

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Speaker 1: and try to negotiate a peace between Taylor's forces and

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Speaker 1: the rebel Taylor Taylor's forces and does or the different

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Speaker 1: rebel groups dominated by Taylor and Dough um. But this

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Speaker 1: isn't really doesn't go anywhere because none of the belligerents

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Speaker 1: are really willing to discuss any kind of peace as

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Speaker 1: long as Dough remains in the country and Do is

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Speaker 1: not willing to leave, and so the situation is stymied

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Speaker 1: once again until on September nine, n President Dough gets

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Speaker 1: in his motor cade to visit the International Military Missions

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Speaker 1: headquarters and through a comedic series of errors. He winds

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Speaker 1: up captured by troops from the a f L, which

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Speaker 1: is the party that Charles Taylor is a member of. Now,

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Speaker 1: the a f L splits into at one point, and

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Speaker 1: Taylor is in charge of a bunch of the troops,

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Speaker 1: and then another guy named Prince Johnson, who is a warlord,

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Speaker 1: is like in control. He's like also a major warlord

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Speaker 1: in this period, right, So these guys are in the

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Speaker 1: party that Taylor's affiliated with, but they're under the command

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Speaker 1: of this other warlord, Prince Johnson. And I'm gonna quote

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Speaker 1: from the Liberian Civil Wars. The events that followed were

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Speaker 1: captured on film by a Palestinian journalist representing a Middle

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Speaker 1: Eastern news agency, the result of which was a snuff

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Speaker 1: film that later found its way into circulation all across

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Speaker 1: West Africa. The sequence opens with Prince Johnson seated at

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Speaker 1: a desk, a can of Budweiser beer in his hand

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Speaker 1: and a string of hand grenades slung around his neck.

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Speaker 1: Opposite him, seated on the floor and dressed only in underwear,

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Speaker 1: with his arms and legs tightly bound. With Samuel Doe.

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Speaker 1: A rambling interrogation followed, interspersed with him singing in prayer

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Speaker 1: as Prince Johnson and an audience of his men grew

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Speaker 1: steadily more inebriated. Doe could be heard pleading for his

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Speaker 1: arms to be loosened and appealing for brotherhood, while jeers

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Speaker 1: in general conversation punctuate the background scenes. Then, at a

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Speaker 1: certain point, Johnson thumped the desk and ordered Doe's ear

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Speaker 1: to be cut off. Dough was held down by several

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Speaker 1: men as one man armed with a knife cut off

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Speaker 1: his ears as he wailed and thrashed on the floor,

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Speaker 1: And so it continued. The torture went on between bouts

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Speaker 1: of muddled interrogation and snippets of discussion of Doe's potential

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Speaker 1: to escape despite his condition thanks to his juju power. Death,

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Speaker 1: no doubt, came slowly, and it is generally accepted that

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Speaker 1: he died in the early hours of September ten. So

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Speaker 1: pretty nasty. Also pretty similar to how the last guy

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Speaker 1: goes out to how Dough kills the last press point.

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Speaker 1: That's a very good throwback, Yes, Laberia. At this point,

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Speaker 1: when you've had two presidents get tortured and executed by

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Speaker 1: the guy who takes over after them, that's not a

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Speaker 1: good precedent, right, I thought a good track record. I

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Speaker 1: would say, like, look, the US has had some a

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Speaker 1: complicated history with democracy. I don't want to get up

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Speaker 1: on our high horse, but I think it's fair to

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Speaker 1: say that's not an ideal transition of power. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's not the best way that can go. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just recently remembered how you opened up this entire story

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Speaker 1: about someone named button naked, and I'm so curious how

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Speaker 1: we're to general butt nakeds coming baby, Okay, I would love. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's not as fun a figure as you're thinking right now. Well,

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Speaker 1: I know, you know, because I told you he's not.

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Speaker 1: I know he's not as fun as he sounds. Okay, fine, fine,

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Speaker 1: So you might think this would have been the end

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Speaker 1: of things, hopefully, but obviously the violence just continues. Taylor's

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Speaker 1: victory against Dough sets off a six year period of

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Speaker 1: kind of free for all civil warfare. Now Taylor is

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Speaker 1: in charge in the capital for much of this, but

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Speaker 1: the capital city and a lot of the country gets

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Speaker 1: split up by this patchwork of different militia units. They're

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Speaker 1: all allied to different strong men, all of them call

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Speaker 1: themselves generals. Some of them are in charge of armies

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Speaker 1: that have thousands of guys. Some of them is just

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Speaker 1: like a couple of dozen dudes, right, they all call

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Speaker 1: themselves generals. Most of these guys are pretty young, you're talking,

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Speaker 1: we're talking in like their twenties. Um. Basically none have

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Speaker 1: formal military experience. Some of them had been in the

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Speaker 1: librarian military. A lot of them are just like fucking

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Speaker 1: dudes who joined militias during the early stage of the

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Speaker 1: civil war and wind up you know, in charge of units.

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Speaker 1: Um at this point, are you are you? I know,

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Speaker 1: no one has all the answers. But like it's is

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Speaker 1: Taylor like revered or like, oh, this person's fear because

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Speaker 1: the violence never ends, Like nobody likes Dough But like

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Speaker 1: Taylor's not bringing peace to Liberia. He is definitely very

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Speaker 1: popular members of ethnic groups that had been purged by Dough, right, Um,

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Speaker 1: but that does not obviously the country kind of falls

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Speaker 1: apart into this massive civil war afterwards, so he's not

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Speaker 1: like widely seen as legitimate you know, um, and of

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Speaker 1: all these different warlords and generals and whatnot. Basically, since

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Speaker 1: they don't have much in the way of military experience,

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Speaker 1: their understanding of war and how to prosecute. It comes

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Speaker 1: from American action movies. Um, it's a mix of like,

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Speaker 1: it's a mix of American action movies. The own like

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Speaker 1: the trauma they remember from being like twelve and seeing

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Speaker 1: the early days of the war, right uh, and then

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Speaker 1: myths they kind of remember from childhood about like different

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Speaker 1: Indigenous practices, and as an adult they adopt noms to

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Speaker 1: gear for themselves that are a dizzying mix of awesome

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Speaker 1: and nonsense. Famous rebel leaders included General Chuck Norris, General

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Speaker 1: one Ft Devil, General Mosquito, General Mosquito Spray, and of

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Speaker 1: course the guy we're going to spend most of this

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Speaker 1: episode discussing General butt naked. So that's where that of course,

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Speaker 1: it's a child fucking Yeah, they're fucking like kids may

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Speaker 1: there like I mean like twenty or something, but like

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Speaker 1: they were kids when the fighting started. In many cases,

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Speaker 1: I think it's you would most likely get stunted at

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Speaker 1: that age, you know what I mean. There's only so

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Speaker 1: much yeah, and developing you do when you're so your

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Speaker 1: traumatie so young, and so I don't know, Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is by the time Taylor's in power. This is a

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Speaker 1: civil war that's being fought by kids who probably don't

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Speaker 1: have a ton of memories from before ship started to

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Speaker 1: go really get really violent through things. Yeah, so, General

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Speaker 1: butt Naked's real name was Joshua Milton blacky Uh. He

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Speaker 1: was born on September nineteen seventy one as a member

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Speaker 1: of the Sarpo tribe. One source I found, the credibly

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Speaker 1: named mysterious universe dot Org give this gives this description

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Speaker 1: of his upbringing. And obviously I'm going to explain why

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Speaker 1: this is largely bullshit, but I want to read this

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Speaker 1: because it gives you an idea of how kind of

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Speaker 1: like popularly and more in like less credible, but like

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Speaker 1: main not mainstream, but like one of the ways, like

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Speaker 1: the way in which people talk about this guy's background

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Speaker 1: most commonly, even though it's not accurate. Quote. As he

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Speaker 1: grew he was just another boy, like so many in

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Speaker 1: the world. Somewhat rebellious, yes, but there was no clue

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Speaker 1: as to the darkness and atrocities that ahead on his

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Speaker 1: path to the future. His childhood would diverge from the

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Speaker 1: norm when, at the tender age of eleven, he was

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Speaker 1: made a tribal priest after an initiation ceremony in the forest.

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Speaker 1: Lay would claim during his initiation ritual, he had a

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Speaker 1: strange and terrifying vision in which he says the devil

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Speaker 1: came to him and proclaimed him to be a great

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Speaker 1: warrior who could gain vast supernatural power if only he

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Speaker 1: were to practice cannibalism and perform human sacrifices, and his

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Speaker 1: life would change dramatically after this. Now these are lies. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Joshua Milton Lay General Butt Naked is a huge liar.

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Speaker 1: The mysterious universe thing is based heavily on a book

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Speaker 1: that he wrote after he became a born again Christian.

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Speaker 1: His book titled The Redemption of an African war Lord

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Speaker 1: is a pretty standard redemption narrative. You see a lot

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Speaker 1: of evangelical I used to be a Satanic priest, sacrifice

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Speaker 1: in babies and then a huge thing and like especially

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Speaker 1: during like this actually this exact period, the Satanic panic

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Speaker 1: is hitting in the United States, and you're getting a

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Speaker 1: lot of these like people being like, oh, I was

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Speaker 1: a devil wor shipper and then I found Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 1: Blaye's narrative is like the same thing. One of the

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Speaker 1: differences though, that he absolutely murders a little kid. He

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Speaker 1: kills a shipload of people and does a bunch of

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Speaker 1: like anyway, so what you're saying is he runs this website. No, no,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of based on Yeah. So Blahie claims

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Speaker 1: to have engaged from an early age in elaborate nightmare

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Speaker 1: acts of child sacrifice to gain powers, like even as

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Speaker 1: a little kid. He says he's doing this as the

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Speaker 1: priest um and true, like, well no, because he's not

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Speaker 1: a child priest um but committing but like he's doing

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Speaker 1: up things as an adult. He is claiming that at

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Speaker 1: age eleven, he becomes a priest and learns human visits

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Speaker 1: by the devil and starts sacrificing people. That's pretty certainly

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Speaker 1: not true. There's basically one good article about this guy

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Speaker 1: that I found. It's called The Greater the Center. It's

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Speaker 1: in the New Yorker. It's written by Damon tabor Um

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Speaker 1: and a lot of report orders who aren't Tabor kind

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Speaker 1: of taken in and charmed by blah He He's a

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Speaker 1: very charming guy. Tabor talked to his family though, and

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Speaker 1: among other things, he pretty easily punctures the myth that

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Speaker 1: Blahi was some sort of child murder priest. Quote Harrison

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Speaker 1: shine Challer, another of Blahi's half brothers told me that

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Speaker 1: he had been unaware of Blahi's life as a priest.

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Speaker 1: As far as Chader knew, Blai was merely a rebellious youth.

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Speaker 1: Their mother would give him money to buy food for

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Speaker 1: the family, and he would disappear into the streets of

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Speaker 1: Monrovia for weeks at a time. He left school after

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Speaker 1: the third grade and later sold kool aid and chicken

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Speaker 1: soup at a local market wearing a purple necktie, purple shirt,

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Speaker 1: purple trousers, and purple shoes so people would recognize him.

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Speaker 1: He then moved on to drug trafficking and robbery. Sometimes.

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Speaker 1: Chader said he and Blaihie worked together. A Nigerian soldier

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Speaker 1: once asked Blahi to help him gain spiritual powers. Blai

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Speaker 1: prescribed a witchcraft treatment, an enema, and while the soldier

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Speaker 1: was indisposed, Chader stole his money. So this I think

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Speaker 1: is a more credible version of his back story. He

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Speaker 1: is a con man, he knows how do He's always

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Speaker 1: thinking about an angle. He wants to make money, um

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Speaker 1: and I think he will get into this more later,

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Speaker 1: but I think he adopts this very American Christian but

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Speaker 1: although not just because Liberian Christianity has a lot in

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Speaker 1: common with like the Revival bat like all, you see

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Speaker 1: a lot of the same things over there, these Revival meetings,

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00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:20,399
Speaker 1: speaking and tongues, they have as much acclaim to it

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Speaker 1: as Americans do. Obviously, um because again there started out

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Speaker 1: as a colony. But that's what he's doing. When you

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Speaker 1: hear about these crazy stories of like him sacrificing babies

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Speaker 1: from magical powers, that's what he's doing. He is also

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Speaker 1: as a warlord, as we're gonna get to, he commits

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Speaker 1: a lot of crimes against humanity. Do not get me wrong.

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00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:45,320
Speaker 1: This is a very complicated story for that reason. So again,

398
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: in order to puncture his claims about his early life,

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00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:51,960
Speaker 1: um Tabor also goes on to note that while witchcraft

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Speaker 1: and human sacrifice are a part of some indigenous beliefs

401
00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:58,119
Speaker 1: in West Africa, nothing like the sort of child priesthood

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00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:00,960
Speaker 1: that Blahie describes, where he's like to be the tribe

403
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:03,719
Speaker 1: priest at eleven and has to carry it sacrifice, nothing

404
00:22:03,800 --> 00:22:06,560
Speaker 1: like like. Anthropologists have found no evidence of anything like

405
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:11,359
Speaker 1: that existing in indigenous societies and like communities in Liberia.

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00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:14,879
Speaker 1: Quote David Brown, a social anthropologist who has worked in

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Speaker 1: Liberia since the nineteen seventies, said that he had never

408
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,439
Speaker 1: heard of a secret society that matches Blahi's description. I

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00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,160
Speaker 1: spoke with many other experts who agreed. One called Blahi's

410
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 1: story ludicrous. And again, part of what he's playing on

411
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Speaker 1: here is the fact that white people are willing to

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Speaker 1: believe any kind of ship. Can you tell about this stuff?

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00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:33,680
Speaker 1: You say, like, that's why it's so many people bought

414
00:22:33,680 --> 00:22:35,359
Speaker 1: into it. It was like, oh my god, that's what

415
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:38,800
Speaker 1: these cultures are crazy and it's savage. Of course that

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00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: would happen. And you know what else, White people are

417
00:22:41,359 --> 00:22:46,199
Speaker 1: always willing to believe in, Sharon. Yeah, capitalism and the

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00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast all backed heavily

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Speaker 1: by white people. Oh god, So that was I mean,

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00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:57,600
Speaker 1: that was too real. I mean I did not enjoy

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Speaker 1: that at all at all times. Sometimes things happen and

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00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:10,880
Speaker 1: they can't be stopped. We're back from ADS, so we're

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Speaker 1: talking about Milton Blah He So Blaghi now claims that

424
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 1: when Sergeant Doe took control, and this is again I'm

425
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:19,920
Speaker 1: gonna be talking a lot about things he claims about

426
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:22,480
Speaker 1: his back story. I will tell you when it's true.

427
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:24,720
Speaker 1: I think it's true. Okay, right. So one of the

428
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:27,680
Speaker 1: things Blah claims is that when Sergeant Doe took control

429
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: of the country right back in the eighties, he was

430
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:35,760
Speaker 1: Doe's official spiritual advisor. That's already sounds like absolutely there's

431
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:38,160
Speaker 1: no evidence of this. A lot of casual write ups

432
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:40,960
Speaker 1: of of of General Butt Naked will say it will

433
00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:43,639
Speaker 1: either just say that he was or that he sometimes

434
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: they'll say he claims. I don't think they have put

435
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: enough emphasis on the fact that, like, there's no fucking

436
00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:52,439
Speaker 1: evidence of this. Um. One source claims he did black

437
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 1: magic to help doughe win election or re election, which

438
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 1: is not true. Dough did not win re election. He

439
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: burned people's ballots and men of genocides. UM. I don't

440
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: know he was. He does get affiliated with Dough at

441
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: some point. It's not impossible they did some sort of

442
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: like together. But the idea that like he was his

443
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: spiritual I just have not seen hard evidence of it. Um.

444
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 1: But to give you an idea of more of the

445
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: lurid claims made about Blahi during the Dough period of

446
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:23,360
Speaker 1: time in Liberia, I'm gonna quote again from Mysterious Universe

447
00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 1: dot org you can tell that's a credible site. Yeah,

448
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: he would get involved. Is a high priest of a

449
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 1: secret cult that practiced black magic. Human sacrificed and worshiped

450
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: a god called nyanbe Awe, who he believed was actually

451
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 1: the Devil. During this time, he claims he regularly talked

452
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:41,959
Speaker 1: to the Devil, as well as displayed many supernatural powers

453
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 1: such as invisibility, flight, and immunity to bullets, and he

454
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 1: was already accustomed to the sight of blood due to

455
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: the monthly sacrifices he helped carry out. But it would

456
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: not be until Civil War came to Liberia that he

457
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: would truly carve out his legacy as a ruthless, frightening

458
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: force to be reckoned with and truly earned his moniker

459
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: the most evil man in the world. He just made

460
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: himself to like a superhero villains. Yeah, he kind of does. Yeah,

461
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: that's absurd, and he has a really bad dude, don't

462
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,120
Speaker 1: get me wrong, But like we'll we'll continue. So when

463
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: it comes to the question of what did this guy

464
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 1: actually do right, what is his real background, things are

465
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: a lot murkier. Many sources will say that he will

466
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: kind of just because he calls himself a general. Will

467
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 1: assume he was a major military leader. He was certainly

468
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: well known. Um he was infamous within the city of Monrovia,

469
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:29,879
Speaker 1: which is where he was active right and where a

470
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: lot of the fighting is occurring. A lot of people

471
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:36,359
Speaker 1: were knew him in Monrovia. But basically all good documented

472
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: evidence of him as the warlord General butt Naked is

473
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 1: pretty much just nineteen right now. He's fighting. He's involved

474
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:46,919
Speaker 1: in different militias to some extent prior to that, but

475
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:49,640
Speaker 1: really his his career is butt Naked is like one

476
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:54,679
Speaker 1: year now, that's when something like that. Yeah, Now, based

477
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:56,959
Speaker 1: on what his brother said, we can assume he probably

478
00:25:57,000 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: spends the early year like while Doe is in power,

479
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:03,399
Speaker 1: he's probably mostly like smuggling drugs, doing some mid levels

480
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: scams and crimes. He's he's not Krown, but he's like

481
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 1: an ethnicity that is kind of allied with Doze, with

482
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,680
Speaker 1: the Krown, with like Dose people. So he does when

483
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: when the civil war starts, he joins a militia that's

484
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: allied with Doze political party and he fights on that

485
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: side of the conflict of Taylor. So he's on the

486
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,120
Speaker 1: losing side of the initial stage of the Civil War

487
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: right uh. And when Doe gets killed, Blighi joins a

488
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 1: militia called the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy,

489
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: which is made up of former soldiers in Doe's army

490
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: and other kron Um. Charles Taylor is the big enemy

491
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:40,239
Speaker 1: that Blaggie and all of his fellows were fighting, and

492
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,280
Speaker 1: by the mid nineteen nineties, Taylor had turned the process

493
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: of making child soldiers into something of a science. Taylor's

494
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 1: Small Boys units numbered thousands of kids and were made

495
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,640
Speaker 1: up mostly of orphans who swore allegiance to Popeye as

496
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: they called him, like Papaye, like Papa Uh, and he

497
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: would have to prove and he would have some prove

498
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:01,360
Speaker 1: their loyalty by killing their parents. Because they were so

499
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 1: loyal and impressionable and drugged up, they made excellent shock troops.

500
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: From a write up in pro Publica, he presented himself

501
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: as a Baptist who neither smoke nor drank. A mesmeric speaker,

502
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 1: he would appear before adoring crowds dressed in fine white linen,

503
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:17,880
Speaker 1: spouting promises of democracy jobs in better days. At other

504
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 1: times he wore camouflage and carrying an AK forty seven.

505
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 1: He would talk to the radio to announce the impending

506
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: capture of a nearby town than magically do it. For

507
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: many in Liberia, the spirit world remains close at hand.

508
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: In such a place, Taylor became something more than a man, mystical, powerful, otherworldly.

509
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: So this is the guy that blah he is is

510
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: fighting against. Right, So he starts in the mid nineteen nineties,

511
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: it's probably I don't think I'm not gonna say he

512
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:45,439
Speaker 1: was only butt naked for a year. But like he

513
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: starts to like go from just being a guy involved

514
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: in the Civil War to a militia leader in kind

515
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: of the mid nineties, when he starts recruiting children himself. Um,

516
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 1: mostly kids who are like nine to ten, some who

517
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: are like older in their teens, but like a lot

518
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: of the kids, he's recruiting our little kids, um. And

519
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 1: he has them fight naked, and he fights naked, um blah.

520
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: He claimed that this was because being naked made his

521
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 1: magical powers more effective. He could go invisible and he

522
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,119
Speaker 1: could avoid bullets more easily. And one thing people will

523
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: point out is that like he legitimately was fighting in

524
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 1: a bunch of battles naked. There's video of him naked

525
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: with guns and like fighting killing people with machetes and stuff,

526
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: and he doesn't get shot like he is. It's one

527
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: of those things. Um, you can see how a mystique

528
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: builds around this guy because yeah, he and his kids

529
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 1: are fighting nude, but also like they're winning a lot

530
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: of the time, you know, and these like these are

531
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: like street fights with guts very low, like not we're

532
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: not talking like tanks and ship fighting each other. Helps

533
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: his narrative being like he doesn't need well they don't have.

534
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a bit. So he and

535
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: a soldiers will fight nude. They're also he's mashing cocaine

536
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: up into the foods of these kids in his unit

537
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 1: to like make them fight better. I really feel for

538
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: all these children that work. It's horrible. Yeah. Um, and

539
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:03,479
Speaker 1: the massacre the ship out of anyone they see as

540
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:06,479
Speaker 1: an enemy right up from ABC notes blah. He had

541
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: a reputation for being more brutal than other military leaders.

542
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: Everyone knows his nom de gear General butt Naked. He

543
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: was a cannibal who prefers to who preferred to sacrifice

544
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: babies because he believed their death promised the greatest amount

545
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: of protection. He went into battle naked, wearing only sneakers

546
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: and carrying a machette because he believed it made him

547
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: invulnerable and he was in fact never hit by a bullet.

548
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: His soldiers would make bets on with her, a pregnant

549
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 1: woman was carrying a boy or girl, then they would

550
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: slit open her belly to see who was right. And

551
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: you know, these are things Blai claims a lot of.

552
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: It's certainly true. He has soldiers who kill a shitload

553
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: of women and children. Also that slitting up in the

554
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: belie a pregnant Roman. You hear that a lot, as

555
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: like claims of war crimes and stories, and often like

556
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which they did it.

557
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: It is something he claims a lot of things. He claims.

558
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: There lies that said. They do stuff that's on that level,

559
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: that's documented, that's on that level of horrible. So it's

560
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 1: not out of the question either. Um, we have footage

561
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: and photos of him naked and wielding rifles and machetes.

562
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 1: Foreign journalists reported on what he did. He's he was

563
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: really doing some of this stuff. Numerous Liberian civilians since

564
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: the war have talked to breast To, have talked to

565
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 1: press about how he do stuff like shoot off their

566
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: legs with his handgun or machete their husband to death,

567
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 1: kill their brothers and sisters by hacking them to pieces. Um. So,

568
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: like again, this is very much like a lot of

569
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,040
Speaker 1: those traditional evangelical Christian narratives where they will like luridly

570
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,440
Speaker 1: claimed to have been doing horrible satanic ship. But like,

571
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: also he did a bunch of that, like we do know,

572
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: like he's not making all of this up. A lot

573
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: of it's documented. It's just that there's a lot of

574
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: like lurid occult stuff that isn't so much document that

575
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: is more questionable. Anyway, years later, while he was testifying

576
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 1: at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which we'll talk about

577
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: more later, he claims that how he talked about how

578
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: he would um he called it planting violence in his

579
00:30:56,720 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: child soldiers, how he would radicalize them to fight for him. Um.

580
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: And the way he would do this is he would

581
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: show them American action movies like Rambo and Ship and

582
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: a lot of these movies different Hollywood movies. Right, You'll

583
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: see the same actors in multiple movies, right, and you'll

584
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: die in one movie and then that act will be

585
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 1: back as a character another movie, right, So he would

586
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: show them multiple movies where like kind of the same

587
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: actors are playing extras, are bad guys and get killed

588
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: and then they're back alive in another movie. And he

589
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: would explain to these kids that, like, real war works

590
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: the same way. So if you kill people, they're going

591
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 1: to come back somewhere else. What he called tells them

592
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: war is just an act. You're just playing a role

593
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: like these like Rambo, you know, So it's not real,

594
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: so we can do whatever, you know. Um. He also

595
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 1: testifies that when he shot and wounded enemies, he'd have

596
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: his child soldiers cut them to pieces in order to

597
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 1: desensitize them. Then they would eat and share the heart.

598
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: So that's not great for a better idea of the

599
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 1: kind of war crimes this guy and his boys got

600
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: up to. I'm going to quote again from that ABC article,

601
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: and this is based on interviews with a young woman

602
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: who Black he met with after the war to apologize

603
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: for murdering her family. Part of why I'm reading this

604
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: is like, we can we know this is a true

605
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: Like again, a lot of claims he's making aren't true.

606
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 1: His victim is alive, like we can talk to her

607
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: That's why I'm reading this because this is one that

608
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: we know is one of the things. So are you

609
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: saying like he apologized when he was like doing his

610
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: Christian ship. We're getting to that. I want to give

611
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 1: you an idea of one of the verified war crimes

612
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: we know that he was doing. A group from the

613
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 1: Kron tribe was searching for enemies within the country, which

614
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: in a civil war consists of member of another tribe.

615
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: Her older brother, Daniel, was hiding a nanny from the

616
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 1: Geo tribe who had been working for the family for years.

617
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: It'll be okay, the mother said. Faith heard the screams

618
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: outside the huts as the men approached. Suddenly she saw

619
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: a naked man with only a machete in his hand.

620
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: Why is the man naked, she wondered. Then she saw

621
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: the other men, about twenty five of them as she

622
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: estimates today, carrying guns. They had heard there was a

623
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: Geo woman in the village. Daniel stood in front of

624
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: the nanny to protect her. She is a human being

625
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: like you and me, he said to Blaghi Blagh. He

626
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: responded with an order. One of the boys stepped forward

627
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 1: and shopped off her brother's foot. Then he hacked off

628
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: his lower leg, followed by his thigh in his hip,

629
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: methodically working his way up to up the body. Eventually,

630
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: her brother fell silent. Blai told everyone to lie on

631
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: the ground. His men raped her mother and her sisters

632
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 1: and then killed them. Gway says, they didn't rape her,

633
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: but they did. They didn't rape me, but they did

634
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 1: things to me I don't want to talk about. They

635
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: left me with a blinish that I will always have.

636
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: At some point, Bla, you said that things were moving

637
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: too slowly and that there were other military operations to

638
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: attend to. That was when he began to participate. So again,

639
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: to be clear, we're talking about he makes a lot

640
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: of claims I don't think happened. This guy is doing

641
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: some like nightmarish crimes against humanity, um, real bad stuff.

642
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: So yeah, so, oh my god, it's I don't know.

643
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: The things that humans are capable of truly are just

644
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 1: mind melting. And the thing is you you could say

645
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: that if one person capable of that, than we all are,

646
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: right if it's like, if that's what what I just

647
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: m hmm. We're not all capable of physically participating in

648
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: mass murder and rape, but we're all the people of

649
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: we're all for one thing. We're all capable of supporting

650
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 1: the people who do that, which is really one of

651
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: the stories that's most important from the Holocaust exactly. No,

652
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of sorry, no, no, no, I'm

653
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: just baffled by I mean, I I know humans have

654
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,240
Speaker 1: done horrible things since the dawn of humans, but it's

655
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: it's still so unsettling to me to really wrap the

656
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: head around what that means we are. It's one of

657
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: those things. You One of the worst crimes in the

658
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:41,760
Speaker 1: Holocaust was the Bobby r massacre. I think like thirty

659
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,799
Speaker 1: thousand Jewish people are shot to death in a single

660
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: day by by a German forces UM. A horrific, horrific act,

661
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: probably the biggest mass shooting um of of people in history. UM.

662
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: In the same war, the United States Air Force incinerates

663
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: between like eight and a and fifty people in a

664
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: single night in Tokyo, knowingly killing civilian, knowing that that's

665
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: most of who will die as civilians, that we're going

666
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:11,320
Speaker 1: to burn them to death by the tens of thousands, UM.

667
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 1: Which of those is a worse war crime. Well, people

668
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:15,799
Speaker 1: have strong opinions on that, but at the end of

669
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: the day, both of them are the targeted killing of civilians. UM.

670
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: For different purposes, one could argue, but both are military

671
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:28,799
Speaker 1: forces using military grade weaponry to massacre civilians by the

672
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 1: tens of thousands. UM. It's a thing that every side

673
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: in a sufficiently large war, every side finds a reason

674
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: to justify and and so I think, as lurid as

675
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 1: the crimes of these Liberian warlords are, you get so

676
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,399
Speaker 1: many breathless descriptions of guys like butt naked, murdering little

677
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 1: kids and raping women, all these horrible things that happened

678
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: that are worth documenting and worth discussing, but they often

679
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 1: get talked like they are somehow separate from the kinds

680
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: of war crimes that we endorse. And I don't think

681
00:35:57,160 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: they are. I think the the targeting and killing and

682
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:06,839
Speaker 1: torturing and raping of civilians UM is bad, whether it's

683
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: being done using missiles or being done by a man

684
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: with a rifle going face to face. I don't I

685
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: don't think that the separation, or that we we trade

686
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: one kind of massacre for another makes a tremendous mortal

687
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: difference to me. When you're still killing civilians now, I

688
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: agree with that. That's a good reminder. Yeah. Sometimes I

689
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: get like one of the arguments is that we usually

690
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: when we kill civilians it's an accident. Like that guy

691
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: you have family of tin in Afghanistan, right, he wanted

692
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: to rape and murder these people. We didn't want to

693
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,759
Speaker 1: kill that family. We just fucked up. And it's like, Okay,

694
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: I don't know how you want to apportion out the

695
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: morality of that, you know, totally. I just think that's

696
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 1: we'rekill ignorance and just like, what's just it's just, uh,

697
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: if you still believe some of that bullshit and after

698
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: all this technology and all these things you can make,

699
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 1: and it's we can sit at home and like debate

700
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 1: which those is more or less a moral act. I

701
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 1: don't know that it matters to the people getting blown

702
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 1: up exactly, you know, um, but whatever. Like I just

703
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: state this because it frustrates me when like the fighting

704
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:15,839
Speaker 1: in Liberia and the brutality of it is seen as

705
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 1: something exceptional rather than this is what happens when there

706
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: are civil wars. That's very true, and maybe it's more

707
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: digestible when things are just large numbers versus like this

708
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 1: happened to this person and you can visualize it in

709
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:33,320
Speaker 1: your head, right, or it's like a like a village

710
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: of people. It doesn't really. It's when I when I

711
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: read a story like that of him killing this family

712
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: and repeatedly raping the women and having his soldiers do it,

713
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 1: that is horrific and uh, deeply painful to hear in

714
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 1: a way that if I say, a US air strike

715
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: killed a family of eleven exactly doesn't sound Now if

716
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: I were to describe to you what shrapnel does to

717
00:37:56,320 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: the bodies of little children, perhaps you would have that

718
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:03,480
Speaker 1: reaction to the email about what that bombing did to

719
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: the bodies of these people. Yeah, exactly. But it's just

720
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 1: like sometimes, especially now, we just hear all these like

721
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,720
Speaker 1: eighteen casualties and Palestine or whatever, and it's like we're desensitized,

722
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: does that mean? And we get these stories because there

723
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 1: they seem foreign and terrifying, like they're doing magic and

724
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: they're these drug adult warlords doing these horrible things. And

725
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: that's again this he is committing unfathomably brutal crimes in

726
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: the on the same level of her horribleness as any

727
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: like Nazi Einsets groupa member carried out any of these

728
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: guys slaughtering their way through Russia. Like, I don't mean

729
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: to mitigate what he's doing at all. I just hate

730
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: that it is often portrayed as somehow separate from the

731
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 1: history of Western warfare. We hear you, and I think

732
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't. I didn't see it as you

733
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 1: mitigating anything. I think it's just a good reminder to

734
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 1: just if you think this is bad, realize that it's suggested.

735
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: But if this is also not unique. So lay would

736
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: later claim that his general butt naked, he used human

737
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: sacrifice and cannibalism to gain magic powers. Quote every town

738
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: I entered, they would give me the chance to do

739
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 1: my human sacrifices, which included innocent children. He elaborated. Anytime

740
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 1: we captured a town I had to make a human sacrifice,

741
00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 1: they bring me a living child that I slaughter and

742
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: take the heart out to eat it. I'm perfectly winn

743
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: to believe this happened. Sometimes in this worth noting. I've

744
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:28,479
Speaker 1: read a lot of accounts that journalists have had Because

745
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: he's now that he's for like apologized, he goes around

746
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: and talks to his victims to try to get like,

747
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: we'll get into that more later. Um, all of their

748
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: stories are horrible. They're like the one I read earlier.

749
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 1: I have not run into any of them talking about like, yeah,

750
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 1: we had to he sacrificed an infant in my village

751
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: or something like that. That's all from him as opposed

752
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 1: to the things that like his victim so I I

753
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 1: don't know how true it is. It was a thing

754
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:57,240
Speaker 1: he did sometimes, but he's exaggerating how often it happened,

755
00:39:57,440 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: like very unclear. It's just weird to me that, Like,

756
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:01,320
Speaker 1: I can come up with a lot of stories of

757
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:03,359
Speaker 1: fund up ship we knew this guy did, and none

758
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: of them are like that kind of stuff. But whatever. Um,

759
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: he did definitely kill a lot of civilians. He was

760
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: definitely into like magic kind of stuff, which is not

761
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 1: a lot of Liberian warlords are doing different kind of

762
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,319
Speaker 1: witch doctor kind of stuff. It's usually framed right. Um.

763
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: In the years since Blah, he has attempted to make

764
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:24,799
Speaker 1: amends with his victims. Uh, and overwhelmingly I think most

765
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 1: of them are men and boys, although a lot of

766
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 1: them are especially a lot of the people he does

767
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: violence to that's not murder our women. Um. There are

768
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 1: two ways you can look at his lurid claims of

769
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: committing wartime atrocities. Either he did everything he said and

770
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 1: literally believed he was engaging in witchcraft and gaining powers,

771
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: or he was making a very rational decision based on

772
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: elements of the local culture and battlefield efficacy. For one thing,

773
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,920
Speaker 1: people in this culture, because of what everyone else has

774
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: been doing, our prime to take seriously some of these

775
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: signifiers of being involved in witchcraft, being a witch doctor

776
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: and whatnot, so they make people take you more seriously. Um. Also,

777
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: if other people who are seen as powerful are doing

778
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 1: sacrifices and engaging in cannibalism, than engaging in that too

779
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 1: makes you like he's fighting Charles Taylor, and there's forces

780
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: are doing stuff like this, and this makes this allows

781
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: him to like like you have to build yourself up

782
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: into it, like in a mythic sense, something as formidable

783
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: as what you're fighting, right, you're not getting shot by bullets. Yeah,

784
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 1: it's just like it's also it's worth noting in a

785
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: in fighting like what's happening in Liberia, fighting naked does

786
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: not expose you to much more danger than fighting with

787
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 1: clothing on. This is not a war. This is before

788
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 1: people outside of like very advanced militaries have ready access

789
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: to quality body armor, right, it just does not exist

790
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: for most people in this fighting and a T shirt

791
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: offers no more protection from a bullet than than being naked.

792
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,839
Speaker 1: And in fact, one thing like this is from there

793
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:00,320
Speaker 1: were there have been forces who fought naked earlier in history.

794
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was noted is like, well,

795
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: when they would get stabbed or shop, they were less

796
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 1: likely to die because they're not having like a filthy,

797
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 1: matted fur or something pushed into an open wound which infections.

798
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:14,879
Speaker 1: And this is also there's not a lot of great

799
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: access to medical care. So it's not it sounds wacky

800
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: and crazy, it's not as irrational a decision as it

801
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: may see. And also seeing a naked dude charging, he

802
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: was terrified as he gains a reputation from being not

803
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: being able to be killed, that benefit that makes people

804
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:35,880
Speaker 1: less likely to fight him. People will tell stories that

805
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,440
Speaker 1: like whole towns would flee when you hear General butt

806
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 1: naked is coming because he's a fucking dangerous, crazy person.

807
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: You want to get the funk out of there, right,

808
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 1: And that's a benefit for him. Like so again, as

809
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,800
Speaker 1: as wild as all this sounds there are very rational

810
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: reasons for everything he's doing in addition to whatever he

811
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: does happen to believe. Um. Yeah, And so again that's

812
00:42:57,400 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: just important to note that, like all of the stuff

813
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: that is most lurid about, this makes a kind of

814
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 1: sense as a cold blooded military calculation. Um yeah, it's

815
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: a force multiplier, right. Um, it's like drifting. It's like

816
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: a different form of like just like how just conning

817
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: people in a much more intense violent way. What I think,

818
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 1: what I want to point out is again you get

819
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: a lot of ableism this with people who describe behavior

820
00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: like what he's doing, like taking cocaine and fighting naked,

821
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 1: as insane and like this is extremely sane. He is

822
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: very much acting within the strictures of the society that

823
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:36,319
Speaker 1: has devolved in Liberia over wartime, and his actions are

824
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 1: perfectly rational within the context that he lives. Um. And

825
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: part of the evidence for that is he survives the war.

826
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: So um. And I tend to think he is a

827
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 1: pretty calculating guy. Um. You know, I mean, unfortunately, he's

828
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: not stupid. It sounds like you know, yeah, no, you

829
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: have to Yeah, he's he's he I think he was

830
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: pretty pragmatic dude. So Blah. He now claims that his

831
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 1: career as General butt Naked ended after a battle on

832
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,320
Speaker 1: April sixth, or in some versions, right before a battle

833
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:11,760
Speaker 1: to take a bridge in in like April of nineteen

834
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: and he has this vision. And I'm gonna quote from

835
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: a write up in The New Yorker. I met Jesus

836
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: there for the first time, he said. In his memoir Blah,

837
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: he describes killing a child near the bridge, this bridge,

838
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 1: by opening the little girl's belt back and plucking out

839
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: her heart. Her blood was still in his hands, he

840
00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: told me when he heard a voice. When I looked back,

841
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: I saw a man standing there. He was so bright,

842
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: brighter than the sun. The voice told him repent and live,

843
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 1: or refuse and die. I wanted to continue fighting, but

844
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: my mind never left this person, how bright he was

845
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: and how passionate his words, Blah, he continued. He soon

846
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: quit fighting, leaving his child soldiers defend for themselves, and

847
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 1: he began sleeping in a pew in a nearby church.

848
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:51,399
Speaker 1: The pastor there gathered his congregation and they asked God

849
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: to strip Blahi of his demonic powers. The next day, Blah,

850
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: he went to see his commanding officer handed over his

851
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: weapons and amulets and said, my new commander is Jesus Christ. Okay,

852
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 1: I what is that? Ben okay? As a grifter, as

853
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: a con man. What was the reason he decided? We

854
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,960
Speaker 1: are getting to that? So it is worth noting for

855
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: context that this year nine six, the year he claims

856
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:18,239
Speaker 1: he converted and left war behind, is also the year

857
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,799
Speaker 1: there's a ceasefire in live here. Okay, that's a good

858
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,760
Speaker 1: thing to note. Everyone is fucking exhausted at this point.

859
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:28,439
Speaker 1: For like sixteen years basically they've been either at war,

860
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: they've just been this dictator has been purging people who's

861
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:33,479
Speaker 1: been coups. It's been like it's been like fifteen plus

862
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: years of just like constant traumatizing bullshit. Everyone's exhausted, um,

863
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:41,280
Speaker 1: and they agree like, okay, let's have a fucking election

864
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: and we'll see if that works any better than what

865
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:46,880
Speaker 1: we've been doing. UM. So Charles Taylor is like in

866
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: charge in Monrovia at this point, and he decides to

867
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: run for president. Um. And since violence has gotten kind

868
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:54,839
Speaker 1: of out of favor, he declares that he's been born

869
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 1: again as a Christian, so he is not is not

870
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 1: like his rival does, his rival does gets like starts

871
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: signaling some of this witchcraft ship and like using child

872
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:06,919
Speaker 1: soldiers blah ye does it? Charles Taylor becomes born again

873
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 1: blah right, Like that's an element here. Um. Now, there

874
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: is widespread skepticism about Charles Taylor's claims that he's born again, um,

875
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: and it's generally seen as a ploy to make himself

876
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,439
Speaker 1: more palatable. The next year, he runs for presidents under

877
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:26,879
Speaker 1: the incredible slogan he killed my ma, he killed my paw,

878
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 1: I'll vote for him. That was not where I thought

879
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:33,879
Speaker 1: that was going. Right, that's pretty quite quite a presidential

880
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: actually at least rhyme or something interest. The New Yorker explains,

881
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 1: quote the phrase was darkly ironic. Taylor was claiming to

882
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 1: be the only leader powerful enough to prevent another war,

883
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: so like that's his That's what he's saying, is like, yeah, man,

884
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: I killed your fucking family. But now I've got what

885
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: it the the amount the might that it will take

886
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: to keep Liberia peaceful. So vote for me, like no

887
00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: one else is going to to to to defeat me,

888
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: like the yeah, yeah yeah, And he wins the election.

889
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 1: You can either say this is because of his brilliant

890
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: strategy or because it's not not a great election. Um,

891
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: Taylor wins or wins, you know, however you want to

892
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: see it. Uh. And he immediately sets to persecuting his rivals,

893
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: including Blackie the former general. Butt Naked flees to Ghana,

894
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: where he lives in a refugee camp, and he claims

895
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: he learns to read and studies the Bible during this time,

896
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 1: and he also says this is when he starts spending

897
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 1: time face to face with people who had been as victims,

898
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 1: who are like, what then are you doing here? You're

899
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: the reason that we had to leave, you know. Um.

900
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: So he spends like a decade kind of hiding. Uh.

901
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: In nineteen nine, the civil war starts up again. Right

902
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,440
Speaker 1: they have like three years, asked Durry, where there's this election?

903
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,399
Speaker 1: And Taylor wins and then another rebel invades the same

904
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 1: way Taylor had, from like a bordering country and try

905
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: right exactly mean like right, you know this is none

906
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: of this should be surprising. By two thousand and three,

907
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,359
Speaker 1: at least a order of a million people have been

908
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: killed in the two Liberian civil wars. And this has

909
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:06,680
Speaker 1: now been going like the civil wars have been going

910
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 1: on for fourteen years, right, and then you had Doze

911
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 1: reigned before that, which was pretty nasty. People just have

912
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 1: nothing left in them. Um. But the war has, like

913
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,720
Speaker 1: I say, regular people, the warlords and the their fucking

914
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: child armies. All they do is keep escalating. Um. And

915
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:26,400
Speaker 1: as kind of the Year begins, Taylor is fighting for

916
00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: his life in the city against a siege from an

917
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 1: opposing rebel party, just like Dough had been doing against him. Right,

918
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: it's like the third time this ship has happened. So

919
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: it is at this point that the women of Liberias

920
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,720
Speaker 1: start to get seriously politically organized. Women bore the brunt

921
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 1: of the violence in both civil wars, and there had

922
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:48,239
Speaker 1: been attempts to organize non violent protest campaigns earlier in

923
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 1: the First Civil War. I think one of the issues

924
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: is that Muslim and Christian women have trouble like organizing

925
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: together for a variety of reasons. Um. And I'm gonna

926
00:48:56,640 --> 00:49:00,160
Speaker 1: tell you this story, which is pretty fucking cool. But

927
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: you know what else is pretty cool. Let's see what

928
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,879
Speaker 1: is it this time? Well, it's not Mono. That was less.

929
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: It's not Mono is pretty cool. It's all the cool

930
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 1: kids are getting it because out in my high school.

931
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: If you didn't get it, that means you weren't kissing anybody.

932
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: I know you're not. You're not you're not getting any

933
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:20,760
Speaker 1: action if you're not catching mono because I didn't actually

934
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 1: not clear. Yeah, yeah, neither did I I don't think

935
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: it makes sense anyway, Wamp wamp, go ahead. I have

936
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 1: faith and everyone here's ability to catch mono. We're back. Ah,

937
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:45,359
Speaker 1: So it is, you know, bad stuff. This has mostly

938
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:46,959
Speaker 1: been bad stuff, but now we're going to talk about

939
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: some cool ship. M because all of the women in

940
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:55,399
Speaker 1: Liberia start to organize a protest campaign women women. Let's

941
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:58,800
Speaker 1: bring women into the story. Final so too, they've been involved,

942
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:02,799
Speaker 1: just mostly getting murder. Now they are going to I mean,

943
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: it's been horrible and that's part of why this is

944
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 1: able to happen. Um, and this is one of the

945
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,919
Speaker 1: coolest stories I've ever heard. So to explain what happened next,

946
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from an article in the Journal

947
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 1: of International Women's Studies by Maxwell A. J J A

948
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: d g A d j E. I. So there you go,

949
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: engulfed in a cycle of violence and with no hope

950
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: for a better future. A group of Liberian women under

951
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: the leadership of Lema Bowie, came together to form the

952
00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:32,279
Speaker 1: Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace w l m

953
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:36,280
Speaker 1: a P to demand an immediate into the conflict. Initially, Gabowie,

954
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: a Christian social worker with the Lutheran Church, had intended

955
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: the organization to include include a small group of Christian

956
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: women who would meet regularly to pray for peace. However,

957
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 1: when words spread about their meetings through the community, one

958
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: Muslim policewoman, a Satu Bah Kenneth, became highly impressed with

959
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: the women's vision and volunteered to mobilize Muslim women to

960
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:57,800
Speaker 1: join the movement. Following initial concerns that having Muslims in

961
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 1: their ranks would dilute their faith, the Christian women ultimately

962
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,240
Speaker 1: resolved that because bullets don't pick and shoes between Christian

963
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: and Muslim women, it would be in their interests to

964
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:10,879
Speaker 1: work together for peace. More importantly, having a united front

965
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,240
Speaker 1: of Christian and Muslim women would send a clear message

966
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 1: to the people of Liberia that neither the government forces

967
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: predominantly Christian nor l u r D forces predominantly Muslim,

968
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: We're fighting for their religious interests. While addressing w l

969
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: m a P for the first time. Gabawie declared that

970
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 1: in the past we were silent, but after being killed, raped, dehumanized,

971
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 1: and infected with diseases, war has taught us that the

972
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: future lies in saying no to violence and yes to peace.

973
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 1: For the thousands of women gathered, this impassioned speech by Gabawie,

974
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: more than any ethnic or religious affinities, represented the level

975
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 1: of frustration with the conflict and the extent to which

976
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 1: they were willing to commit to bring peace to their country.

977
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:52,800
Speaker 1: So Gabawie and her fellow organizers start holding rallies at mosques,

978
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: markets and churches. They'll do three rallies a week, one

979
00:51:55,239 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: of a mosque, one of a market, wanted a church.

980
00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 1: These are all like so that they're reaching every one right.

981
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:02,320
Speaker 1: These are the three places everyone's going to go to

982
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 1: at least one of these three places. Um and they

983
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,320
Speaker 1: start reaching out to other women and gradually expanding the

984
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 1: reach of their organization and demanding peace. Once they've built

985
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: themselves up into a sizeable organization and they'd had time

986
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:18,400
Speaker 1: to discuss a more detailed plan of action, they issued

987
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 1: a statement condemning all sides in the Civil War for

988
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:22,800
Speaker 1: their abuses of women and children, basically saying none of

989
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 1: you were legitimate because all of you were just massacring people,

990
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: which is not an inaccurate way to analyze the life

991
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,240
Speaker 1: period Civil War next quote. In defiance of President Taylor's

992
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: ban on public marches, w l m a P staged

993
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:38,280
Speaker 1: its first mass protest at Monrovious Fish Market, a location

994
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 1: that would make the President see them on his daily

995
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: commute to the office. While using radio and printed flyers

996
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: to just to spread word about the protest, Cavalli and

997
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: her team encouraged women to show up for the protests

998
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:50,880
Speaker 1: in white clothing, without any jewelry or makeup for them.

999
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: This would send a signal about their serious commitment to peace,

1000
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 1: an unrelenting desire to remain independent of either side of

1001
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 1: the conflict. Heating to their calls on the radio over

1002
00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 1: women from different social backgrounds, clad in white T shirts

1003
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 1: showed up daily for the sit in protests, which took

1004
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:08,360
Speaker 1: place over the next several weeks. In each of the gatherings,

1005
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:10,799
Speaker 1: the women would sit, dance, and sing for peace while

1006
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: displaying placards and banners with messages such as the women

1007
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,879
Speaker 1: of Liberia want peace now, we are tired, we want

1008
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: peace no more. War, et cetera. For a while, Taylor

1009
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 1: was able to ignore the women, but their crowds kept

1010
00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:26,920
Speaker 1: growing larger and larger. He was eventually forced to take

1011
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:30,280
Speaker 1: their petition and promise his willingness to quit hold ceasefire

1012
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: talks with the rebels. They didn't consider this the end, though,

1013
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 1: and brainstormed other tactics to apply pressure. Eventually, they decided

1014
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: to go on a sex strike and this is a

1015
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:42,720
Speaker 1: quote again from the same document, to purnt their husbands

1016
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: from forcibly having sex with them. They set up safe

1017
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 1: spaces where they could stay and sleep together. After some

1018
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: initial setbacks, the strategies seemed to be effective, as many

1019
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 1: men began to pray with their wives and demand an

1020
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 1: into the conflict. More importantly, the sex strike gave the

1021
00:53:56,360 --> 00:54:00,920
Speaker 1: campaign extremely valuable media attention outside of Liberia. Following the

1022
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:04,000
Speaker 1: successes with the sex strike and President Taylor's meeting, the

1023
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:06,319
Speaker 1: women turned their attention to the rebels, demanding that they

1024
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 1: too agree to attend the peace talks. Upon hearing that

1025
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: the war lords were meeting at a hotel in a

1026
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: neighboring country, Sierra Leone, a delegation of the women traveled

1027
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:16,719
Speaker 1: to the country on their arrival, the delegation was able

1028
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: to arrange a private meeting with the war lords and

1029
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:21,960
Speaker 1: get them to commit to attending peace talks. So men

1030
00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: of our geniuses. That was pretty It's a pretty good story. Um,

1031
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,839
Speaker 1: you know it's not there's other stuff going on, other

1032
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 1: factors working for peace obviously, like talk about the ceasefires

1033
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: and stuff have been going on for what it is

1034
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:37,880
Speaker 1: not just this that leads to an end. But this

1035
00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: plays a significant role in the end of the Second

1036
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: Liberian Civil War, um, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think,

1037
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean not that we did more evidence

1038
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 1: of this, but women smarter than men, you know what

1039
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: I mean. So let's just this is definitely definitely a

1040
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 1: story where the women are the ones who are much

1041
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: smarter and also very much like have you so Liza

1042
00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:06,160
Speaker 1: Strata is this old Greek play about the Peloponnesian War

1043
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 1: with the plot of like this is the plot of it,

1044
00:55:08,160 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: Like the women in Athens decided to go on like

1045
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:13,399
Speaker 1: a sex strike to force an into the war. Yeah,

1046
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:15,879
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if you think about it, if nothing

1047
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: else is working, you use what is weaponized to you,

1048
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 1: like for your benefit, you know what I mean, or

1049
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: like for you take advantage of people see you as

1050
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: and it's important to note like they have to there's

1051
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:28,960
Speaker 1: a lot that they have to do in order to

1052
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: make this work, including setting up safe spaces where they

1053
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: cannot get like that. That the document that I cited there, Um,

1054
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: you should is really worth reading because there's a lot

1055
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 1: more that go. Like, there's a ton of organizations. This

1056
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 1: is a very involved process. Um, I'm giving you like

1057
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:47,840
Speaker 1: really broad strokes here. Uh So Taylor is eventually forced

1058
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 1: to resign and go into exile. International peacekeeping troops into

1059
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: the country, the rebels lay down some of their arms,

1060
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: and broadly speaking, things get a lot better. There were

1061
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:00,760
Speaker 1: elections and more elections, and these all of aally culminate

1062
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 1: in the election of Ellen Johnson Surleif, who becomes Liberia's

1063
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 1: first female president. So this is all great, uh In

1064
00:56:07,560 --> 00:56:10,320
Speaker 1: things in Liberia get much better because of this. But

1065
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:13,840
Speaker 1: peace is only achieved because there's with There have to

1066
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 1: be a lot of ugly compromises, right, So when the

1067
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: war ends, one side isn't crushed. Everyone's got people under arms.

1068
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: The country is filled with tens of thousands of men

1069
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:27,839
Speaker 1: and boys who have done the things we just talked about.

1070
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 1: Why are you doing who have raped women in mass

1071
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: and like gunned down babies and all this kind of ship.

1072
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:36,840
Speaker 1: These guys are like still around. But also, what are

1073
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,279
Speaker 1: you gonna do about it? If you start going after

1074
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:41,840
Speaker 1: every individual who committed a war crime in the militia,

1075
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:44,879
Speaker 1: how does that not cause another civil war? Because they're

1076
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:46,759
Speaker 1: gonna pick up guns again, and also their families are

1077
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: gonna be pissed. The ethnic group is gonna be like, well,

1078
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 1: they did what they did because that was done to

1079
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: us and they were defending us, and like it's it's

1080
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: a really messy problem. We have achieved peace. What do

1081
00:56:57,440 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 1: we do to what extent can we hunish the people

1082
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:03,359
Speaker 1: who did bad things during the war? How like? How

1083
00:57:04,080 --> 00:57:06,040
Speaker 1: so this is not they don't have a simple answer

1084
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:07,840
Speaker 1: to this. But they decided to hold a truth and

1085
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 1: Reconciliation commission um, And the purpose of this is to

1086
00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: investigate the worst offenders and basically go through this list

1087
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:17,959
Speaker 1: of people they know had done fucked up ship, talk

1088
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 1: to as many of them as they can, investigate it,

1089
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: and then decide, broadly speaking, do we pardon them or

1090
00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 1: do we prosecute them? You know? Um? And this is

1091
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: where General butt Naked comes back into the historic record.

1092
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:33,440
Speaker 1: So he's been he's been hiding for like a decade,

1093
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:37,920
Speaker 1: you know, hanging around. Uh when he hears about this. Uh,

1094
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:40,440
Speaker 1: he shows up on day one of the hearings and

1095
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:46,440
Speaker 1: becomes the first warlord to testify. He admits, Yeah, he shows,

1096
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: he enters that he's not even in the country. He

1097
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,560
Speaker 1: comes back to testify. He is the first, I think

1098
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,240
Speaker 1: like the only person to admit to war crimes on

1099
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:57,160
Speaker 1: this level. Um. He admits in front of this to

1100
00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 1: recruiting child soldiers, to raping women, to murdering civilians, to

1101
00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 1: sacrificing babies, to everything we've talked about. He admits his

1102
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: personal death toll at twenty people. Now that's not possible.

1103
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: He he isn't He is effectively leading a platoon. There's

1104
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 1: like thirty forty kids that he's commanding at any given time,

1105
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:17,680
Speaker 1: maybe a company at the most. There's just no way

1106
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: he killed a tenth of the people who died in

1107
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: the Liberian Civil War. Um. Yeah, but this guy exagger right, right,

1108
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 1: he's a fan. And also there's a a Vice documentary

1109
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:29,080
Speaker 1: about him, which we'll talk about in a bit. There's

1110
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:32,320
Speaker 1: problematic aspects of that. Um. But some of the Liberians

1111
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: who were interviewed in that suggests that, well, he's not

1112
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: literally saying me and my forces killed, but we were

1113
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 1: the side we were working on in the period where

1114
00:58:40,200 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 1: I was one of the leaders of that side killed,

1115
00:58:42,360 --> 00:58:46,120
Speaker 1: which is broadly plausible, right, And you know, so that's

1116
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 1: a thing you'll hear. Um. The Commission did not really

1117
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:51,760
Speaker 1: question him on anything. They seem to kind of be

1118
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: in awe of him and the fact that he's coming

1119
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 1: and admitting and he's saying, like, I feel terrible, you

1120
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: know it is it's the smart move. If he did

1121
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: something stupid and you immediately admit to it, there's something

1122
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: almost endearing about it, you know what I mean. It's just, Yeah,

1123
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:08,560
Speaker 1: that's why I always when I finished drunk driving my

1124
00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 1: Forerunner through a trailer park and shooting an A K

1125
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: forty seven out the window, I always with a note

1126
00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:17,800
Speaker 1: that says, real sorry, And that's why everybody loves me.

1127
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:20,360
Speaker 1: And I'm just say it. If y'all cheat on your partners,

1128
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:22,400
Speaker 1: instead of getting caught, if you admit to it, less

1129
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:23,920
Speaker 1: likely they're gonna hate you, you know what I mean?

1130
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:26,200
Speaker 1: Stuff like that, not the A K whatever, the ship

1131
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 1: that you just said, but also none of this works

1132
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 1: on cops, so don't try it. Um So the Commission

1133
00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 1: does not really question him on any of this stuff.

1134
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 1: One member tells him he has good leadership qualities. They

1135
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: seem to just be blown away that this guy is

1136
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 1: like coming to them and just saying what people broadly

1137
00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:46,320
Speaker 1: know is true. Next from the New Yorker quote, Blast

1138
00:59:46,360 --> 00:59:49,760
Speaker 1: testimony was front page News and Liberia. Strangers hugged him

1139
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: on the streets of Monrovia and journalists came from all

1140
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: over the world to interview him. The Daily Mail run

1141
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: a profile under the headline face to Face with General

1142
00:59:57,000 --> 00:59:59,640
Speaker 1: Butt Naked, the most Evil man in the World. Vice

1143
00:59:59,720 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: feature Blaggie in a lurid travel documentary called The Vice

1144
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:04,960
Speaker 1: Guide to Liberia, which has been viewed more than ten

1145
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:09,320
Speaker 1: million times on YouTube. The pastor of an evangelical church

1146
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,840
Speaker 1: in the East Village saw the video and later became

1147
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:15,720
Speaker 1: one of Blaghie's benefactors. Blaghie has written five books. A

1148
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 1: memoire told titled The Redemption of an African Warlord and

1149
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand and thirteen by a small

1150
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:24,200
Speaker 1: Christian press. In the foreword, Jans wrote, not since the

1151
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 1: conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.

1152
01:00:26,800 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 1: Have I ever heard a conversation a conversion story more

1153
01:00:30,040 --> 01:00:33,959
Speaker 1: radically compelling? So I'm trying to look him up because

1154
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:36,240
Speaker 1: I need to know. Again, we talked about this before,

1155
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 1: I'm sure on an episode have been on. But like,

1156
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:40,200
Speaker 1: if you're he said he was charming, But if you're

1157
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:42,959
Speaker 1: good looking ish, even above average, you can get away

1158
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 1: with more ships. I want to know what he looks like.

1159
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not he's he's like a big dude,

1160
01:00:48,520 --> 01:00:53,200
Speaker 1: he's pretty like muscular. He's not really b l h

1161
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 1: y e y I. He's not really my I'm kind

1162
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: of more into like anyway whatever. But you said he

1163
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:01,840
Speaker 1: was charismatic, so it's probably he's very charismatic. There's the

1164
01:01:01,840 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: reason he's I'm I'm sure some and he when he's younger,

1165
01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's also considered more handsome. Okay, sorry, but

1166
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: I think he's just he's a really good talker. You know.

1167
01:01:10,400 --> 01:01:13,400
Speaker 1: That's kind of more than the deal. Um, I guess

1168
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:17,000
Speaker 1: more and more than attraction, that's what or attractiveness, that's

1169
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:22,360
Speaker 1: what probably gets you more cons it's the talking. Yeah,

1170
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: so blah. Used detractors will argue that he pretty much

1171
01:01:25,480 --> 01:01:28,080
Speaker 1: just partied his fame as the repentant warlord into a

1172
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 1: new career charismatic and wealth spoken. He's been and again

1173
01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:35,240
Speaker 1: he's in this like this Vice documentary early on, and

1174
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:38,080
Speaker 1: it gets him a benefactor. Somebody starts giving him money

1175
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: to do things to like try and make things right. Um.

1176
01:01:42,320 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 1: And he like, right after he gets kind of famous

1177
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 1: for going to this thing, he establishes a home for

1178
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:52,480
Speaker 1: former child soldiers, like a rehab home to help them. Um.

1179
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: It definitely exists or it has it points. There's a

1180
01:01:56,440 --> 01:01:58,800
Speaker 1: Vice documentary from two thousand eleven called the I think

1181
01:01:58,840 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: it's called The Redemption of General Butt Naked Um, and

1182
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 1: it films him and his soldiers and like or these

1183
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 1: kitchen former child soldiers and they're all saying, like, oh,

1184
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:09,120
Speaker 1: he saved my life. I would have died with I

1185
01:02:09,200 --> 01:02:11,400
Speaker 1: was living on the street. He's you know, he's he's

1186
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: he did bad things, but like you know, he's he's

1187
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:18,040
Speaker 1: are are basically our father. Now he's like he's saving us. Um.

1188
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 1: But interestingly, that documentary is filming him while he gets

1189
01:02:22,720 --> 01:02:24,600
Speaker 1: a death threat and he flees the country for Ghana.

1190
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: Um and his soldiers all wind up back on the

1191
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:29,760
Speaker 1: street and are like, what the funk he abandoned us

1192
01:02:29,760 --> 01:02:32,760
Speaker 1: while he lives in a hotel. So that that there's

1193
01:02:32,840 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 1: there's criticisms of Vices coverage of him, which spans a

1194
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 1: couple of pieces, but they do get that piece of

1195
01:02:38,200 --> 01:02:41,920
Speaker 1: his his life. I mean, it benefited him more than anything.

1196
01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: Like imagine this, you're in hiding and you you he

1197
01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:49,440
Speaker 1: thinks of a way that not only can he get

1198
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 1: out of hiding, but he can be fucking he can

1199
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:52,960
Speaker 1: benefit off of it and make money, you know what

1200
01:02:53,040 --> 01:02:55,720
Speaker 1: I mean? Like he did the perfect con. He's smart.

1201
01:02:56,240 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 1: So by the time that New Yorker article comes out,

1202
01:02:59,120 --> 01:03:01,240
Speaker 1: he's back to running a halfway house. He comes back

1203
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 1: to Monrovia, he starts another halfway house. He's running one

1204
01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: again for these child soldiers in Monrovia, and this seems

1205
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: to be thanks. He gets the funding to do this

1206
01:03:09,960 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 1: from a white American lady named Brenda Webber who saw

1207
01:03:13,400 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: the redemption of General butt Naked one of the Vice

1208
01:03:16,040 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: documentaries and contacted him on Facebook. How modern everything is

1209
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: all the time when you're talking Facebook. So she sees

1210
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 1: this guy and she is taken by him, and she

1211
01:03:27,240 --> 01:03:30,520
Speaker 1: wants to help, and she does this like I think

1212
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:32,400
Speaker 1: a lot of white ladies do where they decide like

1213
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: and white dudes. Uh, just white people thing where they decide,

1214
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:39,640
Speaker 1: I want to help Africa. Yeah, and this guy seems legit.

1215
01:03:39,800 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 1: Let me just give him a bunch of money to

1216
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: do a thing. So yeah, they do this. They set

1217
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:49,240
Speaker 1: up a halfway house, um, using this lady's money. And

1218
01:03:49,320 --> 01:03:52,880
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker interview, this woman she's getting grifted

1219
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:55,160
Speaker 1: and conduct of our life savings. I also don't care

1220
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 1: too much, uh, she says during the interview quote I

1221
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:00,439
Speaker 1: could just tell he was genuine. I knew he wasn't

1222
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:02,600
Speaker 1: the same person, that he was a totally different man.

1223
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:05,040
Speaker 1: And then she would go on to say ship like this,

1224
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:08,919
Speaker 1: you should see them when someone cares, especially a white

1225
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 1: woman from America, and makes them feel like they are

1226
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:14,560
Speaker 1: worth something for the first time in years. This is

1227
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:17,160
Speaker 1: what she's saying about, like the child soldiers that she's

1228
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,880
Speaker 1: helping to fund, like like, wow, when a white woman

1229
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:23,320
Speaker 1: likes them, they feel great. Like I don't care that

1230
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 1: this lady is getting grifted. Yeah, I know me either.

1231
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:29,120
Speaker 1: But also it's a whole like psychological study about how

1232
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:32,760
Speaker 1: serial killers or whatever even if they're in jail like

1233
01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: women are. There's a there's it's certainly a thing that

1234
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:39,320
Speaker 1: had a number of serial killers have had like women

1235
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 1: fall in love with them. I wonder what that's about.

1236
01:04:41,800 --> 01:04:45,480
Speaker 1: That's a bigger topic than we can get in. Um.

1237
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 1: So yeah, so she's she's at this point when New

1238
01:04:49,760 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 1: Yorker writes about them, she is sending eight hundred dollars

1239
01:04:53,320 --> 01:04:56,000
Speaker 1: a month. Half of it goes to him directly for

1240
01:04:56,120 --> 01:04:58,840
Speaker 1: him to live on, and again to a white lady

1241
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:01,320
Speaker 1: living in like, you know, ning a pharmacy. Well, I mean,

1242
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:03,439
Speaker 1: he's just he's living off four dollars a month. Doesn't

1243
01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:05,720
Speaker 1: sound like a lot, but that's ten times the local wage.

1244
01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:08,960
Speaker 1: So that's pretty good money for him. Um. The other

1245
01:05:09,040 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 1: half is supposed to go to run this home for

1246
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:15,920
Speaker 1: child soldiers. Um. But we'll talk about that in a second.

1247
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting she's spending more than eight hundred

1248
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:20,880
Speaker 1: bucks a month by the time the New Yorker gets

1249
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:22,360
Speaker 1: to her. She says that in the first year, she

1250
01:05:22,520 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 1: ran through their entire family savings account of dollars, and

1251
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 1: she's taken out like a fifty thou dollar credit line

1252
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: in order to continue funding it, and she's she's definitely

1253
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:36,760
Speaker 1: the same kind of like really frustrating evangelical prosperity gospel

1254
01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 1: ship that like, well exactly, she tells the New Yorker,

1255
01:05:42,560 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: I know everything is going to be fine. You can't

1256
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:47,360
Speaker 1: give and give like that and not get something in return.

1257
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:51,200
Speaker 1: And she's like, hasn't told her husband she's spending all

1258
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: the money on this, and like, but like she believes,

1259
01:05:53,680 --> 01:05:55,680
Speaker 1: you know, you give money for God, and God will

1260
01:05:55,760 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 1: make you make it right. He'll get your money back,

1261
01:05:58,320 --> 01:06:01,600
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And I think that New Yorker article

1262
01:06:01,680 --> 01:06:03,880
Speaker 1: makes it really clear the Vice the Redemption of General

1263
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:06,880
Speaker 1: Butt Naked Vice documentary, I actually think and this is

1264
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 1: like not the first thing they do about him. I

1265
01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 1: don't think it's yeah, but it is it. I came

1266
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:14,120
Speaker 1: away being like, well, this dude's fucking con man. I

1267
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:16,360
Speaker 1: guess you can kind of make either conclusion from it.

1268
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:20,400
Speaker 1: It's kind of murky. I mean, if you are easily

1269
01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:23,680
Speaker 1: or like if you have a predisposition to maybe believe

1270
01:06:23,760 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 1: religious stories about redemption, or like someone that claims he

1271
01:06:27,040 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: found God, like maybe that's something different, you know what

1272
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 1: I mean. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, Now, the New

1273
01:06:32,280 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: Yorker article, though I want to read another quote from

1274
01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:37,880
Speaker 1: it that kind of further makes that case. At one point,

1275
01:06:37,920 --> 01:06:40,240
Speaker 1: another resident of the house pulled me aside and told

1276
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 1: me that Blaghi was misappropriating the program's money for his

1277
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:46,600
Speaker 1: own benefit. The administration is run by his entire family,

1278
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 1: and no one really questions it. Sometimes, the young man added.

1279
01:06:49,920 --> 01:06:52,240
Speaker 1: The residence of the house went without breakfast, or their

1280
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:55,080
Speaker 1: meals consisted of playing rice with salt and pepper. When

1281
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 1: Western reporters arrived, Blagyi and his staff say, okay, stand

1282
01:06:58,240 --> 01:07:00,120
Speaker 1: in front of this camera and tell the man. We

1283
01:07:00,200 --> 01:07:04,160
Speaker 1: are josh Joshua blah ye beneficiaries. But what have I benefited?

1284
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:07,480
Speaker 1: When one of the residents texted Weber to report that

1285
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:10,200
Speaker 1: they weren't being fed breakfast, she started sending an additional

1286
01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:13,000
Speaker 1: three dollars a month. Blah. He hadn't told her about

1287
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:15,680
Speaker 1: the problem, she believed, out of concern for her finances.

1288
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:18,640
Speaker 1: I wholeheartedly trust Joshua, she went on. If he ever

1289
01:07:18,720 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 1: makes a mistake, it's not willfully. Now that con has

1290
01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:25,800
Speaker 1: been successful in a lot of foreign journalists. Uh. The

1291
01:07:25,920 --> 01:07:28,520
Speaker 1: lynchpin of his entire act, though, the meat thing that

1292
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:31,160
Speaker 1: he makes sure to do whenever he's interviewed is find

1293
01:07:31,240 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: one of the people he victimized and asked them to

1294
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 1: forgive him on camera. Now, there are some of these

1295
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:38,720
Speaker 1: people who he's like helped in one where he's given

1296
01:07:38,760 --> 01:07:41,840
Speaker 1: him money and he has like good relations with them, um,

1297
01:07:42,080 --> 01:07:44,720
Speaker 1: but it is really ugly and a lot of them haven't,

1298
01:07:44,800 --> 01:07:47,360
Speaker 1: and he'll like harass them on camera to demand, like

1299
01:07:47,440 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: he'll say stuff like you have to forgive me, and

1300
01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:51,440
Speaker 1: I want to play a clip from one of these

1301
01:07:51,520 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 1: moments he's this is a woman he murdered her brother

1302
01:07:54,240 --> 01:07:57,920
Speaker 1: in front of her. UM. So it's like, does he

1303
01:07:57,960 --> 01:08:00,120
Speaker 1: think they're less likely to say I mean, yeah, it's

1304
01:08:00,120 --> 01:08:03,320
Speaker 1: probably what he's thinking. Just watch it and watch it

1305
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 1: and watch her face like I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I

1306
01:08:10,080 --> 01:08:20,200
Speaker 1: beg you forgive me. Don't you bank yourself better out

1307
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:24,040
Speaker 1: of madness, but please, I will be able to play

1308
01:08:24,080 --> 01:08:26,559
Speaker 1: the better for you. I mean, I'm not being able

1309
01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:28,920
Speaker 1: to do everything that you're better can do, but I

1310
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:32,439
Speaker 1: will stand there whenever you need it betterly, council, whenever

1311
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:35,240
Speaker 1: you need a better protection. Trying to quote on me,

1312
01:08:37,200 --> 01:08:41,960
Speaker 1: I beg you please. So the whole time this has happened,

1313
01:08:42,040 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 1: because if you just hear what he's saying, it may

1314
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:47,360
Speaker 1: sound okay. She is turning away and trying to get

1315
01:08:47,360 --> 01:08:50,080
Speaker 1: away from him, and he is repeatedly standing in front

1316
01:08:50,120 --> 01:08:52,679
Speaker 1: of her and stopping her from leaving while he says

1317
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:54,160
Speaker 1: all this, and there are people in the background like

1318
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:57,800
Speaker 1: naughty along saying so it's not letting her go when

1319
01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:01,200
Speaker 1: she wants to leave. There's no part of her that

1320
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:03,200
Speaker 1: wants anything what he's saying. Like, there's a moment that

1321
01:09:03,400 --> 01:09:06,040
Speaker 1: like where her eyes just like are so dead and

1322
01:09:06,160 --> 01:09:08,519
Speaker 1: the staring off. He's like, I can be your brother.

1323
01:09:08,640 --> 01:09:12,439
Speaker 1: She's like, I'm out of here. She's also cornered with

1324
01:09:12,560 --> 01:09:16,840
Speaker 1: a camera in her face to the camera in her face. Yeah,

1325
01:09:17,120 --> 01:09:21,200
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty gross. So yeah, that's the episode. There's

1326
01:09:21,240 --> 01:09:24,719
Speaker 1: more to say about the Liberian Civil War. Charles Taylor

1327
01:09:24,800 --> 01:09:27,120
Speaker 1: just got sentenced to prison. By the way, He's one

1328
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: of the people who does not get like they reckon

1329
01:09:30,160 --> 01:09:34,880
Speaker 1: the truth and reconciliation thing, recommends prosecution. Um. He goes

1330
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:41,040
Speaker 1: to the uh the International Criminal Court uh, and he's yeah,

1331
01:09:41,720 --> 01:09:44,000
Speaker 1: he does a whole he does a whole thing, and

1332
01:09:44,120 --> 01:09:47,200
Speaker 1: he gets sentenced to like fifty years in prison. Um,

1333
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:51,920
Speaker 1: so that's good, I guess. I mean whatever, Yeah, I mean,

1334
01:09:51,960 --> 01:09:54,280
Speaker 1: it's like, fuck him, he shouldn't be allowed to just

1335
01:09:55,600 --> 01:09:58,519
Speaker 1: it's good. It's good when war criminals get punished for

1336
01:09:58,600 --> 01:10:04,240
Speaker 1: being war criminals. I feel mixed about Blackey, where he's

1337
01:10:04,280 --> 01:10:07,679
Speaker 1: not doing nothing, and there's definitely people who, at least

1338
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:10,320
Speaker 1: on camera, will say that like he's helped them, he's

1339
01:10:10,360 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 1: helped them after the war and stuff. But he's also

1340
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:15,320
Speaker 1: like he goes to all these revival meetings, he's like

1341
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:18,120
Speaker 1: raising money and it's questionable where's it goes. And it's like,

1342
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what you do. I'm

1343
01:10:20,439 --> 01:10:22,120
Speaker 1: not going to tell the Liberians when we or the

1344
01:10:22,160 --> 01:10:24,040
Speaker 1: other this is how you should handle the aftermath of

1345
01:10:24,120 --> 01:10:28,400
Speaker 1: your civil war. But like this, this guy is a

1346
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:32,040
Speaker 1: pretty familiar kind of grifter. Yeah, no, I agree. I

1347
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 1: usually these grifters somehow are able to live a long

1348
01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:39,840
Speaker 1: life just continuing some type of grift. And like, look

1349
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:42,479
Speaker 1: at him now, he's like he's only fifty. He has

1350
01:10:42,720 --> 01:10:45,200
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's I don't know, it's

1351
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:48,439
Speaker 1: he's doing great. He's being great all things considered. He

1352
01:10:48,640 --> 01:10:54,040
Speaker 1: fucking he won. Yeah, you know who else wins Sharine

1353
01:10:54,920 --> 01:10:59,800
Speaker 1: who everyone who listens to your plugs? That's correct, Robert, Wow,

1354
01:11:00,040 --> 01:11:02,600
Speaker 1: thank you so much. You can follow me if you

1355
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:05,599
Speaker 1: want on the internet. Twitter is Shiro Hero six six

1356
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:08,960
Speaker 1: six and Instagram is just Shiro Hero. I have some

1357
01:11:09,080 --> 01:11:11,840
Speaker 1: poetry books out that you can buy if you want,

1358
01:11:13,040 --> 01:11:19,679
Speaker 1: and a podcast as well. Uh, ethnically ambiguous and that's about.

1359
01:11:20,200 --> 01:11:27,519
Speaker 1: That's that's enough for today. Yeah, all right, motherfucker's that's

1360
01:11:27,560 --> 01:11:34,320
Speaker 1: the episode, So get out of here. Thanks for having met.

1361
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:36,800
Speaker 1: I do think but we bonded on this episode. Do

1362
01:11:36,840 --> 01:11:40,120
Speaker 1: you feel it we had like that discussion about whatever

1363
01:11:40,200 --> 01:11:42,280
Speaker 1: the funk that was? Yeah, that was like that was

1364
01:11:42,320 --> 01:11:44,320
Speaker 1: a conversation that we just happened to record, you know

1365
01:11:44,360 --> 01:11:46,880
Speaker 1: what I mean? That was that was you wanna you

1366
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:53,280
Speaker 1: want to smoke weed and listen to King Crimson? Helly? Alright, okay,

1367
01:11:53,320 --> 01:11:59,439
Speaker 1: but Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1368
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:02,760
Speaker 1: More from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone

1369
01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:05,600
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I

1370
01:12:05,720 --> 01:12:08,920
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.