It Could Happen Here - Israel's History with UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

James and Mia discuss the history of UNIFIL, and the role it plays today as Israel keeps threatening UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.Sources: https://unifil.unmissions.org/unifil-ground-operations https://www.total-slovenia-news.com/politics/5322-timeline-of-security-incidents-involving-slovenian-troops https://unifil.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/unifilpresskit.pdf http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5215366.stm https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/syrian-golan-crossing-israeli-military-quneitra https://x.com/UNIFIL_/status/1845470755015762208See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again 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 tech's elite and how they've 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 brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. 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. Call Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. It's a calm introduction today. No, it's just a chill one. It's me, James, and I'm joined by Mia. How are you doing, Mia?

Not the best, but you know, we're hanging in there. We're defeating the illness and the frailness of the human body. Overcoming the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God or something. That's what Elon Musk does every day, of course. Yeah, we're doing this with the power of cough medicine. It's going to be great. Yeah, yeah. Not the kind of cough medicine that you can only buy so much of.

Okay, so we're here today, powered by cough medicine, to discuss the united nations interim force in lebanon of course a thing that we haven't talked about before uh but the last people are talking about on the internet and and i wanted to like just clear up what i think are some misunderstandings or like just a lack of background sort of explain what they do explain who it's composed of a little bit of history and sort of its role here as israel begins attacking lebanon as it did gaza right and as it has continued to attack the west bank as well yeah and as we're going to get to the end of this episode they've started making a small push into Syria. So great things happening here. We'll get to that at the end of the episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Israel once again employing an entirely proprietary

understanding of borders and where they are and how they work. Maybe they're actually the no borders state. You know, like Benedict Anderson. My opposition to the Sykes-Picot borders is well known, but not like this, man. Like, come on. This is not what I meant when I said destroy the Sykes-Picot borders is well known, but not like this, man. Like, come on. This is not what I meant when I said destroy the Sykes-Picot borders.

In the Venn diagram, the overlap of people who disagree with Sykes-Picot, it's Mia Wong, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, and Israel, but it's very small, and they disagree with it for very different reasons. ISIS, too. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you're really in good company.

Yeah, I remember back in 2014, so this like 2014. So this one's for there's, there are a bunch of kids who listened to this show and by kids, I mean, people who weren't like 27, um, who don't remember the fact that you could just argue with ISIS people on Twitter. Oh yeah. 2014, 2015. And like, they had a really good PR operation. Oh, incredible. Yeah. And one of the arguments he would make was like, well, yeah, we're trying to destroy the imperialist like, sex-physio borders. And we're like, well, okay. You're doing this by

establishing ISIS. And it's like, really? Yeah. No, that was a wild time when you could argue that, like, you can still argue with, like, an Assadist occasionally on Twitter or like... Oh, sure. like this wasn't even just like people who support them this was like actual ISIS PR guys yeah yeah that was their

whole job was to argue with you yeah um there are some pretty good articles from back in that time period about that if you're too young to remember that but yeah so we're talking about UNIFIL today right the United Nations interim force in. Why are we talking about them? Because the IDF has spent the last week or so edging on just openly attacking them. And it has more or less openly attacked them, but it hasn't done so in like a complete way, I guess. We'll talk a little bit now about some of the things which have happened, because I think we should probably start there.

And then we'll explain who UNIFIL are, what they do, where they're at, etc. A little bit of history. So UNIFIL has caused a situation with the IDF extremely serious and a flagrant violation of international law. A phrase which is used every time Israel does anything, because it's true. And then nothing happens. And then nothing happens, yeah. And that, I think, where we're going to end up today

is that it's good that they are there right like just to big picture this what israel has done in lebanon in gaza and in the west bank is it has attacked anyone who is any form of outside observer right it has killed aid workers it has killed journalists and it has shot artillery rounds at peacekeepers injured peacekeepers in lebanon right anyone who can provide any form of independent oversight who can provide any form of accountability for what they're doing is in danger and this like is more or less i mean russia does this a little bit too right but like among like i don't know what we're supposed to uh understand israel as a democracy but like this war seems to be pretty unpopular even there.

And then Yahoo really isn't. He's taken the Trump approach to democracy, let's say. Israel seemingly murdering journalists as part of its policy, as a goal of its invasion of Gaza, is pretty unique even by the standards of other Western militaries who have done some pretty terrible things in the Middle East in the last 20 years. So some of the things it's done in recent days,

it's fired smoke rounds about 100 meters from their compounds, causing UNIFIL peacekeepers to have to don their gas masks. 15 of them were injured. They had like skin irritation from whatever the munition was. I don't quite know what it was. I guess I think expired smokes can do that and tear gases, old tear gas can do that. You're not supposed to use tear gas.

Yeah, that's a war crime. Yeah, that's a war crime. It's a war crime that lots of people do, to be fair. They wouldn't be the first one I'd seen. But then, again, right, like these are people, are they signatures to a Geneva Convention? Actually, I don't know. That's a good. They either don't give a fuck. Does it really matter?

Yeah. Have a look. i'm interested to know yeah they actually have ratified the convention which i guess makes them mildly more there you go international law bound in the u.s which is the ultimate rogue state yeah yeah exactly i mean israel is pretty much a rogue state at this point right like that i think is oh yeah the sort of the frame of analysis for which they should be understood a rogue state at this point, right? Like that, I think, is sort of the frame of analysis for which they should be understood. A rogue state doing violence, settler colonialism, wherever the fuck it wants with your taxpayer money, because apparently there's nothing it can do which will cause it to have one centimeter of accountability from the US.

Yeah. Other things they've been getting up to, they've knocked down compound walls of the unifil compounds. Can we explain what unifil is, by the way? Yeah, sure. So the Unifil is the United Nations interim force in Lebanon. It's tasked with peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal of the IDF. So in theory, the IDF, as we'll get into, has invaded Lebanon many times.

invaded lebanon many times has in theory since 2006 which was the last time it sort of invaded lebanon like it's invaded lebanon on a very small scale like hundreds of times right like uh for instance stepping across the border which the border is not entirely agreed upon by israel and lebanon but the united nations has imposed something called a blue line which is what it considers to be the border. Israeli troops will go across that to trim trees a lot, so they can spy more effectively. They literally have towers and cameras and stuff.

But in 2006, people who are old, like myself, will remember Israel. Last time, it did a full-scale evasion of Lebanon. And on its withdrawal... I'll just go through the history of Unifor now, and we can talk about the attacks later, I guess. So they're supposed to keep the IDF and Hezbollah, in theory, out of an area between the Litani River and the Blue Line. The Blue Line is where the UN drew the border in 2000. And the idea is that the border was drawn there by

the UN to determine if Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon. That doesn't necessarily mean that all parties accepted it as a border. They don't, but it is a blue line for now. The UNIFIL have been in Lebanon since 1978. That was one of the times when Israel invaded Lebanon. At that point, they were looking for the PLO. Yeah. I think the PLO had crossed over from Lebanon to attack and massacre people in Israel.

Right. At which point Israel then decided to just go hog and fully invade Lebanon in 78. It invaded again in 82 while UNIFIL were there. And it sort of bypassed UNIFIL position to that point. And it doesn't mean that people didn't die in these invasions. UNIFIL troops are peacekeepers because they did. Right. Like it's a dangerous place to be also like 82 is like the sabra massacre like yes like just like hideous israeli massacres of uh refugee camps which is the kind of thing that like used to cause more anger in the u.s that it did now like yeah now it's another day that ends in y right yeah you know they bombed

our hospital again it's been a year of bombing hospitals now uh and it doesn't seem to register anymore doesn't you know make the make the headlines yeah in in 82 israel bombed compounds and it took israel until the year 2000 to to quote unquote withdraw from Lebanon. And at that point, that was when the blue line was drawn, right? During that time before 2000, it wasn't just the IDF that was operating in the area. You also had the South Lebanese army. I don't like the division of groups in this part of the world exclusively along religious lines, because I think that doesn't entirely explain things always.

And I think it's like a very analyst brain way of seeing things like to be like oh these are the shiites and they do this these are the sunnis and they do this but the sla is a majority christian organization and like it began as its own independent thing in the in the civil war in lebanon but it became more or less an israeli proxy right it's certainly in this area. And the UN calls them Israeli de facto forces, which is kind of a bold move from the UN, actually. Like, to just say it, of course,

saying it and doing it is another thing. But like during the time from 82 to 2000, Israel invaded multiple times, right? Including in 1996, when just in the year of 1996 israel fired on unifil peacekeepers 270 times so like i think that's like every weekday for the entire year to put things in perspective you know like if they took weekends off uh they fired on them every weekday including she shelling a UNIFIL compound. After the withdrawal in 2000, UNIFIL's task was peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal, and assisting the Lebanese government

in restoring its authority in the area under UN Mandate 1701. In 2006, Israel invaded again. And eventually, it sort of ground to a standstill that time, ground to a standstill on top of a massive pile of civilian bodies, as it tends to do, right? They bombed Beirut in 2006. I remember that. I was traveling in the Middle East in 2006.

I remember just being like, oh, this is... It's one thing to watch war on TV when you're at home, but when you're that little bit closer and it's people who are like, my cousin is there, my brother is there. A good school friend of mine was in Beirut, I remember. a little bit closer and it's people who are like yeah my cousin is there my brother is there um good school friend of mine was was in beirut i remember it like it was one of my earlier experiences of just being like this is horrific and there's nothing we can do like no one seems to care no one's going to stop them and like here we are getting on for two decades later and in

fact no one has stopped them they're still doing it talking of things that no one can stop yeah no one can stop the relentless march of capitalism and that is where we now have to pivot to advertisements 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. 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. Hey, I'm Jacquese 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. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

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Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again 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 Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google

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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. Gonzales 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 We are back.

So in 2006, once again,rael killed un peacekeepers right perhaps the most notable incident is when a precision guided bomb struck a bunker in which four un peacekeepers were sheltering they'd been shelled 14 times that day they had then gone to their bunker right to be protected from the shelling at which point they received this precision guided munition which killed four of them the peacekeepers were from austria canada china and finland later the un sent like a quick reaction force and a rescue team which the idf also shelled jesus christ yeah like i think this may be the time to point out that like i think a lot of people are maybe hopeful and maybe it's true that like if

israel crosses a line with attacking like european people that will matter more to the nation the states and governments of the world than it has done with killing palestinian civilians and to a degree they might be right like you might you've had statements from a dozen or so countries that israel shouldn't be attacking but they're still getting this fire hose of money and weapons right there's still been no actual accountability i think that will actually stop them from doing what they're doing that's not like the fault of the people on the ground in unifil for the most part yeah but it nonetheless is it's the case it was also in that incident in 2006 that i was talking about unifil called the idf 10 times to ask them to stop shelling and this bunker by the way i'm

not talking about like concealed position right like like i've been in bunkers and i'm away for work that you might not be able to see very easily this bad boy is painted bright white with the letters un on it like it's incredibly well marked it's impossible to miss you know it stands out like a sore thumb that's where they dropped their precision guided munition there was also an incident in 2010 this might be one people remember and this is one of the tree trimming incidents so the idf was trying to trim trees on the blue line the lebanese military perceived them to have entered lebanon i'm sure the idf perceived themselves to be inside israel the idf's understanding of borders as i said is

somewhat uh unique and so indonesian unifil troops were there this is a particularly interesting incident the indonesian troops seem to be pretty popular in lebanon from what i can tell there are 41 nations that take part in unIFIL right um but there are large contingents of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Irish peacekeepers and Indonesian and Nepali peacekeepers as well the Indonesians are interesting because their government doesn't recognize Israel and so they have they have no diplomacy like I don't quite know how they manage that because as we'll get into unifil is controlled by this thing called a tripartite mechanism whereby they have to agree on almost everything with the government of lebanon or the military of lebanese

army and the idf which is it's kind of classic un right you have these people there who are positioned to do something really important right now, which is to stop the IDF doing in Lebanon what it has done in Gaza. But they've managed to engineer themselves into a situation where the IDF also has a veto on pretty much anything they can do. Yeah. Which, like,

I was told, I spoke to someone who was very familiar with the operations of Unifil, and they were telling me, for instance, that the IDF had been able to control what munitions they were able to bring into the country jesus which matters because as we'll get into one of the things that idf likes to do is like literally knock on their front door with main battle tanks right they actually knocked down the front gate of the unifil compound with a macava tank certainly like knocking the front gate down with a macava is one way of going about asking yeah which is insane yeah like these people just completely lost their

minds yeah i mean that's that's the thing right like i think that's what i want folks to take away from this is that like it's unlikely that the un is going to go toe-to-toe with the idf at this point yeah no that doesn't mean as i've seen people saying that either they're going to go toe-to-toe with the IDF at this point. Yeah, no. That doesn't mean, as I've seen people saying, that either they're there to spy for the IDF, they're not. The IDF keeps killing them. Yeah. In quite large numbers. I think 42 Irish people have been killed in the history of uniform deployments.

Dozens from other countries too, right? Nor does this mean there's a netanyahu has called them quote hostages of hezbollah which is kind of a ridiculous claim yeah many of the things that come out of his mouth are like they're also categorically not they're hostages of the united nations and there's this system that it's backed itself into whereby two belligerent parties can stop them doing anything they do so i'll give you an example of that 2010 case right these indonesian unifil troops are trying to prevent the idf and the lebanese army firing at each other the idf is entering into lebanon to cut down some trees

and then the perspective of the lebanese army i guess they started throwing insults on one another and and soon enough they start shooting at each other so two indonesian peacekeepers there was a video of this that went around for a while uh so the indonesians decide that basically there's nothing we can do they're going to shoot at each other and so they decide to withdraw which probably isn't the best like they're like you know they're not keeping peace by force i guess but uh they basically decide there's nothing they can do. They decide to pull out. Local people construct a roadblock to try and make them stay and prevent the IDF

from entering Lebanon. This happens a lot. You'll see this happening. This happens in various... I'm going to get into some other UN situations where this has happened. The two peacekeepers get separated from their unit this is a video that kind of went around at the time uh like i'm sure they're genuinely afraid at that

point right in the video they're being helped by local folks and they end up getting in a taxi to like leave and come back to their base and which like i'm sure they were in a pretty shitty they were having a bad yeah yeah and to quote. And to quote Major General Alain Pellegrini, who was a French officer, who was UNIFIL commander from 2004 to 2007, quote, the problem is in such cases as this, if you intervene to protect the IDF,

for instance, UNIFIL will be accused by Hezbollah or the people of protecting the Israelis and collaborating with the enemy. The other side, if we do the same with the Lebanese, it's relevant to accuse UNIFIL of collaborating with Hezbollah. So like, yes, it will in the situation that we're seeing currently. I think, obviously, what Israel thinks and says doesn't really have much credibility anymore.

Because they're ruled by this tripartite mechanism, there's really very little they can do. They can fire at people if they're fired upon but the idf isn't like uh engaging them in small arms combat right they're lobbing artillery shells into their compound they're firing smoke they're bashing down their walls with caterpillar armored bulldozers the idf loves an armored bulldozer yeah because i mean you can probably join the dots on why the idf loves an armored bulldozer. You know, they're in the business of knocking stuff down, I guess. And yeah, going into urban areas and destroying people's homes.

That's, I'm sure other folks have armor bulldozers too. Just the IDF is kind of well known for using these things. They shot down an observation tower last week, which had two peacekeepers in it. And obviously those people were injured because their tower got shot down but like they're not fully attacking them enough that those peacekeepers would like defend themselves or their uh their positions and i think if people are like hoping that somehow like an engagement between peacekeepers and the idf will

be yeah what causes accountability i don't think that's going to happen. Yeah. And for like, for the UN to actually like really seriously intervene in a world like this, it takes one of the UN security council members being like, we will send our own troops. Like that's like how the UN got involved in Korea. Right. Yeah. Like the US was like,

fuck it. We're going to send an army there. And like Russia is not going to like send an army. They are significantly too busy invading Ukraine and selling natural is not going to like send an army they are significantly too busy invading ukraine and selling natural gas to israel to like do anything china is not going to do it because they're israel's second largest trading partner and they don't give a shit like no no one's actually going to like send troops to like back some kind of like un mandate to like stop the israelis from doing this like that's just like

not even if the Israelis were to just start killing peacekeepers like it's not going to happen it's never happened any other time the Israelis have killed peacekeepers yeah like peacekeepers have in other places for yeah that for instance Irish peacekeepers in Congo right or the Canadians and indeed like the uh the Unifor have engaged in combat before, but I think the chances of them stopping the IDF invasion are extremely slim. Yeah, if you're fighting a state that is just directly an American proxy, there's no way.

Yeah. I don't even think the 70s NAM, like non-aligned movement, like dominated UN, could have pulled something like that off. And this un will not no like the un will issue strongly worded statements the un will say it's deeply concerned and i imagine that like if you're just like a troop and then you're on your unifil so most of the at least for the irish most of the people that have volunteered to be there to an island

is probably among at least among european countries most of the people there have volunteered to be there. Ireland is probably among, at least among European countries, a country that has stood strongest in its solidarity with Palestine for a long time. I'm sure it fucking sucks. I'm sure it really blows. Oh yeah. And what the IDF has done now is advance past their like forward positions and the positions where people are being injured by shelling at their

headquarters positions. So like, if you imagine a triangle with a broad base of it at the front there shelling and sort of fighting around the headquarters positions so like if you imagine a triangle with a broad base of it at the front they're shelling and sort of fighting around the headquarters positions i'm sure if you've been spending that much of your life as a soldier you know like and you're watching something terrible happen you'd want to fight but uh yeah you're just sitting around like that doesn't mean that it's bad that they're there no yeah like any form of accountability will make it more accountable than what happened in gaza right yeah or at least it will make whatever happens more visible than

what happened in gaza and it probably legitimately has slowed the israelis down like yeah versus what would happen if there was nothing there and they could just run roughshod which is you know again like what we've seen in gaza and what we've seen the west bank yeah like i mean their strategy in gaza has been first of all like militarily inept right like they've lost control of areas in their rear because aside from just killing lots of people and flattening cities they don't seem to be really doing much you know like an actual sort of targeted manner and like yeah just the presence of peacekeepers means that you can't just carpet bomb in advance you know fire at anything that moves this area between the latani river and the blue line civilians have largely left because there's intense combat going on there right

has bala present there and then obviously the idf are now present there and they're fighting so like if people can leave they've left so having not that civilians have really slowed the israelis down in gaza or been a civilian casualties don't seem to be something they care about but yeah having these folks there has stopped them just just carpet bombing the area which is a good thing yeah something that's not a good thing it's our obligation to pivot to adverts again which we will do. 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. 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. 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. Hey, I'm Jack Peace 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. I'm Jack Peace Thomas,

and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio 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. hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs

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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 will make headlines everywhere. 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.

All right, we're back. Yeah, I guess like I've seen it from a few people. I think it's either the people who discovered like international politics a year ago and previously like hadn't really thought about it or from the kind of nativist right the idea that like they shouldn't be there like i've seen it from like some kind of nativist type folks about ireland like why are the irish they're risking their lives for the for the lebanese what the fuck the lebanese ever do for them i have such good news for you about about who was training the ira in the 70s there were there were a lot are a lot of guys with Irish accents in the Bekaa Valley

training at PLO camps in the 70s. So, you know, they really have actually done things for you. It's one of the things, people do this with, like, the US, where there's, like, one of the Israeli lines. It's like, ah, what have Palestinians ever done for black people? It's like, well, like, there are a lot of people who got a lot of training

with PLO in the 70s. Like, they genuinely are, for better and for worse, because, like, there's also groups that they trained that, like, they probably shouldn't have. Yeah, without a doubt. A lot of the groups that became the Fighting Vanguard, which was, okay, it's, I don't want to describe the Fighting Vanguard. The Fighting Vanguard were, like, a kind of militant wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. And like a bunch of those Fighting Vanguard guys who survived. So they do an uprising in, I think it was 84. They like all get killed.

Those people who survived go on to be some of the founding members of Al-Qaeda. So not always. Yeah, not great. Yeah, but like, you know, their record, like, look, one out of like 20 of the people you trained go with haywire is not great. But, like, you know, 19 other ones did pretty good. Yeah, I think Abdul-Azhar was in the Bekaa Valley for a while. Yeah, yeah. Lots of cadres of the PKK.

Yeah, PKK was there, yeah. Yeah, Kurds died, actually. There's a good article called The Kurds who died for palestine i was reading recently because often you'll see this like uh idea that the kurds are like inherently like zionist and i don't think that's true no like yeah like they fought in the lebanese civil war on the side of the plo like yeah yeah because they were in because they were in becca valley in the plo's training camps like yeah yeah they didn't really have much choice to be fair like israel was coming for them. Yeah, and Israel is one of the countries that helped kidnap Abdullah Ocalan. They're really not pro-Zionist at all.

No, this is one of those things that you'll see from, like, I don't know if they're bot accounts, or they're just people with very unoriginal opinions who retreat kind of Turkish state lines. When Israel builds settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, they do it with steel that comes from Turkey. Yep. lines when israel builds settlements in a west bank in gaza they do it with steel that comes from turkey yep so yeah maybe treat those claims with some skepticism uh if there's a gray wolf in bio particularly yeah there is a broader more serious point there which is that like the actual physical resources that the israelis use to to physically build the occupation right yeah those all come from places and it's not all the u.s and i think people have this image that like well like and it is true the u.s sends an

unbelievable amount of money to israel but there's a lot of places where the israelis are getting their shit formed right like the israeli tech sector the israeli tech sector is one of the cores of the israeli economy and it's one of the cores of of the israeli occupation is almost entirely fueled by like semiconductors and stuff that they buy from china right it's one of the cores of of the israeli occupation is almost entirely fueled by like semiconductors and stuff that they buy from china right that's where all the the physical technical infrastructure of this stuff comes from i talked about before about like russian natural gas right all of these countries who will you know talk all of this shit like and the un about israel like people's geopolitical stances and what

they're willing to send materially to the Israelis are not the same thing at all. And if you want to actually gauge how the occupation functions, it's because a lot of countries that nominally will be like, oh, we oppose Israeli occupation, we'll just send them all the fucking resources that they need to do the occupation.

Yeah, and they don't get any heat unless it's like literal bombs and bullets right like yeah and and even and even then like lots of people like yeah there's plenty of uh of non-us i mean the uk does a lot of this too right yeah one of the things that idf likes to do they haven't mentioned yet is mock air assaults of uh uniform positions jesus christ well they'll fly in like a bombing formation, just basically, I guess, haze them. I can't really think of a way to describe it.

Well, it's terror. It's a terror campaign. Yes, yes. It's a very clear indication that any day we could wipe you off the map. And some of the UNIFIL assets seem to have anti-aircraft missiles, some of them don't. But even still, a determined attack by the IDF,

they'd be in big trouble, of course. So right now, I guess the situation we're in, according to the person I spoke to, is that these positions, Israel has advanced past. The peacekeepers there are still in their positions, right? They have, using their own funds, which I presume means like funds from the states of which they are part fortified their positions and improve their positions with their

own Jesus Christ yeah well the UN is supposed to provide positions for them it's supposed to provide their rations and it's supposed to provide weapons and vehicles for some of the states that like kind of aren't up to uh i guess a modern standard that's incidentally why you don't see it so much here but in other parts of the world you'll often see troops on peacekeeping missions who like perhaps you haven't heard of that country's military before right like it's very common for like also i think it is better that there are african peacekeepers in africa than like white european peace like i think for historical and very obvious

reasons. I will mention, one of the places that sends a lot of peacekeepers to places is Nepal and the record of Nepalese peacekeepers that are being sent by Maoist governments are not great. That sucks. Yeah, you can google that.

We've talked about this in Brazil at length and Haiti. Brazilian-Nepalese cooperation in Haiti is a shitshow. Yeah, you can Google that. We've talked about this in Brazil at length. And Haiti, like, sorry, Brazilian-Nepalese cooperation in Haiti is a shit show. Yeah, no, it has not been good for the Haitian people. I will say, like, one of the things that happens a lot is the UN pays them a certain rate for peacekeeping, I guess. The UN compensates a certain rate, which is often a lot more than those militaries pay their soldiers.

So it's like a source of income for the military. If you see what I mean, they can they can like skim off the percentage but these guys have at their own expense fortified their positions at their own expense supplied themselves with rations so that they've they bought a ton of food and water it's what that means in like non-nerdy terms so they're pretty well stocked up right they're like they're bunkered up yeah but but it's also it's also like this u.n operation is being equipped in the same way that American school teachers make sure their classrooms have pencils. That's a perfect... What the fuck is going on here?

Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ. It may be, Mia, maybe the state not the best way of organizing human society is what people are saying. Look, we need to fuse the two and finally bring about my lifelong dream of armed teachers union pickets yeah bring it back to like blair mountain but for teachers yeah it's like don't arm teachers arm teachers unions yeah yeah we can finally get bipartisan agreement on uh nothing yeah they're pretty well hold up like like uh like american preppers dream of themselves

being right surrounded by ammunition and mres but at some point they're going to run out of food and water and at some point that means that they're going to have to resupply right now on i'm just going to check the date very quickly and unifil is on twitter by the way if you want to uh do you want to follow them there they kind of give a daily update on what's going on. On the 13th of October, Unifil said that the IDF soldiers stopped a critical Unifil logistical movement, which could well be like an attempt at resupply of one of these places, right? At some point, they're going to have to resupply them either by air or by land and i think that is when we will most likely see like exactly how hard the idf wants to go against like in this case trucks

full of mres right like yeah and previously they've got in standoffs like uh a few years ago the french the french have done some interesting stuff as part of the unifil mission like in 2010 they kind of went on a unilateral operation without approval to look for his brother yeah not a great move yeah it's wild french forces in lebanon such an interesting thing because it's like you you have inside of the french soul is warring at all times two forces and it is it is racist and anti-semitism it's like they they because they hate muslims so much but they are also so anti-semitic this this is at all times warring the nature of the french soul the two wolves that live inside the french person uh yeah well in 2010 they were their islamophobia was winning like they uh

specifically they used sniffer dogs in people's homes, which is very disrespectful in culture in that part of the world. I mean, also here, I would be really pissed off if fucking a bomb squad started running sniffer dogs around my apartment. Yeah, for sure. Get out. Going through private property and doing things that they were supposed to operate with the Lebanese armed forces. So they patrol alongside them. But in this case, the French decided they were just going to send it solo and obviously pissed a lot of people off and like it's really interesting to see people address their concerns but what's not interesting I guess but people address their concerns specifically

with the French element of Unifil rather than other elements of Unifil like for instance the Indonesian seems to be pretty popular the Indian element of Unifil teaches weekly yoga classes which are apparently becoming more and more popular. I've seen a bunch of videos. There's like TikToks of Lebanese people in that area who speak English, and they all speak English with an Irish accent. Oh, yeah. Because they've been there for so long.

It's great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the Irish have been there since the 70s, right? Like, I know of people who have two generations of their family who have been peacekeepers there. Yeah. I think for those people, like over time being there, Like, I know of people who have two generations of their family who have been peacekeepers there. I think for those people, like, over time being there, I'm sure they do develop a personal connection to the people who, you know, they're around

and the people whose communities they are protecting. And, like, I genuinely feel like it's probably really a shitty situation to be in. Yeah. Being locked in your base. That doesn't mean they should leave, right? I just want to end with, like, and I know we want to talk about the Glan heights too in 2013 actually austria pulled out

the golan heights and ireland had to deploy a bunch of people really quickly to kind of cover that area but if we look at like strebrenica right where the un could have prevented a genocide did not yeah the un forces there withdrew surrendered and then places were captured by the Serbs and then used as collateral to stop the UN doing any more to prevent what. And like some of the most horrific acts in human history happened. It's for Benica, right? Just disgusting, terrible stuff. terrible stuff and like hopefully the un has learned from that hopefully like individual nations i think like in that case it wasn't so much the un as a whole it's like the specific chain of command of those peacekeepers i think they were dutch well and like like it's worth noting in that point too that like part of what's going on there is that like a lot of the european countries until well into the genocide were basically pro-Serb because they saw the Serbs as something that could

cleanse the Muslims from Europe. This is the explicit language that they're using. And this has always been a problem with UN missions. It's like, well, half the time you're trying to stop a genocide, there's some faction of the UN that's like, no, this one fucking rips. Yeah, right.

But they are the bad guys though, aren't they? I think it's good that they have like muslim countries within their yeah their group and like i think it's probably good that the irish are there in large numbers because as a country they have been better on on palestine than almost anyone else in europe yeah it turns out being a colony has an effect on you yeah yeah yeah i mean like yeah that's on that's on us as the british but it's better that they're there i guess and like no one talked about them for the past 10 fucking years but like the most important time for them to be there is right now yeah and like even if they're not fighting i think they serve a useful role in like it's the only accountability mechanism yeah that israel can't

just destroy there are definitely people who are alive right now who would not be if if the irish were not there yeah and like i know we have these number of irish listeners like i know it sucks if it's your family member who's stuck there like and like it feels like they're not able to do anything and they're just stuck there as like collateral it's a bargaining chip i don't know but like yeah i think overseas military deployments by european countries go it's one of the more defensible ones. It's one of the ones that has stopped civilian lives being harmed. And yeah, I think the idea that they should leave, which I've seen people trotting out,

like that, no, they shouldn't. When they leave, it's just like Gaza all over again. It's just Israel carpet-bombing civilians. And talking of carpet-bombing civilians, I guess, Mia wanted to talk about like israel has decided to invade another country so okay so one of the things that's happened this has gotten almost no attention i think because because the syrian government does not want to admit that this is happening and they're not doing anything about it because they don't give a shit yeah so israel has been occupying the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967. They've militarized it.

They've just been holding the territory for, I shouldn't have tried to do math on the fly, like over half a century. 60 years. Yeah. And one of the things that's been happening recently is there had been, there had been like, I was going to describe it as like a Russian monitoring force sort of on the border of the Syrian-Aqaba Golan Heights and the sort of like southern provinces of Syria. Yeah. And the Israelis

seem to have just apparently they've done this before where they'll just like go in and bulldoze a bunch of farmland. Yeah. I think this is under the auspices of demining, right? Yeah, sort of. Yeah. It's always been it's always been pretty clearly like a land grab kind of thing. Yeah. But normally what happens is they go in, they bulldoze a bunch of places, and they pull out. Yeah. So somehow they

have surpassed Turkey as the number one bulldozer of olive fields, which is sort of staggering. They love that shit. Yeah. But this time, they've set up, it seems like a road project although given everything that we've been seeing about the sort of like rise of the concept of greater israel where they just start invading everyone and radially outwards from israel

extremely alarming so they've they've bulldozed these places but now and they're but they set up like barbed wire like around the new territory which seems like they're just actually attempting to do annexation yeah and that's really alarming because i mean like the syrian government isn't going to do shit about this right like you know israel has bombed syria a few times already oh yeah they bombed syria last time i was there the syrian government doesn't give a shit right they're they're too busy like like they they have courage to kill like they don't have time to be dealing with fucking israel here yeah yeah but there's there's been an explicit israeli push like even further out from the golan heights and i and i think we're just going to see this intensify as as the most sort of like deranged settler factions in Israeli politics gain more and more power

and the sort of, like, frankly, like, very American, we must push our borders, we must, like, push into new frontiers and seize more land, like, cycle, sort of perpetuates itself. Yeah, and a lot of the people doing the settling have literally come from America to do the settling. Yeah.

Pushing out in the Golan Heights, it's bad, like... Yeah. I israel claims it was attacked by katiba's bulla in the golan heights like last week and katiba's bulla has denied that they claim israel fabricated it neither of those people are people i particularly trust yeah well and this is also one of these funny ones where it's like the the israelis are denying that they've done this i think and the syrian government is also denying that they've done this i think and the syrian government is also denying that they've done this but like everyone who's there is like well obviously they did this like yeah and like i don't know why israel keeps wanting to open up new france i mean they did yeah like you say

it's settler colonialist logic i guess but i do think that like the continuation of this like full-scale war generates consent for the government as it exists in the moment that it stops and the government's legitimacy will collapse there. Yeah. But yeah, pushing into Syria opens up a whole other world of shit. Yeah. The worst stuff. Yeah. If there's a nation on earth who really doesn't need anyone else trying to fucking...

And it's not that Israel has not been killing Syrians for a long time. Israel has been lobbing munitions into Syria for a long time and it's increased in the last year. I was in Syria on October 7th last year and pretty much soon as Israel began responding to that attack

it began responding in Syria as well. But a ground operation is a whole different thing. There ain't no UN peacekeepers in Syria. And yeah, that could be very bad. Yeah, so we'll keep you updated on that story as it presumably continues to get worse because everything seems to end. I mean, I will say, okay, so todayiden made a thing that said if israel hasn't resolved humanitarian situation in 30 days he's gonna cut off aid but like that's not gonna happen

like it's simply not like everyone says that all the time i mean how many lines have they stepped over right like how many an american red line is a line that when you step over it, nothing happens. Yeah. That's just how it works. Right. Like, it was in Syria. It has been multiple times. Yeah.

I mean, there's this old Russian joke about China's final warning. Because throughout the entire 70s, when there's all these border disputes going on, even during the 60s, and sometimes in the 50s and 60s, Chinese officials would be like, this is China's final warning. Russia must stop. Nothing would happen. This is where we're at with the Democrats being like, ah, Israel must stop doing whatever the fuck.

No, they're not going to do anything. They don't give a shit. Yeah, no. We've cried wolf so many times. It's clearly not an issue that Harris feels like it's going to lose her the election. Yeah.

And then whoever wins, we got four more years of turning a fire hose of money and weapons on children in Palestine and apparently Syria and Lebanon as well. So, yeah, it's great.

It's all great. I'm afraid, yeah, this has not been a good news episode. I hope people who have family, I have friends who are in Lebanon,. I hope people who have family, I have friends who are in Lebanon, I hope people who have family there are doing okay. I know it sucks. It Could Happen Here is a production

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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've 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 brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and

dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again 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. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.