Doomed to Fail - Ep 92: The Butcher of Africa: Idi Amin

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Today, we barely scratch the surface of one of the most violent dictators in history - “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hajj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” - Idi Amin. During his eight years in power, he likely killed 300,000 people in Uganda, in a wildly violent way. Buckle up and join us on this week's Doomed to Fail.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are live, active, talking, and viding. Right, Taylor? Yeah, I'm trying my best. It's, I mean, it's early. And we daylight. saved that was very early um but i'm fine hold on what wait was daylight savings yeah but like you don't even notice because all of your stuff happens automatically like maybe check your oven but like other than that it just so is so is is it supposed to be like noon my time right now yes no 11 we we went up an hour 10 it is 11 my time supposed to be 10 so my weird my phone my phone

says 919 but my like wall clock says 819 oh I didn't even realize it I know you don't notice unless you have a wall clock or check your oven yesterday was also just kind of wild so I'm glad it's finally chill but anyways welcome to doom to fail I'm Farr's here by Taylor we're going to be bringing you two topics wait don't we're going to bring you one topic twice a week about things that are doomed to fail I'm I'm pretty sure I go first this time, right? Uh-huh. Okay.

I have a pretty fun one, I think, for you today. I think. I can't wait. Okay. Show me. Should I, should we do the guessing game? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

I am going to talk about the most famous Ugandan person in world history. Do we know who that is? Oh, my God, no. I wish I did. I don't. Gilberg, recognize his name. It is Edie. I mean.

Oh, okay. This is a big one. Yep. There was an, I think, an Academy Award-winning movie based on this guy. It was called The Last King of Scotland, Forst Whitaker played Edie, I mean. That's exactly what I was thinking. But I didn't know the name, but yes. And for those who saw the movie, so what they depict it in that movie is like mostly accurate.

What's not accurate is that guy never existed. The guy, the Scottish guy who was his position, that wasn't a real person. Like, he actually had a real position. It was a Ugandan, born and raised Ugandan. Like, that was his personal position, but it wasn't some, like, it wasn't like a white savior thing, really. So, I'm going to start this in like several levels. So the first level is, as I started my research on this, I realized that it is almost impossible for us to fathom what the political life in Uganda has been like throughout. It's like mostly post-colonial history.

I started researching this by going back through the historical record and realized that it was like really, really complicated. There were like a ton of tribes and factions and interests. And all of it was weirdly intertwined with other countries that were dealing with similar issues themselves. And so it's kind of like really, really complicated. I realized that if I went down this path, I'm trying to figure out how a guy like Ediamen came to power, completely, then this one turned into like a Dan Carlin level podcast. Yeah, I mean, you could write a book, I feel like, so.

Dude, it is so complicated. It was so, like, I have, like, so many different notes of, like, this tribe was aligned with this political party. And, like, this ethnic group, it's weird. It was, did, have you seen Hotel Rwanda? No. Do you remember, you know the Rwandan genocide, right? Yeah.

Yeah, like, it was, like, largely based on the fact that, like, Rwanda, for example, was, like, a Belgian colony, I think it was. And they identified the lighter skin to black people as being, like, the ones who deserve privilege and the darker skin ones, the ones that didn't. It was like the Hutus and the Tutsis. I forgot which one was which. But what happened was, like, once Belgium left the country, the darker ones were going to take, like, their revenge on the lighter ones. And that's where the genocide started. It's weird. It's like, it's like weird racial, like interplayed racial stuff.

It always is. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. Well, so pivoting back to Uganda, I went as far back as when it was a British territory and what happened when it's stopping a British territory because that seems to be like the genesis of like all the chaos that happened with the rise of the needy,

I mean. So basically, Uganda was a British territory and it was part of the Commonwealth. From 1894 until 1962, from then 1962 until 1966, there was kind of a piece. Like there was the establishment of a government within Uganda. And this is something that I don't even understand. So there's a kingdom within Uganda called Bogunda. And it's within the territorial borders of the country itself, but it has complete autonomy on its own.

It just operates on its own. And so when the Brits were there, they were like just leave these people alone do your own thing. Like, yes, you are within our boundaries, but you can just do whatever you want. And when they left and you've gone to establish its own government, they also similarly

were like, just leave these people mostly alone. It's going to be fine. It was a problem for the government of you to figure this out because that kingdom, Bagunda, it represents 14% of the population within the borders of Uganda itself, which doesn't sound like it's that huge. But it is huge if you factor in that it is a single tribe. So all these other factions within Uganda are like various different tribes. And so they don't have a population density. And they're always fighting with

each other. Whereas Bagunda is just like one giant conglomerate of people that all are aligned behind the same ethnic background and religious background. So. Okay. In 1966, tension started rising between the government and the kingdom to the point where Uganda actually attacked the kingdom and try to take over their palace. That led to what I would argue is the downfall of basic democracy within Uganda that ultimately gave rise to a guy like Edie Amin. At that time, Uganda had a prime minister, a guy named Apollo Milton Obuto.

And he was the one who basically was like attack the kingdom, take over the palace, and let's just get rid of this whole separate autonomous kingdom within the territorial boundaries of Uganda. So as part of that, he essentially did away with several government cabinet positions that were a part of his government and suspended the constitution of Uganda to basically say like, hey, I'm just going to go rogue and try to figure out what to do with this kingdom. So that's what he essentially did. And he took over this kingdom and abolished it and established complete control over the entire country. Again, this is the guy named Milton Abuti. The people of Uganda really had issues with this guy at Obuti. He was essentially the first prime minister, first ruler, governor of Uganda. And I'm going to try and parse exactly what this guy did that pissed people off.

But again, it's so nuanced. It's so textured and detailed. Rough, rough strokes was that Abuti was trying to present the optics of nationalism as though, hey, we're all, you know, Ugandans, like, forget about the tribal stuff. But he did it under the guise of socialism than a way that was not well received. So he would often talk about how a strong democracy was imperative and the will of the majority was imperative for the Ugandan people and the government itself. But at the same time, he also mandated the government take control of the largest corporations in the country. What was problematic with that was that, again, when the Brits left like four years ago, like everything there was like largely British or anti-Barclays, for example, was the prominent bank at the time, all that stuff. When a boutique came into power, he said that any foreign corporations that are operating in Uganda had to reincorporate as a Ugandan company.

to operate there. So what that means is that now the government of Uganda was able to take over corporations that were owned by other countries or operated outside of those boundaries. Like Barclays was a really good example. They referenced a few times. That was the primary bank of Uganda, but now they're like, we're not going to deal with this shit. Like, no, you can't own our company.

Like, what are you talking about? And so all that essentially spiraled into corruption. food shortages, crazy inflation, everything comes along with it. So this is what led to the civil unrest within Uganda under this guy's government. And eventually on January 25th, 1971, Ediamine, who was a general that was working for Abootie, he decided that he was going to lead a coup using the military to remove him from power and he was going to take control of the government. by all accounts there was a riff between them um um ameen was actually the general who led the attack

on the palace and the kingdom to take over and abolish the kingdom within uganda so then he was very very high up and very tied into things that were going on there so that's what ends up happening in 1971 is amine uh establishes this coup and it was relatively bloodless mostly because obuti was attending a conference or summit in singapore so during the time, Amin, who had complete control of the police and military, just basically told them take the capital and shut down the airport so this guy can't come back to his home country. So it was basically, it wasn't like a bloody, like when you hear about like the civil unrest, usually it's usually pretty out there. But that wasn't the case here.

I mean, there was still murders, but they were murders of opportunity, which was like, hey, we're going to take over the palace. And someone's like, you can't do it. I'm going to stand up for my president. And it was like, nah, let's tell us guy to get over with. So it was relatively bloodless. I've heard that before where like you do it when, if you do it when someone's out of town. Which is like hilarious. Like it's like when your parents go out of town and you invite your friends over. So Amin ran Uganda as a military dictatorship.

His official and formal title during his rule was, it's going to take a little bit. Okay. This is his title. His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al-Hajee, Dr. Edie Amin Dada, V.C, D.S.O. MC, CBE, Lord of all the beasts on the earth and fishes of the sea, and conquer of the British Empire and Africa in general, in Uganda in particular. That's very long. He was obviously a crazy person. I did a lot of digging because I was like, everybody had at least, has at least like one redeeming quality.

but almost everybody has and I could not find a single quality of this guy had that was actually redeemable so that's that was his formal title unofficially his nicknames were butcher of Uganda butcher of Africa

the machete and my personal favorite Black Hitler Oh my God I'm excited that we're talking about this because I definitely want to learn more because I even I know now there's plenty of very very bad things happening in Africa that are not

the mainstream news. So it's good to get the background. And I will talk about that if you want to talk about that because nothing has changed. Like almost nothing has changed. And there's a topic I'll bring up at the very end of this just to highlight that point. So going back to, I mean, his only real experience in life was that of running military operations. He literally had no experience on how to handle the economy, humanitarian efforts, diplomacy, functionally, basically nothing civil government related, he had any experience in. You add to the fact that he was also completely beholden to the army, like he was their figurehead, and he's the reason why he was able to take power, adds to that the fact that

he had crashed the economy into the wall so hard that he had difficult, he was struggling to compensate them and make keep them happy so they don't try and overrule him he was naturally very very incredibly paranoid and violent and by the way he also happened to be illiterate so add to that the fact that every directive that he issued had to be done over like a speech or over the phone with a violent temperament and you have nothing in writing so if he calls you and you're as minister of something and he just says yeah I just think we should do this thing and do you do that thing like you have no written record of him saying that he would just come back to you and say what i didn't say that they just kill you like it was a yeah oh my god

so when you end we essentially end up with with that combination as a country that was incomplete upheaval the sense i got from reading about him and his government is that the patients were basically running the asylum he had the love and respect of his military but he also knew that that was only going to last for as long as he was able to control them and as long as they saw him as like strong and not weak essentially. I view some of the things that he did as the flailings of a leader who is too incompetent to know where his struggles are and he's just like trying to figure out what to do. So as an example of that, I highlighted a few things that he did during his rule.

The first being the purging the government and military, all of the form of, more prime minister of booty supporters and also like again it gets to weird racial stuff like just like tribal minorities that he didn't like or thought that would be more aligned with somebody else than him roughly 300,000 people fit this bill of people who just were like kind of undesirables that he had executed primarily using machetes which is why he got the um nickname machete um and most of those bodies they would just end up dumping in the river now um so So 300,000, some estimates to say 500,000, whatever. It's a lot of people to kill.

Yeah. Uganda was and is a predominantly Christian country. I think the latest stat that I found was that 40% of the country identifies as Christian. And it was kind of the same back then as well, which posed a problem for a mean because a lot of people listen to their spiritual leaders. And most of the time, despite what we were. both probably think and assume is true, spiritual leaders aren't crazy sociopaths who want to use machetes on people. Like, they're, they're like somewhat better than that.

And that was a problem for me, because he was like, my populace is going to listen to these leaders and possibly, they're going to possibly turn them against me. And so he made a point to go out killing bishops, pastors, priests, you name it. Basically, anybody who was kind of in a position of power against him. Since the economy was in the tank, he implemented a brilliant idea. This was so smart. And it was totally repeatable policy because he was trying to figure out how to increase the coffers of the government.

And so this was great. Brilliant idea. So about 80,000 or so people who are the population of Uganda, they're Indians. they come, you know, they come from India because, again, this was a British colony. We know the story of Mahatma Gandhi. A lot of folks were brought over as indentured servants, and then once they left, they were released and all that stuff. What Amin did was, again, looking at the minority aspect of his rule, he decided that the way that he was going to bolster the conference of the government was give these people about 60,000 of them. who have dual passports, 60,000 of them 90 days to evacuate the country or face deaf or

prison camps. The point being that he could then take their properties and repatriate them to the Ugandan government. There was a fact I read that I almost don't believe and I can't really get too much further into. I tried digging this up more. The economists reported in an article they wrote on August 18th of 2022, it was called 50 years on from the arrival of the

Ugandan Asians. They're calling them Asians because India isn't on the Asian continent, but that's what I mean by that. Yeah. I don't understand this. What they said was that this 60,000 population of Indians was somehow responsible for 90% of tax revenues received by the government. I don't understand it. Because

why would that be? Yeah. because in in 1974 the population the entire population of uganda was 11.4 million which means that 0.005 percent of the population was responsible for 90 percent of tax revenue I don't get how that's even possible were they just the only ones who were taxed how do you run a country though I mean I don't know how do you fix roads like how do you i guess you don't i guess that's how you end up in this situation right yeah i mean i i you know i enjoy paying taxes because i have nice roads in a great school you know i mean yeah i again we'll get to this but we'll talk about this a little bit because i looked up i looked up visiting uganda now and i got a story to tell about that too so um some other fun facts that i mean in his role so in 1976 the plo the Palestinian liberation are, what is it?

Oh, I forget what the O is. Whatever, it's Palestinians. They hijacked a commercial plane going from Tel Aviv to Paris to compel the release of various Palestinians who are imprisoned in Israel. Amin, again, showing his incredible aptitude at state craft, he allowed the plane to land in Uganda, kind of to show himself as like a world leader that he was going to help negotiate the release and do whatever like he was just he was way out of his death like Israel who as we know historically has given absolutely zero fucks about solving their problems on

their own they ended up working with Kenya to cross into their airspace into Uganda the Israeli forces were planning on just we're not doing diplomacy we don't care what it means says we don't give a shit what the Ugandan armed forces want want, we're going to handle this ourselves, which is, like, really badass. I actually, like, really love reading this story. It was really, really cool. So the Israeli forces decided about a week after a week after planning this that they were going to land at the air base where the hosses were being kept.

At that point, the hosh has been moved from the plane into the terminal. So they get there, and they had also brought with them the exact same car color and model that Amin had, because, like, again, nobody is driving, like, a brand U.S. class. Like, you can't an S class in Uganda, you're like, that's Amin. Like, there's literally nobody else. There's only one in the country. You're going to say something. I do have a question.

So the hostages, are they just regular folks happen to be on the plane, or are they, like, political people? No, there's regular people. Yeah, they're flying from Tel Aviv to Paris for trips, vacation, business, stuff like that. So they bring the same car that Amin has just to fool the Ugandan security forces. Basically, they knew what I read about this was that they knew they were going to have to get into a firefight with the Ugandan armed forces. They were basically going to start like a mini war, but they're like, we're going to try and get as far into the airport as before the gunfire starts. They end up making it to a terminal after having killed one of the security, Ugandan security forces.

And once they get to the terminal, they basically go. fully guns blazing. Ultimately, they grab the hostages, they get them on to the Israeli plane to head back there. In all seven of the hijackers were killed. Forty-five or so Ugandan soldiers were killed and three of the hostas were killed. In the middle of all this, Israel also destroyed 11 Ugandan fighter jets. They were at the air base that they would have a better chance of making it back across borders. And they did. So, yeah, my take on us, like, dude that is badass like that is so like good on you israel um for for going in and doing that because like yeah why would you trust this guy to negotiate on your behalf yeah that's fair

so in response to this um i mean was really really pissed because he was trying to show himself as like a negotiator and like a leader and all that and part of the world stage i imagine exactly exactly and it adds to that the fact that israel killed a bunch of you got in soul destroyed a bunch of Ugandan military equipment and all that stuff. In total, Amin shot and killed 12 of his own soldiers who were there, and he said, let the raid happen. Between the time that the hostage takeover happened and the raid happened, there's one woman who was 74 years old, and she fell ill, and they negotiated with the hijackers to release her to a Ugandan hospital to get aid.

So there was one hostage who wasn't at the terminal when the raid took place. She was at the hospital. Amin ended up going to the hospital and having her killed out of anger towards Israel and killing a bunch of her doctors and nurses who were trying to get in the way of his security forces, not killing this poor 74-year-old hostage. Oh, my God. Just because he was mad? Oh, my God. I mean, yeah. After that, that he also killed about 245 Kenyans who were living in Uganda, due to the United.

to the fact that Uganda allowed Israel to cross into their airspace, like they negotiated with Israel, and that pissed him off as well. So, again, like, no redeeming qualities, total sociopath, like, awful, awful, awful human being. Another fun fact about him,

he is like kind of single-handedly responsible for the population decline of elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, and lions within Uganda because he allowed his force because he was having a hard time keeping with how to pay them and keep them happy. He was like, go poach them. So, by all accounts, the population of elephants, Uganda declined 75%, rhinos, 98%, 80% for crocodiles and 80% for lions,

just because he would let his soldiers go and kill and poach these things. It's crazy. So eventually, his control over his military grew very, very tenuous, and some members of his military decided to flee across the border to Tanzan. And in the process, Ugandan forces followed them and engaged them in Tanzania, which, again, is a sovereign country bordering Uganda. Not great. So really, at the time, what was happening was he had lost control of his military and they were kind of acting on their own volition. Like, I mean, can you imagine, like, some soldiers in Texas just like going into Mexico and starting a firefight?

Like, you're starting a war with a drop sort of, yeah. But still, you're starting a war with another country. It's like, it's like a crazy level of, like, disregard for your leadership. What Amin did, and this was mostly assumed that he did this to save face, was that he decided, after he found out this happened, he decided to declare war on Tanzania. He had no reason to declare war in Tanzania, but he was like, oh, shit, my military's acting rogue. They're starting a firefighting another country. I better just say this, and it was done to save face and pretend like he still had military under control. So the president of Tanzania, much for his credit, was like, great, you got a deal.

He begins assembling his forces on the border for a full-on invasion of Uganda. I mean, realized, oh, shit, this is like really bad for me. And he, again, defers back to his safe craftsmanship. And she decides he's going to challenge the president of Tanzania to a boxing match. Whoever wins, that conflict wins at all, basically. That was his idea. obviously obviously the president of Tanzania did not reply to this and decided that he's just going to attack Uganda and go after the capital the capital city is called Kampala that's where Amin is that's where the presidential palace was and that's where the Tanzanian forces were now advancing because there was nobody in charge of the Ugandan military um he decides to flee at that time so he initially flees to Libya because he was also very close to more Mara Qaddafi.

And eventually he moves to Saudi Arabia where the royal family basically offered him like a stipend in housing and safety and security in exchange for never going into politics again. By this time, about eight and a half year. That's like a very Napoleon thing to do to be like, get out of here. You can't have a job anymore. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this time we're looking about eight and a half, nine years from when he started to when we're at this stage of, um, of what's going on.

This lasts for about nine years, this exile. And then I can only assume he just grew restless because he knew that Uganda was in turmoil in 1989. And so what he ended up doing was he had a following of supporters that were in Zaire. He decides that he's going to fly out of Saudi Arabia into Zaire to try and mobilize the supporters and figure out how to take back control. in 1989. He was immediately arrested

upon Lining and Zaire by the government because he was incredibly well known. I mean, he had the title The Butcher of Africa and Black Hitler.

Like he wasn't going to just like go into another country and not be recognized. I mean, I imagine he's still wearing his oven. Yeah. Yeah.

These people obviously they go to bed in their military uniform. Yeah, it's a lot. I have, I googled it. And there's a, a egregious

number of metals. He's a beast owner, master of fishes. Yeah, you got to get a lot of metals for that. So, Zaire, the government, contact Saudi Arabia, saying, hey, we don't want this guy here. We're going to send him back. The world family said, no, we're good. Do not send this guy to Saudi Arabia. Eventually, they put him on a plane to Senegal, and literally upon arriving, the government of Senegal, put him on a plane, and flew him back to Zayur. So eventually, the king of Morocco calls and begs the royal family of Saudi Arabia to let him back in. Eventually, they relent and say, fine, we'll let you back in.

On August 16th of 2003, he died of kidney failure in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where he is now buried. But that was his life. That was basically what habit. He eventually had, I believe, 60 children with five wives. I think a couple of those are now like again it's I would love if anybody's like a historian of like African countries like let us like it is so complicated like you have to have you have to study this stuff for your entire life to even start to comprehend it because I write

out his son how his son is now aligned with another faction that was like originally aligned with the faction that his dad took over like it's crazy like. I do have, I do, I mean, obviously, like, this is barely, you know, touching the surface, just like of this story, but, yeah, I'd love to know more. It's crazy. It's like just wild that all that. I mean, it's wild that I don't, I mean, it's not wild, but like, when am I supposed to learn all that? I wish I don't think you, I really don't think you can. I think you have to rely on people who are able to distill it for us. Like, again, the last. Asking of Scotland's a really good portrayal of what it would have been like to live in Amin's country at that time. But I looked up Uganda today, and apparently you can actually still go there and visit the torture chambers where around 200,000 people were starved or beaten to death. The State Department, the United States State Department has a level three travel advisory up for Uganda, which literally means, quote, unquote, reconsider travel. Part of the reason

for that is that in this man you'll go down some deep rabbit holes with this so in the guy who's president now has essentially been president since shortly after a mean stop being president he he's one of those presidents where he passes like constitutional amendments saying that you can you'd never have to stop running for president there's no term limits he changed the age limit for president like he's one of those like he's very much in line with like in a mean type which is really gross because there's pictures of him with like Obama shaking his hand and smiling I'm like what are we doing is gross yeah so in 2014 his government was the one that passed the um the anti-homosexuality bill um and and when I researched it was like oh okay cool like they

they struck it down the Supreme Court you got to struck this down so there is some like checks and balance on this so great um when I wanted the state department as well website and they put the reconsider traveling advisor on there, they specifically go back and refer to, it's called the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023. This just happened. Like, it literally just happened a year ago, like less than a year ago. So they tried again to pass another bill that was similar to the one that I mentioned in 2014. This one did get through and has not been struck down.

And essentially, what this does is it institutes a mandatory. life imprisonment for consensual homosexual behavior and for anybody caught promoting anything considered homosexual so think of like advocacy organizations that want to fight against a law like this like that's kind of what that is um that is a 20 year prison sentence and if you were caught having multiple of these acts um against you that's a death sentence so wow so it's one thing one thing that came up researching this was that that mentality of like strength and military

and machismo and all that that Amin kind of exemplified and perpetuated during his rule, that's now baked in to the consciousness which is how you end up having laws like this written is because like that's

who's left. Everybody else was killed. Yeah. No, totally. So very, very scary apparently like it's not a it's not a safe place to visit um no and uh who knows if it ever will be because it sounds like this guy's probably not going to go away for a while when he does go away it'll be another strong man that's going to come in and lead them and yeah

we're kind of just in a perpetual cycle there that's awful and in the meantime people I'm sure are just not living pretty rough lives I would assume so Yeah. It's, again, like the history and the culture is so rich. I started looking into the Rwandan genocide. It all just seems like it's very, very tenuous peace, punctuated by moments of, like, insane violence. Yeah. I mean, killing that many people with machetes, I don't even know what that. I mean, I can't imagine what that entails. Yeah. You know, it's so, so violent and it's so personally violent. Like, there's some things that I've read, like, about, like, other military history things where, like, you know, like a bayonet, like a gun with, like the knife on the front of it. Like, people very rarely actually stab someone with it, you know, because once you get that close to someone, it's really hard.

You know, like, it's harder than you imagine it will be. And when you get there, you're like, fuck, I'm in front of it. person with this knife you know i think i think it can only happen in this tribal kind of environment because you can look at somebody and say the person that looks like you killed someone that looked like me or my family so i'm just doing an eye for an eye and it i mean that's what kept coming up with this stuff was like the tribal element of it of like and that's why i mentioned like that one kingdom was like everybody else was nobody was aligned it was just this one function within this kingdom that was aligned or this one faction but um anyways yeah so uh please tell us if you know more

about this stuff um there was another one that i wanted to research and i haven't gotten around to it but um i might do like warlord series yeah it's interesting and it's i mean it's not something that i see on my usual like news day you know yeah like we're too in like again like we talked about this before about like how we're so u.s. centric and us focus and we want the u.s. be better or people to be better or whatever and then you look at like what happens outside of our borders and like we're so insulated from things that everything here looks existential and then you look outside and like holy shit like it can be infinitely worse on this absolutely yeah but anyways that's my story today taylor hopefully you enjoyed it hopefully the people listening enjoyed it

it. And again, if you know about this stuff, or even if you just have recommendations on where to go for content about this stuff, I'd be so curious. Like, I'm sure there's other movies or better movies about this than the Last King of Scotland. But, so yeah, so let us know if you, if you have any, again, our email is Zoom tofellPod.com. We're on the socials at Doom tofell pod. So, yeah, that's it. I have something. Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm just going to my phone. Our friend Nadine, I'm so sorry. I was reading this comment that she sent me for, for sure. She's from Canada, and she was saying in Canada, public services, in reference to your postal service story, that the public service is unionized, but there's always, like, drama around what constitutes an essential service and whether they can or cannot go on strike. So they get a little bit creative of using other labor actions instead of a full-on strike to advocate. So just interesting that over there, they have a little bit more, I think, ability to kind of fight for what they're hope for a safe. workplace and all of that. Well, it's unionized here, too. There's a postal workers union in the United States.

So they could go on strike. They can now, but at a time in 1970, yeah, in 1970, they were a agency of the federal government. They were an administrative office of the federal government. Yeah, they were on strike. I think that was eight days they were on strike. And that's when Nixon ended up saying, fine. No, no, I mean, but since then.

Oh, I don't know that. I don't know. Cool. I don't know. Interesting. How other countries do it. The last one was in 1972. You're right. You're right. Oh, 72. Sorry, I said 70. Whatever. Oh, no. There's one in 70. The last one was in 72. Okay. The 71 then is the one that established they can unionize and they can be a separate office than a federal agency. Great. Sweet. Well, Taylor, thank you for that.

we'll go ahead and cut this off and rejoin you all on Wednesday. Thanks all.