Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 80

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and Nick Offerman as we bring the sixth president to life. Was there ever witnessed such a bare-faced corruption in any country before? Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Listen to Founding Sun, a curiosity podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the beginning of the podcast. I'm Sheree. Yeah, I'm James. And this is It Could Happen Here. Today, we're going to be talking about the recent events that have happened in Palestine and the recent acts of terror that the IDF has committed against Palestinians. So yeah, thanks for joining me, James. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's going to be another fun one from us. I know. I think that's our thing. It's just...

Yeah, uplifting podcasts. If they don't leave depressed, we're not doing our job right. If you're driving, maybe pull over because we're going to try and make you cry. But no, really. I mean, I'm all seriousness. There has been some shocking footage that has come out of Palestine this month. On April 5th in particular, there was footage that emerged from Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third holiest site in Islam. And it is within occupied East Jerusalem. The compound is within that area. And the videos are showing Israeli security forces mercilessly beating Palestinian worshipers. And that violence left at least 12 Palestinians injured and obviously just fueled more public anger. And three of those Palestinians had to go to the hospital.

Yeah. And if people haven't seen the videos, you don't have to watch them, really. But it's pretty horrific. We were just talking before we started about how monstrous you have to be to stand there and whack someone with a stick again and again and again. Especially when they're not particularly any threat to you other than you perceive their existence as a threat to your state project. And they're just trying to go to the mosque. Yeah. They're literally just, there's no weapon. They're trying to pray. They're praying. And I feel like prayer is a very vulnerable state to be in. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, I don't know. It was just really upsetting. And you're right about the dehumanization

thing because a gun would make it so much easier to kill someone, right? But to purposely injure someone with your own hands, I think is monstrous for sure. I think maybe it's when a lot of people in America, at least like, it was very formative to me the first time I saw a cop fucking battering someone with a stick, you know? And I think if a lot of people in America maybe had that experience firsthand a couple of years ago, and it maybe changed their perspective on things. But this is what colonialism does everywhere, right? And it's that what's happening here. And in Ramadan as well, right? Like, yeah. And this is kind of like a trend. Like, there's no excuse for what they're doing. And people always try to point fingers about like, who's the bad guy here? But

on the other side, rockets were fired from Gaza and Lebanon as a warning sign after this escalation happened. It was literally like a warning, like, please don't do this. This is wrong. But Israel didn't listen. And the following day, Israel repeated the violent attack on al-Haram al-Sharif, which is what Arabs call that compound. It's also called Temple Mount for the people of Jewish faith. And yeah, and then as that was happening the following day, Israel carried out air raids on Gaza and Lebanon. So not only did they not heed the warning, it was like a slap in the face. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the experience that some people had in Gaza from this. But that's a little bit later. But I just want to like,

put that out there that when people are like, oh, Hamas or whatever, they fired rockets. It's like, what do you what do you expect people pushing a corner to do? I just that's what I always think about. I don't know. Yeah. And if Hamas fires rockets, you know, does that mean everyone should be collectively punished? Like you shouldn't be able to practice your faith now? Like that's that doesn't make any fucking sense. And like, yeah, how would you react if you'd seen your grandmother being with a fucking stick at church or synagogue or mosque or wherever you go? Yeah, especially, yeah, like during Ramadan, a time when like, this particular place on earth has got like, the all the abramic faiths are like, looking at this place and trying to do that

religious stuff there. And like, I'm not a particularly religious guy, but like, surely there's no religion which where like, the thing you should be doing at your holy days is beating people with a stick. Yeah. Like, even if you're not a Muslim, that that area is still really sacred to both Christians and Jewish people. And you would think that Jews would want to be horrific on that area in general, you know what I mean? Like it's yeah, it's just like even even if that little area is not particular sacred to you, like it's still all sacred, in my opinion. And I feel like people forget that. Yeah, it takes a real like, interesting is the wrong word, it's the juxtaposition of these sacred spaces. And then

it's incredible, like it's somewhere I've been when I was younger, and like, all around that part of Jerusalem, all around Jerusalem, I guess, is juxtaposition of like sacred spaces, which are supposed to be peaceful and calm and reflective. And then people doing the violence of colonialism, like right there. And it's just such a profound kind of whiplash every time you move from one to the other. Yeah, because they're the extremes of both. It's like one of the most sacred and one of the most violent. It's not, there's no like wishy-washyness about it. But let me continue. Okay, so after this happened, the Arab League held an emergency meeting to discuss these air raids. And just in case you don't know, the Arab League

is a regional organization in the Arab world. It has 22 members. But Syria hasn't been a member since 2011. That could be another episode another time. But that's what the Arab League is in case someone out there needed a refresher. But the League condemned the attack and it said in a statement that, quote, the extremist approaches that control the policy of the Israeli government will lead to widespread confrontations with the Palestinians if they are not put to an end. And at least 400 Palestinians were arrested on Wednesday of April 5th when this happened. And they remain in Israeli custody. They're being held at a police station in occupied East Jerusalem for no reason. It's never really for a reason. It's very rare that it's for a reason. But yeah. Palestinian witnesses

said Israeli forces use excessive force, including stun grenades and tear gas, causing suffocation injuries to the worshipers and then beating them with batons and rifles. There was a 24-year-old student who was detained, Bekud Owais, and he said, we were conducting iktikaf, which is the religious Muslim worship that is reserved for Ramadan. It's very sacred. And he said, we were conducting iktikaf at the El Aqsa because it's Ramadan. The army broke the upper windows of the mosque and began throwing stun grenades at us. They made us lie down on the ground and they handcuffed us one by one and took us all out. They kept swearing at us during this time. It was very barbaric. And then an elderly woman said, according to this reporter, she was catching her breath

outside and in tears. And she said, I was sitting on a chair reciting the Qur'an. They hurled stun grenades and one of them hit my chest. And there's no discrimination. There's no discrimination to their hate. Everyone in this under the same umbrella. If they're Palestinians, if they're Muslims, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you can't be using tear gas selectively in a place of worship. But that's not how that works. You're going to break windows and throw in tear gas. By definition, you're targeting every single person there for the crime of being there. Yeah. There's no excuse of like, we were shooting back at shooters. You know what I mean? That's not an excuse anymore that they could use. It's like, you're infiltrating a place where people

are literally trying to pray. Like there's no excuse. Yeah. Like old ladies, you haven't eaten all day to drink a water. They're not like, you shouldn't be threatened by those people. But if their existence as Muslims in the place that you don't think they should be allowed to exist is threatening to you, then that's because you're doing a colonialism. Yeah. And you're, I mean, you're the bad guy in the situation in this case. And the Palestinian Red Cross said that Israeli forces prevented medics from reaching the mosque. And this has happened before, as James mentioned to me before the podcast, it's like a very typical characteristic thing of the IDF to block paramedics or aid to come help people.

Yeah. People want to look more at like our podcast alumni. Tarik has done a lot of first aid work in Gaza. And he's written about it on his medium page. I'll find a link and we'll put it in our sources. Yes, please. Yeah. You can see some firsthand accounts of how difficult it is to like, again, right, that I don't really see how you could find it objectionable to help someone who's been hurt. Yeah. But yeah, it seems to be a recurrent thing. Yeah, it is. And what I always find amusing is Israel's statements after things like this happen, they're always so comical and so stupid. And this time they said, when the police entered, stones were thrown at them, and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators. It also said that a

police officer was wounded in the leg. Like, womp, womp, are you kidding me? Like, I don't care about his fucking leg. I don't, like, they always mentioned stones. I'm so tired of them mentioning stones and rocks. Like, shut up. The most powerful army in the Middle East. And it's like, they hurled stones at us like fuck off. Yeah, you have the fucking Iron Dome and a kid has thrown a sort of rock at you. Like, and like the stone thing in particular, I don't know why it's something that Border Patrol use a lot when they kill people at the border, right? Well, yeah, stone. This is a commonality of training between these two organizations, right? But like, yeah, what you also like, when we entered the mosque, some people threw stones at us like,

what were you fucking doing in the mosque? Like, why were you there? Like, and I'll get into the rules later. But there are very specific times because this place is sacred to so many people, there are specific times for each faith to enter and use the compound. And so they weren't supposed to be there. And they were beating people to make way for Jewish people to enter and, and have their time. But that's not the way to do it. And I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to be there at that time. But I mentioned this in a previous episode, the government is more far right than ever. And so the nationalists that are like, encouraging violence are usually the ones that are succeeding. In response to this, Jordan, and Jordan acts as a custodian of Jerusalem's

Christian and Muslim holy sites. This is under a status quo agreement that has been in place since the 1967 war. They condemned the flagrant storming of the compound. And then Egypt, they called for an immediate halt to Israel's blatant assault on al-Aqsa worshipers. But other than that, there hasn't been much like the US said was like, I think I don't know the exact quote that anyone in the US said, but I'm sure they were like, Oh, no, this shouldn't happen. And they move on. It's never really any kind of helpful action or reprimand or anything. There's one from Carine Jean-Pierre, which is we urge all sides to avoid further escalation, which like, why was why do you even bother saying shit when you like, don't escalate when they come into your mosque and tear gas,

you would throw stunk grenades at you. Like, what are they supposed to do? Like singkumbaya? Yeah. Also, why it's like, it's like the same situation we had a couple years ago, where you have the police that are in swat gear and fully armed with people that aren't. And you're saying like this both sides thing, like both sides shouldn't do violence or escalate or whatever. And I think it's so stupid when that happens because there's a clear aggressor and a clear victim in that situation. But as I mentioned earlier, Palestinians see a laksa mosque as one of the few national symbols over which they retain some element of control. They are, however, fearful of a slow encroachment by Jewish groups. And this is what happened at the Ibrahim Mosque,

which is also called the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. And in 1967, half of the mosque was turned into a synagogue. So Palestinians are worried about that happening again. And they're also worried about far right Israeli movements that want to demolish the Islamic structures in al-Aqsa mosque and build a Jewish temple in their place. So it's not just like rumors of this happening, there are nationalists in the far right government and the people that they follow that want that to happen. And by now, it is quite clear that American efforts to prevent another escalation in Palestine is failing. And it's not the Palestinian side that's responsible. Prime Minister Netanyahu, his desperate bid to cling to power is not conducive to any de-escalation

that anyone can ever encourage. Like all he's doing is accelerating the process of violence and triggering instability, not just in East Jerusalem, but like all over the state of Palestine. And okay, before we move on, let's take our first break before I forget. BRBE. We are back. I ended the last segment talking about how the U.S. diplomacy is failing an understatement of the century. But for more than a year now, the tensions in occupied Palestine territories have been very high. The armed Palestinian resistance has been active, especially in Jedan and Nablus. And Israeli security forces have carried out incessant violent raids of Palestinian towns and villages. I said this in a previous episode, but the UN called 2022 the deadliest year for the occupied

West Bank in the past 16 years. And the Israeli army killed at least 170 Palestinians, including 30 children and injured at least 9,000 people. The first two months of this year have been the most violent since the year 2000, with 65 Palestinians killed, including 13 children. This year, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Al-Haram al-Sharif, aka Temple Mount, is significant, as I said, for both Muslims and Jews. Muslims believe it's the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and the Jewish people believe that it's the site of two biblical temples. Regardless, it contains the al-Aqsa mas currently, and it's been there since 1035 AD. And it's, again, the third holiest site for Muslims. And it's an incredibly sacred place for prayer

and worship. I'm sure there's an energy there. I'm not religious, but I kind of feel that energy sometimes where everyone thinks or believes in a place, and it becomes important just as a place. It doesn't even need to be explained, I think, in general. And maybe I'm biased because I was raised Muslim, but still, I think it's silly to pretend that this is, at this current point in time, there's a reason for them not to be there, or there's a reason for a synagogue to be built instead. I think it's just so stupid. My vocabulary isn't expansive enough to actually describe how I feel, but you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's such a barbarous thing to do, to take this thing, and to destroy it. It's so special to literally more than a billion people.

Now, fuck you. We have more guns, so we're doing our thing now. Yeah. And it was correctly speculated because of this co-incision of Ramadan and Passover, that it would be a potential flashpoint for violence. And two regional meetings were held under United States supervision to hope to preclude any major escalations from this time. And it didn't work, obviously. On February 26th, Palestinian, Israeli, Georgianian, Egyptian, and American officials met in the Georgianian city of Akhaba. They emphasized a commitment to a quote de-escalation on the ground to prevent further violence. And Israel pledged to stop authorizing new illegal settlements in Palestinian territories for six

months. On March 19th, the second regional meeting happened, and it was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the Palestinian and Israeli officials committed to uphold the status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem, quote both in words and in practice. And they emphasized the quote necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians to actively prevent any actions that would disrupt the sanctity of these sites in general, but especially during the upcoming holy month of Ramadan. I feel like every time Israel says anything, you can't actually believe anything they say. Pledges don't matter. The UN's labeling them as an apartheid state doesn't matter. Nothing really matters, because it's all empty words. And Netanyahu's government hasn't been

upholding the status quo in words or in practice. He is allied with far-right and ultra-religious forces that have openly stated that the Israeli recognition of the Zerginian guardianship of the holy sites was a historic mistake that they are bound on rectifying. So not only are they meeting, just like to say face, I think, they've openly said that we don't respect this group that is being held together. We want to change it. I don't understand how anyone can believe anything this country says. Even within Israel, people can recognize that this current Netanyahu coalition is opposed to the basics of their constitution and their democracy. And when you have people within the IDF being like, now, dog, you've gone too far, I think that says a lot.

But they're not saying you've gone too far in throwing stone grenades into a mosque, right? Get away with pushing that shit further and further. And he has gone away with it. It's atrocious. And we'll continue to when he gets domestic pushback, because aggressive Zionism is the kind of unifying, the grand unifying policy that brings people together for him and for his coalition. So he'll keep doing this. And it would be irrational to expect people in Palestine not to respond. I know there are lots of new groups that are like popping up to fight back, which, you know, you'd have to be incredibly naive to expect that not

to happen. Yeah, it's just what happens when you push people in a corner. And then I think what they actually like is an excuse to fight back too. So like when these when these groups do attack, that's always their excuse as to why they're attacking. So it's almost like they're provoking an attack on purpose to give them a reason to attack, which is stupid. Again, that word is the only word in my head right now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about this thing that they do again, which just seems to be like sticking a middle finger up. It's like that they like to withhold the bodies of people they've killed. Yes. Quite often. And like, I just don't like, what do you expect to gain by doing that other than just being unfathomably cruel?

And the burial process for Muslims is very sacred. It's a very sacred ritual. And so they're purposely denying them of that. It's like, I mean, the Geneva Convention is like a pretend thing. It doesn't matter. But it's still inhumane, right? It doesn't matter if some people, some old white dudes, a long time ago decided it was inhumane or not, because I think anyone with head screwed on could be like that. So that's fucked up. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And speaking of the Zionist movement and the far right movement, 2023 started with the far right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gavir. He entered al-Haram al-Sharif and this provoked public anger across Palestine. Under his watch, the raids by Israeli settlers on the Muslim holy site of

al-Aqsa mosque, they were under the protection of the Israeli security forces and they've only intensified. Ben Gavir and other extremists in the government are Netanyahu's only chance to stay in power and to avoid going to jail for corruption. And they know that and they're taking advantage of the situation to support, by all means possible, the violence that the Jewish settlers have unleashed onto the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank and continue to erode the status quo at the holy sites. All of this is an aim to establish new facts on the ground, aka full Israeli control. All of this is with the aim of establishing full Israeli control. And Netanyahu does not mind this violence. He encourages and likes it for his own

means. For him, violence is a useful distraction from the anti-government protests which have played his sixth term in office. Because I did an election episode about Israel that you can always listen to, but Netanyahu being in power wasn't supposed to happen again is the main thing. And him being in power and bringing in this terrible government, there's a reason why it's all happening so intensely. Yeah, it's just years of Zionist encouragement finally coming to a head, especially now that a lot of Zionists are in power. And war is not really in Israel's interest. It's currently preoccupied with the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. It's worried about Iran's military presence and diplomatic successes in the region.

It's been striking Syria regularly. Even just days after the devastating earthquakes that happened this year, they bombed Syria. And they want to curb Iranian influence. And they're also concerned about Hezbollah's role in a recent roadside bomb explosion near the border with Lebanon. So starting a religious war, quote-unquote, does not suit there. I don't understand the motivation there other than to further assert dominance and to scare the Palestinians. On the other side, Hamas and Gaza has tried to take a measured response. Again, it warned Israel against further raids on Al-Aqsa. And it is reluctant to escalate this because it would take attention from the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank because Hamas sees the main area of conflict with

Israel as the conflict in the West Bank. Armed attacks in the occupied territories cause much more anxiety to the Israeli authorities than a confrontation with Gaza. Hamas' strategy now is to encourage a popular Palestinian mobilization in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel in order to serve as a barrier to further encroachment on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And that said, Hamas may find itself under pressure to act decisively, especially if Israel's brutal violence against worshipers continues. The Palestinian people, I mentioned this in previous episodes, but they have reacted angrily at the weak response from the PA, the Palestinian Authority, and its inaction. They're frustrated that the supposed protectors or liaisons that they have to negotiate or protect them,

they're not doing anything. So that anger becomes this pressure on someone to act and it's usually Hamas because they're the the longest standing and most powerful group in that area. The Hamas leadership would not want to be perceived as passive and they may feel compelled to abide by popular demand to take a tougher stance and intensify rocket fire towards Israel. And this would repeat, as I mentioned earlier, the 2021 war on Gaza, which was also triggered by Israel's raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque. And this would only further escalate the violence well after Ramadan. It's not going to just be contained in this month. And let's take our last break. We'll be right back and we're back talking about the escalation of violence. And there have been repeated warnings

that Israel's actions in the holy sites could trigger a quote-unquote religious war. In January, Jordanian Ambassador Mahmoud Daif al-Ahmoud told the UN Security Council that Israeli attacks on Al-Harama Sharif are provoking quote, the feelings of nearly two billion Muslims. And this could spark a religious conflict. So the people that are saying it's religious may actually have a point if this actually comes to a head. Because it's actually not the whole the whole Israel-Palestine quote-unquote conflict is not about religion. It's about occupation and colonialism. But in this particular instance, when it comes to the mosque, the anger is very rooted in faith and a direct like slap in the face of that faith. So it takes a, yeah, you can make it a religious conflict.

I think as like other colonial powers have been very good at doing by like desecrating holy sites of a religion, right? Like, it's kind of, yeah, you risk alienating, look, it's at a billion people or, you know, a uniting a billion people in opposition when you just flagrantly do this shit like this. Like, I don't think anyone who like, I'm not a religious person either. And like, I watched that video of the cops or soldiers, I guess, kind of the same thing. And like beating people with chairs and shit. And like, that made me furious. That made me want to hurt someone like, and that's not something that's especially special to me. Maybe it was, I can imagine it'd be even more furious.

It should make anyone mad to see someone treated like that. You know what I mean? It should make anyone furious to see that kind of terror taking place. I think a lot of people have trouble putting themselves in someone else's shoes, maybe, or like, they have trouble caring about something that doesn't affect them. And I think that is a very dangerous path to go on. It's just very self-centered and main character and heartless, in my opinion. It's very odd that as humans, like, we've normalized the existence. And to an extent, people will like, simp for the existence of like, this state, right, which is like an abstraction of capital. And like, the state exists as an abstraction of capital, and it has boundaries

and rules. And if you transgress it, even if you don't, if you're just like, antithetical to its vision for a piece of land, then people can come and beat the shit into you while you're praying now. Like, that's just a thing that's going to happen. And like, I don't know, if I feel like sometimes if we sort of reround the past two or 300 years, and we're like, hey, peasant in the 1700s, like, do you want to be in a place where like, someone could walk into this mosque at any time, throw these stone grenades, beat the shit out of old ladies, and like, no one would go from like, A to B, right? But we're at B now. And people don't seem to want to like, investigate how we got here and what we can do to change it. Yeah, they, yeah, they regard it as like, just a thing

that happens in order for human, like humanity or like civilization to progress. Yeah, so backwards. It doesn't have to be like that. No, people can read The Dawn of Everything. They want to. Yes. They want to know about that. But yeah, or you could just, you know, not simp for cops. If you don't want to read the book. That can help. That's a good first step is to fuck cops. But there is a growing concern that with its aggressive actions in Al-Aqsa, Nanyahu's government is seeking to impose restrictions on the access that Palestinians have to the holy site, the way that it was done with the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron that I mentioned earlier. This mosque was divided by the Israeli authorities into sections that Muslims and Jews can visit

to supposedly prevent further violence because a massacre happened there in 1994 when a Jewish settler opened fire on Muslim worshipers and killed 29 people who were there to pray. So it's, we've talked about how history repeats itself a lot and being afraid of it happening is is not illogical. It's not irrational because it's happened before it could happen again. Yeah. The IDF always backs up these settlers, right? Like they did it yesterday. I think like a kid was killed in a refugee camp in an incident. I think we'd started when, if I'm not wrong, there was a march, like a bunch of settlers were marching into an area and claiming that Israel should legalize it and normalize it. Do another colonial conquest. And yeah,

they're willing to shoot a kid, like it seemed to be willing to back these people, especially when they form, if I understand correctly, like an important part of the coalition that Netanyahu's relying on right now. Oh, it's a huge part. And also those marches by settlers are usually protected by cops. They're shielded by the IDF. It's not like they're there to stop any kind of conflict. They're there to protect the settlers. It's just backwards. History repeating itself and if these measures are imposed on Alexa, it would be a clear violation of the status quo under which non-Muslims are allowed to visit only at certain hours of the day and they're not allowed to pray inside. But this is obviously not what's happening. And so far,

there have only been condemnations issued by Arab states and the EU and the US. What Arab and Western capitals do not understand is that unless there is a harsh response to Israeli actions now, Netanyahu's far-right allies will only be emboldened to go even further in their efforts to take over Muslim and Christian holy sites and settle there. Israeli aggression in El Haram as Sharif is turning Israel into a detonator that will sooner or later blow up the whole region. It's really felt like that for me for a long time and for a lot of people. It's like this metaphorical ticking time bomb and Israel themselves is provoking it to detonate. And I think this pressure cooker of a situation is bound to have an apex. It's not going to be boiling

forever. And the violence isn't just contained at Alexa. Israel didn't take a break from all their other terrorist activities, focus on just one, because their other terrorist activities are still happening. As you mentioned, on April 10th, a Palestinian child was killed by Israeli forces in the Aqaba Tjaber refugee camp in Jericho. Muhammad Fayez Balhan was 15 years old and he was shot in the head, chest, and stomach. Make it make sense. On April 8th, the Gaza Strip endured a night of bombardment as Israeli fighter jets conducted air raids on several sites in the territory. The first Israeli airstrike that hit was near El Dora Children's Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip. Some reporters talk to people that experienced this event, this act of terror,

and so I'm going to read some of their quotes. Samad El Wan talked to El Jazeera about her terrified experience. When she rushed to her two-year-old daughter's bed to pick her up, moments later, the glass from the window next to her on the bed shattered and crashed onto the cot. She said, my daughter miraculously survived. Last night we were sleeping in the ward. Suddenly we woke up to the sound of terrifying airstrikes. There were moments of massive fear. The glass was falling. I immediately rushed to take my child out of her bed. Moments later, the window fell on her bed. I was so close to losing her. Jesus Christ. She continues to say, all the sick children were frightened and screaming. A state of tension prevailed among all the mothers and the

medical staff because of the intensity of the bombing. Glass from the windows was falling and shattering. There were some windows that fell onto the beds of sick children just moments after they had been picked up, and this could have caused a catastrophe and a large number of injuries. The Gaza's Ministry of Health said, this is not the first time that health facilities have been targeted and it is unacceptable. These attacks not only put patients' lives at risk, but they also create a sense of fear among healthcare workers, patients, and their families. The same mother from earlier went on to say, several children have spent the night trembling in fear. Our children are poor in Gaza. They do not enjoy Ramadan or Eid or any other occasion.

They are always threatened with fear and destruction that may come their way at any moment. Yeah. We did an interview a few months ago with some young men from Gaza that we haven't put out yet, but we will. But I've spoken to them quite a few times and I remember one of the things that they would say to me that really was very affecting for me was that they had very young boys who would come and stay and they would do parkour together, and that these eight-year-old boys would routinely wake up in the middle of the night screaming with horrible PTSD. They are children. They shouldn't be anywhere near that stuff. People will talk about precision airstrikes in Gaza. Even if you manage to somehow not kill any people, then you're still going to

fundamentally alter the course of someone's life in a terrible way. There was a study done. I'm paraphrasing it, but it basically showed that the children in Gaza are in a perpetual state of trauma. They never get over the phase where they're out of that fight-or-flight mentality. They're stunted in the fear part of PTSD and it's so sad because that's their reality. They've never known anything different other than fear and violence and the loss of life at any moment. Yeah. They can't leave. It's extremely difficult. Our friends have tried to leave. It's taken them years of trying to leave. They can't go anywhere else. They're trapped in the most bomb place on earth and that's the whole reality.

Yeah. Gaza has been referred to an open-air concentration camp. It's not just a place where people live. It's been just the main target of Israel for a really long time. I always recommend this movie, but Gaza Fights for Freedom is a great movie by Abby Martin. It's free on YouTube. I would watch it if you want some more examples of what's happening in Gaza because it's horrific. It's a hard watch, but it's important if you want more information. In the Altafa district of Gaza City, raids were also taking place. Mejdi Abu Nima and his family woke up at 3 a.m. for Soud, which is the pre-Sunrise meal right before you fast the whole day. So they woke up at 3 a.m. and then suddenly Israeli warplanes were attacking the empty land next to

their house and this caused severe destruction to their home. Abu Nima is the father of seven children and he told Al Jazeera, It was like an earthquake. We were terrified. Immediately, I rushed to my three daughters' bedroom to find my two-year-old daughter covered in shattered window glass. I can't forget her shock, fear, and her heartbeat. Everyone in the house was screaming. Until now, I don't understand why they bombed our area. How could an empty land be bombed without any justification? There are no resistance fighters or any military sites here. It is just an empty land between residential buildings. And there was a lot of destruction that happened. As I said, there's no excuse for it. The oldest son in this family, his car was

obliterated and it was his only source of income. And he told Al Jazeera, conditions in the Gaza Strip are unbearably difficult. The bombing came and destroyed whatever we have left. Life here has truly become hell. Jesus Christ. Like, do you want to spell that any differently, people? But I don't want to end this episode completely on a terrible note. I was really happy today when I woke up and my mom sent me this video of Bernie Sanders calling Israel a racist government, like in those words on television, which is very, very important, especially as a Jewish ally. Because I've said this before, but Jewish people that defend Palestine are some of the most important allies we can have because there's no excuse for anyone to be like,

you're anti-Semitic because it's not about that. It's not about religion or anything. If you're anti-Zionist, you're not anti-Semitic. It's very different. And so having Bernie Sanders be the one to call out Israel is very important. So I want to play that clip because he'll say it better than I can. And yeah, that's the episode. Do you think that democracy is imperiled in Israel right now? I do. And I am very worried about what Netanyahu is doing and some of his allies in government and what may happen to the Palestinian people. And let me tell you something. I mean, I haven't said this publicly, but I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel. And I think we've got to put some strings attached to that. And so you cannot run a racist

government. You cannot turn your back on the two-state solution. You cannot demean the Palestinian people there. You just can't do it and then come to America and ask for money. Has the administration, have you talked to the administration about it? They've been very careful in criticism of the Netanyahu government. Well, I am not careful about it. I'm embarrassed that in Israel you have a government of that nature right now. And are you going to introduce something? We may well, yes. To try to attack strings to USA attention. You cannot give if you have a, you know, whether it's Saudi Arabia or other authoritarian societies, if a government is acting in a racist

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. It's still Shireen, and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. Yeah, anytime. The listeners, they get what they want, you know? They demanded it, and here we are delivering it. Log on to the subreddit. No, I mean, I was interested in having someone else receive the information I had because it's really hard to do it by myself and it's also hard not to like sound like a bored professor or something because I just sound like this. Something I have experience with. Yeah, you don't sound like a bored professor, but it's also very emotionally challenging to just be like, here's some terrible fucking things that have happened

again. Exactly. Yeah. And when you write yourself, it feels a lot heavier for some reason, and so I'm glad to have someone else on. Anyway, thank you. Today, I wanted to talk about something that happened 75 years ago this month. So there's going to be some history here, but I think it's really important history, so please stay tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But 75 years ago, this month, before Israel was officially established, the Dariusine massacre happened. This massacre was part of the Nekba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even 75 years later, and it should always serve as a reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized,

have people killed, and forcibly removed from their homes, and the indigenous people were expelled from their homes, and the ownership of their own land was granted to someone else. And I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that happen is extremely important, because we're not that far removed from that brutalization. It's not like we can say like, oh, that was medieval times. People were different. It's like, no, that was less than 100 years ago. Shut up. The Nekba, aka the catastrophe in Arabic, it refers to the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias in the new Israeli army during the state of Israel's establishment between 1947 and 1948.

The Nekba was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the euphemism quote unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today will be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nekba and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today, they lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the late 1800s when some European Jews influenced by the nationalism that was sweeping the continent. They decided that the solution to antisemitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state for Jews in Palestine. They began immigrating to Palestine as colonizers where they started depossessing indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In November of 1947,

following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision or choice to make. Regardless, the UN approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of Palestinian people. It gave 56% of that land to the proposed Jewish state despite the fact that Jews only owned about 7% of the private land in Palestine and made up only 33% of the population and a very large percentage of this percentage of 33% were recent immigrants from Europe. So handing over more than half of someone else's land truly doesn't make sense. I don't care

what religious text you're citing. It was wrong at this point in time to take that land. It was just wrong. The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just 42% of Palestine even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and were indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after the partition plan was passed, the expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias began. Months before the arming of neighboring Arab states began to be involved, so there was no other person to say don't do this or like there was no one else to fight to hold them back, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And by the time these Zionist militias and the new

Israeli army finished, the new state of Israel covered 78% of Palestine. So they didn't even follow the rules either. They just kept on swallowing up the land that wasn't even there to begin with with this violent nekba that it's just it's a terrible horrific thing they did. There is a film on Netflix called Farha. It's the first film that depicts any kind of story about the nekba and it's by a Palestinian filmmaker. It's really powerful. I would recommend seeing that if you want an example of what happened because it's all factual as far as like the terror that they did. So I'd recommend that film, give it five stars for the haters. You know what I mean? Oh, God, I can imagine the reviews are just like death. Yeah.

That was the film that the Israeli government tried to ban and they were a lot of Zionists were commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one star or whatever. They wanted Netflix to take it off Netflix. But no, we fuck the haters. Help us out. Five stars. Put it on the background of your TV. It doesn't matter. Just keep streaming it on a live stream. Exactly. Yeah. Strike a blow against colonialism. But that's just an example of how important and scared they are of the truth because it's a movie. It's a fucking movie. Yeah. The control of the narrative is so important in these things. Exactly. Yes. And even the way you refer to it, right? Not calling it a transfer, not a cleansing. Exactly.

Calling it like not referring to it in the same terms as we would do like the genocidal settler colonialism that settled this country or the way that Britain and France and Germany behaved in Africa, like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state, right? That's what it is, that's what it does. Like all of those things are so important and they might seem like petty battles, but they really control how we see things. I think when you control language, you can control how people perceive things. 100%. And I think controlling the narrative is so parallel to controlling the history books because that's what gets remembered by the people that want the narrative to have a certain thing. Not all history books, obviously, but a lot of the

times the things that are considered facts are biased. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, or you're only getting half of the things, right? I mean, as a historian, we are all biased and so we should declare our biases and sort of go forward that way rather than presenting our biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a biased thing, which is what we tend to get in the US, especially when we look at this stuff, right? Yeah, no, totally. I love that. I didn't bash historians, but I criticized them, but you're like, I'm a historian. Yeah, I will not jump to the defense of scientists, historians. I've worked with, there's a chapter in my book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and about 30% of

volunteers were Jewish people, right? And many of them couldn't go back to... There are some of them who fought in the Spanish Civil War, where guerrillas in the Second World War survived the Holocaust in some cases and then were anti-Zionist and so they didn't have a place. There wasn't a place for them as people who had stuck to their very decent principles of you shouldn't impose shit on force by people who don't want it and were opposed to fascism or opposed to colonialism. There wasn't a place for them in that sort of post-World War II Jewish movement, that Zionist movement. There were in other places, but yeah, it's very sad that their stories aren't... A friend of mine was a person who first wrote articles about them, but their

memory is completely erased, right? Or at least it's not present and then they should be people that any reasonable person would be very proud of, right? They were willing to die for someone else's battle and then they were stuck to the same principles the whole way through it and the world kind of moved around them. Yeah. I think as time goes on, those things won't even be existing in people's reality. You know what I mean? If no one remembers that that happened, if no one is part of what happened, it's just going to go away. It's going to disappear. Yeah. That's why it's so important to do history and to use different sources and to do history from a people's perspective, not from a perspective of people who are in power.

Exactly. Wow, that's powerful. History from below, that's what we call it. Wait, that sounds one more time. If people call it history from below, and to look at other sources without writing my hobby horse too much, I was primarily a historian of sport and anti-fascism and specifically sport. I got a ton of pushback on when I started because it's not important. I don't have any charts or whatever. It's actually very important. It's where people were able to express who they were and who were on the team and who was not on their team. That's where you find these people who are very impact from lots of other areas. I think if I was a younger person and I was trying to find

my way, find my identity and be like, hey, designism seems wrong in the same way that other things seem wrong. To have those people, to be like, yeah, these people also saw that, right? They didn't want a boot on anyone's neck. They didn't want it to be their boot on someone else's neck and that was fine. Having seen the Holocaust, having seen what happened in Spain, they were like, this shit is wrong. It's still wrong. It doesn't matter if we're doing it. Yeah. Their humanity prevailed. Yeah. It's important for people to have those stories, to be like, okay, well, I'm not fucking crazy. It's not that I just don't understand what it was like back then

because a lot of people could see it and were like, nah, we shouldn't be doing this. Yes. Wow. Historian James, thank you for joining me today. Sorry. No, why are you apologizing? I love that shit. The fucking nerd. No, I love it. History from below is what you said. Yeah, that's quite an old theme now. I mean, I think it's a good thing to to abide by. So I'm glad that there's a little catchy phrase for it. Stuart Hold and things like that. Yeah, we'll do another episode on this one day.

Yes, please. So as we mentioned before, Israel stole about 78% of Palestine, and then this left 22%. And the 22% was compromised of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. And these regions fell under the control of Jordan, Egypt respectively. In the 1967 war, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards. And just to give you some numbers, I think they're important sometimes just to get the context of the scale of something. But the Nakaba by the numbers is what I'm about to continue. Between 750,000 and one million Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and they were made refugees by Zionist

militias, amounting to approximately 75% of all Palestinians. Between 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians were driven out from their homes by Zionist militias between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29th of 1947 and the establishment of Israel on May 15th of 1948, prior to the outbreak of war with the neighboring Arab states. Several dozen massacres of Palestinians were carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli army, which played a critical role in prompting the flight of many Palestinians from their homes. More than 100 Palestinians, including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were massacred in the Palestinian town of Dariusene near Jerusalem on April 9th of 1948

by Zionist militia. This is the main massacre I want to talk about today because it's been exactly 75 years on April 9th, but it was one of many massacres and it was the one that excited as igniting a lot of the condomino effect. The massacre at Dariusene was one of the worst atrocities committed during the Nakba and a pivotal moment in Israel's establishment as a Jewish majority state and again it triggered the flight of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and beyond. The Dariusene massacre is commemorated annually by Palestinians around the world. Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in 1948, a quarter of them internally displaced. These Palestinians who are sometimes referred to as

Israeli Arabs were granted Israeli citizenship but stripped of most of their land and governed by violent undemocratic military rule as of 1966. As of 2023, there are more than 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship comprising more than 20% of Israel's population and they are forced to live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens of laws that discriminate against them in almost every aspect of life because they're not Jewish. Let's take our first break here and I'll come back and tell you more terrible things, so here we are. Okay, we're back. I'm going to finish up a little bit more of these numbers and then I'm going to talk about Dariusene. More than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by Zionist militias

and the new Israeli army or they were repopulated with Jews between 1948 and 1950. Most Palestinian communities including homes, businesses, houses of worship, vibrant urban centers, they were destroyed to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners who are now refugees outside of Israel's borders or they were internally displaced inside them. Today there are more than 7.2 million Palestinian refugees including Nekba survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and neighboring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and they're denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland. This is the last big number I want to say just because I think it's so big I had to say it.

Approximately 4,244,776 acres of Palestinian land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after the establishment of the state in 1948. Millions of acres. It's not just a tiny little place that no one was in before. No, millions of acres of land were forcibly stolen. And all of them land that people have had for generations at their farm. It's not the oldest settlement on earth, but people have been living here for tens of thousands of years. I said El-Aqsa yesterday was built in 1035. This shit is very old and sometimes the same people or people's family have lived there. It's not just a loss of property, so lots of everything that's sacred and like the El-Aqsa mosque or these things that are

sacred and important to you. Yeah. And similar to what you said earlier, it's like we have to remember these things because otherwise they'll get forgotten in whoever's recording the history. You know what I mean? Yeah, they have been here, right? When we look at how America sees itself, it sees the land that it expanded into. It's like terra nullius, like empty land that was unoccupied, which it was not. There was not a wilderness to tame. There were people living here and they were living very happily and they were living in, they weren't like, I don't want to do the whole like in commune with nature thing, but like this wasn't a wild and savage place, right? There were people existing here and taking from the land and living on the land.

That just doesn't get fucking, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg was citing the doctrine of discovery, you know, like all the lips, love, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but like it's so subsumed into what America is that like, like Obama did a fucking tweet, like this nation was built on peaceful protest. It was built on fucking genocide. Like fuck off. Yeah. But we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten, right? Like you don't go to school in California and be like, oh, there was a fucking unit that just changed, actually. There was a unipero hesera high school. And like, this is a person who did genocide. Like we wouldn't have a fucking Goebbels high school in Germany, you know, and Britain does a shit too. I'm not like, you know,

I'm in a glass house, so I don't say that. But yeah, we, this wasn't an empty place. And it's really important to remember that because that is so often the talking point of fucking stupid people that try to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to now the main massacre or topic I want to talk about today, which happened on April 9th in 1948, just weeks before the creation of the state of Israel, when members of the Ergon and Stern gang, Zionist militias, attacked the village of Diriassin, and they killed at least 107 Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages, massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive to clear the way for the creation of the state of Israel. And this was one of the

many massacres that happened during the Nekba, where again, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 fled their homes as refugees ignited a very terrifying domino effect. This year, the UN will host its first ever high level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel in May of 1948. So this is the first time ever that the UN has recognized that the Nekba even happened or like, is it happened enough to mention it and commemorate it. But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the loss of each village that was once part of their homeland. Among them was Diriassin and it was a village perched on a hill west of Jerusalem. And this massacre has become emblematic of the

suffering that Israel would inflict on the Palestinians. Many of the people slaughtered from those who were tied to trees and burned to death to those lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns. Many of these people were women, children, and the elderly. And Farhah does a really good job of showing this lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie that I mentioned earlier. As the news of these atrocities spread, thousands fled their villages in fear. So again on April 9th, 1948, the Israeli militia struck Diriassin where about 700 Palestinians lived. According to the Israeli narrative, Operation Nashon, N-A-C-H-S-O-N, apologies if I mispronounce that, but this operation aimed to break through the blockaded road to Jerusalem

and the fighters encountered stiff resistance from the villagers that forced them to advance slowly from house to house. It's kind of silly and strange how the same excuse is being used like a century later to justify acts of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them, and that's why they butchered them. It's pathetic. It's stupid and pathetic. And like, yeah, for having the, I don't know, temerity to be like, no, you can't take my home, they carried out a collective punishment. Yeah. And that's the Israeli narrative. That's what their history books say is that this was the aim of this operation. They were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to go from house to house. Like, it's just a fucked up narrative.

But Palestinians and some Israeli historians say that the villagers had signed a non-aggression agreement with the Haganah, which was the pre-Israeli state Zionist army. They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in mass graves. According to a 1948 report filed by the British delegation to the UN, the killing of quote, some 250 Arabs, men, women and children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality. This is from a 1948 report filed by the British delegation. Like, it's in the record. When they both, like the, the stern going and the, whatever the militia was called,

the begin was in, it's like, IZL, I think, were like, they hadn't really done any military operations before, right? They just been, they just like bomb, like they did car bombs and shit previous to this. Like, and the British had already, like, like they were, like, they were killing British people and, I guess, Arab people in Palestine before this. Yeah. It's, I mean, the escalation in violence was like pretty severe, but I think they would have gone there eventually, you know, they just kind of hit us forward. I think they'd already like established an intention or like a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in their way, right? And they wanted to show that they were like, unlike the, like, I guess like the labor aligned Zionist

movement, that they were like more hardcore than that. Exactly. Like, that's why they made a spectacle of violence like this. They're establishing their, their power and dominance. Right. Israeli historian, Benny Morris, said that the militias, quote, ransacked unscrupulously, stole money and jewels from the survivors and burned the bodies. Even dismemberment and rape occurred. I mean, there's nothing to say to that. Yeah. The number of dead is disputed, but it ranges from 100 to 250. A representative of the Red Cross who entered Derya scene on April 11th, two days later, they reported seeing the bodies of some 150 people heaped haphazardly in a cave while around 50 were amassed in a separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin

Buber wrote at the time that such events had been quote unquote infamous. In Derya scene, hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred, he said. Let the village remain uninhabited for the time being. Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of war and a warning to our people that no practical military needs may ever justify such acts of murder. He also noted that Derya scene had a profound demographic and political effect. And he's referring to the fact that the news of this massacre spread and it prompted hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next, Kailunia, Seres, Beit Saruk and Bedouin. Derya scene was no mistake, according to Israeli historian, Ilan Pepe.

Ilan Pepe has been called a Israeli quote unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth, the actual truth of what happened in their history. Yeah, the concept of revisionist history is nonsense. It suggests that there is a settled history at some point, which does not. We're always looking at sources again, we're always looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not like there is this monolith of history and then some meddling bastard comes and chops it down. It's fundamentally misunderstanding how history is done. That's why you shouldn't pay attention to Malcolm Gladwell for that and many other reasons. But yeah, it's a ridiculous idea. It's not like everyone was like, oh yeah, this wasn't a bad

thing. And then he came along and like injected some kind of political animus into his history. He came along and looked at maybe new sources, maybe the same sources that people had, I don't know. And was like, no, you guys, you got this wrong. You called this wrong. But that's what historians do. You can't fucking write your PhD without disagreeing with someone and doing some new history. That's what takes you from a master's to a doctorate. And you're supposed to do three articles in a book to get tenure. Your articles can't just be like, yeah, we pretty much called this one right the first time. The process of doing history is to revise and hope to better understand things from different perspectives. Totally. I like that. That's the

point of history is to revise because you're right. And I just think it's so discrediting of his work to call him a revisionist historian. It's condescending. And if someone that interviewed him called him this. Yeah, I mean, hopefully he gave them both barrels because it's kind of a ridiculous. Yeah, it shows that they fundamentally aren't qualified to be discussing the topic, I guess. Yeah. I want to talk about what he said, but I realized that I didn't take the last break and I want to right now. And that is my choice. So stay tuned. Proud of you. Thank you. And we're back. We were talking about Elan Pepe, a revisionist quote unquote historian, but not really, you know, he was called that because he was talking about Israel the way it should be talked about

with actual historical facts. In one of his writings, Pepe wrote, depopulating Palestine was not a consequential war event, but a carefully planned strategy, otherwise known as plan Dalit, which was authorized by the Israeli leader, Ben Gurion, in March of 1948. Operation Nashon was in fact the first step in the plan. And as I said, the massacre unleashed a cycle of violence and counter violence that has been the pattern ever since this happened. Jewish forces have regarded any Palestinian village as an enemy state or a military base. And this has paved the way for this blurred distinction between massacring civilians and killing combatants according to the historian. So what does all of this say about Israel's vision today? This is why I want to talk

about this is because this started this whole cycle of violence that we still see perpetuated today. And it's why Palestinians refuse to forget it and forget what happened. And they'll always talk about Palestine because they don't want to be erased from history books. Dariusine has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a historical fact Israel must confront when retelling its national narrative. According to Pepe, given that terrorism is a mode of behavior that Israelis attribute solely to the Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a part of any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's past. One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one,

with the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior. Israeli historians, as well as Israeli society, they've only been able to admit to the massacre in Dariusine by attributing it to the right-wing group Irgun, but have covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one in Tantura in 1948. This was carried out by the Haganah, the main Jewish militia, from which the current day Israeli military has evolved from. And despite this shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have labeled Israel itself an apartheid state. I've just seen the worst ever op-ed in the Dariusine post about.

About what? Tell me. It's about this, but it's about the Nakba. It contains this kind of narrative that, oh, the Nakba was coined by historians to explain the failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which is like, A, what does that fucking matter? And B, what are you saying? Well, that contains within it the notion that they would have to defend themselves from someone. Who was that, pal? And then going back and forth on the number of people killed, which low estimates are as low as 107, high estimates are in the 250s, based on claims that the militias themselves made. So again, what, is it cool to kill 100 people,

but 250 people? We should step in there. And just checking the authors' affiliation, because that's always fun. And he's a researcher at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly, but when the organization you work for is moralizing heritage of one of the dudes who led the massacre, you might want to step aside from, I mean, oh, not, right? Or just shut up. Just dive the fuck in. But you are flying your flag as a fairly part. It's like I said, all historians are biased. But yes, when, if I work at the Colonel Custer Heritage Center, please take my account of the United States' violent assault on the Lakota people with a pinch of salt, because I'm coming at this from a certain perspective.

Here we are at 2023, still doing the thing where we were. Rather than just taking the L and just being like, oh, it's bad, actually, to rape and mutilate and murder people, trying to try to equivocate. It's funny, you mentioned articles, though, because I just saw one. And when I was researching for Alexa yesterday of this Israeli cop that admitted that the videos he saw was a bad look, like that's what he said. Good cop. Yeah. And of course, the solution to that is to not allow people to take videos of you brutalizing. Yeah, that's the solution. Yeah. Tim Apple, known anti-cop anarchist. So Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have labeled Israel as an apartheid state. And

Human Rights Watch said in 2021, we reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians. As recognition grows, that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand. Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. And apartheid is a very light word to use, but I did want to just mention that an organization said that, not just like, I don't know. It's officially on paper that Israel sucks. Like, why are we still defending it? I'm just like, go rewatch the Bernie Sanders video from yesterday, like, or audio, because there's no reason we should be funneling any kind

of support into that country. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's mad. We still made a lot of money selling weapons to Israel that they used against like, and a Robert and I pursued a public records request for going on two years for like, these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke grenades and flashbangs that a US company is selling to Israel, right? Like, yeah, like, that's great. They can fire them into a mosque. I mean, not surprising. No, it's just annoying. Well, annoying is the wrong word. But like, yeah, there are people who make a lot of money every time things get more violent there, right? And people who are very invested in that. Yeah. And yeah, that's ghoulish as fuck. It is. And that's actually all I have.

That's a good place to end, if any. But I hope you learn something if you didn't know something in this episode. And I hope you go watch Farah or Gods of Fights for Freedom. I don't think this is history that should ever be understated or forgotten. So I'm always more than happy to talk about it, even if it's depressing. So thank you for joining me today, James. It's okay. It's been very uplifting. I don't think it's important. It's very important. Hopefully one day we'll have the PK Gaza episode. Yes, that'll be great. Yeah. I guess if you're in the UK and have old copies of men's health, you can read about young people doing Parker and Gaza. It's pretty sick. I will have another story about that soon.

But yeah, where should people, I think a good thing, maybe if we could end on like, where is a good place to find news about Palestine? Where can people? I really like El Jazeera, especially their opinion pieces are pretty good because a lot of the times they're written by people that are really passionate about what they're writing. I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always a good call. Like Muhammad al-Kurd is one of the most prominent voices recently that has been uplifted. And I would follow his social media. His sister has one as well. His family's house was basically we had the threat of being demolished last year. His house

was in Sheikh Jarrah. If you remembered any of that stuff from last year with the violence going on there. I also really like Sobri Taha. He's on Instagram mostly. And he has a podcast now. I would highly recommend following his stuff. He is so informed and so just easy to understand too. So I would watch that. And yeah, Muhammad al-Kurd actually was on some news program like Face the Nation or no, maybe not that, but he was on recently, like basically handing the asses of the people that were talking to him about Israel and Palestine. Is that the right way to say that? I don't know. He was just stating, he was not willing to be talked over and whatever. Which I like. Yeah, he shouldn't be. My friend Hossam is a photographer

in Palestine. Most of those Al Jazeera pieces you'll see are his photographs actually. But Hossam, Salem, Ji, he's a photograph. We've worked together before. But yeah, if you're a person who'd like to see pictures, his pictures are very good. Yeah, that's a good point too. Also, there are a lot of accounts that are solely about Palestine. And a lot of these Palestinian activists follow them and share them. So you will find more organizations by following them. There is I for Palestine. There's I think it's like land Palestine. And like, I think there's a lot of really trusted accounts on the internet. You just have to find the ones that are trusted. And a lot of times it's stuff from the ground. And that's the stuff that

needs to be seen and shared. Because if there's going to be any upside to fucking internet and social media, it has to be to spread stuff like this around and make sure people know about it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I think it gives us a way to get underneath that hegemonic narrative and see what happens to real people every day. Yeah. So yeah, that's all. Okay, whatever. That's the episode. Bye. Some people can't stand the rain. But at Vessie, we can't get enough of it. That's why we make 100% waterproof shoes that look and feel anything but imagine your favorite sneaker styles supercharged with waterproof tech. So whenever you're out sustain in, you're getting out for a walk with your pup and jumping in puddles like a kid again.

Because with waterproof shoes, there's nothing stopping you. Head to Vessie.com. That's V-E-S-S-I dot com and see for yourself. Vessie, come alive in the rain from the studio who brought you the number one podcast, the python massacre. This is Death Island. Just a few miles off the Thailand coast, the island of Kotau looks like a postcard. It's almost like if you were going to imagine a paradise island or draw a picture of one, that's what Kotau looks like. Young tourists from all over the world visit the pristine beaches and crystal clear water. But underneath the surface lies something sinister. A dark cloud has come over the island and cast its shadow. Death, mystery and danger. In the last 20 years, dozens of tourists have died mysteriously on the island. One thing is certain. In this beautiful place, no coast is clear. Listen to Death Island every Wednesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen Here with me, Andrew, of the YouTube channel, Antruism. And I'm joined today by... It's me, it's just James today. Just James. Sounds like a cringe from the 90s. Really, I was not aware. Just out of curiosity, James, do you play any paradox games? I don't. I don't know what that is. Is that like a type of computer game? Yeah, it's like a game development company and they also distribute games as well.

You've hit an area about which I have very little knowledge indeed. Yeah, and by the way, this isn't sponsored. It's just, it's how I ended up stumbling upon this topic, right? Okay. So just, you know, human me for a second here. So one of the paradox games is Crusader Kings 3, right? Right, yeah. Okay, no, I'm really interested to see where this goes. So yes, it's a medieval grand strategy game. It's sort of like, it's a combination of like those classic sort of, well, grand strategy games and also a bit of sims flair. You're playing as a character and you're also playing as that character's dynasty. So you'd play as the grandfather and then the father and then the son and then the grandson and so on and so forth. Yeah. And so I actually, if you can't tell, I play the game. Sometimes a little bit too much, but I appreciate the role playing the setting. It's set between either 867 or 1066 and 1453, which is considered the end of the medieval era due to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Yeah. So, you know, at a certain point in playing the game, I have to play it in pretty much every corner of the map. I was looking for a new religious movement to spread across the map for fun, of course, this is something I do with my free time. And I started reading about all these different strands of Islam that they have in the game, like the commissions and the Ibadis and the Sufis. And that led me to stumble across the Mu Tazilism and the Najadat.

And please bear with me with the pronunciation of everything I'm about to pronounce in this episode. But Mu Tazilism and the Najadat, I started digging into this stuff and that led me to make the decision to talk about what I've been learning. And before I begin, I know even the idea of religious anarchisms is somewhat controversial, particularly the discrepancy between the anarchist slogan of no gods, no masters, and of course the history of various faith based glass struggles. My stance on it is complicated. But whatever my stance is, I don't think we could deny the reality that religious anarchisms have existed in the past and still exist today. Now I'm really interested in this. I'm just I'm working on a book at the minute about anarchists at war or I guess how anarchism meets war and people variously sort of defining anarchism narrowly and widely. I grew up in the early 2000s, I guess, with the kind of new anarchists, as Graeber called it. And they were always amongst that broader movement, opposed to like neoliberal globalization, they were always religious people, and I'm not a religious person. And I went to a school where there was a priest and the priest had been a member of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa and was wanted there and had left for doing violence again, which like it's pretty based. I have a lot of time for a lot of religious people. It's always been kind of an area of, I guess, interest to me, religious anarchisms. Yeah, it certainly has a very eventful history.

So I wanted to talk a bit about the rather interesting history of just one tradition, although the whole thing about the anarchism that I'm going to be discussing is that I wouldn't really call it anarchism. At least not by our standards. It's more of a distinct and notable resistance to centralized authority or a minimization and decentralization of that authority. I think it's more akin to like a minarchism than an actual anarchism. But it's still interesting to see, I guess, the seeds of anti authoritarianism through history. So these particular movements, they have a sort of an anti-Khalif being the religious leader in Islam. They have a kind of an anti-Khalif action that expanded into a broader philosophical and political conclusion. So we can start in the city of Basra in Iraq in the 800s, where a discussion was taken place regarding how the Ummah or Islamic community should respond to a leader of the Abbasid Caliphate who would become corrupt and tyrannical. Now the two mainstream opinions were that of the activists who believed in staging a violent revolution to instill a new legitimate leader and the quietists who believed in patiently persevering under tyranny or passively resistant.

It's funny how we see these kind of ideas about change raring their heads again and again and again throughout history, despite various different contexts. The other people were like, yeah, let's go get it. And the other people were like, let's rock back a little bit and take things with more passively. So that's interesting, right? Now Abu Bakr, the guy who was the first Khalif, he made it clear in his inauguration that obedience is not incumbent upon his followers if he contradicts the will of Allah and for those who don't know Allah is God in the Islamic religion. And yet the dominant position in Islam has been the quietest position even to this day. The activist position is less popular, some would say. Some people have this idea that the only manifestation of Islam can be the one seen in the autocracies of Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. But even back in Islam's Heide, they were Muslims willing to resist the tyrannical control of even religiously ordained rulers. So back to Basra in the 1800s, there was also the third category of solutions proposed, which we can call anarchist in the general sense, but not really in the actual sense.

Most of the Muslim anarchists believe that society could function without the Khalif. They proposed a kind of evolutionary anarchism where private property was not abolished per se. But because the ruler was considered illegitimate, the titles of property the ruler granted would also be considered illegitimate. They also argued that the Khalif must be agreed upon by the entire community, which is no easy task considering how Islam divided Britain, Sunnis and Shias almost immediately after the Prophet Muhammad died. However, without this consensus, no legitimate Khalif could exist. And it was widely accepted that Allah did not impose obligations that were impossible to fulfill. So then there was reason that then there was really no obligation to establish legitimate Khalif if no consensus could be found. There's a little loophole basically. We need full consensus. We're never going to get full consensus. Oh well, shrug, you know. And then in time, in the context, remember this is, you know, medieval times, you're seeing a lot more, you're seeing several different political configurations and formations and ways of organizing society. So some of them at the time were seeing their neighbors, the Bedouins, and the Bedouins were living without rulers like normal.

So they were like, well, why can't we live without rulers like normal? And so they use that as a justification as well. And so they also had many proposed solutions ranging from a radical decentralization of public authority to a complete dissolution of public authority. One particular genre of proposals involves replacing the Khalif with elected officials, either completely independent of each other or joined together in a federation. And these elected officials would be temporary and only remain in office when legal disputes arose, or when an enemy invaded. When the problem was resolved, they would lose their position and society would return to, quote unquote, anarchy. There was even a minority sect which called for the complete abolition of the state, called the Najdia. And they argued that if there wasn't sufficient agreement to establish legitimate Khalif, there can never be enough to establish law at all. They wanted not just political independence, but intellectual independence, because according to them, individuals should be able to reason for themselves and have no one above them but Allah.

Basically, the religious anarchists slogan, one God, no masters. Yeah. Right. But don't get it twisted. Of course, all this radical stuff applied to them within their group alone. So if you weren't part of their group, you could still be enslaved or killed. This is kind of a selective. Yeah. It's a bit selective in their freedom, mindedness. Then in 817, so a couple of years later, the center of religious power in the Muslim world collapsed with the fall of Baghdad, the chaos of civil war ensued.

But in the absence of public authority, they would naturally emerge an order out of the chaos without central planning. As we've seen it again and again and again throughout history, people self-organized to protect themselves and their positions collectively. In times of natural disaster, in times of crisis, people come together without having a state having to organize them and tell them what to do and how to do it. Yeah. Such has been the case for centuries. And speaking of centuries, we're going to jump ahead a little bit to the 12th century, where we could see a sort of pseudo nihilist anarchist movement called the Kalandariya, a movement of wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes from Andalusia and Spain to Iran, Central Asia, India and Pakistan. Interesting.

One of the Kalandariya had body piercings and tattoos and explicit defiance of Islamic traditions that regarded such practices as Haram. Here's a bit of an interesting story. One of the earlier duvishes of the Malatemeer was once being followed by a crowd of admirers. And in reaction to their praise, he paused, pulled out his peepee, and urinated on the ground. So it's a sort of a radical. It's almost like, what's the name of that Greek guy? Oh, the one who like dies because of the D. Diogenes.

Right. So he kind of like a Muslim diogenes. A sort of rejection of society and rejection of its values. As a lot of people, a lot of these duvishes, they chose voluntary poverty and noirism as a lifestyle. They would reject civilization. They would have the sort of an active nihilism directed at society. One of them has been quoted and saying in effect that money is, well, I don't know if I could say that before I cross that out. I think we, I think we get, we get the, get the idea.

Of course, again, not really anarchism in the classical sense or an actual sense, but manifestation of one trend within or one streak within an anarchist movement. So we jump ahead against the 19th century now with perhaps the first anarchist to convert to Islam. Ivan Agriely born in Sweden in 1869. Agriely was interested in philosophy, spirituality, ideology and literature, and he explored new ideas ravenously. He joined the Theosophical Society in France and he met anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in London in 1891. He also began reading the Quran around 1892 and converted to Islam in 1897. And Agriely wrote about Islam and anarchism fairly frequently, but he didn't really connect them together. However, there was another one, another anarchist to convert to Islam, Isabel Eberhardt.

She grew up in Geneva and converted to Islam around 1896 or 97 and she challenged both Eastern and Western norms through her writings and practice, pursuing a nomadic lifestyle in Nigeria, joining a Sufi order and expressing her unconventional spirit by dressing as a male when she felt like it, taking on a male name and pursuing a lifestyle of purported promiscuity, journalism, smoking keef and journeying across the North African desert by horse. I think she would also be considered a figure of queer anarchist history. I wasn't able to find anything about how she identified personally, but apparently, I don't know if she was a cross-stress or if she was trans or something else entirely. Right, especially in that period, misogyny is so rampant that it could be necessary to present as male, even if you weren't trans in your transgender identity, just to have access to things that were constrained or delimited as male.

Exactly. Yeah, I think it's why it's to just be like we don't know rather than to necessarily like lay claim to someone's identity stuff when all we know is their presentation stuff. Agreed. Also, during this time in the Ottoman Empire, there was a not insignificant population of European anarchists, mostly Italians. You know, Alexandria alone, there were approximately 12,000 Italians living and working often in the building sector. By 1876, anarchists there had organized a branch of the Syndicalist International Workers Association, and in the early 1800s, Ericko Malatesta and other Italian anarchists joined the Urabi uprising against the British. And this was perhaps the first time that Muslims anarchists fought a military campaign side by side.

Although the uprising was squashed, anarchists were less harassed in the Ottoman Empire than in many other parts of Europe. Later on in 1901, anarchists co-founded a free popular university, the Université populaire libre, or UPL in Alexandria. It provided free courses on subjects like Tolstoy's and Bakunin's ideas, the arts, pragmatic topics like working negotiation strategies, etc, etc, etc. However common, if you were indigenous to the region, tough luck. Indigenous Muslims and Arabic speakers weren't really part of the UPL's program, weren't really included, too much marginalized from the education entirely. And the UPL gradually became more and more aimed toward and controlled by upper class interests. So that sucks. Yeah, that's lame.

A lot of disappointments in this episode, people who are nearly there and then kind of fail, of course. But that's part of history, right? Japan had even more. In the 20th century, we got to see the fall of the Caliphate in 1924 and two new influential currents of Salafism. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for their social democratic lean-ins, and the Saudis, who are known for their monarchic lean-ins, to put it lightly. Yeah, that's a case of generous. Yeah, put it as generously as possible. And we even saw later on a sort of an Islamic liberation theology developing that dismissed bin Laden as senseless and lifted up the examples of the Revolutionary Babi movement at the 1800s, Malcolm X, and Alishariyati's quest for a just and classless society.

Then there was also a neo-Sufi group known as the Mura'putin, the Mura'bitun, and the inclusive mosque initiative in London as other examples of how Islam could be used to resist some Islamic traditions. And there were also several individuals today who have explicitly and publicly self-identified as Muslim anarchists, not Muslim and anarchists, specifically Muslim anarchists, including Abdu'nir, Prado, and Muhammad Shah and Venus. That's cool. So that's a sort of a basic rundown. But I think inevitably with these sort of topics, these sort of fraught ideas, something like an Islamic anarchism, there are going to be some challenges and criticisms, right? Yeah. I would like for one, you know, it's a fairly new concept, the idea of Islamic anarchism. Like I went over, there were certain trends that can be described as anarchic, Afibian, generous. But the idea of Islamic anarchism, as in something born out of the after development of anarchism and through anarchism as a political philosophy, is fairly new.

It challenges a lot of the traditional Islamic teachings on authority and governance. So some scholars and practitioners have pointed out that with the emphasis of social order, with the emphasis of authority of the state and the rule of law, this idea of rejecting hierarchy and authority as advocated by Islamic anarchists is, you know, heretical practically. So some criticism that with Islamic anarchism's rejection of all forms of authority and hierarchy, it undermines the concept of Tawid, which is the belief in the oneness of God. And by, you know, rejecting that by undermining that concept and promoting individualism and self rule, it sort of goes against that teaching. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, there's also this challenge to the idea that Islamic anarchism or Islamic anarchism could be compatible because of the slogan, No Cards, No Masters, right? Of course, Islamic anarchists and other Islamic socialists would argue that Islam should be seen as a liberating force that can help individuals achieve freedom from oppression and exploitation. The same argument is made with a lot of other strands of religious anarchism as well. And so to bring things to a sort of a close, I'd say that, you know, like every religious anarchism, like every political philosophy, like every religion, like everything, honestly, people pick and choose.

You know, in Islam, you can find elements of quietism as well as activism, detached mysticism as well as pragmatic daily concerns, traditions of violence and traditions of non violence, moderation and extremism. In anarchism, tensions exist between pacifism and insurrectionism, syndicalism and individualism, nationalism and anti nationalism, collectivism and individualism again. And I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a religious anarchist of any variety, but I think that there is room for, even if I may not agree with it in all cases with the conclusions some people draw, I think there's room for these sorts of dialogues to be had and there's room for exploration to the history of all sorts of historical movements and ideologies and religions and ideas. Because I mean, there's a whole legacy of billions of people who have lived and died long before us and I find it interesting, at least as a thought exercise, to see how they came to their conclusions as well. So I hope this episode was thought provoking and lightning and interesting to those who tuned in. Yeah, it's always interesting to see these, yeah, like we don't have to agree with all of it, but it's interesting to see where people come at these things from. I was wondering if you were going to get to or not, but like one of the things that you saw in the Spanish, like not really the Civil War as much,

the Second Republic was the socialists and left liberals explicitly selling out like Moroccan Muslim people and North African people more generally, whatever their faith and anarchists being like, well, we should express solidarity with these people, like even if they are and some of them were part of the like they were anarchists in Spanish North Africa, of course, but like even if they weren't being like, we should oppose colonialism. And like when every other kind of left stripe didn't, and it's kind of one of the failings that are public not to. Yeah, they've been these conversations, I guess for a long time. It was interesting to hear about those Sufis in Spain and think about how long those conversations have been going back and forth, you know. Exactly, exactly. I think the whole Iberian Peninsula is really interesting region in terms of the confluence of cultures. I did miss that particular historical instance in my research with also points in itself. Yeah, I don't worry some big nerd for that stuff. Is there anything you'd like to plug before we go, Andrew?

Sure, sure. So you could find me on YouTube at Andrewism on patreon.com slash St. Drew, and I've logged off of Twitter. But if you want to get updates, when I do decide to log in to post updates here and there, you could follow me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew. Thank you, Andrew. Take care, everyone. Peace. Just a few miles off the Thailand coast, the island of Kotow looks like a postcard. It's almost like if you were going to imagine a paradise island or draw a picture of one, that's what Kotow looks like. Young tourists from all over the world visit the pristine beaches and crystal clear water. But underneath the surface lies something sinister. A dark cloud has come over the island and cast its shadow. Death, mystery, and danger.

In the last 20 years, dozens of tourists have died mysteriously on the island. One thing is certain. In this beautiful place, no coast is clear. Listen to Death Island every Wednesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh boy, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less depressing than that. This is going to be a mix of both of those things. I'm Robert Evans. My co-hosts for today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are we both? How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling? I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, so I'm excited. Like a kid at Christmas. Yeah, so James, that answers my question for you, but Mia, have you ever heard of Lord Miles Rutledge?

I have seen him on Twitter and I cannot express how excited I am for this. So we are talking about a real piece of shit today. This is kind of relevant to our, I try to always justify our purview is, broadly speaking, collapse, what we call the crumbles. And Miles Rutledge is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and con men who sort of seep in at the edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever. And behind the bastards, we've done a couple episodes on different white people who tried at various points to conquer Latin American nations and the 17 and 1800s. Just kind of during these periods of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on and so some group of mercenaries would be like, I bet we can steal Nicaragua. Right. Let's go. It's worth a shot. You know, you get these kind of like these kind of people and Lord Miles Rutledge is sort of the lower body count end of that. But in some ways, a lot more frustrating because at least look, there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another country and then getting murdered yourself. There's at least like a degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge is like purely like doing war tourism in order to like pump his his Tik Tok and his Instagram and his YouTube.

And I find that worse than like, I don't know, those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and got captured by fishermen. So they were great. Yeah. And then laid in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story. Perfect story. Took a BB gun with them. Such a good story. And this one has a similar this story. Thankfully, Miles's story has has an ending almost that satisfying. So Miles Rutledge was born on James. Actually, I'm going to I'm going to bring you in for a second. How do I spell this last name? R-O-U-T-L-E-D-G-E. He's British. R-O-U-T-L-E-D-G-E. If it's the same as the academic publisher, which you which is spelled the same, then then it's R-O-U-T-L-E-D-G-E.

And look, I don't give a fuck about how this guy feels. So let's just say how we want. Yeah. Okay. So Miles Rutledge was born on September 14th, 1999, probably somewhere near Birmingham. I don't think we have like, like it's just kind of based on shit he said, but yeah, I don't see why he'd probably he'd lie about that. I don't think people brag about coming from Birmingham. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not what they're like. One of the more clan, yeah, detentions. So, unfortunately, thanks to generations of medical advancements, he survived to adulthood because he does strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't have done that in like the 1800s. He got into the university of, I'm going to need your help here again, James, Laubereau?

Loughborough. Loughborough? Unbelievable. Amazing. That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War II German aerial division or something. Yeah, yeah, Loughborough. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's like the very bro-y section of the Luftwaffe. So he gets into the university of Loughborough as a fucking physics student, or so he says. And sometime within the last two years, he got an internship at an investment banking firm. Oh, this is a kind of guy. A kind of guy is emerging.

He's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece of shit. Yeah. But I haven't found much in my casual research about his financial situation or how much money he was born into. But I think he was like, I'm going to guess his parents were at least comfortable because as a young man still in college, he had the funds to travel pretty extensively, starting in 2019 when he visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Now, this is one of the most popular destinations in the world for what is called dark tourism. And this is largely, this is people who live kind of boring lives, otherwise traveling to places that sound scary in order to impress people on like the TikTok or whatever. Now, I just said that, but like, I don't think there's anything wrong. Like now there's like a lot of problems with getting to Chernobyl because of the war.

But like, prior to the expanded innovation, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyl. My thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or whatever is like, are you increasing the odds of like causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources in a way that like harms people who have no choice in being there, right? And visiting Chernobyl, whatever, you're not really putting anyone at risk. So that's fine. And, but in May of 2021, though, Miles Rutledge made the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that was distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist Afghanistan. Now, he decided to head over there during kind of the end stages of the war, although if you guys can remember back that far, the collapse of the Afghan government that the United States had backed happened more rapidly than most people had predicted. So it was kind of like less clear, I think, when he booked his trip, that things were going to fall apart quite that quickly. Yeah.

If you're willing to feel the same way about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's one of those things where like, Miles, you know, his plan to go there was, again, not as like, he's not heading there as a journalist. There's not like a story he wants to tell. He's not traveling there for kind of a practical purpose. He really does frame this as just he wanted to go on vacation and he wanted to go on vacation specifically for what I think is probably like the dumbest reason I've ever heard of anyone choosing a vacation location, especially choosing fucking Afghanistan as a vacation location. I'm going to play a clip from one of his YouTube videos now. Why am I in Afghanistan?

Well, that's a really good question. During COVID lockdowns, Afghanistan was the only country open around a vaccine mandate. So I just went. I've never heard his voice before. I'm more angry now. He goes to Afghanistan because they don't have a fucking vaccine mandate. Oh my fucking god. Yeah, real warrior for freedom.

Yeah, just the dumbest idiot. I hate him. So anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of young British men who have gone out to Afghanistan on a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something called everybody wiki. Yeah, which I hadn't heard of that one before, but it very hilariously lists his occupation as quote, posting online during the 2021 Siege of Kabul. That's actually pretty funny.

Tim Kennedy. So for obvious reasons, he encountered difficulties. He wound up sleeping by the side of the road one night, he was taken into Taliban custody. While he makes a big deal out of this, I actually don't think he was ever in serious danger, particularly not compared to, for example, the people fighting and dying or the civilians and cities taking by the Taliban who had to endure an often violent change of regime. When the Taliban was taking over here, you know, obviously there's the danger of like accidents on the road, which is always a significant danger in a place called like Afghanistan, there's the danger of, you know, being caught up in a fight or something potentially. But the Taliban in this kind of late stage of their takeover had no desire to harm a British citizen like Miles or to harm like, you know, Americans who were in the country. And in fact, we're working kind of in the later stages of the US evacuation to try to make sure it happened peacefully, not because the Taliban are such good guys, but because like, there's no geopolitical benefit to them from like a random British traveler dying. It's just kind of cause problems for them.

Yeah, it's just no way for stress and bother. Yeah, like they didn't have like, I don't believe they were the Taliban was ever like threatened his life in any way. Miles, though, posted through it, reporting that he was stuck in a pickle and giving details of his experience to fans on 4chan and Twitch. He started using the name, James, you had asked about this, he started using the name Lord Miles due to the fact that he had purchased a 15 pound Lordship certificate as a bit. I knew it, I fucking knew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not that surprising. What a con, I can't say that. Sorry.

No, you can, you're British, it's fine. Okay, Daniel, yeah, leave that one in. That is my sincere conviction. What a twat. Sorry, what an absolute prick. What's really fucking frustrating, everything about his existence is frustrating, right? What's so annoying is he's playing this fucking twi parochial version of Britishness for an exclusively in American audience, right? If you're born near fucking Birmingham.

We are not all pride and prejudice people, and if you move to another country you will constantly encounter people thinking you grew up in Harry Potterland, but we're not all turfs either. But he's fucking doing it, and he's doing it like a naive American. The Scottish Parliament has made statements about not buying these stupid Scottish titles. Yeah, here's a prick. Yeah, it's very silly. He justified this by saying, because I think he buys it while he's in Afghanistan. He explained to his followers, the Taliban may see that as a reason to keep me alive, thinking it may hold some negotiating power as they'll think I'm important. They don't care.

They don't want any fucking Westerners dying in the country because it'll fuck up their chances of like, you know, they want to get integrated to the like fucking global economy. They want to qualify for like loans and shit. Like they don't want to, they don't want the problems that you dying bring. Like you being a lord has not going to impact this in any way. Yeah, and they don't want like the British government deciding like, oh shit, they killed someone. Now we need to just bomb like Kabul for eight months or whatever. Now, I don't want to say in his defense because I would not like speaking to his defense, but I will say that the one person who might be conned by a lordship you bought online is Boris Johnson. Yeah, that might have an impact on Bojo.

Yeah, but it is not defense. It's not like Bojo is going to be sticking around for very long, right? You have to like, every like seven weeks you are rolling a dice as to whether the conservative PM is someone you can con with a lordship title. Yeah. Well, none of them in the last few years have been what I would call intellectual titans. That's true, but hope springs a turtle, Rishi, Sunax and Trouble too. So they might, I don't know, put someone in. Well, we make a swell of braverment or some shit.

You can just really go down the fast road. I really, I feel sorry for you all across the pond. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your politicians be national laughing stocks. I mean, that's just got to be hard. No American will ever know what that's like. Yeah, we are ruled by the hero of Ireland. Oh, I was going to talk about, you know, my hero, the governor of Florida and his best friend, the pedophile who just committed suicide. Wait, oh, is this a different pedophile?

No, this is the pedophile who like backed Santas' like early political rise and now just killed himself after he got exposed. Oh, so this isn't Ali Alexander. Okay, nevermind. No, no, no, this is a different pedophile. I'm losing track of the GOP pedophiles. There's too many. Every day there's a new one. I can't keep track. It's not Mike Gates, his other friend who's also a pedophile. Just to be clear.

Now, you know who I cannot prove at this point is a pedophile, Miles Rutledge. So let's get back to his story. Please. So he also claimed during this period where he's kind of like quote unquote on the run, that the 4chan users he was posting with kept him alive by giving him updates on Taliban progress through Oscent as they advanced through Kabul. That's broadly speaking, not impossible. So the idea that Miles, again, I don't believe he was ever threatened by the Taliban. They are, again, not nice people, but they're not like unhinged. They're not ISIS, you know, they are a government.

They don't have a benefit in something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though, played up the idea that he was something between a tourist, a journalist and a philanthropist. Billing his trip to Afghanistan is a quote little charity thing. At the same time, as he said that he was prepared for death when he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country. Eventually, a United Nations safe house took him in and he was given a seat on one of the last planes out of the country. Now, this is an actual act of evil. Mate. Yeah.

That's frustrating. Because like there are people in danger from the Taliban who had no, couldn't leave, right? Like he took one of their spaces. Somebody didn't get out who is in danger because of him. Yeah, like very good friends of mine. Like I spent much of that time, like I've written about Afghanistan. I've worked with translators and like good friends of mine. Sometimes them left Afghanistan, but many of them still have their families there, right?

And every single day they have anxiety about whether their families are okay, if something terrible has happened to them. Yeah. And this twat is just like sitting on a plane, posting on 4chan. Like that makes me properly angry. Yeah. And that's again what I was talking about. Like if you're going to, if you're going to go to a place that is beset by conflict, you know, by civil war, by violence or anything like that. Number one, you have a responsibility to like have a reason to go beyond.

I wonder what it's like. And you have a responsibility to not make things worse for people who don't have a choice about being there. And he did, you know, that's like fundamentally why I hate this guy. Is he absolutely took an opportunity to escape from, I don't know, some woman's rights activist or something, you know? Yeah. Somebody who, or some terp or something, somebody who didn't have a choice about fucking being stuck in Afghanistan. Yeah, just some fucking person who wanted a fair crack at life and isn't a prick. Yeah.

Yeah. And he could have stayed. I have friends who stayed through that time and covered it. Like, your concern is for your sources, not yourself. Yeah. Or you could have done the thing that his ancestors did and just walk across the border under fucking Pakistan. Like, your ancestors did this. This is the one thing I'll give the credit for.

Exactly. Red like hell. It's like lore. Hike through the Kiber Pass and then become Sherlock Holmes' best friend. You know, that's a proud tradition. I thought you were going to go with dying, which would have also been a very exception. Well, that's another proud tradition, getting sniped by a jizzail in the fucking Kiber Pass. Absolutely.

So, he had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and immediately pivoted because he built up a big social media following around his posts there. Pivoted to a career as a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an island in Brazil. There's this island off the coast of Brazil that like you're not allowed to go to because there's so many fucking snakes. Like, it's just extremely dangerous to go there because it's covered in fucking snakes. And he like went there wearing armor, but he didn't actually run into any snakes because snakes don't like, you know, they're not generally aggressive, most of them. He got arrested in Kenya for as best as I can tell being a prick near a refugee camp. And then he traveled to Ukraine right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to try to make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people about him.

The highlight of that trip was he claims that he drove a woman and her kid out of the country and rescued them and also brought people snacks. Whatever. Miles has always been two things. He's deeply enmeshed in right wing meme culture and he is at least superficially committed to Christian extremism. He is like kind of at least it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian. He's like he's super fashy, right? This is not like a hidden thing with within his videos and stuff. I found one write up of him on a right wing religious news website that gives you an idea of how he builds himself to his ideal audience.

Miles Routledge is a self-described Catholic independent war journalist and charity on the ground. At just 21 he headed to Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates that are peppered with humor, reality and a little naivete. In the past, Routledge went to war-torn countries and into areas no NGO or charity dared to go, according to his GoFundMe page, so he can hand out bibles, food, medicine and money. There's a special place in hell for some kind of giving a starving person a Bible. He never went to places other people wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you everywhere he went there were already people like the Free Burma Rangers or even Medicine Sands Frontiers or journalists without borders. There were people there. It was in Kabul!

I've seen his videos. He's not going anywhere special. How many people are in Kabul? Like 10 million people? Yes, these are big cities. 4 million people, sure. He's playing off of the provincialism of his audience and the fact that most people in the West when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine, when they hear it or even a place like Kenya, which is like a massive country with major cities and all sorts of stuff. These places are just death traps and you don't go there. I would get this when I visited Iraq seven or eight times and it's like most of it's just a country. There's specific things you have to keep in mind that are dangerous, but it's just a place. Millions of people live there and don't die every day. This is ludicrous to suggest. You could go to all these places and stay in a five-star hotel. You're not in any danger, especially as a rich white British guy parading around.

To the extent that he's in Ukraine and traveling near the front where there's random missiles and shelling, there's some danger. But again, it's danger that he is exposing himself to unnecessarily and then creating a situation whereby if he is injured, that's a bunch of morphine and antibiotics that can't go to a fucking civilian who had no choice because they were raised in Konstantinifka or whatever. Fuck him. He's a prick. I mentioned a little earlier, he's definitely a fascist. When I say that, sometimes people do the whole, oh you lefties will call anything a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one. Shortly after his famous trip to Afghanistan, he published a book about his very brief time in the country. This book included some interesting claims, like that he was the last person to enter the country on a tourist visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting. He wrote, quote, my response was simply an A4 sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it. It was accepted without question. I was ready for my very own white boy summer. He also notes that the last, right, which was at the time kind of like a meme in, you know, fashy online Nazi circles. It was all over Telegram. He also notes Chet Hanks. Tom Hanks is very problematic child. Yeah, although not problematic in this sense. Chet did not, I think, mean for that to happen. He's just problematic in other ways.

So he also notes that the last thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho, which he described as a sacred male experience. I will remind you all that that is a movie directed by a woman. He also writes about the fact that he ordered a meal at the airport before leaving, but decided not to eat it because it was likely filled with soy. He goes on like a whole diet tribe about how Afghanistan is probably safer for him because there's no soy in the food. So the weird right wing memes and signaling, all of which are like, he's always like a year or two out of date on his like far right signaling and stuff too, which is weird. All of it makes a little more sense when you realize that the book that he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing. Oh, yeah, yeah, James, you recognize that, didn't you? It's coming in from the far right.

Yeah, it is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the Antelope Hill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath it, you know, you've got the main book and it's like this is record. If you like this book, read these books are a collection of one of the books is a collection of speech speeches from Kai Morose, who is a Finnish right wing activist who was formerly a Maoist but is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who supports total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He advocates for an uprising in the UK in which all university staff will be executed by death squads. So he hasn't gone that far from the Maoism. So not that far from the like, look, there's still pieces of it. So the next book that's recommended if you're interested in Miles's book is The Death Company, which is a firsthand account of the Italian Arditi in World War One that was very influential among early fascists.

And then there's Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I found a review of this book on a website called the White Art Collective and I'm going to read a quote from that now. So this is a Nazi reviewing this book by a Nazi, right? Good stuff. Yeah, here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen is a big city writer sent on assignment to interview James Alexander, the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who has revived his state with, among other things, a Christian themed public works program and Mount Calvary, an artificial mountain which villagers climb up and pass the stations of the cross, then view a live action recreation of the crucifixion with music by a live choir. The first few chapters until Rob meets Alexander feel like a deadpan satire of apocalypse now. Rob didn't want a mission, but for his sins he was given one.

He's a fish out of water who has to navigate and improvise his way to the goal. There's a magical realism vibe to the book, despite nothing overly supernatural occurring. And maybe this is why Phillips calls it a mundane fantasy. But it's also a mundane fantasy for the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described in the book are so far beyond what is possible that suspension of disbelief is required. Even the Nazi seems like to think it's kind of a shit book, which is very funny to me. So, again, if you publish your book with Antelope Hill, like you are comfortable at the very least comfortable with having your book advertised next to explicitly Nazi power fantasies. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to Antelope Hill unless you know, like, we've both published books, like, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even try. Yeah, they are the Nazi, one of the Nazi's publishers out there. In April of 2022, Miles attempted to re-enter Afghanistan. He claimed in videos that his goal was to rescue a tour guide and his family who were threatened by the Taliban.

But he wound up stuck in Pakistan claiming that this guide had lied to him and claimed that the border was closed to British people. I mean, to be fair, I have no issues with this. No, that would be fine. And he gets like, he starts like freaking out in the video. He's like near tears and stuff. He claims that he had spent 15,000 pounds on the trip and now he was broke. So, obviously, he has to beg for money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if that was just the whole point of the trip. He also pointed, posted whiny status updates claiming his life had been ruined by the failed trip. Quote, this means I can't go on a date with a girl I really liked. It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend. I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end. But, I know, big baby.

Despite his failure, he did not give up on his dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again for the sake of content. He put together another trip for the start of 2023. In late February, as he geared up to go, he made some tweets to his followers that give us more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is. From February 27th. A flatmate saw my Bible and said, that book is a fairy tale, so I threw my empty mug at his head, broke on the wall behind him. This isn't the first instance, and after a while, you have to stop playing nice and defend your faith. Yeah, this is the tweet that I remember seeing. People used to send me his shit so often.

He's infuriating. There's a worse one. The most infuriating tweet I found from this guy came a bit further down. It's a picture of him, I think, might be Dubai. I think it's Dubai. He's got his back to the skyline, and he's just kind of looking off into the distance pensively. And it says, friends say I space out all the time. My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. Now, if you don't remember, Sentinel Island is the forbidden island in the Andamans, which is part of India, where in 2018 an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and endangered the lives of an entire tribe so he could satisfy his narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to death by them via arrow before he could get too close and hopefully did not spread any diseases to them.

I wish my own success in reaching the island and meeting a similar fate, but if he gets anywhere close to them, there's just such a high chance that he will spread deadly disease to the people there that I hope the Indian government keeps him away. Even though it would be very funny if he got shot to death by them. That would be quite a laugh. Yeah, truly living out the dreams of being a British Lord. Yeah. Continue a real time-honored tradition, getting fucking murked by the natives on an island. So, the good news is that Friends of the Pod, the Taliban, may have taken care of this guy for us.

Shortly after making those posts, he re-interred Afghanistan. In a video posted several days later, he bragged about entering, while he's in Afghanistan, he brags that he made a fake visa in order to get himself into the country. So, he breaks Taliban law entering the country in a fake video and then posts a video while he's in Kabul bragging about it. So, first off, genius brain, unbelievable smarts there. So, the first video that he posts back is titled something like shooting guns with the Taliban. And it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad to see what kind of guns are available. He talks a lot about how all these US guns and gear are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it. Like most of the video, he's in like this fucking, I'll show you, he's in like this fucking gun bazaar and he's like really awed by this giant AR style Turkish shotgun.

Oh, we've seen some of those. We have seen some of those James. They're terrible weapons. They are definitely, obviously the Taliban got a hold of a shitload of US gear. Nobody's questioning that. These shitty Turkish shotguns are not American weaponry. Well, that's probably why it's in the bazaar and not like in someone's like garage or something. Yeah. Yeah, the Taliban have access to a lot of American gear. He is kind of just like looking at, I don't know, like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like trash guns. So I'm going to show you a first clip from this video here. Jalalabad is sometimes a little bit dangerous. So there's a lot of Daesh there. If you don't know who Daesh is, it's basically ISIS. Now ISIS, you know, our number of the Taliban, however, the weapons market and maybe in some areas could be quite bad for me.

So I'm going to have to be a little bit careful. But if you're seeing this footage, it ended up okay. I'm just going to take a moment to tell you guys about my sponsor, Tennis. What the fuck? This is not official media, but Jesus Christ. That is one of the most jarring ad tricks. Like if you're not watching this, he's like standing in the desert and like talking. There's that brief clip of like a picture of some ISIS guys, but then he's like back in the desert talking and then suddenly a shot like it cuts very harshly to him in his hotel room doing like a fucking ad for an investment banking app. It's so fucking or like a stock trading app. It's so funny. Is this bandana on?

Yeah, that's the, has he got the Shahada written on it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sure does. Oh, fuck you. Yeah, I was going to say people should watch this, but just to spare yourself like, God, yeah, he's wearing his white headband. I can't see it anymore, but it's something written in Arabic on it, I guess, and doing it as much for something called Tendies. Yeah, something which is like, yeah, some sort of like stock trading app for I'm going to guess people to get their life savings scammed from them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's some version of it. That's my apologies, Tendies, if I'm getting you wrong, but you're sponsoring Lord Miles Ruffling.

Yeah. Ah, damn, it's okay. We've got enough sports betting companies to that we'll be okay. Ronald Reagan always sees us right. Yeah, Ronald Reagan, gold coins or silver coins will take care of us. So again, one of the things that's very funny about this is the amount of time he spends flipping out over this dog shit AR style shotgun. For those of you who aren't gun people, the Turks make a number of different shotguns that kind of look like AR-15s. They're all very impressive looking to people who don't know anything about guns. They're terrible weapons. One of the reasons they're terrible is that shotgun shells do not work well in magazines. The reason most shotguns are tube fed because like shot shells are plastic and they have a weird shape to them.

And if you stick them in a magazine like a normal bullet, they just tend to like jam and misfeed a lot. It's just not a good way for it. Yeah, exactly. It's the one gun, the one actual like producing a factory gun that I'm aware of that the folks in Myanmar are like, now fuck it, we'll just re-print one dude. We don't need these. We are desperate, but these are just... And he spends a lot of time talking about how cheap guns are. You can get guns here cheaper than you can anywhere else because like this AR shotgun is 200 bucks. It's like, man, I can get an AR shotgun for 200 bucks in Portland, Oregon. They're terrible.

Nobody wants them. So he does eventually go out with what he claims is the Taliban. As far as I can tell, it's a guy who has an M16 that he probably paid like 100 bucks to go shooting with, right? Maybe the guy, like a lot of people in Afghanistan are technically the Taliban, but that doesn't mean like much, right? Like at this point, they're the government like, you know, you get like your uncle, you know, gets you a fucking gig or something, watching a road or whatever. I don't know. I don't know anything about this guy. He claims he's the Taliban. So I'm going to play you a clip of him shooting this guy's M16.

No hearing protection. Sweeping people. Just sweeps him again. The Taliban guy is visibly nervous about him using the gun. He's glad he got that back in one piece. He's backing away. He's just like shooting into the air. I love how like visibly nervous the Taliban guy is. He sweeps his legs with the gun, like points the barrel at that guy's legs like three different times,

shoots up into the air. He's just an incompetent asshole with it. He's doing all of these like 80s action movie poses. It's very stupid. He has no hearing protection in, so he like hurts his ears. It's just comprehensively stupid and sad. So this video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up with two other UK citizens who were in the country, one of whom was, he's described in most of the news articles I read as just a charity medic, and it's, this is all a little unclear. It seems like this guy was in possession of a firearm without a proper permit.

He claims that he has a permit, but that was lost or something, whatever. At any rate, Miles goes missing in early March. And after several days, the Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two other British guys and also two Polish guys into custody. And it's a little unclear why, but it seems to be due to like them breaking some laws with guns. It also may have something to do with the fact that Miles broke the law entering the country. He seems to be being treated reasonably well at present. It's unclear what's going to happen to him, I hope.

I mean, honestly, like of all the people who deserve to be in a Taliban prison, Miles Rutledge is the one. That's amazing. Like, yeah, keep that, go ahead and keep that guy, Taliban. Very, very, very excited for whoever is in the Prime Minister's chair next week to like, yeah, maybe get around to start negotiating with the Taliban. I hope they don't. The British Foreign Office just don't give a fuck anymore. Like, I've had to contact them with when colleagues have been detained, et cetera.

And like, they'll literally be like, now computer says no, and just like, tell you to fuck off. Like, so hopefully they do the same for him. Yeah, it doesn't, I haven't seen anything like the latest, most recent news stories about him were like, more than a week ago, it looks like. Yeah, I'm not seeing anything recently. So it doesn't look like, I'm guessing we would have, there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed. The Daily Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like, yeah, he was there to try to find himself. Yeah, it's very funny.

He says he claims at one point like, yo guys been taken by the, by Afghan intelligence for taking like $1,000 out of Western Union suss amount. No internet, no idea when this will end, everything is good, but please excuse my lack of communication. That was like March 8th, something like that. And he hasn't really been back on in a while, like he's kind of been dark for quite a spell. So I don't know, maybe something terrible has happened to him or will happen to him at which point, or in which case like, that would be kind of funny, fuck him. Yeah, that's where I am officially. Yeah, I mean, he fucked around and found out.

Yeah, like you keep, again, man, you want to like, yeah, you keep fucking around, you like go to a place with like a famously, like dangerous authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are like, I'm going to brag about breaking the law for a YouTube video. But yeah, man, maybe they'll get pissed. It's like the same shit with like, obviously the Romanian government is not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind of shit with like Andrew Tate, where you're like, I'm going to go to this other country and brag about the fact that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws. That's a pretty good way to get them to fucking get their problems for you. Like, anyway. My favorite Miles post, if I'm remembering this right, I'm pretty sure like two weeks before he like got arrested,

he posted a tweet about how like he's safer and he's safer in Afghanistan than he is and that he would be in San Francisco. Yeah, in Brooklyn, yeah. But I've got about it. He tried to be homeless for a day. No, two days. He spent 48 hours quote unquote homeless in Brooklyn. Yeah. Again, for content. And yeah, it is funny that like he is in a lot of trouble now. He tried to go to Mission Texas as well.

I don't know if he ever went, but he was going to do something. Oh, I missed that. Yeah, he was going to do something fucking horrific with people crossing the Rio Grande. Oh, God. Oh, you see the look. It's where we get the base butterfly lady with the ram fort. You're not going to hear this often from me, but critical support to the Taliban. Like they're really fighting the good fight for all of us by keeping this guy behind bars.

It initially seemed like he had he had fallen into the hands of like the Islamic State Coruscant province. And yeah, I was going to have to. Yeah, you rarely have to hand it to Islamic State, but we may have. And that one occasion. I don't give ISIS a lot of credit, but that it is like, you know what? I'll just I'm going to go ahead and say this on behalf of the rest of the world. Taliban, if you keep him locked up, you know, we will erase one of those big Buddha statues from like the list of Taliban crimes. We'll all agree to forget one of the Buddhas.

Like, hold on. I feel like that's fair. I'm not signing on to this. I'm still I'm still mad about the Buddha. Just one of them. Come on. No, we need all the Buddhas. Anyway, fuck this guy.

He's fucking sad. I hope they're feeding him tofu. Yeah, I hope they're feeding him all of the soy in Afghanistan. Yeah, like fucking park a soy truck up to that guy's cell. Anyway, that's a story like there's these guys are like. Especially in the social media. I mean, they've always been a part of war and of conflict. You know, there's a degree to which like this is a not a new story.

Like this is actually kind of one of the older stories in human history is like dudes kind of stumbling into war zones in order to write about it or otherwise like make it about them. So, you know. Fuck these people and fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. I hope we I hope he winds up like those Venezuelan mercs or not. They weren't Venezuelan who are caught on video pissing themselves and then lying in the piss.

That's that's my dream for Miles Rutledge. Spending some time lying in piss before he sent back to the UK. Yeah, that's what I got. Nice. Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like they did to the British people. He did make a bunch of posts about how cool the Taliban were. So I don't know. We can dream.

Look, man, you said you wanted to live there. Here you go. Yeah, I don't know. I think he's a dick and I think this is funny. That's my official stance. Because with waterproof shoes, there's nothing stopping you. Head to Vessi.com. That's V-E-S-S-I dot com.

And see for yourself. Vessi, come alive in the rain. From the studio who brought you the number one podcast, the Python Massacre, this is Death Island. Just a few miles off the Thailand coast, the island of Kotow looks like a postcard. It's almost like if you were going to imagine a paradise island or draw a picture of one, that's what Kotow looks like.

Young tourists from all over the world visit the pristine beaches and crystal clear water. But underneath the surface lies something sinister. A dark cloud has come over the island and cast its shadow. Death, mystery and danger. In the last 20 years, dozens of tourists have died mysteriously on the island. One thing is certain. In this beautiful place, no coast is clear. Listen to Death Island every Wednesday on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy Earth Day. And by happy Earth Day, I mean the Earth is dying and people are killing it. Yeah, welcome. Welcome to what could happen here, the Earth Day episode. Now, now, now, quick question, Mia. What is Earth? So the Earth is one of many, many, many planets in the universe.

It was, it was, it's Kajield Rock. There's some like, belty shit in the middle of it. But on the outside, there's a part of it that's nice to live on. And it'd be nice to continue to have it be that. Ah, OK. That's this is different than what I had been raised to believe. But, but, but I'll, I'll humor you here. Please continue.

Yes. And so, OK, we were going to be talking today about what one of the many attempts to destroy the Earth and also Garrison is here too. Hello. Yes. Hi. I'm, I'm here also for the Earth. For the Earth.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is a special episode featuring a bombing. So it is. Oh, good. I love a good bombing. Yeah. This is very exciting.

Actually, technically speaking, it's two bombs. So it is near midnight on July 10th, 1985. The crew of the Greenpeace Boat Rainbow Warrior, which is docked in the harbor of Auckland, which is New Zealand's largest city, a thing that I learned while researching this episode. Wait, really? That's New Zealand's largest city? Yeah. Yeah.

There's not, there's not a lot in New Zealand other than hobbits and that one show about vampires. A lot of cheese too. They make, they make, they make a lot of milk. So the Greenpeace Boat is docked in this harbor. Most of the crew is asleep. Some of them are playing cards and they are, they are relaxing after having celebrated the birthday of one of their crews.

Suddenly, a massive shock rips through the boat. Water starts flooding into the ship. The lights go out and the crew thinks they've been hit by a tugboat by accidents. That lasts a couple of minutes until a second explosion hits the boat. Mr. President, a second explosion has hit the boat. 9-11 joke, yes. Yeah. Excellent.

Good work. So the crew, the light, like the people fleeing 9-11, the crew flees the boat, but they realize that the photographer, a guy named Fernando Perriera is missing. Perriera, like, hasn't quite realized that the boat is like under attack. And so he runs back to his cabin to grab his camera. And then the second explosion hits and the boat sinks so fast that he never has a chance to get back up. And he drowns to death.

And the crew very quickly realizes that this is not an accident. And rescue divers discover there are massive, there's like massive holes in the ship from where they've been blown up from the outside. And they eventually determine that this boat, which is, again, a green-piece boat that is doing non-violent civil disobedience, has been sunk by limpet mines. Oh, boy. Oh, I love a good limpet mine. I'm so happy that we're getting limpet mines in this episode.

Yeah, yeah, we're getting limpet mines. We're getting, there'll be some special forces boats later, or I say boats is one boat. But, yeah, we're going through all of the sort of naval combat traits here. Excellent. But this raises the question, who would commit such an act of terrorism on the, I can't actually say on the soil of New Zealand because it's technically in the water of New Zealand. In the waters of New Zealand, yeah. Yeah, yeah, off the coast of New Zealand, sure.

Yeah, we get it. Yeah, but, okay, so to answer this question, we need to talk about the anti-nuclear movements. And, you know, there's been a kind of rewriting of history about what the anti-nuclear movement was actually about, to basically like sort of purely focus on the anti-nuclear movement, as something that's just about nuclear power, but that was never true. The movement was always way more larger than that, and a huge part of it was about opposing nuclear weapons, both in terms of like opposing nuclear tests, and in terms of fighting for nuclear disarmament on the fairly simple principle that having weapons that can kill everyone

on Earth around is a bad idea. Well, it's a bad idea if you don't want to destroy the entire Earth, but yeah. That's true, but unfortunately... Yeah, if you want to destroy the Earth, it's a pretty good idea, actually. Unfortunately, I'm on a living kick right now, so I'm not okay to be destroying everything on Earth. Yeah, it's good that you can admit your bias up front, though, that's important. Yeah, yeah.

So this is a very important thing in journalism. Yeah. So, when we're talking about nuclear testing, because it doesn't happen anymore, nuclear testing... Okay, so we used to just detonate nuclear bombs in the Earth. You're goddamn right we did. Yeah, and it turns out this kills enormous numbers of people, but the problem is that it kills them very slowly with increased cancer rates, which is very difficult to sort of

track or prove direct causality. And this is aided by the fact that when countries do nuclear testing, they are almost always killing people... Well, they're almost always dropping the nukes on indigenous land, which means that they're killing people who the government and most of the country just does not care about. And you can literally map colonialism and sort of the value that a given state places on people's lives by where they test a nuclear weapon. People in the US test a nuclear bombs in places like the Bikini Atoll, the Marshall Islands,

a former tribal land in Nevada, New Mexico, and in Hatesburg, Mississippi. Okay, so... Jesus Christ. All those are bad except... except Mississippi. No, no, that was also bad because... Guess what race the population of Hatesville, Mississippi was? Yeah, they got paid $10 to get relocated. Located, quote-unquote.

Yeah, this is not a white city that they are blowing up with a nuclear bomb. It's not like a gated community for white men in their 50s or something. No. No. No, the only good nuclear testing we did was back in the day when they used to set off nukes right outside of Vegas, and so all of the Vegas people would watch the nukes go off and then get irradiated. That was kind of funny.

Yeah, they also irradiated the Area 51 people one time, and that was also extremely funny. They sure did. And there was that guy, I think it was uranium. There was one of the dudes who was on the Manhattan Project. There was this dude who... there was an accident, and he just sucked down a bunch of nuclear fuel, and they had to... he could never work in a lab again after that. And he, for decades afterwards, has breath-tested positive for radioactivity, but he lived to be 80-something.

Well, good for him. It doesn't seem to have hurt him. He said it tasted kind of like sour candy. Okay, so he's tasted the forbidden nuclear water. Yeah. No one else has to now. We know what it tastes like. Yeah.

Oh yeah, Donald Masticus. He was sprayed in the face with liquid plutonium chloride and swallowed some. But apparently that's fine, so there you go, everybody. Drink some plutonium. You'll live a long life. So the U.S., I guess, also tests it on their nuclear scientists. But yeah, so those were the U.S. tests it. The U.S.S.R. tests the nukes in Kazakhstan, which there's an amazing story about Beria

going where nobody lives in this part and nobody lives in Kazakhstan, so we'll be fine. It's like, okay, Beria, people, in fact, you live there. China tests its nukes at a site called Lop Nor, which is in Xinjiang, because of course it is. And the French do their tests in the Saharan Algeria until the Algerian Revolution forces them out, which are good for them, death of betrayers, the Algerian workers, councils, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But this means that the French now no longer being able to bomb, like, their colonial possessions in Algeria. Yeah, they start testing the nuclear weapons on particularly the... Muro... I don't know how to pronounce this.

I'm really sorry. What is it? A toll in the South Pacific? Yeah, I mean, that sounds close enough, yeah, sure. Yeah, and so they start these tests, like, in secret. So there are people on islands nearby who don't know that there's nukes going off. Like, they don't even have bomb shelters, right? It's real loud these days.

Anybody notice how loud it's gotten here? Yeah, I was like, you know, you can see the fucking mushroom cloud, right? But like, these people, you know, the French military scientists are like, oh, it's fine, they're not going to be in the fallout there, unbelievably, in the fallout radius. If anyone ever tells you you're not in a fallout radius, that's your first sign that you are in fact in a fallout radius. Yeah, it's never a great sign. I don't think that's happening. I don't think anyone has ever assured a group of people that they're not going to be exposed to radiation

and been telling the truth. Here's the thing, here's the thing. If they had merely gone to these people and said you're not going to be exposed to radiation, it would have been better, because then at least it would have had a chance. They just didn't tell these people at all, they were testing a nuke. Sure. They just blew it up. Great.

And so they detonate nukes all over Polynesia. Actually, a few years ago there was a thing called the Morua files, which was a bunch of investigative journalists got together. They got a bunch of classified French military documents, they got some scientists together, and they did a whole thing about the sort of influence that the effects of this nuclear testing has. And I'm just going to read from that. According to our calculations, based on a scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately 110,000 people were infected, almost the entire Polynesian population at the time. Good God.

So they irradiated the entire population of Polynesia. This is great. I mean, that's not ideal. That's not ideal. I'll give them that. And okay, so obviously, nuclear testing has negative effects on humans. I feel like I don't need to explain how nuclear testing has dropping a nuclear bomb on a place has a negative effect on the environment. Are you sure?

It seems pretty obvious. I think we're all more or less caught up on nuking things being bad for them. Except for underwater aquatic lizards, which seem to do really well when exposed to nuclear tests. They have atomic breath now. Absolutely, yeah. They get to star in a movie with a surprising number of members of the cast of Simpsons. Yeah, it's all upsides. Oh, and that Ferris Bueller, I think, was in it.

So that's pretty good. Did these people get to star in a movie with Ferris Bueller? No, they died of radiation poisoning or genetic defects. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah, and so these tests and some other tests of the U.S. are doing in the Marshall Islands are the origin of Greenpeace. So there have been environmental groups like the Sierra Club have been involved in anti-nuclear activism because, again, bad for the environment dropping nukes. But, okay, so the activism that the Sierra Club people are doing is based on bearing witness. And the Greenpeace people rightly are like fuckberry witness.

They are dropping nuclear bombs. We are going to try to stop these bastards. The only way you can beat a bad guy with a nuclear bomb is a good guy with a nuclear bomb. That's why we should... I'm introducing a new initiative to arm all Greenpeace members. A personal tactical nuke. Not a joke. The David Crockett.

I am not kidding. France's rationale for why they have nukes, which is that the thing is literally called the weak deterring the strong or something. And it's like, ma'am, you are France. Like, come on. Okay, yeah, sure. France is acting for the protection of the weak against the strong. I mean, look, I would, if I had the option, I would keep a nuke in my basement, you know, just in case. Yeah, someone comes to my house, you know, I've got the option then, right?

Like, what if, because like right now, okay, say Pakistan decides to try to rob my house. I don't have a counter to their nuclear arsenal. But if I keep, you know, and I'm not even talking to like six to 10 megatons in my basement. That's enough, I think, to discourage aggression, right? Or if like my neighbor decides to call the city on me, you know, I've got an option. There's a problem with this plan. How are you getting the nuke from your apartment to Pakistan? Well, I mean, it's if they come to my house, right?

That way I can I can nuke all of my stuff so they won't want it and that way they won't rob me in the first place, right? This makes about as much sense as actual nuclear doctrine. Yeah, I mean, it's worked for decades, Mia. Like, I don't know what your problem is here. If it's worked for all of these great powers, you know, it can work for me. Or I could do what the British do and send, you know, some of my people out. I could send James or Garrison out underwater with a nuclear weapon and just have them always waiting in the sea to nuke my adversaries if somebody takes me out, much like the British nuclear fleet.

See? We as a human race are really good at coming up with good ideas. Our ideas are amazing. They rock. We never have any bad ones. It is funny that there's just like some guys who are expected to like follow a dead man's orders at the end of the world for unclear reasons. Like, there's just a letter and it's like, if all of your loved ones die, open this letter and do whatever it says. Yeah.

Nukes are really funny when you think about them. Yeah. So, OK, so in the late 60s and early 70s, there's people who are like, this is a terrible idea. We should not, in fact, drop nuclear bombs. And these groups in the late 60s become Greenpeace in 1972. OK. Great for them. Good for them.

Yeah. All right. So we've talked about the French having to move the nuclear program into the Pacific after being run out of Algeria. Greenpeace starts doing direct actions against French nuclear testing. Mm-hmm. And so in 1972, Dave McTagger, who's one of the founders of Greenpeace, sails his boat into a French nuclear testing area. Now, OK, I have my issues sort of in principle with like nonviolence as your like pure organizing political principle. But if you are willing to sail your boat under a nuclear bomb to stop it from going off, that is pretty based.

Yeah, man. I have trouble, I have trouble like coming up with any critiques of that. No, this rips. Yeah. And the other thing is like, you know, this isn't a stunt, right? Like they are actually prepared to get nuked. Yeah, no, that seems like a pretty commitment. Yeah, I'll give them that.

It's sick. And so they refuse to leave. And the French Navy eventually gets so pissed off that a French Navy ship rams their boat like a fucking trireme in order to get them out. Oh, yeah. Faced. They're forced out because they're rammed by a trireme. Happens to the best of us. We've all been there.

Yeah, so sometimes sometimes you just get you just get rammed. I don't know. It happens. So true. So they they Greenpeace tries to go to the International Court of Justice to get a ruling to force France to stop the testing. And the French government stakes out what I claim is like the primary status political principle, which is that what is justice to a man holding a gun? And they just absolutely ignore the International Court of Justice. So in 1974, they're trying to do another set of nuclear tests.

And this time, you know, so Greenpeace is like, OK, well, we're going to we're going to send like a flotilla of boats out this time. Did you just say a flotilla? Yeah. Is that a word? Yeah. Yeah, that's a group of boats, Garrison. I that's like a that's like a murder of crows thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is a very common name for a bunch of boats. I've never I've never heard that before. No, you have a flotilla. Yeah. Elron Hubbard had a flotilla of boats that he made teenagers pilot and jump off of when he was angry at them.

You know, I was thinking about this. It's actually the first flotilla of boats that we've had on any of our shows that is good. That's not that's not commanded by Elron Hubbard. Yeah. Or like the Moody's. It's a it's a whole it's a whole sort of line of bad. But this is this is a good flotilla. But the Navy this time is like, OK, we're not going to mess around with these people, like, and, you know, let them get inside the testing zone.

They so they just board McTabbert ship and just beat the shit out of him and his crew. And so the French Navy claims that like, oh, the Greenpeace people just like turned around on their own. And McTabbert, you know, McTabbert's like very badly, visibly hurt. So he like shows up to the press and the French Navy goes, oh, I mean, he's like McTabbert is like he is he is like blind in one eye for several months. Like he is very, very badly beaten. And the French Navy claims that was actually the result of a fall, which I will allow you to draw your own conclusions. He walked into a door. Yeah, I'll let you draw your own conclusions about parallels between the state and domestic abusers.

But yeah. Yeah, unfortunately for the French Navy, the Greenpeace crew have managed to like get the beatings on camera and they're able to smuggle like the film canister off the boat and get it to the newspapers. And so the newspapers the next day just have a bunch of like pictures showing the French Navy just beating the shit out of these like random Greenpeace people. And this eventually actually works, right? There's there's there's I mean, there's there's a sort of political pressure campaign that Greenpeace is waging. There are these there are these campaigns in the French courts to get the government to stop. And eventually in 1974, the French government agrees to stop conducting atmospheric tests and nuclear weapons. Now, Robert, do you know who else stopped conducting atmospheric testing after years of public pressure campaigns?

The US and the USSR? Yes, but also the products and services. Oh, that support this podcast. Yeah, no, I mean, most most of them, most of them. Ah, we're back. And, you know, that I'm hearing now that we we did have an ad from Blue Apron in there who does continue like low Earth orbit atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. You know, it's the only way to get your food boxes to you in a timely manner. They have to use the Orion Drive, which is a special spacecraft engine that relies on popping nuclear weapons out of the back of a spaceship and using them to accelerate it to near light speed. It's actually that's a you can look that up. It's a pretty cool idea. I think we should do it.

It is very funny to me that it's like, OK, we have this incredibly convoluted drive that's powered by nuclear weapons and it gets you to around the speed of light. Maybe it's it's not even convoluted. It's literally just the spaceship poops out a nuke and it makes it go faster. It's a fun idea. I'm going to be honest with you. I think it's a fun idea. It is, but it can't even get you to like the next solar system very fast. Well, nothing probably ever can, which is why we're all doomed to die alone in the dark. Yeah, very sad. Other thing that's sad. OK, so the French government agrees to stop doing like testing the atmosphere, right? However, this is just atmospheric tests. I never agreed to stop doing like non atmospheric tests.

So in 1985, the French government is gearing up to do another round of nuclear testing and Greenpeace is once again bringing a flotilla to try to stop them. Now, Greenpeace are already in 1985. They've been involved in another anti nuclear. Well, OK, really, it's all the same anti nuclear campaign. But so the other people who are dropping nukes in the Pacific are the U.S. And when they they nuked the Marshall Islands, the people of this island called Wrongalap began suffering from radiation exposure, even though they were also once again told by the American government that they were fine. And so the U.S. is going to drop another nuke and they refuse to evacuate these people. And so Greenpeace like brings their boats, like brings the rainbow warrior and these people asked like Greenpeace for help.

So Greenpeace like evacuates them all to another island and like brings like construction materials and supplies so they can like set up on a new island. And it's this really, I don't know, it's a really sort of grim look into what, you know, like what this nuclear testing actually means, which is that a bunch of people who've been living in a place for hundreds of years are forced to flee for their lives. The state won't even like ethnically cleanse them, right? Like they are forcibly relocated from their homes, but the state won't even do it because the state's like, oh, it's fine, we're just going to die of radiation poisoning. And so they have to get someone else to like move them. And it's, I don't know, it's really bleak. These people survive, which is good, but the U.S. doing nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which I'm betting at least 40% of you don't know of the U.S. control.

Yeah, it sucks. Okay, so they get done with this evacuation, they're back in Auckland, and then their flagship, the Rainbow War, gets bombed. And Greenpeace talks later about how they actually got really lucky because, you know, remember when I said earlier, there are people who were still awake like playing cards. If those people had been in their cabins, a bunch of them basically would have drowned immediately because the cabins got flooded instantly by the first bomb. So they got very lucky, only one person died. To this day, I do not understand why the people who did this thought they could do this without killing anyone. It's baffling to me. I don't know. At least they claim they weren't trying to kill anyone.

So New Zealand police start investigating, you know, hey, there's been like a terrorist attack on a boat in a harbor. Sure, that seems like a thing you'd look into. I get that. They get very, very lucky. And they get lucky because there are two people in this boating club who are like watching the harbor, trying to catch someone who's been stealing diving equipment. And in the middle of the night, they see a man in a black wetsuit carrying a Zodiac inflatable speedboat ashore and get into a van. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So it's unclear to me which model Zodiac this is, but for people not familiar with boats, Zodiac makes something called the Mill Pro, which is a like it's an inflatable speedboat that is used by like most of the world's special forces units.

And so these two guys are like, this is really sketchy. And so they put two and two together when they realized that a boat's been blown up and they're like, oh my God, it was probably these guys. So they go to the police and they're able to get the license plate of the van. And so the staff at this like van depot have to like sit there and like stall the two people in the van and keep them from leaving long enough for the cops to show up with something I really, really desperately want a video of. It just sounds really funny. I do love the idea of like the average people who work at like a car rental company being asked like, hey, could you do like a little bit of counterterrorism for us today? Just like a skosh of it in between denying people rentals because they don't have a credit card.

It's amazing. And okay, so the cops show up and they arrest this couple who are claiming to be newlyweds. But the New Zealand government quickly discovers that both these people have forged passports from Sweden. Hell yeah. Yeah, they're on a fake swish passports. And so they discover their real names and by God, is that the Mercedes that is a man with a baguette? It is the French CIA. They have planted this bomb.

And what is the French CIA called? Hold on. Because we can't just say the French CIA. Yeah, so it's the Directorate General for External Security or DGSE. That is definitely fake. Oh, that's a much worse, much worse. Exactly. We're going to go back to calling it the French CIA.

I'm going to read it in French. Secret police, I think we can all agree, secret police need to have three letter acronyms. CIA, GRU, FBI, like it just doesn't work with four. You need to have one kind of sinister sounding name like the Mukhabarat, but like the DGSE. Oh my God. I'm sorry, that sounds like a bank. It's a direction general de la sécurité. No, no, that's trash.

For instance, you have been suppressing people for so long and you don't have a better secret police name than that. That's shameful. Yeah, by the way, their address. MI6, that's a great fucking name for your secret police. Incredible. Or MI5, whatever the real one is. Anyways, if you ever want to go take a visit to these people, their headquarters is on 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris, France. It's at 48.8744 in North, 4067 East latitude.

Great. I don't need to go back to France. Yeah, go fuck with the DGSE. I'm not that big of a wine guy, it's fine. They catch these agents whose names are, I shit you not, Jean Kamas and Jean-Luc Castare? No. Yeah, that makes sense. No.

So the police catch these two. There's like 10 other, well, there's like eight other people involved. Two of them get, I think like maybe two, one or two of them get caught in Australia, but the Australian police aren't able to hold them long enough for the forensic evidence to come in, so they have to release them and they flee. And there's this whole thing where like they flee at a yacht and then they get on a submarine and the submarine shoots the yacht to sink it. It's a whole thing. And I actually, okay, it probably is worth mentioning here that as silly as the French CIA's name sounds, like they have one of the most extensive networks of surveillance and sabotage of any intelligence agency in the world. It never gets talked about, but they have people everywhere, they are lethal, they absolutely suck. But yeah, so they get caught and the French order an investigation and their first investigation concludes that like, well, we asked, okay, so these people are our spies, right?

But we just asked them to spy on Greenpeace. We didn't ask them to do a bombing. And everyone's like, okay, yeah, sure, French government. So the French media does- We've all been there, yeah. Yeah, well, no. Okay, so you may have caught two of our spies dragging a Zodiac boat, well, with a guy at a website dragging a Zodiac boat into a van. But that doesn't mean he did the bombing.

And the French media does their own investigation and like quickly concludes that like not only did the French order the bombing, the bombing was personally signed off on by French defense minister Charles Hardou. And also quite possibly French president Francois Mitterrand and- Well, okay, at least Mitterrand's got a good name for an evil president. Yeah, well, this is interesting, right? Because if you know your French history, for those of you who know your French history, you will note that Mitterrand is a man to the French left. He's the president from the France's Socialist Party, right? Okay. He has a program of amnesty for Italian communist terrorists, where like if you're able to make it to France, they won't extradite you.

That's pretty cool. The communists would never have a nuclear bomb. So it's very famously Antonio Negri, who's the guy who writes a bunch of books that are very famous in the early 2000s. He's one of the founders of the Autonomists. He uses this to flee to France after the Italian government accused him of being the mastermind of the Red Brigades, who had just kidnapped and killed former prime minister Alden Morro. So Negri gets himself parliamentary immunity by getting elected as an MP and then flees to France, which is just very funny. And then Mitterrand refuses to extradite him. So okay, so the one that you would think that Mitterrand is like, I don't know, kind of cool.

I don't think so. Mitterrand, okay. So in terms of sort of being sympathetic, Mitterrand is like a kind of different kind of neoliberal than the kind that we that we sort of know. So I would classify in terms of sort of neoliberal, like neoliberal politicians, right? Like neoliberal heads of culture. I think there's sort of like three kinds of them. There are sort of the right wing hardliners who people like Thatcher, like Pinochet and Reagan. The Reagan's weirdly Reagan is slightly less hardline than like Thatcher is.

But yeah, so okay, so there's those people. There's the sort of like third way neoliberals like Clinton and Tony Blair, who are like, I guess like liberals in the American sense, but are still sort of like real hardliners on economics. And then there's a group of people I would call like the quote unquote socialist neoliberals like Mitterrand and Italy's long time Socialist Party Prime Minister. But you know, Croxy like, I don't know if I can actually call him the most corrupt man in Italian politics, but like he's like at least in the top five. But he's Prime Minister for like 20 years. And he he's also like this. So these are these are people who are nominally socialist and we'll talk about like doing socialism, but then are also like implementing neoliberalism.

And you know, I think the closest thing to this in the US is like if Carter had beaten Reagan, we still would have gotten neoliberalism, but it would have been sort of like softer than it was under Reagan. So, you know, you have your sort of kinder gentler form of neoliberalism and do you know who else advocates for a kinder and gentler form of neoliberalism? Oh, not Blue Apron. No, they support going going right back to the old days. We're talking like East India Trading Company. In fact, as we speak, Blue Apron's flotilla is on the coast of India right now ready, ready to try their hand at making another Raj and Calcutta. We wish you could all see Garrison's face.

It's amazing. It's fine. It's fine. Oh, we're back. So the consequence of this is that, you know, despite the fact that Mitterin is like nominally a socialist, he is completely committed to nuclear testing as part of his like nuclear deterrence program. Funny how that always happens. Yeah, you know. Now, supporting colonialism is not out of character for Mitterin to as part of a previous coalition government in the fifties had presided over the guillotining of Algerian rebels.

But his reaction to his government and possibly also him personally bombing the rainbow warrior is not good. Yeah, that's nice to hear at least. Not a great look, buddy. Yeah. So because French people are extremely normal, the reaction in the French public about their government carrying out a terrorist attack is that there's a giant nationalist upswell and people get really angry because they're demanding that the two French intelligence agents who again are serving 10 year manslaughter sentences in New Zealand for bombing a ship involved in nonviolent civil disobedience in the harbor of a country that France is not at war with. People are mad that they are like being held in prison and they demanding they be released. That that makes sense from like the French nationalist side.

It's the French far right. They're pretty bad. Like again, like lots like lots of just like non far right people in France get involved in this. And they had this whole thing about the way they talk about it is amazing that they talk about it in terms of liberating them. It's like they just murdered a guy with a bomb, like multiple, but they use two minds to blow this ship up. And so the government's response is they start putting sanctions on New Zealand's exports. That's funny. That's funny. And this is this is a huge deal for New Zealand because they have a you know, New Zealand's economy is like in large part in agricultural based export economy.

And they export just an enormous amount of cheese to France. Yeah, I did not. I did not know that. Yeah. Well, so I New Zealand is like one of the world's leading dairy producers. Yeah. I thought they mostly just made those like Elphin dwarf and wizard movies. But oh, yeah, I mean, they do make a lot of money producing limbus cakes, which which can keep you going for an entire week. You know, I'm realizing I'm realizing now I'm not geared. Do you know the story of how of how New Zealand was was like dragging supporting the Iraq war and sending troops to Iraq?

No. OK, OK, I need to tell the story because I'm realizing there's some of our listeners who might not have heard this the last time I told the story. So in the WikiLeaks papers, it comes out that New Zealand New Zealand sent troops to Iraq because so New Zealand had had a milk for oil program where they would trade milk to a rock for oil and the US threatened that after the after they invaded Iraq, they were going to cut off the milk for oil deal. And this was this was like Fonterra, they're like the giant milk cooperative in in New Zealand was so powerful and New Zealand government was like fine. Don't don't cut off our dairy. Our milk for oil program. We will go to war.

So yeah, New Zealand New Zealand did not go to war for oil. New Zealand went to war for the milk market. And and that's why we called it a coalition of the willing. Yeah. Oh, New Zealand is a truly a cursed place. And you know, and the I don't think New Zealand's the cursed one. And that is true. But they also like this is the this is the second time that New Zealand is going to capitulate to like to the demands of a violent imperialist in order to save their cheese market.

I mean, that's that's like a fair criticism of New Zealand. But as an American, I do feel like I don't really have much room to like talk shit on this. It is our fault that this is happening. Yeah, I just I'm not going to blame New Zealand for this. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. I will kind of blame them for this one. This is also France's fault.

Yeah. What they're able to do is they're able to. Well, okay, partially also. So like eight of the other people who are involved in this bombing like are just got out free. And so New Zealand is like, hey, will you guys like send us these people so we can try them in France? Like, no, absolutely not. In fact, we will impose sanctions on you. And what they're able to do is they're able to force New Zealand to like enter UN arbitration.

Even though again, they've already arrested and convicted these two guys, right? Because they obviously did it. And the UN and typical UN fashion goes, okay, so France is powerful and New Zealand isn't. So fuck them. And they negotiate a deal where like these two French officers are going to be like released and stationed in this like tiny island at the French control for three years. And so the French doesn't they don't even do that. They they pull these guys out in less than two years. So New Zealand is.

It doesn't go great. I mean, I don't know. I say it doesn't go great for them in the short term. They suffer a series of catastrophic defeats in the midterm. The French eventually get ordered to pay $8.1 million to Greenpeace, who use the money to make another boat called the Rainbow Warrior 2 and continue to like sale fleets to stop French nuclear testing. And I'm going to I'm going to read from Greenpeace's website. Quote, in 1995, the Rainbow Warrior 2 was boarded by French commandos as it let as it led further protest against nuclear testing. So they have their I'm Spartacus moments and, you know, eventually it takes a very, very long time.

But they win in 1996. France and China do like one last nuclear test and then sign the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. India and Pakistan do a pair of tests each 1989. But since then, no country has tested a nuclear weapon except North Korea, who does it all the time. But, you know, I don't know what Greenpeace is supposed to do about North Korea testing nuclear weapons. Yeah, I mean, look, you can't. And it is I will say this, like, from a real politic point of view, you know, there's an argument to be made that like, yeah, the kind of balance of nuclear power certainly provides a degree of protection to some countries. But my argument would be not having tested your weapons makes them more frightening.

If you're France and you're like, look, man, anyone who tests us, we don't know what's going to happen when we fire these things. We don't know if they're going to go to the right place. We have no idea what will happen when we fire our nukes. So come on and fuck with us. But literally anything could happen. That just seems like a better threat to me. I'm not going to advocate that one. But you know, I think that's the stance. I think that's the stance, you know, build increasingly large weapons and never test them so that we just know if shit goes down, we could all die. It doesn't involve nuclear testing, so I'm coming around to this position. Yeah, never test them. Just build increasingly large doomsday devices and be like, no one knows what will happen if we have a war. Why not?

Maybe none of them work and we all get to really think about what we've been doing. In all seriousness though, this is a massive victory. There are millions upon millions of people across the world and millions of people who have yet to be born who are going to live their lives free of the effect of radiation poisoning because people stood up and fought nuclear testing. And you know, this is the message that I want to sort of end Earth Day with, which is the people who are destroying this world are incredibly powerful and they are willing to kill protesters in order to keep their power and keep maiming the world further. But if you just keep fighting them, no matter what they throw at you, if you just every single time they hit you, if you just come back and keep fighting them again, you can win. And this is the way that it happens. All right. Well, that's a good, that's a nice note to end on. So everybody get out there and... Get nuked once and then everything's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Get nuked once and you'll be okay. Like that scientist who drank the plutonium. It's surprisingly easy to not die when you get exposed to unbelievable quantities of radiation.

That seems like a responsible note to end on. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Some people can't stand the rain, but at Vessie, we can't get enough of it. That's why we make 100% waterproof shoes that look and feel anything but. Imagine your favorite sneaker styles. Supercharged with waterproof tech. So whenever you're out to stay in, you're getting out for a walk with your pup and jumping in puddles like a kid again. Because with waterproof shoes, there's nothing stopping you.

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