Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Hey everyone, I'm Robert Evans
Speaker 1: and this is me an Mar printing the Revolution. It's
Speaker 1: and it could happen here special mini series, an in
Speaker 1: depth documentary investigation with me and journalist James Stout. Over
Speaker 1: the next four days, you're going to learn about the
Speaker 1: gen Z militias of the MA and Mar Civil War,
Speaker 1: three D printed weapons, and a bunch of other really
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. Besides, So, without any further ado, here's James.
Speaker 1: Ever since the first person built the first fence, took
Speaker 1: land from everybody and annexed it to themselves, property rights
Speaker 1: and violence on hand in hand with property, grew the state,
Speaker 1: and when the state came the police. Today most of
Speaker 1: us grew up under the control of states, and they're
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous that their violence is often overlooked until a
Speaker 1: particularly agreed to as incident occurs. But all states, even
Speaker 1: the most benign, rest on a monopoly on violence. State
Speaker 1: to the entities that impose laws on a given area,
Speaker 1: and if you break those laws, the state can beat
Speaker 1: you up, lock you up, or shoot you up. When
Speaker 1: the state loses the monopoly on violence, it ceases to
Speaker 1: be able to enforce its laws, charge its taxes, and
Speaker 1: enforce its will on the people at rules. We've seen
Speaker 1: this all over the world, from the Democratic Republic of
Speaker 1: Congo to briefly downtown Seattle. Our state in the USA
Speaker 1: speaks the language of rights and liberties. When we want
Speaker 1: to appeal to the state, we tend to use that language.
Speaker 1: Even though our state, as we saw in is backed
Speaker 1: by plenty of violence as much as any other, it
Speaker 1: goes a long way to camouflage that violence. Some states
Speaker 1: are a bit more mask off. They speak to their
Speaker 1: citizens more or less exclusively through violence, and when citizens
Speaker 1: need to respond to that state, they respond to their
Speaker 1: language it uses to speak to them. That's how a
Speaker 1: teenager from Yangon, Myanmar ended up on Reddit in summer
Speaker 1: of one asking strangers how to use a three D
Speaker 1: printer and computer to make a rifle me and Ma
Speaker 1: isn't a country that is on the radar for most
Speaker 1: of the US. If it is a tool, it's probably
Speaker 1: because the State Council and Foreign Minister on Scien Succhi.
Speaker 1: She managed perhaps the history's fastest pivot from Nobel Peace
Speaker 1: Price winner to head of a government accused of genocide.
Speaker 1: But Suki is in jail now and the Rahania, the
Speaker 1: Muslim ethnic group that the military attempted to eliminate from
Speaker 1: the east of the country under her rule, are just
Speaker 1: one of many ethnic and political groups. They're an open
Speaker 1: armed conflict with the military who now hold control of
Speaker 1: the government of Myanmar, known locally as a Tapmador. The
Speaker 1: military sees power in early one you might have seen
Speaker 1: a video of a woman doing an aerobics workout as
Speaker 1: the vehicles rolled in behind her to seize power. Ever
Speaker 1: since that day, they've been committing crimes against humanity all
Speaker 1: over the country. Myama has a longer history of dictatorship
Speaker 1: than democracy. The British East India Company occupied the area
Speaker 1: that now represents the country in the nineteenth century. As always,
Speaker 1: they talked about civilizing missions and freedoms, but in practice
Speaker 1: the occupation was extractive and only benefited the Anglo Burmese
Speaker 1: and a few Indian civil servants they brought with them often.
Speaker 1: But this month led to resistance that manifested itself in
Speaker 1: hunger strikes and everyday acts of disobedience, small ways of
Speaker 1: saying no. In a few instances, it became open and
Speaker 1: unrest biled into the streets. The country became a major
Speaker 1: battle ground during the Second World War, with Japan evading
Speaker 1: and seizing the country before Allied forces took it back
Speaker 1: in a fierce campaign in nineteen As many of a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand Japanese troops died. Burmese people fought
Speaker 1: on both sides. As son An San Suki's father demanded
Speaker 1: that Britain grant him and his fellow Burmese people independence
Speaker 1: if they fought for the Allies. The British refused. An
Speaker 1: San then went first to China and eventually Japan for support,
Speaker 1: and eventually he fought against the British with his Burmer
Speaker 1: Independence Army. But after two years of occupation, a Stan
Speaker 1: and his comrades changed sides under a broad alliance called
Speaker 1: the Anti Fascist organization. They turned on the Japanese and
Speaker 1: they once again took up arms to liberate their country.
Speaker 1: On the fourth of January, Burma became an independent republic.
Speaker 1: The new republic's territory combined three British territories and over
Speaker 1: a hundred distinct ethnic groups. For the next fourteen years,
Speaker 1: these groups struggled to find a democratic Burma and an
Speaker 1: identity for themselves within it. Mostly they failed. The period
Speaker 1: was characterized by the Chinese Civil War spilling it to Burma,
Speaker 1: ethnic arm insurgencies and repeated demands for a federal republic
Speaker 1: with a weak central government into the military. A rate
Speaker 1: at new demands for a federal republic stage to cop
Speaker 1: Burma spent the next twenty two years under the military
Speaker 1: rule of a council, pursuing what they called the Burmese
Speaker 1: Way to socialism. Burma's planned economy left it largely isolated
Speaker 1: from the rest of the world home the press was censored,
Speaker 1: and a type of nationalism that combined nominal socialism and
Speaker 1: Burman ethnic identity became the official state ideology. During this period,
Speaker 1: Burma became one of the world's poorest countries. Sporadic protests
Speaker 1: were met with overwhelming force and the eighths of August
Speaker 1: and uprising began. It started among a students in Yangon,
Speaker 1: but it took real quickly around the country. The so
Speaker 1: called eight eight Uprising because of the date, began with
Speaker 1: the general strike and huge nor violent protests. These were
Speaker 1: met with gunfire. Protesters fought back with Molotov cocktails and rocks.
Speaker 1: The military fired to hospitals, and by September eighteen they
Speaker 1: launched a coup to take the country from a one
Speaker 1: party state back to a military dictatorship. It was throing
Speaker 1: these protests on San Suki, the Daughter of Independence. Here
Speaker 1: a son emerged as a national figurehead, especially in the West. Amato.
Speaker 1: The Indian writer wrote the following about eight across Burma,
Speaker 1: people poured out in thousands to join the protests, not
Speaker 1: just students, but also teaches, monks, children, professionals and trade
Speaker 1: unionists of every ship. It was on this day, too,
Speaker 1: that the Hunter made its first determined attempt at repression.
Speaker 1: Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators and hundreds of unarmed
Speaker 1: marches were killed. The killings continued for a week, but
Speaker 1: still the demonstrators continued to flood the streets. After the
Speaker 1: uprising had been suppressed. Multiparty elections were later held, while
Speaker 1: the new National League for Democracy party of Ang Song
Speaker 1: Suki won the most votes. The hunter used to see power.
Speaker 1: Protests continued off and on for decades, with the two
Speaker 1: thousand seven Saffron Revolution, which the government violently cracked down
Speaker 1: on monks, resulting in the most international condemnation. Following the
Speaker 1: Saffron Revolution, the government's isolationism hindering aid after extensive cyclone damage.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, the military government finally implemented
Speaker 1: the roadmap to discipline flourishing democracy that had developed in
Speaker 1: If you're wondering about the name of the country, this
Speaker 1: officially changed in as well, but like much of the
Speaker 1: nation's history, a grand proclamation from the government didn't mean
Speaker 1: much on the ground. Both words derived from Baranma, a
Speaker 1: name that the majority ethnic group who we're calling Burman
Speaker 1: here used for themselves. Many opposition groups still use Burma
Speaker 1: instead of Myanma. It's another small way of saying no
Speaker 1: to the military's attempt to control every aspect of their lives. Finally,
Speaker 1: on the eighteenth of September, the army took to the
Speaker 1: streets and the coup led by their Chief of Staff,
Speaker 1: General Sormon. The next day the killings began again. Yeah
Speaker 1: The army later described these people as lutas. It was
Speaker 1: not until two thousand eleven that the military junta finally
Speaker 1: stepped down and passed on power to the Union, Solidarity
Speaker 1: and Development Party in an election that was widely seen
Speaker 1: as fraudulent. A year later on Sen su Chi was released,
Speaker 1: and by two thousand fifteen her National League for Democracy
Speaker 1: won an absolute majority. While she was barred from holding
Speaker 1: the presidential office, she took on the role of State counselor,
Speaker 1: and Myanmar entered a period of liberalization, which, although never
Speaker 1: the federal democracy promised when the country gained its independence
Speaker 1: in n seven, allowed for significant freedoms of communication and speech,
Speaker 1: especially for the Burman majority ethnic group. Not everyone was
Speaker 1: reconciled to the change. Many of myanmars a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five ethnic groups feel marginalized by the state, which
Speaker 1: tends to be dominated by the Burman ethnicity. Some of
Speaker 1: these groups have armed insurgent wings, often more than one
Speaker 1: per ethnic group, as they disagree on politics or religion.
Speaker 1: These groups have fought various Burmese governments since the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: but many of them reached a ceasefire with the government
Speaker 1: as the country passed from military to civilian rule. One group, however,
Speaker 1: saw a huge uptick in violence. The Rohinga ethnic group
Speaker 1: have been persecuted by Buddhist nationals since the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: but the campaign against them increased in violence and scale
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen, when the toatmah Dau began a
Speaker 1: huge crackdown against Rohinga people in Rakin State. The persecution
Speaker 1: began in response to attacks by the Arkan Rohingas Salvation
Speaker 1: Army on Burmese border outposts, but the campaign that followed
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the small insurgent group and
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the desire of the Totma
Speaker 1: Daw to destroy or drive out all Rohinga people, who
Speaker 1: they claim are undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and not citizens
Speaker 1: of Myanmar. While the world praised Suki, her government looked
Speaker 1: the other way as the military carried out a genocide
Speaker 1: that displaced over a million people and killed tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: It was in the context of growing international condemnation of
Speaker 1: the genocide that Myanmar went to the polls in November
Speaker 1: of The November twenty election was only the nation's second
Speaker 1: since the official end of military rule. On San su
Speaker 1: Chi's National League for Democracy won a resounding victory. The
Speaker 1: military backed Union Solidarity and Development Party holds twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of seats under a constitution that SUCHI wanted to change.
Speaker 1: It didn't take defeat well. The election was neither perfectly
Speaker 1: free nor fair. The Rohinga have been almost wholly disenfranchised.
Speaker 1: The government claims they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and
Speaker 1: thus unable to vote. Areas with ethnic armed organizations which
Speaker 1: opposed the government often had poles canceled and in had
Speaker 1: cut off. According to Human Rights Watch, The Carter Center
Speaker 1: estimates that one point four million citizens couldn't vote. The
Speaker 1: one opposition party that was certainly not short changed was
Speaker 1: the military's. However, it was the Union Solidarity and Development
Speaker 1: Party U s d P, which had been calling for
Speaker 1: election delays due to COVID before polls opened. Once the
Speaker 1: elections concluded, they immediately began questioning the results. They continued
Speaker 1: to attempt to undermine the vote for months before they
Speaker 1: resorted to force on the first of February, the day
Speaker 1: before the newly elected legislators were due to be sworn
Speaker 1: in the world largely ignored the situation, apart from the
Speaker 1: one viral video where a masked fitness instructor dances in
Speaker 1: the foreground as a PCs rolled through a roadblock and
Speaker 1: into the parliament complex behind her. On Sang Suchi was arrested,
Speaker 1: charged with breaching COVID nineteen restrictions and illegally importing a
Speaker 1: walkie talkie, and General min On Lang was installed at
Speaker 1: the head of a military junta. If this sounds a
Speaker 1: little like a stop the Steel antasy, and that's because
Speaker 1: it is erily similar to one. Myanmar's democracy is not
Speaker 1: what academics call a consolidated one, which is to say
Speaker 1: that democracy has never been the only game in town there,
Speaker 1: but the United States seems to be rapidly deconsolidating its
Speaker 1: own democracy. The allegations of election fraud and Meanmar were
Speaker 1: no more credible than those in Arizona. However, the military's
Speaker 1: tradition of political engagement there removed many of the barriers
Speaker 1: in between electoral defeat and the death of a short
Speaker 1: lived democracy. Within twenty four hours of the coup, the
Speaker 1: people of Mianmar had fought back health care workers and
Speaker 1: civil servants were on strike by February third, and a
Speaker 1: boycott of Junta owned businesses had begun. Protests began with
Speaker 1: a handful of people. The memories of massacres of pro
Speaker 1: democracy protesters in the nineteen eighties kept many away, but
Speaker 1: a younger generation who had grown up with relative liberty,
Speaker 1: internet access and basic freedoms had not seen blood in
Speaker 1: the streets like their parents. They had seen activists in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, the USA, and Ukraine take on violent state apparatuses,
Speaker 1: and they often seen them win. By the six of
Speaker 1: February twenty people in the streets of Yangon, the largest city,
Speaker 1: and the Internet was shut down. Nationwide. Protests began peacefully
Speaker 1: with memorable signs like my eggs is bad, but the
Speaker 1: military is worse, and we are protesting peacefully, but with
Speaker 1: the W a P capitalized, so it said whack. These
Speaker 1: signs were designed by generation of kids who grew up
Speaker 1: with access to the Internet to attract international attention. Despite
Speaker 1: the ban. They used VPNs to shore im due to
Speaker 1: their struggle. One sign read you've messed with the wrong generation.
Speaker 1: Now will never be allowed to ruin our own lives.
Speaker 1: The tap the door, showed his cards. Pretty quickly, police
Speaker 1: began a suppression with sling shots and clubs, then tear
Speaker 1: gas and flash brag, and quickly they moved to rifles
Speaker 1: and rocket papel grenades. By the ninth of February, my
Speaker 1: way Way, a twenty year old woman have been shot
Speaker 1: in the street. Soon those young protesters have switched signs
Speaker 1: for shields by the mid march on m forty this day,
Speaker 1: a hundred and fourteen civilians were killed in a single day,
Speaker 1: including sixty five in Yangon who were kettled by police,
Speaker 1: surrounded and then shot Quickly, shield walls were set up.
Speaker 1: Medics identified themselves in the protest movement, and hard hats
Speaker 1: and goggles were distributed, but this didn't hip the balance
Speaker 1: of power in their favor. So all In, a former
Speaker 1: student union leader, was there from the start. In the
Speaker 1: text message, he told me I did not miss a
Speaker 1: single day as a member of the KaiA State National
Speaker 1: Strike Committee. I later became more involved in anti authoritarian protests.
Speaker 1: In the early protests, you see him in photos walking
Speaker 1: in the front of the group carrying flags and banners
Speaker 1: with his student I D card on a lanyard around
Speaker 1: his neck. But by March he's wearing a black shirt,
Speaker 1: goggles and a hard construction hat. Meanwhile, the National League
Speaker 1: for Democracy politicians who had escaped attention joined other parties
Speaker 1: and set up a National Unity Government in April. The
Speaker 1: National Unity Government contained members of the National League for Democracy,
Speaker 1: but significantly her Anger activists was appointed and advised with
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Human Rights, and the National Unity Government
Speaker 1: has announced it would for the first time accept the
Speaker 1: jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court with respect to all
Speaker 1: international crimes committed in Myanmar since two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: This would include the Ring genocide. By May, both the
Speaker 1: National Unity Government as well in her to realize that
Speaker 1: no amount of non violent protests was going through this
Speaker 1: large regime that was happy to gun down kids in
Speaker 1: the street, So on the fifth of May he left
Speaker 1: for the jungle. That same day, the National Unity Government
Speaker 1: announced the formation of the People's Defense Force or PDF.
Speaker 1: Within a month, eight hundred soldiers had affected to these
Speaker 1: pro democracy guerilla units. Many put their guns with them.
Speaker 1: That's what didn't join the PDF. Instead, he joined one
Speaker 1: of me and Mar's many ethnic armed organizations groups opposed
Speaker 1: to the central state and its domination by the Burman ethnicity.
Speaker 1: To understand these groups, you need to understand that me
Speaker 1: and Mar is composed of dozens, not hundreds, of ethnic groups,
Speaker 1: but that the Burman, who make up about two thirds
Speaker 1: of the population, have always controlled the state and used
Speaker 1: it as a tool in furthering their interest. Some of
Speaker 1: these groups, like the current National Liberation Army and the
Speaker 1: Kachin Independence Army, have been fighting for decades since the
Speaker 1: country emerged from British colonial rule at the end of
Speaker 1: World War Two. All of these groups draw on a
Speaker 1: combination of ethnic and police to go grievances. Many of
Speaker 1: them adminished to semi autonomous territories like the Kuran State.
Speaker 1: In two thousand thirteen, thirteen ethnic Armed Organizations or e
Speaker 1: a o s came together to form the Nationwide Ceasefire
Speaker 1: Coordinating Team in c CT and signed an eleven point
Speaker 1: Common Position of Ethnic Resistance Organizations on National Ceasefire, or
Speaker 1: the LISA Agreement. Most of them seemed to agree that
Speaker 1: they would accept a federal system rather than complete autonomy.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, a ceasefire was signed, but conflict
Speaker 1: between ethnic armed organizations and between e a o's and
Speaker 1: the government continued. Since the coup began, EO membership has skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: and in October the National Unity Government announced alliances with
Speaker 1: several groups under a central chain of command. Some political
Speaker 1: organizations who played a part in the nineteen eighty eight uprising,
Speaker 1: like the All Burma Students Democratic Front, have been revived
Speaker 1: as armed groups. The a B s DF recently attacked
Speaker 1: Tautama Dagh ships using an RPG. Attacks on military basis
Speaker 1: have also stepped up. PDF units have ambushed and killed
Speaker 1: policemen and raided police and military outposts. Each time they do,
Speaker 1: they steal valuable weapons and ammunition. The top MEDAU has
Speaker 1: responded with shellings and air strikes against residential areas, executions,
Speaker 1: mass physical retribution and the murdering of civilians and aid
Speaker 1: workers and burning of their bodies. As a result of
Speaker 1: all this, ethnic armed organizations have joined forces with anti
Speaker 1: authoritarian Berman people under the auspices of the People's Defense Forces,
Speaker 1: which are under the command of the exiled National Unity Government.
Speaker 1: We have never experienced such kind of brutalities from the
Speaker 1: military as well as a strong resistance from the people.
Speaker 1: They try to make sure the whole country submit to them,
Speaker 1: but we still refuse to allow them to be our rulers.
Speaker 1: This defiance has led to the formation of the People's
Speaker 1: Defense Forces or PDF, a coalition of thousands of resistance
Speaker 1: fighters were carrying out surprise attacks on Hunter checkpoints, bombing
Speaker 1: army convoys, and supporting ethnic armies in their fight against
Speaker 1: the regime. Twelve months ago, these men and women were
Speaker 1: students and office workers protesting the coup. Today they're training
Speaker 1: to overthrow the military. Bennesota is the tough choice, but
Speaker 1: the young people um they are ready to defend the community.
Speaker 1: They have to, of course, sacrifice their own daily life,
Speaker 1: ordinary life. Since March of the influx of new recruits
Speaker 1: has changed these groups. Generation Z militias like the Karinni
Speaker 1: gin Z Liberation Army have sprung up, founded by kids
Speaker 1: who were holding memable signs at protests just a few
Speaker 1: months earlier. They care less about ethnic independence and more
Speaker 1: about beating the junta. Many Burman kids join these groups.
Speaker 1: These organizations of young fighters received training from the experienced
Speaker 1: guerillas hiding in the jungle, but they tended to adopt
Speaker 1: a less top down military structure and armed themselves by
Speaker 1: scavenging whatever weapons they could find, often twenty two caliber
Speaker 1: rifles better suited to shooting squirrels than soldiers. It was
Speaker 1: these kids who grew up online and knew that there
Speaker 1: was nothing you couldn't learn about on Reddit who tipped
Speaker 1: the balance of force away from the state. Unlike the
Speaker 1: ethnic armed organizations and other more experienced guerrillas in Myanmar,
Speaker 1: these kids have little military experience. Their organizations have few
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. They're made up entirely of young people.
Speaker 1: As a result, there are certain things that they're less
Speaker 1: proficient at, but they're much better at things like grasping
Speaker 1: the use of new technologies, which has led to my
Speaker 1: Anmar being the first country in the world where three
Speaker 1: D printed weapons have taken part in a revolution against
Speaker 1: the government. We're going to hear more about that and
Speaker 1: many other things as this series continues. Hey everybody, I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and this is me an mar printing the
Speaker 1: Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms, regular people
Speaker 1: all over the world have had the same basic idea,
Speaker 1: maybe if I made myself a gun, the government wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to be such a dick to me. Historically,
Speaker 1: this has had little impact on the willingness of governments
Speaker 1: to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun
Speaker 1: manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a
Speaker 1: gun in your home was really no different from making
Speaker 1: it in a shop as long as you had the
Speaker 1: proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on
Speaker 1: their own, and we're best fired in a volley by
Speaker 1: a shipload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were
Speaker 1: extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some
Speaker 1: poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a
Speaker 1: threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield
Speaker 1: prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fudel
Speaker 1: lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology
Speaker 1: led to a change in warfare and helped to change society.
Speaker 1: As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle,
Speaker 1: they required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity.
Speaker 1: Nations and peoples without the know how or infrastructure were
Speaker 1: at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came
Speaker 1: into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways
Speaker 1: to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity
Speaker 1: their foes enjoyed indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often
Speaker 1: consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in
Speaker 1: South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and
Speaker 1: Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the
Speaker 1: French during the Coach in China campaign of eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler fortifications in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the months that
Speaker 1: led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the
Speaker 1: men who fought to create the United States busied themselves
Speaker 1: building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities to
Speaker 1: resist the English. This trend has never really stopped in warfare.
Speaker 1: The day before we recorded this, James, my partner in
Speaker 1: this series, sent me a screen grab from a live
Speaker 1: stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for a K
Speaker 1: forty seven's on a three D printer. Firearms manufactured outside
Speaker 1: the arms industry have played a role in every conflict
Speaker 1: of the modern era. But as you've probably guessed they
Speaker 1: have had the greatest influence in the little wars of colonialism.
Speaker 1: European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms ownership in
Speaker 1: their colonies, except the individuals and ethnic groups that adopted
Speaker 1: its local enforces. Since most of these places had never
Speaker 1: developed their own industrial base for arms industry, colonial rebellions
Speaker 1: often relied on homemade weapons in their early stages, along
Speaker 1: with modern firearms pilf by deserting local soldiers. Where domestic
Speaker 1: productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out of their
Speaker 1: way to relocate it, along with the profit it generated
Speaker 1: to the metropol All were reflected on this in his
Speaker 1: novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century, the Indians
Speaker 1: cast guns that are at any rate up to the
Speaker 1: European standard. Now, after we've been in India a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years, you can't make so much as the
Speaker 1: brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among the colonizers,
Speaker 1: being armed became almost a synonym for being a man.
Speaker 1: This was particularly true for the colonial police forces and militaries,
Speaker 1: but it was also true domestically. Most people are broadly
Speaker 1: familiar with the US Second Amendment the robust gun culture
Speaker 1: that it spawned, but during the higher colonialism, English citizens
Speaker 1: are also free to arm themselves. In Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne,
Speaker 1: Cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a speech and we she
Speaker 1: claimed he would laud the day when there was a
Speaker 1: rifle in every cottage. In England, firearms were utterly unrestricted
Speaker 1: at this point. The first chaine to this came in
Speaker 1: with the first Law that required a permit to carry
Speaker 1: a handgun and restricted children from buying guns. Still, firearms
Speaker 1: were widely available until a red panic gripped the nation
Speaker 1: in following the ball strict revolution in Russia. Across the
Speaker 1: ocean in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly restricted,
Speaker 1: where all Well himself would learn what it was to
Speaker 1: fire a rifle at someone who shot back. Arm unions
Speaker 1: and working people served as the only bullwalk to a
Speaker 1: military coup in ninety six in Madrid, one officer opened
Speaker 1: his armory to the Union militias, but another refused to
Speaker 1: hand over for the bolts for the guns they had
Speaker 1: been issued. The Barcelona, where the anarchists left, had a
Speaker 1: long tradition of armed political violence. The coup was repelled
Speaker 1: by workers with guns and a general leading troops there
Speaker 1: was imprisoned and executed. The same pattern played out all
Speaker 1: across the country in July ninety six, when the military
Speaker 1: rose up to topple the elected government. In the cities
Speaker 1: where the government opened the armories to the people, the
Speaker 1: coup was repelled. In the cities where the government did not,
Speaker 1: the coup succeeded. Reflecting on this in nineteen forty one
Speaker 1: or worldwide, the totalitarian states can do great things, but
Speaker 1: there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot give
Speaker 1: the factory worker a rifle and tell him to take
Speaker 1: it home to keep it in his bedroom. That rifle
Speaker 1: on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class
Speaker 1: flat is a symbol of democracy. It's a job to
Speaker 1: see that its stays there, despite orwell's please. The years
Speaker 1: that followed the Second World War led to greater restrictions
Speaker 1: of the ability of the public to arm itself. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, carrying any weapon for self defense was illegal.
Speaker 1: Semi automatic center fire arms were banned in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and pistols were banned in nineteen ninety six. After a
Speaker 1: mass shooting killed sixteen children in Dunblane. This was all
Speaker 1: utterly infuriating to a man named Philip A. Looty. Loody,
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty five grew up on a farm
Speaker 1: in West Yorkshire, England. We don't have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of detail about his upbringing, but by the time he
Speaker 1: was in his early thirties he'd become a committed crusader
Speaker 1: for an unrestricted right to bear arms. A skilled machinist
Speaker 1: with a well equipped shop, Loody began the long process
Speaker 1: of learning how to craft homemade firearms. Soon he was
Speaker 1: building semi and fully automatic weapons. Now these were not
Speaker 1: military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled, which made them
Speaker 1: terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be crafted from widely
Speaker 1: available things like sheet metal, washers and screws. The person
Speaker 1: assembling a Looty gun would need to be a skilled craftsman,
Speaker 1: but they would not need access to welding rigs, forges,
Speaker 1: or rather expensive industrial equipment. Looty published a book Expedient
Speaker 1: Homemade Firearms the nine millimeter Submachine Gun in ninete through
Speaker 1: Paladin Press. In the late nineteen nineties, Paladin was one
Speaker 1: of the places you could go to mail order fringe
Speaker 1: political literature and guides for stuff like trapping human beings
Speaker 1: or disabling the drive system of an Abram's tank. In
Speaker 1: the United States, nothing about Ludy's book was or is illegal,
Speaker 1: but Phil didn't live in the United States. He was
Speaker 1: arrested several times, starting in the late nineteen nineties when
Speaker 1: a pair of illegal home built guns were found on
Speaker 1: his property. Ludy spent the rest of his life, which
Speaker 1: ended in two thousand eleven, operating a website where he
Speaker 1: raged against gun control. His main argument was that England
Speaker 1: was headed for totalitarianism, and like Orwell, he believed only
Speaker 1: public ownership of arms could prevent this. Unlike Orwell, Ludy
Speaker 1: was firmly on the right wing. He traced society's problems
Speaker 1: to quote a combination of political correctness and anti freedom
Speaker 1: of speech laws, legislation governing how we speak about such
Speaker 1: subjects as religion or a person's race being just two examples.
Speaker 1: Words and phrases that have been used for centuries without
Speaker 1: malice are now insipid in people's mouths and said to
Speaker 1: cause offense by those very same speech police, who, on
Speaker 1: the other hand turned a blind eye to the violence,
Speaker 1: foul language, and sexual references blasted daily through our TV sets,
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that really does cause offense to many people.
Speaker 1: Loody never succeeded in sparking a renaissance in civilian arms
Speaker 1: ownership in the UK, but his ideas were adopted by
Speaker 1: organized criminal groups all around the world. In Brazil, looty
Speaker 1: guns can go for as much as twenty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: From two thousand eleven to two thousand twelve, nearly half
Speaker 1: of the submachine guns seized by police and salpolo were homemade.
Speaker 1: Most of these arms were certainly used as tools by
Speaker 1: drug dealers or other gangsters, but some of them were
Speaker 1: surely also the tools of citizens who simply sought a
Speaker 1: way to defend themselves in a place with no real
Speaker 1: rule of law. Looty guns have long been popular among
Speaker 1: mootor cycle gangs in Australia, and in October of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, a fascist terrorist carried out the last of
Speaker 1: that year's eight chan shootings in Halla, Germany with a
Speaker 1: looty gun. His weapons, thankfully did not work well. As
Speaker 1: a general rule, looty guns were never going to be
Speaker 1: of much use to anyone besides organized criminals. They aren't
Speaker 1: great in a gunfight, but you can use them to
Speaker 1: spray bullets into a room or a vehicle at close
Speaker 1: range pretty well. The year after Phil Looty died two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, a fellow named Cody Wilson decided to carry
Speaker 1: on his work. Cody felt three D printing carried the
Speaker 1: possibility of eventually manufacturing arms of equality that might rival
Speaker 1: traditionally produced guns. He started simple with a single shot
Speaker 1: three eighty handgun based around the old Liberator pistol from
Speaker 1: World War Two. The Liberator had been a single shot
Speaker 1: forty five caliber handgun meant to be dropped into Nazi
Speaker 1: occupied territories and used by insurgents to stealthily kill single
Speaker 1: German soldiers and take their guns. Cody Wilson described himself
Speaker 1: as a crypto anarchist, and when his ideas began to
Speaker 1: draw attention, he dropped out of law school to create
Speaker 1: Defense Distributed. This organization was dedicated to the development and
Speaker 1: distribution of plans to craft three D printed weapons. It
Speaker 1: used a platform called deaf CAD to allow users to
Speaker 1: develop and share blueprints. In two thousand and thirteen, the
Speaker 1: first CAD gun file became available online to everyone. It
Speaker 1: was downloaded more than a hundred thousand times in two days.
Speaker 1: I'd like to quote now from an article on the
Speaker 1: website three D Natives. This prompted the US government to
Speaker 1: demand that Defense Distributed removed the file from their site.
Speaker 1: What followed as a legal battle between Cody Wilson and
Speaker 1: the U S government, consisting of back and forth lawsuits.
Speaker 1: It lasted five years until in two thousand eighteen, the
Speaker 1: Trump administration legalized three D printed guns. The same year,
Speaker 1: Wilson was charged with sexual assault of an underage girl
Speaker 1: and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless, the
Speaker 1: organization did not cease to exist without Cody. Today, for
Speaker 1: a yearly fee if fifty dollars, users of the Deaf
Speaker 1: CAD website can access the files containing different designs of
Speaker 1: three D printed guns. And I should note here that
Speaker 1: it's probably more accurate to say the Trump administration legalized
Speaker 1: sharing the plans and printing the files and whatnot of
Speaker 1: three D printed guns, not legalized three D printed guns.
Speaker 1: Homemade firearms have been federally legal in the United States
Speaker 1: since forever. The fighting in the courts over all. This
Speaker 1: has continued ever since, and in two thousand nineteen, a
Speaker 1: federal judge and Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD. This sparked the
Speaker 1: creation of a new group, Deterrence Dispensed, which was even
Speaker 1: less centralized. The basic idea was that this would make
Speaker 1: them harder to take down via lawsuits or police action.
Speaker 1: Not stated was that this might also protect their reputation
Speaker 1: from a Cody Wilson situation. The debate over the legality
Speaker 1: of three D printed firearm plans continues on to the
Speaker 1: present day, but the development of these arms has continued
Speaker 1: at an ever faster pace. The best modern three D
Speaker 1: printed arms can even rival conventional guns. It's worth emphasizing
Speaker 1: that these are not purely class the tools. The Liberator
Speaker 1: pistol used a metal nail, and the better three D
Speaker 1: arms have metal barrels rifled using other craft methods that
Speaker 1: require some nohow, but arguably less than it took to
Speaker 1: manufacture a looty gun. Three D printed arms have been
Speaker 1: confiscated by police around the world, but in recent months
Speaker 1: they've begun to crop up somewhere new in the arms
Speaker 1: of revolutionaries fighting against a military coup. Me and Ma
Speaker 1: Burman before that has adversively strict gun control laws for decades.
Speaker 1: When Georgie Orwell was a policeman there in the ninet twenties,
Speaker 1: he may have carried a gun, but the people he
Speaker 1: was policing did not. In the nineteen thirties, the British
Speaker 1: leaders allowed tact organizations similar to militias to form and drill,
Speaker 1: but they weren't allowed to carry guns. Gun licenses under
Speaker 1: the dictatorship were issued primarily to party members, but most
Speaker 1: revoked after failed pro Democian uprising. The only civilians who
Speaker 1: were permitted to un armed with the Chin, the nation's
Speaker 1: poorest ethnic group who rely on guns to hunt for food.
Speaker 1: In many cases, these guns were flintlocks that would not
Speaker 1: have looked that out of place in a battlefield two
Speaker 1: centuries before. In practice, though, things are very different. The
Speaker 1: current conflict is best seen as a flare up in
Speaker 1: violence has been ongoing since Britain left the country in
Speaker 1: ninety seven. The Tapma door has consistently used violence against
Speaker 1: marginalized ethnic groups in the country, and they have consistently
Speaker 1: taken up arms in response. But unlike civil wars in
Speaker 1: the Middle East, wealthy nations in the West have not
Speaker 1: been flooding me and male with weapons for decades, and
Speaker 1: the various E A O s or ethnic armed organizations
Speaker 1: have had to turn to much more unorthodox routes to
Speaker 1: arm and equip themselves against the government. To get a
Speaker 1: better idea of what things are like on the ground,
Speaker 1: we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial
Speaker 1: volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought
Speaker 1: with the Karen people in the early two thousands. Yes,
Speaker 1: or the ammunition is a constant problem. The shortage is
Speaker 1: absolutely permanent. And yes, there is two sources for the
Speaker 1: for the for the weapons, there is the black market,
Speaker 1: and the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive. This is
Speaker 1: why I would like to have my notebook here with me,
Speaker 1: because I think I wrote down the conversation I had
Speaker 1: with some leaders of the kind of at the time
Speaker 1: asking them why we didn't do more persons, Well, like,
Speaker 1: we just can't afford it. Uh you know, Uh, we
Speaker 1: just can't afford it. Like strictly we we don't. We
Speaker 1: we don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of
Speaker 1: uh of operation we need to. So all the operations
Speaker 1: we did. Were always focused on if we could catch
Speaker 1: you of some ammunition, if we could get you like weapons,
Speaker 1: but especially immunition. Yeah, so there is you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's the second source of of course of uh of weapon.
Speaker 1: Uh let's say source is the is the captures of course,
Speaker 1: then the black market. The black market used to be
Speaker 1: huge in Cambodia. I don't know what's the situation now.
Speaker 1: It was in the nineties. It was it was a
Speaker 1: bit of the Albania of some Systeia at this time, right.
Speaker 1: And so there is also the other ethnic groups that
Speaker 1: received sometime say a lot of uh of of arms
Speaker 1: and ammunition from sponsors, uh like some of them like
Speaker 1: the West Townies our sponsor of China. So like the
Speaker 1: supply of ammunition, it's pretty good of of weapons. I
Speaker 1: think it's even now that cartigo and stuff. Um. Then
Speaker 1: there is also groups that also produced locally quite good
Speaker 1: their own on arms, light arms usually. So yeah, these
Speaker 1: are the different sources of welcomes the okay in in
Speaker 1: the time I was there. In the early weeks of
Speaker 1: the protests, once it a claim clear that non violent
Speaker 1: demonstrators were going to be met with state violence, protesters
Speaker 1: began to fashion weapons. First, they thought soldiers with the
Speaker 1: sault rifles using catapults and bows and arrows. It was
Speaker 1: incredibly brave, but it wasn't very effective. By the twenty
Speaker 1: eight to March, protesters are taken a step. First, a
Speaker 1: group calling itself the Clay Civil Army set up barricade
Speaker 1: and defended them using pressurized air rifles that fired marbles
Speaker 1: and bicycle wheelbearings. The rifles all used the same design
Speaker 1: and the same components. They were based on a video
Speaker 1: someone found on YouTube, but they weren't lethal. They helped
Speaker 1: protesters defend their space, albeit at great cost. In that
Speaker 1: first clash, four protesters and four soldiers were killed. The
Speaker 1: protesters in Calais were able to hold out a few
Speaker 1: days using old hunting rifles and air guns. The ambush
Speaker 1: military patrols and they took four police hostage. Then they
Speaker 1: exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters. But nearly April, the
Speaker 1: Tapmador returned to the protest camp in Calais with rocket
Speaker 1: propelled grenades and machine guns and killed eleven people. We
Speaker 1: must fight back against them. If not, our generation will
Speaker 1: face a worse situation than us. They have no laws,
Speaker 1: a neighborhood villager who battled the regime's forces told the
Speaker 1: irra Wady, a local paper, the air guns spread around
Speaker 1: the country quickly to avoid surveillance. Protesters talked about cooking
Speaker 1: up veryanny on telegram channels, and what they meant was
Speaker 1: desperately scouring the internet for a way to fight back
Speaker 1: and finding a way to make an air rifle out
Speaker 1: of a beautane canister, a pipe and a cigarette lighter,
Speaker 1: combined with fireworks and smoke bombs made of potassium nitrate.
Speaker 1: The air rifle gave protest is just enough cupboard to
Speaker 1: escape police charges, but they also gave the hunter an
Speaker 1: excuse to further escalate the violence. Attitudes are hardening among
Speaker 1: the protesters too. In Mandalay, they took air rifles to
Speaker 1: the barricades on Saturday, hardly a match for the weapons
Speaker 1: of war they face, but now they know this is
Speaker 1: a fight to the death and more destruction. After a
Speaker 1: fire raged and Pgdalgon township overnight, people living there but
Speaker 1: kept away by security forces returned to find sixty homes
Speaker 1: burned to the ground. Now all they can do is
Speaker 1: pick through the ashes, trying to save anything from the
Speaker 1: military's policy of scorched Even the Tatmadau makes its own weapons,
Speaker 1: a highly unusual move for a relatively small nation. Totmadaw
Speaker 1: troops and police can be seen with a bewildering array
Speaker 1: of indigenously produced copies of HIM sixteen s ouzies and
Speaker 1: even five five six Galil pattern A K style rifles,
Speaker 1: as well as in three light machine guns, which are
Speaker 1: slightly updated copies of the MG forty two used by
Speaker 1: the Nazis in World War Two. After the failed eight
Speaker 1: eight eight eight uprisings in Night, the military offered concessions
Speaker 1: to China and return for more advanced weapons. They got them,
Speaker 1: but it didn't stop China from also supplying ethnic armed organizations.
Speaker 1: E a o s don't have access to the same
Speaker 1: munitions factories that the government does, but there is a
Speaker 1: long tradition of homemade weapons in Myanmar. In more remote
Speaker 1: parts of the country, homemade air rifles and shotguns seem
Speaker 1: to have been relatively commonplace before the start of the conflict,
Speaker 1: and they were mostly used for hunting. The country has
Speaker 1: also covered with land mines, which the e a o
Speaker 1: S used a great effect against the Topmadaw. We spoke
Speaker 1: to Pierre, a former combatant with the Karin who no
Speaker 1: longer lives in Myanmar. His experience is not that recent,
Speaker 1: but it helps us to understand the way this conflict
Speaker 1: has been fought for decades. What we used to produce
Speaker 1: a lot of uhland mines, that's uh that's produced at
Speaker 1: the base. Yes, with like you know, very very lot
Speaker 1: of systems with a little bit of of type of
Speaker 1: plastic explosive cople of bomboom for contactors and like batfield.
Speaker 1: That's it. Pellet guns are not good for combat and
Speaker 1: E A O s mostly relied on weapons imported from Thailand,
Speaker 1: India or China. Overwhelmingly these were a K or In
Speaker 1: sixteen pattern rifles. Yeah, mostly in my and the units
Speaker 1: have been U probably majority of a K platforms in
Speaker 1: this time. Yes, yeah, definitely. I mean it's more reliable
Speaker 1: and you know, simple to operate. It's very adapted to
Speaker 1: the to the to the type of it was. It
Speaker 1: was quite correct. I mean you swee from the moment
Speaker 1: that I switched to a case at least because at
Speaker 1: Tost I tried to use this scumperency M sixteen and
Speaker 1: it was a nightmare of malfunctions. So I switched back
Speaker 1: to a case which is the what I best known
Speaker 1: and used, or my idea doesn't have this. I never
Speaker 1: really had any any malfunction with the case. Maybe one time.
Speaker 1: It's a faulty lot of communition. But let's see, not
Speaker 1: really the rifles, but the fight pierces has never been
Speaker 1: restrict ript into the battlefield for the top medal violence
Speaker 1: against civilians as part of their four cuts doctrine that
Speaker 1: cuts off funding, food, intelligence, and recruits for the e
Speaker 1: a O. S Now they are moving that same outlook
Speaker 1: to the cities like literally uh literally by by absolutely
Speaker 1: no laws of wow airs. I mean like one of
Speaker 1: the first things that I saw when we went going
Speaker 1: Batrol and in the in the Karen villages, huh around
Speaker 1: the house one of operation is that there was absolutely
Speaker 1: no girl between the age of eleven to the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen. I was like, I asked, you know, my
Speaker 1: my uh commander about it, and he says, yeah, like
Speaker 1: obviously if they if they stay as they will be
Speaker 1: rapped by the model and the first patrol like the
Speaker 1: first times they will will come. You know. So this
Speaker 1: this gives you a little bit of the tone of
Speaker 1: what they are about. They constantly ransome civilians when they
Speaker 1: don't model them like you know, shell villages for no
Speaker 1: reason or because there had been an operation of the
Speaker 1: kind and they take evenge and who they can take
Speaker 1: evenge and the civilians. You know, this is this is
Speaker 1: how the b this is what they are. Basically the
Speaker 1: top the doll is a large army and many of
Speaker 1: the conscripts are hardly high speed operator types, but that
Speaker 1: hasn't stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians. I
Speaker 1: mean they have as many army defferent units with different
Speaker 1: military value. Uh let's say, uh, you know, um many
Speaker 1: times the units that they truck on hilltop in the
Speaker 1: middle of Libel zone are not like the most combative,
Speaker 1: let's say, but sometimes we will get sur highed resistance.
Speaker 1: But yeah, except of that, when they to uh an
Speaker 1: operation in uh in a place they bring in like
Speaker 1: more elite troops. Let's say. By contrast, the k and
Speaker 1: l A, the Karni National Liberation Army and other e
Speaker 1: aos relied on civilian support to survive. The Canada operates
Speaker 1: in uh in karen H territory, and the civilians are
Speaker 1: Karen I mean pretty much when we when we arrive
Speaker 1: in uh in the village as as medics. You know
Speaker 1: that with us that the kind of the population distribute medicine.
Speaker 1: Uh No, like I don't know what it was like
Speaker 1: quite uh it's quite a funny acquisition coming from the Totnam.
Speaker 1: This attitude has helped them, Pierre says. And they have
Speaker 1: always been open to noncurrent recruits. First of all, is
Speaker 1: not absolutely not um let's say some kind of ethnicist
Speaker 1: or organization of ethno nationalist like you know, with some
Speaker 1: hate for us, I think, including the Obama echnic group
Speaker 1: that like traditionally you know is the is our the
Speaker 1: leaders of the MODEO that have been oppressing them for
Speaker 1: seventy years. But they have absolutely no resentment. That are
Speaker 1: extremely open to work with the Democrats, democratic forces from
Speaker 1: from every ethnical Yes, since nine, Per said, the K
Speaker 1: and l A had been willing to link up with
Speaker 1: Democratic rebels, providing them with training and shelter in order
Speaker 1: the further their shared goal of a federal and democratic
Speaker 1: country that treated all ethnicities with respect to episode. These
Speaker 1: Obama rebels let's say, uh so trained by the currents
Speaker 1: and so by people I know very well since it
Speaker 1: was my commander then never so I've seen, I've seen
Speaker 1: the currents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the Obama opposition,
Speaker 1: meaning the Obama the Man ethnic group. I'd say this
Speaker 1: for me, for people that might not know the difference.
Speaker 1: So and so the currents always had representation and they
Speaker 1: took like you know, political refugees, let's say, from from
Speaker 1: inside the Boma in the territories, the control mano close
Speaker 1: I was like the student and association. The exact name
Speaker 1: I contricle right now. But all these are organization of position.
Speaker 1: And so now they keep this tradition by helping the
Speaker 1: UH these new revails of the PDF to get military twinning.
Speaker 1: And yes, by the summer of young people had flooded
Speaker 1: into the jungles, and many of them, even the ones
Speaker 1: of Burman ethnicity, we're fighting alongside the Karen and Krinni rebels.
Speaker 1: They had previously seen as troublemakers and terrorists. Just a
Speaker 1: year or two before we spoke with one of these people,
Speaker 1: Zall Lynn, who left his home in May. There was students, friends,
Speaker 1: but also young people from just the neighborhood. Most people
Speaker 1: were just above twenty. A lot of them were single.
Speaker 1: You know, there's women as well, people whom new technology
Speaker 1: young people from UH from the technology computer uh apologists
Speaker 1: why called university. A lot of these people who knew
Speaker 1: modern technology went into the jungle too, go into the
Speaker 1: guncle to train and be able to overthrow the men
Speaker 1: online government. So there was it was very tiring. We
Speaker 1: had to go up and down on lots of hills.
Speaker 1: It was two days of walking get there, so up
Speaker 1: and down the hills and back down, up and down
Speaker 1: until we got to the training planet. Hey everyone, I'm
Speaker 1: Rebert Evans, and welcome to episode three Printing the Revolution.
Speaker 1: Here's my partner, James Stout. In the spring and summer
Speaker 1: to millions of Americans had versions of the same experience.
Speaker 1: State forces killed the helpless man. Protesters took to the
Speaker 1: streets in anger, and armed agents of the state responded
Speaker 1: with mass violence. A lot of people's lives changed for
Speaker 1: ever and fairly short order. What happened in Me and
Speaker 1: Mara after the military coup was that story turned up
Speaker 1: to eleven within days. The military had used live fire
Speaker 1: and demonstrators or a source for today's episode, were twenty
Speaker 1: two years old at the time. He spent his days
Speaker 1: working as delivery driver hang out with his girlfriend playing
Speaker 1: video games. On the day the coup started, he was
Speaker 1: playing pub g after a long shift. Soon he and
Speaker 1: his girlfriend took to the streets with thousands of other
Speaker 1: gen z Burmese kids. The state responded with massacres, often
Speaker 1: firing automatic weapons into the crowds. So all had them
Speaker 1: in particularly politically active before this moment. In fact, he
Speaker 1: felt pretty poorly to woods revolutionary, supposing the government in
Speaker 1: the jungle, seeing them as rebellious troublemakers. Um In the past,
Speaker 1: we thought that the military is a group that loves
Speaker 1: all the people and all the different groups in the
Speaker 1: in the country, and then there's just a few people
Speaker 1: who really hate the military. But especially after the who
Speaker 1: we face it with our own foreheads, with the guns.
Speaker 1: We can face the evil the military and all the
Speaker 1: human rights and things that people who hated the military
Speaker 1: before we're talking about. We understand it now because we
Speaker 1: had to face it ourselves. And then they're gonna tell
Speaker 1: us terrorists, and however, must fix all us. We know
Speaker 1: that we're finding for human rights, and we know that
Speaker 1: each person deserves these basic things, you know, So so
Speaker 1: even when we captured a soldier, we don't kill them
Speaker 1: immediately as they're unarmed, you know, when they have sure PDF,
Speaker 1: they torture and kill them very very horrifically or horrendously,
Speaker 1: and they kill and to hurt all the citizens and
Speaker 1: ordinary bystanders. So for us, what they're calling at rebels before,
Speaker 1: we're not rebels. They're the ones that are rebels, So
Speaker 1: we have to call down rebels. They're the terrorists. But
Speaker 1: as violence against protesters escalated, Zuill began to see through
Speaker 1: the lives he'd been told by the military of his life.
Speaker 1: What we were calling as rebels are what we kind
Speaker 1: of become. But we know why we are now rebels.
Speaker 1: That's because of their terrorism. They're oppressive Rejews and their
Speaker 1: violation of human rights. That's why we have to revolt
Speaker 1: against them. For a time, protesters responded creatively with giant
Speaker 1: potato guns meant to fire less lethal protect ours long distances.
Speaker 1: These homemade guns will be fired in volleys well. Other
Speaker 1: protests protected them with shields. Some of these tactics were
Speaker 1: effective a points, but it quickly became clear that the
Speaker 1: government was willing to massacre everyone is standing up to them.
Speaker 1: So his girlfriend and their friends quickly decided that non
Speaker 1: violent resistance wasn't going to work, but they didn't give up.
Speaker 1: As we get onto into June, there's two paths, right,
Speaker 1: we can be normal, we can go on the streets,
Speaker 1: we can ask for the people's power back. And since
Speaker 1: that's not working, we know that what we have to
Speaker 1: do is we need to hold these guns. Get these guns.
Speaker 1: And on the military side, all they know is that
Speaker 1: they will solve this by holding guns. So the only thing,
Speaker 1: the only path that's left for us is to take
Speaker 1: those guns for ourselves. So around the end of May
Speaker 1: we started entering training school. So the downtour is what
Speaker 1: the word he used, and it's something like this corner
Speaker 1: part um so one corner part one to two. So talking,
Speaker 1: what that means is that in the funt things, funt
Speaker 1: things that we were doing, hunting rifles that we were
Speaker 1: using for that. So we kind of start started and
Speaker 1: we fought at first in Demoso. If we can ask
Speaker 1: the military nicely, then there's no reason for us to
Speaker 1: be using guns. But since they don't listen to our
Speaker 1: demands or our requests at all, then the and since
Speaker 1: all we can do all they are saying, all they're
Speaker 1: doing is using the guns and being terrorists trying to
Speaker 1: shoot us. So the only thing that we can do
Speaker 1: to get what we need and what we want is
Speaker 1: to take the guns for ourselves. And so, like hundreds
Speaker 1: of people this age, so headed into the jungle in
Speaker 1: May one. The decision wasn't even one or an easy one.
Speaker 1: But after protesting non violently, then meeting state violence with
Speaker 1: community defense, then seeing his peers gunned down in the street,
Speaker 1: he didn't have many of the choices. He'd picked up
Speaker 1: a megaphone, then a shield, and now he was heading
Speaker 1: in the jungle to pick up a rifle. The only
Speaker 1: problem was that there won't any rifles. He left with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend and quote with the blessing of his parents.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind for later. When he first went
Speaker 1: to the jungle, Zall went to a two week training
Speaker 1: camp where the Karinny People's Defense Force taught him the
Speaker 1: basics of guerrilla warfare, but they didn't have enough weapons
Speaker 1: to arm him and his friends. So these gen Z
Speaker 1: militants began their fighting careers with twenty two caliber rifles.
Speaker 1: If you weren't a gun person, the twenty two was
Speaker 1: one of the smallest widely available bullets. Like any bullet,
Speaker 1: it can kill, but as a caliber it's better suited
Speaker 1: for shooting rabbits than soldiers. These twenty two rifles were
Speaker 1: handmade locally and only fired one shot at a time.
Speaker 1: But it was those rifles that Zaw, his girlfriend, and
Speaker 1: their friends carried into their first gunfight with the Totmadaw.
Speaker 1: After battling like that for about three weeks, the shooting stopped,
Speaker 1: he said in an interview. We conducted over signal. After
Speaker 1: the shooting stopped, we grouped together money to buy arms
Speaker 1: by asking for donations. They were massively outgunned, but determined
Speaker 1: to fight on with the weapons they could make and
Speaker 1: buy on the black market until they could find something better,
Speaker 1: even if that meant taking guns from dead soldiers. The
Speaker 1: military's guns are extremely good, of course, compared to Point
Speaker 1: two two's, he said. We fight with the mindset that
Speaker 1: we must win. Our minds are always prepared to take
Speaker 1: their guns when a soldier falls. It's a mindset to
Speaker 1: want the enemy's arms to beat your own arms. You
Speaker 1: need to want to resist injustice because we are fighting
Speaker 1: for what is right. We do not get sad even
Speaker 1: if we die. We are happy, even when wounded. We
Speaker 1: no longer care if our arms are matched unevenly now.
Speaker 1: Despite their enthusiasm, PDF units all over the country were
Speaker 1: finding themselves in the same desperate situation. When thousands of
Speaker 1: young people in Mianmar decided to take up arms against
Speaker 1: the government, They're just weren't enough guns to go around.
Speaker 1: A K pattern rifles sell for three thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: the black market, and a RS sell for up to
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars. The g d P per capita in
Speaker 1: was just twelve hundred and eighteen dollars and thirty five
Speaker 1: since per person, and unlike militias in Syria and Iraq,
Speaker 1: the pro democracy E a O S and Myanmar don't
Speaker 1: have the benefit questionable benefit of the US flooding the
Speaker 1: region with its fire hose of guns and money. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: Zall and his squad took to YouTube, where they found
Speaker 1: videos explaining how to make two to three caliber bolt
Speaker 1: action rifles. Again, if you're not a gun person, two
Speaker 1: to three may not sound very different than twenty two,
Speaker 1: But whereas twenty two is commonly used to shoot squirrels,
Speaker 1: two to three is the standard rifle round more or
Speaker 1: less for the US military. These new bolt action two
Speaker 1: two three's all and his friends were making could not
Speaker 1: match the rate of fire of a modern riot full,
Speaker 1: but they could at least match those rifles in stopping power.
Speaker 1: Once these gen z insurgents had the technique down, they
Speaker 1: created a detailed album on Facebook showing how everything from
Speaker 1: the stock to the barrel could be made with pipes, lumber,
Speaker 1: and hours and hours of detailed hard work. Unlike their
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare instructors, these kids had grown up on the
Speaker 1: Internet rather than the jungle, so they knew that if
Speaker 1: it exists, there's a subreddit for it. It was the
Speaker 1: Internet that came to their rescue. Three D printed guns
Speaker 1: have been around for a decade, but the early models
Speaker 1: didn't work well and suffered from a pretty bad reputation
Speaker 1: due in part to Cody Wilson, the pedophile libertarian activists
Speaker 1: we discussed last episode. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has
Speaker 1: covered the printed gun movement extensively. Cody Wilson made his
Speaker 1: whole thing like, I'm the guy with the three D
Speaker 1: print guns, and he was on this moral crusade. The
Speaker 1: three D printed gun lads, particularly Deterrence Dispense. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't, we don't give a ship about that we're
Speaker 1: just putting our stuff out into the world. Obviously they
Speaker 1: got the right ideas, but they weren't really wedded to
Speaker 1: this idea of being one person. The Turns Dispensed was
Speaker 1: a group of anonymous activists who were more concerned with
Speaker 1: making printed guns that worked than making a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: Hanrahan was connected to one activist who used the pseudonym
Speaker 1: Jay Stark, through the group, and after three years of
Speaker 1: conversing online, Hanrahan met Stark in Germany to produce a documentary.
Speaker 1: Jay Stark died of a heart attack following a police
Speaker 1: raid last year, so we spoke to Hanrahan about Stark's worldview.
Speaker 1: His whole worldview comes from this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: it's everybody should have the right to be able to
Speaker 1: fight tyranny. And if you can't fight tyranny, like you're fucked.
Speaker 1: And the way to fight tyranny in the modern era
Speaker 1: is firearms. We know that, you know, there's there's no
Speaker 1: you can't argue it's that no peaceful march gets rid
Speaker 1: of a fascist dictatorship or whatever. But he he was,
Speaker 1: he he was you know, there's some people would say
Speaker 1: he was far right, Some people say it was an anarchist.
Speaker 1: Some people say he was a US patriots. I mean, first,
Speaker 1: he wasn't even from America, and he had a lot
Speaker 1: of He liked the laws in America, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: like some of the American kind of fan boy or
Speaker 1: anything in that sense. He liked the gun lawds. He
Speaker 1: liked the freedom of speech lords, which I do as well.
Speaker 1: You know that personally, I I in this country. You know,
Speaker 1: if you tweet the wrong thing, even in jest, like
Speaker 1: police will literally come to your house in Britain, like
Speaker 1: it's happened, it's fucking mental. Um. So yeah, he liked
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, um. And I think I think
Speaker 1: for him it was he was very tunnel vision, you know,
Speaker 1: he was very tunnel vision. It was just freedom, freedom, freedom,
Speaker 1: And if he said, well what about this, what about that,
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't care about that Until the
Speaker 1: freedom is there, there's no point looking at anything else.
Speaker 1: And so his brain was always on people that are
Speaker 1: living under tyranny, you know, and it genuinely would. I know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people, even leftist, particularly leftist had
Speaker 1: tried to completely smear him as a white supremacist. They
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, everything he said in that dog that
Speaker 1: I made was really it was secret um anti Jewish
Speaker 1: white supremacy. And then it came out that he wasn't
Speaker 1: even white. You know. It's like, very good, very good,
Speaker 1: you fucking idiots. So there was a lot of that
Speaker 1: going around. But I honestly believe that deep down he
Speaker 1: was just tunnel vision focused on this idea of every
Speaker 1: until everybody is not living on the tyranny, I must
Speaker 1: go on this mission and okay, if if someone shoots
Speaker 1: up at school with what I've invented, so be it.
Speaker 1: You know, which I'm not saying as good, but that
Speaker 1: was just his idea. You know, he was like, so
Speaker 1: be it. Fuck it if I can. You know, he
Speaker 1: was very genuine when he was done about the Wagers,
Speaker 1: or he was on about the mistreatment of Kurds from Turkey,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was like, look, if we can
Speaker 1: build something that can help them, well, sorry that the
Speaker 1: West might get funked up because of it, but I'm
Speaker 1: focused on this now. Obviously, in in practice that would
Speaker 1: be chaos probably, but you know, he he just saw
Speaker 1: it the way he saw it, and that was that
Speaker 1: the cavalier attitude Stark seems to have had how his
Speaker 1: invention might be used is of course worthy of criticism,
Speaker 1: but the revolutionaries on the ground in Myanmar were not
Speaker 1: concerned with ideological debates over the ethics of homemade firearms.
Speaker 1: Then did guns and they needed them now. J Starks.
Speaker 1: F GC nine, which stands for Fuck Gun Control nine millimeter,
Speaker 1: was simple to make, easy to use, and relied entirely
Speaker 1: on parts you could print or buy in any hardware store.
Speaker 1: In September one, a post popped up on the fosse
Speaker 1: cads subreddit, which is dedicated to the manufacturing of three
Speaker 1: D printed guns. Stark is a hero there. The post said,
Speaker 1: wanted to say thanks to this community, the creators of
Speaker 1: f GC nine and the various mods when we could
Speaker 1: you guys are literally empowering the armed revolution against dictators
Speaker 1: and one of the most underdeveloped countries. We are now
Speaker 1: equipped with f GC nine and starting the armed revolution
Speaker 1: to the coup leader dictator. As one poster comments, the
Speaker 1: account quote went from posting about mobile games to how
Speaker 1: to three D print SMG S two, desperately asking people
Speaker 1: to pay attention what was happening in Myanmar. Then, after
Speaker 1: the f GC nine post, it was deleted entirely. J
Speaker 1: Stark never lived to see this. He would I've loved it.
Speaker 1: What everything that he was doing, that was the main
Speaker 1: focus in my opinion, that like, it couldn't be a
Speaker 1: more perfect, like practical actual realization of his project. You
Speaker 1: couldn't pick a more perfect version of it to happen
Speaker 1: like that, you know. And there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: of all where there's a lot of drug dealers in
Speaker 1: Amsterdam have FGC nines. There was a Natzi recently arrested
Speaker 1: with one. You know, these people are awful, of course,
Speaker 1: But the most prevalent use of the f GC nine,
Speaker 1: at least from what I've observed, has been from the
Speaker 1: rebels in MYRMA making them. I think that I've seen
Speaker 1: like thirty of them so far, you know, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of them, And there was one was found stashed
Speaker 1: in a bush. My theory is they're left around for
Speaker 1: ambush attacks and areas that are not as fully controlled
Speaker 1: by the rebels. First CAD, a community of mostly US
Speaker 1: based gun printers lost its collective mind, and it didn't
Speaker 1: take long for people to make the connection between the
Speaker 1: host and a desperate plight of me and my Spring Revolution.
Speaker 1: Soon after the post, the tap the Door started posting
Speaker 1: pictures of f GC nins, often without sights, captured from
Speaker 1: fighters in Yangon and the one September, the Tapmodor's Ministry
Speaker 1: of Information released a statement, I'm the ap th way
Speaker 1: yea mint were found with an f GC nine Mark
Speaker 1: two pistol five rounds of nine millimeter an munition. They
Speaker 1: were arrested along with their drone. The military alleged they
Speaker 1: were an urban unit from the same generation Ze Freedom
Speaker 1: Army that's all was a part of. That same month,
Speaker 1: the military posted pictures of three more captured f GC nins,
Speaker 1: suggesting that at least five are been captured by late September.
Speaker 1: Then two months later, a new post popped up in
Speaker 1: the fos cat cebreadit Hey, I'm back and the guy
Speaker 1: who posted a thank you know back in September here.
Speaker 1: Now that the FGC nines are ready known by the dictator,
Speaker 1: I can proudly announce the We're from me and mar. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are mass producing FGC nines to fight back against
Speaker 1: the Dictator. More info about our production will be published
Speaker 1: later this time. The user you slash daddy u m
Speaker 1: c D hung around to answer questions. Those basterds didn't
Speaker 1: know we had the tech back then. Now that everything
Speaker 1: is in public, we can proudly say we're from me
Speaker 1: and mar. We are mostly responsible for production in R
Speaker 1: and D, even though we also involved in other ground missions.
Speaker 1: We distribute the FDC nine to a lot of different
Speaker 1: urban guerrillas in urban and rural areas. Some of the
Speaker 1: units got arrested a few weeks ago, which you might
Speaker 1: have already seen on the sub credit. Apart from the
Speaker 1: FGC nine, there are other equipments and weapons that are
Speaker 1: being produced with three D printers, he wrote. He said
Speaker 1: his team were residing in ethnic armed organization areas, mainly
Speaker 1: the Corn National Union and the Kitchin Independence Army controlled zones.
Speaker 1: He posted that they tried other three D printed designs,
Speaker 1: such as the plastic of which is a printed a
Speaker 1: K forty seven receiver, but getting the other parts made
Speaker 1: it impractical. By contrast, the FTC nine can be made
Speaker 1: entirely using a three D printer and some hardware store parts.
Speaker 1: According to another source, Mere Moust, small motorcycle repair shops
Speaker 1: made quick work of the metal barrels and bolts. Electro
Speaker 1: Chemical machining was used to make more barrels. They also
Speaker 1: had the chance to buy a few glock barrels from Thailand,
Speaker 1: Daddy U m c d said, but those costs a
Speaker 1: lot more than the FDC nine barrels. While his account
Speaker 1: continued to post, the military continued to share photos of
Speaker 1: captured FCC nines. Three workshops that have been using lathes
Speaker 1: to make the barrels were raided. The photos of three
Speaker 1: more captured guns popped up in November, alongside bolt action
Speaker 1: rifles still had stickers on their stocks from what looked
Speaker 1: like US gun shops. Production and decentralized locations continued despite
Speaker 1: the raids, while other groups fought on with homemade revolving rifles,
Speaker 1: crude homemade wooden stocks, another improvised weapons. A telegram channel
Speaker 1: with instructions in Burmese on how to make the guns
Speaker 1: made sure that even when one shop or gunsmith was
Speaker 1: taken out of the fight, the knowledge wasn't lost. Although
Speaker 1: filament for their three D printers were becoming harder to get,
Speaker 1: they'd stock piled a lot in advance. Daddy U m
Speaker 1: c D tried to manufacture automatic FGC nine and another
Speaker 1: printiple model called Professor Parabellum square tubes of machine gun,
Speaker 1: but nothing else seemed as easier as reliable as the
Speaker 1: FDC nine. Of course, read it. Being read it, people
Speaker 1: questioned the veracity and utility of his posts. He responded,
Speaker 1: FCC nines are just part of the game because they
Speaker 1: could be use with what we have At the lowest
Speaker 1: cost available rifles of four thousand to seven thousand U
Speaker 1: S dollars at our border, f gcs are under one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Rifle parts are ten times more expensive than
Speaker 1: lock parts. To all those who are saying these photos
Speaker 1: of sus we don't want to blame your suspicion. If
Speaker 1: any of you remember the threat I posted in September,
Speaker 1: you will remember that we are mass producing FGC nights.
Speaker 1: The ones in the photos you've seen were supplied by us.
Speaker 1: There are many groups like this now we do the
Speaker 1: main production, just like I explained in September. Then, Daddy
Speaker 1: um c D went on to thank the other members
Speaker 1: of the sub creddit, claiming their active help was the
Speaker 1: only reason he and other revolutionaries have been able to
Speaker 1: overcome certain technical issues. We wouldn't be here without you, guys,
Speaker 1: especially someone who shared with me the buffer spring and
Speaker 1: fire control groups bring the measurements, he said. By late November,
Speaker 1: photos of FGC nins in the hands of fighters emerged
Speaker 1: and they showed sight. This time they had longer barrels
Speaker 1: and home made suppresses too. The FGC nines were apparently
Speaker 1: used by urban units for close up fighting and for
Speaker 1: the training of new fighters, since they have essentially the
Speaker 1: same controls and they are fifteen or M sixteen rifle,
Speaker 1: both of which are common in ME and Moze rebel units.
Speaker 1: We have successfully streamlined variety of techniques to produce f
Speaker 1: GC nine one thousand plus efficiently. Our primary forces are
Speaker 1: equipped with proper rifles. FDC nines are for guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 1: We started using those in hit and run and special
Speaker 1: Task Force missions too. We don't share much about the
Speaker 1: mission to the public yet. It will definitely come and
Speaker 1: when it does, are updated here if I'm still alive,
Speaker 1: ha ha, wrote Daddy u m c D on the
Speaker 1: False cat Sepreddit. Even with production in false Wing, ammunition
Speaker 1: remained a problem. Although some regions can produce twenty two
Speaker 1: and nine minimeter at home. According to the u m
Speaker 1: c D, five six can be purchased in large quantities
Speaker 1: at the border with Thailand, but it isn't cheap. Instead,
Speaker 1: the PDF alide on raiding police and military outposts in
Speaker 1: the same way the EO has had for years. Nine
Speaker 1: millimeter is the most common center fire pistol around in
Speaker 1: the world. That's why the Turrns Dispense picked it for
Speaker 1: the FDC. Nine sees weapons often only have a handful
Speaker 1: of rounds, but that's enough to kill a soldier and
Speaker 1: take his weapon. Jay Stark might not have been around
Speaker 1: to see his invention used to fight tyranny, but Hammrahan
Speaker 1: thinks he would have been happy with the results. He
Speaker 1: would have been made up. I think that's everything he
Speaker 1: wanted to achieve. You know what I'm saying, That really
Speaker 1: is everything you wanted to do. Even the National Unity
Speaker 1: Government me and mus government in exile has come around
Speaker 1: to at least some of Jay Stark's ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: According to Daddy um c D Ministry of Defense Minister
Speaker 1: already promised about the right to bear arms at the
Speaker 1: first day of the revolution. Promises made by revolutionary governments
Speaker 1: are not exactly solid commitments, but it's not hard to
Speaker 1: see why a generation of kids like Zaw forged by
Speaker 1: an asymmetrical conflict with a government that possessed a near
Speaker 1: absolute advantage in armaments, might be committed to staying armed
Speaker 1: even if they win. At the moment, the future of
Speaker 1: their struggle is very much in doubt. Scrolling through Facebook
Speaker 1: photos of Zol and his comrades is a surreal experience.
Speaker 1: They look not just young soldiers mostly look young, but
Speaker 1: they look like students, kids from some weirdly militarized university.
Speaker 1: Photos on Facebook show them sprawled out together in the
Speaker 1: grass and camo fatigues, bearing rifles, but each glued to
Speaker 1: their phones as they cuddle in together. Zow and his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: who he described to us as the girl I love,
Speaker 1: fought alongside each other until January seven of this year.
Speaker 1: The battle that we started, she was coming within and
Speaker 1: you know, asp of sense weapons landed near her and
Speaker 1: hit her like so their bone broke so so she
Speaker 1: had to go to hospital. Three D printed and homemade
Speaker 1: guns have helped, but Zoll and his friends are still
Speaker 1: fighting against a modern military with planes, night vision goggles,
Speaker 1: and tanks. Despite this, more than a year after the coup,
Speaker 1: they're still fighting, and more soldiers affect to join them weekly.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see what victory looks like the cities
Speaker 1: will be another battle altogether. But in the jungle camp
Speaker 1: where Zoll video calls us from, it's impossible to see
Speaker 1: what giving up might look like. Either he's still fighting,
Speaker 1: his girlfriend is healing, and they're both committed to staying
Speaker 1: out in the jungle until they are in their freedom
Speaker 1: back or die trying. I'm Robert Evans, and this is
Speaker 1: part four of me and mar printing the revolution. And
Speaker 1: then once we thought that we couldn't rest, you know,
Speaker 1: reign sid whatever. Women as well, and we were all
Speaker 1: like try. When they came when we were leaving, they
Speaker 1: were all like very fair skin beautiful. And then we
Speaker 1: went in and then everyone got tanned. In the jungle,
Speaker 1: we're training all the time, you know, people in training camp.
Speaker 1: We were driven with the part and the reason that
Speaker 1: we were all doing this is because of Man nine
Speaker 1: school as students and how much he has terrorized the
Speaker 1: public and the people, and that's why we were We
Speaker 1: have this morale and the ability to get through the
Speaker 1: training and be able to wield weapons. Zor and his
Speaker 1: friends went into the jungleist students, programmers and kids. Now
Speaker 1: they're fighters. They would tech savvy, young people. He says,
Speaker 1: they grew up online and that generational divide was the
Speaker 1: Internet brought here came much later in Mima. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until twenty eleven the people really gained access to the
Speaker 1: Internet with the new ideas and identities today brought. Those
Speaker 1: generation are among the first to embrace glible connectivity, and
Speaker 1: now after having it taken away, they're refusing to give
Speaker 1: it up. The start of the coup in February, the
Speaker 1: military school gen Z was organizing online social media and
Speaker 1: all that so and they were kind of I think
Speaker 1: this is from my experience, but um kind of organizing
Speaker 1: around like gen Z is going to be different than
Speaker 1: the generation because we have the Internet, and also we
Speaker 1: know more about the world and can come communicate the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. I think one thing that was
Speaker 1: big was that in two thousand eight, it just took
Speaker 1: one video leaking out of the country for there to
Speaker 1: be big international repercussions. It's worth noting that when people
Speaker 1: in Burma talk about the Internet, they mean Facebook. Phones
Speaker 1: come with the Facebook app installed and it's sometimes exempt
Speaker 1: from day to church juice. For many people in Burma,
Speaker 1: using the Internet means using Facebook. Zor and his friends
Speaker 1: are different from their parents in many ways, not at
Speaker 1: least in their perceptions of authority. This has led to
Speaker 1: a situation where the PDF people's defense force units are
Speaker 1: much less hierarchical than units of the town moidor so
Speaker 1: when we make decisions in our group, there's no master
Speaker 1: and student. There's no teacher and student. But you know
Speaker 1: the way that it works. There are people who are good.
Speaker 1: They're older, people who are more trained, and then their
Speaker 1: new recruits, new people who just came in. So of
Speaker 1: course the people who are there for longer and know
Speaker 1: more about the situation have more voice. And when we
Speaker 1: discussed so especially people who were there when we founded
Speaker 1: this group. There were only really eight people from when
Speaker 1: we group, so those eight people kind of discussed on
Speaker 1: the bigger strategy. You know, we don't really vote their
Speaker 1: He says he wants to do it, he thinks it's good.
Speaker 1: We are there's the seven of us we think is good,
Speaker 1: or we support him, or someone says, well, we don't
Speaker 1: really like that idea, then we don't do it. They
Speaker 1: try to achieve more gender quality as well, but there's
Speaker 1: are explained that in his unit the women are not
Speaker 1: always the frontline fighter is that's the place there's no discrimination.
Speaker 1: You know, women can women and men were training whoever
Speaker 1: could come. But like on the battlefield, people, we don't
Speaker 1: use women that much on the battlefield. That's one thing
Speaker 1: that we do know is that it's not it's not
Speaker 1: really discrimination. But if women are with us together, we
Speaker 1: have a confusion about whether we need to protect them
Speaker 1: or they're just fighting with with them, or they're fighting
Speaker 1: in front of us. And that there's one thing that
Speaker 1: is very different. It is that in terms of mentality,
Speaker 1: we we can't. We never take the women out really
Speaker 1: far into very dangerous flights, so often they're in the back,
Speaker 1: gets back up or two supplies or things like that.
Speaker 1: But as you know, the military government, the military terroristists
Speaker 1: are very very very unethical. They don't follow the rules,
Speaker 1: so you know they're gonna shoot wherever they see. So
Speaker 1: even if they're hanging back and they're sending medical supplies there,
Speaker 1: they can still get hit for Zor in particular, there's
Speaker 1: a lot at stake. After almost an hour and a
Speaker 1: half of talking, I asked about his parents. I've heard
Speaker 1: of retribution attacks against the families of factors and wondered
Speaker 1: if he was worried about that. So mom and dad
Speaker 1: are both they support me fighting against the military. They're
Speaker 1: very happy. There's that really wants to do c d M,
Speaker 1: but he can't run away because the military has taken
Speaker 1: his uh mother and his sisters. He's still has five sisters.
Speaker 1: They're all still in that military command and they're worked
Speaker 1: there in the military stool schools, so it's very hard
Speaker 1: for them to run away, right, So he really wants
Speaker 1: to leave the military, but he can't. So well, so
Speaker 1: that the fact that I am they're trying to fight
Speaker 1: against the military. He's very happy, and but he tells
Speaker 1: me to be careful about my own life. They're supportive
Speaker 1: and they really want to come fight themselves, but they
Speaker 1: can't because of my sisters and my mother. So him
Speaker 1: seeing that I can do it is really wonderful for them.
Speaker 1: So his father, his other brother and other people, but
Speaker 1: are three of them below him. They've all usually just
Speaker 1: lived together with grandfather and stuff in the military trumpounds
Speaker 1: or near the military. So he really wants to call
Speaker 1: all the people that are still there, but they can't leave.
Speaker 1: This is what civil Ward does. Trapped us in a
Speaker 1: situation where we can't make the right choice even when
Speaker 1: we know what it is, and in many situations it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to discern right from wrong. In the midst
Speaker 1: of so much violence, This All has been able to fight,
Speaker 1: but his dad is stuck fighting against people like his
Speaker 1: son in order to protect his daughters. Thousands of families
Speaker 1: across the country divided in the same way by circumstance
Speaker 1: or ideology. The military is something of a separate society,
Speaker 1: has its own schools in its own culture, but ethnic
Speaker 1: armed organizations have not been close to Ovan populations either,
Speaker 1: and so whole new identities are being forged by Generation
Speaker 1: Z while their families often struggle to abandon all certainties.
Speaker 1: As we record this, Zall is still fighting, his girlfriend
Speaker 1: is still healing. Every few weeks a video of him
Speaker 1: and his for ends pops up on redditor Facebook. They
Speaker 1: have optics on their rifles now and are taking long
Speaker 1: range shots at the topmodal who rely on iron sights.
Speaker 1: They shoot and reload like soldiers, and they laugh like kids.
Speaker 1: The Totmadaw still controls the cities, but to move between them,
Speaker 1: they have to travel in convoys at breakneck speeds, using ambushes, mines,
Speaker 1: and knowledge of the terrain. E a o S and
Speaker 1: the PDF are able to deny the military access to
Speaker 1: large portions of the countryside. Without a serious change in
Speaker 1: the conflict, it might stay like this for years. A
Speaker 1: report published this month detailed the attacks in the Karini
Speaker 1: state by the TOTMODAU on churches, residential homes, camps were
Speaker 1: displaced people, which killed sixty one in the months since
Speaker 1: Saw left the city On Christmas Eve. In Prusso's township,
Speaker 1: they killed at least forty civilians. Autopsies show some were
Speaker 1: gagged and burned alive. In recent months, the TOTMODAW has
Speaker 1: increased its use of air strikes against targets that it
Speaker 1: deems legitimate. Ming Anhlang, the junta's leader, flew to Russia twice.
Speaker 1: In one he was proclaimed an honorary professor of the
Speaker 1: Military University of the Russian Armed Forces. Quote. We are
Speaker 1: determined to continue our efforts to strengthen bilateral ties based
Speaker 1: on the mutual understanding, respect and trust that have been
Speaker 1: established between our two countries, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu
Speaker 1: said at a meeting with the coup leader on June
Speaker 1: twenty two. We pay special attention to this meeting as
Speaker 1: we see me and mar as a time tested strategic
Speaker 1: partner and a reliable ally in Southeast Asia and the
Speaker 1: Asia Pacific region. He went on. Min Onhlang was equally
Speaker 1: lavish with his praise, saying that he saw Russia as
Speaker 1: a friend forever. Meanwar relies heavily on Russian hind M
Speaker 1: I thirty five helicopter gunships, transport helicopters, Mid twenty nine
Speaker 1: and s U thirty fighter jets and Yak one thirty
Speaker 1: ground attack aircraft to carry out bombing raids and straight civilians.
Speaker 1: All of these weapons systems have been seen more recently
Speaker 1: in the fighting in Ukraine. One prominent Burmese Irish family,
Speaker 1: the Kiyo Tongs, has helped the Unta avoid an international
Speaker 1: arms embargo using their global connections and a network of
Speaker 1: shady shadow companies. They have purchased helicopters under the pretense
Speaker 1: of using them for tourism and the oil and gas industry,
Speaker 1: and handed them over to the Top Meadaw. They've also
Speaker 1: helped shuttle coastal radar to me Anmar, which the Topmadal
Speaker 1: used to track Rohinga refugees and provide cover for several
Speaker 1: aircraft purchases to fund these arms purchases, the top Meada
Speaker 1: has found willing markets for luxury goods abroad. According to
Speaker 1: Justice for Menmar, since the coup in February one, the
Speaker 1: United States has imported fifteen hundred and sixty five metric
Speaker 1: tons of teak from the Annmar, using intermediaries to avoid sanctions.
Speaker 1: In the two thousand seventeen two thousand eighteen financial year,
Speaker 1: the last year for which data is available, the government
Speaker 1: received one hundred million US dollars in revenue from taxes
Speaker 1: and royalties applied to the timber trade. One there were
Speaker 1: more shipments than two thousand eighteen, offering the top medauw
Speaker 1: the chance to make enough money to continue purchasing weapons
Speaker 1: to use against their population. The consult in ME and
Speaker 1: My remains complicated. It's easy to reduce the alphabet super
Speaker 1: rebel groups to E O S and the PDF, but
Speaker 1: these groups and their motivations are diverse. Pierre explained to
Speaker 1: us that even within the Koran there are deep divisions. Well, first,
Speaker 1: you have to know that historically the Karen rebellion that
Speaker 1: started in the nineteen forty eight nineteen nine, so quite
Speaker 1: a long time ago, was led by by Christian by
Speaker 1: the Christian minority, okay, of the of the Karen people
Speaker 1: because obviously that was the most Western educated people at
Speaker 1: the time. And so this elite kind of reproduced itself
Speaker 1: in the gay who without being the guy new is
Speaker 1: the Karen National Union is democratic movement. But you know,
Speaker 1: our elites stand reproduce themselves. And so most of the leadership,
Speaker 1: let's say, of the Karen National Union and the Karen
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army was Christian like. And so the Burmese Junta,
Speaker 1: the Burmese military government, decided to use this to create
Speaker 1: a wedge between between the Karen Christians and the Karen
Speaker 1: Buddhists uh, and sent monks to say, agitate and try
Speaker 1: to cause this split on religious grounds no uh, And
Speaker 1: they succeeded in parts and succeeded to to separate a
Speaker 1: part of Karen Buddhists that created the democratic Garen Buddhists,
Speaker 1: the army, which then allied themselves of course, to the
Speaker 1: to the junta and to UH to attack the to
Speaker 1: attack the kind of and the manor of plow, which
Speaker 1: of course they knew all the all the hoods there
Speaker 1: on the defenses and where was the defense is situated
Speaker 1: et cetera, and succeeded in destroying the capital of the
Speaker 1: Canon National Union in Manaplow in nine. So that was
Speaker 1: the situation pretty much when I arrived. It was pretty hard,
Speaker 1: like uh, there was not so much territory anymore held
Speaker 1: by the caren and most more importantly, they lost a
Speaker 1: lot of income because a lot of their income come
Speaker 1: from tax at the border that they can control. You know.
Speaker 1: So yeah that not every e a O has embraced
Speaker 1: the National Unity Government directly, after all, many of its
Speaker 1: members were enthusiastically running cover for the Rohinga genocide a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Many of the e a O s
Speaker 1: remain technically under a ceasefire with the Totmodal, and the
Speaker 1: Totmada knows that if it pushes too far into e
Speaker 1: a O territory, it risks provoking a full blown response.
Speaker 1: The e a O s, meanwhile, have been aiding and
Speaker 1: training the PDF and still maintaining enough deniability that na
Speaker 1: Totmadal has not been forced into a confrontation e a
Speaker 1: O PDF alliances look different in different regions, and often
Speaker 1: realities on the ground bear little relationship to the back
Speaker 1: door diplomacy and official stances embraced by leadership in public,
Speaker 1: the war continues to have a huge toll on civilians.
Speaker 1: According to United Nations, in total, some four hundred and
Speaker 1: forty thousand people have been newly displaced since Seku happened
Speaker 1: in February twenty one, adding to an existing three hundred
Speaker 1: seventy thousand who had fled their homes from earlier waves
Speaker 1: of violence and over a million people who had fled
Speaker 1: the Regina genocide. More than half the population of Corelli
Speaker 1: State has fled. Humanitarian access is hard. Much of the
Speaker 1: relief effort for displaced people occurs within the local communities.
Speaker 1: Thousands of refugees are camping along the border with Thailand,
Speaker 1: which is defined by rivers. Initially, many people fled into Thailand,
Speaker 1: but terrible conditions in refugee camps led some of them
Speaker 1: to return to Myanmar. Now they wade across the river
Speaker 1: for international aid donations of food and water, but they
Speaker 1: can't bring themselves to stay in the crowded camps overnight,
Speaker 1: so they wade back to sleep on the Burmese side
Speaker 1: of the bank. The U n h c R the
Speaker 1: High Commission on Refugees, it's been unable to access camps
Speaker 1: in Thailand or Me and Mar to check on the conditions.
Speaker 1: But it has urged the Thai government, which has been
Speaker 1: credibly accused of forcing people back across the border, to
Speaker 1: move people to better conditions further into Thailand instead of
Speaker 1: keeping them in camps near the border. And here we
Speaker 1: find the unfortunate, unavoidable reality of the civil war in
Speaker 1: Myan Mar. For all the uniqueness of aspects of the conflict,
Speaker 1: the innovative ways of gen Z militias have interfaced with
Speaker 1: older ethnic military forces, the three D printed arms, et cetera.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, this is another brutal,
Speaker 1: horrific conflict between large numbers of people who want to
Speaker 1: be free and a small number of people who want
Speaker 1: to control them. From Me and Mar to our media,
Speaker 1: Ukraine to Syria, Ethiopia, true Iraq and beyond. The novelties
Speaker 1: the twenty one century conflict don't change the fact that
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, each war brings with
Speaker 1: it what might be the truest symbol of our current age,
Speaker 1: parents saying goodbye to their kids, camps filled with deathperate
Speaker 1: people fleeing violence, and government's all over the world willing
Speaker 1: to send nothing more than kind words and stern warnings.
Speaker 1: This is a PostScript, episode four. It's not one that
Speaker 1: we've been intending to record, because it's not news that
Speaker 1: we'd ever hoped to have to share, but here we are. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we found out that about ten days after we last spoken,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks before we released our podcast, Zor died.
Speaker 1: And he died in battle fighting with the top me door.
Speaker 1: He's really was, I suppose, an amazingly brave and courageous
Speaker 1: young men and Um. I think that his loss is
Speaker 1: one that reflects the realities of of what war is,
Speaker 1: which is not great and glorious and exciting. It's young
Speaker 1: men and sometimes young women, young non binary folks. I
Speaker 1: imagine too, um dying when they had no quarrel with anyone,
Speaker 1: when they just wanted to live their lives. Two years ago,
Speaker 1: a year and a half forgo even he was just
Speaker 1: loving the people, he loved, having fun, being a kid,
Speaker 1: riding his motorcycle, speaking to his girlfriend on his phone,
Speaker 1: living a happy life. And then someone who had power
Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to have more power, and they
Speaker 1: decided that it didn't matter how many kids had to
Speaker 1: die so they could have what they want, and he
Speaker 1: decided to say no to that, and that's brave, and
Speaker 1: I think all of us would agree that what he
Speaker 1: did was right and morally courageous, and that that we
Speaker 1: would hope to be brave enough to do the same
Speaker 1: if the same thing happened to us. This one's hit
Speaker 1: me quite hard, honestly. I know this is my job,
Speaker 1: and it happens that it's happened before and it will
Speaker 1: happen again. But he was such a happy, polite, kind
Speaker 1: young man. He never didn't pick up the phone, He
Speaker 1: never got tired of explaining stuff that we didn't understand um,
Speaker 1: and he always answered our questions. It was nothing that
Speaker 1: was off the table. There was nothing that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: talk about with us. He was completely open. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we will miss him greatly. He died fighting the thing
Speaker 1: that we all have to fight, right, fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, militarization,
Speaker 1: And yeah, we'll will grieve his loss. Both Robert and
Speaker 1: I have. We've just spoken on the phone and we
Speaker 1: found out because the contact of mine on the ground
Speaker 1: sent me a Reddit message with a link to a
Speaker 1: Facebook post and it's very clearly Zorin no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: It names him, and unfortunately it also shows him dead.
Speaker 1: So we were not in any doubt that it was
Speaker 1: him who died, and we're not in any doubt that
Speaker 1: we will gravely miss him either. We both hoped to
Speaker 1: go over and record with him, to speak with him,
Speaker 1: to meet him. I've spoken to him several times on video,
Speaker 1: sometimes just to chat, not even to to record anything,
Speaker 1: just just to chat, just to catch up and and
Speaker 1: and look at what each of us was doing that day.
Speaker 1: So it's a hard loss for me and for Robert
Speaker 1: will As I said, we've just spoken, um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the news that we hadn't hoped to end on. Obviously, though,
Speaker 1: this is the reality of war. And as the world
Speaker 1: is looking at the conflict in Ukraine now, I'd urge
Speaker 1: you too to look at the conflict in Myanmar. To
Speaker 1: another Russian bomb killed another nice kid who never had
Speaker 1: any quarrel with anyone, who just wanted to live his life,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to live the rest of his
Speaker 1: life with a boot on his neck, so he decided
Speaker 1: to stand up against it. As you can probably hear
Speaker 1: my voice, I'm quite upset bye by his loss and
Speaker 1: will be probably for a few days. So I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to have to end this podcast on such a sad note.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for his family who are now caught between
Speaker 1: the loss of their son and trying to protect their daughters.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for his girlfriend, who's dealing with shrapnel in
Speaker 1: her own leg and now the loss of the person
Speaker 1: she loved. And I'm sorry for his comrades. And they've
Speaker 1: said they'll go on fighting, and I hope they do.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's any point really pretending to
Speaker 1: be objective at this stage in the games, and I
Speaker 1: hope they win, um, But I mostly just hope that
Speaker 1: like one day, young men and women and everyone else
Speaker 1: just gets to live their lives without having to kill
Speaker 1: and die, because ultimately, no one should have to and
Speaker 1: no parents should have to bury their kids. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: as much as we're all focusing on Ukraine and what's
Speaker 1: happening there is terrible, Please don't forgets all his comrades,
Speaker 1: Please don't forget his legacy, um, and please don't forget him.
Speaker 1: We won't and we obviously want to dedicate this podcast
Speaker 1: to him and what he stood for. So yeah, thanks, Oh,
Speaker 1: welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, recording
Speaker 1: from a deeply unsettling airbnb right near the border of
Speaker 1: Texas and Mexico. Um. I'm here with my good friend
Speaker 1: James Stout. Say hello to the people. Hi everyone, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about well, let me let me
Speaker 1: introduce briefly. You'll you'll see the episodes soon. Eno. What
Speaker 1: we're down here reporting on um a mixture of of
Speaker 1: of right wing militancy, government militarization of the border, and
Speaker 1: the attempts by people trapped in the middle to survive
Speaker 1: and avoid those authoritarian structures. So today, James and they're
Speaker 1: going to talk about molotov cocktails. Um. But first, James,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about this airbnb. We're in for
Speaker 1: a second because you book this motherfucker deeply. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you have like less than twenty
Speaker 1: four hours before you arrive and need a place for
Speaker 1: more than two people is uh, you really get into
Speaker 1: the depth of airbnb And I've found this place, which
Speaker 1: how to describe it? Um? Yeah, YEA unsettling, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: it it just feels wrong. I can't put my finger
Speaker 1: quite on where there is a basement which definitely has
Speaker 1: like murder vibes. And there's not basements in Texas normally,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's crumbling and unsettling. There's a some
Speaker 1: pump doesn't appear connected to anything. There's puddles of standing water. Um.
Speaker 1: I think there's like nine bedrooms in this house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but only one like it is upstairs, and it seems
Speaker 1: to have like like to be designed to command an
Speaker 1: arqui fier around the house. Then there are other bedrooms
Speaker 1: which are like kind of in this stable block. What
Speaker 1: else is weird? Like three of the bedrooms are separate
Speaker 1: from the main house and in a built in a
Speaker 1: way that it looks like a roadside motel. And then
Speaker 1: there's a main house that has like four living rooms
Speaker 1: for We're sitting at a large kitchen table right now,
Speaker 1: which spins around a central access. For some inexplicable reason,
Speaker 1: we have the overwhelming feeling that something horribly wrong was
Speaker 1: done in this space because it doesn't everything is a
Speaker 1: little off. None of the decorations look like people. This
Speaker 1: is some sort of trap house, but we cannot identify
Speaker 1: the kind. I think you describe it best when you
Speaker 1: said it's like one of those this person does not
Speaker 1: exist photos but of a home, and you can't work
Speaker 1: out what's wrong. But it's not human and it's not right.
Speaker 1: So we just had to get that out of our
Speaker 1: systems because it's been deeply unsettling the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: We're here now, James, you wrote an article about Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktails that got you in a bit of a fascinating situation.
Speaker 1: I want to just kind of walk me through what
Speaker 1: happened there and what the fallout was. Yeah, well, the
Speaker 1: one that started it was about how to tear down statues,
Speaker 1: and that was for popular mechanics. In In that article,
Speaker 1: I interviewed a couple of experts and one of them
Speaker 1: explained how to make something called thermite. Thermitees like an
Speaker 1: exotherermic reaction, and you mix a couple of things, they
Speaker 1: get hot, They get hot enough to melt some metal.
Speaker 1: So if you were interested in bringing down a statue
Speaker 1: of a bigot, that might be helpful to you. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's legal basically all of the US to
Speaker 1: possess their mite, and pretty simple to make. Not that
Speaker 1: you know, you can google it. You can figure that
Speaker 1: out yourself. Yeah, I'm not telling you how to make it.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that it exists, exists, and is surprisingly legal. Yes,
Speaker 1: and if you need to old some ship underwater or
Speaker 1: joined together some train tracks, it's the right tool for
Speaker 1: the job. Yeah. If you happen to be I know
Speaker 1: a lot of the Russian Army in Ukraine listens to
Speaker 1: this podcast. If you happen to be in the process
Speaker 1: of abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars in armor, their
Speaker 1: mite can allow you to stop Ukrainian farmers from towing
Speaker 1: it back to their homes. Yeah, but don't do that
Speaker 1: if you're a Russian soldier. Just just run, um, go
Speaker 1: to the Ukrainians. I'll let you call your mom. They're nice. Um. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I write the story for pop Mac Right. It's
Speaker 1: it's just a useful guide to people who are looking
Speaker 1: to safely dispose of a racist statue. Right. And when
Speaker 1: I write it, I think their readership might lean pretty conservative,
Speaker 1: or they felt like that was a safe space. Anyway.
Speaker 1: It immediately became like the epicenter of the culture War
Speaker 1: for like a week, including triggering one Benjamin Shapiro, who
Speaker 1: then sub tweeted me like a coward and asked when
Speaker 1: I'll be writing my story about Molotov cocktails, which I
Speaker 1: subsequently wrote. So that that gets us to the Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktail story. I was in Russia today as well, now
Speaker 1: banned media outlet No No No. I wrote it for
Speaker 1: a British magazine called Huck. I described like Huck is
Speaker 1: like like Vice but less tragic, like af device went bad,
Speaker 1: Huck Huck school. Um, and so yeah, Ben Ben was upset.
Speaker 1: Ben orchestrated this kind of right wing panic around the story.
Speaker 1: They canceled pop Mac for a while, and I wrote
Speaker 1: a piece about the history and I guess chemistry of
Speaker 1: monotor and they're rolling democratization movements. That was really fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. So yeah, that's how we got to the
Speaker 1: Molotov story. And you want to give me kind of
Speaker 1: some cliffs notes on the history of the Molotov and
Speaker 1: it's rolling because what I know about Molotov cocktails, I
Speaker 1: assume it's named after Molotov, of the Molotov ribbon trop
Speaker 1: packed right the at slav Molotov. Yeah, um, and I
Speaker 1: know I have been near a couple of them going off.
Speaker 1: I nearly got lit on fire by one, and I
Speaker 1: watched a colleague get let on fire by another. So
Speaker 1: I am aware of what they do. Um, But yeah,
Speaker 1: why don't you walk us through kind of the close
Speaker 1: notes of the history of molotovs. Yeah, absolutely, so. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you'll go on the Internet and
Speaker 1: you're read something about history and it will turn out
Speaker 1: not to be right, and that that's often the case
Speaker 1: with Molotov cocktails. So, yes, they're named after Lav Molotov.
Speaker 1: We can get to why they named that way in
Speaker 1: a second. But they their origin is actually with Franco's
Speaker 1: nationalist fascist national fascists, whatever you wanna call them, national
Speaker 1: Catholic troops in the Spanish Civil War. So early on
Speaker 1: in the Spanish Civil War nineteen thirties seven ish, um,
Speaker 1: the Republic had some Soviet tanks and they were using
Speaker 1: these against the At Fentbro, they were using these against
Speaker 1: the nationalists and nationalists were throwing what they then called
Speaker 1: petrol bombs at the tanks too great effect. There's those
Speaker 1: old tanks had rubber on the wheels that turned the
Speaker 1: tracks and those would melt. So that's when they were
Speaker 1: first used. And if you're not familiar with what a
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktail is, it's an improvised incendiary device. It's a
Speaker 1: glass thing filled with a flammable thing, topped with some
Speaker 1: kind of cloth with a flame that the goth is burning.
Speaker 1: And when you throw it, obviously the glass thing breaks,
Speaker 1: the flammable liquid comes out, and the flame catches a
Speaker 1: liquid and you have a fireball. So the first time
Speaker 1: we kind of see them is used it in the
Speaker 1: Spanish and war. We see references to them in like
Speaker 1: British media in the nineteen thirties when British reporters were
Speaker 1: going out to watch the Spanish Civil War and they
Speaker 1: were like, Wow, what a development, what a technology, and
Speaker 1: so they used there. But where they get their names
Speaker 1: in Finland, right when the Soviets invade Finland. Why they
Speaker 1: got their name is that Molotov claimed that his planes
Speaker 1: were not dropping bombs. You'll see like a history of
Speaker 1: gas lighting in Russian Foreign poll or Soviet foreign policy here. Um.
Speaker 1: He claimed they weren't dropping bombs. He claimed that they
Speaker 1: were bringing aid to the people of Finland, right, and
Speaker 1: Finland was like, this is ridiculous. So they kind of
Speaker 1: started calling the bombs Molotov's bread baskets, and pretty soon
Speaker 1: everything that was shipped was associated with molotovs. Bombers were
Speaker 1: Molotov's chickens, blackout curtains were Molotov's curtains, And so the
Speaker 1: they switched many of their state alcohol factories to making
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails, and so they started calling these these pet
Speaker 1: work work called petrol bombs Molotov cocktails, and that's how
Speaker 1: the names dug It is neat that Russia has such
Speaker 1: a long history of causing other nations to retool their
Speaker 1: domestic liquor production towards making bombs to throw at Russian soldiers,
Speaker 1: and like, how what do we now eighty odd years
Speaker 1: on from from nine seven? Like it's it's not always
Speaker 1: Russian tanks, but it's nearly always Russian tanks, right like
Speaker 1: Spain and the Russian tanks are obviously like in the
Speaker 1: Republican Spain is much preferable to Franco Finland hungry and
Speaker 1: ninety six right um, And today in Ukraine you see
Speaker 1: people throwing bottles of petrol with flames on top of
Speaker 1: Russian tanks. Yeah, they have a long history. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's among other things like especially if you
Speaker 1: don't have easy access to firearms and and no access
Speaker 1: to explosives and stuff like. It's it's not a force equalizer,
Speaker 1: but it does allow you to to do certain things
Speaker 1: militarily that that would be harder to do, um if
Speaker 1: you were like trying to manufacture something a little bit
Speaker 1: more like it's easier than making a grenade, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it does much more damage than a rock, but
Speaker 1: it's not much harder to come by for most people. Right.
Speaker 1: One really interesting thing I read about them was by
Speaker 1: this academic who I really like his work. It's called
Speaker 1: Ali Cadiva, and he's Iranian, and he's looked at like
Speaker 1: democratization movements all over the world. Right, so, how do
Speaker 1: authoritarian regimes collapse? And his research suggested that like peaceful
Speaker 1: extreme like extremely like quote unquote peaceful protests tend not
Speaker 1: to work, and insurgencies hadn't had that higher a success rate.
Speaker 1: But his paper is called stick, stones and Molotov cocktails,
Speaker 1: and like his research suggested, like, if you're prepared to
Speaker 1: do violence against property by hidding it with a stick,
Speaker 1: throwing a stone, throwing a Monotov cocktail, then you are
Speaker 1: more likely to have success in toppling a regime. So like,
Speaker 1: because they're accessible to people who don't necessarily have guns,
Speaker 1: aren't doing insurgencies. They've had this really interesting role in
Speaker 1: arming nonstate actors or arming liberation movement throughout history. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because it would seem to suggest, like
Speaker 1: a reading of that paper would seem to suggest that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not so much like being willing to carry out
Speaker 1: like a militant movement, but being willing to destroy things
Speaker 1: as one of the primary signs that like you have
Speaker 1: a chance of actually overthrowing an authoritarian regime is like
Speaker 1: your your ability to prepare to to do damage, um,
Speaker 1: like a financial nature, Like is that kind of the
Speaker 1: argument is making. I think the argument he's making is that, like,
Speaker 1: and it's an argument that can't be made enough. Right,
Speaker 1: the damage to property is not the same as damage
Speaker 1: to people, and violence against property in the name of
Speaker 1: liberation or justice is okay and tends to work. And
Speaker 1: but yeah, you have to have some skin in the game.
Speaker 1: You have to be prepared to fund some ship up
Speaker 1: if you if you want to bring down a regime
Speaker 1: which is prepared to use violence against you. That's kind
Speaker 1: of talking about the use of these tools within liberatory struggles.
Speaker 1: But they're not I guess the liberatory strugglesm the I
Speaker 1: have the beholder that's talking about the use of these
Speaker 1: tools and kind of like street movements that are agitating
Speaker 1: for change. But we also have this military history UM,
Speaker 1: which I think is much more muddled in terms of
Speaker 1: its actual efficacy as a as a weapon, its ability
Speaker 1: to deny area, it's ability to destroy UM or damage
Speaker 1: like enemy uh like combat ability. Do you do you
Speaker 1: have any kind of sense of like how effective like
Speaker 1: we're seeing all these people in Ukraine arming themselves with
Speaker 1: cocktails UM evidence of of of you know, the efficacy
Speaker 1: of these and calmbat as a lot murkier UM, at
Speaker 1: least within the present conflict. Do you have a sense
Speaker 1: of how historically they're useful? They tend to be for that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think depending on the age of the and and
Speaker 1: then the type of the vehicle you're attacking. Right, So
Speaker 1: like these old Russian tanks UM, what they would do
Speaker 1: a lot was make something which is not quite what
Speaker 1: we would see if the MONOTORV cocktails, I had a
Speaker 1: whole blanket that was soaked in petrol, and that would
Speaker 1: get caught up in the track and then it would
Speaker 1: destroy that. There was a bit of rubber on on
Speaker 1: the wheels interface with the tracks that it would melt
Speaker 1: and that would immobilize the tank and then folks could
Speaker 1: swarm it from all angles. That was kind of the
Speaker 1: move there, and then I think they've been more useful
Speaker 1: in Ukraine than one might have expected. Because of the
Speaker 1: nature of some of the Russian military vehicles. They tend
Speaker 1: to carry their fuel on the outside. They also because
Speaker 1: of the mud, they'll carry lots of pieces of wood
Speaker 1: that they can use to put under their wheels like
Speaker 1: you would you know, like sand ladders on the truck um,
Speaker 1: so those tend to catch fire more easily. I know
Speaker 1: the b MPs also have fuel storage on the back door,
Speaker 1: which is is pretty optimal for if you want to
Speaker 1: walk up behind someone to set something on fire. So
Speaker 1: that they've worked pretty well there. In other places, yeah,
Speaker 1: they seem to be more of an annoyance, Like I know,
Speaker 1: I've spoken to people who have been in the military
Speaker 1: in the UK and like the big thing in Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland right again right, you have a sort of a
Speaker 1: liberatory movement there and so they were very popular, but
Speaker 1: they didn't seem to do much of them, cause people distress,
Speaker 1: cause people personal injury sometimes but not particularly too. They
Speaker 1: weren't game changing in terms of like the monopoly on
Speaker 1: violence there, but yeah, they seem to be very very
Speaker 1: I think they're better when you have a ton of
Speaker 1: people throwing them. I think you have a lot of
Speaker 1: people setting things on fire, that tends to be it
Speaker 1: causes people to stop. And I think with Russia being
Speaker 1: lacking in excellent leadership, it seems like we could say
Speaker 1: in Ukraine and some of their soldiers maybe lacking in training,
Speaker 1: and with the fact that they tend to carry fuel
Speaker 1: externally so their vehicles catch fire. If you can just
Speaker 1: convince some conscripts that their vehicle is on fire, they
Speaker 1: are going to get out, run away. And we've seen
Speaker 1: that a lot, right, a lot of people running away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when I think about, like outside of military uses,
Speaker 1: where I've seen molotovas be most effective in like the
Speaker 1: time I've been covering conflict, that the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes up is the My Dawn Revolution Ukraine, where people
Speaker 1: were throwing some of the same people throwing molotops at
Speaker 1: Russian troops. Now we're through a mix of throwing by
Speaker 1: hand and like catapult devices were launching sometimes hundreds of
Speaker 1: molotovs in a couple of minutes and like melting tank
Speaker 1: treads to the ground, which is definitely like that's a
Speaker 1: that's obviously it was effective. It's also almost a different
Speaker 1: kind of weapons system when you're when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: that kind of volume grad molotov launcher. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then I can think about, like, there's this really amazing
Speaker 1: video that you can find if you look of Greek
Speaker 1: anarchists on bicycles swarming pass a Greek police station and
Speaker 1: throwing it looked like about a dozen molotovs at once,
Speaker 1: and and just like sacking a police station that way
Speaker 1: and then biking right the funk off and like disappearing
Speaker 1: into the city um, which is which you know, seemed
Speaker 1: like a more effective tactic than some of the ways
Speaker 1: I've seen them used, where it's like a person throwing
Speaker 1: a molotov um and then the cops get really fucking angry,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really do that much damage to them,
Speaker 1: and then people get or they hit the wrong person.
Speaker 1: Like it is, it is a tool with a high
Speaker 1: degree of chance for error if you don't know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Yeah, it's there's a decent skill requirement. You
Speaker 1: also really don't want to have like anything flammable on
Speaker 1: your hands or shirt or anything like that. Like I've
Speaker 1: seen people really end up badly after trying to make
Speaker 1: a molotov and just hurting themselves trying to light it
Speaker 1: or throw it. Yeah, it's it's not. It's not one
Speaker 1: of those things that like you want to casually suggest
Speaker 1: people use because the odds of actually injuring yourself with
Speaker 1: it are pretty high if you're not being careful. Um,
Speaker 1: and if you if you're going into a situation where
Speaker 1: you think people might have molotov's natural fibers people, natural fibers, nuts, synthetics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well is your friend welding gloves your friend? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be caught on fire. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how, like what are the
Speaker 1: different kinds of constructions of molotops you've seen people using
Speaker 1: and how they changed over time. You talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about kind of the early Spanish ones were like
Speaker 1: full blankets and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the
Speaker 1: interests where we go from Spain to to Finland right
Speaker 1: where we're seeing the same thing basically petrol or maybe
Speaker 1: ethanol or something like that inside a bottle with with
Speaker 1: just a wig, right something sort of. I know in
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War they were using jars a lot like
Speaker 1: jam jars. But when things started to develop, I think
Speaker 1: is in the UK, so in Britain, and you actually
Speaker 1: have this guy called Tom Wintringham who went to Spain
Speaker 1: as a walk correspondent, decided to become a soldier and
Speaker 1: then returned to the UK and tried to share what
Speaker 1: he'd learned with British people. Right in this article he
Speaker 1: wrote a picture post and he was very much into
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails is a great way of fighting an invasion,
Speaker 1: much like actually the old guy you heard, did you
Speaker 1: hear the guy who called into NPR recently? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was outstanding, just just turning NPR into our how
Speaker 1: to do gorilla warfare. And so what they did they
Speaker 1: made this thing called the number seventy six grenade, and
Speaker 1: they made six million of them, I think Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And they still find them. It's funny, they'll still find
Speaker 1: them in like when they'll be digging the foundation for
Speaker 1: a building. They'll be like, oh shit, this is not
Speaker 1: a box of beer. And what those had was a
Speaker 1: strip of rubber that they dropped in it. It was
Speaker 1: in a bottle with a cap, and it had a
Speaker 1: phosphorus ignitor actually, so you didn't have to light it,
Speaker 1: you just hosted it. And yeah, and those were extremely effective.
Speaker 1: The rubber dissolves and then that allows the flaming liquid
Speaker 1: to adhere better to the person or thing that is hit. Right,
Speaker 1: and you're almost like making a napalm bark, yes exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the phosphorus will last for a long time. It's
Speaker 1: much less risky to the thrower and you and also
Speaker 1: have a whole box of them and just keep throwing them, right.
Speaker 1: You don't have to light each one, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have someone else like each one. So those seem
Speaker 1: pretty effective. I don't know if they were ever really
Speaker 1: used in anger, because obviously the Nazis never landed in
Speaker 1: the UK, but yeah, that was that was a pretty
Speaker 1: big development, and that kind of set the tone for
Speaker 1: the other developments which I've seen, at least. I'm not
Speaker 1: like a Molotov expert. But people put sugar in them,
Speaker 1: people put polystyrene in them or what do you call that?
Speaker 1: What does sugar in them do? I think it gives
Speaker 1: it a higher viscosity, and I think they sort of
Speaker 1: it maybe melts when they like sticks. It like creates
Speaker 1: like a sticky kind of hot, like like if you're
Speaker 1: making toffee. I would imagine, Um, the big thing I've
Speaker 1: seen people putting in them is various like plastics. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you look at the You've seen these videos
Speaker 1: of old ladies in Ukraine with cheese graters just grating
Speaker 1: like packing styrofoam, and they put at in there, and
Speaker 1: that that does the same thing, right, creates a more
Speaker 1: viscous kind of napalm which adheres to the thing that
Speaker 1: you throw at. And that I think if you're talking
Speaker 1: about persuading someone that their tank is on fire, if
Speaker 1: it keeps burning for ten twenty seconds, you know you
Speaker 1: don't have a very long time to get out of
Speaker 1: a BMP, so you're going to start getting out, I
Speaker 1: would imagine. Well, and that does point to like an
Speaker 1: interesting reality of like not just this war all war,
Speaker 1: but like specifically in the context of territorial kind of
Speaker 1: volunteers who are on paper terribly out gunned. Um. But
Speaker 1: the psychological dimension is that, like you said, if you
Speaker 1: can convince people they may be in an armored vehicle
Speaker 1: that has unquestioned supremacy over the partisans attacking them. But
Speaker 1: if you can convince them they are on fire, they
Speaker 1: will make decisions that lead them to no longer have
Speaker 1: the advantage in terms of firepower. It's not impossible to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you saw that. I think there's some footage
Speaker 1: from my dan of them sort of ambushing some armored vehicles.
Speaker 1: And yet once you throw half a dozen monitor of
Speaker 1: cocktails from above at windows, you can only get those
Speaker 1: people to abandon their vehicle and run away. That's the goal.
Speaker 1: If they get out, there are a lot more vulnerable
Speaker 1: to further attacks from molotov cocktails or anything else. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it. It really plays into that
Speaker 1: kind of gorilla or sort of like underdog side of conflict. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting to them about me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you and I just finished this series that
Speaker 1: dealt heavily with like three D printed weapons, homemade guns
Speaker 1: and stuff. But you know, there's a lot that you,
Speaker 1: as the state can do to reduce people's access to firearms,
Speaker 1: or even to reduce people's access to like knives that
Speaker 1: are bigger than kitchen knives. A lot you can do
Speaker 1: to reduce people's access to conventional arms, but everywhere has
Speaker 1: got liquor. Yeah, exactly, it's almost impossible to stop people
Speaker 1: having them. Right, If you have gasoline, diesel, alcohol, and
Speaker 1: glass things and fabric and lighter, you have access to these.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're accessible to everyone, and they are incredibly effective. Like,
Speaker 1: they're probably the most effective thing that you could make
Speaker 1: in your home if you were doing an insurgency or
Speaker 1: fighting Russian invaders in this case. Yeah, well, James, was
Speaker 1: there anything else you wanted to get into on the
Speaker 1: subject of molotos or other forms of cocktails? Yeah, let
Speaker 1: me think I should probably say that it's probably illegal
Speaker 1: to make them in the United States. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are specific ways you legally can, but you you need
Speaker 1: a number of different permits. Yeah. Yeah, you do have
Speaker 1: to ask the government. So I probably wouldn't suggest to
Speaker 1: do Yes, you have to, I probably wouldn't suggest doing that,
Speaker 1: But no, I think it's always interesting to look at
Speaker 1: these like, if we want to move towards a world
Speaker 1: where there is less authority more freedom, then these things
Speaker 1: which take away the state's monopoly on the ability to
Speaker 1: do violence should always be not necessarily like things that
Speaker 1: we want that. It's interesting. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's fascinating to me. Obviously, Ukraine is a pretty
Speaker 1: standard government within the global or at least up until
Speaker 1: this point, has been like they are. They are a
Speaker 1: state that has done a number of ugly things in
Speaker 1: its past, and we'll do them in the future. But
Speaker 1: they're in this fascinating moment where the government has really
Speaker 1: set down any claim to a monopoly on force in
Speaker 1: a lot of fascinating ways, the kind of widespread here's
Speaker 1: how to make a molotov, here's how to disable And
Speaker 1: one of the things that's fascinating, the Ukrainian government very
Speaker 1: famously sent around sheets which are like, here is where
Speaker 1: to throw molotovs to do the most damage. Different Russian
Speaker 1: vehicles are also Ukrainian vehicles. Yeah, yeah, and also those
Speaker 1: vehicles now belong to random farmers, Like I saw that
Speaker 1: was a thing with the Ukrainian equivalent of the I
Speaker 1: R S who said, like, don't worry, you don't need
Speaker 1: to declare this tank on your income tax. Right, how
Speaker 1: does one tax a person who has a tank? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or in the case of some of them, has a
Speaker 1: twenty million dollar anti aircraft system. Yeah, who is the
Speaker 1: tax man who is willing to go and collect that?
Speaker 1: Like they have become ungovernable, right, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: we're they are in the thick of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: for the rest of all of our lives. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: how long this thing is going to last. But if
Speaker 1: if the war does end in any kind of reasonable
Speaker 1: time frame, the what's Ukraine going back to. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they go back to being a normal state
Speaker 1: when they have when they have opened the floodgates to everyone.
Speaker 1: Is the army now? Well? I think it's Yeah, it
Speaker 1: calls into question number things, right, like that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily always need is very strict disciplinary and structure
Speaker 1: to fight very effectively. But also yeah, that like do
Speaker 1: you need the state? Right? People are just doing their
Speaker 1: own thing right now, and I yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you already take that back? Like how do you
Speaker 1: go and collect the tanks from people? They know how
Speaker 1: to kill tanks, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government in the future, if we imagine a time
Speaker 1: of people piece, it'll be quite a while before there's
Speaker 1: any chance of like, well we better send in the
Speaker 1: riot troops to crack down on this protest. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get those riot troops to go
Speaker 1: anywhere near there. Yeah, Like, yeah, we're testing out this
Speaker 1: armed society as a polite society thesis, right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how the police return to a country
Speaker 1: which is seemingly at least holding off, if not defeating,
Speaker 1: a military superpower. Yeah. It is a fascinating question, and
Speaker 1: and no one really has a clear answer, but I
Speaker 1: do think it's interesting. Of course they have embraced the
Speaker 1: Molotov as you've kind of made the case here that's
Speaker 1: it really has this history as this great kind of
Speaker 1: democratizing force within the conflicts between people and governments and
Speaker 1: governments and governments. Yeah, and and people in capital, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you're prepared to destroy capital goods like people
Speaker 1: have done for centuries, and that that seems to be
Speaker 1: the way to make change. Right. It's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: I think, to reflect on from our me and my podcast,
Speaker 1: I thought was that they had very strict gun ownership
Speaker 1: laws before this, very very strict apart from from one
Speaker 1: ethnic group called the Chin. But what they've promised to
Speaker 1: do afterwards, at least according to our sources is to
Speaker 1: allow people to keep and bear arms, right, because I
Speaker 1: guess they kind of have to write because a they
Speaker 1: can't stop them anymore. These people are three D printing
Speaker 1: guns and be the only way they got freedom or
Speaker 1: if this is if the if they're able to defeat
Speaker 1: the Tapmador, then the only way they've they've become free
Speaker 1: is through fighting for their freedom. And it seems that
Speaker 1: they're not going to be willing to give that up,
Speaker 1: especially for the ethnic groups there. So yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to see, like what kind of a state emerges
Speaker 1: from a sort of uh, what's the sort of world
Speaker 1: like Like it's it's not an authoritarian structure, right, the
Speaker 1: militaries are not like a lot of people in Ukraine
Speaker 1: are not necessarily authoritarian instructures. So what emerges for the
Speaker 1: state when we've had this horizontal resistance? Yeah, these are
Speaker 1: These are fascinating questions and ones that I think will
Speaker 1: all be continuing to ask and answer for for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future. For now, do you have anything you want
Speaker 1: to plug before we were all out? James M No.
Speaker 1: You should listen to our podcast on MIMMA. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter. That's my name at stout Patreon.
Speaker 1: I write some other things. I teach at the community college.
Speaker 1: If you want to take some history courses, we can
Speaker 1: learn about molotovs. Have a lecture about that. But otherwise no,
Speaker 1: that's about well, that's gonna do it for us here
Speaker 1: until next time. Don't make a molotov if it's illegal
Speaker 1: where you live. But but do think about molotovs, because,
Speaker 1: as the last couple of weeks have shown us, you
Speaker 1: could by next week be living in a state where
Speaker 1: it's very legal to make molotov cocktails. That could happen
Speaker 1: to any of us. You never know, you know, you
Speaker 1: never know, So you know, do some reading online, use
Speaker 1: a use a VP a VPN to do that reading browser.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna be how to make molotov, do some
Speaker 1: very careful reading, and um, you know, keep an eye
Speaker 1: on the world. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more
Speaker 1: episodes every week from now until the heat death of
Speaker 1: the universe. It could happen. Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.