Chapo Trap House - 870 - Holiday in Cambodia feat. Brendan James & Noah Kulwin (9/23/24)

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

BLOWBACK’s Brendan & Noah return to the show. We start off today’s show discussing Israel’s massive escalation into Lebanon, and Brendan & Noah point out the many parallels between America’s current position and the various atrocities and mis-adventures they’ve chronicled on Blowback over the seasons. Plus much more on Blowback’s current season focused on Cambodia, and the many crimes, colorful characters, and surprising sources of magnanimity they’ve uncovered through their show. Find all things Blowback at https://blowback.show/ Tickets on sale for our Mon. Nov. 4 show in Los Angeles tomorrow for Patreon subscribers. Sales for No Pasaran! Matt Christman’s Spanish Civil War start Oct. 1 at chapotraphouse.store.

All I wanna do is hit the drum. All I wanna do is hit the drum. Hello, friends. It's Monday, September 23rd, and Chopo is back at it again. Felix and I are joined today by the Blowback Boys, of course. It's Noah and Brendan with it out with a new season of blowback and gentlemen I just gotta say it's great to have you on the show today this Monday because like you know you know we're talking about the this most recent season of blowback but it must be great for you guys to like already be gathering material on what surely will

be season 12 of blowback this latest war in Lebanon. Yeah, it's a already uncontrollable and horrible war sucking in a Neutral country next door. I'm talking about the season. We just did not Not anything else that is happening as we speak and as we record. Yeah, somehow this always happens The killing fields are currently being planted

By isn't it funny that Joe Biden is president right now? Yeah, I just want to say I just want to say No, Joe Biden does not have an advanced degree in international relation Fucking good. Yeah, I Is just that fucking good. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is funny to remind you that technically he is still the president. And I just like I want to discuss just two news, news pieces from over the weekend that I think put into context or at least frame, you know, just like the shocking escalation of Israel's expansion of their killing fields now into southern Lebanon. Hundreds dead, probably thousands wounded, and you know, every school, hospital, and

house in southern Lebanon and Beirut now labeled missile parking zone. But I'm turning to, of course, official mouthpiece. Barack Ravid writing in Axios over the weekend, headline, US fears war in Lebanon, but hopes Israeli attacks push Hezbollah to a deal. It says here why it matters. Israel and the US are both looking for ways to decouple Hezbollah from Hamas. Despite months of diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration, Hezbollah hasn't agreed to any deal that would stop the current fighting with Israel before

there is a ceasefire in Gaza. And then scrolling down here, really the money graph from this article here is labeled under the big picture. Israeli officials said their increasing attacks against Hezbollah are not intended to lead to war, but are an attempt to reach de-escalation through escalation. And like I feel like I said, I think you put it rightly, because like whether you're talking about, you know, the last year of what's been going on in Gaza and now the West Bank, and now, you know, like the expansion of Israel's Laban's realm into

southern Lebanon, if you believe that Joe Biden has been like actively trying to achieve a ceasefire or de-escalate tensions in the Middle East over the last year. If you actually believe that that's what their policy is, then this is the single most incompetent and effective US presidential administration, possibly in American history. Yeah, on the most basic level, you are trying to prevent escalation, you're you were ostensibly trying to prevent

escalation, or, you know, trying to prevent escalation or the expansion of a conflict, or just in general, you're like, okay, calm down with blowing up hospitals or preschools. Do you then say, it is unthinkable that we will ever stop giving you weapons at cost. Not just giving you weapons, but basically at cost, at a lower price, basically paying you to buy these weapons. We will never stop doing that. That is, if they are doing both things, they are giving a level of military and diplomatic cover that

no other state in the world gets, and this is their attempt to bring the temperature down, then who would you even compare them to? Herbert Hoover? One comparison, not to crowbar our promotion here into serious stuff too much, but one comparison I remember is that UN relief chief, this was the beginning of this year, compared the situation that's being unleashed to the Khmer Rouge. He said he started his career off in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, which we cover this season, and that the only thing he's seen that equals the level of carnage and the nature of all-encompassing violence is what's going on in Gaza. And you add to that what happened, as I made reference to at the top of the show, that

the Nixon administration with Kissinger driving it wanted to go into Cambodia to quote-unquote end the war in Vietnam by expanding it and that's obviously seems to be the same sort of Sincere or cynical logic being offered by Israel now is well We're doing this in Lebanon to wrap everything up if anything Why why are you insisting that we're spreading things where we're obviously trying to de-escalate by escalating. And there's also the fact that the Cambodia operation and the idea of widening the war to end the Vietnam War was a way for Nixon to end the war without, as he saw it, losing it and thereby dinging his credibility and obviously burying him for reelection because I'm not going to be the first president to lose a war and all that.

Um, and you know, similar to what's going on with Israel and Lebanon, Israel has not won the war in Gaza. They are, you know, like they've not got Sinwar. They've not completed their objectives. Uh, they've not ended Hamas and it doesn't appear that that's even a possibility. And so, you know, Netanyahu and the current political regime and the public's willing to go along with it, they've now, you know, sort of widened the aperture of the conflict.

And I think that they're, you know, similar to, you know, perhaps the story of our season. They are, yeah, looking to sustain this war and thereby sustain their domestic political credibility so that nobody has to look around and realize how fucked it all is. And I just read that we're sending more troops to the region. Yeah. This is already with people who have spotted French Raffaels, France's main 4.5th generation multi-role fighter over Lebanon in the last month. So it's just a fucking powder keg of Western nations

already in the area. I mean, it just, what fucking message does it send when you just immediately fucking send more US troops over? Besides, this is great, keep doing it. Even just for the most cynical angle of like, okay, maybe they obviously don't care about this on moral or humanitarian grounds, but just for the purposes of Kamala's election, they think it would be bad for a big regional war to kick off.

Well, then like why go, okay, well, you know what got your back no matter what. I mean, they're legitimately afraid that if Hezbollah escalates or matches Israel's escalation is a better way to put it that, you know, there may need to use those truths. The Israeli forces are so fucked right now in terms of fatigue and just how they go through. I mean, I mean, it's not to say that like, like, oh, Israel's like totally incompetent and weak or whatever, but just that, you know, they've spent a year of sustained offensive operations and the idea of like all

of a sudden adding a Northern front to that, like it's part of what makes this new cycle of violence. Like, so, uh, I mean, I, you know, one way to look at it is that it's really senseless and horrible. And it's also, I think ultimately, like I, I just don't believe. And it's really hard to imagine that Israel even has the resources to escalate it further, um, because there's so stretched then. Yeah. I mean, well, the way that they have conducted, at least the war in Gaza is it is a military equivalent of like throwing a tantrum. Yeah.

The worst aspect of it, of course, being that like, when you throw a tantrum with the military with a very advanced Air Force and like rocket guided rocket artillery, you kill tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people. tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, but it is not the marker of like someone who is completing their stated objectives here. You don't have to be like a blind triumphalist to think that like the expansion of the northern front where already like already tons of Israelis over the past year have been fucking fleeing would be ruinous, not just for like a strained military where they're so hard up that they're now recruiting like ultra orthodox guys for a new spitting division. But just like,

but like an Israeli economy that's in Taliespin. It's in fucking Taliespin. Oh, there was an amazing report from the Israeli Federal Reserve, or their equivalent, like their central bank, that was basically saying, look, if we don't embark on a crazy program of budget cuts as soon as this is over,

and by the way, we're expecting things to peter out over the next year is like an assumption guiding Israeli economists. But like, you know, which I find amusing, but you know, they're saying like, you know, even in those conditions, they have to do like radical austerity to fix their shit. And that like the contractions are like the conditions

are in place for when they're done with their state of military exception for just a straight up financial crisis. I don't think it's like out of the question that like, okay, whenever things calm down enough for there to be these massive cuts and like brutal austerity, well, you can bet on these things now. I would bet on there being like just on the outside, a wild card bet. One of those, like a parlay bet in Israeli civil war.

They have all the makings of it right now. Well, and also, I mean, the moment where I think everyone, the intake of breath, you know, you could hear it down the block was when they hit Iran. And then Iran, you know, which the radical minds which the radical minds sort of have a go at Iran and has a blow for how restrained they've been and relatively conservative they've been. Iran obviously telegraphed her response and said, okay, that's it. We're done now. Let's get back to normal.

And so it's obvious that no one has taken the bait so far. Part of the tantrum, Israel's tantrum, is that they obviously want someone to. And Lebanon is the next one on the menu, obviously. But the US, I mean, it's going into an election with this massive policy failure of not even being able, I mean, Blinken's probably not over there for his health. I think they wanted a deal.

And it's just embarrassing the level of, of, of diplomatic and political humiliation that's been visited on them. Well, and there's now this like recurring thing about how like the Biden people, like there's an article in foreign affairs by Jessica Matthews, who's like a, you know, sort of a kind of like blob resident. And it's like's like about how like diplomacy or power without hegemony is the title of it. And it's all about how Biden people have been doing diplomacy. And that's been the centerpiece of all this stuff, diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. And so there is also like, like this kind of like perverse thing where Brendan, like

what you're describing is like this, like, you know, like black pit of anti diplomacy going on, like just complete failure. But because that's just because, you know, just because the Biden people have leaned on it, they're getting credit for making it the centerpiece of their strategy. Yeah, while they while they explode every possible moment of diplomacy on Ukraine and make sure that no one even touches the beginnings of a deal in Ukraine, we're pursuing words and West Wing style artful diplomacy in this other area of the world where we actually have leverage. The most alarming thing for the future of all

this is that I think at least in Israel and probably in the American State Department, there is an acknowledged idea that the only way forward for Israel to continue as a political entity in its current form is for it to be at a low to medium intensity conflict. Yes. Just in perpetuity. For it to be about this level for the next 30 years so they don't ever have to institute a brutal austerity regime or so that American troops and American aircraft carrier groups never have to leave so that they get the exact amount of help that they need to perpetuate this

and they never have to deal with the economic consequences. And Felix, what you were describing is what defenders of the Biden administration or the US State Department would refer to as regional stability. And I think when we're trying to assess the motivations here, you always have to, you run into like the stated what are the stated reasons what versus what what you interpret as the actual reasons because looking just

like if you have eyes at all, if you have any awareness, you would have to conclude that the stated reasons are not the motivation behind this policy. And you know, if you were critical of the Biden administration or Kamala Harris's candidacy for president, you are often entreated by I don't know, like, Democrat or liberal defenders, that there must be some unstated reason, there must be something that accounts for what for the policy, the results of the policy that we're seeing, which is just unrestrained bloodshed, which is genocide. And like the response to that is like, I guess it's like, I can't psychoanalyze the people in power.

I mean, if I did, I think it's because they're they're monsters. But I mean, if that's if that's too simple for you, then like, what you see is the policy, the intent of whatever the motivations and policy that you'd like imagine is taking place. What you're seeing in Gaza and now in Lebanon, that is the policy. And our policy, the policy of the United States government is to support that. The policy of the United States government is to support our client state and its attempts to colonize land and exterminate the people on it that they want. And like I, you know, I'll talk about like, you know, with when

Barack Ravid writes about, we to de-escalate through escalation Well, you know in the Israeli press in herets and there you know English, you know, the in the English language Israeli press There's a headline just from the other day Israeli minister claims Lebanon cannot be defined as a state IDF should establish buffer zone inside its territory. So I mean, like this is a client state, this is like a colonial project seeking to expand its borders through violence and extermination. And I'd add something to that, like that guy, the men, the minister who said that, you know, he doesn't have like a big portfolio, whatever, at least on this stuff. But there were also plans that like Israeli ministers were kicking out in like

attempts to, you know, come up with like mass resettlement of people Palestinians in Gaza you know in Egypt and the Jordan wherever the fuck they thought they could fit them and again you know similar to this minister's plan like even if that doesn't actually come to pass even if Israel doesn't actively pursue a state campaign to or succeed in trying to you know know, like make, you know, annex essentially or make Lebanon a protectorate of Israel or whatever the hell. I think what it does sort of point to though is, you know, the mindset of what the Israeli government wants. When people ask like, what is the Israeli seeking to achieve in terms of like, oh, we're trying to get, you know, we're trying to decouple Hezbollah from this or whatever. I think that it also sort of, I mean, we're trying to get, you know, we're trying to decouple Hezbollah from this or whatever.

I think that it also sort of I mean, at least to me, Israel, right? It's yes, exactly. It's what they want. Like it's it's you just you can't deny that this is their this is their head. Cannon is the idea that like, you know, Lebanon should be this vassal state, even if they actively can't make it happen. And, you know, the other thing that like the people, the defenders of the Biden administration and the status quo that believe that they are honestly trying as hard as possible to bring peace and stability to the region.

They're just like, well, OK, if it's the U.S. policy to just like obliterate Palestine and kill as many Palestinians as possible. But how come so many of them are still alive? And like, I think the response to that is like well give them another I mean, yeah I mean like what six percent now more tomorrow Yeah, and the answer is like our policy is to It's just whether we like it or not is really like beside the point our policy is that we're willing to countenance the death of however many Palestinians or Lebanese people it takes to achieve first for Israel to

You know continue to be like, to exert dominance over a strategically important region. I've been thinking about this. I haven't followed it as much as you guys have in the gory details every day of quotes from this minister and that minister and all that. But ultimately, we are in that era of the American empire. It's on its decline. China's approaching the world mostly through business deals, Belt and Road.

They have two overseas military bases. We have almost 750. The deficit is obvious in what works and what doesn't. I wondered, you know, the Americans, we talk about the Yankee cowboy war, you know, the book by Carl Ogosby, which is a must read and listeners out there would probably know it a bit. I don't think the empire usually loves to get involved in a completely endless war. They like the goods to flow, they like the commodities to flow.

Bloodshed is dictated by essentially the markets and you go as far as they dictate. Israel is operating on a completely different logic, which is the logic of an ethno-state at the end of its ability to pretend it's seeking anything other than greater Israel. And why the Americans... Yeah, it's not that it's a...

It cannot continue to pretend that it's just a liberal democracy like... Correct. Whereas the Americans are, as Ned Beatty says in Network, they're still trying to break out their charts and run intake and outtake and inputs and outputs. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price, cost, probabilities of their transactions and investments just

like we do. But they have this client. So why would they really let, why wouldn't they cut off the aid? Why wouldn't they let this happen? And I think the only real explanation since they are operating from a sick but still logical place compared to Israel, a cold logic, is that Israel is one of the last few places where we have true and as of now unquestioned loyalty from a client state. And that is fading in every other part of the globe.

So we have to give our few remaining stalwart allies everything they want. Even that's kind of a, you know. And that's not even totally true. Exactly, that's what I was about to say. I agree with you, but it's not true. These hoes ain't loyal anymore. They are not loyal. I mean, Israel.

They stole nukes from us. I mean, the idea, the stuff for them. There's endless instances of like espionage committed by Israel against America. Of course. Israel, they haven't, there's not been a lot There's endless instances of espionage committed by Israel against America. Of course. Israel, there's not been a lot of Chinese-Israeli weapons exchanges in the last 20 years, obviously, but a lot of China's most foundational air-to-air ordinances are directly licensed Chinese production.

That's not even to get into their dealings with Russia, which are extensive. I don't know. I think with this stuff, just the thing that everyone automatically goes to when this stuff comes up, right? The thing that you say when you are nervous of being called anti-Semitic, which is like Israel is just a client state and this is an imperial, we control them and not vice versa. It just does not tell the full story at this point.

I think for the most part you can explain a lot of this with, yes, the crackpot, but cold logic of an empire. And I think you're right that it is mostly like they see it as the most unquestionable, you know, unquestioning ally, even if that's not totally the case throughout history. But at this point, I just don't think you could ignore the fact, the pervasiveness of just like this is an ideal, just Jewish racial supremacy as an ideology. Yeah. That's what I mean is I think the desperate logic they're clinging to is sent calm is in the Middle East.

You know, we need to hang on to every bit of influence we have there. But ironically enough, that gives Israel even more license to fuck American policy and its its messengers again and again and again and of course, you know, I Think they're the sunk cost idea behind it is well, they'll go to Russia if we if we stop bankrolling them Which is probably true and let them well exactly crawling them, which is probably true. And let them. Well, exactly.

I mean, it's, it'd be there. I can't even take Kiev. Yeah. They can't even fucking take Kiev. They're going to, okay. They're going to, they're going to replace, they are going to be able to at cost fulfill all the needs of Israeli's military, of Israel's military.

I don't think so. Yeah. If they, if that's the case, if that's the case, if it's like everyone will get the worst thing possible will happen no matter what. Why don't we sell fucking munitions to Russia in that case? Yeah. Under the same thing. I mean, it will create a bunch of fucking jobs in Missouri. Why not? Why not? There is one other worthwhile thing put to point out that is a real reason why Israel cannot just be disembedded in a sense, or cut loose, which is that it's really part of the surveillance architecture of the whole world. Aside from the fact that Israel is bound up at the highest stratum of like international capital. Um, it's also a really important part of five eyes and these sorts of other, like

broad intelligence sharing and surveillance networks, um, that are sort of considered like the crown jewels of, because like basically, right? Like the CIA is not particularly good at, at getting good intelligence, but SIGINT signals intelligence. That's the per that's the remit of the NSA, which about which the journalist James Bamford, who's extremely critical of Israel has written a lot about how Israel has sabotaged that. But our collaboration with Israel and our reliance on them and their reliance on us

and to participate in that network is also one of these sorts of like ugly secret facts that guides a lot of like the, you know, when we think of like, well, I have, we have to go along with it. Like, that's also probably a part of, you know, that's like part of what's flickering in Jake Sullivan's mind when he makes that calculation. Israel is the only member of Five Eyes that has committed espionage against America on the level that it has. No one else in Five Eyes has fucking done that. Among the Five Eyes nations, Israel is referred to as Short Eyes. Just one more thing on that is, because I agree with you, Felix.

I was trying to spell out the faltering justifications that I think policy makers in America are saying to each other. But I agree with you that I know people don't want to feel like they're slipping into, you know, tropes or whatever when they say like, maybe it isn't just America dictating its interest to Israel and they're a complete loyal outpost of Western imperialism. I don't think that's persuasive at this point. Yeah. I don't think that's persuasive at all. The history of espionage, the history of actual, I mean, it's a long distant memory, but usually Republican administrations forcing Israel to stop doing things that it didn't like.

Our interests differ all the time. I sometimes wonder if the term puppet should be retired in general, because they're really, it's hard to find an actual example of a puppet, but Israel is not a good example of a puppet. Yeah, with America,

Noah brought up like the five by stuff and like how unusual it is for a five by state to behave as Israel has, especially in the last 20 years, just with regards to their operations in America. Israel is also they more so than even the UK get to receive like American military technology that previously by like edict of like the president of the DOD of Congress cannot be exported. They get to do like they're famously a member of the F-35 program. They were able to like fuck with the technology of the F-35 program. They were able to like fuck with the technology of the F-35 in a way that no one else can. We famously sell them a lot of like our military

technology from like, you know, jets to munitions to just everything. And they'll like fuck with it. They'll be fucked with the technology in a way that like no one else is allowed to. Fuck with the levels on the radio. Fuck with the pre programs. Yeah, the way you're talking about it makes it sound like the Jewish magic from Wolfenstein. And and and just so just in case for those tender listeners out there who don't want to do tropes. I mean, there's plenty of other clients who are like this, you know I mean when we did our season about Cuba, you know that the Cuban right-wingers JFK was eventually at war with them

You know, I'm a do you know was in our season Cambodia when we install the the nutty Mystic who had a stroke and then cried all the time who was at the head of the government in Phnom Penh He was doing pogroms against ethnic Vietnamese and America didn't want him to do it because they wanted him to play nice with the South Vietnamese government. But then there was just war between the South Vietnamese client state we had and the Cambodian client state we had. So it happens all the time. Israel is just another example of why I don't think it's helpful to always say these are

stalwart automatons that are just doing America's bidding. To Felix's point about how analysis of this, like, of just like a patron and a client sort of falls short. I mean, I guess if I could provide some sort of psychoanalysis here of the American government and American culture. I think about a comment, a speech, a public speech given recently by the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro. And in it he said that like, you know, in responding to what we've been seeing in Gaza, he said that the Western middle classes have once again opened up the door for Hitler. And I just think it's just like with Israel, we have this like one giant exception carved out through which the West Can continue to like relive and project our fantasies about you know?

Genocidal violence and subjugation and racial hierarchy But with the massive exception that like it's okay because we're protecting Jewish people from a second Holocaust And I just like I think like Israel is just like our little Hitler It's our little Hitler on the shelf and we've let it in the house. Well, no, it's you know, yeah. Speaking of Latin American leaders saying no, it wasn't. Gustavo Arevalo, the father of the current or sorry, Juan Jose Arevalo, excuse me, who is the father of the current, the recently elected Guatemalan leader.

What did he say? What he said was that sometimes i think since nineteen forty five it was actually hitler who won like i'm paraphrasing it early castro is a bit that that's what he said but the legacy of american foreign policy is one in which the uh... essentially the nazis it's what was what's been said you know the fourth right policy uh... in the third world

that america sponsors uh... and and you know i guess in in Israel's case, whatever world Israel's in. So yeah, it's similar, similar remark. How would NATO look different if it was, if the third right had worn out? That's a good point. Yeah, I mean, it is look like to that point, like, what's the big, what's the second biggest standing army in NATO after the U? Turkey. You know, like the literal model for Hitler in many respects, but also like these days, you know,

probably one of the like most unpleasant like governments in that part of the world. In light of that, I do want to turn to one more news piece from this week. And of course, Brendan, I was thinking about this in regards to an op-ed you guys feature in this great season of blowback. This is from the New York Times from August 1990. Headline, Pol Pot, brutal. Yes, but no mass murderer. And I just think about that in light of this is a political article titled Biden's foreign policy goal slip as clock ticks. Oh, good.

Biden's top foreign policy priority right now is a Gaza ceasefire deal. That's not looking likely. And then it begins just by Jonathan Lemire. And it begins in one of his final moments on the global stage. President Joe Biden this week will aim to burnish his legacy and bolster Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign. But his top foreign policy goal may be slipping away. Negotiations over a ceasefire in the Israel Hamas war had already stalled

before hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies detonated across Lebanon and Syria last week, killing more than 20 people and injuring more than 3000 in a moment of audacious trade craft targeting Hama as Bala militants. That triggered an exchange of rockets between Israel and Lebanon and increased fears of an expanded conflict. President Biden has done everything he could to prevent a regional war in the Middle East. He has stood firm by Israel and his deterrence has helped prevent an escalation, said Senator Chris Kroons of Delaware, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and has perhaps the closest relationship with Biden of any senator.

But the dynamics between Israel and Hezbollah have gotten harder and harder, and I'm concerned. Okay. Yeah. I mean, this, those $10 words just spilling out from the first sentence is all the, you just have to, it's all you can do to puff up what we've described in the first half of the show, you know, into describing it as something else and mask what it really is. I mean, the Pol Pot op-ed that you quoted, at that point, the United States was still allied with the Khmer Rouge. So there just had to be this giant euphemism coating every single bit of coverage of what had happened under them. And of course, 30 years later, you read it out loud and it's atrocious and I think something similar will happen

for more people than just the listeners of this show and others when this stuff is read out in 30 years from our current moment. One thing that I think people in the near future will recognize and laugh at people now for is the very obvious technique by Israel over the last 30, 30 odd years, where every, every conflict at the time, they have a set of goals that are like, those are their, those are their shoot for the moon goals.

Whether it's like, you know, expanding settlements in the West bank or now, like a Liebensraum in, uh, South Lebanon, uh, where during, during the conflict, uh, those are, those are the terms that America gets to say, okay, that's like, you can't do that. That's just crazy. You can't do that. But by the time the next conflict starts, it's all red. That's already part of the package that it always happened like that, that they were always able to up the ante in such a way. And I mean, I wouldn't really say Rook, the American security state, but in such

a sense that it is like deleterious to running the American Empire the best way that it could be run, probably. Yeah, it's not strategic. I mean, weapons manufacturers and the DOD, you know, growth on the DOD that they make up, that's a different story. It's part of it. You know, that Yankee cowboy framing, there's divides in the ruling class. And I do think that you see people mass resigning because of Gaza and the people who stay probably don't want this war to still be going on in their personal view. Their job is to go up in defense.

There's an election in like two months. Yeah. There's an election in two months. It's not advantageous, but it's part of the desperation of it. And Israel's desperate for a completely separate reason Which is I think they think this is their last and hopefully they're they're right in the in the long long game That this is their last chance Before they are completely, you know

drummed out of any kind of legitimate geopolitical club and And I don't know if that's going to happen, but I, you get the feeling that they're thinking smash and grab while we can, cause this is it, which makes it all the, but it's, it's also, it's also that like, there's the smash and grab component, that's like how the leadership thinks, but like there is this like rising current that legitimately want, you know, like, like inmates are coming, are starting to run the asylum in a lot of ways.

Within Israel though. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But not without Israel. No, no, no, no, no. That's what I'm saying is the rest of the world, I think they're spending negative points in whatever they still had as a legitimate state. And that within Israel, it's going to become even more

just like a sick freak show, illegitimate pariah state than it already was and they're almost aware of that so they're just saying fuck it let's go to Lebanon we'll do it live you know with our last shot they're inviting they're inviting the their torture rapists on like their morning TV shows but they don't feel that it's their last the serial rapists like they don't feel that it's their like the smash and grab component. Like they think it's like smash and stay. The last time they went to war in Lebanon, they stayed for 20 years. You know, like.

Well, 2006, you know. 1982 to 24 years. Sorry. I'm talking about 80, sorry, 82 to 2000 is what I meant. Right. But yeah, no, I know what you mean that they hope it can go on forever, but I think there must be some awareness that they're not gonna come out of this

the way they came into it. I think Brendan is right in the sense that, I think among the military and the more, we won't say normal, but like. Strategic. Right, yeah, the guys in Israel who are, who at least have like the presence of mind to, you know, know that this, this in its current form is kind of fucking doomed. I think those guys are aware that like, this

is really the last generation where they get any say. The shin bed guys. Yeah, the shin bed guys. All the, right, the cold calculating element of the Israeli security state. This is the last element, the last generation where they get a say in where things go. And everyone after them is either like a fucking ultra orthodox psycho or a Russian mobster or fucking whatever.

And so, so like for, I don't know, Israel is as it's been portrayed in the West, this kind of is the last hurrah. And like whatever the guys who are going to inherit the asylum after these guys are gone, they obviously think like the good times will never happen. Like, yeah, exactly. They're insane. Yeah, but, you know, good fucking luck at the same time. Well, that's where I agree. I agree 100 percent.

Is that like I think that these guys are going to inherit like a moldy peach, more or less like they're going to have this this really like shitty decrepit thing. All of like, I mean, like there's a real, I mean, you hear a lot of rumors is what I'll say. I think that like the hard fact on this stuff has not really come out, but I have a lot of good like firsthand,

like anecdotes I would call them about like people moving money out of bank accounts into European and American bank accounts. People complaining of like longer waits for doctor times in Israeli hospitals because of the sense, the feeling or the fear, the anxiety, which is always good to have in a thriving modern industrialized country, is that their doctors are leaving. This is by the way, South Africa vibes to me, so to speak. 100%.

There's a real people, the one difference is that like Israel is escalated so violently and so quickly and so rapidly that like what took essentially years across an international cultural hegemony and you know, like a, you know, a fairly coordinated resistance like Israel is, is like putting the shotgun in its mouth, you know, in this situation. Yeah. Well, that is why I think like the the first of the sort of weird half load ammunition half stealth cruise missile

From Yemen, but now it's more importantly the short-range ballistic missile that was shot from Yemen and landed near Ben-Gurion Airport why those are such gigantic fucking deals and why I kind of think that they have received like the minimal amount of coverage you can probably give them in western media, especially American media, is because like for an economy that's already in talisman and where, you know, as Noah said, the money is probably already moving out of and the professionals are leaving, is probably already moving out of and the professionals are leaving when they can no longer guarantee safe skies over Tel Aviv because that's kind of, that was part of the deal of this whole arrangement of the last 25 years.

We're going to do horrible third Reich, Einsatzgruppen shit all over, but you, like you in Tel Aviv, you, the doctor, you, the venture capitalist, you, the fucking whatever, it will not touch you. Yeah, this is the Iron Dome. This is like what Iron Dome symbolizes and actually does, you know, in theory. Like that's what that's all about. Ballistic missiles, not even to mention just, you know,

whatever 80 year old unguided rockets, they're not gonna touch you. When you can no longer guarantee that, there is gonna be just an absurd amount of fucking brain drain. And it's happening already. And you know, the South Africa comparison, one of the factors that sped up the crumbling of that system was, of course, that South Africa was actively involved in a war over its borders with Angola and Namibia. And the defeats in that war were part of the crack up back home. So it's just they're playing so far that the decision makers,

they are playing into a lot of other very similar stories that end badly for the person carrying this shit out. Well, in terms of playing the hits, I did want to get to the money shot of this political article. Oh, sorry. Just a paragraph here. It says, Biden's most trusted aides, CIA Director William Burns, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have made a deal their top focus. The president recently convened a meeting in the Situation Room with his national security officials and urged them to ignore recent setbacks and continue to work with both sides and third party negotiators to find an agreement.

He after drinking 15 shots, my top focus is driving home negotiators to find an agreement. Keep fucking trying is how Biden recently ended a meeting with the officials, according to one of the participants. Can you say that? This is how you know, you know with the officials, according to one of the participants. Can he say that? This is how you know they're serious about it, is that Biden is breaking out the curse words.

And I think actually if they really want to get a deal done, Biden should drop the C word. I actually, I disagree, Will. I think he needs to say, ho ho da buh buh again. Ho ho da buh buh. I think that that is what we, the situation, I think that if Hezbollah and Hamas heard that, I think that that is what we the situate. Like I think that if his Bola and Hamas heard that, I think

Sinwar would surrender if they broadcast to what a bubble instead of like, you know, the moezin or whatever. That's the Ponty pool verbal virus that'll make everyone's minds unravel. I think he needs to do what Charlie Sheen did when he was, when Denise Richards caught him viewing, uh, CP and he needs to go on the dumbest N word in the world. should never be a literal battlefield.

A little battle guy. A little battlefield. A little battlefield, god forbid. Well, you know, good thing that that guy's not president. I mean, like, this is the current present nightmare, but of course, you know, blowback season five is about some nightmares of the past. And you mentioned this, this current season is about Cambodia. And I did want to ask you about some of the specifics from the story you guys are telling this season of the show. But before I do, I got to say from the first episode, Brendan, you alluded to it earlier in the program. But this is in terms of something I didn't know. But the details about

the Lan Nal government, the American-backed Cambodian government is truly like this is the most insane like mafia government that like a US-backed dictator that I've had the details about this are incredible and my favorite one was the the the the official in the government whose office whose government office was filled with miniature furniture to make himself look bigger. And then there was the other simple... His office was a doll's house to make himself look large. Yeah.

It's like when George Senior in Arrested Development is having the tea party and he keeps looking over and talking to them when Michael's visiting. I think people were all weirded out by it. Yeah. That's in... For people who don't think that's true, that's in William Shaw Cross's book, Sideshow. That's a great book on Cambodia. And then the other government minister, who ordered a, he put a cat on his head

and ordered a soldier to shoot the cat off his head. Of course, the cat just jumped away immediately, and he had part of his head blown off, but he survived and became in him completely a very important part of his head blown off, but he survived and became completely a very important part of our anti communist campaign. Cambodia was run by a guy who was missing part of his skull because he tried to have someone shoot a cat off his head. The soldier was like, boss, don't make me do it. I don't want to do it for our William

Tell routine. And he's like, that's an order, because he was a colonel. His name was Um Sehvoth, and he was a colonel. And yeah, it's one of our great military collaborators there. And he would drink all the time to numb the pain of his fucking skull being partially gone. And he was put in charge of the Chenla I and Chenla II campaigns, which were the biggest campaigns against the communist insurgency. And you might be surprised to learn they didn't go that

well with this guy in charge. Well this guy this guy Lan Nal also known as Black Papa. Black Papa. He said that his dark skin proved that he was racially pure Khmer. You might say he said I'm a black Nazi. He was a devout Buddhist and like you said, like it was a fanatically anti Vietnamese racist. What you said about his sort of he described the Vietnamese, he believed them to be cannabis fueled demons from hell. I say, I say, kind of just evaluation led to the conclusion that he was deeply unwell. And you have, you describe a scene where he's in a room

with Alexander Haig and just starts crying. And Alexander Haig, not knowing what to do, has to pat him on the shoulder and go, there, there. Yes. Yeah, I always got the sense that these guys were like the McPoyles of the international scene. We're gonna get this place hot and clammy. Just like the McPoyles, Megan's a that's a reference to that.

It's lost on me. Who? What's who's always sunny? They look fucked up in bread family. Yeah. Well, that's about it. Yeah. That that sounds about right.

And, and, uh, Lon Nol. Yeah. He, he started off as like a pretty scary guy. He was a classic, you know, military strong man, which is why he pulled off the coup with, with some, um, with some actually you know liberal collaborators and a prince in Cambodia but by the middle of the war his neurological condition was just in the in the toilet but we did hey you know talk about it we just didn't have anyone else we had no other ideas we tried we tried nothing and we're all right we didn't need him to do it unnecessarily, for us to do what we wanted to do, which was like, you know, to have American military officials and CIA operatives and special forces running in and around Phnom Penh and outward. You know, I mean, there's a really good book by a veteran name who is there named Richard

Boyle and he talks about talking, you know, with, you know, talking with, you know, ice chewing, special ops colonels chilling in Phampen who are extremely open about how badly things are going for the law and all government. But, you know, he doesn't really seem to give a shit. Why? Because there'll be somebody else who comes after him and so on and so on. I mean, it's a very familiar logic to, you know, for people who've listened to our other seasons, like how we thought about the governments in Afghanistan, how we think about governments in Iraq.

We just like, whoever is in charge now could be replaced by somebody else. It doesn't fucking matter. But they were doing, to Will's point, they were doing no-show jobs, classic mobs, scams, and getting away with it, because we just kept writing them checks. Well, I guess most Americans,

we all know the story of Vietnam, you know, it was the war with the Credence Clearwater songs on the same track. And then like, if Americans are aware of Cambodia, as like at least as blowback to Vietnam, they're aware of Pol Pot and the killing fields and look, the horrible atrocities. But like, in this season, like, what is the story you tell about? Like why begin the story with Cambodia?

Why focus on Cambodia and not Vietnam? And how is what happened with Pol Pot in the Killing Hills? How was that blowback to our intervention in Vietnam? So I would say that the like the sort of first concern for me and Brendan was that we didn't necessarily want to do a Vietnam season because everybody, as you say, knows about it and so on. But Cambodia was a kind of way into talking about Vietnam and talking about a lot of the stuff that people definitely, you know, were interested in hearing about from the Vietnam War. And on top of that, I think that the story of

Cambodia as we sort of began to look at it and research it a bit more, kind of revealed itself as, you know, a really kind of sorted, terrifying and horrible, discrete, you know, separate chapter, sort of soup to nuts from our efforts to destabilize the royal government of Sihanouk when it was neutral, to then propping up La Nal up long now to then you know sort of washing our hands of the whole country during the Khmer Rouge years and then teaming up with the Khmer Rouge after the Khmer Rouge you know after they were in power but then once they were a guerrilla force and we wanted to use them as a pawn against the Vietnamese we're happy to support them diplomatically and militarily. You know there is the other thing that people don't know about the killing fields is that it was the Vietnamese army that stopped it and overthrew Cambodia. That's correct.

And that was officially against US policy. That's correct. And they were condemned. They were condemned by the US all over the world. We sanctioned them and we stopped food aid from getting into the new pro-Vietnamese government in Phnom Penh as famine conditions loomed because we were trying to say that what the Vietnamese did was much worse than the genocide by Pol Pot. Also it was, you know, the relations with China almost paid off there because they actually sided with the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam.

Yeah. So this is a season where you get your Nixon your Nixon and Kissinger you get your you know White House intrigue and then the Vietnam backdrop and all that but also it's a story Running through it is of the Sino-soviet split and and how China found itself much more at odds with the Soviet Union and vice versa then then the United States and we're used to China now being this new Cold War and the Relations have come a long way since here.

But there was a moment where China and the United States were working together, thanks to Nixon and Kissinger, on what is not on either country's shining record for foreign affairs, which was the collaboration to prop up the Khmer Rouge. So it's a very bizarre and intriguing mix of allies and enemies that I don't think we're at all taught about. And that's what we try to do in this season is stay after the Vietnam War and see what happened next. And as we often do, you know, a show's called Blowback, but it's always kind of also pointing out how blowback is a state of mind. We're always able to make something advantageous happen or think we can out of the exhaust fumes of the last conflict.

And what we did in this case was partner up with what everyone now pretty much agrees were the worst human rights offenders for scale, aside from the Nazis, and maybe some others in the 20th century, and use them as a blunt instrument against our old enemy, Vietnam. You know? And now, just as a tertiary bonus, every guy who writes a black book of communism or something gets to point to the Khmer Rouge and be like,

this is socialism in fucking practice, even though it was completely and entirely propped up by America. Yep. Well, and even, you know, I think one of the things that makes the story kind of interesting as well is that when all this stuff was known, when, you know, none of it's not like this was like a secret that American bottled up America, you know, this was a position that was held from the Carter administration, more or less, uh, through the Reagan years and into

HW Bush and, you know, during that time, many of the sources that we still draw from for this season, like when the war was over by the journalist Elizabeth Becker, whom we also interviewed in the show, um, you know, those books were published. So there was a real sense for a lot of the people who were watching this closely. I'm just you know like like beating their heads against the walls of you know just trying to get somebody to change the policy. And the sort of wind down the conflict better because you know as you know the consequence of our support of the camera it wasn't just a thing we did. just a thing we did, you know, that didn't, you know, didn't influence outcomes.

It propped them up long enough that for, you know, the Vietnamese continued to occupy Cambodia militarily until the late eighties and even for years afterward, there was, you know, essentially a continued, the civil war wound down in the early nineties, but there was a state of conflict that was present in the country with active Khmer Rouge insurgency that arrested and really fucked up the development of that country. Cambodia was and still is one of the poorest countries in all of Asia, not just East Asia. And so it's really, you know, it's the legacy of not just the Khmer Rouge and the Henry Kissinger bombing and all that. That stuff was bad, but what was

also bad was what, you know, what came in the decade and a half afterward that we, you know, we helped oversee is more or less. I would also say talking about neutrality and policies to avoid more bloodshed, there's a very fascinating man who's at the heart of the Cambodian 20th century history named Sihanouk. He was the prince, but he was very, very cunning and opportunistic. He crushed all of his rivals at home, his communist rivals at home, but he was very, very cunning and opportunistic. He crushed all of his rivals at home, his communist

rivals at home, but he had mansions with heated pools in Pyongyang and Beijing. He was the best friends of the global communist leaders. He hated the Khmer Rouge personally, even though he ended up making common cause with them against the Vietnamese for a period. But when they visited in Beijing, he would make these kind of, you know, cold fish communists uncomfortable by grabbing a porno from the archives of French movies and making them sit with him and watch them. He's one of those guys. Dude, I love bad kids on the international stage. Well, it's funny you call him that because he was a kid when he became a royal. Yeah, no.

And yeah, not just a kid, a bad kid. He was probably making the Chinese communists watch SmackDown, even though it scared them. He was doing all the bad kid things, like going on a school trip and being like, we should all take our dicks out Pretty much he described himself as a quote-unquote naughty boy and the the quote from that the quote from that that moment It was Yang Sir, who was the kind of? UN representative the Khmer Rouge He made him sit through this this this risque stuff and then when he left the room this, you know This communist aparachic leaves the room. Siunuk

said to everybody laughing, he said, he's going to have a hell of a self-criticism tomorrow morning. So he's great. Greatest bad kid of all time. Absolutely. I remember I heard this, Sy Hirsch told me a really, really good story about how he was trying to get a meeting with Siunuk many, many years ago, but that he was, you know, he was told he couldn't meet him.

He had an erratic schedule and it was like in the middle of the night, he was playing badminton. Like he was, he was just like a, he was a really like fun boy. Yeah, exactly. Like he's, he's a really interesting character. And he also, I mean, there's a a we have a really good story in the season too about when he attempted to defect to the U.S. from the Khmer Rouge at the UN, like he slips a note to in a secret service

agent and elevator to, you know, get to Andrew Young, who was the U.S. UN representative then. See, because he's he's definitely Brennan and I agree. He's one of our favorite people that we've just ever mentioned on the show. Barnett, he's like because he doesn't he changes sides a lot. He's often acting in his own interest, but like he has a larger conception of his country and like what his country means and the people in it. That's like he's moving mindset.

He's moving mindset. He makes movies in his spare time like he made his cabinet act in movies and would shoot them like his own little dramas. Because especially when his power was starting to get attacked by the right wing. So he a lot of what people think of as Kim Jong Il, he did that shit first. So like so Kim Jong Il got the idea to kidnap a South Korean film director and make him direct a movie in North Korea from Sissanook. He had to one up the king, literally. That is a foundational part of bad kid theory.

You could call it a core bad kid that all bad kids learn from. They pick up all their bad kid techniques from the alpha. He also would. He was a recording artist and he would put out music. We were in the Queen Mother Library in Cambodia and put on an old record of him, you know, playing like, you know, Calypso songs. And he, you know, that's like his SoundCloud. He's like, he's enough to just be like, he cut a Calypso album. There's there's a song where he like Farrakhan Just like Robert Richam. Well, that's true as well. Talk about that kid Yeah, no, but he he dabbled in all different types of music obviously some traditional Cambodia stuff but he was like a pop he was like a pop king and just wore all kinds of hats and

We we love him. So he's another great reason to listen to this season. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] And by the way, his late, sorry, he is deceased, but his wife Monique, still alive. Yep, Queen. I mean, obviously we're not gonna get to even like one 100th of the history. I mean, there's some great stuff about Ho Chi Minh in episode two, but you, Brendan, you did just mention that you were

listening to this record, you know, in a library in Cambodia and like part of the research for this season and all sort of a, you and Noah both took a trip to Cambodia. I mean, you know, Catherine and I were looking after your dog. You would go over to your house. I would put Bobcat on my head and then cajole Catherine to shoot her off it with a crossbow. I can see that you're healing nicely. Just in terms of the interviews and the relationships you cultivated with your Cambodian sources, I guess I'm just wondering, how do Cambodians that you spoke to, how do they feel about this era of history that you are rendering on this season of blowback? I would say that honestly, we would ask questions about the history.

We'd ask questions first and foremost about what these people experienced. We spoke to people. Obviously, they had to be of a certain age to have been through the years of this season. But at the end, you know, we'd say we're American, we're visiting, Americans are gonna hear this. What would you want Americans to know? And I would say most of the time, if you were like an angsty grad student trying to get quotes about, you know, some kind of impassioned speech about the evil Amerifats and burger and how much they hate us. We, you're not going to get that.

Basically people were like, at least not to the older people we spoke to, they said, look, these years are in the past. Thankfully, I've just been trying to live a normal life. We don't want any more wars. We just want to get on with our life and we like anybody, you know, come to Cambodia. We also went to Vietnam. That was overwhelmingly the attitude as far as the American factor. But they went through some shit that very few other countries had to. I shouldn't say very few, but not everybody goes through in

their life. We try to sprinkle in these interviews to compliment the narratives that we're telling in each episode. But yeah, we were in the villages too. We didn't just go to the capitals and chill out. We tried to get to the Cambodian-Vietnamese border as much as we could to really go where the action was. And we had some great conversations there.

That is something that I think is very interesting, just about not just people who are directly victims of America's imperial exploits, but people who are victims of our allies or our proxies is just, you know, they're always more gracious than anyone could ever imagine. Yeah. I mean, I would say the same, you the same with the Palestine stuff we were talking about earlier. I lived there a bit when I was much younger, but there was never any bad blood or any sort of justifiable and understandable wariness of me as an American given America's relationship with the people doing all this shit to them all the time.

It was always, you know, how are you? Where do you come from? Not, not a drop of animosity that they felt would have been, you know, impolite. Yeah. So, and it's also like looking up, like sort of widening the view in societies, like in Cambodia or Vietnam in different ways, uh, like, like sort of widening the view in societies like in Cambodia or Vietnam, in different ways, like truly different ways for each country, they're managing this period of like rising US hostility toward China and rising tensions between the US and China.

And in the case of Vietnam, I mean Vietnam is a country we mutilated more or less, and they're opening a new Columbia university campus there. Then there's going to be a New York times bureau in Ho Chi Minh city. Vietnam is like talk, you know, the Vietnamese leadership is on a very active campaign to as come as American and European businesses, try to move manufacturing capacity out of China. Vietnam really actively wants to win a bunch of that business. manufacturing capacity out of China, Vietnam really actively wants to win a bunch of that business.

And Cambodia is more, you know, although Cambodia has taken a lot more aid from the US than Vietnam and the head of Cambodia, the son of the previous sort of strongman leader of the country, the current leader, Hun Manay, he literally went to West Point. Cambodia is sort of moving in the orbit of China. And they're one of China's two bases abroad is in Cambodia. And I think that what's really interesting though, is that, you know, you see these sorts of, you know, like Vietnam as a historic rivalry with China as well that, you know, is a big part of our season, but, you know, influences this dynamic. But I think the general picture is that these countries are, they want to have

peaceful relations with both the U S and China. They want to be a part of a story of the world in which their people, you know, move from the kind of like abject rural poverty that characterizes still many of the lives of people there, you know Conditions are improving, but it still looks, but poverty still is the condition of life for many millions of people. And I don't think that they're, as Brendan said, they're particularly interested in any kind of war.

And so that is like a sentiment we heard expressed in our interviews locally as well. But if you read the press and you read and take seriously what people in the leadership of these countries say and do, then you also see that that is the view held upstream as well. It must be very strange for them to try to have good relations with both America and China and to understand that China and America are these, you know, have just massively intertwined economies like just mind numbing volume of trade and then for like American state apparatchiks

to kind of give them a like us or them thing. Yeah. What do you mean us or them? Your biggest fucking trading partner? We were we were there during the I don't even what even happened with this. We were there during the, I don't even, what even happened with this? We were there during the TikTok ban thing. Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember knowing that we were having lunch with our friends who were fixers in Vietnam. That was when we were in Vietnam, not Cambodia, I think. And they were like, why do they wanna ban it? And doesn't everyone use it in America? And we were like, yeah, but they were like, why do they want to ban it? And it doesn't everyone use it in America. And we were like, yeah, but they want to base it. I think Americans want to own it and not have China own it, but they still, and

they're like, well, why don't they just, you know, do deals and stuff? It was just the most baffling to them baffling, you know, unnecessarily, uh, you know, uh, xenophobic and confusing. Policy. Well, Brendan, maybe you could send, you could send some of these these quote unquote fixers who fixed you in Vietnam. Maybe you could send them Hillary Clinton's recent interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN where she said these American college students, they're there. They don't have the facts. The tick to was instantly anti-Israel. I didn't watch this, this interview. So she says like the, the, the minds, the, the, the, basically the body snatcher thesis,

like all these kids are being controlled via. Yeah. Now what she says is, um, she says by a few days we were doing an event and we started being protested. The Dean and I, and our guests are being screamed at, at being called, you know, all kinds of names. What happened in that period? As best I can sort of unpack, it is that there were already existing groups within our country, and particularly on certain campuses like Columbia, who had talking points.

They had a plan for protests and disruption. And I watched it sort of morph into something that was not student-led, even though students participated, but which had outside funding, outside direction. And still to this day, I'm not quite sure of all that was going on. Outside funding, outside direction, and I still to this day, I'm not quite sure what's going on with all of it. Well I'm glad we're talking to you. Yeah that much is clear grandma. Who was leading it? Was there like an invisible IRGC guy? I didn't see it all these fucking protests. Well you didn't see it because it was all in their phones. It was all in the app. That is by the way

like dogma on the like that's taken as truth in a lot of like the center right like centrist blob as well as the right obviously. The person is because they need an explanation for why like the absolute evil policy they're enacting is like people don't like it. Well it's like you know like I mean the way we talk about student-led protests in this country versus any student-led protest let's say in Iran, you know? Yeah. Oh, sure. That's all.

That's all is legit. No, Will, you know what it's like? Everyone allow me, Will and I, a Star Trek moment. It's like the episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation, The Game. You remember the one where everyone puts on the little headset and then it's like, that's what they think TikTok is. And then everyone's just like a zombie who wants everyone else to say it again. Someone shows up at the Columbia campus,

they're like, I've just got back from Ryza and I've got this new TikTok app, you've gotta try. It's like in Ryker. Dropping little pellets of like anti-Semitism into your brain. Yeah, Ryker went to a rally and got gamed and came back. Now the ship hates Israel and they're gonna blow it up with a photon torpedo. Ashley Judd co-stars in that episode.

She does. She is Leslie Crusher's crush. Yeah. I do think that as the TikTok stuff relates to like the Lebanon stuff going on at this very moment, one thing that is like super jarring to me has been the like Israel's like psycho propaganda thing of like doing like what the press is calling evacuation notices or whatever and thinking like, you know, what, like if tick tock is being used to propagandize like, you know, pro

Palestinian perspective, considering that the press was calling these warnings, like, you know, these threats, really evacuation notices, you know, fucking good, like we need, we need some, we need the earthworm turning these kids, like we need all of society to be consuming it. Like, like, you know, hogs at the trough, please. China also like state run media does not have like, like some incredibly like radical, uh, pro Palestinian slam. Yeah.

That that's the kind of like not really where they're at. I think more than any, like to the extent that TikTok changed things, I would wager more than anything, it's Israelis getting on TikTok and the average kid in America seeing how fucking repulsive they are. Yep.

I would suspect that. I mean, yeah, China's like official messaging on all of this is like, we should all come to the table and stop the war like that's their That's their messaging. It's not 1971 where they're putting out like, you know, the the social imperialists are running dogs and hyenas that we all must you know Feed to the the blood of the tree of liberty. Like, like, that's not what they say program is available to say that now. Yeah, that's outsourced. Now they pay you guys. China sounds as their language on Israel. Palestine sounds like Obama in 2006. Sure.

It's all by the way, like more or less like they're very, because these countries all have, I mean, like, look, like, this is what globalization is. Everybody has trade relationships with everybody. And even if it's like point 2% of the volume, because most of your shit is with like your neighbors, it turns out that like within that point 2% are part, you know, income streams, proprietary technologies, high tech imports, whatever the fuck you want to call them, that like actively, you know, like are important mediating factors in international diplomacy. That's why the Houthis are causing such a problem for everybody is that they're saying fuck that.

Well yeah, one of Israel's biggest coups, just as far as that, specifically not in the number amount of trade volume, but how important the specific things they're selling is, one of their biggest coups was the Python air to air missile. It became like a very popular missile for countries that like couldn't buy Sidewinders from America, but didn't want to like risk alienating America by buying like a Vimple R-73.

That was a lot of these countries, you know, they either got a license to produce pythons in their own country or just bought them outright. It was a major coup for them. The last thing I would say about our trip there and then the mirroring of ultimately pragmatic, peaceful messaging from these countries as we heard from the rather pragmatic and peaceful messages of the people, as we heard from the rather pragmatic and peaceful messages of the people themselves that we spoke to, it's hard not to just see Vietnam in the season we cover, two to three million dead. I mean, Agent Orange effects lasting

years after the fact, the damage done to the environment. All they want after this is reparations for the war, which Nixon promised them, which I don't think a lot of people know, and we denied them because Nixon was out at that point and we said, oh, who? Nixon who? We didn't say anything about reparations. All they want is normalization, and they're fine with normalization with the United States and China, even in 1976, not later and later after market reforms, even then. Cambodia, they want to just be a part of the world economy and they're getting more

support from China than they are the United States, but they're open to it. The bloodthirstiness you would expect after the treatment of these countries that we carried on with for years and years, the bloodthirstiness is just not there. It's not there. As opposed to what we co-sign and visit upon others who have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the United States, such as the people of Palestine, who would, I'm sure, in a similar aftermath of all this horrible violence, just want to get on with it and become a part of the family of nations and do

business, however unglamorous all this sounds, and just get on with it. But instead, we have no time for the only conversations and whatever the, what do the state departments say, those state department people say when they get up there? when they're logs we're having dialogues and tough Conversations with our allies in Israel. Well, that's all that people want to have in general is let's have talks Let's make deals. Let's come to the table, but that's not on our agenda Apparently although it's instantly on the agenda of the people who have been bombed and put through hell They're okay with doing it. Why we aren't able to get there from our position of great wealth, I don't understand.

I think, Brendan, I think that like that puts a very fine point on it. I think it's a good place to wrap things up here. And it puts a very fine point on who represents civilization, you know, because we're doing all of this in the name of civilization against, quote, the forces of barbarism. And I think we in the United States and are just like, are just our addict. Like the way we lash out at like our own victims and the way that they, their attitude towards us, I mean, like I think really puts into stark clarity who is the barbaric nation and who is the civilized culture. It's yeah we're beginning a gladiator when the guy runs in with a head and then Russell Crowe says unleash hell that's us. We're the

we're the dude with the freaking out with the decapitated head running around. I mean that's it's I think it was we said at the top of the show it'll be far more obvious to more people down the line But it makes you go a little crazy wondering why it's not obvious now You know if the plot of gladiator happened in real life It would be mark Miley getting his identity stolen, and he has to become a UFC fighter It's true that would be a great story also It wouldn't be that his family was killed by the enemy.

It would be like a Caleb Jacoby thing where his kid ran away for a little bit and he thought like, I'm sick of my dad. He gets candy. Yeah, if he gets candy. And he's like, they stole my family. I have to get my family back. And it's like, no, your kid's in Times Square. His kid ran away and ruined his credit buying a Studio Time.

Did credit card fraud on his dad to buy snacks. And he's like, I guess I have to fight for the UFC Championship in 72. Well, Clubbieter too soon to be in theaters, but Blowback season five is available now. Yes, go to blowback. five is available now. Yes. Go to blow back dot show. Please to subscribe. It's $25 a year.

You get the 10 main episodes of the season, the narrative episodes and 10 bonus episodes. While the narrative episodes, the main episodes will come out for free in a few months. These bonus episodes are pay wallalled for eternity for life. So if you want the private stock, exactly. You want this time, this time I didn't even bother. Special reserve. We, we, we talked to Cy, uh, Hirsch last year, but this time, um, uh, I just played the call, I just was like, I'll, I'll, I'll end the, end the episode when the call

ends. Yeah. You called him sir. Yeah. Well, in the beginning I was just like, sir, thanks for joining us. And he gets all haughty about that. But the interview begins with him being like,

what, hello? Am I here? All right, all right, let's fucking do this fucking thing. Let's fucking do this thing. So it's definitely our least produced episode ever when Cy's like, grainy voice. Cy Hurst unplugged. Yeah, it really is. It is.

I can't wait to hear that. Layla. Yeah, I can't wait to hear that. All relevant information will be in the show description. Once again, always enjoy talking to Brendan and Noah from blowback, but stay on the line because we got some business to discuss Chris kicking it over to you. Hello.

Yes, as teased on Thursday episode, we have a show coming up in the great city of Los Angeles. We are playing an Election Day Eve show. That is Monday, November 4th, at the Aratani Theater in downtown LA. Our special guests co-hosting this event with us will be the Fine People from the Episode One podcast. So this is a Chapo plus episode one election day eve show November 4th,

our Tony theater tickets will be on sale soon, but I believe I can announce a pre sale for Patreon subscribers that will be live. There'll be a pre sale code on Patreon, uh, tomorrow. Uh, that is Tuesday, September 24th. So look for your Patreon pre-sale code for our show at the Aratani November 4th and the public on sale will be live probably later this week. Boys, any thoughts on the show before I go on to the next announcement? It's going to be fire. And if you're wondering why it's a Election

Day Eve show it's I'm never getting trapped again by a live show contingent on the results of a US presidential election so we will give you everything you need to know going into the ballot box the ballot booth on Tuesday. We will hopefully be riding the crest of a wave of peak psychosis rather than just staring at all our phones and announcing assaults as they roll in. Yeah, and I'm really excited to work with, to do a live show with E1 again,

because we're gonna cook up something real special for you guys. Yeah, there are going to be four uninterrupted hours of the Josh Shapiro AAVE voice that only I can talk about. That no one else likes, but I like, of the Josh Shapiro AAVA voice that only I can call me. That no one else likes, but I like, and have found myself walking around my house going,

I don't play with no damn Gradle. Four hours of that. Not to interject, but Noah and I got to do you on earlier this year, and talk about four hours. It took me about four hours As the president I had to say something like it's probably burned into my brain I had to say something like I can hang sack with the best of them 10 toes on the sand and two nuts And I could not fucking get through it and I felt like an unprofessional person, but they were very kind to us.

So yeah, Chapo E1 boys election day Eve in Los Angeles. It's going to be fun though. I'm really looking forward to it. And then as also announced on Thursday's show, Matt's book, No Pasaran, Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War will go on sale at ChapoTrapHouse.store starting Tuesday, October 1st and running through, I believe Thursday, October 31st. October 1st through October 31st, that will be your chance to order Matt Christman's book on ChapoTrapHouse.store.

There will also be copious announcements and information about this, probably in another blog post that I will put on the site tomorrow But October 1st Chapo trap house dot store your chance to order Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War book So keep an eye out for that as well. Yeah, and as we mentioned in the last episode as well Once the printing costs editor is etc Once everyone gets paid all profits from the Matt Christman Spanish Civil War book will go directly to Matt and his family. Not a single cent will be going towards Felix's project of turning his bedroom into the cockpit

of a fighter jet. Yes. No money will go towards my feature length movie about Josh Shapiro. a scene for scene recreation of super fly starring Josh. Man, man, you ruined my reefer high. What did you say governor? All, all information about this will hopefully be continued to be copiously related to all of you.

So keep your eyes out for Matt's book and tickets to the LA show. That's all I got. Oxyneris peeled. Listen up, troops. Await further orders. Thanks again to Brendan and Noah from Blowback. Until next time, everybody signing off. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye. I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word,

I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, I'm a man of my word, Thank you.