Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and for the last two years,
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,
Speaker 1: which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year
Speaker 1: y'all raised more than twenty one dollars, which was able
Speaker 1: to purchase one point one million diapers for children and
Speaker 1: families in need in one um. And this year we're
Speaker 1: trying to get two dollars raised for the Portland Diaper Bank,
Speaker 1: which is going to allow us to help even more kids.
Speaker 1: So UM, if you want to help, you can go
Speaker 1: to bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank at go fund me.
Speaker 1: Just type and go fund me b TB Fundraiser for
Speaker 1: PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go fund Me bTB Fundraiser
Speaker 1: for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Thank you all, Ah, Behind the Bastards. That's
Speaker 1: how I would say this show's name if we were
Speaker 1: dry time radio DJs. This life of podcasting with me
Speaker 1: get up at five am every morning and talk to
Speaker 1: people on their well it's uh horn dog in the
Speaker 1: apple here with you do do our morning buts days
Speaker 1: travel thing. Here's a part sound that could be a Shearine,
Speaker 1: that could be how we live our lives. Anything for you,
Speaker 1: Robert Kings, We'll both get greatly addicted to cocaine, I mean,
Speaker 1: Sharine problematically addicted to cocaine. And then I'll o d
Speaker 1: and have to go to the hospital, and then I'll
Speaker 1: become a born again Christian and I'll start another radio
Speaker 1: show but it's super racist and right wing, and then
Speaker 1: I'll become a congressman and then the vice president of
Speaker 1: the United States. That's the logical timeline and route any
Speaker 1: white man. So I'm gonna that's like like the shirt
Speaker 1: I wear every day. I'm gonna just pensive. But everybody,
Speaker 1: we all love we all of our former vice president
Speaker 1: Michael Pitts. Yeah, bless God, bless well pin that I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just talking about how God isn't really come on,
Speaker 1: that's an obvious Joe. We we we we we we.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about how Charles Taylor has invaded
Speaker 1: Liberia or is like carrying out a liberation freedom civil
Speaker 1: war yeada, YadA yda. Anyway, he's got his troops, they're
Speaker 1: taking more and more of the country. Um, and there's
Speaker 1: other warlords and there's other people like fighting against the government.
Speaker 1: Like it's not all Charles Taylor, but his forces are
Speaker 1: like gradually advancing on the Capitol. And as they advance
Speaker 1: on the Capitol in April of nineteen ninety, one of
Speaker 1: the places I was born in April nineteen ninety And
Speaker 1: when you're a little baby, so recent and well, baby Sharie,
Speaker 1: Charles Taylor's liberation forces reaching the outskirts of the Firestone
Speaker 1: rubber plane invasion. Now the guy in charge of it,
Speaker 1: this dude in Sminger, who's again like the ex pat
Speaker 1: the white dude who's like running this plantation. Um, he
Speaker 1: sends out a message to all of the Liberian like
Speaker 1: the indigenous workers who live on the plantation, and he's like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, be calm, there's nothing to fear. He says repeatedly, like, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, worried about what's going to happen. Um.
Speaker 1: The rebels, you know, aren't gonna funk with you. Like
Speaker 1: everything's fine, keep right on working. Um. Now you want
Speaker 1: to guess if he's saying the same thing to the
Speaker 1: ex pats, the white workers who live there with their families.
Speaker 1: I don't like where this is going, he sends them
Speaker 1: a confidential letter saying, due to the current unstable political
Speaker 1: situation in Liberia, we believe it is prudent to plan
Speaker 1: for the worst case scenario. He tells them to pack
Speaker 1: emergency supplies to fill up their cars to meet its
Speaker 1: secret rally points in case of an evacuation uh and
Speaker 1: he states the information contained in this memo, even the
Speaker 1: very existence of this memo, should not be discussed with
Speaker 1: persons covered by it. Um. He also sends home the
Speaker 1: wives and children of all the ex pats who worked there.
Speaker 1: So here's the cool thing. They're fine because again, Charles
Speaker 1: Taylor also not a stupid person. I don't want to
Speaker 1: He's inventive converse. He did after inventing converse, he invades Liberia,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm not going to murder a bunch
Speaker 1: of like white people working at the Firestone. That's not
Speaker 1: good for me. Like that's gonna piss off all of
Speaker 1: these governments that I don't particularly want angry at me
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, because that's like that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's gonna get dough a bunch of weapons from
Speaker 1: the whoever, right, Like, you don't want to murder? So
Speaker 1: he has I don't think you ever had any intention
Speaker 1: of harming the ex pats working there, just because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a smart thing to do. But this
Speaker 1: has become an ethnic war at this point. Right, Doe
Speaker 1: is massacring the members of ethnic groups that are opposed
Speaker 1: to him. Uh, Taylor is massacring Krown and members of
Speaker 1: like other allied like ethnic groups that are allied with
Speaker 1: Dough in his regime. Right, So when Charles Taylor's forces
Speaker 1: reach the Firestone plantation, they start picking out all of
Speaker 1: the people who are members of these groups that are
Speaker 1: their enemies and massacring them. Quote from Republica. The first
Speaker 1: person the rebels killed after crossing the river, according to
Speaker 1: several witnesses, was a mentally handicapped man. He was gunned
Speaker 1: down in the street. Next, the rebels began hunting down
Speaker 1: people who belonged to tribes closely associated with the ruling regime.
Speaker 1: Kevin Estel, a British expatriate who was Firestones agricultural operations manager,
Speaker 1: recalled seeing piles of dead bodies of Liberians lying outside
Speaker 1: the Harbell supermarket. He was told the rebels had executed
Speaker 1: the men in public because they were from a rival tribe.
Speaker 1: They had been stitched riddled with bullets from May case
Speaker 1: forty seven, straight up and down their bodies. He said.
Speaker 1: They were left in the street, their bodies swelling in
Speaker 1: the sun. So that's good for Firestone, Like, hey, you
Speaker 1: guys are fine, don't worry about it. White people get
Speaker 1: the fun out exactly. Pretty messed up, pretty pretty bad stuff. God,
Speaker 1: white people, Well, I would say, so, I would say,
Speaker 1: none of that's good behavior. I would say both abandoning
Speaker 1: your workers, not telling them they're in danger, only protecting
Speaker 1: the white people. Firestone, Why why don't you know this?
Speaker 1: I think there are things we do should to Firestone
Speaker 1: property that would be good. But boycotting, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's the most effective thing that could. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I I've gone there a bunch of times. I
Speaker 1: don't needn't know this blunt diamond history, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Make a molotov out of a Chuck Taylor
Speaker 1: converse and tucking through the window of a Firestone tire store.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when Charles Taylor invaded Laboria, his problem. His
Speaker 1: plan probably was not to spark the building of a
Speaker 1: series of child militias filled with drug adult and heavily
Speaker 1: armed kids. But it kind of happens as the invasion proceeds.
Speaker 1: Right once his forces are in country, they're engaging with
Speaker 1: those forces, he's running up into shortages of manpower. The
Speaker 1: decision to arm kids just becomes militarily pragmatic. So at
Speaker 1: this point Dough has spent like that half decade he's
Speaker 1: been in power, sending his military two different provinces and
Speaker 1: killing all of the men he can find, raping most
Speaker 1: of the women, and then often killing them to write UM.
Speaker 1: And as a result, there's a shipload of angry, starving
Speaker 1: orphans in Liberia, you know whose parents got murdered by
Speaker 1: the regime. Now, if you're Charles Taylor, you're always short
Speaker 1: of dudes to hand guns. Um, what's a great source
Speaker 1: of manpower? But a bunch of like twelve year old
Speaker 1: kids who were piste off because their families died. Um.
Speaker 1: If anything, they're like, they're potentially more loyal because you're
Speaker 1: the loyal because the purpose starving and they need an
Speaker 1: authority figure. Charles Taylor provides both. So he gives these
Speaker 1: kids guns and he gives them cocaine, UM and other drugs.
Speaker 1: But cocaine is the big one. Because man let me
Speaker 1: tell you, I mean, this is just something I've learned
Speaker 1: a lot. If you want to get a child to
Speaker 1: fight for you, you've got to give him a lot
Speaker 1: of cocaine. That's the best way to get kids to
Speaker 1: fight with you or for you, um whatever, both. Really, so,
Speaker 1: these kids have been exposed to the culture of human
Speaker 1: sacrifice and corpse desecration engaged in by the most prominent
Speaker 1: and powerful adults in their world. Again, these kids grow
Speaker 1: up seeing all of both, kind of the president's signpost
Speaker 1: aspects of this, and then after the Civil War they
Speaker 1: see all of these warlords doing this ship. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're beyond traumatized. Can only there, It's not it's more
Speaker 1: than traumatized. Certain aspects of this has become normalized. This
Speaker 1: is what you do in the war. This is what
Speaker 1: you do to exert power right and to take power
Speaker 1: for yourself, to protect yourself. These are practices you engage in.
Speaker 1: So as Taylor's men take more and more of the country,
Speaker 1: journalists start to see roadblocks manned by small boys units
Speaker 1: um draping their command posts with the bones and guts
Speaker 1: of slaughtered enemies and civilians for like ritual purposes to
Speaker 1: protect themselves. Um. Dough responds in the predictable way by
Speaker 1: handing guns out to Krawn kids and kids of any
Speaker 1: other allied ethnic groups in Monrovia and sending them out
Speaker 1: in ad hoc death squads and platoons to attack Taylor's soldiers,
Speaker 1: who by late nineteen laying siege to the capital UH.
Speaker 1: These children that Dough arms in the city become known
Speaker 1: as the nineteen nineties Soldiers. At one point, they attack
Speaker 1: a Lutheran church that's filled with members of rival ethnic
Speaker 1: groups UH, and using axes and machetes, they murder more
Speaker 1: than six hundred refugees from these kind of ethnic groups
Speaker 1: that they're seen as being opposed to the president. Um
Speaker 1: like like kids just massacring six hundred people with axes
Speaker 1: like and again these are like some of them are
Speaker 1: like ten little kids. Often. Um. So, Taylor has a
Speaker 1: lot of initial international support for obvious reasons, but it
Speaker 1: becomes quickly obvious that he is just as vicious as Dough. Right,
Speaker 1: there is not a real moral difference between these two dudes. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Liberian expact pet positions like Ellen Surleif, who had supported
Speaker 1: Taylor initially, quickly dropped him, and she'll get like attacked
Speaker 1: later on because she helps fund him early the economists.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but also like you know, he didn't start
Speaker 1: off doing some of the ship he would later do. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not going to weigh in on
Speaker 1: that too much, but uh so, the good Dough Jackson
Speaker 1: Doe tries to join up with Charles Taylor's forces at
Speaker 1: one point, and Taylor like uses him a little bit
Speaker 1: as like a billboard, like look at us, you know,
Speaker 1: we're legitimate. This guy really won the election. He's on
Speaker 1: our side. But then a couple of weeks later, Jackson
Speaker 1: Doe disappears and nobody knows what happens to him, probably
Speaker 1: because Taylor's like, well, I don't actually I'm going to
Speaker 1: be the president. So this guy here, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: not really needed, You're not really useful here. So as
Speaker 1: all this killing continues um, the world just kind of
Speaker 1: watches on in shock. Taylor's forces gradually boxed Dough into
Speaker 1: pretty much just controlling the capital Um, and his overthrow
Speaker 1: was only halted by the arrival of an international military
Speaker 1: mission made up by soldiers from West African states. Although
Speaker 1: Nigeria is basically a d percent of the effort, and
Speaker 1: it's more or less Nigeria intervening in order to try
Speaker 1: and have things work out in a way that's best
Speaker 1: for Nigeria. Right, That's often what you'll hear people claim,
Speaker 1: at least so because like Dough connected to the US
Speaker 1: and Nigeria also wants some Yeah, there's a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna attempt to lay
Speaker 1: into like, but yeah, this is supposed the International Mission
Speaker 1: is primarily Nigeria, and it's primarily Nigerian forces. So they
Speaker 1: set up shop in the capital to like monitor things
Speaker 1: and try to negotiate a peace between Taylor's forces and
Speaker 1: the rebel Taylor Taylor's forces and does or the different
Speaker 1: rebel groups dominated by Taylor and Dough um. But this
Speaker 1: isn't really doesn't go anywhere because none of the belligerents
Speaker 1: are really willing to discuss any kind of peace as
Speaker 1: long as Dough remains in the country and Do is
Speaker 1: not willing to leave, and so the situation is stymied
Speaker 1: once again until on September nine, n President Dough gets
Speaker 1: in his motor cade to visit the International Military Missions
Speaker 1: headquarters and through a comedic series of errors. He winds
Speaker 1: up captured by troops from the a f L, which
Speaker 1: is the party that Charles Taylor is a member of. Now,
Speaker 1: the a f L splits into at one point, and
Speaker 1: Taylor is in charge of a bunch of the troops,
Speaker 1: and then another guy named Prince Johnson, who is a warlord,
Speaker 1: is like in control. He's like also a major warlord
Speaker 1: in this period, right, So these guys are in the
Speaker 1: party that Taylor's affiliated with, but they're under the command
Speaker 1: of this other warlord, Prince Johnson. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the Liberian Civil Wars. The events that followed were
Speaker 1: captured on film by a Palestinian journalist representing a Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern news agency, the result of which was a snuff
Speaker 1: film that later found its way into circulation all across
Speaker 1: West Africa. The sequence opens with Prince Johnson seated at
Speaker 1: a desk, a can of Budweiser beer in his hand
Speaker 1: and a string of hand grenades slung around his neck.
Speaker 1: Opposite him, seated on the floor and dressed only in underwear,
Speaker 1: with his arms and legs tightly bound. With Samuel Doe.
Speaker 1: A rambling interrogation followed, interspersed with him singing in prayer
Speaker 1: as Prince Johnson and an audience of his men grew
Speaker 1: steadily more inebriated. Doe could be heard pleading for his
Speaker 1: arms to be loosened and appealing for brotherhood, while jeers
Speaker 1: in general conversation punctuate the background scenes. Then, at a
Speaker 1: certain point, Johnson thumped the desk and ordered Doe's ear
Speaker 1: to be cut off. Dough was held down by several
Speaker 1: men as one man armed with a knife cut off
Speaker 1: his ears as he wailed and thrashed on the floor,
Speaker 1: And so it continued. The torture went on between bouts
Speaker 1: of muddled interrogation and snippets of discussion of Doe's potential
Speaker 1: to escape despite his condition thanks to his juju power. Death,
Speaker 1: no doubt, came slowly, and it is generally accepted that
Speaker 1: he died in the early hours of September ten. So
Speaker 1: pretty nasty. Also pretty similar to how the last guy
Speaker 1: goes out to how Dough kills the last press point.
Speaker 1: That's a very good throwback, Yes, Laberia. At this point,
Speaker 1: when you've had two presidents get tortured and executed by
Speaker 1: the guy who takes over after them, that's not a
Speaker 1: good precedent, right, I thought a good track record. I
Speaker 1: would say, like, look, the US has had some a
Speaker 1: complicated history with democracy. I don't want to get up
Speaker 1: on our high horse, but I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that's not an ideal transition of power. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not the best way that can go. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just recently remembered how you opened up this entire story
Speaker 1: about someone named button naked, and I'm so curious how
Speaker 1: we're to general butt nakeds coming baby, Okay, I would love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not as fun a figure as you're thinking right now. Well,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, because I told you he's not.
Speaker 1: I know he's not as fun as he sounds. Okay, fine, fine,
Speaker 1: So you might think this would have been the end
Speaker 1: of things, hopefully, but obviously the violence just continues. Taylor's
Speaker 1: victory against Dough sets off a six year period of
Speaker 1: kind of free for all civil warfare. Now Taylor is
Speaker 1: in charge in the capital for much of this, but
Speaker 1: the capital city and a lot of the country gets
Speaker 1: split up by this patchwork of different militia units. They're
Speaker 1: all allied to different strong men, all of them call
Speaker 1: themselves generals. Some of them are in charge of armies
Speaker 1: that have thousands of guys. Some of them is just
Speaker 1: like a couple of dozen dudes, right, they all call
Speaker 1: themselves generals. Most of these guys are pretty young, you're talking,
Speaker 1: we're talking in like their twenties. Um. Basically none have
Speaker 1: formal military experience. Some of them had been in the
Speaker 1: librarian military. A lot of them are just like fucking
Speaker 1: dudes who joined militias during the early stage of the
Speaker 1: civil war and wind up you know, in charge of units.
Speaker 1: Um at this point, are you are you? I know,
Speaker 1: no one has all the answers. But like it's is
Speaker 1: Taylor like revered or like, oh, this person's fear because
Speaker 1: the violence never ends, Like nobody likes Dough But like
Speaker 1: Taylor's not bringing peace to Liberia. He is definitely very
Speaker 1: popular members of ethnic groups that had been purged by Dough, right, Um,
Speaker 1: but that does not obviously the country kind of falls
Speaker 1: apart into this massive civil war afterwards, so he's not
Speaker 1: like widely seen as legitimate you know, um, and of
Speaker 1: all these different warlords and generals and whatnot. Basically, since
Speaker 1: they don't have much in the way of military experience,
Speaker 1: their understanding of war and how to prosecute. It comes
Speaker 1: from American action movies. Um, it's a mix of like,
Speaker 1: it's a mix of American action movies. The own like
Speaker 1: the trauma they remember from being like twelve and seeing
Speaker 1: the early days of the war, right uh, and then
Speaker 1: myths they kind of remember from childhood about like different
Speaker 1: Indigenous practices, and as an adult they adopt noms to
Speaker 1: gear for themselves that are a dizzying mix of awesome
Speaker 1: and nonsense. Famous rebel leaders included General Chuck Norris, General
Speaker 1: one Ft Devil, General Mosquito, General Mosquito Spray, and of
Speaker 1: course the guy we're going to spend most of this
Speaker 1: episode discussing General butt naked. So that's where that of course,
Speaker 1: it's a child fucking Yeah, they're fucking like kids may
Speaker 1: there like I mean like twenty or something, but like
Speaker 1: they were kids when the fighting started. In many cases,
Speaker 1: I think it's you would most likely get stunted at
Speaker 1: that age, you know what I mean. There's only so
Speaker 1: much yeah, and developing you do when you're so your
Speaker 1: traumatie so young, and so I don't know, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is by the time Taylor's in power. This is a
Speaker 1: civil war that's being fought by kids who probably don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of memories from before ship started to
Speaker 1: go really get really violent through things. Yeah, so, General
Speaker 1: butt Naked's real name was Joshua Milton blacky Uh. He
Speaker 1: was born on September nineteen seventy one as a member
Speaker 1: of the Sarpo tribe. One source I found, the credibly
Speaker 1: named mysterious universe dot Org give this gives this description
Speaker 1: of his upbringing. And obviously I'm going to explain why
Speaker 1: this is largely bullshit, but I want to read this
Speaker 1: because it gives you an idea of how kind of
Speaker 1: like popularly and more in like less credible, but like
Speaker 1: main not mainstream, but like one of the ways, like
Speaker 1: the way in which people talk about this guy's background
Speaker 1: most commonly, even though it's not accurate. Quote. As he
Speaker 1: grew he was just another boy, like so many in
Speaker 1: the world. Somewhat rebellious, yes, but there was no clue
Speaker 1: as to the darkness and atrocities that ahead on his
Speaker 1: path to the future. His childhood would diverge from the
Speaker 1: norm when, at the tender age of eleven, he was
Speaker 1: made a tribal priest after an initiation ceremony in the forest.
Speaker 1: Lay would claim during his initiation ritual, he had a
Speaker 1: strange and terrifying vision in which he says the devil
Speaker 1: came to him and proclaimed him to be a great
Speaker 1: warrior who could gain vast supernatural power if only he
Speaker 1: were to practice cannibalism and perform human sacrifices, and his
Speaker 1: life would change dramatically after this. Now these are lies. Uh.
Speaker 1: Joshua Milton Lay General Butt Naked is a huge liar.
Speaker 1: The mysterious universe thing is based heavily on a book
Speaker 1: that he wrote after he became a born again Christian.
Speaker 1: His book titled The Redemption of an African war Lord
Speaker 1: is a pretty standard redemption narrative. You see a lot
Speaker 1: of evangelical I used to be a Satanic priest, sacrifice
Speaker 1: in babies and then a huge thing and like especially
Speaker 1: during like this actually this exact period, the Satanic panic
Speaker 1: is hitting in the United States, and you're getting a
Speaker 1: lot of these like people being like, oh, I was
Speaker 1: a devil wor shipper and then I found Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Blaye's narrative is like the same thing. One of the
Speaker 1: differences though, that he absolutely murders a little kid. He
Speaker 1: kills a shipload of people and does a bunch of
Speaker 1: like anyway, so what you're saying is he runs this website. No, no,
Speaker 1: this is kind of based on Yeah. So Blahie claims
Speaker 1: to have engaged from an early age in elaborate nightmare
Speaker 1: acts of child sacrifice to gain powers, like even as
Speaker 1: a little kid. He says he's doing this as the
Speaker 1: priest um and true, like, well no, because he's not
Speaker 1: a child priest um but committing but like he's doing
Speaker 1: up things as an adult. He is claiming that at
Speaker 1: age eleven, he becomes a priest and learns human visits
Speaker 1: by the devil and starts sacrificing people. That's pretty certainly
Speaker 1: not true. There's basically one good article about this guy
Speaker 1: that I found. It's called The Greater the Center. It's
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker. It's written by Damon tabor Um
Speaker 1: and a lot of report orders who aren't Tabor kind
Speaker 1: of taken in and charmed by blah He He's a
Speaker 1: very charming guy. Tabor talked to his family though, and
Speaker 1: among other things, he pretty easily punctures the myth that
Speaker 1: Blahi was some sort of child murder priest. Quote Harrison
Speaker 1: shine Challer, another of Blahi's half brothers told me that
Speaker 1: he had been unaware of Blahi's life as a priest.
Speaker 1: As far as Chader knew, Blai was merely a rebellious youth.
Speaker 1: Their mother would give him money to buy food for
Speaker 1: the family, and he would disappear into the streets of
Speaker 1: Monrovia for weeks at a time. He left school after
Speaker 1: the third grade and later sold kool aid and chicken
Speaker 1: soup at a local market wearing a purple necktie, purple shirt,
Speaker 1: purple trousers, and purple shoes so people would recognize him.
Speaker 1: He then moved on to drug trafficking and robbery. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: Chader said he and Blaihie worked together. A Nigerian soldier
Speaker 1: once asked Blahi to help him gain spiritual powers. Blai
Speaker 1: prescribed a witchcraft treatment, an enema, and while the soldier
Speaker 1: was indisposed, Chader stole his money. So this I think
Speaker 1: is a more credible version of his back story. He
Speaker 1: is a con man, he knows how do He's always
Speaker 1: thinking about an angle. He wants to make money, um
Speaker 1: and I think he will get into this more later,
Speaker 1: but I think he adopts this very American Christian but
Speaker 1: although not just because Liberian Christianity has a lot in
Speaker 1: common with like the Revival bat like all, you see
Speaker 1: a lot of the same things over there, these Revival meetings,
Speaker 1: speaking and tongues, they have as much acclaim to it
Speaker 1: as Americans do. Obviously, um because again there started out
Speaker 1: as a colony. But that's what he's doing. When you
Speaker 1: hear about these crazy stories of like him sacrificing babies
Speaker 1: from magical powers, that's what he's doing. He is also
Speaker 1: as a warlord, as we're gonna get to, he commits
Speaker 1: a lot of crimes against humanity. Do not get me wrong.
Speaker 1: This is a very complicated story for that reason. So again,
Speaker 1: in order to puncture his claims about his early life,
Speaker 1: um Tabor also goes on to note that while witchcraft
Speaker 1: and human sacrifice are a part of some indigenous beliefs
Speaker 1: in West Africa, nothing like the sort of child priesthood
Speaker 1: that Blahie describes, where he's like to be the tribe
Speaker 1: priest at eleven and has to carry it sacrifice, nothing
Speaker 1: like like. Anthropologists have found no evidence of anything like
Speaker 1: that existing in indigenous societies and like communities in Liberia.
Speaker 1: Quote David Brown, a social anthropologist who has worked in
Speaker 1: Liberia since the nineteen seventies, said that he had never
Speaker 1: heard of a secret society that matches Blahi's description. I
Speaker 1: spoke with many other experts who agreed. One called Blahi's
Speaker 1: story ludicrous. And again, part of what he's playing on
Speaker 1: here is the fact that white people are willing to
Speaker 1: believe any kind of ship. Can you tell about this stuff?
Speaker 1: You say, like, that's why it's so many people bought
Speaker 1: into it. It was like, oh my god, that's what
Speaker 1: these cultures are crazy and it's savage. Of course that
Speaker 1: would happen. And you know what else, White people are
Speaker 1: always willing to believe in, Sharon. Yeah, capitalism and the
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast all backed heavily
Speaker 1: by white people. Oh god, So that was I mean,
Speaker 1: that was too real. I mean I did not enjoy
Speaker 1: that at all at all times. Sometimes things happen and
Speaker 1: they can't be stopped. We're back from ADS, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about Milton Blah He So Blaghi now claims that
Speaker 1: when Sergeant Doe took control, and this is again I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be talking a lot about things he claims about
Speaker 1: his back story. I will tell you when it's true.
Speaker 1: I think it's true. Okay, right. So one of the
Speaker 1: things Blah claims is that when Sergeant Doe took control
Speaker 1: of the country right back in the eighties, he was
Speaker 1: Doe's official spiritual advisor. That's already sounds like absolutely there's
Speaker 1: no evidence of this. A lot of casual write ups
Speaker 1: of of of General Butt Naked will say it will
Speaker 1: either just say that he was or that he sometimes
Speaker 1: they'll say he claims. I don't think they have put
Speaker 1: enough emphasis on the fact that, like, there's no fucking
Speaker 1: evidence of this. Um. One source claims he did black
Speaker 1: magic to help doughe win election or re election, which
Speaker 1: is not true. Dough did not win re election. He
Speaker 1: burned people's ballots and men of genocides. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know he was. He does get affiliated with Dough at
Speaker 1: some point. It's not impossible they did some sort of
Speaker 1: like together. But the idea that like he was his
Speaker 1: spiritual I just have not seen hard evidence of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But to give you an idea of more of the
Speaker 1: lurid claims made about Blahi during the Dough period of
Speaker 1: time in Liberia, I'm gonna quote again from Mysterious Universe
Speaker 1: dot org you can tell that's a credible site. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would get involved. Is a high priest of a
Speaker 1: secret cult that practiced black magic. Human sacrificed and worshiped
Speaker 1: a god called nyanbe Awe, who he believed was actually
Speaker 1: the Devil. During this time, he claims he regularly talked
Speaker 1: to the Devil, as well as displayed many supernatural powers
Speaker 1: such as invisibility, flight, and immunity to bullets, and he
Speaker 1: was already accustomed to the sight of blood due to
Speaker 1: the monthly sacrifices he helped carry out. But it would
Speaker 1: not be until Civil War came to Liberia that he
Speaker 1: would truly carve out his legacy as a ruthless, frightening
Speaker 1: force to be reckoned with and truly earned his moniker
Speaker 1: the most evil man in the world. He just made
Speaker 1: himself to like a superhero villains. Yeah, he kind of does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's absurd, and he has a really bad dude, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, But like we'll we'll continue. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to the question of what did this guy
Speaker 1: actually do right, what is his real background, things are
Speaker 1: a lot murkier. Many sources will say that he will
Speaker 1: kind of just because he calls himself a general. Will
Speaker 1: assume he was a major military leader. He was certainly
Speaker 1: well known. Um he was infamous within the city of Monrovia,
Speaker 1: which is where he was active right and where a
Speaker 1: lot of the fighting is occurring. A lot of people
Speaker 1: were knew him in Monrovia. But basically all good documented
Speaker 1: evidence of him as the warlord General butt Naked is
Speaker 1: pretty much just nineteen right now. He's fighting. He's involved
Speaker 1: in different militias to some extent prior to that, but
Speaker 1: really his his career is butt Naked is like one
Speaker 1: year now, that's when something like that. Yeah, Now, based
Speaker 1: on what his brother said, we can assume he probably
Speaker 1: spends the early year like while Doe is in power,
Speaker 1: he's probably mostly like smuggling drugs, doing some mid levels
Speaker 1: scams and crimes. He's he's not Krown, but he's like
Speaker 1: an ethnicity that is kind of allied with Doze, with
Speaker 1: the Krown, with like Dose people. So he does when
Speaker 1: when the civil war starts, he joins a militia that's
Speaker 1: allied with Doze political party and he fights on that
Speaker 1: side of the conflict of Taylor. So he's on the
Speaker 1: losing side of the initial stage of the Civil War
Speaker 1: right uh. And when Doe gets killed, Blighi joins a
Speaker 1: militia called the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy,
Speaker 1: which is made up of former soldiers in Doe's army
Speaker 1: and other kron Um. Charles Taylor is the big enemy
Speaker 1: that Blaggie and all of his fellows were fighting, and
Speaker 1: by the mid nineteen nineties, Taylor had turned the process
Speaker 1: of making child soldiers into something of a science. Taylor's
Speaker 1: Small Boys units numbered thousands of kids and were made
Speaker 1: up mostly of orphans who swore allegiance to Popeye as
Speaker 1: they called him, like Papaye, like Papa Uh, and he
Speaker 1: would have to prove and he would have some prove
Speaker 1: their loyalty by killing their parents. Because they were so
Speaker 1: loyal and impressionable and drugged up, they made excellent shock troops.
Speaker 1: From a write up in pro Publica, he presented himself
Speaker 1: as a Baptist who neither smoke nor drank. A mesmeric speaker,
Speaker 1: he would appear before adoring crowds dressed in fine white linen,
Speaker 1: spouting promises of democracy jobs in better days. At other
Speaker 1: times he wore camouflage and carrying an AK forty seven.
Speaker 1: He would talk to the radio to announce the impending
Speaker 1: capture of a nearby town than magically do it. For
Speaker 1: many in Liberia, the spirit world remains close at hand.
Speaker 1: In such a place, Taylor became something more than a man, mystical, powerful, otherworldly.
Speaker 1: So this is the guy that blah he is is
Speaker 1: fighting against. Right, So he starts in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: it's probably I don't think I'm not gonna say he
Speaker 1: was only butt naked for a year. But like he
Speaker 1: starts to like go from just being a guy involved
Speaker 1: in the Civil War to a militia leader in kind
Speaker 1: of the mid nineties, when he starts recruiting children himself. Um,
Speaker 1: mostly kids who are like nine to ten, some who
Speaker 1: are like older in their teens, but like a lot
Speaker 1: of the kids, he's recruiting our little kids, um. And
Speaker 1: he has them fight naked, and he fights naked, um blah.
Speaker 1: He claimed that this was because being naked made his
Speaker 1: magical powers more effective. He could go invisible and he
Speaker 1: could avoid bullets more easily. And one thing people will
Speaker 1: point out is that like he legitimately was fighting in
Speaker 1: a bunch of battles naked. There's video of him naked
Speaker 1: with guns and like fighting killing people with machetes and stuff,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't get shot like he is. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things. Um, you can see how a mystique
Speaker 1: builds around this guy because yeah, he and his kids
Speaker 1: are fighting nude, but also like they're winning a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, you know, and these like these are
Speaker 1: like street fights with guts very low, like not we're
Speaker 1: not talking like tanks and ship fighting each other. Helps
Speaker 1: his narrative being like he doesn't need well they don't have.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a bit. So he and
Speaker 1: a soldiers will fight nude. They're also he's mashing cocaine
Speaker 1: up into the foods of these kids in his unit
Speaker 1: to like make them fight better. I really feel for
Speaker 1: all these children that work. It's horrible. Yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: the massacre the ship out of anyone they see as
Speaker 1: an enemy right up from ABC notes blah. He had
Speaker 1: a reputation for being more brutal than other military leaders.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows his nom de gear General butt Naked. He
Speaker 1: was a cannibal who prefers to who preferred to sacrifice
Speaker 1: babies because he believed their death promised the greatest amount
Speaker 1: of protection. He went into battle naked, wearing only sneakers
Speaker 1: and carrying a machette because he believed it made him
Speaker 1: invulnerable and he was in fact never hit by a bullet.
Speaker 1: His soldiers would make bets on with her, a pregnant
Speaker 1: woman was carrying a boy or girl, then they would
Speaker 1: slit open her belly to see who was right. And
Speaker 1: you know, these are things Blai claims a lot of.
Speaker 1: It's certainly true. He has soldiers who kill a shitload
Speaker 1: of women and children. Also that slitting up in the
Speaker 1: belie a pregnant Roman. You hear that a lot, as
Speaker 1: like claims of war crimes and stories, and often like
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which they did it.
Speaker 1: It is something he claims a lot of things. He claims.
Speaker 1: There lies that said. They do stuff that's on that level,
Speaker 1: that's documented, that's on that level of horrible. So it's
Speaker 1: not out of the question either. Um, we have footage
Speaker 1: and photos of him naked and wielding rifles and machetes.
Speaker 1: Foreign journalists reported on what he did. He's he was
Speaker 1: really doing some of this stuff. Numerous Liberian civilians since
Speaker 1: the war have talked to breast To, have talked to
Speaker 1: press about how he do stuff like shoot off their
Speaker 1: legs with his handgun or machete their husband to death,
Speaker 1: kill their brothers and sisters by hacking them to pieces. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like again, this is very much like a lot of
Speaker 1: those traditional evangelical Christian narratives where they will like luridly
Speaker 1: claimed to have been doing horrible satanic ship. But like,
Speaker 1: also he did a bunch of that, like we do know,
Speaker 1: like he's not making all of this up. A lot
Speaker 1: of it's documented. It's just that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like lurid occult stuff that isn't so much document that
Speaker 1: is more questionable. Anyway, years later, while he was testifying
Speaker 1: at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: more later, he claims that how he talked about how
Speaker 1: he would um he called it planting violence in his
Speaker 1: child soldiers, how he would radicalize them to fight for him. Um.
Speaker 1: And the way he would do this is he would
Speaker 1: show them American action movies like Rambo and Ship and
Speaker 1: a lot of these movies different Hollywood movies. Right, You'll
Speaker 1: see the same actors in multiple movies, right, and you'll
Speaker 1: die in one movie and then that act will be
Speaker 1: back as a character another movie, right, So he would
Speaker 1: show them multiple movies where like kind of the same
Speaker 1: actors are playing extras, are bad guys and get killed
Speaker 1: and then they're back alive in another movie. And he
Speaker 1: would explain to these kids that, like, real war works
Speaker 1: the same way. So if you kill people, they're going
Speaker 1: to come back somewhere else. What he called tells them
Speaker 1: war is just an act. You're just playing a role
Speaker 1: like these like Rambo, you know, So it's not real,
Speaker 1: so we can do whatever, you know. Um. He also
Speaker 1: testifies that when he shot and wounded enemies, he'd have
Speaker 1: his child soldiers cut them to pieces in order to
Speaker 1: desensitize them. Then they would eat and share the heart.
Speaker 1: So that's not great for a better idea of the
Speaker 1: kind of war crimes this guy and his boys got
Speaker 1: up to. I'm going to quote again from that ABC article,
Speaker 1: and this is based on interviews with a young woman
Speaker 1: who Black he met with after the war to apologize
Speaker 1: for murdering her family. Part of why I'm reading this
Speaker 1: is like, we can we know this is a true
Speaker 1: Like again, a lot of claims he's making aren't true.
Speaker 1: His victim is alive, like we can talk to her
Speaker 1: That's why I'm reading this because this is one that
Speaker 1: we know is one of the things. So are you
Speaker 1: saying like he apologized when he was like doing his
Speaker 1: Christian ship. We're getting to that. I want to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of one of the verified war crimes
Speaker 1: we know that he was doing. A group from the
Speaker 1: Kron tribe was searching for enemies within the country, which
Speaker 1: in a civil war consists of member of another tribe.
Speaker 1: Her older brother, Daniel, was hiding a nanny from the
Speaker 1: Geo tribe who had been working for the family for years.
Speaker 1: It'll be okay, the mother said. Faith heard the screams
Speaker 1: outside the huts as the men approached. Suddenly she saw
Speaker 1: a naked man with only a machete in his hand.
Speaker 1: Why is the man naked, she wondered. Then she saw
Speaker 1: the other men, about twenty five of them as she
Speaker 1: estimates today, carrying guns. They had heard there was a
Speaker 1: Geo woman in the village. Daniel stood in front of
Speaker 1: the nanny to protect her. She is a human being
Speaker 1: like you and me, he said to Blaghi Blagh. He
Speaker 1: responded with an order. One of the boys stepped forward
Speaker 1: and shopped off her brother's foot. Then he hacked off
Speaker 1: his lower leg, followed by his thigh in his hip,
Speaker 1: methodically working his way up to up the body. Eventually,
Speaker 1: her brother fell silent. Blai told everyone to lie on
Speaker 1: the ground. His men raped her mother and her sisters
Speaker 1: and then killed them. Gway says, they didn't rape her,
Speaker 1: but they did. They didn't rape me, but they did
Speaker 1: things to me I don't want to talk about. They
Speaker 1: left me with a blinish that I will always have.
Speaker 1: At some point, Bla, you said that things were moving
Speaker 1: too slowly and that there were other military operations to
Speaker 1: attend to. That was when he began to participate. So again,
Speaker 1: to be clear, we're talking about he makes a lot
Speaker 1: of claims I don't think happened. This guy is doing
Speaker 1: some like nightmarish crimes against humanity, um, real bad stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so, oh my god, it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: The things that humans are capable of truly are just
Speaker 1: mind melting. And the thing is you you could say
Speaker 1: that if one person capable of that, than we all are,
Speaker 1: right if it's like, if that's what what I just
Speaker 1: m hmm. We're not all capable of physically participating in
Speaker 1: mass murder and rape, but we're all the people of
Speaker 1: we're all for one thing. We're all capable of supporting
Speaker 1: the people who do that, which is really one of
Speaker 1: the stories that's most important from the Holocaust exactly. No,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of sorry, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: just baffled by I mean, I I know humans have
Speaker 1: done horrible things since the dawn of humans, but it's
Speaker 1: it's still so unsettling to me to really wrap the
Speaker 1: head around what that means we are. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things. You One of the worst crimes in the
Speaker 1: Holocaust was the Bobby r massacre. I think like thirty
Speaker 1: thousand Jewish people are shot to death in a single
Speaker 1: day by by a German forces UM. A horrific, horrific act,
Speaker 1: probably the biggest mass shooting um of of people in history. UM.
Speaker 1: In the same war, the United States Air Force incinerates
Speaker 1: between like eight and a and fifty people in a
Speaker 1: single night in Tokyo, knowingly killing civilian, knowing that that's
Speaker 1: most of who will die as civilians, that we're going
Speaker 1: to burn them to death by the tens of thousands, UM.
Speaker 1: Which of those is a worse war crime. Well, people
Speaker 1: have strong opinions on that, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, both of them are the targeted killing of civilians. UM.
Speaker 1: For different purposes, one could argue, but both are military
Speaker 1: forces using military grade weaponry to massacre civilians by the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands. UM. It's a thing that every side
Speaker 1: in a sufficiently large war, every side finds a reason
Speaker 1: to justify and and so I think, as lurid as
Speaker 1: the crimes of these Liberian warlords are, you get so
Speaker 1: many breathless descriptions of guys like butt naked, murdering little
Speaker 1: kids and raping women, all these horrible things that happened
Speaker 1: that are worth documenting and worth discussing, but they often
Speaker 1: get talked like they are somehow separate from the kinds
Speaker 1: of war crimes that we endorse. And I don't think
Speaker 1: they are. I think the the targeting and killing and
Speaker 1: torturing and raping of civilians UM is bad, whether it's
Speaker 1: being done using missiles or being done by a man
Speaker 1: with a rifle going face to face. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think that the separation, or that we we trade
Speaker 1: one kind of massacre for another makes a tremendous mortal
Speaker 1: difference to me. When you're still killing civilians now, I
Speaker 1: agree with that. That's a good reminder. Yeah. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: get like one of the arguments is that we usually
Speaker 1: when we kill civilians it's an accident. Like that guy
Speaker 1: you have family of tin in Afghanistan, right, he wanted
Speaker 1: to rape and murder these people. We didn't want to
Speaker 1: kill that family. We just fucked up. And it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you want to apportion out the
Speaker 1: morality of that, you know, totally. I just think that's
Speaker 1: we'rekill ignorance and just like, what's just it's just, uh,
Speaker 1: if you still believe some of that bullshit and after
Speaker 1: all this technology and all these things you can make,
Speaker 1: and it's we can sit at home and like debate
Speaker 1: which those is more or less a moral act. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it matters to the people getting blown
Speaker 1: up exactly, you know, um, but whatever. Like I just
Speaker 1: state this because it frustrates me when like the fighting
Speaker 1: in Liberia and the brutality of it is seen as
Speaker 1: something exceptional rather than this is what happens when there
Speaker 1: are civil wars. That's very true, and maybe it's more
Speaker 1: digestible when things are just large numbers versus like this
Speaker 1: happened to this person and you can visualize it in
Speaker 1: your head, right, or it's like a like a village
Speaker 1: of people. It doesn't really. It's when I when I
Speaker 1: read a story like that of him killing this family
Speaker 1: and repeatedly raping the women and having his soldiers do it,
Speaker 1: that is horrific and uh, deeply painful to hear in
Speaker 1: a way that if I say, a US air strike
Speaker 1: killed a family of eleven exactly doesn't sound Now if
Speaker 1: I were to describe to you what shrapnel does to
Speaker 1: the bodies of little children, perhaps you would have that
Speaker 1: reaction to the email about what that bombing did to
Speaker 1: the bodies of these people. Yeah, exactly. But it's just
Speaker 1: like sometimes, especially now, we just hear all these like
Speaker 1: eighteen casualties and Palestine or whatever, and it's like we're desensitized,
Speaker 1: does that mean? And we get these stories because there
Speaker 1: they seem foreign and terrifying, like they're doing magic and
Speaker 1: they're these drug adult warlords doing these horrible things. And
Speaker 1: that's again this he is committing unfathomably brutal crimes in
Speaker 1: the on the same level of her horribleness as any
Speaker 1: like Nazi Einsets groupa member carried out any of these
Speaker 1: guys slaughtering their way through Russia. Like, I don't mean
Speaker 1: to mitigate what he's doing at all. I just hate
Speaker 1: that it is often portrayed as somehow separate from the
Speaker 1: history of Western warfare. We hear you, and I think
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't. I didn't see it as you
Speaker 1: mitigating anything. I think it's just a good reminder to
Speaker 1: just if you think this is bad, realize that it's suggested.
Speaker 1: But if this is also not unique. So lay would
Speaker 1: later claim that his general butt naked, he used human
Speaker 1: sacrifice and cannibalism to gain magic powers. Quote every town
Speaker 1: I entered, they would give me the chance to do
Speaker 1: my human sacrifices, which included innocent children. He elaborated. Anytime
Speaker 1: we captured a town I had to make a human sacrifice,
Speaker 1: they bring me a living child that I slaughter and
Speaker 1: take the heart out to eat it. I'm perfectly winn
Speaker 1: to believe this happened. Sometimes in this worth noting. I've
Speaker 1: read a lot of accounts that journalists have had Because
Speaker 1: he's now that he's for like apologized, he goes around
Speaker 1: and talks to his victims to try to get like,
Speaker 1: we'll get into that more later. Um, all of their
Speaker 1: stories are horrible. They're like the one I read earlier.
Speaker 1: I have not run into any of them talking about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to he sacrificed an infant in my village
Speaker 1: or something like that. That's all from him as opposed
Speaker 1: to the things that like his victim so I I
Speaker 1: don't know how true it is. It was a thing
Speaker 1: he did sometimes, but he's exaggerating how often it happened,
Speaker 1: like very unclear. It's just weird to me that, Like,
Speaker 1: I can come up with a lot of stories of
Speaker 1: fund up ship we knew this guy did, and none
Speaker 1: of them are like that kind of stuff. But whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: he did definitely kill a lot of civilians. He was
Speaker 1: definitely into like magic kind of stuff, which is not
Speaker 1: a lot of Liberian warlords are doing different kind of
Speaker 1: witch doctor kind of stuff. It's usually framed right. Um.
Speaker 1: In the years since Blah, he has attempted to make
Speaker 1: amends with his victims. Uh, and overwhelmingly I think most
Speaker 1: of them are men and boys, although a lot of
Speaker 1: them are especially a lot of the people he does
Speaker 1: violence to that's not murder our women. Um. There are
Speaker 1: two ways you can look at his lurid claims of
Speaker 1: committing wartime atrocities. Either he did everything he said and
Speaker 1: literally believed he was engaging in witchcraft and gaining powers,
Speaker 1: or he was making a very rational decision based on
Speaker 1: elements of the local culture and battlefield efficacy. For one thing,
Speaker 1: people in this culture, because of what everyone else has
Speaker 1: been doing, our prime to take seriously some of these
Speaker 1: signifiers of being involved in witchcraft, being a witch doctor
Speaker 1: and whatnot, so they make people take you more seriously. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: if other people who are seen as powerful are doing
Speaker 1: sacrifices and engaging in cannibalism, than engaging in that too
Speaker 1: makes you like he's fighting Charles Taylor, and there's forces
Speaker 1: are doing stuff like this, and this makes this allows
Speaker 1: him to like like you have to build yourself up
Speaker 1: into it, like in a mythic sense, something as formidable
Speaker 1: as what you're fighting, right, you're not getting shot by bullets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's also it's worth noting in a
Speaker 1: in fighting like what's happening in Liberia, fighting naked does
Speaker 1: not expose you to much more danger than fighting with
Speaker 1: clothing on. This is not a war. This is before
Speaker 1: people outside of like very advanced militaries have ready access
Speaker 1: to quality body armor, right, it just does not exist
Speaker 1: for most people in this fighting and a T shirt
Speaker 1: offers no more protection from a bullet than than being naked.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one thing like this is from there
Speaker 1: were there have been forces who fought naked earlier in history.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was noted is like, well,
Speaker 1: when they would get stabbed or shop, they were less
Speaker 1: likely to die because they're not having like a filthy,
Speaker 1: matted fur or something pushed into an open wound which infections.
Speaker 1: And this is also there's not a lot of great
Speaker 1: access to medical care. So it's not it sounds wacky
Speaker 1: and crazy, it's not as irrational a decision as it
Speaker 1: may see. And also seeing a naked dude charging, he
Speaker 1: was terrified as he gains a reputation from being not
Speaker 1: being able to be killed, that benefit that makes people
Speaker 1: less likely to fight him. People will tell stories that
Speaker 1: like whole towns would flee when you hear General butt
Speaker 1: naked is coming because he's a fucking dangerous, crazy person.
Speaker 1: You want to get the funk out of there, right,
Speaker 1: And that's a benefit for him. Like so again, as
Speaker 1: as wild as all this sounds there are very rational
Speaker 1: reasons for everything he's doing in addition to whatever he
Speaker 1: does happen to believe. Um. Yeah, And so again that's
Speaker 1: just important to note that, like all of the stuff
Speaker 1: that is most lurid about, this makes a kind of
Speaker 1: sense as a cold blooded military calculation. Um yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a force multiplier, right. Um, it's like drifting. It's like
Speaker 1: a different form of like just like how just conning
Speaker 1: people in a much more intense violent way. What I think,
Speaker 1: what I want to point out is again you get
Speaker 1: a lot of ableism this with people who describe behavior
Speaker 1: like what he's doing, like taking cocaine and fighting naked,
Speaker 1: as insane and like this is extremely sane. He is
Speaker 1: very much acting within the strictures of the society that
Speaker 1: has devolved in Liberia over wartime, and his actions are
Speaker 1: perfectly rational within the context that he lives. Um. And
Speaker 1: part of the evidence for that is he survives the war.
Speaker 1: So um. And I tend to think he is a
Speaker 1: pretty calculating guy. Um. You know, I mean, unfortunately, he's
Speaker 1: not stupid. It sounds like you know, yeah, no, you
Speaker 1: have to Yeah, he's he's he I think he was
Speaker 1: pretty pragmatic dude. So Blah. He now claims that his
Speaker 1: career as General butt Naked ended after a battle on
Speaker 1: April sixth, or in some versions, right before a battle
Speaker 1: to take a bridge in in like April of nineteen
Speaker 1: and he has this vision. And I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: a write up in The New Yorker. I met Jesus
Speaker 1: there for the first time, he said. In his memoir Blah,
Speaker 1: he describes killing a child near the bridge, this bridge,
Speaker 1: by opening the little girl's belt back and plucking out
Speaker 1: her heart. Her blood was still in his hands, he
Speaker 1: told me when he heard a voice. When I looked back,
Speaker 1: I saw a man standing there. He was so bright,
Speaker 1: brighter than the sun. The voice told him repent and live,
Speaker 1: or refuse and die. I wanted to continue fighting, but
Speaker 1: my mind never left this person, how bright he was
Speaker 1: and how passionate his words, Blah, he continued. He soon
Speaker 1: quit fighting, leaving his child soldiers defend for themselves, and
Speaker 1: he began sleeping in a pew in a nearby church.
Speaker 1: The pastor there gathered his congregation and they asked God
Speaker 1: to strip Blahi of his demonic powers. The next day, Blah,
Speaker 1: he went to see his commanding officer handed over his
Speaker 1: weapons and amulets and said, my new commander is Jesus Christ. Okay,
Speaker 1: I what is that? Ben okay? As a grifter, as
Speaker 1: a con man. What was the reason he decided? We
Speaker 1: are getting to that? So it is worth noting for
Speaker 1: context that this year nine six, the year he claims
Speaker 1: he converted and left war behind, is also the year
Speaker 1: there's a ceasefire in live here. Okay, that's a good
Speaker 1: thing to note. Everyone is fucking exhausted at this point.
Speaker 1: For like sixteen years basically they've been either at war,
Speaker 1: they've just been this dictator has been purging people who's
Speaker 1: been coups. It's been like it's been like fifteen plus
Speaker 1: years of just like constant traumatizing bullshit. Everyone's exhausted, um,
Speaker 1: and they agree like, okay, let's have a fucking election
Speaker 1: and we'll see if that works any better than what
Speaker 1: we've been doing. UM. So Charles Taylor is like in
Speaker 1: charge in Monrovia at this point, and he decides to
Speaker 1: run for president. Um. And since violence has gotten kind
Speaker 1: of out of favor, he declares that he's been born
Speaker 1: again as a Christian, so he is not is not
Speaker 1: like his rival does, his rival does gets like starts
Speaker 1: signaling some of this witchcraft ship and like using child
Speaker 1: soldiers blah ye does it? Charles Taylor becomes born again
Speaker 1: blah right, Like that's an element here. Um. Now, there
Speaker 1: is widespread skepticism about Charles Taylor's claims that he's born again, um,
Speaker 1: and it's generally seen as a ploy to make himself
Speaker 1: more palatable. The next year, he runs for presidents under
Speaker 1: the incredible slogan he killed my ma, he killed my paw,
Speaker 1: I'll vote for him. That was not where I thought
Speaker 1: that was going. Right, that's pretty quite quite a presidential
Speaker 1: actually at least rhyme or something interest. The New Yorker explains,
Speaker 1: quote the phrase was darkly ironic. Taylor was claiming to
Speaker 1: be the only leader powerful enough to prevent another war,
Speaker 1: so like that's his That's what he's saying, is like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I killed your fucking family. But now I've got what
Speaker 1: it the the amount the might that it will take
Speaker 1: to keep Liberia peaceful. So vote for me, like no
Speaker 1: one else is going to to to to defeat me,
Speaker 1: like the yeah, yeah yeah, And he wins the election.
Speaker 1: You can either say this is because of his brilliant
Speaker 1: strategy or because it's not not a great election. Um,
Speaker 1: Taylor wins or wins, you know, however you want to
Speaker 1: see it. Uh. And he immediately sets to persecuting his rivals,
Speaker 1: including Blackie the former general. Butt Naked flees to Ghana,
Speaker 1: where he lives in a refugee camp, and he claims
Speaker 1: he learns to read and studies the Bible during this time,
Speaker 1: and he also says this is when he starts spending
Speaker 1: time face to face with people who had been as victims,
Speaker 1: who are like, what then are you doing here? You're
Speaker 1: the reason that we had to leave, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So he spends like a decade kind of hiding. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen nine, the civil war starts up again. Right
Speaker 1: they have like three years, asked Durry, where there's this election?
Speaker 1: And Taylor wins and then another rebel invades the same
Speaker 1: way Taylor had, from like a bordering country and try
Speaker 1: right exactly mean like right, you know this is none
Speaker 1: of this should be surprising. By two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: at least a order of a million people have been
Speaker 1: killed in the two Liberian civil wars. And this has
Speaker 1: now been going like the civil wars have been going
Speaker 1: on for fourteen years, right, and then you had Doze
Speaker 1: reigned before that, which was pretty nasty. People just have
Speaker 1: nothing left in them. Um. But the war has, like
Speaker 1: I say, regular people, the warlords and the their fucking
Speaker 1: child armies. All they do is keep escalating. Um. And
Speaker 1: as kind of the Year begins, Taylor is fighting for
Speaker 1: his life in the city against a siege from an
Speaker 1: opposing rebel party, just like Dough had been doing against him. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like the third time this ship has happened. So
Speaker 1: it is at this point that the women of Liberias
Speaker 1: start to get seriously politically organized. Women bore the brunt
Speaker 1: of the violence in both civil wars, and there had
Speaker 1: been attempts to organize non violent protest campaigns earlier in
Speaker 1: the First Civil War. I think one of the issues
Speaker 1: is that Muslim and Christian women have trouble like organizing
Speaker 1: together for a variety of reasons. Um. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you this story, which is pretty fucking cool. But
Speaker 1: you know what else is pretty cool. Let's see what
Speaker 1: is it this time? Well, it's not Mono. That was less.
Speaker 1: It's not Mono is pretty cool. It's all the cool
Speaker 1: kids are getting it because out in my high school.
Speaker 1: If you didn't get it, that means you weren't kissing anybody.
Speaker 1: I know you're not. You're not you're not getting any
Speaker 1: action if you're not catching mono because I didn't actually
Speaker 1: not clear. Yeah, yeah, neither did I I don't think
Speaker 1: it makes sense anyway, Wamp wamp, go ahead. I have
Speaker 1: faith and everyone here's ability to catch mono. We're back. Ah,
Speaker 1: So it is, you know, bad stuff. This has mostly
Speaker 1: been bad stuff, but now we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some cool ship. M because all of the women in
Speaker 1: Liberia start to organize a protest campaign women women. Let's
Speaker 1: bring women into the story. Final so too, they've been involved,
Speaker 1: just mostly getting murder. Now they are going to I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been horrible and that's part of why this is
Speaker 1: able to happen. Um, and this is one of the
Speaker 1: coolest stories I've ever heard. So to explain what happened next,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from an article in the Journal
Speaker 1: of International Women's Studies by Maxwell A. J J A
Speaker 1: d g A d j E. I. So there you go,
Speaker 1: engulfed in a cycle of violence and with no hope
Speaker 1: for a better future. A group of Liberian women under
Speaker 1: the leadership of Lema Bowie, came together to form the
Speaker 1: Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace w l m
Speaker 1: a P to demand an immediate into the conflict. Initially, Gabowie,
Speaker 1: a Christian social worker with the Lutheran Church, had intended
Speaker 1: the organization to include include a small group of Christian
Speaker 1: women who would meet regularly to pray for peace. However,
Speaker 1: when words spread about their meetings through the community, one
Speaker 1: Muslim policewoman, a Satu Bah Kenneth, became highly impressed with
Speaker 1: the women's vision and volunteered to mobilize Muslim women to
Speaker 1: join the movement. Following initial concerns that having Muslims in
Speaker 1: their ranks would dilute their faith, the Christian women ultimately
Speaker 1: resolved that because bullets don't pick and shoes between Christian
Speaker 1: and Muslim women, it would be in their interests to
Speaker 1: work together for peace. More importantly, having a united front
Speaker 1: of Christian and Muslim women would send a clear message
Speaker 1: to the people of Liberia that neither the government forces
Speaker 1: predominantly Christian nor l u r D forces predominantly Muslim,
Speaker 1: We're fighting for their religious interests. While addressing w l
Speaker 1: m a P for the first time. Gabawie declared that
Speaker 1: in the past we were silent, but after being killed, raped, dehumanized,
Speaker 1: and infected with diseases, war has taught us that the
Speaker 1: future lies in saying no to violence and yes to peace.
Speaker 1: For the thousands of women gathered, this impassioned speech by Gabawie,
Speaker 1: more than any ethnic or religious affinities, represented the level
Speaker 1: of frustration with the conflict and the extent to which
Speaker 1: they were willing to commit to bring peace to their country.
Speaker 1: So Gabawie and her fellow organizers start holding rallies at mosques,
Speaker 1: markets and churches. They'll do three rallies a week, one
Speaker 1: of a mosque, one of a market, wanted a church.
Speaker 1: These are all like so that they're reaching every one right.
Speaker 1: These are the three places everyone's going to go to
Speaker 1: at least one of these three places. Um and they
Speaker 1: start reaching out to other women and gradually expanding the
Speaker 1: reach of their organization and demanding peace. Once they've built
Speaker 1: themselves up into a sizeable organization and they'd had time
Speaker 1: to discuss a more detailed plan of action, they issued
Speaker 1: a statement condemning all sides in the Civil War for
Speaker 1: their abuses of women and children, basically saying none of
Speaker 1: you were legitimate because all of you were just massacring people,
Speaker 1: which is not an inaccurate way to analyze the life
Speaker 1: period Civil War next quote. In defiance of President Taylor's
Speaker 1: ban on public marches, w l m a P staged
Speaker 1: its first mass protest at Monrovious Fish Market, a location
Speaker 1: that would make the President see them on his daily
Speaker 1: commute to the office. While using radio and printed flyers
Speaker 1: to just to spread word about the protest, Cavalli and
Speaker 1: her team encouraged women to show up for the protests
Speaker 1: in white clothing, without any jewelry or makeup for them.
Speaker 1: This would send a signal about their serious commitment to peace,
Speaker 1: an unrelenting desire to remain independent of either side of
Speaker 1: the conflict. Heating to their calls on the radio over
Speaker 1: women from different social backgrounds, clad in white T shirts
Speaker 1: showed up daily for the sit in protests, which took
Speaker 1: place over the next several weeks. In each of the gatherings,
Speaker 1: the women would sit, dance, and sing for peace while
Speaker 1: displaying placards and banners with messages such as the women
Speaker 1: of Liberia want peace now, we are tired, we want
Speaker 1: peace no more. War, et cetera. For a while, Taylor
Speaker 1: was able to ignore the women, but their crowds kept
Speaker 1: growing larger and larger. He was eventually forced to take
Speaker 1: their petition and promise his willingness to quit hold ceasefire
Speaker 1: talks with the rebels. They didn't consider this the end, though,
Speaker 1: and brainstormed other tactics to apply pressure. Eventually, they decided
Speaker 1: to go on a sex strike and this is a
Speaker 1: quote again from the same document, to purnt their husbands
Speaker 1: from forcibly having sex with them. They set up safe
Speaker 1: spaces where they could stay and sleep together. After some
Speaker 1: initial setbacks, the strategies seemed to be effective, as many
Speaker 1: men began to pray with their wives and demand an
Speaker 1: into the conflict. More importantly, the sex strike gave the
Speaker 1: campaign extremely valuable media attention outside of Liberia. Following the
Speaker 1: successes with the sex strike and President Taylor's meeting, the
Speaker 1: women turned their attention to the rebels, demanding that they
Speaker 1: too agree to attend the peace talks. Upon hearing that
Speaker 1: the war lords were meeting at a hotel in a
Speaker 1: neighboring country, Sierra Leone, a delegation of the women traveled
Speaker 1: to the country on their arrival, the delegation was able
Speaker 1: to arrange a private meeting with the war lords and
Speaker 1: get them to commit to attending peace talks. So men
Speaker 1: of our geniuses. That was pretty It's a pretty good story. Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's not there's other stuff going on, other
Speaker 1: factors working for peace obviously, like talk about the ceasefires
Speaker 1: and stuff have been going on for what it is
Speaker 1: not just this that leads to an end. But this
Speaker 1: plays a significant role in the end of the Second
Speaker 1: Liberian Civil War, um, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean not that we did more evidence
Speaker 1: of this, but women smarter than men, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So let's just this is definitely definitely a
Speaker 1: story where the women are the ones who are much
Speaker 1: smarter and also very much like have you so Liza
Speaker 1: Strata is this old Greek play about the Peloponnesian War
Speaker 1: with the plot of like this is the plot of it,
Speaker 1: Like the women in Athens decided to go on like
Speaker 1: a sex strike to force an into the war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if you think about it, if nothing
Speaker 1: else is working, you use what is weaponized to you,
Speaker 1: like for your benefit, you know what I mean, or
Speaker 1: like for you take advantage of people see you as
Speaker 1: and it's important to note like they have to there's
Speaker 1: a lot that they have to do in order to
Speaker 1: make this work, including setting up safe spaces where they
Speaker 1: cannot get like that. That the document that I cited there, Um,
Speaker 1: you should is really worth reading because there's a lot
Speaker 1: more that go. Like, there's a ton of organizations. This
Speaker 1: is a very involved process. Um, I'm giving you like
Speaker 1: really broad strokes here. Uh So Taylor is eventually forced
Speaker 1: to resign and go into exile. International peacekeeping troops into
Speaker 1: the country, the rebels lay down some of their arms,
Speaker 1: and broadly speaking, things get a lot better. There were
Speaker 1: elections and more elections, and these all of aally culminate
Speaker 1: in the election of Ellen Johnson Surleif, who becomes Liberia's
Speaker 1: first female president. So this is all great, uh In
Speaker 1: things in Liberia get much better because of this. But
Speaker 1: peace is only achieved because there's with There have to
Speaker 1: be a lot of ugly compromises, right, So when the
Speaker 1: war ends, one side isn't crushed. Everyone's got people under arms.
Speaker 1: The country is filled with tens of thousands of men
Speaker 1: and boys who have done the things we just talked about.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing who have raped women in mass
Speaker 1: and like gunned down babies and all this kind of ship.
Speaker 1: These guys are like still around. But also, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do about it? If you start going after
Speaker 1: every individual who committed a war crime in the militia,
Speaker 1: how does that not cause another civil war? Because they're
Speaker 1: gonna pick up guns again, and also their families are
Speaker 1: gonna be pissed. The ethnic group is gonna be like, well,
Speaker 1: they did what they did because that was done to
Speaker 1: us and they were defending us, and like it's it's
Speaker 1: a really messy problem. We have achieved peace. What do
Speaker 1: we do to what extent can we hunish the people
Speaker 1: who did bad things during the war? How like? How
Speaker 1: so this is not they don't have a simple answer
Speaker 1: to this. But they decided to hold a truth and
Speaker 1: Reconciliation commission um, And the purpose of this is to
Speaker 1: investigate the worst offenders and basically go through this list
Speaker 1: of people they know had done fucked up ship, talk
Speaker 1: to as many of them as they can, investigate it,
Speaker 1: and then decide, broadly speaking, do we pardon them or
Speaker 1: do we prosecute them? You know? Um? And this is
Speaker 1: where General butt Naked comes back into the historic record.
Speaker 1: So he's been he's been hiding for like a decade,
Speaker 1: you know, hanging around. Uh when he hears about this. Uh,
Speaker 1: he shows up on day one of the hearings and
Speaker 1: becomes the first warlord to testify. He admits, Yeah, he shows,
Speaker 1: he enters that he's not even in the country. He
Speaker 1: comes back to testify. He is the first, I think
Speaker 1: like the only person to admit to war crimes on
Speaker 1: this level. Um. He admits in front of this to
Speaker 1: recruiting child soldiers, to raping women, to murdering civilians, to
Speaker 1: sacrificing babies, to everything we've talked about. He admits his
Speaker 1: personal death toll at twenty people. Now that's not possible.
Speaker 1: He he isn't He is effectively leading a platoon. There's
Speaker 1: like thirty forty kids that he's commanding at any given time,
Speaker 1: maybe a company at the most. There's just no way
Speaker 1: he killed a tenth of the people who died in
Speaker 1: the Liberian Civil War. Um. Yeah, but this guy exagger right, right,
Speaker 1: he's a fan. And also there's a a Vice documentary
Speaker 1: about him, which we'll talk about in a bit. There's
Speaker 1: problematic aspects of that. Um. But some of the Liberians
Speaker 1: who were interviewed in that suggests that, well, he's not
Speaker 1: literally saying me and my forces killed, but we were
Speaker 1: the side we were working on in the period where
Speaker 1: I was one of the leaders of that side killed,
Speaker 1: which is broadly plausible, right, And you know, so that's
Speaker 1: a thing you'll hear. Um. The Commission did not really
Speaker 1: question him on anything. They seem to kind of be
Speaker 1: in awe of him and the fact that he's coming
Speaker 1: and admitting and he's saying, like, I feel terrible, you
Speaker 1: know it is it's the smart move. If he did
Speaker 1: something stupid and you immediately admit to it, there's something
Speaker 1: almost endearing about it, you know what I mean. It's just, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I always when I finished drunk driving my
Speaker 1: Forerunner through a trailer park and shooting an A K
Speaker 1: forty seven out the window, I always with a note
Speaker 1: that says, real sorry, And that's why everybody loves me.
Speaker 1: And I'm just say it. If y'all cheat on your partners,
Speaker 1: instead of getting caught, if you admit to it, less
Speaker 1: likely they're gonna hate you, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Stuff like that, not the A K whatever, the ship
Speaker 1: that you just said, but also none of this works
Speaker 1: on cops, so don't try it. Um So the Commission
Speaker 1: does not really question him on any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: One member tells him he has good leadership qualities. They
Speaker 1: seem to just be blown away that this guy is
Speaker 1: like coming to them and just saying what people broadly
Speaker 1: know is true. Next from the New Yorker quote, Blast
Speaker 1: testimony was front page News and Liberia. Strangers hugged him
Speaker 1: on the streets of Monrovia and journalists came from all
Speaker 1: over the world to interview him. The Daily Mail run
Speaker 1: a profile under the headline face to Face with General
Speaker 1: Butt Naked, the most Evil man in the World. Vice
Speaker 1: feature Blaggie in a lurid travel documentary called The Vice
Speaker 1: Guide to Liberia, which has been viewed more than ten
Speaker 1: million times on YouTube. The pastor of an evangelical church
Speaker 1: in the East Village saw the video and later became
Speaker 1: one of Blaghie's benefactors. Blaghie has written five books. A
Speaker 1: memoire told titled The Redemption of an African Warlord and
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand and thirteen by a small
Speaker 1: Christian press. In the foreword, Jans wrote, not since the
Speaker 1: conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.
Speaker 1: Have I ever heard a conversation a conversion story more
Speaker 1: radically compelling? So I'm trying to look him up because
Speaker 1: I need to know. Again, we talked about this before,
Speaker 1: I'm sure on an episode have been on. But like,
Speaker 1: if you're he said he was charming, But if you're
Speaker 1: good looking ish, even above average, you can get away
Speaker 1: with more ships. I want to know what he looks like.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not he's he's like a big dude,
Speaker 1: he's pretty like muscular. He's not really b l h
Speaker 1: y e y I. He's not really my I'm kind
Speaker 1: of more into like anyway whatever. But you said he
Speaker 1: was charismatic, so it's probably he's very charismatic. There's the
Speaker 1: reason he's I'm I'm sure some and he when he's younger,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's also considered more handsome. Okay, sorry, but
Speaker 1: I think he's just he's a really good talker. You know.
Speaker 1: That's kind of more than the deal. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: more and more than attraction, that's what or attractiveness, that's
Speaker 1: what probably gets you more cons it's the talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so blah. Used detractors will argue that he pretty much
Speaker 1: just partied his fame as the repentant warlord into a
Speaker 1: new career charismatic and wealth spoken. He's been and again
Speaker 1: he's in this like this Vice documentary early on, and
Speaker 1: it gets him a benefactor. Somebody starts giving him money
Speaker 1: to do things to like try and make things right. Um.
Speaker 1: And he like, right after he gets kind of famous
Speaker 1: for going to this thing, he establishes a home for
Speaker 1: former child soldiers, like a rehab home to help them. Um.
Speaker 1: It definitely exists or it has it points. There's a
Speaker 1: Vice documentary from two thousand eleven called the I think
Speaker 1: it's called The Redemption of General Butt Naked Um, and
Speaker 1: it films him and his soldiers and like or these
Speaker 1: kitchen former child soldiers and they're all saying, like, oh,
Speaker 1: he saved my life. I would have died with I
Speaker 1: was living on the street. He's you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: he did bad things, but like you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: are are basically our father. Now he's like he's saving us. Um.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, that documentary is filming him while he gets
Speaker 1: a death threat and he flees the country for Ghana.
Speaker 1: Um and his soldiers all wind up back on the
Speaker 1: street and are like, what the funk he abandoned us
Speaker 1: while he lives in a hotel. So that that there's
Speaker 1: there's criticisms of Vices coverage of him, which spans a
Speaker 1: couple of pieces, but they do get that piece of
Speaker 1: his his life. I mean, it benefited him more than anything.
Speaker 1: Like imagine this, you're in hiding and you you he
Speaker 1: thinks of a way that not only can he get
Speaker 1: out of hiding, but he can be fucking he can
Speaker 1: benefit off of it and make money, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like he did the perfect con. He's smart.
Speaker 1: So by the time that New Yorker article comes out,
Speaker 1: he's back to running a halfway house. He comes back
Speaker 1: to Monrovia, he starts another halfway house. He's running one
Speaker 1: again for these child soldiers in Monrovia, and this seems
Speaker 1: to be thanks. He gets the funding to do this
Speaker 1: from a white American lady named Brenda Webber who saw
Speaker 1: the redemption of General butt Naked one of the Vice
Speaker 1: documentaries and contacted him on Facebook. How modern everything is
Speaker 1: all the time when you're talking Facebook. So she sees
Speaker 1: this guy and she is taken by him, and she
Speaker 1: wants to help, and she does this like I think
Speaker 1: a lot of white ladies do where they decide like
Speaker 1: and white dudes. Uh, just white people thing where they decide,
Speaker 1: I want to help Africa. Yeah, and this guy seems legit.
Speaker 1: Let me just give him a bunch of money to
Speaker 1: do a thing. So yeah, they do this. They set
Speaker 1: up a halfway house, um, using this lady's money. And
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker interview, this woman she's getting grifted
Speaker 1: and conduct of our life savings. I also don't care
Speaker 1: too much, uh, she says during the interview quote I
Speaker 1: could just tell he was genuine. I knew he wasn't
Speaker 1: the same person, that he was a totally different man.
Speaker 1: And then she would go on to say ship like this,
Speaker 1: you should see them when someone cares, especially a white
Speaker 1: woman from America, and makes them feel like they are
Speaker 1: worth something for the first time in years. This is
Speaker 1: what she's saying about, like the child soldiers that she's
Speaker 1: helping to fund, like like, wow, when a white woman
Speaker 1: likes them, they feel great. Like I don't care that
Speaker 1: this lady is getting grifted. Yeah, I know me either.
Speaker 1: But also it's a whole like psychological study about how
Speaker 1: serial killers or whatever even if they're in jail like
Speaker 1: women are. There's a there's it's certainly a thing that
Speaker 1: had a number of serial killers have had like women
Speaker 1: fall in love with them. I wonder what that's about.
Speaker 1: That's a bigger topic than we can get in. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so she's she's at this point when New
Speaker 1: Yorker writes about them, she is sending eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a month. Half of it goes to him directly for
Speaker 1: him to live on, and again to a white lady
Speaker 1: living in like, you know, ning a pharmacy. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's just he's living off four dollars a month. Doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a lot, but that's ten times the local wage.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty good money for him. Um. The other
Speaker 1: half is supposed to go to run this home for
Speaker 1: child soldiers. Um. But we'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting she's spending more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a month by the time the New Yorker gets
Speaker 1: to her. She says that in the first year, she
Speaker 1: ran through their entire family savings account of dollars, and
Speaker 1: she's taken out like a fifty thou dollar credit line
Speaker 1: in order to continue funding it, and she's she's definitely
Speaker 1: the same kind of like really frustrating evangelical prosperity gospel
Speaker 1: ship that like, well exactly, she tells the New Yorker,
Speaker 1: I know everything is going to be fine. You can't
Speaker 1: give and give like that and not get something in return.
Speaker 1: And she's like, hasn't told her husband she's spending all
Speaker 1: the money on this, and like, but like she believes,
Speaker 1: you know, you give money for God, and God will
Speaker 1: make you make it right. He'll get your money back,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And I think that New Yorker article
Speaker 1: makes it really clear the Vice the Redemption of General
Speaker 1: Butt Naked Vice documentary, I actually think and this is
Speaker 1: like not the first thing they do about him. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's yeah, but it is it. I came
Speaker 1: away being like, well, this dude's fucking con man. I
Speaker 1: guess you can kind of make either conclusion from it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of murky. I mean, if you are easily
Speaker 1: or like if you have a predisposition to maybe believe
Speaker 1: religious stories about redemption, or like someone that claims he
Speaker 1: found God, like maybe that's something different, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, Now, the New
Speaker 1: Yorker article, though I want to read another quote from
Speaker 1: it that kind of further makes that case. At one point,
Speaker 1: another resident of the house pulled me aside and told
Speaker 1: me that Blaghi was misappropriating the program's money for his
Speaker 1: own benefit. The administration is run by his entire family,
Speaker 1: and no one really questions it. Sometimes, the young man added.
Speaker 1: The residence of the house went without breakfast, or their
Speaker 1: meals consisted of playing rice with salt and pepper. When
Speaker 1: Western reporters arrived, Blagyi and his staff say, okay, stand
Speaker 1: in front of this camera and tell the man. We
Speaker 1: are josh Joshua blah ye beneficiaries. But what have I benefited?
Speaker 1: When one of the residents texted Weber to report that
Speaker 1: they weren't being fed breakfast, she started sending an additional
Speaker 1: three dollars a month. Blah. He hadn't told her about
Speaker 1: the problem, she believed, out of concern for her finances.
Speaker 1: I wholeheartedly trust Joshua, she went on. If he ever
Speaker 1: makes a mistake, it's not willfully. Now that con has
Speaker 1: been successful in a lot of foreign journalists. Uh. The
Speaker 1: lynchpin of his entire act, though, the meat thing that
Speaker 1: he makes sure to do whenever he's interviewed is find
Speaker 1: one of the people he victimized and asked them to
Speaker 1: forgive him on camera. Now, there are some of these
Speaker 1: people who he's like helped in one where he's given
Speaker 1: him money and he has like good relations with them, um,
Speaker 1: but it is really ugly and a lot of them haven't,
Speaker 1: and he'll like harass them on camera to demand, like
Speaker 1: he'll say stuff like you have to forgive me, and
Speaker 1: I want to play a clip from one of these
Speaker 1: moments he's this is a woman he murdered her brother
Speaker 1: in front of her. UM. So it's like, does he
Speaker 1: think they're less likely to say I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably what he's thinking. Just watch it and watch it
Speaker 1: and watch her face like I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: beg you forgive me. Don't you bank yourself better out
Speaker 1: of madness, but please, I will be able to play
Speaker 1: the better for you. I mean, I'm not being able
Speaker 1: to do everything that you're better can do, but I
Speaker 1: will stand there whenever you need it betterly, council, whenever
Speaker 1: you need a better protection. Trying to quote on me,
Speaker 1: I beg you please. So the whole time this has happened,
Speaker 1: because if you just hear what he's saying, it may
Speaker 1: sound okay. She is turning away and trying to get
Speaker 1: away from him, and he is repeatedly standing in front
Speaker 1: of her and stopping her from leaving while he says
Speaker 1: all this, and there are people in the background like
Speaker 1: naughty along saying so it's not letting her go when
Speaker 1: she wants to leave. There's no part of her that
Speaker 1: wants anything what he's saying. Like, there's a moment that
Speaker 1: like where her eyes just like are so dead and
Speaker 1: the staring off. He's like, I can be your brother.
Speaker 1: She's like, I'm out of here. She's also cornered with
Speaker 1: a camera in her face to the camera in her face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty gross. So yeah, that's the episode. There's
Speaker 1: more to say about the Liberian Civil War. Charles Taylor
Speaker 1: just got sentenced to prison. By the way, He's one
Speaker 1: of the people who does not get like they reckon
Speaker 1: the truth and reconciliation thing, recommends prosecution. Um. He goes
Speaker 1: to the uh the International Criminal Court uh, and he's yeah,
Speaker 1: he does a whole he does a whole thing, and
Speaker 1: he gets sentenced to like fifty years in prison. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's good, I guess. I mean whatever, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, fuck him, he shouldn't be allowed to just
Speaker 1: it's good. It's good when war criminals get punished for
Speaker 1: being war criminals. I feel mixed about Blackey, where he's
Speaker 1: not doing nothing, and there's definitely people who, at least
Speaker 1: on camera, will say that like he's helped them, he's
Speaker 1: helped them after the war and stuff. But he's also
Speaker 1: like he goes to all these revival meetings, he's like
Speaker 1: raising money and it's questionable where's it goes. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what you do. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell the Liberians when we or the
Speaker 1: other this is how you should handle the aftermath of
Speaker 1: your civil war. But like this, this guy is a
Speaker 1: pretty familiar kind of grifter. Yeah, no, I agree. I
Speaker 1: usually these grifters somehow are able to live a long
Speaker 1: life just continuing some type of grift. And like, look
Speaker 1: at him now, he's like he's only fifty. He has
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: he's doing great. He's being great all things considered. He
Speaker 1: fucking he won. Yeah, you know who else wins Sharine
Speaker 1: who everyone who listens to your plugs? That's correct, Robert, Wow,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. You can follow me if you
Speaker 1: want on the internet. Twitter is Shiro Hero six six
Speaker 1: six and Instagram is just Shiro Hero. I have some
Speaker 1: poetry books out that you can buy if you want,
Speaker 1: and a podcast as well. Uh, ethnically ambiguous and that's about.
Speaker 1: That's that's enough for today. Yeah, all right, motherfucker's that's
Speaker 1: the episode, So get out of here. Thanks for having met.
Speaker 1: I do think but we bonded on this episode. Do
Speaker 1: you feel it we had like that discussion about whatever
Speaker 1: the funk that was? Yeah, that was like that was
Speaker 1: a conversation that we just happened to record, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? That was that was you wanna you
Speaker 1: want to smoke weed and listen to King Crimson? Helly? Alright, okay,
Speaker 1: but Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: More from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.