It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 107

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See 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. 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. CallZone Media.

Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. And I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. This could be a giant disaster. Those were the words that Elon Musk texted biographer Walter Isaacson on a Friday evening in September 2022, claiming that the Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol,

in the annexed region of Crimea. Musk had been providing Starlink internet to the Ukrainian military for months as part of their ongoing conflict against Russia's invasion, and the resourceful Ukrainians began using Starlink as a way to remotely control their kamikaze drones. Musk, having spoken to a Russian ambassador, saw Crimea as a red line that, when crossed, would escalate the conflict, potentially even provoking a nuclear retaliation. And so he acted, disabling or, depending on who you ask, refusing to enable Starlink accessed in the Crimea region. When the Ukrainian drone subs approached their targets, they suddenly stopped communicating with their operators and eventually washed up ashore, harmless and impotent. While the

specific details of this episode are hazy, the core truth is unambiguously clear. Elon Musk is a supremely powerful individual and, through action or inaction, has the ability to influence the outcome of combat operations in the bloodiest war inflicted upon Europe in generations. It's a level of power typically only reserved for nation-state actors, not tech company CEOs. Throughout history, we've seen plenty of examples of individuals and companies with outsized country-like power and influence. Musk isn't unique in that regard, nor is he the sole cautionary tale about why this shouldn't be allowed to happen. As a private individual operating within his capacities as CEO,

he's unconstrained by democratic accountability. And as a private businessman, he has his own conflicts of interest, from Tesla's long history of sourcing aluminum from Russian companies to his contacts with the highest echelons of Russian leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself. Historically, the only real accountability mechanism for people like Musk has been the media. And yet in this case, the media has chosen instead to fate the Elon Musk creation myth that he's a trailblazing real-life Tony Stark that will take humanity to the stars rather than asking him any hard questions of any kind. This situation is the product of a media industry dominated by journalists seeking access to popular public figures, pulling their punches

in the process. The most notable access journalist is Kara Swisher, who has spent decades covering the tech industry with a pantomime-like aggression, asking the quote-unquote hard questions without ever really pushing to the level of discomfort that might make a source unwilling to participate. Swisher famously, in an interview during the All Things Digital Conference in 2010, convinced Meta CEO, then called Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg to take off his hoodie after asking him a challenging question about Facebook's invasion of privacy, only to be distracted by the design of the inside of what he was wearing, effectively objecting to her own line of questioning for entertainment purposes. Eight years later, Swisher would interview Zuckerberg about Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in the 2016 elections, lobbing softball questions like, make a case for keeping Infowars on Facebook,

and responding to Zuckerberg outright saying he wouldn't ban Holocaust and Sandy Hook deniers by asking how it made Zuckerberg feel when people said Facebook killed people in Myanmar. The Swisher House style is simple. Ask a big, meaty question, and then fail to interrogate a single answer in any way, shape, or form. Around a month later, Swisher would interview Elon Musk, who at that point had aided harassment campaigns against reporters, called a man saving children a pedophile, and had his companies face multiple allegations of sexual harassment and racism. When asked about his fights with the press over Twitter, Musk claimed that the Wall Street

Journal, who Swisher used to work for, outright lied about investigation into Tesla's production figures. To which Swisher asked him if he realized the dangers of him saying such things about the press, and proceeded to help Musk paper over his claims, saying that he, quote, just doesn't like falsehoods. One of the richest and most powerful men in the world sat before Swisher, and her interrogation involved asking him simple questions about why he was doing things, lightly teasing him and saying that he looks, and I quote, rested in calm. To be clear, this is an ultra-powerful billionaire, and this is a, was at the time, enterprising journalist who everyone looked to.

In April 2022, the week that Musk announced the Twitter acquisition, Swisher gave a strange interview to James D. Walsh of the New Yorker, defending Musk, who had of course waived due diligence on the acquisition and did not seem to have a single clear plan about how he might run the site. She claimed that you couldn't pin Musk down, that he was quite complex, and that we would be surprised about what he likes and doesn't like. Musk, who has invented none of the core products that make him rich, is a, quote, visionary that gave Swisher genuine answers, and arguably the most damning thing she could have said would call her back. That was her litmus test, that he would return her calls. Her ultimate defense of Musk was that, and I quote, inventors were very difficult,

problematic people, and that moderation on Twitter was not working at the time of acquisition. These are all, of course, demonstrably false based on the events that followed, the growth of hate speech, the lack of accountability, the biggest face on the platform, and the fact that every third post seems to be some kind of spam bot, either selling t-shirts or pornography or cryptocurrency scams. Swisher only turned on Musk when he emailed her, calling her an arsehole in November 2022, including a screenshot where, according to Swisher, she was actually defending him, saying that the US government should pay Elon Musk for Starlink. Since then, Musk has gone from a difficult-to-pin-down visionary to Kara Swisher calling his social network a, and this is agonizingly, horribly

written, a thunderdome of toxic asininity. Swisher, it appears, only worried about what she'd called Musk's price of cocktail of ignorance and big ego until he was rude to her. One of the most famous tech journalists in the world, who has failed to take any real shot at any of the people she's questioned across decades of doing this, has now been reduced to making epic dunks that sound like a 21-year-old Harry Potter fan trying to cast a spell. It's embarrassing. Swisher isn't the sole media figure guilty of having treated Elon Musk with kid gloves or treating his bloviating with otherwise undue credulity. This is a problem that affects almost every news outlet and reporter that covers billionaires. The assumption is always that

billionaires will act with empathy, patience, and grace, three things that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and their ilk totally lack. Failing that, one would suppose they'd act like a normal person, a losing proposition if you've ever read Jeff Bezos' texts. These people are not like us. They do not experience human struggle. They don't have bills or bosses or fear of anything, let alone authority. Each and every billionaire is effectively above the law, and that is the place that you must start to understand them. It's deeply frustrating, especially when you consider the myriad of opportunities where the media could have taken Musk to task and held him accountable. Take Hyperloop, for example, Musk's concept for a

high-speed mass transit system where pressurized capsules would hurtle between cities through vacuum tubes at speeds as fast as 760 miles an hour. Hyperloop, Musk promised, would allow commuters to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in as little as 30 minutes, and with the network powered primarily by solar power, with no real environmental impact. If anything, this could have been a much bigger deal than Tesla. High-speed trans-air that doesn't burn fossil fuels could truly have changed the world. So what do you think happened? Do you think that Musk delivered on this? On this product that helped play a vital role in cementing his image as a real-life Tony Stark. Not only would it be faster and cheaper than anything currently in existence, but it'd be

greener too. What followed was a gushing, or at least credulous, flow of media coverage, including from the Washington Post and the New York Times, both papers of record. It wasn't until the hype gradually died down that people began asking serious questions about Hyperloop's viability. An exhaustive report published by the Transportation Research Laboratory earlier this year raises serious questions about the feasibility of Hyperloop, particularly when it comes to passenger transportation. Riders, it noted, would be exposed to extreme physical and mental stress, with the noise, vibrations, and rapid acceleration and deceleration inflicting an unknowable toll on the human body. Questions about safety still linger. And then there's the thorny issue of cost, with Hyperloop requiring

an all-new infrastructure. Even the shortest routes would involve a multi-billion dollar upfront investment. These points were, for the most part, absent entirely from the earliest coverage of Hyperloop. The media also missed the fact that Hyperloop wasn't even a new idea. In the 19th century, countless inventors toyed with the notion of an atmospheric railway, where vehicles traveled through a near-vacuum environment on the momentum of pressurized air. A small demonstrator route was even built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the legendary British engineer who designed the first transatlantic steamship. While Hyperloop differed in some meaningful ways, it was still nonetheless,

much like many Musk products, a derivative of an earlier idea. The boring company, Musk's hilariously named tunnel boring startup, earned similar credulous coverage upon its inception, driven in no small part due to Musk's decision to raise working capital by selling branded flamethrowers, dubbed the Not-A-Flame-Thrower, to anyone that paid $500. This stunt aside, the Boring Company won praise due to its stated mission to reduce the cost of digging tunnels, which are often an inevitable and expensive part of road and mass transportation development. Like Hyperloop, the Boring Company fed into the Tony Stark image of a billionaire that could, through sheer force of will, change the world and fix once-intractable problems. problems. I quote Mashable when they said, Musk built machines to travel more efficiently on the earth and above it, so traveling through earth seems within the realm of his capabilities. If anyone can transform a seemingly absent-minded half-joke into world-changing technology,

it's Elon Musk, said The Guardian. And then reality here. The Boring Company's first commercial project, a 1.7-mile tunnel in Las Vegas, where I in fact live, wasn't a traditional road tunnel or part of an underground metro system. It was, in fact, far less impressive. A single-lane loop where human-driven Teslas ferried passengers between points of interest and the Las Vegas Convention Center and where traffic jams are a routine frustration for passengers. Other projects in other cities, most notably Chicago and Los Angeles, have either been cancelled or are on indefinite hiatus. There is nothing that the boring company has done. The tunnel in Vegas is useless. It's claustrophobic. It's ugly. Feels like being in an airport lounge except there's no food. It's strange. It doesn't

feel like it solves a problem other than how can Elon Musk get more attention? And that really is what he craves. Musk's wafer-thin skin, his volatility, and his propensity to over-promise and under-deliver has never been a secret. While he's been able, with some success, to obfuscate and misdirect through a well-crafted media persona, the clues have always been there. Musk's reality distortion field goes some way to explaining how he has managed to amass the extent of the power he has and how he's cemented himself into our nation's most vital industries like transportation, communications, infrastructure, and social media. He has a fairly consistent battle plan. He makes a big promise, he delivers enough to make the media believe he's for real, and then he relies upon the fact that very few

parts of the media will ever follow up with him. There is no challenging Elon Musk in the media. The thinnest amounts of criticism are usually meant by a horde of crazed Tesla fans, or at times, Elon Musk himself. He's created a paper-thin media image built on the smallest, thinnest structures of reality. He has found a way to manipulate the media using his large amounts of power, money, and his few friends. Elon Musk is a danger to society. He's a capricious demagogue, desperate for more power and attention, and he will do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants, because we are societally unprepared for billionaires. It's no longer healthy or safe or honest to see Elon Musk as a dorky charlatan

carrying sinks into offices or destroying social networks to settle insular beefs. Elon Musk is a nation-state level actor with a net worth larger than the GDP of Ukraine. He associates only with equally spurious reactionaries like Bill Maher, Ron DeSantis, and David Sachs, and he's easily influenced by anyone who agrees with his thinly-backed beliefs. Musk isn't polarizing. He's polarization-given life, an empty man made of contrarianism and grievances, and he'll happily change the world based on his own personal beliefs. As a result of our market-driven government and compliant media, Musk has caused, and will continue to cause human

suffering and actual death in his pursuit of fame, power, and capital. It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, an executive, or an industry blowhard. As a result of our market-driven government and compliant media, Musk has caused and will continue to cause human suffering and actual death in his pursuit of fame, power, and capital. It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, an executive, or an industry blowhard, and see him as a man who has used his incredible wealth and status to twist the world to his petty, ignorant, and selfish desires. It's important to realize with complete clarity that Musk makes electric cars that are sold around the world and sells rockets to NASA. He runs Twitter, X, or whatever it's called these days.

One of the largest communication networks in the world, and of course Starlink, the satellite ISP used throughout the world that is specifically marketed to places that are otherwise inaccessible to traditional broadband. This is not just a goofy Redditor posting epic memes and saying exactly anymore. Elon Musk has chosen to, and will continue to choose to, use his influence over these networks to interfere with global events, and because the media and the government has been so utterly tepid in their approach to him, he's accumulated such power and influence that he is, on some level, unstoppable. Since his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, and the subsequent layoffs of 6,000 people, Musk has revealed to the world his deep-seated reactionary beliefs and his noxious, pathetic victim complex.

He has become obsessed with the woke mind virus, a term that he uses to vaguely refer to everything from progressive education on college campuses to San Francisco's growing homeless problem. He's made Twitter's bot problem, one that he tried to use to cancel the original acquisition, significantly worse, littering replies with bots trying to sell you t-shirts or make you join the latest cryptocurrency scam, some of which even include Elon Musk's face. He took Twitter's verification system, a flawed yet workable solution to verifying whether a tweet came from the person who actually sent it, and turned it into an $8 a month premium account that verifies nothing other than whether someone is capable of completing a credit card transaction. And by destroying Twitter's trust and safety team,

Musk has allowed the world's real-time communications channel to become one rife with racism and other hate speech, leading to Fortune 500 advertisers worrying that the network, and I quote, perpetuates racism, which was raised in a semaphore story from earlier in this year. Musk has shown he is more than willing to do things based on not what's good for the world, his businesses, or his users, but on what will confirm his biases and protect his financial interests. As a result of these moronic and malicious choices, Twitter's valuation has tanked to less than a third of the $44 billion he paid

for it, losing half of their advertising revenue and changing their name to X, which some have argued killed further billions of the original company's brand value. Being a selfish, ignorant, and gormless charlatan, Musk has now blamed Jewish non-profit the Anti-Defamation League for ruining his company, claiming that the ADL had pressured advertisers into killing X slash Twitter. Musk had previously sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another non-profit that published research showing the growth in hate speech on the platform. Musk is now fine with the ADL because they resumed advertising. A deeply confused and utterly pointless exercise that only sought to further increase bigotry on his website. For all his statements around freedom of speech, Musk is the ultimate capitalist dictator, willing to use his money to intimidate and censor those

who dare to criticize him. He's already done so on Twitter, banning an account that tracked publicly available records of private jet flights, censoring over 400 tweets critical of Turkish President Erdogan in the weeks running up to an election, suppressed accounts critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and cut access to links to newsletter platform Substack when they launched a network competitive to Twitter. Musk is a propagandist willing to work with any fellow reactionaries who feel scorned by progressivism, personally helping Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis launch his campaign on Twitter and funneling money to alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate through Twitter's creator program. On our nation's roads, Musk has created another problem. In March 2023, according to the Washington Post,

a 17-year-old stepped off of a school bus on North Carolina Highway 561. As he stepped off, a Tesla Model Y, allegedly with Tesla's autonomous autopilot engaged, hit him at 45 miles an hour, throwing him into the windshield and leaving him lying face down on the pavement. He thankfully survived, but broke and fractured his leg in the process. The incident, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still investigating, is part of a growing list of victims of Tesla's open beta test of, quote, full self-driving. A buggy, dangerous software available on hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles, allowing users to let the car drive, which has resulted in the deaths of 17 people and led to 736 other injuries and crashes. In theory, activating Tesla's full self-driving

lets your Tesla take the wheel, making turns, avoiding other vehicles, maintaining speed, avoiding objects, and theoretically helping you arrive safely at your destination. The problem is that this has only ever been a beta, meaning that every new release involves some sort of new bug, such as the one that electric car blog editor Fred Lambert claimed tried to kill him in September 2023 by trying to veer at highway speed into the median strip on the road. One might imagine that such a thing is illegal, effectively unleashing beta software onto the world's roads without sufficiently testing it. Would, for any normal person, lead to imprisonment and a lifetime of

fines. Musk, thanks to his incredible wealth and power equivalent to that of a small nation, has managed to avoid much scrutiny, with the occasional government investigations that never seem to go anywhere. And despite a well-documented culture of racism and sexism, very little seems to happen to Tesla at all. This is because our society, in its government, its media, and its citizenry, is woefully unprepared to deal with billionaires. Musk is able to operate as a noxious, abusive, and reckless monster in public, using his companies as vehicles to lend himself money and political weapons with little scrutiny or punishment. On their own, one might fob off these concerns as one-time things,

but the reality is there's a pattern of malicious and capricious acts, all one after another, again and again, done in broad daylight for all to see. Musk has shown he will push whatever envelope he sees fit, and as Ronan Farrow's New York Magazine piece shows, there are very few people in the government, former and otherwise, anywhere really, not investors, not other members of the Silicon Valley elite, who are willing or able to get in the way. Musk is so unbelievably rich, well-connected and powerful that he can push around just about anybody, even if they work for the Pentagon. Yet Musk's desperation for attention and adulation mean that he can be pulled in any direction that feels like it scorns his critics. And when his

critics are pretty much anyone who isn't a right-wing lunatic, it almost guarantees he will continue to pal around with authoritarian regimes that will influence his remarkably malleable brain. The actual solution would be to treat Musk as what he is, a dangerous entity with a higher GDP than Ukraine and an ego that rivals their invaders president. Regardless of what happened in Crimea, Musk has the ability to know when attacks are happening and influence their outcome as a result of his for-profit, privately held satellite internet communications firm that the US government is paying for. Elon Musk is a nation-state global threat and must be treated as such. He must be treated as if he will make decisions based only on what he believes will benefit or amuse him. He's the Wish.com version of Bon's Ernst Stavro Blofeld, an offensive,

charmless, and boorish monster that has successfully bought his way into the elite and found that no matter what he does, their patience is unlimited and their scruples are few. Musk, like another high-profile narcissist, the former President Donald Trump, routinely finds himself ensnared in litigation, both from regulators and private individuals. Even though the government never really seems to actually do anything to him, the SEC is currently investigating Musk for securities violations concerning his acquisition of Twitter. This would be his third tryst with the Commission, the first in 2018, the second in 2019. In both cases, very little happened. the second in 2019. In both cases, very little happened. However, at the same time, he faces actions from former employees stiffed on severance pay, and from those who allege age and gender

discrimination were factors in their dismissal from Twitter. For Musk, these lawsuits were unlikely to be anything other than a minor annoyance, rather than any kind of existential threat, or something that otherwise curbs his most egregious of behaviors. There are people who could help. There are people that could sway Elon Musk. You know, people as rich as him. Tim Cook, Mark Benioff, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the world's billionaires feel no need to correct Musk's behavior. They don't need to interfere or even chide him for his disgraceful acts because doing so would potentially make their actions and wealth more conspicuous, which is far more important to protect than free speech or human lives, or really anything that normal people face. They may act as if they have civic responsibility, but the few people we have

that could actually change things, the ones with the war chest to box out Musk, blocking X from app stores and excluding him from their circles, are sitting on their hands. One approach proposed by Stephen Feldstein in The Atlantic is to treat Musk's businesses as they are, vital to national security, and as a result, take them into public control when necessary. This wouldn't be without precedent. The legislation that allows this, the Defense Production Act, has been invoked 50 times since its inception, both in times of war and civil necessity, like the 2022 infant formula shortage. While Starlink would remain a privately held company, it would be obliged to prioritize the national need. Full nationalization, Falstein noted, would also be a possibility if Musk failed to cooperate. Full nationalization, Falstein noted, would also be a possibility if Musk failed to cooperate.

Full nationalization would be a drastic measure, but at this point, what other options exist for Elon Musk? What other options exist for someone that is so reckless, so dangerous, so selfish, and so capricious? What options exist to deal with someone who has inserted himself into the most vital aspects of the American economy, making himself billions of dollars off of government subsidies and contracts? How the hell do you handle someone who has insulated himself from media scrutiny despite holding immense nation-state power? Musk is not a goofy weirdo or the real-life Tony Stark. He's a fragile, mean-hearted ogre, one hell-bent on seeing his whims brought to life at any cost. The only way to write about this man, the only fair coverage of Elon Musk, the only clear perception of this man, is to frame him as a villain, a bigot, a bully, and a crook.

But what do you do about the man who has everything? is to frame him as a villain, a bigot, a bully, and a crook. But what do you do about the man who has everything? Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. 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 podcast or wherever you get your podcast 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. 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 the 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.

Hello, everyone. It's me, James. And I'm joining you today for another long series of the little recordings where I ask you to give us your money. Once again, I'm asking you to support the mutual aid work being done at the border. I'm recording this in November. And this week, we have terrible weather forecasts that will make conditions in Hukumba extremely dangerous for people who are detained out there by the Department of Homeland Security. It will mean that it's no exaggeration to say that people's lives will be at risk and that the important mutual aid work that's already been done will only become more important as we get rain we get snow and we get cold temperatures and people continue to be detained without shelter

food water or adequate clothing if you would like to support those efforts you can find the way to do so at linktree.com. There's a dot before the ee, so it's linktr.ee. I'll also post a link on my Twitter if you'd like to find it there. Thank you. Hello, everybody. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. This is Shireen. I'm back to talk about Palestine because it's important. But when it comes to the history of the creation of Israel and the subsequent ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, I feel like there's a part of history that often gets overlooked. People usually say Israel was created in 1948, but the intent to create it actually started decades before that. We're going to be talking about the Balfour Declaration, which resulted

in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians and was issued over a century ago on November 2nd, 1917. The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality. The Pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalyst aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality. The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel. The Balfour Declaration is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world. So what is it? The Balfour Declaration, it means, or is translated to Balfour's promise in Arabic, it was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to, quote,

establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The declaration came in the form of a letter from Britain's then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community at the time. The declaration was made during World War I, which was just a reminder from 1914 to 1918, and this declaration was included in the terms of the British mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. terms of the British mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. So on November 2nd, 1917, the Balfour Declaration became the basis for the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine. A week later, the declaration was published in the Times of London for all the public to see. The content of the letter is rather short, so I'm just going to read some of it right now. It goes, His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,

and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. Keep in mind, at this time, the British had no control over Palestine. It was still under the Ottoman Empire, but in this letter, Britain was essentially preparing to take it over in the very near future. I also want to include that at this time, Jewish people only made up 6% of the Palestinian population. I'm going to play audio from a video posted by former guest of the show, the amazing Sim Kern, where they break down the last part of the declaration. Sim is referencing in this audio Rashid Khalidi's book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 to 2017.

It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. That last bit sounds like, all right, well, he's saying like we're not going to tread on the civil and religious rights of Palestinians. That's pretty good, right? But in The Hundred Years War on Palestine, the book by Rashid Khalidi that I'm encouraging you all to keep reading along with me this week, Khalidi does a great job breaking down the rhetoric of this declaration and why it was actually a declaration of war upon the Palestinian people. Yes, they were promised civil and religious rights, but they were not granted political or national rights. And this meant that for the next 15 years, as people in Palestine tried to resist the establishment of a Zionist state within their

country, the takeover of all their land by Zionist groups, they were unable to find any audience in the halls of power because Balfour had declared them to not have these rights and to not really be people. They weren't even referred to as Arabs or Palestinians in the declaration, just non-Jewish. 94% of the people of this land had just been written out of existence as far as the Western powers were concerned. Khalidi describes how between 1917 and 1936 almost all of the organized Palestinian resistance to Zionism was peaceful and legalistic. They would form political committees but the British said you're not allowed to have political activity and shut those down harshly. They would send delegations to the League of Nations to other countries to try

to get to support to Britain but they would not even be seen in the halls of power. They would not even get audiences because they were told basically as Palestinians, you have no rights. You are not allowed to have nationalistic interests. As I mentioned, the declaration was included in the terms of the British mandate for Palestine. The so-called mandate system set up by the allied powers was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation. In retrospect, of course, it's not a very thin veil at all. The mandate system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, to those who were victorious in the war. The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow

the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent. The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the post-war mandates, the main goal of the British mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish national home, even though Jews, again, at the time, constituted only 6% of the population. Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose to nearly 27% of the total population. And even though the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that, quote, nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the

existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs. Understandably enough, the document is seen as controversial for several reasons. First, it was, in the words of the Palestinian Arabs. Understandably enough, the document is seen as controversial for several reasons. First, it was, in the words of the late Palestinian American academic Edward Said, quote, made by a European power about a non-European territory, in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory. In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90% of the population. Second, the declaration was

one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British. Surprise, surprise. When the declaration was released, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence. However, the British also promised the French, in a separate treaty known as the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be split between the two colonial powers after the war. would be split between the two colonial powers after the war. This Hussein-McMahon correspondence was a series of letters exchanged in 1915-1916 during World War I between Hussein ibn Ali, who was the Emir of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt. In general terms, the correspondence effectively traded British support of an independent Arab state

for the Arab assistance in opposing the Ottoman Empire. However, the correspondence was later contradicted by two things, the incompatible terms of the Saxe-Picot Agreement, which was secretly concluded between Britain and France in May 1916, and Britain's Balfour Declaration in 1917. The declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence. Third, the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law, that of a, quote, national home. The use of the vague term national home for the Jewish people as opposed to state left the meaning open to interpretation.

Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase, quote, the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish state, but that was later changed. However, in a meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Wiseman in 1922, Arthur Balfour and then Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly said that the Balfour Declaration was, quote, always meant to be an eventual Jewish state. Okay, let's take our first break here, because I have to. Okay, bye. And we're back. So we're talking about the Balfour Declaration, but who exactly is Arthur Balfour? is Arthur Balfour. Sim Kern, in that same video that I played earlier, explains that he can be seen as the person most responsible for violence in the Middle East for the past century. Because

when he wrote his declaration in 1917, he effectively wrote Palestinian rights out of existence. And surprising no one, Arthur Balfour was a terrible guy. He was a white supremacist, a racist, and an anti-Semite. The Balfour Declaration is a statement that can fit into two tweets. As we mentioned, Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary at the time, announced that the British government would support establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. And more than a hundred years later, those written words continue to define the dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2017, marking 100 years since the declaration, little bitch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to London to commemorate the centennial occasion with Theresa May.

I hope you know by now, though, that the declaration is really nothing worth celebrating. though, that the Declaration is really nothing worth celebrating. And though he may be most known for aiding the Zionist cause in 1917, it's crucial to remember that Arthur Balfour was a white supremacist. He made that much clear in his own words. In 1906, the British House of Commons was engaged in a debate about the native Blacks in South Africa. Nearly all the members of parliament agreed that the disenfranchisement of the Blacks was evil, but not Balfour, who, almost alone, argued against it. When talking about the Black people in South Africa, he said, We have to face the facts. Men are not born equal. The white and the Black races are not born with equal capacities. They are born with different capacities, which education cannot But Balfour's troubling views were not limited to Africa.

In fact, despite his now iconic support for Zionism that's celebrated by Zionists everywhere, he was not exactly a friend to the Jews. In the late 19th century, P pogroms targeting Jews in the Pale of Settlement had led to waves of Jewish flight westward to England and the United States. Little insert here that the Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. So created by imperial decree, the Jewish Pale of Settlement was that part of the Russian Empire within which Russia's Jewish population was

required to live and work for more than 130 years between the late 18th and the early 20th century. Although it was initially intended to forestall commerce 18th and the early 20th century. Although it was initially intended to forestall commerce between Jews and the general population of Russia, the restrictions imposed by the Pale fostered the development of a distinctive religious and ethnic culture in an area covering roughly 386,000 square miles, or 1 million square kilometers, between the Baltic and Black Seas. or one million square kilometers between the Baltic and Black Seas. The word pale as used in this sense comes from the Latin polis or stake, one that might be used to indicate a boundary. A pale is thus a district separated from the surrounding country. It may be defined by physical boundaries or it may be distinguished by a different administrative or legal system.

boundaries or may be distinguished by a different administrative or legal system. The Jewish Pale of Settlement was both a defined area within the Russian Empire and a legal entity regulated by laws that did not apply to the Russian Empire as a whole. So back to the main narrative. The targeting of Jews in the Pale of Settlement led to immigration of many Jews to the West, to England, and the U.S. This influx of refugees led to an increase in British anti-immigrant racism and outright anti-Semitism, themes not unfamiliar to us today. Support for political action against immigrants grew as the English public demanded immigration control to keep certain immigrants, particularly Jews, out of the country. So, this scared and xenophobic public found a sympathetic ear in Balfour. In 1905, while serving as Prime Minister, Balfour presided over the

passage of the Aliens Act. This legislation put the first restrictions on immigration into Great Britain, and it was primarily aimed at restricting Jewish immigration. According to historians, Balfour had personally delivered passionate speeches about the imperative to restrict the waves of Jews fleeing the Russian Empire from entering Britain. So maybe it's not as astonishing as you would think that Balfour, whose support of the Zionist cause has made him a hero among Zionists, would have implemented anti-Jewish laws. But the truth is, his support of Zionism stemmed from the exact same source as his desire to limit Jewish immigration to Britain. Both of these things can be traced back to his white supremacist

beliefs. Balfour lived in an area of stirred nationalism, highly defined by ethno-religious identity. Because of these sentiments, the early 20th century was a time when seemingly liberal Western nations struggled with the challenge of incorporating Jewish citizens. Balfour wanted to keep the UK as a white Christian ethno-state. What the Zionists provided Balfour with was a solution to the challenges Jewish citizens posed to his ethno-nationalist vision, a solution that didn't force him to reckon with them. Instead of insisting that societies accept all citizens as equals, regardless of racial or religious background, the Zionist movement offered a different answer. Separation. Balfour saw in Zionism not just a blessing for Jews, but for the West as well. In 1919, he wrote the introduction to Nahum Sokolow's History of Zionism. In this

introduction, Balfour wrote that the Zionist movement would quote, mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. By both giving Jews a place to go and a place to leave, Zionism seemingly solved two problems at once in Balfour's mind. In other words, his support of Zionism was motivated by his desire to protect Britain from the negative effects, or the miseries, as he said, of having Jews in its population. Rather than protecting the rights of one of its minorities, Britain could simply export them, or at least not import any more. This is one of the many reasons Zionism itself is anti-Semitic. We can even fast

forward to now and see how Zionists are telling anti-Zionist Jewish people that they're no longer Jewish for supporting Palestine. That belief and statement in itself is extremely anti-Semitic. Criticizing Israel and the Israeli government, however, is not. But putting that aside, we can see that from the very beginning, even in its origin, Zionists associated and allied themselves with the worst kinds of people, like people who believed that Jewish people are, quote, an alien and hostile body among them. Needless to say, Balfour's view of Zionism is steeped in the same kind of white supremacy as Balfour's view of Zionism is steeped in the same kind of white supremacy as Balfour's view of South

Africa's blacks. But his support of the Zionist dream had another problem. Rather than solving the problem of how to handle a minority living in a white majority country, the Balfour Declaration just shifted the same problem into a different geography. The tension between ethno-nationalism and equality is definitely and equally present today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where the Israeli state rules over the fate of millions of Palestinians who either have no right to vote, are treated as second-class citizens, or are refugees denied repatriation. Today, it is Israel that views Palestinians as demographic threats and sees the quote presence in its midst of a body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile,

by which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. Let's take our second break here, again because I have to, so see you later. And we are back. So, that Balfour's legacy of supremacy persists as much as British support for Israel does is no accident. We have arrived at this point today because the white supremacist attitudes of Balfour informed policy, lending imperial right to a project in pursuit of national self-determination for Jews by trampling on the rights of native non-Jews. Remarkably, Balfour was unabashedly aware of the hypocrisy in his stance. In 1919, he wrote a letter that said this to the British Prime Minister. The weak point of our position, of course, is that in the case of Palestine, we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination. We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit

that ancient land. Those are his words in a letter that he wrote to the British prime minister. So there's no misconstruing that there. Those 700,000 Arabs, of course, made up approximately 90% of the population of Palestine. Again, it bears repeating that Jewish people before this declaration was implemented made up only 6% of the population. And therein lies the fundamental problem that continues through this day, more than a hundred years later. Palestinians are denied the right to have rights because from the outset, their views, their human rights, and by extension, their very humanity, were consistently seen as inferior to those of others. That was clear in Balfour's perspective and the British mandate's policy, and it persists in one form or another in many, if not most, of the policies of the Zionist state

of Israel through this day. In modern times, as much as in 1917, the battle between ethno-nationalism and equality has risen to the foreground. We saw this in Donald Trump's rise in America and in Theresa May's Brexited Britain. Rather than resolving this tension, Balfour's support for Zionism merely exported it to Palestine. And resisting the legacy of Balfour's racism is absolutely necessary if there is ever to be peace in Palestine and beyond. A little bit more history here about why this declaration was issued. The question of why has been a subject of debate for historians for decades, with historians using different sources to suggest various explanations. Some argue that many in the British government at the time were Zionists themselves. Others say the declaration

was issued out of an anti-Semitic reasoning, that giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution to the quote-unquote Jewish problem. In mainstream academia, however, there are a set of reasons over which there is a general consensus. One, control over Palestine was a strategic imperial interest to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within Britain's sphere of influence. Two, Britain had to side with Zionists to rally support among the Jews in the United States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to stay in the war until victory. Three, there was intense Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in Britain and the British government, as well as some of the officials in the government being Zionist themselves. Four, Jews were being persecuted in Europe and the British government was sympathetic to their suffering. I think that last point is usually used as a validation to why Israel exists today, but feeling sorry for a people and giving them someone else's land is

really not a solution in my opinion. Of course, the Balfour Declaration was also not received well by Palestinians and Arabs. In 1919, then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson appointed a commission to look into public opinion on the mandatory system in Syria and Palestine. The investigation was known as the King Crane Commission. It found that the majority of Palestinians expressed a strong opposition to Zionism, leading the conductors of the commission to advise a modification of the mandate's goal. The late Ani Abdel-Hadi, a Palestinian political figure, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs, saying it was made by an English foreigner who had no claim to Palestine to a foreign Jew who had no right to it. However, it's very important to mention here that the other vital important

source for insight into Palestinian opinion on the declaration at the time, aka the press, was closed down by the Ottomans at the start of the war in 1914 and only began to reappear in 1919, but it was under British military censorship. In November 1919, when the Al-Istiqal Al-Arabi, the Arab independence newspaper based in Damascus, was reopened, one article had a response to a public speech given by Herbert Samuel, a Jewish cabinet minister in London, on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The article said, quote, our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must remain Arab. In 1920, the third

Palestinian Congress in Haifa decried the British government's plans to support the Zionist project and rejected the declaration as a violation of international law and the rights of the indigenous population. I'm going to pull audio from Sim's video here again. They kind of summarize in a really good way what happened in the years leading up to the Nakba. So here is Sim. And even still until 1936, Palestinians are trying to peacefully, legalistically resist decolonization, which unfortunately history teaches us doesn't work that great usually. However, inspired by the examples of Iraq and Syria, which had managed to overthrow their colonizers, starting with a generalestinians organized a strike in 1936 again this starts out as just a peaceful strike but it is brutally repressed by the british

overlords we're like no you're not allowed to strike you are our captive wage slavery labor force you have to go do your work kalidi shows how britain was also very strategically sowing internal divisions within the Palestinian leadership, turning people certain to their side by bribing them to work against one another. And so the strike fell apart in 1936, but then only then in 1937 did an armed revolt break out. Much is made by Zionists about this Arab revolt and how this was justification for the Nakba, which would ultimately kill 15,000 Palestinians and displace hundreds of thousands more. But this was no religious massacre. And that's reflected in the casualties. Yes, several hundred Jews died during the revolt,

but it took 100,000 British troops to suppress the revolt. And the fighting was mostly between the Arabs and the British. And it's estimated that between 14 and 17 percent of the adult male Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. So the population of Palestinians was absolutely devastated by this revolt by the end of it. What struck me a lot reading the conclusion of this chapter was, you know, the Western media, which is so Islamophobic, portrays Palestinians as like inherently violent and bloodthirsty and anti-Semitic, but that just isn't reflected in this history at all. In fact, as Khalidiidi mentioned several scholars argue that you know the Palestinians really should have organized an armed revolt earlier it was too late by the time they did but they had spent 15

years since the Balfour Declaration trying peacefully and legalistically to earn their rights and that was ultimately a dead end but Palestinians really clearly did not want to fight a war. It wasn't until they'd exhausted every single other option to them. They tried legal routes. They tried organizing. They tried a strike.

You know, they had done everything they could and this was a population that had been stripped of huge amounts of its land that was destitute, that was impoverished, that was starving, that was shut out from any economic opportunity in the land they had lived on for millennia. They were farmers. They didn't want a wage of war. They wanted to make olive oil. But because this guy didn't want Jews moving to the UK, they didn't

get to have their country anymore. Even prior to the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate, pan-Arab newspapers warned against the motives of the Zionist movement and its potential outcomes in displacing Palestinians from their land. Khalil Sakakini, a Jerusalemite writer and teacher, described Palestine in the immediate aftermath of the war as follows. A nation, which has long been in the depths of sleep, only wakes if it is rudely shaken by events, only arises little by little. This was the situation of Palestine, which for many

centuries has been in the deepest sleep until it was shaken by the Great War, shocked by the Zionist movement, and violated by the illegal policy of the British, and it awoke little by little. And while Britain is generally and understandably held responsible for the Balfour Declaration, it is important to note that the statement would not have been made without prior approval from the other Allied powers during World War I. In a war cabinet meeting on September 1917, British ministers decided that the, quote, views of President Wilson should be obtained before any declaration was made. And, indeed, according to the cabinet's minutes on October 4th, the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour confirming that Wilson was,

quote, extremely favorable to the movement. France, surprise surprise, maybe to no one, was also involved and announced its support prior to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration A May 1917 letter from Jules Cambon, a French diplomat, to Nahum Sokolow, the Polish Zionist Expressed the sympathetic views of the French government towards a, quote, Jewish colonization in Palestine This letter, again, the precursor to the Balfour Declaration, says, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist by the protection of the allied powers in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago. The Balfour Declaration, again, is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, when Zionist armed groups, who were trained by the British, forcibly expelled

more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and they massacred 15,000 Palestinians. Despite some opposition within the war cabinet predicting such an outcome was probable, the British government still chose to issue the declaration. And there is no doubt that the British mandate created the conditions for the Jewish minority to gain superiority in Palestine and build a state for themselves at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs. When the British decided to terminate their mandate in 1947 and transfer the question of Palestine to the United Nations, the Jews already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and

created to fight side by side with the British in World War II. More importantly, the British allowed the Jews to establish self-governing institutions, such as the Jewish Agency, to prepare themselves for a state when it came to it, while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so, paving the way for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. We're going to end the episode with one more audio clip from Sim's video. I just think it really describes and summarizes why exactly Arthur Balfour is an extremely evil person. So here is Sim. And the violence that has sprung from the creation of Israel goes so much further beyond its borders. I mean, the whole history of the Middle East and of Western imperial conquest in the Middle East hinges on Israel being

there. All of U.S. imperialism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I mean, all of that would have been impossible without the existence of Israel. So add Arthur Balfour to your list of the greatest war criminals of all time. It truly feels silly to be talking about anything else at this time. So I do want to mention here that at the time of this recording, there are over 11,000 Palestinians who have been murdered by the settler colony of Israel in their genocide that is currently happening. Nearly 5,000 children are gone, have been slaughtered. Every time I open my phone, I see the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. slaughtered. Every time I open my phone, I see the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.

And there are images that we're seeing of, I mean, you've seen them, children under the rubble, crying for help, parents losing their babies. And it doesn't make sense for me to describe the images, but my point is we have never seen a genocide take place right before our eyes. we have never seen a genocide take place right before our eyes. All the proof is there. Israeli leaders have been very clear in their intention for genocide. Just for example, Israeli cabinet member Avi Deichter, I don't care if I said his name wrong, but he said that they are rolling out Nekba 2023. That's one example of extremely genocidal language that's being used by not just Israel, but also American politicians as well. There are photos side by side of the 1948 Nekba to what's happening right now. It's happening again.

The mass expulsion of Palestinians is happening right before our eyes. There are Palestinians who have experienced the Nakba in 1948 who are experiencing it again, being displaced so many times in their own country. And right now, over a million Palestinians have been displaced. We are also just being inundated with the most bizarre propaganda from the IOF. I've decided to call them the IOF from now on instead of the IDF because they are not defending anything. They are the Israeli offensive forces, not defensive. So just a disclaimer there over my choice of words, but it's strange. They post photos of Arabic text saying it's something else. Just recently, I saw that they posted a calendar that they found in a house that they say are a list of Hamas hostages.

It's literally just a calendar with the words of the week written in Arabic. And that is just one example of many. And I feel like if I keep talking about this I will never stop but my point in bringing us back to modern times is that this all started with a decision made by men who had no business making a decision Arthur Balfour had no fucking business handing over a piece of land that had nothing to do with him. It was never his place. In what galaxy does that make sense to anybody? Zionism and Jewishness and Judaism are not equivalent. And I hope at this point in time people are realizing that. I hope that this

episode sheds some light on how the roots of Zionism itself are rooted in antisemitism. It's nobody's place to decide to play God and just pretend people don't exist in a place that you want. It doesn't work like that. That's not human. So I think it's important to remember history like this because something like this does not happen overnight. It did not happen or start on October 7th. This is something that has been decades in the making and it all started with one stupid man making a decision with other stupid men that have way too much power that resulted in the suffering, the continued suffering of an entire people, the dehumanization of an entire people. We're seeing it play out right now.

So I think as you learn about history, as you learn about things like this that maybe seem like they happened so far away, they really didn't. We are experiencing the ripples of those decisions. They really didn't. We are experiencing the ripples of those decisions. And that's the episode for today. I hope it was informative, and I hope the genocide of Palestinian people comes to an end. So in the meantime, free Palestine. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. 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, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. 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. We'll be right back. In the weeks since the end of October, the conflict landscape in Myanmar has significantly changed. The junta and its alignment issues have taken unprecedented losses. The PDF, as well as several ethnic revolutionary organizations, have swept across the country seizing bases, weapons, tanks, and even towns and cities.

As the offensive was ongoing, I spoke to Sayar Montine, a leader in the Mandalay PDF, and Billy Ford of the United States Institute for Peace. What follows is my conversation with Billy and some insights on the situation on the ground with the Mandalay PDF. You'll hear more from Sayar Montine in another episode that we're working on, but I wanted you to hear his personal on-the-ground perspective now as well. First, I'll let Nain Nain, the translator from Mandalay PDF, introduce our guest. Oh yeah, hello, yes. He is the leader of the commanding and cohesion team, and you can also say that he's the leader of our organization. To start with, I asked Billy to explain to you the developments in the conflict

in the last few weeks. I mean, it's really been just the past, what is it, since the 27th, so 13 days, kind of a level change in the conflict trajectory. Whereas I'd say, I mean, you got coup February 1st, 2021, major military resistance operations began September 7th, 2021. And frankly, since then, it's been more or less incremental change. I wouldn't characterize it as a stalemate, as many have, but there's essentially been small pockets of progress where the resistance is capturing territory, but almost exclusively rural areas of the country. And then things changed radically on October 27th, whereas before the 27th, you had a range of armed stakeholders involved in the conflict, some under the deposed National

Unity Government, as well as what's called the K3C, which is four of the biggest ethnic armed organizations. But a lot of the reason why we hadn't seen the level change in the military balance of power was because of the absence of some of the biggest and most powerful armed organizations that had more or less stayed on the sidelines. I mean, they were arming and training resistance forces that were engaged in active combat, but they hadn't themselves in a meaningful way. But on the 27th, that totally changed. This alliance called the Brotherhood Alliance that involves three of the biggest armed organizations initiated coordinated attacks in northern Shan State on the border with China, and have since the 27th, we're talking to you on the 10th here of November,

150 posts have been taken. Seven towns are now under full resistance control. Seven others, by my count, are under partial resistance control. And the operation in northern Shan state on the border has effectively spurred resistance operations in other parts of the country. And so now you essentially have operations in all corners of the country. I mean, you've seen PDFs taking towns in Sagin along the Indian border. You've seen the K&U taking important towns on the logistics corridor on the Thai border. Kareni groups have moved into Mesa on the thai border with kareni state the chin national front

has initiated attacks in palatwan southern chin state near the bangladesh india border um yeah so it's really just um the trajectory of conflict has gone from an incremental trajectory where it's like this is a slow burn that could last a long time to a we need to start thinking about potentially the day after. I mean, nothing is a given, and the Myanmar military has been resilient in the past, but it does feel like this is a historic moment in a lot of ways, and the military is weakened in a way that we've really never seen in the history of the country. I asked Montinet to explain a little about how he got to a point where his force, who hadn't fought at all in 2021,

were able to fight alongside the EROs and deal a serious defeat to the junta. So in 2021 March, he decided to go for the armed revolution and then he started reading the books about the military and tactics and then warfare things. And then he said that he is still learning and reading from books about the military tactics till now. And one more thing is we are having some problems about the other people's defense force PDF

that they don't have the world forming and then they don't follow the code of conduct or something like that. So we organized well that we won't become a bloodthirsty organization,

but just to fight for the military pool. And one more thing is we are following the 2COC, which is a code of conduct and a chain of commands before we form up as these military organizations. A number of the EROs are acronyms you won't have heard before, and that's because they haven't been part of the conflict before. So I asked Billy to explain who the EROs in the North were, and how and why they'd enter the fight now. Sure. So the Arakhan Army is a Rakhine ethnic-based armed organization.

They're based on the China border, but for those who know Myanmar geography, Rakhine State is actually on the complete other side of the country. But this, like many newer armed organizations, they were essentially incubated by some of the longer term armed organizations. In this case, the Kachin Independence Army helped for the emergence of the Arakan Army, which has really grown in the past 10 years into one of the strongest armed stakeholders in the country. Before the coup, under the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy government, they were in intense fighting with the Myanmar military. And Aung San Suu Kyi strongly supported the Myanmar military's operations against the AA. And that kind of built some bad blood, as you might imagine, between the AA and the National League for Democracy.

And that bad blood has made it difficult to build alliance across ethnic lines and with those resistance organizations that involve NLD folks. But the key point here is that the AA is operating in two places, Rakhine State and in northern Shan State and Kachin State. Rakhine State and in Northern Shan State and Kachin State, also actually in Sagai now. But and they're an extremely powerful armed organization, highly disciplined, highly effective, well armed. The second group is the Ta'ang National Liberation Army. This is a an ethnic based army in Northern Shan State that, um, also is a relatively a newer armed organization. Um, they, uh, it's, it's a, it's a pretty complex, uh, military environment in Northern Shan state. Cause the TNLA are often in tension with other Shan,

uh, ethnic groups that are in Shan state, including the RCSS or the Shan State Army South, which is competing for control in other parts of Shan State. We've also seen some tension between the TNLA and the SSPP, which is another northern Shan Army that's closely aligned with the Wa and Chinese. So that's a pretty complex array of relationships there. But the TNLA is also an increasingly powerful armed organization, one that administers territory and has also been locked in conflict with the Myanmar military for some time. The last group is the MNDAA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. This

is a Kokong ethnic-based armed organization that for a long time controlled a territory along the China border. In 2009, Min Aung Hlaing, who is now the commander in chief and the head of the SAC, he essentially was leading commands in the Northeast and led operations to push the MNDAA out of that territory and replace it with a border guard force of another ethnic, Kokong ethnic army. And we can get back to that, but that ethnic army became or is a criminal enterprise that's now operating massive scam and human trafficking operations with the support of the Myanmar military. They're commissioned under the Myanmar military. But I think a key point here is that it's very personal with the MNDAA and this border guard force and Men Online. And so this is really, the MNDAA is an organization that has been pushing for a very long time to retake this territory, and particularly this city of Laukai. And so that three constitutes the Brotherhood Alliance. There's other stakeholders in this region, including the United Wa State Army, which is the largest armed organization in Myanmar, or non-state armed organization, as well, which is very closely tied with the Chinese.

I mean, they use Chinese currency. They speak Chinese. They fully administer their territory autonomously. And then the other organizations that are relevant here is the National Democratic Alliance Army, NDAA, which is essentially, you can think of it as closely tied with the Wa and the Chinese. And then the Kachin Independence Army, which is a Kachin ethnic-based armed organization, very much founded as a social services. I mean, it's kind of got a different identity from some of these other groups.

It's very much like a revolutionary organization with political intentions. There's kind of Christian beliefs that are embedded within the organization. So yeah, I'll just say it's a highly complex array of actors with different intentions and motivations. But in this particular case, they came together to, or at least the Brotherhood Alliance came together to launch this coordinated attack. The Ta'ang National Liberation Army are the group who received many of the young people of Mandalay, who went on to form the Mandalay PDF. Those young people started out as a strike force within Mandalay, but their only weapons were Molotov cocktails, and every action they took was a risk for their whole families if they were caught. By March, a few weeks

into the revolution, Montinet and others took to the mountains with the Ta'ang National Liberation Army to learn to fight. Before the revolution, he said, he had no experience and he didn't even play fighting video games. I asked him how it felt to be joining a group he'd been raised to hate and how he got there. Before we formed Manley PDF, we started as a MSDF, which is Manley Special Task Force. It was the first training for our organizations. And at the time, we only have some handmade weapons like Molotov, but we really don't use like handmade guns. But after the support of TNLA, we got the automatic rifles with the help of our alliance. And at first, when we act as MSTF, Manila Special Task Force,

we restrict the rules for not attacking to the schools or hospitals or the civilians. And then after that, we start using the handmade weapons just like Molotov. We didn't use any handguns at the time. like a molotov we didn't use any handguns at the time but after that we tried uh and we contact with the tnla we have uh we now have the automatic rifles and then others uh missiles or something like that now so when he decided to contact with the tnLA, TNN Nationals. What he expected were nothing else but a few problems about the racist. Because most of the ethnic groups, most of them, they hate Burmese people. And they even call the bum army so he was expecting that we will be having a racist problem but when he actually reached to the uh to end region uh

he found out that there is no hatred to the bummish people and then there was no problem about the racist problems yeah he also thought that it's because of the communication between the bombings people and then alone racist uh because uh people they provide tea leaves and other um things to a bummish people and then they they make some tradings and then some uh they do some business with uh parmese people so that there was uh no problem about that but the only other thing was about the weather because of the rough weather in the mountains rough weather in the mountains it's a very different weather from the like manly region it's very cold for the people from the uh manly region because our manly spot yeah and uh in mountain is very cold in here so we are still having problems about the the weather problems

I still having problems about the weather problems, but now we are getting used to it. And he said that he is also surprised that TNLA, the National Liberation Army, is a well-formed military, and then they are also following the code of conduct. And then they follow in a democracy way, of context. And then they follow in a democracy way. And then most of the leaders from the TNLA have the liberal ideas. And then they also want to welcome the young leaders from the revolution forces. So he was surprised about that. Billy told me that this same dynamic had occurred all over the country. And this is probably a good

time to remind listeners that we've covered the formation of the PDFs in our two previous series about Myanmar. And if you haven't had the time to listen to those, I really hope you do, because it'll make this one a lot more interesting. And this one probably won't make much sense without it. Yeah, and I think this is really a key dynamic. And we can come back to the conversation maybe about day after or the political dimensions of the conflict. But there's frankly, before the coup, these sorts of coordinations would be like incomprehensible. Khan Army, the Kachin Independence Army, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, all of them have deep connections with mostly Bamar ethnic PDS, some of whom work in coordination with the National Unity Government, some which are slightly more independent. But this is an inter-ethnic collaboration that's very novel and demonstrates a shift in inter-ethnic and inter-communal dynamics in the country that is very positive in a lot of ways.

So, yeah, the TNLA has been providing weapons and training for PDFs in Mandalay. The KIA has been providing weapons and training and tactical and strategic support to PDFs in Sagaing. The Arakan Army has been, maybe more than any group, providing tactical support and weapons and training to PDFs in Bogo, Eorwadi, Magwe, and now more recently in Sagin. So really the Burman heartland of the country. So yeah, all of these ethnic minority-based armed organizations are now collaborating, sharing resources and knowledge with with uh with with bumar ethnic um pdfs um there's a so that i think the main question here is like what does this mean for intercommunal relations what does this mean for the future uh of you know of the country is there does this indicate there's potential for greater national solidarity in the absence of the Myanmar military fracturing

communities and so on. But yeah, it's a radical shift in those relationships. Billy also shared that, as we've heard from every single PDF fighter we've talked to, their time alongside the EROs as comrades in arms has changed the way they see ethnicity in the future of their country. I mean, I think this is also manifest in a lot of the research that my organization, the U.S. Institute of Peace, has been doing among the general public. I mean, we've done three different studies over the past year to assess inter-criminal relations in the post-coup period and to kind of see how relations have shifted because there's a really dominant narrative that Myanmar is kind of irreconcilably fractured and that the communities are loyal to their ethnic identities, not their

national identities and so on. And frankly, all of our research has pointed to a similar trend, which is one, inter-ethnic relations are considerably better. There's greater solidarity. Actually, one of the experimental research studies that we did found that national identity as in being from Myanmar was more important to respondents than ethnic identity, which totally cuts against narratives about Myanmar. And, yeah, I mean, I think there's been considerable gains in interethnic relations. And it's, you know, it's hard to determine, you know, the causal linkages here, whether, you know, the improved interethnic relations

are spurring greater military collaboration and collaboration on humanitarian assistance and governance and so on. But it does feel like there's a major shift in social dynamics, in addition to these kind of military shifts that are taking place. I mean, I think that the research we've done has found there to be sort of extremist nationalist perspectives still remain. But the likelihood of them escalating to violence is reduced in large part because the public's vulnerability to incitement or to highly divisive political speech, most of which came from Myanmar military run troll farms, is much, I mean, there's much more resilience to those, that form of political violence. So, you know, I think there's still a lot of work, obviously, to do to build intercommunal cohesion and understanding, but that the likelihood, you know, for example,

in a post-SAC world that you will be, you know, see mass intercommunal violence, it seems much lower than a lot of people are presuming that it would be. That the actual horizontal relationships across communities are not as bad as many presume. Actually, one of the surveys that we did found that Myanmar's intercommunal relations are no worse than countries with much lower levels of violence, which is kind of an indication of the fact that it's really vertical dynamics like violent political speech, highly exclusionary governance structures that are driving intercommunal violence. And so that those on that dimension, at least at the person to person intercommunal relation or relationships, I think there is there is a lot to be a lot of positive narratives there.

Talking of positive narratives,. Talking of positive narratives, here are some positive narratives about products and or services. Another aspect of the conflict that has played out in Operation 1027 is the role of China and the massive crime empires that the Hunters facilitate along the country's borders in recent years. I asked Billy to explain some of those. So this has become the major political dynamic between China and the SAC over the past year, frankly. I mean, it's essentially what we've seen is the emergence of these massive scam operations that use foreign labor that's trafficked into Myanmar into areas controlled primarily by Myanmar military commissioned border guard forces. So these are commissioned under the Myanmar military, which is a very key point in most cases.

And they are running scam operations at a global level that are scamming people using a scheme called pig butchering, which is long term relationship relationship building, and then theft at a large scale. These are sizable losses from individuals. Last year, for example, to give you a sense of that scale, China lost $20 billion to these scam operations. The20 billion. Yeah. And the United States lost $2 billion on scam operations emerging from Myanmar. I mean, the scale of this is wild. I mean, there's more than 100,000 people being held in scam zones in Myanmar from 46 different countries.

I mean, this is a total global operation because because I mean, this emerged actually before covid. I mean, in Sihanoukville, Cambodia and other places where there's a rule of laws is dubious. They have initiated kind of casino operations which are illegal in China and really targeting Chinese public. And during covid, when China, a lot of Chinese nationals were forced back to mainland China, these criminal enterprises were short on labor. And so they shifted their approach. I mean, they shifted to trafficking people into their zones and then operating at a global scale, finding labor from around the world, using not low-skilled labor. I mean, these are high-skilled kind of middle-class workers seeking employment in the tech industry

or some other scheme that, you know, eventually they're held at gunpoint and forced to scam their co-nationals. So that's a little bit of background. co-nationals. So that's a little bit of background. So this is happening in Kokong along the Chinese border, also in the Wa territories and in the NDAA territories. The largest areas are actually on the Thai-Burma border with the Karen border guard force and affiliated criminal organizations. So essentially over the past year, the Chinese have noticed not only the financial losses, but the potential for social instability. Because as youth unemployment has grown in China, you know, these young people are seeking new employment opportunities, crossing the border in Myanmar for high paying tech jobs and then being held at gunpoint. So you have, you know, mothers on

social media saying, I haven't seen my son in three weeks. And, you know, he's being held in a scam operation. So, you know, this is this is deleterious at two levels, you know, the financial scam losses and trafficking. And it's all being run by border guard forces that are commissioned by the Myanmar military. Yet you see countries around the world, including China, going to the Myanmar military and saying, please shut this down. Of course, the Myanmar military has no intention to shut this down because these scam operations are financing the border guard forces that are their key weapon against the resistance. So they need the border guard forces. And so they will never shut down the scam operations. And so what ensued was essentially earlier this year,

I mean, the Chinese came to the Myanmar military and said, we will support you at every level. We will prop you up, provide you weapons, provide you assistance if you can demonstrate the capacity to govern, the capacity to provide stability on our border, the capacity to provide to allow us to pursue our economic interests. And the SAC has completely failed this test. Scam operations have exploded. And the SAC has completely failed this test. Scam operations have exploded. China's economic interests, the Chao Piu Special Economic Zone, remains in an impact assessment phase. The Lepidon copper mine is non-functional.

The Miezo Dam is non-functional. They're just not getting out of the SAC what they wanted. And so there was a meaningful shift recently, it appears. And I think by all indicators that we can see the Chinese greenlit Operation 1027, that they at least did not stand in their way. And you'll see from the MNDAA, I mean, they really were the leaders of the operation that in the statements that they issued about the operation itself. And when they articulated their objectives, the first objective was to shut down scam operations. They're speaking to a Chinese public and government indicating that we are a responsible good faith actor that will shut down these enterprises that are trafficking your citizens and scamming the public out of billions of dollars. So this has become a really dominant dynamic in the relationship between the Chinese and the SAC. And it leads to a really weakened position for the SAC if they're not being propped up in the way that they have been for so long by the Chinese. So we'll have to see how this kind of unfolds, but it's not looking good for the military.

When we do see how this unfolds, it'll be people like the Mandalay PDF who we see leading the charge for a new and democratic Myanmar. We don't exactly know what that means, but I asked them if the weapons seized in Operation 1027 would allow them to arm more fighters and get there faster. We are also now recruiting new recruits

but we will have to recruit until the center is gone and we also need more soldiers to form up the better army than the center

after we won. Even after we won, we are going to need some more human resources to form up a better army than the male-like army. For the arms and ammunitions, we got

a lot of arms and ammunitions from the male-like army, but they use a different type of the emanations and then because we for example we use like uh ak types we have the different so it is not very uh possible to arm the better weapons from the the male army we only use some of the weapons like for the artillery or something like that but that's only a few we got from them what we really need is about the better artillery or sam or something like that for the airstrikes. So, yeah, it's not very useful for us from the arms and ammunition we got from the Malay Army.

He said that the main expect in the new Myanmar. more plants and then he said that he's clear about that. I asked Billy what he thought we could expect in the new Myanmar. As he points out here, everything every so-called analyst has said has been proven wrong by the revolution. They have exceeded the wildest expectations of experts in London and Washington, D.C. And where they go next is really up to them. Good question. And frankly, I don't have a lot of information about that. I mean, you've seen pictures over the past 12 days of the, as the resistance has taken

150 posts, they've definitely captured a lot of heavy munitions and artillery. But yeah, I'm not sure service to air capabilities i i mean i think the the fact that the myanmar military is not able to push the resistance out of urban areas i mean this is the first time really that the resistance has moved into urban areas and held them um including into guy i mean colin has been they're holding it um and um so i mean that seems to be an indication to me that the sac's capability is weakening um i mean yeah their their access to foreign currency and to purchase weapons is highly constrained now i mean their primary providers russia and china you know one's fighting their own war and the other is kind of is a little bit more skeptical as to whether they deserve their support. I mean, just last week, the U.S. initiated

new sanctions on the Myanmar oil and gas enterprise that provided half a billion dollars in revenue for the junta per year. Yeah, that's a major that's a major issue for them accessing U.S. dollars, which they need part of Kalkarig on the Asia Highway into Thailand. I mean, they control the borders or the parting to in a way they hadn't before. So even this sort of bartering or material trade is less viable. So, yeah, I mean, I think they're just really asset constrained. And it does. I mean, just the fact that they haven't been able to retake these critical logistic cups. I mean, the the border crossings that the resistance has have controlled constitute 40 percent of the of the of the overland trade between China and Myanmar. of the overland trade between China and Myanmar.

It's like, you know, it's like $4 billion in value that's being, you know, that tax loss for the SAC. It's considerable. It's considerable losses there as well. And how long they can really hold out and maintain their air assets is really questionable, particularly since they've had to massively diversify their air asset purchase, which really makes it more complex to service planes and helicopters. So yeah, I mean, I think I'm not sure that the resistance has much more capacity in surface to air or air defense, but

it does seem like the SAC's capacity to inflict atrocities in this way has also been constrained. Yeah. It sort of flies in the face of every sort of like analytical idea about the assets that you need to have in order to be successful in one of these. Like they've really proved a lot of people wrong in a really impressive way. I know you have to go. I want to ask one more real quick. The, these towns, did the SAC pull out of the towns or did,

did they like fight house to house or like how did they, or did it vary across the country? Well, the, I mean, the SAC was, you know, in their barracks themselves.

I mean, in these towns, it's a national uprising. The public is is you know opposed to the the presence this is an occupying force yeah um and so yeah it's just moving in and capturing military posts and as one person uh resistance fighter indicated essentially you fire your gun in the air and they lay down their weapons, which is more, you know, an indication of of where the military stands and the support that these these highly isolated. I mean, this is a fractured light infantry force that's dispersed at posts all over the country.

And, you know, they're resupplying from the Northwest Command in Moiniwa to towns within 30 minutes drive by helicopter because they can't move. So there's just not logistic support to these posts. And so, yeah, you've got folks in there that just the will to fight is pretty small. Morale is shrinking from a very low base um and so i think there was the the general pattern is just resistance taking military barracks and posts um other than having to go house to house um i mean there's villages and towns where there's these groups called pusalti that are like military aligned militias um but yeah that's's not really, you know, a nationwide fighting force. And it's in most cases, it really is just the resistance capturing posts and pushing out military personnel. And I mean, there was a they're also using drones to a high degree of effectiveness. They recently killed a colonel who was on,

he was about to be become a brigadier general, the highest ranking person to have been killed in battle from the military through a drone strike in Northern Shun state, I believe. And I think that, yeah, the, the resistance drone capabilities have also increased considerably. And this is also an area where you see NUG collaborating a lot with the EROs. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, it's just, yeah, it's a barracks, um, uh, you know, Myanmar military personnel, and they just, in many cases, just lay down their arms because it's just

morale is so low and the probability of them to be able to fend off indefinitely is when they have the public against them and a resistance movement against them. It's just really a challenging set of conditions for them. We don't know exactly what the future of Myanmar is, but it took an interesting turn in the last few weeks with the KNDF, that's the Karenny National Defense Force, 5th Battalion, issuing a statement of solidarity with the people of Rojava, and the people of Rojava in the form of the YPG and the YPJ, their defense units of men and women respectively, recording a response at great risk during the ongoing Groen campaign, expressing their solidarity and support for the revolutionary people of Myanmar.

Something we'll cover in greater detail in another episode, but it's yet another illustration of how the revolutionary people of Myanmar have continued to defy everyone's expectations about how and where they will go next, and how they've managed to dream up a vision for a more equal and just future, even as they face the injustice and inequality of fighting a war the world doesn't seem to care about without a single dollar of international military aid and little support other than strongly worded letters from the UN at sporadic intervals. As we come to the end of the episode, I asked Sayar Montine if he had anything else he would like to share with our listeners.

I asked Sayah Montine if he had anything else he would like to share with our listeners. Okay, he said that if he is able to talk, he wants them to know that we are not the white people. Most of them are educated and we are only fighting for the democracy but in some international news uh there will be some news that uh like uh pdf the revolution forces are killing each other or something like that but it's like not fully correct maybe some a few will be doing that but most of us are not doing that way it's just a propaganda from the male like me you know he also say that we no more expecting for the help from the other countries, we will be fighting our own and with our spirit to the end. And he also wanted to say that to the US government or the King of England or the other countries

authorities that we are not wild ones. We are educated, and then we are just fighting to get the democracy back to our country. He's using a little bit strong words, you know. He said that if other governments are not helping us because they can't get any benefits from helping us,

even if they don't get any benefits from helping us. Even if they don't want to help us, just don't look at us like we are the wild ones. We will be trying to get the level of the other countries. We will always be trying for that. If you have any chance to speak out in a seminar or the workshops or any other things or any meetings, he wants you to tell the news about killing each other of our revolution forces is just a propaganda of SAC. If there is no more SAC, there will be no issues like that anymore. Most of the issues are just because of SAC

and then they spreading some rumors about that and then fake news, you know. If you guys can come and visit us and then you can see how we treat people and then how we respect the civilians and then how we follow code of conduct in person. If you want to follow the Madeleine PDF, you can search them on Facebook where they post regular updates. We'll include the link in the show notes for you. If you want to hear more from Billy, I'll let him tell you how sure yeah i mean um we put out a paper at usip.org yesterday on the relationship

between the the scam operations and the the um the conflict dynamics i'm putting one out probably next week on the day after um quote unquote dynamics, summarizing some of our research. I'm on Twitter at B-I-L-L-E-E, the number four, the letter D. I try to stay up on some of the conflict dynamics there. But yeah, the USIP website's where we publish most of our stuff. In closing, I just want to share

how much hope I found in the conflict in Myanmar in recent weeks. At a time when the world seems so full of cruelty, it's inspiring to see people relatively unified, committed to respecting life and civilians, and succeeding against all the odds. This doesn't mean they don't need help, they do desperately. And I hope that as people continue to advocate to civilians in Gaza, they can include civilians and revolutionaries from Myanmar in their demands going forward. 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. 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,

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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 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 iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Welcome, welcome to Get Up and Here. I'm Andrew Sage from the YouTube channel Andrewism, joined today by...

James. Hi, sorry, I'm doing my own intro. Hi, Andrew. Yeah, I'm excited to hear about something. I don't know what yet, so this should be a fun adventure. traveling we're gonna embark on a journey to explore movements of about 200 years ago that i think is still quite relevant even today particularly in our very technological fast-paced world so let me put a new james in the early 19th century in england oh great which you know is a time of great change of evil disease all that jazz yeah i think i'd have thrived as a person with diabetes i'd have made it approximately you know a couple of weeks yeah yeah um the industrial revolution was in full swing it hadn't quite reached that point yet, as far as I know. But it was transforming the way that people lived and worked. It was a time of innovation.

It was also a time of great uncertainty. And amidst the clattering looms and rise of iconization, a group of workers emerged who became known as the Luddites. They were some early adopters ah yes of resistance yes resistance the changes of the industrial revolution and you know for that cardinal sin they've been misinterpreted ever since so today we're going to be explaining exactly who the luddites were and why their actions resonate with us today in the 21st century. We'll talk about their history, their motivations, and their brave stand against the relentless march of capitalist progress.

We'll also touch on some figures, some of their tactics, and the lasting impact they left on history. But most importantly, we'll be covering why their struggles still matter to us today. So here we are, you know, in the 19th century, industrial revolution sweeping through England. British working families were going through some very tough times as the economy was in turmoil and unemployment was spreading like wildfire. It really wasn't a good situation to be in. There was this never-ending war with Napoleon's France, there was draining resources and causing what Yorkshire historian Frank Peel

described as the hard pinch of poverty. And to make matters worse, food was in short supply and prices were shooting up. So not only were jobs hard to come by, but even putting basic food on the table was becoming a serious challenge. It was a really tough period for these families and they were feeling that squeeze in every way possible. So the lights emerged as a response to these seismic shifts, as a loosely organized group of textile workers and weavers who hailed primarily, but not exclusively, from the Nottinghamshire region of England. At the heart of their struggle was the mechanization of the textile industry. Factories powered by steam engines and intricate machinery were replacing traditional cottage

industries, leading to unemployment and a decline in working conditions. In the place of a cottage industry where cloth workers could work as many or as few hours a day as suited them, the factory had a reason where workers would work long many or as few hours a day as suited them. The factory had a reason where workers would work long hours at dangerous machinery, be fed meager meals, and submit to the punitive authority of the foreman. The factory owners were winning. As I alluded to earlier, the Luddites were not blindly opposed to this idea of progress, as they've been misinterpreted, but they were seeking to protect their livelihoods and the quality of their craftsmanship many of the original rights were

actually quite savvy when it came to technology in fact some were highly skilled machine operators that ended up smashing the very machines that they were accustomed to using. They had no issue with welcoming innovations that made their lives and their jobs easier. But they had an issue with the way that the new machinery was being used by the factory owners to reduce them to mere cogs in the industrial machine. And they didn't like that factory owners

were using the machinery to kick out the trained and skilled cloth workers in favor of child laborers and other lower skilled workers who would be easier to exploit. The cloth that these machines produced was of lower quality, but because it was so cheap to churn out and there was so much of it, the factory owners were still turning a profit. And so that, you know, that sucks for them, which is why the Littites, to resist these changes, embraced a distinctive form of protest.

At the time, labor organizing was illegal. So they chose a, I suppose, even more drastic method of targeting the newly introduced machines for destruction. Is it E.P. Thompson who called it collective bargaining by riot yes yeah i believe so yeah i think that's an excellent like way to understand it i'm sure we'll get there but it's yeah it's a means of labor organizing when labor organizing is illegal indeed indeed and if no other options are available to you, you're pressed against the wall, you have no other choice. Yeah. So these Luddites would gather together in the dead of the night, usually in secluded areas like forests or hillsides, to plan their actions.

To maintain their secrecy, Luddites adopted a strict code of silence, making it very difficult for authorities to infiltrate their ranks that secrecy was crucial to their survival and their ability to outwit the authorities and so under this code they'd go on and break into the factories and smash the machinery and occasionally leave an etching of the infamous ned Ludd as a mark of their presence. Ned Ludd, by the way, was a symbol, not their actual leader. He was a legendary weaver who was said to have been whipped for idleness, so he smashed two knitting frames in a fit of passion. More than likely, Ned Ludd didn't exist.

He was more of like a folkloric character. But the knights named themselves after him and would call him king lud and general lud yeah funny enough the authorities actually thought he was the ringleader of the whole operation so they tried to hunt him down meanwhile of course the lights are jokingly referring to lud's office in sherwood forest and some of the luddites would actually cross-dress as lud's wives during their protests yeah uh i do like every time you find an instance of like uh cross-dressing in history uh so it's just amusing to note that i guess some people have decided that uh like either either like cross-dressing or trans people were invented in 2016.

Not that those two things are the same, but we can find literally thousands of instances of, of course, trans people and also cross-dressing as a form of deliberate... Sometimes it's transgression, sometimes it's a thing that just people did. But yeah, you can see it in depictions of the Luddites. People even took the time to paint it into their paintings. that just people did uh but yeah if you can see it depictions of the luddites like people even took the time to paint it into their paintings exactly exactly yeah but yeah so i mean the leader wasn't ned ludd the leader well it really was a leaderless movement the real instigators

were just regular on the ground weavers and craftsmen folks like for example george mellow a weaver from huddersfield who played a pivotal role in organizing luddite actions in the west riding of yorkshire best known for the time that he fatally shot a mill owner in the balls what a hero. Yeah. Chad move. Indeed, indeed.

But these actions were not just, you know, random acts of vandalism and violence. They were a desperate plea for change. In fact, they mainly confined their attacks to manufacturers who specifically use machines in what they called a fraudulent and deceitful manner to get around standard labor practices. The lights wanted machines that made high quality goods and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were really their main concerns. And besides the raids and the smashing smashing they also had a couple other tricks up their sleeves they organized public demonstrations they sent out letters to local industrialists and government officials to lay out their reasons for wrecking the machinery

they weren't just smashing for no reason with no messaging um yeah and in different parts of england you know you had different uh approaches different stances and different you know material conditions so for example in the midlands of england the lorites had the company of framework knitters which was this recognized public body that could talk to the capitalists through named representatives and so they used that legitimacy as a recognized institution to back up their demands but up in the Northwest of England, textile workers didn't have these established trade institutions. So they used their letters to push for official recognition as a united group of tradespeople. It's like an early union.

Their demands weren't just, of course, about smashing machines. They also wanted high minimum wages and, again, an end to child labor. They were playing the long game and in yorkshire you know the tone shifts a bit they were going from letter writing to making more direct and violent threats against local authorities who they saw as supporting these nasty machines that messed with the job market the The Yorkshire Luddites meant business. In fact, they carried around these sledgehammers that they called the Great Enoch, named after a local blacksmith

who had manufactured both the hammers and also any of the machines they intended to destroy. As they declared, Enoch made them, Enoch shall break them. Which I think is just just the division that gives me is like you know god of war style you know swinging around this sledgehammer smash other machines yeah yeah like i mean they broke some big things right like they weren't uh this wasn't like uh i don't know like some sort of trivial sabotage, like frame breaking is still a capital crime in the UK,

but it's also a serious feat of strength. Yes. And I'm going to get into that. Excellent. Good. Yeah. I love coming from a country with normal laws. There's so many.

Don't even get me started on strange laws around the world. I mean, you mentioned that there are some really strange, strange laws, yeah i'm sure that could be a whole topic for a whole episode it could be uh you could suggest that they're not connected to morality uh perhaps maybe maybe the law and what's right and wrong is not the same thing hmm you might be onto something there yeah ponder something to think about for sure yeah so a lot of these chain differences and approaches like i mentioned really depend on their material conditions

it also depended on the background of the workers some of them were frame workers some of them were weavers some of them were spinners and so they took on different tactics and styles uh depending on what they were experienced with and what where you found them of course they were sending out and where you found them. Of course, they were sending out death threats to some industrialists as well. And in fact, some of these industrialists were so worried about Luddite attacks that they had secret chambers built into their buildings as escape plans in case things went south during an attack. Yeah.

You can imagine them cowering in their holes yeah just like as well outside imagine being like yeah i'm making excellent choices in life i employ hundreds of people and i've i've built a secret hole to hide in when they're never to be trying to kill me because i've made their lives so shit yes like i'm going to create conditions that are so terrible these people are going to get so angry at me and then I'm just going to make a place to hide you know yeah instead of actually rectifying the reasons they're angry yeah exactly like you could simply take the money you spent on your secret escape hatch and distribute it to people who are literally struggling to put food in their children's mouths but I guess that's not the logic of capitalism is it yeah that'd be too um that'd be too humane yes yeah yeah you can't

let them get uh you know realize that you're afraid of them indeed with all these tactics the lights were truly fights not only for their own jobs but also for a say in the future of their industry and their communities like regular people of, they were just trying to provide for their families and defend themselves against the ever-expanding incursions of the capitalists. I don't know, James, how do you think the government and factory owners responded to these ordinary people and their desperate and fair pleas for change yeah surely it was a humane response right from yeah that's what i would expect as a british person uh through our history our government has really shown a lot of humanity and compassion for people so i'd expect they did something similar here that's what i learned in school they're so compassionate that they created an empire that the sun would never set on

that's so considerate you know for people who are afraid of the dark yes yeah yeah that's that's the real reason yeah and of course they were doing it to uplift civilized and christianizeize the other peoples of the world and for no other reason. God, such philanthropists. Yeah. Such philanthropists. Kind people who brought tea and scones

to the rest of the world, the British Empire and the British government. Yeah. Am I going to learn something bad about them? Yeah, I hate to let you down, but the government and the factory owners responded with deploying troops to quell the light uprisings

and firing against the protesters. In one of the bloodiest incidents in April 1812, some 2,000 protesters mobbed a mill near Manchester and the owner ordered his men, because in addition to soldiers, you also have these private militias that capitalists would hire. So the owner ordered his men to fire into the crowd,

killing at least three and wounding 18. And then soldiers killed at least five more the next day. Okay, yeah, that's not quite what we'd hope for is it yeah yeah yeah many of the lorites were arrested uh many were tortured some even faced execution or even worse exile to australia yeah the ultimate the ultimate crime the ultimate penalty rather yeah it's sent to the land of kangaroos and uh where they put mashed potatoes Yeah, the ultimate crime. The ultimate penalty, rather. It's sent to the land of kangaroos where they put mashed potatoes inside their pies. What?

Yeah, have you not seen this? It's terrible, but unfortunately it's true. Are you talking about like shepherd's pie? No, they'll take a meat pie, like a normal meat pie, and then they'll cut a bit and then put mashed potatoes in the top of it. Just to... What is this called?

I'm going to have to look now. Like, I've seen it on YouTube. Meat pie, mashed potato, Australia. You can get it like in like, you know, like, yeah, like instead of having fish and chips, you can get it at a van. Like someone will bring it to

you i think i'm seeing it you found it and then they put like gravy as well oh man yeah it's uh like i know i've come from a country that does terrible things to food but uh yeah it's this one is really something else you can see why people why it was uh the word i have to say though i do admire that it it seems to be a very balanced you know you get in the carbs the fats and the proteins in it you know it's like yeah and it all in one that's that's the gym bro and me talking of course but it seems like a very efficient meal yeah it's like uh it's not the cornish pasty is the uh the truly the most efficient uh like working man's power bar because you can uh you you can hold on to the crust and eat the pasty and even if you have like dirty hands from working in a factory you uh you still

get your lunch yeah but we're getting a little bit sidetracked yeah yeah we have we've traveled a long way from the exiled australia oh i shut out the thought um but some of them despite that kept their fighting spirit to the bitter end like for example john booth and no offense to you james but you know a lot of the names i read in like british history are the most generic sounding names it's like you just casually find somebody in british history named like john doe yeah we do we're choosing from a limited palette. Until very recently, we were really pretty stodgy on the names. I mean, more power to you. I mean, it's iconic, but at the same time, it's also hilarious

that everybody from regular people to some of the movers and shapers, the leaders in the military, and politicians and stuff, just all of them yeah yeah it's like they had six-sided yeah yeah yeah just some guy occasionally you'll get like a cornelius or a mama duke or just some absolute nonce with like a really posh name uh but yeah we otherwise yeah it's well apparently like an enoch you know yeah yeah you gotta respect enoch like once you go outside of england you get some good names but like uh yeah we were moving with a pretty pretty pretty playing with a playing

with a small deck i guess when it came to names for a while there yeah for sure i mean i can't even talk my name is andrew so I think my name is the most popular name for boys born in the year I was born. So I can't really say much either. Oh God, we're getting off track again. Right. So John Booth, right? So John Booth was this 19 year old apprentice

who joined one of the Luddite attacks. He was injured, detained, and died after being tortured to give up the identity of his the Luddite attacks. He was injured, detained, and died after being tortured to give up the identity of his fellow Luddites. A local priest was in the room when he was passing and his dying words became legendary. So John was like, can you keep a secret?

And the priest was like, yes, and then booth was like so can i and then he died there you go what a hero yeah iconic yeah iconic yeah so yeah government officials by 1813 were trying to quash the lyrite movement by any means necessary. So they organized this massive trial in York after the attack on Cartwright's Mill at Rawford's near Clacketan. I've got to write it. Yeah, Clacketan, I think. That seems about right.

Where are we? Clacketan. Yeah, yeah. We're in, I'm signing it on the map. Okay, you're near Leeds. Yeah, yeah. Bradford. I've not actually spent much time in that part of the world,

but if I had to guess,ofield's um something like that we do like one of our another another great tradition in Britain is having names which uh don't bear any relation to the way they're spelt we just write them like that so we can tell if you're local or not yeah yeah I mean we primarily use british spelling conventions um internet and english so i know all about your center with the r and then the e yeah yeah defense and yeah i'm working on a book at the moment and uh my american microsoft word is fighting me every step of the way on my spelling. Yeah. I mean, can't they see that the U is absolutely essential in the word color? Yeah.

Without it, we wouldn't know what it meant. And that's what language does. So yeah. So after this attack on Cartwright's Mill at Ruffles near Clacketon, the government accused over 60 men, including Mellor and his associates, of various crimes related to Luddite activities. It's important to note that not all of these charged men were actually Luddites. Some had no connection to the movement. And while these trials were technically legitimate jury trials, many were abandoned due to a lack of evidence laid into the acquittal of 30 of those 60 men.

And it's evident that these trials were primarily intended as show trials to discourage other lorides from continuing the activities. And then here's where we get to the important bit. Parliament went on to make machine breaking, i.e. industrial industrial sabotage a capital crime with the frame breaking act of 1812 yeah what a normal thing and they've never repealed it is that

right yeah i believe i don't think so yeah it's still in the books yeah listen if you're listening since it was yeah go ahead yeah i was going to say if someone's listening in the UK just give it a try see what happens stakes are quite high but yeah you know

you never know you might be able to get the machine breaking act struck down a frame breaking act honestly I wouldn't be surprised

if you know since it was established in 1812 if by now a lot of the British colonies you know might still have it in their books as well yeah yeah i've inherited that common law and stuff yeah i'm not like a legal scholar i don't know all the deets on that no i can see liz truss incorporating it into her platform to return to

uh our leadership position it's like a a very insane kind of Tory position. There's still this bizarre British, like anytime we have a protest movement in the streets in the UK, you can log on to Meta or Facebook or whatever and see a certain type of British person being like, send in the army.

It's like a, there are people who have not reconstructed their opinions on labor organizing since the luddite period yeah indeed indeed they are the conservative party you can literally picture them like smoking cigars with top hats except you know they were not capitalists a lot of them are just like regular workers it's like what are you even doing yeah yeah yeah like uh you've uh like don't you understand that your economic interests line up with these people uh and not with like the boris johnsons of this world and your social interest too of course but i mean speaking of of you know interests aligning there was actually a

politician who did stand against um that legislation and that is you know the well-known english poet lord byron yeah he was actually one of the few prominent defenders of the luddites especially after witnessing how the defendants were treated during the york trial yeah i mean go ahead but byron has some surprisingly like uh good i think he was part of this romantic movement right like the idea that the uh industrial revolution spoiled the innocence of the the rural working people which it's uh it's paternalist at its core but like when at least he's not baying for their blood yeah yeah yeah yeah actually that that attitude reminds me of van gogh oh he was another his all of his art was very obsessed with the peasants because he just saw it as like a better way of

life yeah real romanticization of the peasantry yeah it was i think it was a thing that sort of spread around europe in the late 19th, early 20th century, maybe like, uh, even 18th century, but no, they, yeah.

19th, 20th century, like this idea that, yeah, like the innocence of the rural peasants had been broken. And like, it's just so reflected in so much art from that period. You know what that is? That's literally just like their version of nostalgia.

Yes. If you really think about it, you know, know it's like it's kind of like our people today are like oh the 90s was so much better oh the 2000s was so much better oh the 80s oh the 70s it's just that but with peasants yeah yeah instead of like disco or whatever yeah yeah you're right like yeah it is it's is. It's like doing an ironic wearing a fanny pack, but with a peasant. And not even just in fashion. It's also like the actual material reasons

people feel nostalgic as well. Yeah, yeah. We think about safety. We think about the ways that our cities have changed. Think about all the material realities that have changed in these decades. the material realities that have changed in these decades. And it makes sense that just like we wished for the simpler

life of the present, a lot of people now wish we were back to the simpler times of the immediate post Jim Crow and post-colonial independence period. Yeah, yeah I mean it's uh I think also

we we forget the hardships but yeah like it's a way and change accelerates so much quicker now because uh we've really fucked the whole planet and climate change is accelerating and obviously technological change is accelerating so our nostalgia cycles are much shorter but yeah this is just like when I had an estate and I could direct the peasants to trim my trees in a certain shape life was better for them kind of nostalgia but like in a meaningful sense right like the lives of of working class people were not improved right we see like yeah the like gdp which is a useless metric but like the amount of of like value of goods the country produces in the industrial revolution goes up and up and up but the quality of life and even

life expectancy does not right like uh people are dying earlier and certainly like yeah and chiefly life expectancy is dropping because children are dying right either from industrial conditions or conditions in cities and so like in a meaningful sense those people's life was not improved the life of the bourgeoisie was improved and like yeah uh we see that later in britain with things like the uh britain's forced to incorporate the bourgeoisie into it into its politics right so that doesn't have a bigger revolution that's what it does in the Great Reform Act. But the working class people, it continues to suppress.

After this, we see it with the Chartists and the violent suppression of Chartism. But yeah, this nostalgia, it helps them, but I guess it's not really invested in their agency. It's more of a paternalist. It's, I guess, not dissimilar to the way Britain treated its colonies in many ways. Yeah. And I think another aspect of it as well is, you know, when we look at this sort of nostalgia,

whether it's talking about this romantic nostalgia for the simple life of the peasant, or we're talking about the nostalgia of for example give you an example from trinidad um the oil boom period in the 70s and 80s right yeah we we gained independence 1962 and in the 70s and 80s we got this oil boom and you know a lot of people were living lavish um but whether it's either of those cases, when you look at the reality of the situation on the ground, it's like, oh, you actually go back to that time and it wasn't all sunshine and roses, you know?

Like, it actually was not good to be a peasant, actually. I mean, there are certain things that, you know, a lot better than now in terms of perhaps the vibrance of culture or the ability of to lean on a community for support and that sort of thing but or take for example this oil boom situation talking about trinidad um yeah like there was this massive influx of wealth and stuff but there's also you know a whole bunch of corruption and also we had the whole 1970 black power revolution that was born out of the frustration of the people at the time.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always this sense, like you see it in like nostalgia as well, right? Like the nostalgia for East Germany that German people will talk about. Like you also had the Stasi. yeah exactly yeah exactly i mean i i get it when i look at some of the maps of like like we're talking about with germany yeah some of the data related maps you know sociological data of things like religiosity or things yeah uh current some other examples but there's some like stark differences

between the two sides of the country yes yeah yeah very much so so i completely understand how people would feel like oh we feel so separate and distinct from um you know west germany and all that stuff but yeah and when you become like they went from being like a i guess like a nation within the ussr to like the often the less economically advantaged parts of a nation which is neoliberal and capitalist and like neoliberal capitalism is not kind to the less economically advanced advantaged people it wasn't a great situation before either to be clear but like i can see how suddenly being incorporated into like not not everyone's going through this but you lot are and the state's not going to do fuck all to

help you is like i can see how that might promote some nostalgia definitely definitely and i mean speaking of states doing nothing uh at this time byron is making this his speech before the lords and in that speech laced up with sarcasm of course he was highlighting the benefits of automation which he led to the production of inferior goods and unemployment he concluded that the proposed law uh the frame breaking act of 1812 was only missing two crucial elements to be effective 12 butchers for a jury and a jeffries for a judge which was a reference to george jeffries an infamous hanging judge known for his very harsh judgments yeah it's also mad that like but also not uncommon in this period that you are seeing like the uh the left most political opinion being advanced within parliament being advanced in the hered's the word the aristocratic

yeah the aristocratic realm is still you know having to deal with this yeah it's very much tied to like a paternalism and and this sort of feudal attitude but it's just it's just fascinating to see like and it does happen in the especially and i think also there's this uh a deep deep disdain for new money that this is a powerfully british vibe uh that um that comes especially from the house of lords right like like this like they don't identify with the bourgeoisie at all and fucking hate them because they're, they're, they're turning up at the country club or whatever. Yeah. And it's so,

it's so funny, but a lot of old money and I'm going to say this and I'm going to, you know, give our contract. What's so funny about the old money folks is that a lot of the cases, they don't even have like as much money as the new money people. Yes. Yeah.

It's not even about money for them at this point. It's really just about lineage and culture and whatever. Yeah, like Britain's class thing is like a, it's almost like a caste system. Like your caste is, your class is inherited

regardless of your actual financial means. Like, they're like lord living in a castle that he can't afford to heat. It's like a, it's like a, it's a trope for a

reason in britain i guess indeed indeed so yeah with the passing of that act and in the years that followed the light movement came to an end but the light actions left a lasting mark on the labor movement their tactics of collective action even though clandestine, laid the groundwork for future labor unions, demonstrating the power of organized resistance. Defenders of their way of life, reminders

that technology, while transformative, can also disrupt lives and communities. The light experiences echo even today. You you know in an era with the fear of technological unemployment with discussions and the impact of automation and ai yeah you know before he had said his infamous last words, John Booth also said that the new machinery might be man's

chief blessing instead of his curse if society were differently constituted. In other words, technology can either help common folk or harm them, depending on not just what the technology is, but also what society the technology

develops within. Yeah, that's very true. So I'll leave you all with that for now. And next time we'll be shifting our focus to the present day and examining how Buddhism's principles

have been applied by movements of the 20th and 21st century. Cool. Nice. That's all from me. You can find me on youtube.com slash Andrew Izzo and support on patreon.com slash St. Drew. This has been It Could Happen Here. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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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. getting no less awkward as we go but hi andrew i'm excited to learn about uh what we're going

to learn about today yes we're picking up where we left off by tackling the luddites of today in our previous episode we unraveled the story of luddites who stood against the encroaching forces of the industrial revolution and more specifically the abuses of workers by profit-seeking capitalists they were challenging the worldview of laisse by profit-seeking capitalists. They were challenging the worldview of laissez-faire capitalism, with its increasing amalgamation of power, resources, and wealth, rationalized by its emphasis on progress. Today, it seems history has a way of repeating itself as we face a similar struggle against technological changes that come about to the detriment of workers, as some tech is being used by tech

companies in various industries to drive down wages and worsen conditions for common workers. Take for example technological unemployment. The lorites who once resisted the encroachment of machines would find their concerns reflected in our modern world, as our technological advancements often come at the cost of those whose jobs can be automated away. For instance, in the manufacturing industry, robots and automated assembly lines have streamlined production, leading to increased efficiency and lower costs for companies, but these efficiencies often meant the displacement of human workers. And such as in manufacturing, the ripple effects extend to various sectors like customer service, transportation, and data analysis.

And so there's this fear of job displacement looms large. technology advances, human jobs are at risk, potentially leading to widespread unemployment, has been described by some economists as a fallacy. Back in the early days of the industrial revolution, when the advanced mechanization began transforming various industries, and with workers' fairing, automation would render them jobless and devalue their labor, the people took a stand. But as time passed, new industries and job opportunities emerged to replace some of the old ones, ultimately absorbing that workforce. Fast forward to the 20th century, and the rise of computers and automation technology reignited concerns about technological unemployment. But again, new jobs were

created in new industries. Today, the debate continues as artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation advance at an unprecedented pace. And it remains to be seen what the long-term consequences of those technologies may be. My position has really always been that we should be working less anyway, but instead people are obsessed with creating new jobs even when they're unnecessary see you know of course david graber's bullshit jobs yeah but you know even if the idea of mass unemployment due to tech is not true if we end up replacing the jobs that are erased with new jobs whatever the case may be tech is nevertheless quite capable of destroying livelihoods, creating unintended consequences, and further concentrating power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. For every tech advancement that makes a job more fulfilling and enjoyable, there are also those who make it more tedious and grinding.

I mean, yes, tech can free us from certain tasks. You know, accountants have digital spreadsheets that make their lives much easier, for example. Writing is way easier now that the personal computer is more common. But while technological progress can produce prosperity, there's really no guarantee that the prosperity will reach the workers. In most cases under capitalism, it very clearly doesn't. In fact, many of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution were really not felt by the workers until decades later. Yes.

After many of them had been crushed or poisoned or killed or died in a factory fire or whatever, shot down in protest. They didn't see the benefits until much later on. You know, it's not like, you know, these things introduced and boom, everybody benefits. I mean, even now, not everybody in the world is benefiting from, you know, the computer age.

There are still many people, like for example, in the Congo who are enduring slavery and slave-like conditions in order to, you know, procure the materials necessary for the computer age. Totally. And yet, they're not seeing those benefits. And it remains to be seen when they'll see the benefits that many of us enjoy in various parts of the world. And particularly that those enjoy in the global north yeah in our relentless pursuit of progress and technological advancement as defined by

capitalism we also end up losing our nature our community and in many cases our craftsmanship i mean remember john booth the one who had, can you keep a secret or so can I? His other words, you know, that the new machinery might be man's chief blessing instead of his curse if society were differently constituted. That's where I have to bring in the one and only, the Ellis. I've spoken about him before, of course, the Austrian philosopher, the theologian, the sort of everything guy ivan illich oh yeah fun times fun times yeah he was a thinker ahead of his time yeah um you know it's really strange in some of his positions i think um but a lot of his concepts resonate today in various movements in fact one of the foundational uh concepts in the modern movement of degrowth is the concept of conviviality, which was redefined and introduced in the context of our tools in Illich's book, Tools for Conviviality.

Illich's vision, as explored by the book, is one in which technology serves humanity, not supplants it, where convivial tools empower individuals and communities, fostering creativity and autonomy while preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. According to Illich, conviviality is individual freedom realized in personal interdependence. It's basically the ability of individuals to interact creatively and autonomously with others and the environment to satisfy their individual and collective needs. Convivial tools are those which are robust and durable, preserve or enhance ecosystems, level unequal power relationships, and give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich their environment with the fruits of their vision and i can reveal society

is one in which tools which according to illich includes physical hardware productive institutions and productive systems so tools would be factories hospitals uh schools uh farms, all of those things are being included in his definition of tools. And a convivial society is one in which those tools operate on the human scale and serve the people instead of rulers. The idea of convivial tools really challenges us to view technology as a means to enhance our lives rather than displace our livelihoods it's a call to harness innovation for the betterment of society instead of the perpetuation of radical monopolies which i spoke about in a previous it could happen here episode i think a lot of it's like john booth would have certainly appreciated that message yeah and to the right of today certainly do because yeah i'm not the

first nor the only person to see lessons to be learned from the luddite movement the concept of a new luddite movement has been embraced by a variety of folks who may or may not understand what the original luddite movement was about like you know you have these primitivists who embrace the new luddite cause because they think. Like, you know, you have these primitivists who embrace the neo-Luddite cause because they think it means hate and technology. And you have the anarchists and the trade unionists and the environmentalists who are looking more at the labor organizing roots

of the original Luddite movement. And of course, you even see echoes of, you know, OG Luddite action in the vandalism against self-driving cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The yeah yeah the neoliberal movement is composed of activists workers scholars and social critics who stand against the predominant worldview that unbridled technology represents progress pointing scathing critiques and in some cases actual action against technologies and tech companies to desecrate our planet and our society?

Philosopher Lewis Mumford, who had written The Myth of the Machine, Pentagon of Power, reminds us that technology encompasses more than just physical objects. It also includes the techniques of operation and the social organizations that make a particular technology work. Technology reflects our worldview. The forms of technology we embrace, whether they be machines, techniques, or social structures, are deeply rooted in our perception of life, death, human potential,

and the relationships between humans and nature. Our choice of technology, in many ways, mirrors our outlook on the world. That outlook in the modern world is shaped by a rather mechanistic approach to life, characterized by rational thinking, efficiency, utilitarianism,

scientific detachment, and a belief in humanity's ownership and supremacy over nature. That's how you end up getting texts like the Military-Industrial Complex and the Urban Sprawl. Honestly, in a sense, the lorites kind of had it easy not i mean obviously their conditions were horrible but when i say they had it easy i

mean it's in the sense that their machines could be destroyed by their sledgehammers right yeah our technology is a lot more ephemeral you know yeah it's like it's in the cloud yeah it's as it's as nebulous as microplastics in the soil the water and the breast milk i mean it's everywhere and it's integrated into everything it's like where do you even begin yeah wow in the book when technology wounds by psychologist chalice glendening by psychologist chalice glendening, she studied technology survivors, people who had suffered injury or illness in recent years after being exposed to various toxic technologies in their homes and workplaces, whether nuclear radiation, pesticides, asbestos, birth control

devices, or drugs, and covered how they had begun to question not only the processes that maimed them, but the world that indifferently forced those processes on them under the guise of progress. Glendening saw these victims as the basis of a new Luddite movement, struggling against what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution, alongside thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Ivan Illich. Those survivors have gone on to create groups such as Asbestos Victims of America, Aspartame Victims and Their Friends, Citizens Against Pesticide Misuse, Dalkin Shield Information Network, DES Action in National, National Association of Atomic Veterans, National Committee for Victims

of Human Research, National Toxics Campaign, and the VDT Coalition. All of these, of course, are based in the US. And there are also activist groups like Earth First that could have been classified under the neoliberal cause. And Earth First's strategy was to stop environmental intrusions by any means available, legal and otherwise. So there would be slashing engines, slashing tires, disabling engines, blocking roads. Most famously, they would drill spikes into trees and wilderness forests to prevent them from being logged by chainsaws. Yeah. But, you know, while all these movements and organizations are happening in the Western world, it really wasn't just the Western world where this is happening.

A positive undercurrent of the Luddite spirit has surged where indigenous peoples have led the charges against the inclusions of industrialism. Communities not merely resisting the machines and projects of industrialization, but also pushing back against its cultural impact. Peasants and farmers staunchly rejected participation in the various development initiatives imposed upon them by compliant governments, often under the influence of entities like the World Bank or the US State Department. For example, during the early 1980s,

some farmers in Mali took a stand against the construction of dams and dikes for a rice growing program that they wanted no part of. Other communities elsewhere have rallied to halt dam projects that threatened to submerge their ancestral lands and some have been successful as seen with the villagers who protested the Narmada dam in India in the early 1990s and others have faced you know more daunting challenges like the people of eastern Java who protested against the Nipah Irrigation Dam and faced deadly consequences at the hands of Indonesian security forces in 1993. Indigenous tribes have also organized combat deforestation and road-building projects that encroached upon their territories. The Chipko Tree-ger movement in India during

the 1970s and 80s famously succeeded in stopping government clear-cutting efforts, and similar projects have echoed across the globe, from Malaysia to Australia, Brazil to Costa Rica, Solomon Islands to Indonesia and beyond. Traditional fishermen in many regions, such as the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia, Indonesia, and multiple ports along the Pacific coast of South America, including Ecuador and Colombia, have also taken action against industrial fishing fleets encroaching on their waters and jeopardizing their livelihoods. In some cases these protests may not have involved the destruction of machinery, but sabotage is not unheard of, like in the case of a high-tech chemical plant in Thailand

in 1986. The driving force behind these actions really mirrors the Luddite ethos, as they share this fervent desire to preserve the traditional ways of life and livelihood in the face of industrial capitalism's relentless pull towards a wage and market system. And then, of course, outside these movers and shakers, these underground activists, there are also the philosophical Luddites, like the aforementioned Illich. The neo-Luddite spectrum is more diverse and intriguing than one might imagine. While it may not have crystallized into a more formal movement with clear representatives

as is expected of movements these days, it unites a wide array of individuals who share a common awakening from the allure of unchecked technology and resist various aspects of the industrial monoculture. Perhaps if the connections between these separate groups strengthened, we'd see a greater recognition of the interconnected challenges in this grand tapestry of our evolving world. But the thing is, to address the challenges posed by these technologies, it's not enough to merely regulate or eliminate individual items like pesticides or nuclear weapons. What's required is a profound shift in our thinking about humanity and in our relationship

to life itself. We need to craft a new worldview that paves the way for a different way of interacting with our world, our technologies, and our fellow human beings. We need to reconsider our place in the grand scheme of things and to imagine a world where harmony and balance take precedence over domination and control. In Notes Toward a Neolite Manifesto, written in 1990 also by Charles Glendening, the author outlines three core principles and four prescriptions that could drive the neolite movement. In terms of principles, firstly, and I suppose most essentially to addressing the misconception, neolites are not anti-technology. As she says, technology is intrinsic to human creativity and culture,

but what they oppose are the kinds of technologies that are at root destructive of human lives and communities. The next principle, too, is that all technologies are political. Quote, a social critic, Jerry Mander, writes in Four Arguments of the Elimination of Television, a book I read some years ago, by the way, that I've been meaning to revisit, but continuing the quote, technologies are not neutral tools that can be used for good or evil depending on who uses them. They are entities that have been consciously structured to reflect and serve specific powerful interests in specific historical situations. The technologies created by mass technological society are those that serve the perpetuation of mass technological society.

They tend to be structured for short-term efficiency, ease of production, distribution, marketing, and profit potential, or for war-making. As a result, they tend to create rigid social systems and institutions that people do not understand and cannot change or control. The last principle, three, is that the personal view of technology is dangerously limited. Glenn Denning argues that the often-heard message,

but I couldn't live without my mood processor, because of course she's writing this, you know, years and years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my automatic typewriter. processor because of course she's writing this you know years and years ago yeah yeah i'm a word automatic typewriter yeah but this oftenhood message that i couldn't live without my word processor and i guess you could substitute that for smartphone or computer yeah um that message denies the wider consequences of widespread use of computers for example the toxic contamination of workers electronic plants while the solid contamination of workers in electronic plants, while the solidifying of corporate power through exclusive access to new information and databases.

As Mander points out, producers and disseminators of technologies tend to introduce their creations in upbeat, utopian terms. Pesticides will increase yields to feed a hungry planet nuclear energy will be too deep to too too cheap to meet her etc and of course you know you have to throw in that um that uh potshot had nuclear energy it's very um very 20th century coded text yeah um however code learning to critique technology demands fully examining its sociological context, economic ramifications, and political meanings. It involves asking not just what is gained, but what is lost and by whom. It involves looking at the introduction of technologies from the perspective not only of human use, but of their impact on other living beings, natural systems, and the environment. And then there's the Neolite program program which loses me a bit at some points

even where i may agree with some of the principles and you know you might say that's a sign of my propagandized mind in our technological society but i'll leave you to be the judge of that here's what glendening explicitly proposes one as i move toward dealing with the consequences of modern technologies and preventing further destruction of life, the new Luddite movement should favor the dismantling of nuclear technologies, chemical technologies, genetic engineering technologies, television, electromagnetic technologies, and computer technologies. Which, according to them, you know, according according to her cause disease and death create dangerous mutagens in case of television functions as a centralized mind controlling force

poisons the environment all these different things and i mean i get some of the justifications for some of these technologies right yeah a lot of them cause disease death you know pollution a lot of social issues. Right, yeah. But at the same time, I don't believe in throwing out entire sciences and technologies wholesale like that. It feels like a very myopic view being presented on some of these texts. Yeah.

I mean, I guess this was before really the decentralization of some of the means of dissemination of information that happened later on with things like some parts of the internet. I don't want to say by any means that the internet is decentralized, but at least the promise of that which we occasionally see deliver as well. I don't know if you saw today, but I was just watching a video of the YPG in Syria, If you saw today, but I was just watching a video of the YPG in Syria, the people in Rojava talking about the importance of women in the revolution in Myanmar.

And just occasionally the internet or technology gives us the thing that it was supposed to give us, this ability to connect without barriers. Absolutely. But yeah, like you say, that's the computer or the cell phone that was recorded on or whatever happened because somebody uh somebody in the congo in horrific conditions and the drc had to dig out some rare earth chemical and got paid next to nothing and their ancestral homeland was ruined by some rabid company that makes billions of dollars and pays people like shit yeah yeah so i mean i absolutely agree that the supply side of a lot of these technologies need to change drastically yeah and also the you know just the supply chain as a whole you know from

raw materials to the finished products and how it gets to us. I mean, that might mean no more of certain technologies or it might mean a different approach, but it really remains to be seen. We really haven't tried other approaches because, you know, we live under this capitalist hegemony. The next step in the program, two, the neoliberal movement should favor a search for new technological forms and the creation of technologies by the people directly involved in their use, not by scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who gain financially from mass production and distribution of their inventions

and who know little about the context in which their technologies are used. I don't necessarily believe in, you know, splitting it down the middle like that, as if, you know, scientists and engineers are not going to be the people that are directly involved in their use i mean in some cases that's true yeah but in other cases you know you know people who are using the products sometimes the people who invented it yeah iterated on that or whatnot like when i think about um before they were 3d printing weapons in

the revolution in myanmar they were 3d printing prostheses because landmines are so common there. Right. And so like for those people, right, the engineer is the person whose brother or sister or non-binary sibling or what have you needs a leg. And so they have iterated or designed a leg. And that person is very much both like benefiting from end use and doing the engineering.

Exactly. I get this as kind of like, you know know a screed against the ivory tower types but yes i don't think that reflects on you know all of the or even most of the scientists and engineers a lot of engineers on the ground a lot of um you know barefoot scientists as the expression is yeah yeah like when we talk about things like permaculture or the things we talked about before like some of that is a science too right we have a thesis and we test it and we prove it and then we keep iterating on it like it's a hypothesis i should say like and that's certainly a science which is rooted in in a place and people and respect for the environment yeah that's i mean the the the manifesto goes a little bit further on this particular point you know she's advocating for the creation of technologies that are of a scale

and structure that make them understandable to the people who use them and are affected by them she's advocating for the creation of technologies built with a high degree of flexibility so they do not impose a rigid and irreversible imprint on their users and she's advocating for the creation of technologies built with a high degree of flexibility so they do not impose a rigid and irreversible imprint on their users. And she's advocating for the creation of technologies that foster independence from technological addiction and promise political freedom, economic justice, and ecological balance. There, I can't disagree. Yeah, no, I'm down with that. I'm absolutely down with with advocating for that yeah uh the third point in the program uh she says we favor the creation of technologies in which

politics morality ecology and techniques emerged for the benefits of life on earth for example community-based energy sources utilizing solar, wind, and water technologies. Organic, biological technologies in agriculture, engineering, architecture, art, medicine, transportation, and defense. Conflict resolution technologies which emphasize cooperation, understanding, and continuity of relationship. And decentralized social technologies which encourage participation, responsibility, and empowerment. which encourage participation, responsibility, and empowerment. Now, you know, I'm the solo punk guy. I'm the, you know, the anarchist on YouTube, whatever.

So you got me on these. You know, I agree with all of these, obviously. But what I find interesting is that this list seems to ignore how, you know, the technologies being advocated here are linked to the previous technologies that were just being decried. You know, like in one section, she's talking about, oh, you're not a fan of these chemical technologies, but chemistry is an inevitable component of the biological technologies that you're advocating for.

Or you're saying that you don't like computer technologies. But when you're talking about like solar, wind and water energy, which to be fair can be low tech too. Yeah. There is usually some involvement of a computer in those energy systems. So I think there's a slight inconsistency there. But I don't know know what do you think yeah i think yeah like we can't sort of uh yeah yeah we sometimes we can't say that to like you say to a degree all of these systems require a technology and like i suppose we start to get into like what is the technology right before we

go too far um and then i think that's probably a question worth asking but uh yeah i think we it's easy to throw the baby out of bathwater i suppose yeah i mean like um like mumford had said technology is more than just physical objects It's also techniques of operation and social organizations that reflect a worldview. Yeah. So I suppose, as you said before, it's what I think about often. What we need to change is the way we see the world

and then the other stuff we can change. It will fall into place. Yeah. I think, again, I i'm gonna go back so i was just in in rojava for the last few weeks but um one of the things that i heard from everyone there right from like and not just from like people in the women's movement but also from like random guy in the market who i'm having tea with, uh, uh, is like that this idea that we can't, um, can't decolonize the country until we decolonize our family. And the notion that like women were the first colonized group of people, um, which, and

so like, if we can't do gender equality, what, you know, what are we doing? Like, well, we can't, why, why are we fighting this revolution to, to liberate our country when we can't liberate uh you know our spouse uh daughter or what have you so um definitely yeah it's just it's a very powerful i know it's not like as fun as uh taking a sledgehammer to a cotton mill but like uh if we if we replicate that kind of extractive like extractive capitalism is what makes the supply side of these things so bad and it's what also leads us to think about using them in a way that can extract the most value from the worker um yeah and so i would absolutely say that uh you know the break the frame

in your mind i don't know that's a good point yeah you know it's funny as you mentioned you know it's um gonna be as fun as you know smashing a cotton uh cotton mill or whatever yeah it made me think that you know perhaps in a revolutionary society in a society you may see um therapeutic rage rooms where people can smash out some of their last frustrations against the capitalist system yeah consequences there's left for them to fix yeah yeah to get that out before you uh you take that out on other people you go and rewild or something you know you have to get get that energy out first yeah yeah yeah remove the toxicity i like that no look at that it's a place where you can take that anger out.

Right. So finally, the fourth and final element of the program. She says that we favor the development of a life-enhancing worldview in Western technological societies. We hope to instill a perception of life, death, and human potential in technological societies that will integrate the human need for creative expression, spiritual experience, and community with the capacity for rational thought and functionality. We perceive the human role not as the dominator

of other species in planetary biology, but as integrating to the natural world with appreciation for the sacredness of all life. We foresee a sustainable future for humanity if and when Western technological societies restructure their mechanistic projections and foster the creation of machines techniques and social organizations to respect both human dignity and the nature's wholeness in progressing towards such a transition we are aware that we have nothing to lose except a way of living that leads to the destruction of all life we have a world to gain." End quote. Word. That was a nice, very rhetorical flair at the end. Yeah, that's a bar. In my opinion, coming to a close here, the new lights uh hits and a miss um they hit a lot more than

they miss there's some things i have some slight quibbles with um and i really of course i have to give them credit for doing a lot more to investigate and confront technology than the vast majority of people i mean they're asking the right questions questions that you don't see being asked at all you know you get these announcements for new technologies new innovations new techniques new whatever and so it's just like you know marketing and advertising and it's just implemented there's no say of people there's no raising questions about what might the consequences of this be 10 years on the line 20 years on the line 50 years on the line 100 years on the line you know yeah yeah and lessons of luddism are very clear technology should serve humanity not the other way around yeah i think that's that that's

a good key take home like yeah it's it's there to make our lives better we don't have to not to allow us more exploited yeah landscape is vast and it's constantly evolving but the principles the lights and the vision of convivial tools i think they can offer us some guidance and i hope you're able to take that away from this two-parter. Yeah. And that's all I have for today. Great, thank you. You can follow me on YouTube, Andrew Azem, support on Patreon, slash St. Drew. Thanks, James,

for being part of this. Thank you. That was good. I enjoyed that. This has been It Could Happen Here. Peace. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes

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