WEBVTT - Ukraine Aid with Charles McBryde 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.960 Also media. 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:09.080 Okay, hello, welcome to it could happen here. This is 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:13.400 Sharene today. I am joined by you know him, you 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:14.320 love him. It's Robert. 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.480 Hi, Robert Ah. Someone knows me and loves me. That's nice. 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.640 Robert is here today to talk with me to Charles McBride. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:26.160 But I met Charles fairly recently doing just pro Palestine 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.760 stuff online, and I really liked his work. He's here 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.280 to talk about some things that I think are very 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.320 important to like Ukraine, and why helping Ukraine is not 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.479 the same thing as aid to Israel and all that 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.680 good stuff. And yeah, let's just get right into it. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.159 I want to know your experience with Ukraine. Can you 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.040 just tell us a little bit about that first? 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:48.600 Sure. 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.400 First of all, thank you Sharen so much for having 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.440 me on. This has been one of my favorite podcasts 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.520 for a while. So this is kind of a slightly 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:02.880 surreal moment going into my experience with Ukraine. I double 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.760 majored in history in comparative religion in college, and I 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.520 was kind of interested in sort of the post Soviet sphere, 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.280 and I worked on some kind of post Soviet issues 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.920 when I lived in Washington, d C. After school, and 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.600 also was deeply interested in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.520 kind of why I took an interest in that region. 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:28.440 So I remember, in like twenty fifteen, I watched this 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.600 Vice video called Russian Roulette that popped up on my 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.440 YouTube feed, and it just completely it just put Ukraine 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:36.959 on the map for me in a way that I'd 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.160 never really thought about before. I thought of it as 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:45.800 the Ukraine. Yeah, my Muscovite Russian history professor had always 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.200 talked about it as a part of Russia, and she 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.360 had denied, you know, I was during the Midan the 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.800 Revolution of Dignity, I was in college, and she denied 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:59.120 that Ukraine had any autonomy. She echoed all the putinesque 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.440 sort of talking points about CIA intervention and neo Nazis 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.400 and stuff, and I didn't really know what. I didn't 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.640 know at that point. So then I, yeah, I got 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.720 I got interested in in sort of what was happening 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.000 in the lead up to the Russian invasion. And I 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.040 had been following this guy who went over to Syria 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.520 a couple of years ago named Aidan Aslin. And in 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:27.040 my conversations with with aid and he'd sort of told 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.520 me a little bit about kind of what stuff was 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.080 like in going on in Ukraine, and I got very 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:34.840 interested in I was following him and all of his 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.760 friends and what they were doing. And at that point, 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.000 I had, you know, about four or five years of 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.400 nonprofit humanitarian experience under my belt, as long as as 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:49.160 well as sort of a historical political understanding of the region. 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.200 And so when the when the war happened, when the 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:56.480 full scale invasion happened, I immediately started trying to fundraise, trying 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.760 to help out, trying to educate, and sleep to try 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.919 and cut through Russian propaganda because there were a lot 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:08.760 of people in my sphere who were just retweeting straight 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:13.080 up Russian propaganda. They were elevating you know what you 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:17.840 and I know who are basically Krimlin adjacent individuals in 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.480 the United States who have Sway and leftist circles, some 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.440 of whom have re emerged in the Palestine discussion, much 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:25.160 to my chagrin. 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:29.040 Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about that more like 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:30.200 I would love to. 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:30.720 Get into that. 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.160 Yeah, And so yeah, in my hope was to kind 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.120 of to do that, and as I was sort of 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:38.760 working with Ukrainian it's one of the things they said is, hey, man, 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.880 everything happens here. You have to be in Ukraine for 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:44.520 to get anything off the ground, so you need to 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:46.720 come here. And I'm like, are you insane? It's there's 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.200 a war going on in your country. So I said yes, 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:56.000 and yes, yes, I am in retrospect. So the second 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:57.839 week of the war, I booked a plane ticket, flew 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.120 over there, across the train and the pole, and scared 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.560 out of my mind, got in touch with the Ukrainians 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.520 I'd been talking to previously, and after a mad hustle 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.560 from the train station, was very comfortably drinking tea in 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:14.200 a cute little apartment in Leviv with somebody's grandmother. And 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.960 I was like, this is this is crazy experience. So 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.560 I spent two months in Ukraine. At the beginning, my 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:25.240 attention was to sort of identify gaps in the medical 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:27.880 supply chain, particularly things that were going to be initially 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.560 overlooked in the mad dash of refugees and resettlement and 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.320 all that sort of stuff. And one of the things 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:40.160 we identified was like prescription medication for people coming from 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.400 the East to the West. And yeah, I think it's 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:45.279 important that not a lot of realized that people coming 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.040 from Eastern Ukraine. A lot of them had never visited 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.000 cities like Leviv until the start of full scale invasion, 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:56.080 predominantly Russian speakers, and you know, for them, Leviv was 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.599 almost like going to Poland, and it was a very 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:03.120 new thing for them. But you know, your medical issues 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.680 don't stop just because someone invades their country. In fact, 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.560 oftentimes they get worse. And so what I was trying 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:13.000 to do initially was was find a way to address that, 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:19.280 and that led me into contact with Rostislov Philippinko, who's 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.919 one of my dear friends and the co founder of 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.640 the organization that we started together called Mission HARKV. So 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:30.920 that organization worked initially on prescription medications and then started 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:36.120 distributing high end oncology drugs, which are very difficult to transport, 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.200 very lucrative to steel, and very difficult to store because 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.720 they have to be kept at a constant temperature. So 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.040 we focused on those things while everybody else was focusing 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:51.400 on tints and you know, and clothes for refugees and 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.120 that sort of stuff. And as a result, we carved 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.839 out a very interesting niche in terms of the humanitarian 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.440 response and are still you know, going strong with that 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.919 today and so that was initially kind of why I 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.080 went over there for that first two months, and since 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:11.440 then I've been back over to film a documentary, sort 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:16.200 of an artistic short documentary called Note of Defiance, and 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:18.960 then I was involved with another documentary project which is 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:20.880 hopefully forthcoming in the next year. 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:21.919 Nice. 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.320 Yeah, I don't think I've talked about this on the show, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.919 but kind of my relationship with Ukraine and eventually going 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.400 over there and starting to report on what was happening 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.640 started weirdly enough as a result of the fact that 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.320 I had friends who went to the big Burning Man 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:41.280 event in Nevada, and I wound up traveling with one 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.880 of them in India, this Ukrainian woman who lived in 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:49.560 the Bay and when stuff started in late twenty thirteen, 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:51.839 which is when the Revolution of Dignity is kind of 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:53.880 the common Ukrainian name for it. You'll also hear it 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:55.960 referred to as like the twenty fourteen revolution of the 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.400 madn Revolution. They're all talking about the same thing, which 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.480 is when the guy who was the President of Ukraine 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.120 trying to make himself into a dictator, the stude Victor Yanikovich, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.920 who is this incredibly wealthy oligarch who literally built a 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.000 golden palace for himself with like a fake lake that 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:14.840 had a boat on it, that was a restaurant for 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.560 just him, for like the level of rich oligarch asshole 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.280 we're talking about here, cracked down really brutally on a 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:25.400 student protest, which it kind of culminated in this kind 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:29.000 of escalating occupation of the Center Square in the capitol 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.080 that basically got built into an ice fortress in like 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.280 the middle of the Ukrainian winter. This very very like 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:39.240 pretty epic story of successful resistance because this guy is 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:43.040 eventually forced out the police riot unit, the bearcoot who 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.000 had done had been literally killing people by dropping them 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:49.680 naked in like ice drifts and stuff, are disbanded. It's 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.600 a really remarkable story, and I just kind of fell 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.920 into it because my friend connected me with a couple 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:57.760 of people who were on the ground there, who were 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.280 friends of hers, who were Ukrainian in the tech industry, 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.800 who traveled to the US every year or so for 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.280 burning Man, and so when this occupation of the madn started, 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.280 they were like, well, we know how to, like we're 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.360 used to making soup and food for large numbers of 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.760 people and like running little chunks of a camp. So 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:17.840 we'll just start, We'll just do the thing that we 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:20.440 do at our camp out over in Maidan. And they 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:22.080 were part of the thing they were part of was 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:26.080 the Automidon, which was this like mobile unit of resupply 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:29.600 where people would like basically drive supplies to and from 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.240 different areas of occupation in the city. It was a 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.880 pretty dangerous job as things escalated, but that was my 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.440 ind and I wound up talking to like, I don't know, 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.840 twenty or thirty people like actively the entire time the 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.400 occupation was going on. There's like two folks I never 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.800 was able to get back in touch with who just 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:48.160 kind of like dropped off at a certain point. Like 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.360 it was a really sketchy time for a lot of people. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.480 But I wound up traveling there the year after, right 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:56.720 after the early part of the invasion, started to report 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.960 from Avdifka, which is, you know, was had been under 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.760 siege for a year at that point and is still 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.520 under siege today. For an idea of like that's a 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.839 decade now basically that that this this little town has 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:09.720 been shelled. 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.320 Yeah, anyway, yeah, I didn't know that about burning Man. 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.640 That's well, it was a weird way to get connected 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:18.240 to it. Yeah. 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:20.280 I just got a message from this friend of mine 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.280 who's like, hey, somebody, someboddies from my camp are like 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:25.400 trying to overthrow their government. Do you want to talk 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.600 to them? I was like, well, yeah, that sounds pretty dope. Yeah, 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.760 that's your mo that's wild. You know what burning Man 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:35.120 really does, apply It. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.480 Provides, It really connects all, doesn't it. I have some 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:40.800 weird like tangential burning I've never been. 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:42.920 But I have like neither of I actually yeah. 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:44.959 I have like Burning Man devotees who play a large 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:46.920 role in my life. And it's just very interesting. 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.960 Yeah, yeah, the weird little connections you get. And I 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.080 was kind of disappointed, you know. To me, this was 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.280 because the whole time, especially like the late twenty thirteen 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.679 early twenty fourteen, as this was going on, I was like, well, 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.200 they're probably all going to get killed, right, like, just 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.480 you know, we were several years in the Syrian Civil 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:08.880 War at this point, Like I was not optimistic, and 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.880 that's not what happened. And then there was like this 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.200 counterpoint of realizing a few years later that oh, a 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:17.199 shocking number of people on the left think it was 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:22.199 a bad thing that they overthrew their government. Yeah, which, yeah, 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.400 I guess gets us into the kind of thing you 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:27.680 wanted to talk about, which is the difference in providing 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.959 military aid to Ukraine versus Israel. 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:33.480 Yeah, which I don't know. 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:36.680 I mean, from my standpoint, it's pretty obvious, right, Like, 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.400 one country is fighting a military that has a massive 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:44.880 industrial base, much more powerful than it and is killing 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.320 large numbers of civilians, and they have proven their ability 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:54.960 with military aid to react effectively to this invasion. And 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.320 the other case, I don't think I need to explain 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.640 which one, but it's Israel is a country with a 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.640 massive arms industry that is fighting people who have no 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.840 arms industry of any kind and primarily killing civilians. So 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:09.680 I can very easily justify one of those groups of 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:12.199 people getting US weapons and one of them not needing 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:13.480 any additional weapons. 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:15.960 That's right, Yeah, you. 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.920 See, Robert. None of that is justified because of the 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:24.439 existence of the Azhoh Battalion. There is no right for 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.839 any Ukrainian grandmother to get access to her insulin because 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.640 there's a couple of neo Nazis that were stationed in Mariople. 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.400 But truly, that is that is about how sophisticated. A 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:38.160 lot of the leftist critiques of the Ukraine, of supporting 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.000 Ukraine are. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes in. 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:43.720 One of the things that I talk about, and I 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.760 talked with Sharin about this when we went on Instagram 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.400 Live together, is that a lot of leftists seem to 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.400 live in kind of a weird little cinematic universe where 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.000 only the US and Israel can be the bad guys, 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.080 and by extension, France and the UK you know, and 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.680 YadA YadA. But as a result of that, they have 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:07.200 this just really strange view of global affairs that literally 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.600 no one in the countries they're talking about share. Somehow, 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.439 Russia and Iran and China and Cuba are all aligned 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.080 in a sort of anti imperial axis because they oppose 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.720 the interests of NATO in the United States. And I 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:27.160 think that's just so, that's that's patently ridiculous, but it 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.600 plays a big role in conversations like what's going on 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:34.720 in Palestine, yes, or people will invoke, well, why are 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.520 you giving all this money to Ukraine instead of giving 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.719 money to people the relief for the Maui fires, or 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.640 you know, doing why are we doing medical medicare for all. 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:47.240 So it's like it's a convenient because it's the military 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:50.000 industrial complex, it's the Iraq War, it's all these things 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.480 that we as leftists were taught to hate, but it's 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:56.040 there being used for good. It's like America is actually 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.520 being the arsenal democracy and doing the thing that we 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.240 did in World War Two that helped the Soviet Union 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:02.120 march into Berlin. 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:04.800 Well, and it's also i think an important thing to 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.840 notice when we talk about the it's always framed as 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:10.280 the US is giving this amount of money to Ukraine. 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:15.160 What's what's happening is we are taking stockpiles of arms 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:17.839 we already have worth that much money, and we are 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.120 sending them there like they're not right like that that 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:25.760 is overwhelmingly like the the what kind of aid we 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.920 are sending over So these are extant weapons that are 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:33.239 sitting in the US doing nothing and being like the Bradley's. 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.640 We didn't just build a bunch of new Bradley's. We 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.120 had a shitload of them, we weren't using them anymore 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.600 because they were not very useful in the conflicts that 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:43.520 we were fighting, right that Bradleys. 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:47.160 Yeah, the United States is like really itching to like 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:49.920 need high mars right now. No, Like all of this 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:52.680 stuff we're sending to them has been mothballed for yeah, 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:55.760 basically since the Goal War, and people don't understand that. 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.280 It is funny to me to imagine, like, yeah, let's 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.440 send that stuff to Maui for the virus. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.719 That's what they need. They need long range artillery. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.640 That's really gonna that's really gonna help them heal. 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.400 I'm in favor of sending lethal aid to the indigenous 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.800 residents of Malai, but I think that's it. 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:17.760 You talked me into it, and I think we have 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.560 enough mothball tanks for both of these goss. 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.880 I think for me, the comparisons for Ukraine and Palestine, 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.040 it started with how it was presented in the media. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:30.880 It just it rought people the wrong way when the 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.120 Ukrainian struggle was presented in a certain way and the 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.720 Palestinian struggle was not. And people can draw some draw 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:41.280 like comparison like whiteness and all this stuff. Absolutely, and 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:43.920 I just it got me, really, it really irritates me 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:45.960 because it's not like the Oppression Olympics, Like we're not 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:51.480 trying to compare or demonize Ukrainians. We should demonize the 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:54.920 media for not representing Palestinians in the right way. But 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:57.400 I think that is kind of the origin of the 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.320 comparison that I saw anyway. 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:03.000 Yeah, and I think that that's really worth digging into 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.400 because there's a couple of First off, it is absolutely 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:10.600 an injustice that Ukrainian resistance and that light is seen 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.920 as inherently just and not just Palestinian resistance is demonized 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.800 or often ignored, But like all sorts of resistance by 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.160 people who are being harmed around the world, it partially 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.000 is or in large part as a result of like 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.320 US and other Western countries policies are not seen in 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:29.080 the same light as Ukrainian resistance. I certainly agree with 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.880 that stance. That's not the refault of anybody in Ukraine. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.240 Right this we are not talking about a country that 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.960 exercises power on the global stage. We are talking about 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:44.360 a cash poor nation that has been struggling with Russian 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.520 imperialism for most of the time that most of the 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.360 people listening this, actually all of the time that everybody 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.280 listening to this has been alive in one form or another, right, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.600 And so I think it's perfectly fair to point out 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.000 the ways in which the media reports unequally on these conflict, 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.920 on what's happening in Palestine, what's happening on stuff like Buka, 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.400 and on the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:05.680 Right. 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.040 I think that that is worth pointing out, but it's 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.920 also not worth blaming Ukrainians over they are not participating 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.920 in that, just by saying, hey, it's bad that our 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.720 civilians are being massacred by rockets, right and other forms 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:20.920 of weaponry. By the way, like that, right, that's not 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:22.200 on them. 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.520 Yeah, I think to also kind of flip that on 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.560 its head. I mean, part of it is the media narrative. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:32.040 You know, it's easier. Ukrainians are mostly hot white people 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.560 in the eye of the Western media, and it's easy 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.520 to cheer for the hot white people who have you know, 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.760 everyone's a lot of people have been to Ukrainian restaurant, 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:43.560 They're familiar with some Ukrainian maybe songs, so they have 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:45.200 friends if they live in a place like la or 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.280 New York. You know Ukrainians, you're familiar maybe even with 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:53.160 some Ukrainian media, and it's kind of like this accessible thing, 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:55.040 you know. And also like there's other aspects of it 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.840 to which you're even stranger, which is that Ukraines produces 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.440 like a huge amount of the world's fashion models. That's 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.000 a very accessible thing for people to get behind in 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:06.679 the nice liberal media. And you could see these in 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:10.360 these initial broadcasts being like I've never seen anything like this. 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.960 With seeing all these European looking refugees, it's like, all right. 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.800 They're multilearly cast like that, where they're like, these are 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.040 not Arabs, like they say it with their chests, you know, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.320 like the these are people like us. 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.760 But for the flip side of that is that that 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:29.560 leftists are reluctant to be charitable to Ukrainians because they 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:31.760 also see them as hot white people who don't need 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:36.359 any help. Yeah, and they're they're unwilling to admit that 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:42.160 Ukrainian Ukrainians, like Gosins, also suffer from a settler colonial 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.320 state as their neighbor with a history of ethnically cleansing 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:46.800 and genociding them. 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:47.320 Yeah. 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:49.360 I mean part of the reason for that is that 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.480 the neighbor that ethnically cleansed in gen well one of them, 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.800 because actually they had several neighbors ethnically cleansing genocide them. 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.000 But the Soviet Union, like did a significant amount of 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.760 that during the Holy Dolmore. Now, the Germans also carried 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.320 out a massive genocide in Ukraine. Like and by the way, 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:08.880 a huge number of the Red Army soldiers who successfully 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:13.439 helped defeat the Nazis were Ukrainians. As a note is 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:15.520 you often see this thing where people will point out 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.280 there were a significant number of Ukrainians that fought with 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:21.760 the Nazis, and they tend to ignore that, like, yeah, 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.000 and there were even more Ukrainians who fought with the 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.040 Red Army. Like, both of those things happened. It was 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:29.320 a world war and Ukraine was right in the middle 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.440 of it. It's a very ugly situation. And it kind 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:34.480 of comes down to this inability of a lot of 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:40.040 people to not even nuanced to care about accuracy when 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.040 that accuracy is not like ideologically convenient, when it points 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:48.240 to some of the ugliness and messiness of war. I 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.760 find that very frustrating. Like I sympathize with because I 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.080 was reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis from the refugee 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.199 trail right after actually I was in Ukraine, and it 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.439 is unfair that like Ukrainian refugees were treated differently. But 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:05.800 the people to blame for that is the news media, 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:09.959 not refugees who have lost their homes. In fact, I 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:14.879 suspect that a lot of Ukrainians have a different attitude 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.960 themselves towards the suffering that they witness during that period 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:20.280 of time because they've now been through it. It's just 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:22.639 like a human thing now, you know what that's like? 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:28.000 Yeah, I mean as a Syrian person who for the 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.680 past like over a decade, I really the media really 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:33.880 fucking got on my nerves every time I would see 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:35.879 them not talk about Syria, or when they did it 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.360 was not a good way. And then when they started 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.280 really embracing Ukrainian refugees or talking about them in a 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:45.320 different way, I'm not gonna lie, it made me mad, 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.639 but not at Ukrainians. Like I think even now, we 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.560 should have criticized the media back then, but like they're 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:53.880 doing the same thing now with their fucking headlines about 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.639 Israel and Palestine. It's always how it's presented versus the 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.080 people it's presenting. Like when someone when some dumb newscaster 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.240 is standing in front of a group of Ukrainian refugees 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.280 behind him and he's like, these are not Arabs, these 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.080 are white people. They didn't say that he did, so 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.120 I don't know. Yeah, And also, like. 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:16.840 I encourage everyone to ask Ukrainian, particularly Eastern Ukrainian's opinions 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:20.120 on the Western media and like Westerners in general, because 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.160 two years into this war, they have a lot of them, 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.119 and I imagine that they would. You would find a 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.320 lot of the sentiments shared by the Ukrainians. They don't 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.160 always appreciate how they're portrayed in the Western media, as 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.760 you know, either brave defenders of their country or sook 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:38.000 covered refugees coming off of a railcar. You know, they 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.600 have a lot of opinions on these sorts of things. 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:45.959 They feel patronized, they feel babied in some senses, and 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:48.880 they feel like they will be ultimately abandoned by us, 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.560 which is already coming to pass. And as the attention 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:56.119 shifts to things like Gaza, you know, it's difficult for 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:57.600 them to feel like they have any friends. 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.440 Yeah, no, I want to get into that, but let's 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.000 take our first break, and yes, we will jump back 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:17.480 in and we're back. Okay, we had just been talking 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:23.480 about how the support for Ukraine has kind of changed recently. 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:25.600 Can you get into that little bit. 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:30.440 I'm not even necessarily sure that it changed so recently. 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.399