BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 65 - Black Lives Matter

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

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It's Budpod 65, it's retirement age in the UK Budpod, I think, is that right? I think that sounds about right. Officially speaking, this podcast shouldn't continue beyond this week. But fortunately, we are a private limited company, and so we can continue as long as we want yes yeah we're a we're a freelance worker uh so like like sometimes you get you get those guys who like stay working as bricklayers even though they're like 71 or whatever right the hardiest men of all um how you been i'm all right i'm enjoying um the apocalypse it's now become a pandemic and a kind of american civil war race riot theme as well how about you yeah um it's just when i'd worried things were about to get boring.

Or better in any way. A new revolution has begun. Yeah. Yeah, man. And the images from America are really startling. Like, you know, there's footage of cars, like, on fire, like flames being blown out the windows, in a movie yeah like and bombed out buildings and you go whoa god where is this war zone like the the middle east is this vietnam footage it's like it's washington dc yesterday yeah yeah i saw a video from saint louis today

and it was like the gunfire sounded like i remember when you like when we were young and you watch the news and it'd be a broadcast from like bosnia or like baghdad or something like background gunfire and stuff it's fucking nuts it's nuts and it's um yeah it's it's very it's very like dictatorshipy as well, with Donald Trump hiding in a bunker and demanding that troops kill people and stuff. Yeah, it's like a near end-of-game mission in Red Alert, when you've got the bad guy president cornered in a barricaded white house and he's just he's just

posting over the airwaves his his his final insults yeah like his his final suicidal instructions to cause as much like damage and horror as possible his final suicidal instructions to cause as much like damage and horror as possible. It's unbelievable. I had no idea just how many state police there were. And they're like better outfitted than most countries. Armies. It's nuts,

isn't it? I mean, they've got like MRAP vehicles and stuff like gigantic armored police carriers and things. It's really ridiculous. I mean it's really ridiculous it's fucking nuts people sort of people bandy the word dystopian and authoritarian

around a lot but I think this is only a few times it seems appropriate it's crazy, it's like V for Vendetta over there it's all's crazy like it's like v for vendetta over there yeah it and it's all down to like really weird like there's a lot of good articles if you want to read up on the the militarization of the police it it's it's happened a little bit in other countries but

america is the main place where it's to do with like you know that whole thing where like oh if you don't spend your whole budget you lose it that happened and we have that here we have that here with um uh art centers regional art centers where they get a budgeted amount for comedy per season and so you just end up getting these random quite well-paid gigs in the middle of nowhere and they're just like yeah we just had to spend this money yeah like that but for cannons yeah and that's just like the the sheriff of of some town just just like well we've we don't need any more money so i guess we don't want to lose it we better buy an armored personnel carrier designed for a war in eastern europe it yeah i mean nuts they all look like like you say like graphic novel drawings of

fascist troops they look terrifying yeah yeah I mean yeah it's such a difference isn't it where like the UK has its issues but like in the UK you still get articles with people saying

like do we really need police with guns in the airport? Even in the airport where the terror alerts and so on are at their highest, people are still reluctant to even see it. They don't even like looking at it. Whereas over there, the whole thing looks like every day is just a version of Call of Duty where you have to go to walmart over there yeah like does every policeman need three tanks it's three too many tanks per policeman it's it's crazy and i think yeah i mean and also the crazy because of the amer of America's crazy separation of powers,

you have armed forces every step of the way. You have the city police, then you have the state police, which are closer to military grade, and then you have the national army, which are the actual army. So going down the chain you end up with with basically like three independently independent heavily armed forces coming down on you at once it's even it's even crazier because then you you've got like okay you've got like yeah metro police in a city then you've got state police then you've got highway patrol then you got national guard then the army

itself the permanent force as opposed to the national guard and then you've got National Guard then the Army itself, the permanent force as opposed to the National Guard and then you've got the Secret Service in DC, the FBI the ATF, the DEA Homeland Security, the Border People like it just seems like there's enormous competition

to see who can get the most acronyms together the border people were a the border people were a pop group in the 70s the border yes the border the border people they were they were all of some ambiguous ethnicity because they're all from various borders around the world they are they chinese are they kazakh it's hard to yeah it they could be either they were they were they Kazakh? it's hard to they could be either they were they were ambiguous also

in terms of they were androgynous they were very 80s late 70s early 80s like David Bowie just sort of everyone's got

very angular cheekbones and long narrow bodies it's very hard to tell the border people the border people great great tunes

but yeah it just it seems like america's this huge contest to see which acronym can have the most tanks and run people over with that's right it's crackers crackers yeah I mean yeah the the the freedom with which

like police just run people over it's incredible those are the other videos I mean like the video that started it where the police just murdered a guy and looked at the camera while they murdered him

is obviously bad enough but then yeah all the subsequent footage of them just driving cars through crowds and uh and incredible like in any in any other situation that'd be a terrorist attack yes someone driving a truck into p into pedestrians yes that is literally the kind of thing that the police in europe are on the lookout for in like german christmas markets and london bridge and stuff i mean if if, if any other time we just saw footage of a truck ploughing to people,

we'd all have America flag filters on our Facebook profiles for the next three weeks. Now it's just like you could easily miss that video among the millions of war footage coming out of American cities. Did you see the one with the fbi agent the undercover fbi guy uh no um basically the i think it was in minneapolis the police profile this this black guy and and cuff him and in the video the whole time he's like you dumb motherfuckers you've got no idea who i like i'm not who you're looking for look my ideas in my pocket my ideas in my pocket and eventually they look at his idea and it's obviously says fbi because he's an fbi agent and then one of them looks at it and he's like you can see he's thinking oh fuck and he shows

the other fat white cop and he's like uh-oh and they just immediately uncuff him and like he doesn't even he doesn't even like pause to stop calling them fucking morons and racists while they uncuff him. It's brilliant. And then he makes them get the... What did they arrest him for? Because he looks like a suspect because he's black and sort of tall, so that's enough.

They profiled him. He's like, I'm not who you're looking for. And they're like, well, you look like who we're looking for because they've got a call out on someone. And he makes the supervisor come over and he's like, I want your card, i want your card i want your card it's it's it's a hell of a video because it's the most it's actually this is kind of bud pod vaguely it's the least satisfying most satisfying thing because well i gotta tip my hat to you pierre for somehow finding a way to apply a Bud Pod format to possibly the end of the United States.

Yes, to a race war. Yeah, it's so satisfying. I'm going to make a note of this video. What would you say I should look for? FBI? Undercover FBI arrest Minneapolis. Probably. I think. I think. I think.

But yeah, it's so satisfying to see these guys get their comeuppance but it's really unsatisfying because A, it already happened. That's why you're watching the video. And B, they won't get any actual comeuppance, I don't think. It'll get blocked by them. Fat buzzcut boss.

Fat buzzcut, Fat Buzzcut of course was a very influential jazz jazz musician yes he was huge yeah Fat Buzzcut it's all pretty extraordinary one upside though is the mayor of Minneapolis is quite handsome

I don't know if you've noticed Pierre oh really? have you seen? yeah we've got a hunky mayor on our hands I'm always very confused American media makes it quite hard to figure out what their mayors actually do because all I know is that the mayor

has arguments with the chief of police and American mayors just seem to be sort of spokespeople for the people in their cities but they seem to always be in charge of they're always arguing over a budget

it's always like it's always like the mayor is arguing with the police chief on sort of unequal terms like the mayors seem really powerful they seem kind of like weirdly powerful but i i don't know and then sometimes you hear in america they elect their sheriffs which seems like a fucking terrible idea maybe it's a good idea i don't even know what's a da they elect they elect their judges yeah that's the craziest thing yeah like their judges so that judges have an incentive to sentence people to death because the people in their state like that and they want to be voted in as the death judge. Yeah, or even like... As fucking Judge

Dredd. It's insane. Or even just like some county judge where everyone, like 40% of people in the county go to the worshipful Jesus Church of Abortion Clinic bombings or whatever and so inevitably they all just club together and

vote for the youth pastor to be the new county court judge it just I would, oh man, yeah I don't know, I would not like to live maybe they like democracy a bit too much maybe they need to scale back the old democracy there

that's a funny thing about America is that they love freedom but they want the freedom to die because they don't have to pay taxes for healthcare. Like they're free to do that. They're free to just let people die. That is a kind of freedom. Yeah.

The freedom to never be taken care of at all. It's the free market applied to citizenship yeah and then just except for as we've said tank police where there's literally no demand for tank police but there's an enormous supply of tank police

going around squishing people with tanks and just generally firing machine guns in the air like they're in a fucking cowboy musical set in space or something it's just extraordinary the the disparity between the quality of their military hardware and the quality of the infrastructure that the hardware is currently rolling over and crushing into the dirt is unbelievable and it's like they're different countries yeah the quality of the hardware and the quality of the infrastructure but also the quality of the hardware and the kit and the quality of the people you mean the soldiers no the cops they're always these like gloopy

chinless dudes oh right yeah dressed like robocop and you go like why it's like i don't think you can scale an obstacle course why are you dressed like a a guy whose job is to kill criminals who are also aliens like some kind of futuristic death-dealing man. Whereas clearly the biggest struggle you have is dietary. I guess these are men who need guns to be able to dominate anyone physically. And then now there's been like... i'd you know everyone's everyone's trying to think of of things that they can do and i've looked at twitter and then there was a thing about

posting a black a black square and then people posted the black square in such a way that it obscured loads of actual updates so then that was uh that was like fucking it up and then someone was like ah but the people who started the black square that was just started by like Universal Studios or like a bunch of big rich companies and then someone was like yeah but it was started by I think women of

color executives within those companies so then I'm just gonna stay perfectly still that's my point I've donated some money the social media beast is very much like a big velociraptor

you just have to stay still let it move on its way and then try and do something with real effect yeah I've decided that what I'm going to do is stay perfectly still read up on stuff, retweet things that seem important and give some money to things that seem useful. And otherwise, don't get in with anything trending and just leave it.

Just do your part and stay quiet. And think for yourself and understand what you're talking about and and practice practice cynicism in all cases which is not to mean like to disbelieve accounts you'd rather not believe but to understand that everyone's sources are fallible and that you should not be lazy and finding out what's real what's true yeah and that's and what what sources are credible i mean i was talking to you about this earlier yesterday i was trying to find a somewhere to to donate and there've been plenty of links posted on social media stuff but it's a real it's a rabbit warren once you enter into that,

and it's so hard to tell where the money goes or what these individual charities do or what they serve. And so I was there for, I was looking at my computer for like five hours trying to figure out what a donation would go to or who needed a donation or eventually i settled on i found something that i feel comfortable with but it's hard it's hard and i don't think we should try and pretend that it isn't hard it's also difficult as well because like you say yeah you got to do the research but also if you live in the uk then it's like well

26 different states have a state of emergency and things so like that's at least 26 states if not all of the states that have these problems and so now that the the main charity the minneapolis freedom fund or minnesota freedom fund that everyone's donated they've got like millions of dollars so they're saying to people oh donate elsewhere but then you sort of go okay so it happened in minneapolis but minneapolis is kind of okay that's been flooded so where else and then yeah like you say you've got to spend a whole day doing it and then you're like well i live in the uk i should do something for the uk it's you know down something you know something domestic you don't want to be like we've talked before on this podcast about how irritating it can be

to find these big, like, people who want to seem like big campaigners, but they live in England and they're often, you know, just English or whatever from the UK and they just go on and on about US gun control. And it's got nothing to do with them.

It's as abstract as if they were just going on and on about German property rights and ukrainian inheritance law it's just it's just easier for them to get excited about than face up to the issues we have here so that's also something you got to bear in mind it's a bit absolute minefield of trying to do the right thing and get it right and it is a minefield. And the lack of patience with people who get it wrong. Or not even get it wrong, but do something slightly different to what the instigator wanted. Or the instant pile on the name-calling, the dragging out into the proverbial street of heretics. It's not good.

And if anything, it just discourages people from doing anything meaningful. Yeah. And like a lot of weird conspiracy stuff as well and stuff that does seem genuinely odd. Have you seen the videos of like the piles of bricks? Have you seen the videos of the piles of bricks? Yes, the piles of bricks have been laid too conveniently near the looters as if someone is secretly supplying them, right?

That someone wants these bricks to be thrown in the windows. Yeah, it's like a perfect little square pallet of bricks, but it's like in a central business district, like a CBD. So it's like, what like little square palette of bricks but it's like in like a like in a central business district like a cbd so it's like what's what's even made of bricks there like there's no construction going on according to the people in the video anyway they're like saying oh that's a that's a trap that's that's bait you know and i mean and then everyone is saying it's either anarchists or neo-naazis or the government or all three or some combination thereof. Or just very organized, you know, looters, you know, people actually taking the opportunity to. Well, that's because that's the real dangers.

People jumping onto a legitimate protest in order to what that's what's difficult is that cause real destruction well what's difficult is that anarchists and neo-nazis and the government have all at some point stated that it's it's a good idea for them to make protests turn into riots so that they can use violence so like all three groups at various points have secretly or openly admitted that this is something that they have done or want to do but then you also you've also just got the weekend warriors the yeah bored usually white kids who just want a bit of the old ultra violence man we are seeing it's finally they have cover we are seeing such an uptick in white people cosplaying as v for vendetta types i mean there should be a rule of these marches that if you turn up to a black lives matter march and you're white and you're

wearing welding goggles and like a little top hat. Or if you have a skateboard. Why do you have a skateboard? Are you pulling rad tricks between kettling operations? Are you popping sick ollies off of that personnel carrier? It's always just like

some kid called like uh tristan or cornelius or something and they've got like a purple streak in their hair and they do quickly go up and they go oh anarchy and they smash a window and then they listen to the sex pistols while they skateboard to a chauffeured car that drives them away and then the police shoot everyone else who's still there oh I saw a great little

I saw a great little clip of a lady a white lady who got her boyfriend to take a photo of her outside a smashed up phone shop like with her back to camera god like a sort of moody heroic photo of her stood outside a smashed up and she's just in like a gym gear oh i've seen this clip she's she's in like bum pants. Yeah.

And so people are going to be like, be like, wow, me and my shapely ass are looking at this looted storefront and it's very meaningful here on my wellness Instagram. Very, I'm very interested to, to find out which way she captions it. Does she go,

what, what are we doing? Our country's falling apart. Or does she go standing in solidarity with the protesters in my perfect little gym bard? You know, it's either way, it's a real conflict of interests. Yeah, I would be amused to see

if she was like a super super super right wing like up to that point it's just been a very much a sort of wellness aromatherapy style instagram feed and then sudden suddenly full alt right wing right wing right wing yoga is a very underserved sector I think what about people who like yoga but don't like where it's from Phil I think you'll find that right wing yoga is all the bending into ridiculous positions that they do

if you want to watch some right wingwing yoga you want to pop into parliament sometime i think you'll find that turn there's a little action there's actually a bit too much of the right wing yes i uh i would like to also see what hashtag she uses either way because is she taking a break to be an activist well not an activist but like a social media activist the most dangerous kind and so like will she she'll obviously use various activist hashtags

but will she also still use like hashtag strong not thin hashtag eat clean protest dirty yeah yeah yeah yeah hashtag core

core values I think that would straddle both elements of the post probably yes that's good core values or just really vaguely just like Monday motivation that's the only hashtag I'm free to take what I want from that

did you see the other one about the lady posing with a drill no yes I did did you see the other one about the lady posing with a drill no it's some there's some guy who's actually like boarding up a shop front with with you know a chipboard like he's covering the glass you know and

it's this lady in like little denim shorts posing with him with a drill like oh I'm helping this guy chip up his his storefront and it's a guy who really is huh really just like for a photo yeah so she she's posing and then a guy who is either her boyfriend or her i don't know assistant or bodyguard or whatever takes a photo and then she just like immediately and she's not even holding the drill in a place where it would make sense to put the drill like it's in the wrong angle it doesn't make any sense and she just poses and the guy takes the photo and she's like okay thanks very much they're wearing masks and stuff and then they just get into like it seems like too good to be true maybe

it's an amazing comedy sketch and i've fallen for it but the camera pans to the right and they both get into a really nice black mercedes and drive away oh my god it's incredible it's incredible god i mean it's it's amazing to to see the opportunities where we're like the opportunities that white people will create cosplay. Also, how pervasive influencer culture is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Needing to always make it about you. Even in the apocalypse, the influencer, like the cockroach, will adapt and find a way to survive.

Post-nuclear apocalypse influencer culture. Gosh, what would a post-apocalyptic influencer post about? Eat clean, train contaminated. Yes. Yes. Radiate Radiate beautiful Mindful scavenging Mindful scavenging Mindful scavenging is good I mean that sounds real mindful scavenging

yeah that would be like the mindfulness version of those people who take just about to go off food out of bins and eat it and say it's great freegans I guess after a nuclear apocalypse we'd all be free guns whether we fucking liked it or not that's true when when there is no economy everything's free monday motivation will be harder to to know about just because we won't know what day of the week it is anymore.

Yeah, it would have to be like Monday motivation. No, it's the motivation to find out when it will be Monday. That's quite funny. Mondays? Am I right? Monday? Am I right? Is it monday am i right about that am i right oh god that's funny oh man but this this whole thing is like we were talking about it earlier and it and it's it's i i dread to think the effect it has on people's mental health if they're actually you know directly affected and i'm not i mean i'm not and it's it's ruining my mind it doesn't help that we're all still trapped indoors but fucking hell it can't be good for people just to even see this stuff happening never mind being wrapped up in it

be good for people just to even see this stuff happening never mind being wrapped up in it yeah although maybe there's more clarity if you're actually there i think part of the the maddening element for us here in the uk is that you know especially if you're online there's so many sources to to look at our only experience of it is pieced together by what we've seen on TV and online. And those start to contradict and conflict. That's when the maddening happens. I'm sure it feels a lot more real in America. And you're powerless not only

in the same way that we're all powerless in the UK to really affect what goes on in America, but you're doubly powerless because it's like, well, you also have to stay in your flat. You couldn't be less of a useful cog in anything where it's like my job is to sit still and not sneeze or cough on anyone. The thing that struck me as weird from my point of view,

or strikes me as weird rather, is that the the american police um and i mean like obviously the uk's police force has a problem with racism and so does you know france netherlands germany every every country but america is the most egregious example so it's easiest to talk about is that as a as a as a south african under apartheid it was horrific but the state was honest and open in the sense that it was happy to admit it was being tremendously racist like the actual government and the police were like you can't do anything because you're black and we think you shouldn't be allowed to do things because we are racist and everyone went that's

terrible and they went well we disagree and that was the argument yeah there's a clarity to that isn't there whereas when you're the foundation of your country is the freedom of all and the equality of man of all men you created equal whatever um suddenly becomes a lot more cognitive dissonancy it's also it's also gaslighting because it's you have to watch the police behave in a way that is clearly racist and then they just go well i don't see what's racist about murdering all these black people and you have to go what it doesn't make it like it's it's gaslighting because it fucks with your head because you're like but i just saw you do that and they're like no it was for secret reasons or no you just uh don't appreciate the way we see things it would be so much easier if it was just

a case that they were just happy to go ah we're racist and you go right well let's you know work on that but instead it's all these like weird like propaganda kind of mindfuck arguments of oh it's just the way these things turn out oh you know they're they're legitimate concerns it's all this weird slippery little rhetoric yeah yeah and when the the operation to cover it all up is so complete yeah and like even if you make them all wear body in every level of yeah even if you make them all wear body cameras they're like oh we forgot to switch them on and you're like really but even even with this we can't get a clear fucking answer from you

people i mean and can you imagine all this all the stuff that goes down that isn't filmed on phones i mean this isn't it's not like all these killings are new it's just jesus christ people have phones to record them on now yeah and i mean in a way that's what makes it like it's horrible to think about what was happening even in like say the 90s in that sense but also like this guy was being filmed and he was just like oh i'm being filmed while i'm murdering this guy yeah Yeah, he looks probably psychopathic, the policeman that's been charged. Yeah, he's just looking around like,

ah, here I am doing a murder, and he doesn't even care that he's being filmed. I mean, can you imagine the impunity with which he's done other stuff? And he's got a whole record. And this is in a democratic city in a democratic state. Fucking hell, man.

Which is the crazy thing i mean if you start to think about that yeah what's it like in georgia i think it's a democratic state yeah yeah fucking hell man well i'm interested to see whether or not don Trump declares war on himself. Maybe that will happen. I mean, there's no two ways about it. Dominic Cummings has really lucked out. Fucking hell, that's true. I can't believe how much...

I mean, during the whole Durham scandal, he must have kept saying to Boris Johnson, something will come, something will happen. Don't worry about this. Just keep defending me. I know, look, look, I know 2020, okay? Something is going to happen. Yeah, yeah.

And he was right. He was right. Suddenly a trip up the M1 is not the most egregious thing a person can do. Do you think he was just sitting there going, look, if I know 2020 and if I know the American justice system in general, there's going to be another harrowing incident within between 48 and 72 hours. Yeah, my astrologist says we're well due

for another event in America. Yes. Yeah, well, it's like before the lockdown when there was like a school shooting every six days or something. It was like a mass shooting every few days or something. It was fucking like a mass shooting every few days. So it was just. Isn't there like technically a mass shooting every day in America?

Was it every day? Oh my God. I didn't even remember it bad enough. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, that's not counting gang-related crime.

Yeah, that's mass stuff. So you add those on top and it's more, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, Dominic Cummings going up the M1, and then also, have you seen that it's now illegal for you to sleep over at someone's house and fuck them, unless you are an escort? to sleep over at someone's house and fuck them, unless you are an escort.

Okay, so I saw the news story that said it's now illegal in the UK to have sex with someone outside of your household in their house, which it was already, wasn't it? It wasn't illegal. It wasn't actively illegal. It was a breach of the rules. Yes. The breach of the blanket rules. But now it is specifically illegal to be in someone's house.

But it's not illegal to have sex with them specifically. It's illegal to be in someone else's house. But then all the newspapers ran with is illegal to have sex with someone else. Yes, unless it's... Technically that's true, but that's not the law. It's illegal to be in someone else's house overnight unless it's for the purposes of work. Right, right, right. So the loophole is if they are a sex worker,

then you're okay. Yes. Yes. But that's not officially recognized employment, though, is it, in the UK? It is. It's not not illegal i think it's illegal to profit off the work of sex workers or to engage the services of one or something they've done that thing where they haven't fully they haven't fully criminalized the thing itself they've criminalized all the stuff around it i think i have to look it up okay i have to look

that up i can't i can't't... My head now is just social justice concerns in a big muddle, and it's so hot. I can't keep it all in my mind. Oh, God. You can't even really go to the pub or something, or

get it out of your system, the bad mood. That's the thing with lockdown. You're locked in the house with all the bad news. Jesus Christ. Oh man. I'm now finding it more relaxing to play Warzone and go around an abandoned Russian city killing people, getting gassed by a video game

in a 3D environment. That's my break now. You know where you stand, yeah. You know where you stand. Yeah. You know where you stand. When it comes to Call of Duty, I don't know where I am. I'm military. Oh my god.

I mentioned having a South African perspective. You're from a very multicultural country originally, Phil. Yeah. What was the... Yeah, I'm from very multicultural, very low violence. The police, I think the police are armed, but there isn't really the sort of military what's it called in America?

the military industrial complex? I'm not sure what that means specifically but we don't have it in Malaysia No, I don't have any kind of idea in my head of what the Malaysian police might be like Was there an ethnic component to it ever?

To the police. Yeah. Sometimes you find that in countries where you get problems. Because one particular ethnic group is more likely to join the police than another. That's right. I have a feeling that a lot of police are the malays are malay people from the malay group yeah but um but i'm sure i'm sure there are some non-malay i mean i've absolutely no idea basically i don't know much about police specifically in malaysia

i've never really had much interaction with them at all growing up that's generally a pretty good sign oh my my yeah actually i do i know a chinese um policeman in or ex-cop in malaysia so but that might be a thing about saba because um the state i'm from is is quite heavily Chinese compared to the other Malaysian states. So it'll probably reflect whichever state you're in. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, South African police, I would rather join the British army

and go straight to Afghanistan than have to be a South African policeman, man. Oh my God. The worst job in the world. Well, one of. Certainly not high on my list of alternative careers, now that comedy can't happen.

I'm feeling like in South Africa, the severity of the stuff the police are engaged in is like every day a rookie has to leave the scene of the crime to vomit is that the case there's a lot of uh of deaths three days away from retirement yeah my my cousin was the um he's a he's a psychiatrist psychologist psychiatrist i can never anyway he's he's a

mental health professional um and he was like the the the sort of in-house psych guy for the so the african police service in in in uh the province i'm from for a bit and he said it was it was like being in a war zone because they would get like they would lose a colleague like once a week you know but um really yeah but they're also that's the trouble is that they're losing a colleague a week so they are also um i mean it's it's not so much a white on black thing in south africa now because obviously the police are the government's almost entirely black the police are black but it's still like a power thing they're still south african police and now the government's almost entirely black, the police are black, but it's still like a power thing. There's still South African police and now the South African army doing the lockdown.

Unbelievably violent and like smashing people's property up and they're corrupt as well. What now, doing lockdown? Huh? Like doing lockdown, they're smashing people up. Yeah, yeah, because people are still like,

South Africa's lockdown is like enforced by the military and it's illegal to buy booze or cigarettes oh why i just decided that that would be part of the lockdown and you couldn't even leave your house to walk cigarettes you couldn't leave your house to walk your dog none of this fucking jogging thing they've only just let people leave the house to go for a jog from 6 a.m to 9 a.m that was last week i think like super harsh full military lockdown yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah army on the streets the whole deal no no messing around and then the president made a speech where he was like okay we're not gonna is it has there just been a lot of pent-up authority that's that's been building for ages since the end of apartheid i don't know i mean they deployed they deployed the army a few times because like when the gang the gang warfare gets

too big or when there's like particular areas get so violent that the police genuinely can't like out outgun them they just brought in the army and the army's like even more brutal so it's very like it's not new territory but yeah it's been absolutely crazy and then you'll never guess what phil some people in the government have relatives who make uh factory who have factories that make cigarettes and tobacco that have been uh selling for a lot more money in the black market so there's some sort of corruption to it as well well. Yeah, it sounds like a bit of a mess, really. But surely it doesn't suit them to be forced into operating on the black market. Surely if there's a corruption there between the alcohol and cigarette industries in South Africa,

they'd allow the sale of those items to continue. in South Africa, they'd allow the sale of those items to continue. Well, the idea is that if you're the only game in town and you're charging 10 times what you would for a packet, then not only are you making 10 times as much money from your existing customer base... Oh, I see. So the only cigarettes you can buy are South African-made ones? Yes, or the ones that are made in this particular factory, yeah.

And you'll just make more money because of corruption and da-da-da. And it's probably like, that's not the reason they did the ban, but it's like powerful people subverting it. Anyway, it's a whole mess. And they've been going around, because they made drinking illegal, because the lockdown is so harsh, loads of people are breaking it, especially by accident by just living in slums.

And so the army just come around and beat the fuck out of everyone and smash all their shops. And yeah, not been very good. It's all bad news everywhere, I'm afraid, listeners. Yes, yes. And I want to say the night is always darkest before the dawn but um it's been a really long night

i've said this many times over the last few years again and again well you know things can only get better and you realize oh no they can actually get worse yeah when i said things could only get better, I wasn't on fire. It's only now that I'm on fire that I truly appreciate. Yeah. Well, we've got to end on an optimistic note, Phil, so we can make some donation recommendations.

Just a couple. Yes, yes. After much looking about, I've donated to the NAACP, some donation recommendations just a couple yes yes after much looking about I've donated to the NAACP the NAACP in America who are an organisation that further

the black American cause in multiple ways and so I felt that was a that was a reliable depository depository repository for for my for my donation so i would i would recommend them yeah and uh in terms of stuff that's um within the uk the one that i've one that i've seen that's good that i'm uh uh i've given some money to is the Runnymede Trust. So the Runnymede Trust is like a sort of...

I don't know what you'd call it. It's not quite like a think tank. Basically, they publish papers and data and writing on race in the UK. It's like intelligence on the topic of race in the UK. Let me just look up how they describe themselves rather than me fucking riffing it. Because I think people are... Running Meat is the UK's leading independent race equality think tank. There you go.

There you go. And it is a registered charity. And it's independent and funded by donations. So there you go. You can give them some money. Give the NAACP NAACP some money and then maybe

you'll feel less bad about sitting in your house far away yes, I'm going to donate to them now I think it hasn't been the funniest podcast but it's been hopefully cathartic for you guys certainly for us I think it has been

yes and um yeah it it it would have felt uh uh flippant not to have spoken about what's going on um it would have felt strange to to doggedly focus on shit and piss felt strange to to doggedly focus on shit and piss it it would not that that isn't still going on of course not that that isn't still going on but no we'd like i have a feeling we'll have more opportunities to talk about in the future i don't think that's going away anytime soon we'd like to reassure our regular listeners that shitting and pissing is still happening all over the world don't worry about that alright stay safe out there guys do some reading up on the issues do some research and donate some money

thanks for listening guys bye bye bye