It Could Happen Here - How To Build A Revolution: Myanmar, Part 5

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

We conclude our series on Myanmar, and look at how the revolution is sustaining itself after more than a year and a half of fighting without international aid. Music for this series was provided by Rebel Riot, check out their Bandcamp here https://therebelriot.bandcamp.com/album/one-daySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy

Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or whenever you get your podcasts. We'll be right back. everything. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. It's not easy to leave your home, even when people there are trying to kill you. Dr. Wonder, like everyone else, struggled with the choice.

His hospital had next to no supplies. COVID's third wave was ravaging the population, and he couldn't even get oxygen to treat sick patients. All around him was death and fear, but he still wanted to stay. Actually, I don't want to leave my country. Because if we just live like that, our country will be, will go back to before centuries, you know? You know?

They control everything. We have to just kill. We have to just make a kill to get a petroleum. We have faith in our young age. I don't want to feel that feeling again. Not for me, not just for me, not for our people, for our new generation. I've got two younger sons. One is five years, one is eight years.

So I just want to fight until my last breath. But I can't tolerate because they are trying. You know, as an underground movement, I'm trying my best. For Miao, the decision to go was made for him by the Tatmadaw. We are making the meeting with him. He is in under control at that time. Oh, he's compromised. Yes, at that time.

So we're making the meeting and asking him if he's safe or not, you know, at that time. At the end of the meeting, he told me that he was going to the inside. Oh, at that time, oh shit, holy shit. He was arrested. Yeah. So, at that time, I was living in the jungle. And, you know, the government, sorry, the military also announced that the remain to arrest. Yeah.

Remain to arrest. So, I think all of my team said, you have to go because you have all of the data. So you have to go. So I decided to go. Andy and the boys made the decision to abandon their apartment and head for Karin territory and eventually Thailand once one of their protest friends was arrested by the government. His phone was on him when he got caught, potentially exposing all of them. After a harrowing drive into the jungle and

several days among the Karen, they succeeded in finding a people smuggler to get them across the border without getting stuck in one of the refugee camps operated by the Thai government. Three days later, we were trying to cross at nighttime. And these guys said, okay, you know, you go in, you cross, you get to Thailand the same night. And we thought, okay, you know you go in you cross you get to Thailand um at the same night and we thought okay you know and we we swim across the river it was very scary but for me I've done it like three times so it was a little bit I thought it was going to be better but it was more stressful because I had them right so I was like if it was me alone maybe I could you know whatever happened I would find a way out I'm not sure if I could do that with three other people you know so I was like, if it was me alone, maybe I could, you know, whatever happened, I would find a way out. I'm not sure if I could do that with three other people, you know.

So I was quite nervous. We paid, what, $5,000 each? Jesus Christ. It's not cheap. It is not cheap. That's a significant bribe. It's a good day's work for him. No, no, but because that's the thing.

It's not just one person. Yeah, it's not just one person. Yeah, it's not just one person. He's got a... The person that crossed us from the river, from Yaveri to this side is one, and then from there to the no man's land is another one, right? Yeah, we saw the soldier, we were like, we're fucked. Alex stayed in fort, or attempted to fight, with the Karen. But most of the time all he did was stand sentry,

worry about getting enough to eat, or wonder when he'd get his hands on something better than a squirrel rifle. I first kind of used that because we don't have enough guns. So by the time there was an airstrike happening in Lake Eagle, I thought like, oh, we're gonna have to go and fight them now. But instead, we have to pack our stuff and move to a deeper jungle. So we're kind of like refugees with uniforms. But yeah, if I just keep staying there, if we are just going to keep running away like this, like I don't want to stay there. I want to do something about the needs,

like, you know, like the main needs in our country is the weapons against. So I want to like come here and like, you know, like work for that. He called his unit refugees with uniforms, and that's about what they were. This is why rebels like Miyok and Daddy UMCD are so motivated to find a way to reliably print

functional semi-automatic weapons. The Karen are desperately underarmed, and yet they've been able to hold off the military for decades. If the Karen and other ethnic organizations were able to build

functional arms production infrastructure alongside the new rebels with the PDF, they'd have a real chance at victory. If they succeed in building this, the repercussions around the world could be massive. That is, however, a story for another day. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains

and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head

and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Even in a rich country replete with therapists and VA clinics, thousands of US veterans live every day with PTSD. The difference for them is that they went to war. In Myanmar, war comes to you. And then there's another one which is this one.

And I did the first part and I'm too scared to do the second part. Really? Yeah. I mean, this is fucked up up like every time I have to do it. I get my head get fucked like yeah. That's one of the guy and so that's in Yangon in the protest. That's one of the night where that's one of the day, but yeah, they had one about a hundred people would kill over a hundred people. You can see in the video, they come in and you will see that the military, how the military

came in and how they were trying to... I'm not sure if I have it anymore, maybe here. They surrounded and they killed everyone. What they've seen has bonded the boys. They do anything for each other and have already done things that most of us can't imagine. When one of their mothers wanted to take him home, he felt helpless without them. When the rest of them crossed, one of their mums came back to get him. Without them,

and stuck in a country falling apart, he didn't want to keep going. Every day, he watched soldiers outside himself popping Yabba pills. Yabba's a meth-based drug that soldiers are often given by the military. He worried they'd kill him. His brother-in-law was arrested and tortured just for having a lighter. I'm okay off the police. I killed myself. He wasn't in a good space. Yeah, I live in Tam Ninh, Yangon. That's really dangerous. That's military, like the military space. And I didn't like that.

So he was saying that if he has to go back, he was telling us like, you know, now he's alone. Like, he doesn't even have us anymore. And so he was saying, like, he's going to go out to the protest and he's going to try to kill the cops, right? The soldiers, the police. And it was very difficult, like, for us too, because we know his mom can't really, like, help him with that stuff. You know, we can, but she really wanted to take him, so. Over time, they chatted on the phone, and he felt better. But now he's here with the boys.

It's him playing his guitar in the music you heard. He got a little better at coping with this in a good way. You know what I mean? I mean, if you're young and you see people killing people like this terribly, you have some dark, fucked up thoughts yourself too, right? Like I could do this to someone too and stuff like that so he's struggled a lot with that for a long time and I think the worst thing was being alone. He was alone. He couldn't talk to his mom about all these things, right? He was paranoid. He was scared. He was traumatized

all these things right he was paranoid he was scared he was traumatized so i mean you should see like the first time he right it's been five months since he was he's here but the first few months it was very difficult but yeah i'm kind of like i talk to them all the time about this because i know talking helps with these steps, and especially when you all feeling the same thing. It's like, you know, and I think our ways of coping with this is like, we talk about it, but like kind of like a joke in a way, like people hearing it. Yeah. That's the best way to deal with it. Like...

To get through those hard days on his own, looking down at men who wanted him dead, he picked up a cheap acoustic guitar. When he got back, he began teaching the others. If you hadn't picked it up, they're pretty good. When we went out to the pool bar at night, in between kicking our asses, the boys would look up at the stage, it was occupied by a pretty second-rate cover band. For whatever reason, probably not helped by the incredibly rough taijin we'd been smashing back, I looked at them looking at the stage on our last night and I wanted to cry. Teenage kids shouldn't

be caught picking up guns to fight, or picking up cameras to film their friends die. They should be doing what I was doing when I was a teenager, which is making a complete prick of myself on a stage with a guitar. One day, hopefully soon, they'll be able to sing happy songs again and the war will just be a memory. I start playing guitar. Then, when you arrived here? No, before. Before, yeah.

I don't have friends for talk. I don't talk with my mom, so I start playing guitar. Good man. Their bond is so close now. They're barely ever apart. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah.

Their bond is so close now, and they're barely ever apart. It's a lot of responsibility for Andy, who's just 22 himself, but he wouldn't want it any other way, and neither would they. One night, Andy and Sarah have appointments, and so Robert and I take the boys for dinner. It's a lot of fun, and actually a lot of food. But when we talk to them about their options as refugees who might be able to come to the US, one thing is clear. They don't

want to be apart. For me, it's like I'd rather fucking take bullet than any of them. Because if they die or if something happens to them, I am in so much trouble. You know what I mean? But I know that that's what they want to do. Like if the mom trap him in yangon and he doesn't do anything and the revolution is over he's gonna feel so much regret you know like for not being involved in this like and that's for me

it's like people if people want to fight like you know like we shouldn't keep them we shouldn't just say, yeah. Yeah, I've got it. from the shadows presented by I heart and Sonora an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America gasoline counters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley

into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. It's been a few months since we got back from Maysaut. It's the rainy season there now, and that makes fighting, reporting, harder. Amira is still stuck in Maysaut. It's not safe for her to go back to a country where her family

wants her dead. But it's not possible for her to leave Maysaut either. Without travel documents, something the UNHCR would have to issue, she's stuck in a little room in a hotel. It's not a great place for a young woman, and it's even worse when she has to watch her friends continue to struggle without her. We both wrote to the UN and the various embassies on her behalf, but months later, we've heard nothing. This is typical of a lot of refugees. They're often presented as a faceless mass of humanity bereft of hope. But each of them has a story, and those refugee camps along the border between Thailand and Myanmar are full of stories. Some of those are stories of fear, some of heroism, and some of tragedy. But until things change at the UN, all of those stories aren't being told. The 3D printed firearms Meowth and

his colleagues are working on have made massive progress over the last few months. But even though 3D printed guns cost a small fraction of the price of an M16 or an AK-47 the pro-democracy forces are still desperately underfunded. They're at war with the state but they don't have any of the apparatus of a state with which to fight back. Instead the Gen Z rebels have turned once again to the internet. Alongside crowdfunding campaigns like Liberate Myanmar they've developed a more innovative fundraising method that allows for donations even from people who don't have any money. Instead of soliciting cash donations, risking exposing their donors,

they began using a method that they call click-to-donate, where supporters could help the rebels by clicking on adverts on certain videos and websites in order to generate advertising revenue. It's used to find everything from weapons purchases to shelter for the tens of thousands of eternally displaced people in Myanmar. I spoke to several people in Myanmar who asked not to be named for their own safety, but are very familiar with the funding of the PDF. One of them told me, click to donate started to support government staff who had decided to join the civil disobedience movement. Government staff are always low paid, and so they were not very financially stable in the beginning.

The funds from Click to Donate allow these workers to strike without pay. After a few weeks of being on strike, financial concerns were weakening the movement, and people were being forced to work or starve. Younger pro-democracy activists responded by setting up YouTube channels and then using the anti-coup telegram channels to direct millions of views and ad clicks to them from across the country and from supporters abroad. The resulting advertising revenue allowed them to fund the civil disobedience movement and later to equip the PDF. By December of 2021, these clicks were yielding an income of about 500 million kyats, about $28,000, every day. The military junta responded to this,

an international indignation at videos of protesters being massacred in the street, by tripling data prices and throttling internet connection speeds. Pro-democracy keyboard warriors responded with viral content that required less bandwidth, including writing personal finance blogs to attract a U.S. audience that was unknowingly supporting a revolution with its clicks. People in Myanmar also began to use VPNs to access the internet. This helped them get around some of the junta's restrictions and also yielded a higher advertising payment per click on a given advert. Websites like Digital Revolution allow users to find content that supports pro-democracy rebels and click on it, lending

their support with nothing more than a broadband connection and a few seconds of their time. Alongside their videos and websites, the Gen Z rebels also launched games. At first, they were just simple little online phone app games that would let you throw darts at the coup leader or something. One source told us that these games didn't just support the rebels through funding, but also provided a little bit of mental health care. You know, at least people could virtually kill the folks in their city, in their home, who were ruining their lives. And at the same time, the games earned the money, and that money went to fund the PDF. The most impressive of these games is the recently launched War of Heroes, which you can buy for just a dollar on the Apple and Google app stores if you want to check it out. In the game, which is available in Burmese or English, a player

can fight as a man or a woman, and take on government troops and even zombies. The money donated by these games and adverts doesn't just go into a black hole, according to the sources I spoke to. We have a click-to-donate Facebook page, they said, and regularly we release financial statements on the Facebook page, saying, like, this month we gave 10 million kiaps to that group. I spoke to Billy Ford, a program officer for the Burma team at U.S. Institute of Peace. He says this kind of innovation is what's allowed the pro-democracy movement to survive in Myanmar since it was last violently suppressed in 1988. Activists and resistance movements in Myanmar have, historically, been an example to the world of creative, strategic

and resilient models of activism, he said. This post-2021 movement has taken that to a new level, enabling it to defy all historical precedent and sustain an anti-coup movement for more than 18 months now, actually gaining ground against a regime with an enormous structural advantage. Rather than seeing the lack of weapons and funds as a fatal flaw, Ford says that the highly online rebels have looked for areas where they could outflank the ageing generals who stole their futures from them. The movement has leveraged its comparative advantages. Large numbers of people with time and tech savvy to raise money, he says. This tactic, although unusual, has been a great success, according to Ford. The approach has grown enormously, with one of the video games,

for example, rising to become the number two paid app on the App Store at one point. However, all the clicks in the world might not be enough to sweep the rebels into Mandalay and return the country on its path towards democracy. Sources inside Myanmar say that less and less revenue is generated by a Myanmar IP address, and that they have had to encourage members of the people's click force to install VPNs to make their clicks appear to come from the US or Europe. Sometimes, the traffic is so massive that YouTube's algorithm mistakes it for an artificial intelligence botnet. They're looking, they tell me, at pivoting towards affiliate links and the sort of content-driven commerce that has swept the US media thanks to the success of sites like

the Wirecutter. Meanwhile, on the ground, PDF forces are regularly getting the better of the Tatmadaw in small arms conflict, but coming off worse when they can't defend themselves against the Russian jets, which the junta uses to bomb civilian and military targets. Without man-portable anti-aircraft systems, the rebels are sitting ducks. The world has sent thousands of these to Ukraine, and none to people in Myanmar, fighting the same battle for democracy against the same Russian jets. Despite this, they're not discouraged.

PDF rebels tell me they have been scouring the internet, and they're working on a solution that doesn't need the apparatus of support of a state, and instead relies on stable broadband and the increasing ingenuity they've shown in 18 months of revolution. Hi everyone, it's me again, James. Don't worry, I'm not coming to you at the end of a series to report something tragic like I did in our last Myanmar series. I'm just recording this little message at the end to say that we're very grateful to Daniel and Ian for all their hard work on this.

We've gone through countless edits for this particular project and they've done a lot of hard work to get it to you in the form that you listened to it today and for the last week we also want to say that although this appears to be a podcast written and recorded by robert and i that andy is very much a co-author and that none of this would have been possible without him as we said andy's not his real name and we can't put his real name in the credits because we're worried for his safety. But his work has been invaluable and without him, none of what you've heard would be possible.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami?

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions,

sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.