Speaker 1: Holy shit, it could happen here it in in this
Speaker 1: case being being the podcast that you're listening to, and
Speaker 1: in fact it is it is happening here in your ears.
Speaker 1: But you know what else is happening here? The world's
Speaker 1: kind of fallen apart. Well, I don't know, not the world,
Speaker 1: but the structures in the world that we all relied
Speaker 1: upon for uh, you know, existence and ship sure are
Speaker 1: crumbling anyway. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about
Speaker 1: how things are falling apart and how to deal with
Speaker 1: that ship. Um, if you're new to the show, maybe
Speaker 1: check out our first five episodes. They'll catch you up
Speaker 1: there Evergreen. But this week we have a special guest
Speaker 1: and a special conversation to have that I think is
Speaker 1: going to be edifying for a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: would like to introduce Mr Joey. Ayub Joey. You are
Speaker 1: a writer and a researcher in the host of the
Speaker 1: Fire These Times, which is a fantastico cast. Um, Joey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm fine, I'm up. I'm
Speaker 1: operating with the Norman parameters. As I said before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm impressed by that because I'm I'm constantly in
Speaker 1: the process of falling apart, which is why I was
Speaker 1: late to this call. Joey, you want to give our
Speaker 1: listeners a little background on yourself? Sure, Um, emotionally from Lebanon.
Speaker 1: It's why I go up. My family is kind of mixed,
Speaker 1: a bit of Pedestinians, but of your Talians, but of Argentinians,
Speaker 1: kind of fall over the place. Uh. And I'm currently
Speaker 1: in Switzerland continuing my PhD, which one day will actually
Speaker 1: be done, I hope. I have been told that there
Speaker 1: is a life after the PhD. Yeah, So that's what
Speaker 1: I do. And I do podcasts and I write and
Speaker 1: I stuff that I probably forgot. And uh, you you
Speaker 1: wrote a column that I I quite admire for a
Speaker 1: website called Lausan, which was based on a term that
Speaker 1: I think it was the Mangol media folks came up with, right, um,
Speaker 1: and that term is the periphery. And and one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I think this is useful. So when I
Speaker 1: grew up, and I suspect it was the same. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was the same for Garrison because
Speaker 1: he grew up in a weird cult, but it was
Speaker 1: probably the same for Christopher. Um. The terms we heard
Speaker 1: a lot for different like it was either basically the
Speaker 1: United States or Europe, or it was the third world. Right,
Speaker 1: those were the terms that I grew up with, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't I was like probably seventeen or eighteen before
Speaker 1: I actually learned that. The terms first and third world
Speaker 1: kind of came from the Cold War, where like the
Speaker 1: US is the first World, the Soviet Bloc is kind
Speaker 1: of the second world, and then everyone else it's the
Speaker 1: third world. Obviously, that's not a great collective nown for
Speaker 1: referring to any group of anything. We try not to
Speaker 1: use third world. And the new term has kind of
Speaker 1: become more I don't know, vogue, maybe the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but people have started using the global South to refer
Speaker 1: to um everywhere that's not the US and Europe and
Speaker 1: you know, UM a handful of other countries and kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: that's not great either, um because for one thing, a
Speaker 1: lot of those countries aren't South, and also it isn't
Speaker 1: North either. Yeah. So I'm interested in this because there
Speaker 1: is a use in having kind of collective nouns to
Speaker 1: refer to groups of people from multiple nations. UM and
Speaker 1: in the West isn't going to do for most places um,
Speaker 1: And I like this term the periphery because kind of
Speaker 1: the way that you in the Mangal folks kind of
Speaker 1: have described it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.
Speaker 1: And it makes a tremendous amount of sense because it's
Speaker 1: not trying to group people together based on their relationship
Speaker 1: to of a Western centered kind of like international power
Speaker 1: dynamics understanding that even a lot of people on the
Speaker 1: left here kind of fall into where you know, um,
Speaker 1: you're either imperialist or anti imperialist, but being anti imperialist
Speaker 1: means supporting a lot of imperialist powers because they're against
Speaker 1: whatever imperialist power you were born into. Anyway, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you if we could start by kind of getting
Speaker 1: your your explanation of what is the periphery? Um? And
Speaker 1: and and how do you see that? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean so I'll just say it like up front that
Speaker 1: I don't expect that term to work every time and
Speaker 1: in all contexts. For example, I know someone who who
Speaker 1: like works in development studies and who we had a
Speaker 1: pretty informative chat about the terms global South and global
Speaker 1: Note and she was pretty convincing that they can be
Speaker 1: useful in in in a certain like in the materials
Speaker 1: analysis of certain things. So I'm not I'm not kind
Speaker 1: of here to say it like it doesn't work ever basically, um,
Speaker 1: but I think what really clicked with me, or the
Speaker 1: number of things that really clicked with me in one
Speaker 1: is that conversation with fl Event on Margin Media on
Speaker 1: their on their own podcast as well I've written for them,
Speaker 1: and then we had a chat about it was like
Speaker 1: about the explosion in baby Wood last year, and at
Speaker 1: some point the topic of the periphery, which they coined,
Speaker 1: I didn't coin it came about. And the best way
Speaker 1: he described it, which is a bit ignic given the
Speaker 1: podcast I'm on now, is that when anti authority in
Speaker 1: Turks he's from Turkey, see protests in for example Lebanon
Speaker 1: of Hong Kong, which was what happened. They were happening
Speaker 1: at the same time in two thousand nineteen and Iraq
Speaker 1: and other places, child and so on. They sort of
Speaker 1: think that it could happen here, like you know, it
Speaker 1: could happen in Turkey essentially, which is not the case
Speaker 1: often with like French leftists or American leftists, so usually
Speaker 1: leftists that are broadly speaking in the West. Now the
Speaker 1: obviously exceptions to all of these rules. Not every Turkish
Speaker 1: leftist things like that, not every Western leftist things like that,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a general trend. And for me,
Speaker 1: for example, the way I can explain it is that
Speaker 1: a podcast like it could happen here, where you're sort
Speaker 1: of describing a situation that might happen here here in America,
Speaker 1: let's say, wouldn't necessarily be needed in for example, Lebanon,
Speaker 1: because it's already happening, it's been happening for some time now,
Speaker 1: and that that tension in some sense when I would
Speaker 1: because nowative in Switzerland, so I mean, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in Geneva, which is as international as at the center
Speaker 1: in some sense as it gets almost It's this tension
Speaker 1: between my daily life essentially here and what's happening back
Speaker 1: home on a daily basis is what sort of led
Speaker 1: me to think about this other terms the periphery, because
Speaker 1: I just felt that at least on an emotional level,
Speaker 1: global stuth wasn't working as well. That makes sense, And
Speaker 1: one of the things I really find so useful and
Speaker 1: and admirable about this term is that it it is
Speaker 1: a it's a collective now and for referring to a
Speaker 1: group of people, but it separates those people from the
Speaker 1: state from their government. So when you're when you're talking
Speaker 1: about the periphery and you include people from lebanon Um,
Speaker 1: people from from Palestine, people from Syria, you're not including
Speaker 1: the government's you know, it's not the states, it's the
Speaker 1: because the people are peripheral to the power of those
Speaker 1: states and to the blocks that those states find themselves,
Speaker 1: and which is why they, you know, any any efforts
Speaker 1: at autonomy the communal level are crushed so violently. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why for me, global South in the term includes
Speaker 1: the states from the SOCOL Global South that are crushing
Speaker 1: the activists from the SOCO Global South. And so I
Speaker 1: just felt that I just needed this other layer, this
Speaker 1: other term that explains that dynamic as well. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things you you just
Speaker 1: were talking about was kind of the way in which
Speaker 1: a lot of leftists in the United States and chunks
Speaker 1: of the West, we'll kind of disregard liberatory struggles overseas
Speaker 1: that don't neatly fit into a very simple ideological category.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of wondering, is you know a kid who
Speaker 1: grew up in Lebanon and kind of I'm going to
Speaker 1: assume mostly focused on the regional kind of politics. When
Speaker 1: did you start to realize that that was something that
Speaker 1: was going on internationally? Like when did you when did
Speaker 1: you realize kind of like, you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of folks were taken surprise by the reaction of
Speaker 1: a lot of the international left, like the Arab Spring,
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of wondering was that when it it
Speaker 1: kind of hit home for you? Where did you start
Speaker 1: to see stirrings of those problems at an earlier day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven is when it kind of became very
Speaker 1: concrete in some sense. But I grew up having to
Speaker 1: visit Switzerland actually because my dad is a Swiss national,
Speaker 1: and I would do so on the Lebanese passport obviously,
Speaker 1: so I would always need to apply for visas beforehand
Speaker 1: and so on, you know, like two or three times
Speaker 1: a year sometimes, and that sort of it. In the
Speaker 1: in the retrospect, it was those early experiences just meeting
Speaker 1: the border, just experiencing a border all the time. That's
Speaker 1: sort of I think anyways, one of those things that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking I can get respect, like planted the
Speaker 1: seeds of what was to come, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: because I was always peripheral. Whenever I would go to Switzerland,
Speaker 1: I was never allowed to stay there longer longer than
Speaker 1: let's say, three weeks if they gave me three weeks,
Speaker 1: or three months if they gave me three months. And
Speaker 1: it sort of felt weird coming to Europe all the time,
Speaker 1: because I'm actually born in France, but I don't have
Speaker 1: the citizenship, and so it was there was the sense
Speaker 1: that I felt it weird having to ask permission from
Speaker 1: someone to go to the place where I literally started
Speaker 1: my existence. And so from on a on a very basic,
Speaker 1: basic level that's never quite always like squared with me,
Speaker 1: and that like led to a number of things that
Speaker 1: from Lebanon I was seeing the rest of the world
Speaker 1: in that sense, and it took me sometime. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think after their spring, especially when I started seeing
Speaker 1: that Lebanon is perificult or I didn't. I didn't really
Speaker 1: have a term for that before. And the quote unquote
Speaker 1: real things were happening in in the West. Obviously that's
Speaker 1: all problematic, and I don't mean that literally because the
Speaker 1: real things are happening every all the time. But in
Speaker 1: the sense of what gets to matter, whose lives get
Speaker 1: to matter more, and so on and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things I think about a lot when
Speaker 1: I read your work, UM, and when I consume what
Speaker 1: with Mangal Media puts out Mangal media is UM. I
Speaker 1: guess you called the journalistic collective UM made up of
Speaker 1: of people A lot. I think a lot of them
Speaker 1: were or are have worked as like fixers in uh
Speaker 1: in in you know, the periphery in parts of the
Speaker 1: Middle East, UM. And they're What I find so vital
Speaker 1: about their voices is that it was as as an
Speaker 1: American journalist who has worked over there, it was always
Speaker 1: those folks who had the best stories. It's just that
Speaker 1: those stories got published with the New York Times or
Speaker 1: with the New Yorker, the Washington Post under somebody else's byline. Right, UM.
Speaker 1: That's the way journalism actually works. And you have you
Speaker 1: do have some some reporters like um, I'm spacing on
Speaker 1: his name. But the fellow who wrote no good Men
Speaker 1: among the Living, who uh yes, yes, who has done it?
Speaker 1: I mean I think just I'm sure has local sources
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, but also speaks the language, and it is
Speaker 1: just an accept but for the most part, especially when
Speaker 1: you see somebody with my complexion reporting from over there,
Speaker 1: if they're getting good ship, it's because of it's because
Speaker 1: of a local UM. And what I like about Mangal
Speaker 1: is that it it breaks down kind of that barrier
Speaker 1: between that kind of that kind of white person filter,
Speaker 1: but when the actual people living on the ground and
Speaker 1: understanding the situation the person who's trying to package it UM.
Speaker 1: Which is not to say that I think there's no
Speaker 1: value in having a local package. And I think anytime
Speaker 1: you're trying to translate a story across there is some
Speaker 1: reason for that. But I also think it leads to
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it leads to problematic kind of
Speaker 1: Americans said. There's a lot of problems that it leads to.
Speaker 1: It that we don't have enough time to discuss all
Speaker 1: of it. But what I'd like to talk about with
Speaker 1: you is is kind of how is consumers of of
Speaker 1: media in the United States and in in in the West. Um,
Speaker 1: which most people listening to this are everyone on this call,
Speaker 1: but you was born in the US or a place
Speaker 1: that is the same as the US but with a
Speaker 1: better hat. Um, I'm talking about Canada. UM. So how
Speaker 1: do how do how do you recommend we if we
Speaker 1: if we're if we aspire to be internationalists and to
Speaker 1: to avoid falling into that trap of of flattening the
Speaker 1: struggles of other people to fit inside of a simple
Speaker 1: ideological rubric, how do you recommend people try and cut
Speaker 1: out or or minimize the extent possible, um, the bias
Speaker 1: of of whatever region they live in when reading news
Speaker 1: for another part of the world, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? Well? Imperfectly right, Like it's never gonna be,
Speaker 1: never gonna be you know, there's always gonna be flaws,
Speaker 1: there's always gonna be some learning curve to all of
Speaker 1: that as well. One thing that's worked for me, um,
Speaker 1: because you know, I did grow up in Lebanon, and
Speaker 1: so there is that dimension. But I was I had
Speaker 1: a pretty sheltered child childhood. You know, media was mostly
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and so I could kind of go
Speaker 1: wherever I want, and I was pretty is up until
Speaker 1: the certain point. I was pretty um, let's say, sheltered
Speaker 1: from what was happening even around in Lebanon, around Lebanon
Speaker 1: up until let's say that before just before the air sprain.
Speaker 1: So I do know what it's like to kind of
Speaker 1: have biases against you know, other places and have certain Yeah,
Speaker 1: just it's just human flaws at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: The main difference I think is just what gets centered
Speaker 1: and what gets peripheral. I mean, just to use that
Speaker 1: same term again. One thing that I've been doing to
Speaker 1: kind of help myself, and so I'll just speak from
Speaker 1: personal experience, is go to some websites like Loves and
Speaker 1: I've been I've been I read what Loves and regularly
Speaker 1: mangel media as well. And there are a number of
Speaker 1: other websites that are trying as much as they can
Speaker 1: to actually write for one another. Like they're actually trying
Speaker 1: to write with the assumption that most people who are
Speaker 1: going to read are not from the West. And that's
Speaker 1: not easy to do for language barriers. For example, if
Speaker 1: they're if they're mostly writing in English because the dias
Speaker 1: progress of the world, if there is some sense and
Speaker 1: kind of connecting to one another, we're probably going to
Speaker 1: do it in English. I'm just realistically speaking, and so
Speaker 1: maybe Spanish, but like you know, probably English. And that's
Speaker 1: that's that's something that we have to sort of contend with.
Speaker 1: It's not easy because it could be that I can
Speaker 1: spend all of my time having conversations with let's say,
Speaker 1: other people in the diasporas of other groups, let's say,
Speaker 1: and because I'm doing it entirely in English, then I'm
Speaker 1: actually not conversing with people back home, and so that
Speaker 1: hates another problem, and it's there's no easy solution. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's no I don't really have a A A how
Speaker 1: do you say this? Like A yeah, like a solution
Speaker 1: that can fit he can fit any scenarios. So I
Speaker 1: don't really have a good answer to that. Actually, I
Speaker 1: just think that heating diverse sources is the best way
Speaker 1: to do things, but with a critical eye as well,
Speaker 1: although I feel like that's kind of a boring answer.
Speaker 1: And for me, the thing that has been quite refreshing
Speaker 1: is seeing projects like Love Side, which is why I've
Speaker 1: published like a an interview with like they. We did
Speaker 1: an interview conversation thing where we were exploring parallels and
Speaker 1: contrast between Hong Kong and Lebanon, for example, and that
Speaker 1: for me was a piece where I was entirely thinking
Speaker 1: about the people I was talking to, like people from
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, and that's it. We had a diaspora experience
Speaker 1: in common, but I wasn't thinking and we were speaking
Speaker 1: in English, but I wasn't thinking about how is this
Speaker 1: going to be received in New York or Paris or
Speaker 1: London or whatever. And I feel like these more of
Speaker 1: these probably will help because it centers different voices rather
Speaker 1: than the ones that were used to But even though
Speaker 1: its center, I'm sort of saying it with like an asterisk,
Speaker 1: because my entire point is that I'm actually uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: certain situations where I risk being the center of his
Speaker 1: story when there are so many things happening to my
Speaker 1: periphery as well, and so it can happen, it can
Speaker 1: happen on different layers. If it's what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's sort of the problem of being as
Speaker 1: you are, kind of a child of two worlds, where
Speaker 1: you you have the benefit of it makes it easier
Speaker 1: to explain both places to the other. Um, but you also, uh,
Speaker 1: you have a wall kind of or at least a
Speaker 1: couple of them up up inside you, um, which yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, And it is like there's no there's no
Speaker 1: kind of gaining perfect perspective on any place, including the
Speaker 1: place where you live. But I do think it's important
Speaker 1: to talk about kind of at least de centering to
Speaker 1: the extent that's possible, like Western voices when we're trying
Speaker 1: to understand places that are not Western. M So I
Speaker 1: think think with fair amount, just be a chat over
Speaker 1: the year, particularly during some of the nonsense last year.
Speaker 1: Is um internationalism, which is is a real concern I
Speaker 1: think of everybody on this show, and something that used
Speaker 1: to be in a lot stronger state than it is
Speaker 1: in the left. Um. And I what do you see
Speaker 1: as the primary barriers to functional internationalism at the moment um? Well,
Speaker 1: West centrism is I think a primary one. Racism Islamophobia
Speaker 1: are pretty common as well. Um, Islamophobia is a pretty
Speaker 1: massive one, uh, to the point that even non Muslims
Speaker 1: like me can be swiped kind of kind of just
Speaker 1: taken with it as well. And I just I just
Speaker 1: think that when I say West centerism, I don't even
Speaker 1: only mean people who are fromwhat from the West and
Speaker 1: are thinking about the West as the center of the world,
Speaker 1: but I also mean, like left is from other parts
Speaker 1: of the world. I think that the only enemy is
Speaker 1: is the West, or the only enemy is America for example.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, Christopher and I had chats about
Speaker 1: this as well on my own podcast actually about the
Speaker 1: channel men, the the legacy of channel men as well. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just misunderstood or um yeah, misunderstood among let's say,
Speaker 1: White Americans, but it could also be misunderstood among Chinese
Speaker 1: American for example. There are these multiple like these multiple
Speaker 1: layers in which something can be misunderstood on different layers
Speaker 1: as well, if that makes sense. And I for me,
Speaker 1: the problem with the West centrism is that it takes
Speaker 1: up so much oxygen in the room. It's just take stup.
Speaker 1: So we people like me and others, And like I've
Speaker 1: I've met folks from like the Balkans and in the
Speaker 1: Middle East and Southeast Asia, and like almost any group
Speaker 1: I can think of, I've met them, they have complained
Speaker 1: about pretty much the same thing that they ended up
Speaker 1: spending so much time on the Internet debunking disinformation or
Speaker 1: debunking tankies or de punking campus and or debunking what
Speaker 1: have you, or just misinformation sometimes and this this ends
Speaker 1: up being pretty exhausting, Like this ends up being like
Speaker 1: ship is happening on the ground, like things are actually
Speaker 1: happening on the ground, and activists from let's say by route. Oh,
Speaker 1: they didn't happen as much in Bayhood, but you know
Speaker 1: from Iraq or Syria, Syria especially obviously, but Hong Kong
Speaker 1: as well. You know, they have to deal with concrete
Speaker 1: problems on the ground, but at the same time they
Speaker 1: have to worry about how this is being perceived on
Speaker 1: the internet, because usually it's assumed that how it's perceived
Speaker 1: on the internet, So, especially in the Anglophone online media,
Speaker 1: escape can have real life consequences on the ground. And
Speaker 1: this is something that is very difficult to tackle because
Speaker 1: it's not enough to just fight them by having more
Speaker 1: allow sense and more mongel media. For one, we just
Speaker 1: don't have the resources to challenge a Fox News or
Speaker 1: CNN or what have you. Um And for two, it's
Speaker 1: just exhausting the main the main I think the main
Speaker 1: thing that has stopped most activists I can think of,
Speaker 1: or at least they've taken a break or what have
Speaker 1: what have you. It's just burned out more than anything.
Speaker 1: It's not even well in many cases. Obviously it's also
Speaker 1: therex threats from the state and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: more often than not, it's just being exhausted from having
Speaker 1: to spend so much time dealing with what's happening on
Speaker 1: the ground at the same time making sure that what's
Speaker 1: happening on the ground isn't being misinterpreted or you know,
Speaker 1: having to deal with this information or what have you.
Speaker 1: And so basically the responsibility ends up being on people
Speaker 1: consuming these kinds of media. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it to individualistic either. That are structural problems to
Speaker 1: these things. As I said, CNN, the resources all of that.
Speaker 1: But given the I can't Lena is not gonna listen
Speaker 1: to me. The other the next best thing is trying
Speaker 1: to just speak to just people who are willing to listen. Essentially,
Speaker 1: and you talked a bit about I mean the situation
Speaker 1: in Lebanon right now. If people aren't aware, Um, there
Speaker 1: was a massive explosion UM a year or so ago,
Speaker 1: and everything's kind of been in free fall sense, and
Speaker 1: and what's happening, what's happening in Beiruts and across like that.
Speaker 1: There have been massive wildfires that have destroyed a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of the of the country's forests. UM and a
Speaker 1: lart like just kind of society, uh, seems to be
Speaker 1: breaking down in a lot of areas. The stores don't
Speaker 1: have food, people don't like the inflation has has reached
Speaker 1: kind of a nightmarish level. What do you like we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about? You know, these are all kind of
Speaker 1: the same problems that we're talking about everywhere. It's just
Speaker 1: it it's much more severe at the moment there, and
Speaker 1: it's it's in a much more advanced state for variety
Speaker 1: of reasons. Do you do you have any hope for mitigation?
Speaker 1: How could the situation improve? I guess, like I I'm
Speaker 1: looking at at Lebanon and I'm thinking about like what,
Speaker 1: not even like what I could do, because I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything I can do, but like how how
Speaker 1: things could possibly get better? And yeah, I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you if that's any clearer to you, Um, maybe only
Speaker 1: slightly more, but yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's really bad,
Speaker 1: I mean crumbling, you know, welcome to the combos that
Speaker 1: actually fits there? There there, What's what's been happening for
Speaker 1: something at least a couple of years, if not a
Speaker 1: bit more than that. Pretty well, Um, there is a
Speaker 1: mass exodus happening on a slow depending on the seasons. Basically,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's faster and summer and then whatever. But basically
Speaker 1: most of my friends, for example, like them, are now
Speaker 1: abroad um and there is definitely a sense of um collapse.
Speaker 1: That's you know, in here is the term that we
Speaker 1: would use. It just feels like a state of collapse essentially.
Speaker 1: And what's kind of interesting, I think is that this
Speaker 1: was being predicted for some time now. It's been a
Speaker 1: couple of years I would say, I mean towards the
Speaker 1: end of two thousand nineteen with the revolution, not that
Speaker 1: long after you already had a lot of people within
Speaker 1: Lebanon like kind of you might call it the initial
Speaker 1: phases of counter revolution in some sense, or that's probably
Speaker 1: a bit simplistic, but basically saying that if we continue
Speaker 1: taking to these heats, the country is going to collapse.
Speaker 1: And that's obviously not the reason the country is going
Speaker 1: to collapse. There is that is collapsing. The reason is
Speaker 1: a combination of COVID, last year's pot explosion, corruption at
Speaker 1: the states, septainosum war loads, basically control controlling most of
Speaker 1: the country and so on and so forth. As to
Speaker 1: what can happen next, I mean, it does seem that
Speaker 1: at least for the foreseable future, it's going to continue
Speaker 1: more or less their way. It's been continuing. It feels
Speaker 1: like basically a decline that's sometimes steeper and sometimes less steep. Uh.
Speaker 1: The stories on a daily basis are like, you know,
Speaker 1: if friend took her like five hours to to fill
Speaker 1: up gas and it's not even she can't, you know,
Speaker 1: fill the entire tank, and electricity went out for like
Speaker 1: three days, and so people you know, their fridge was useless,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. Um, And it is definitely
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't have the percentage with me, and
Speaker 1: those are just data and data without stories or can
Speaker 1: be misleading as well. But something like I'm going to
Speaker 1: say of the population is below the poverty line now
Speaker 1: compared to before, stuff like that, it's it's pretty dire,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's pretty It happened at such a
Speaker 1: speed that I'm gonna say that I haven't been back
Speaker 1: since January for various reasons COVID and security threats and
Speaker 1: other stuff. And um, I can't quite picture it in
Speaker 1: my mind. It's not that easy. But friends obviously speaking
Speaker 1: to them, and photos and videos that I see, it's
Speaker 1: just fair to say that everything that I can think
Speaker 1: of on most things that I can think of from
Speaker 1: before two nineteen. Basically most of my life is essentially gone,
Speaker 1: and there is there is no way of getting over
Speaker 1: that quickly, if that makes and you probably never get
Speaker 1: over it anyway, but you might get to at some
Speaker 1: point where you you kind of regain enough energy to
Speaker 1: actually maybe act on it, if that makes sense. But
Speaker 1: there is a period in which now people are basically
Speaker 1: still grieving, and they're still heaving from last year's explosion
Speaker 1: as well because the Silion investigation and the usual stuff,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, no, it's it's it's a game, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be game for some time. I think, uh
Speaker 1: that that being said, I don't think that people back home,
Speaker 1: you know, aren't doing anything. They are if a number
Speaker 1: of initiatives, you're a number of basically mutuate societies or
Speaker 1: no one really calls them that, but they just pop
Speaker 1: up on their own, and these things function to certain extent.
Speaker 1: Often it's they don't last too long, you usually due
Speaker 1: to resources or burnout or what have you. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's um, Lebanon is one of those things. I
Speaker 1: this um. I think it was after the explosion last
Speaker 1: year as well. I was on another podcast, the Auds
Speaker 1: of Travel is called I think it was on that
Speaker 1: one where he basically said that he thinks that for him,
Speaker 1: the apocalypse looks like what happened in Lebanon, and I
Speaker 1: think I know what he meant. But the problem with
Speaker 1: that analysis is that often we think that the apocalyps
Speaker 1: just happens and then that's it. But there's most of
Speaker 1: the story is actually the day after that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And in in Lebanon, as it happens, the apocalypse looked apocalyptic,
Speaker 1: you know, that one day, that explosion that took just
Speaker 1: a few seconds and I destroyed so much of the
Speaker 1: capital and beyond. But the real story is what's been
Speaker 1: happening since then, And there, I think is where Lebanon
Speaker 1: does have lessons, well for Lebanon first and foremost, but
Speaker 1: also for the rest of the world. You know, I
Speaker 1: think we're all kind of in this position of watching
Speaker 1: the place, seeing the place, most of us at least
Speaker 1: seeing the places where we live in stages, you know,
Speaker 1: and and mostly at the moment in earlier stages of
Speaker 1: what what Lebanon is going through not as severe, but
Speaker 1: but also kind of inevitably, inevitably approaching that right UM,
Speaker 1: Like I think most you know, I I have a
Speaker 1: couple of friends who are school teachers who are like
Speaker 1: just kind of going to work with the absolute certainty
Speaker 1: that a bunch of people are going to get infected
Speaker 1: in the very near future. I have people who work
Speaker 1: at hospitals that are no longer able to handle uh,
Speaker 1: basic medical procedures for a lot of people that are
Speaker 1: triaging care. You know that that just came out that
Speaker 1: Idaho was going to have to start triagng like medical
Speaker 1: care based on who they think might be able to
Speaker 1: survive UM years. Yeah. Yeah, We're all living through stages
Speaker 1: of that, and the the the overwhelming question is like,
Speaker 1: how do we pull out of the tail spin? Um?
Speaker 1: And this is you know, not a question I expect
Speaker 1: us to have. I've put up forward, and I think
Speaker 1: sometimes online people are like, oh, you know, you it's
Speaker 1: naive to think that, like, you know, a general strike
Speaker 1: or mutual aid could avert the tailsman. I I don't
Speaker 1: think those are complete solutions to to pulling out of
Speaker 1: the tailsman. I know they're aspects of what the solution
Speaker 1: will be. Nobody knows what the solution is because we're
Speaker 1: still in a tailspin. UM. In your mind, what do
Speaker 1: you what do you think might be part of that answer?
Speaker 1: With the knowledge that and and please people on Reddit,
Speaker 1: nobody's nobody's saying this is the complete solution to the problem.
Speaker 1: But like I'm hoping by gathering people together who think
Speaker 1: about stuff, we can arrive at aspects of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean for me, it's it's it's a combo. So
Speaker 1: in my own person experience is basically what I could
Speaker 1: well against speak of to the most, it's a combo
Speaker 1: of reaching out to people in similar situations. So in
Speaker 1: my case dis pogres especially, but like more broadly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, I think it has to be a combination
Speaker 1: of pragmaticism. So I do believe in lesser evilism, for example,
Speaker 1: when that's the only option. Sometimes I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to choose and that's the only option I have,
Speaker 1: And so I do that at the same time doing
Speaker 1: so without the you know, so Biden versus time to
Speaker 1: use that simple example, but at the same time knowing
Speaker 1: that that's not gonna change much, if anything, It just
Speaker 1: it might slow slow the collapse down. And that's actually
Speaker 1: the metaphor that I prefer to think about, like slowing
Speaker 1: things down gives me time to do other things, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It gives me time to do more
Speaker 1: things rather than always having to defend myself constantly the
Speaker 1: other like. More broadly, I think it is it's a
Speaker 1: combination of trying to build dual power, trying to build
Speaker 1: mutual aid as much as possible. This is not going
Speaker 1: to solve things. But I just don't think there is
Speaker 1: anything that's going to solve everything. I just I don't
Speaker 1: see how that's going to be possible. And the lack
Speaker 1: of that is what I think many people it's scared.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's scary, right, It's just scares the number
Speaker 1: of people scares most people. I mean it scares me
Speaker 1: as well. And I do understand that the instinct to
Speaker 1: sort of go towards well, you know, we have the EU,
Speaker 1: we have the US, we have those grant structures, and
Speaker 1: we're going to just try and reform them and change
Speaker 1: them and so on and so forth. I understand that,
Speaker 1: And I don't judge people who who believe that and
Speaker 1: who genuinely think that they can change things. You know,
Speaker 1: I wish them good luck, basically, I don't. If they succeed,
Speaker 1: good for everyone, Right, it's just that I think due
Speaker 1: to structural factors, primarily due to related to power and
Speaker 1: help power, power corrupts in almost every single case I
Speaker 1: can think of, and pretty much all of them. I
Speaker 1: just don't think these are solutions either. And I view
Speaker 1: my role as as trying and and be critical as
Speaker 1: much as I can, trying to be honest as much
Speaker 1: as I can, saying when I just don't know something,
Speaker 1: that I just don't know something, and having a healthier
Speaker 1: a balance on how to deal with this. But that
Speaker 1: being said, I I don't have that the answer. I
Speaker 1: don't have them, you know. I think it is like
Speaker 1: ninety episodes on my podcast now and there are a
Speaker 1: number of episodes in which this also, this topic comes
Speaker 1: up and some people have some answers, some people don't
Speaker 1: have an answer and just becomes an open question. But
Speaker 1: I would hope that at least the fact that there
Speaker 1: are no clear answers doesn't discourage people from at least
Speaker 1: trying to find these answers, because I do think most
Speaker 1: of the time the solution is going to be found
Speaker 1: while trying, while attempting to solve something else that makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's it's the act in itself for the acts in
Speaker 1: themselves are going to produce some of these solutions. Because
Speaker 1: most of these solutions don't exist yet, we have to
Speaker 1: literally create them, come scratch often. Yeah, yeah, I really
Speaker 1: I think that's an important thing to accept that in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, you know, we don't know how
Speaker 1: to fix the problem. I think the people who claim
Speaker 1: that it's whatever whatever book they read, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: written a hundred years ago, as the perfect solution, I
Speaker 1: tend to think that's pretty arrogant. But I do think
Speaker 1: that what's not arrogant is like getting your hands dirty
Speaker 1: and trying to fix problems and hoping and understanding that
Speaker 1: kind of the solutions to broader problems will come UM
Speaker 1: in part through dealing with and trying to improve the
Speaker 1: situation on a day to day basis. You know, we
Speaker 1: just did an episode about UM self managed abortion, where
Speaker 1: the source was definitely more on the liberal end of
Speaker 1: things than the left end of things, and and somebody
Speaker 1: who UM politically I would probably have a lot of
Speaker 1: disagreements with, but she spent the last twenty five years
Speaker 1: trying to train communities of people to provide to take
Speaker 1: control of of of reproductive health and like enable other
Speaker 1: members of their communities to take direct control of that.
Speaker 1: And that is something I very much, um believe in,
Speaker 1: and I think that's like, that's that's part of the solution, right.
Speaker 1: Part of the solution to why the fucking coronavirus has
Speaker 1: gotten so god damn out of hand is everything to
Speaker 1: do with our broken health care system. And it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not just the fact that healthcare is expensive, it's
Speaker 1: the fact that people are kind of alienated, um from
Speaker 1: an understanding of their bodies. They're not properly educated about
Speaker 1: the way things work, and they don't feel like they
Speaker 1: have that kind of the consistent lack of a feeling
Speaker 1: of like medical autonomy leads people eventually to embrace nonsense
Speaker 1: and and so there you have and kind of this
Speaker 1: very focused solution to to one really specific problem, a
Speaker 1: part of I think a larger solution to the problems
Speaker 1: that that um that confront us. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And you know, I mean, speaking of COVID,
Speaker 1: I think that, I mean, we know that part of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's lasting so long as well, other
Speaker 1: than local dynamics for demination, is that get your nations
Speaker 1: are basically holding the vaccines at this point, were you
Speaker 1: talking about like the third booster shot in in Switzerland
Speaker 1: for example, and most of the words it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the first one. Uh, you know, those are political decisions.
Speaker 1: Those are political decisions being made on behalf of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. As we see what climate change
Speaker 1: is one, it's the same story. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do about that at this stage, Like it
Speaker 1: seems like kind of at every level we've given up
Speaker 1: on handling this the right way, you know, the the
Speaker 1: the clear best solution would have been to treat the
Speaker 1: rollout of the vaccine, you know, the same way we
Speaker 1: treated World War Two as like a logistical hurdle on
Speaker 1: on on par with getting a couple of million of
Speaker 1: men to Western European we do that to get the
Speaker 1: vaccine to everybody. So we could have hopefully fucking stopped
Speaker 1: the variants from hitting, but we didn't do that, and um,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that, And so I guess
Speaker 1: we're all left with mitigation once again, which is too
Speaker 1: often the story with with climate change too. And I
Speaker 1: don't know we've we've already kind of trod on that
Speaker 1: territory garrison Christophers or anything you wanted to get into
Speaker 1: before we close out. Well, I think I think one
Speaker 1: thing specifically with COVID that I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: is if you look at the places where COVID like
Speaker 1: you know, it was ad but like it didn't you know,
Speaker 1: kill six people. Um, you know, particularly looking at China
Speaker 1: and Hong Kong with this, so you know, China both
Speaker 1: both the government, China government, Hong Kong's initial state response
Speaker 1: is really bad. And what happened was, you know, in China,
Speaker 1: it's sort of you know, you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who don't trust the government, and so what they
Speaker 1: do is you can you get hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people sort of just mobilizing and forming these sort of
Speaker 1: volunteer things to to you know, to enforce lockdowns, to
Speaker 1: enforce restrictions, to give people food, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: part of some of its state back, so it's not
Speaker 1: and some of it's you know, you get this sort
Speaker 1: of hazy lying between the sort of mass mobilization between
Speaker 1: just people doing stuff on sort of state a line
Speaker 1: directors and then in Hong Kong, you know, and people
Speaker 1: like people like torch border crossings, people like you know,
Speaker 1: there's this huge thing to get everyone masks is this
Speaker 1: huge Like then this stuff is like entire against again
Speaker 1: sort of against against the sort of government. But what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting about both of them is that
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it turned out to be possible
Speaker 1: to make dependent to make the pandemic less bad if
Speaker 1: you mobilized. And it wasn't really the state that did this.
Speaker 1: It was you know, people who didn't really trust the state,
Speaker 1: and we're like, okay, so we're just we're gonna take
Speaker 1: this into our own hands. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: and somebody's like that that seems like the thing that
Speaker 1: can be done is you have to get people moving first,
Speaker 1: like before everything completely collapses. I guess I guess something
Speaker 1: I was. I also think it was interesting about that
Speaker 1: was that the way that and I think this is
Speaker 1: going going back to the internationalism part we're talking about,
Speaker 1: is that there's this way in which that is particularly
Speaker 1: in China, to the story of of this this hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people doing these mass mobilizations just never
Speaker 1: reached the West at all, Like you know, everyone everyone
Speaker 1: looked at China and went, oh, this is how the
Speaker 1: state is reacting, And it's like, yeah, the state did
Speaker 1: a lot of extremely weird things. Some of them were good,
Speaker 1: some of them were bad, but the sort of mass
Speaker 1: popular mobilization beneath it gets erased. And I think I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: if you think about this, Joey, looking at even even
Speaker 1: how the left worked in the nineties, we're looking looking
Speaker 1: at the Zapatistas and looking at the people's coobal Assembly
Speaker 1: stuff that they set up on how about how that
Speaker 1: stuff was about social movements. It wasn't about sort of
Speaker 1: it wasn't about states, it wasn't about necessarily political parties.
Speaker 1: It was you know, you'd bring about social movements together.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm wondering what you think about the extent
Speaker 1: to which part of what went really wrong in the
Speaker 1: left in the last ten years is that they kind
Speaker 1: of they abandoned that and it became sort of everything
Speaker 1: became like internationalism became almost completely state and party based. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean for me, the Arab swing is is where
Speaker 1: I mean, this is I mean, my sound a bit
Speaker 1: of an exaggeration. That's why the left sort of buried
Speaker 1: it sound like for me, it's it's it's like I
Speaker 1: still hardly called myself on the left just because it's simpler.
Speaker 1: But I have a lot of problems with a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are on the left when it comes
Speaker 1: to so many different things. Um, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: quite know where it started. Um some people trace it
Speaker 1: back to like the you know, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: the Hungarian Revolution in fifty six, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So I don't, I don't quite know where you start
Speaker 1: or where you ended. But it does seem that at
Speaker 1: some point the I don't know, it's a combination of
Speaker 1: the huntings from the Balkan Wars and then the genocides
Speaker 1: there and and the Denis m that was allowed to
Speaker 1: essentially be just grow and be normalized to the point
Speaker 1: that some guy like at the last few or two
Speaker 1: years ago he got the Nobel Prize for literature even
Speaker 1: though he's a boss in genocide denier and just these
Speaker 1: these things are becoming have become in the past um
Speaker 1: decade or two, I suppose, more normalized, and now we're
Speaker 1: sort of back to the mitigation section of things. For me,
Speaker 1: they're springing it to use. The method of the candy
Speaker 1: in the coal mine was sort of that. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can go further back, and some people will
Speaker 1: say it's actually started with Bosnia Rwanda or something, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. I'm I can say like full
Speaker 1: certain words started, if that makes sense. But yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it's obviously it's there Spring. That's that's been the center
Speaker 1: of my world for a long time now, and it's
Speaker 1: it's where I felt that the lack of support that
Speaker 1: was needed. And it's ongoing. I'm talking about it in
Speaker 1: the past stance, but it's ongoing. Like the guy is
Speaker 1: being bombed right now. Yeah, they just bombed it live too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know it's ongoing. The humiliation is ongoing. The
Speaker 1: regime is putting out the green buses, which every Serian
Speaker 1: knows what they're about, the humiliation ones where you escorte
Speaker 1: people out of their homes basically, and they they they know,
Speaker 1: like the regimes I think at this point know what
Speaker 1: they can do and what they can't do. They're they're
Speaker 1: pretty confident in what they can and can't do. So yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm ending another pretty positive note on that. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man. I guess As a last question, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious we we've you've analyzed the problem of
Speaker 1: the left kind of aligning themselves with parties and with nations, um,
Speaker 1: and how that leads to a tremendous amount of blind
Speaker 1: spot spots, a flattening of of conflicts, and a flattening
Speaker 1: of the humanity of people who don't live close to you, um,
Speaker 1: which is you know, all part of the problems that
Speaker 1: we that we are in right now. What do you
Speaker 1: think we ought to be aligning ourselves around, like if
Speaker 1: you're getting you know, if we're if we can if
Speaker 1: we can come to see ourselves as all in the
Speaker 1: periphery and and in the periphery at least and sort
Speaker 1: of as relates to these states, because in a way
Speaker 1: we all are, right, Um, people in the United States
Speaker 1: certainly like benefit more from imperialism and from the might
Speaker 1: of the United States, but we're also peripheral to the
Speaker 1: power of that state, which I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people may have ex experienced for the first time when
Speaker 1: they got tear gas last year, or or as kind
Speaker 1: of the different state effects or attempts to deal with
Speaker 1: the coronavirus have failed disastrously. This really really but what
Speaker 1: do you what should we be aligning ourselves around? Like
Speaker 1: what do you what do you sort of give. I mean,
Speaker 1: even the example that you gave is for me, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good one because that's also sort of the
Speaker 1: point that like centers and peripheries are everywhere, and they're
Speaker 1: they're also within nation states. So like Lebanon is peripheral
Speaker 1: to America, but many Americans are peripheral to other Americans,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, and to other Americans in power,
Speaker 1: especially Like for me, one of the primary thinkers behind
Speaker 1: my own thinking is James Baldwin, you know, African Americans
Speaker 1: or like, he is technically a Westerner, but I would
Speaker 1: consider a lot of his writing to be peripherally essentially,
Speaker 1: and that's because he has this amazing coats that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna probably butcher. But it's something along the lines of, like,
Speaker 1: the oppressed don't only know the oppressors better than oppressor.
Speaker 1: Is no, they oppressed, but they also know them better
Speaker 1: than they know themselves. That they like the oppressed know
Speaker 1: the oppressor is better than the oppress is no, the
Speaker 1: oppressors essentially, which is I think Phinon said something similar
Speaker 1: as well. And for me, this this is the sort
Speaker 1: of inside this is kind of the thing that blew up,
Speaker 1: that blew my mind and this is this thing that
Speaker 1: I would say, in the past few years have really
Speaker 1: shaped everything as to what to sort of like ally
Speaker 1: ourselves with. I mean, the problem is that it's it
Speaker 1: sounds very cheesy to say to have actual principles and
Speaker 1: maintain them, but the problem is that we don't do
Speaker 1: it often. We don't actually maintain this principle often enough.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm not going to speak for everyone, obviously,
Speaker 1: but in my experience it's it's it is difficult to
Speaker 1: maintain them. And often what I see is very seasoned
Speaker 1: activists basically dealing with burnout and kind of retiring from
Speaker 1: public life and from activism and just kind of doing
Speaker 1: their own thing and whatnot. And for me, the question
Speaker 1: is how do I continue doing what I'm doing but
Speaker 1: in the long term, And there is a time component
Speaker 1: to this, there is a resource component to this. And
Speaker 1: the more we are able to add these different um
Speaker 1: frameworks to understand things we like, for me, that perfectly
Speaker 1: is just one framework. You know. Feminism is another one,
Speaker 1: Anarchism is another one. Uh, none of these things explain
Speaker 1: everything all the time, right, But it's it's just different
Speaker 1: lenses from which I can understand the world. And my advice,
Speaker 1: which is not an easy one I still struggled with it,
Speaker 1: is to just try and have as many different lenses
Speaker 1: as possible. And that's sort of my advice that it's
Speaker 1: not a you know, it's not a it's not a
Speaker 1: very quotable one. You're not gonna find this on a
Speaker 1: T shirt. I think, Well, Um, Joey, I that's that's
Speaker 1: I think all I had to ask and get into today. Um,
Speaker 1: did you have anything else you wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: before we before we roll out and leave our audience
Speaker 1: to I don't know, go uh, grow some cabbage or whatever.
Speaker 1: We'll going cabbage and community is always the best thing
Speaker 1: to do to be honest. Yeah, make food, make food,
Speaker 1: make food to community gardens. That's the best thing anyone
Speaker 1: can do to be honest. Um yeah, I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: I I can talk about solo punk, I can talk
Speaker 1: about a bunch of stuff, but um, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: my advice to everyone would be going a bunch of veggies. Okay,
Speaker 1: all the time. We'll we'll have a more We've been
Speaker 1: meaning to. I had been meaning to include a lot
Speaker 1: more solar punk stuff in the first five episodes of
Speaker 1: this we got a bit at the end, but it's
Speaker 1: um yeah, um, I wanna I want to do a
Speaker 1: more detailed, uh meaningful exploration, so we'll have you back
Speaker 1: for that. But Joey, I thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on um your podcast the Fire this Time, um
Speaker 1: times Fire these times. Sorry, And also check out mangal
Speaker 1: Media uh in Lausanne, You've written for both places, um
Speaker 1: and also both great sources for people to check out
Speaker 1: if you want to de westify your reading about other
Speaker 1: parts of the world. UM all right, that's gonna do
Speaker 1: it us here as it could happen here. Um until
Speaker 1: it does uh yeah. Like Joey said, start a fucking garden.