It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 80

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial

picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, 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 is the beginning of the podcast. I'm Shereen. I'm James. And this is It Could Happen Here. Today, we're going to be talking about the recent events that have happened in Palestine and the recent acts of terror that the IDF has committed against Palestinians.

So yeah, thanks for joining me, James. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's going to be another fun one from us. I know. I think that's like our thing. It's just... Yeah, uplifting podcast. If they don't leave

depressed we're not doing our job right yep yeah we want you if you're driving maybe pull over because we're going to try and make you cry yeah but no really i mean like in all seriousness there has been some some shocking footage that has come out of palestine this month on april 5th in particular there was footage that emerged from al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third holiest site in Islam. And it is within occupied East Jerusalem. The compound is within that area. And the videos are showing Israeli security forces mercilessly beating Palestinian worshippers. And that violence left at least 12 Palestinians injured and obviously just fueled more public anger. And three of those Palestinians hadinians had to go

to the hospital yeah um and if people haven't seen the videos like you don't have to watch them really um but it's pretty horrific like um we were just talking before we started about how monstrous you have to be to like to stand there and whack someone with a stick again and again and again especially when they're not particularly any threat to you other than you know you perceive their existence as a threat to your state project um yeah and uh they're just trying to go to the mosque yeah they're literally just they're they're they're there's no weapon they're they're trying to pray they're praying and i feel like prayer is a very vulnerable state to be in you know what i mean like it's not it's kind of like i don't know it was just really upsetting and you're right about

the dehumanization thing because we were because a gun would make it so much easier to kill someone right but to like purposely injure someone with your own hands i think is monstrous for sure i think maybe that's when a lot of people In America at least Like It was very formative to me The first time I saw a cop Fucking battering someone With a stick

You know And I think If A lot of people in America Maybe had that experience First hand A couple of years ago And it maybe changed

Their perspective on things But like This is what Colonialism does Everywhere Right And it's that What's happening here

And inadan as well right like yeah and this is kind of like a trend like there's no excuse for what they're doing and people always try to point fingers about like who's the bad guy here but um on the other side rockets were fired from gaza and lebanon as a warning sign after this escalation happened it was literally a warning like please don't do this. This is wrong. But Israel didn't listen. And the following day, Israel repeated the violent attack on Al-Haram al-Sharif, which

is what Arabs call that compound. It's also called Temple Mount for the people of Jewish faith. And yeah, and then as that was happening the following day, Israel carried out air raids on Gaza and Lebanon. So not only did they not heed the warning, it was like a slap in the face. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the experience that some people had in Gaza from this, but that's a little bit later. But I just want to like put that out there that when people are like, oh, Hamas or whatever, they fired rockets. It's like, what do you what do you expect people pushing a corner to do i just that's what i always think about i don't know

yeah and if hamas fires rockets or you know does that mean everyone should be collectively punished like you shouldn't be able to practice your faith now like that that's that doesn't make any fucking sense and like yeah how would you react if you'd seen your grandmother beaten with a fucking stick at church or synagogue or mosque wherever you go yeah especially yeah like during ramadan at a time when like this particular place on earth has got like the all the abramic faiths are like looking at this place and trying to do their religious stuff there and like i'm not a particularly religious guy but uh like surely there's no religion which where like the thing you should be doing at your holy days is beating people with a stick yeah

like even if you're not a muslim that that area is still really sacred to both christians and jewish people and you would think that jews wouldn't want to be horrific on that area in general you know what I mean? Like it's not It's just like Even if that little area Is not particular sacred to you Like it's still all sacred In my opinion

And I feel like people forget that I don't know Yeah it takes a real like Interesting is the wrong word The juxtaposition of these sacred spaces And then it's incredible Like it's somewhere i've been when i was younger and like uh all around that part of jerusalem or around jerusalem i guess it's juxtaposition of like sacred spaces which are supposed to be peaceful and calm and reflective and then people doing the violence of colonialism

like right there and it's just such a profound kind of whiplash every time you move from one to the other and yeah because they're the extremes of both it's like one of the most sacred and one of the most violent it's not there's no like wishy-washiness about it but let me continue okay so after this happened the arab league held an emergency meeting to discuss these air raids and just in case you don't know, the Arab League is a regional organization in the Arab world. It has 22 members, but Syria hasn't been a member since 2011. That could be another episode another time, but that's what the Arab League is in case someone out there needed a refresher. But the League condemned the attack and has said in a statement that, quote,

the extremist approaches that control the policy of the Israeli government will lead to widespread confrontations with the Palestinians if they are not put to an end. And at least 400 Palestinians were arrested on Wednesday of April 5th when this happened, and they remain in Israeli custody. They're being held at a police station in occupied East Jerusalem for no reason. It's never really for a reason. It's very rare that it's for a reason, but yeah. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces use excessive force, including stun grenades and tear gas, causing suffocation injuries to the worshipers and then beating them with batons and rifles. There was a 24-year-old student who was detained, Beqar Owais, and he said, we were conducting ikhtikaf, which is the religious

Muslim worship that is reserved for Ramadan. It's very sacred. And he said, we were conducting ikhtikaf at the Al-Aqsa because it's Ramadan. The army broke the upper windows of the mosque and began throwing stun grenades at us. They made us lie down on the ground and they handcuffed us one by one and took us all out. They kept swearing at us during this time. It was very barbaric. And then an elderly woman said, according to this reporter, she was like catching her breath outside and in tears. And she said, I was sitting on a chair reciting the Quran. They hurled stun grenades and one of them hit my

chest and this is like it's there's there's no discrimination you know what i mean it's not there's no discrimination to their hate everyone is under the same umbrella if they're palestinians if they're muslims it doesn't matter yeah you you can't be like using tear gas selectively in a place of worship but that's not how that works yeah you're going to break windows and throw in tear gas you by definition you're targeting every single person there for the crime of being there yeah and there's no excuse of like we were we were shooting back at shooters you know what i mean that's not an excuse yeah yeah or they could use it's like you're infiltrating a place where people are literally trying to pray like there's no there's no excuse um yeah like old

ladies who haven't eaten all day yeah had a drink of water like they're not like and you shouldn't be threatened by those people like yeah but if their existence as muslims in the place that you don't think they should be allowed to exist it's threatening to you then that's because you're doing a colonialism yeah and you're i mean you're the bad guy in the situation in this case um and the palestinian red cross said that israeli forces prevented medics from reaching the mosque and this has happened before as james mentioned to me before the podcast it's like a very typical characteristic thing of the idf to block paramedics or aid to come help people. Yeah. People want to look more at, like our podcast alumni, Tarek, has done a lot of first

aid work in Gaza. And he's written about it on his Medium page. I'll find a link and we'll put it in our sources. You can see some firsthand accounts of how difficult it is to like again right that i don't really see how you could find it objectionable to help someone who's been hurt um yeah but yeah it seems to be a recurrent thing yeah it's it is um and what i always find amusing is israel's statements after things like this happen they're always so comical and so stupid. And this time they said, when the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators. It also said that a police officer was wounded in the leg. Like, womp womp. Are you kidding me? Like, I don't care about his

fucking leg. I don't, like, they always mention stones. I'm so tired of them mentioning stones and rocks. Like, shut up. The most powerful army in the Middle East. And it's like, they hurl stones at us. Like, fuck off. Yeah, you have the fucking Iron Dome and a kid has thrown a sort of rock at you.

And the stone thing in particular i don't know what it's something that border patrol use a lot when they uh kill people at the border right this is a commonality of training between these two organizations right but like yeah what who you also like when we entered the mosque some people threw stones at us like what were you fucking doing in the mosque like why were you there like and i'll get into the the rules later but there are very specific times because this place is sacred to so many people there are specific times for each faith to enter and use the compound and so they weren't supposed to be there and they were beating people to make way for jewish people to enter and and have their time But that's not the way to do it.

And I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to be there at that time. But I mentioned this in a previous episode, the government is more far right than ever. And so the nationalists that are like encouraging violence are usually the ones that are succeeding. In response to this, Jordan, and Jordan acts as a custodian of Jerusalem's Christian and Muslim holy sites. This is under a status quo agreement that has been in place since the 1967 war. They condemned the flagrant storming of the compound, and then Egypt, they called for an immediate halt to Israel's blatant assault on al-Aqsa worshipers. for an immediate halt to Israel's blatant assault on al-Aqsa worshippers. But other than that,

there hasn't been much. I don't know the exact quote that anyone in the US said, but I'm sure they were like, oh no, this shouldn't happen, and then they move on. It's never really any kind of helpful action or reprimand or anything. There's one from kareen champierre which is we urge all sides to avoid further escalation which like why was why do you even bother saying shit when like don't escalate when they come into your mosque and tear gas you would throw stun grenades at you like what are they supposed to do like sing kumbaya yeah also why it's like it's like the same situation we had a couple years ago where you have the police that are in SWAT gear and fully armed with people that aren't and you're saying like this both sides thing like both sides shouldn't do violence or

escalate or whatever and i think it's so stupid when that happens because there's a clear aggressor and a clear victim in that situation. But as I mentioned earlier, Palestinians see Al-Aqsa Mosque as one of the few national symbols over which they retain some element of control. They are, however, fearful of a slow encroachment by Jewish groups. And this is what happened at the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is also called the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. And in 1967, half of the mosque was turned into a synagogue. So Palestinians are worried about that happening again. And they're also worried about far-right Israeli movements that want to demolish the Islamic structures in al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish temple in their place. So it's not just like rumors of this happening. There are nationalists in the far-right government and the people that they follow that want that to happen. And by now, it is quite clear that American efforts to prevent

another escalation in Palestine is failing. And it's not the Palestinian side that's responsible. Prime Minister Netanyahu, his desperate bid to cling to power is not conducive to any de-escalation that anyone can ever encourage. All he's doing is accelerating the process of violence and triggering instability, not just in East Jerusalem, but like all over the state of Palestine. And okay, before we move on, let's take our first break before I forget. All over the state of Palestine. And, okay, before we move on, let's take our first break before I forget. BRB.

We are back. I ended the last segment talking about how the U.S. diplomacy is failing, an understatement of the century. But for more than a year now, the tensions in occupied Palestine territories have been very high. The armed Palestinian resistance has been active, especially in Jenin and Nablus, and Israeli security forces have carried out incessant violent raids of Palestinian towns and villages. I said this in a previous episode, but the UN called 2022 the deadliest year for the occupied West Bank in the past 16 years, and the Israeli army killed at least 170 Palestinians, including 30 children, and injured at least 9,000 people. The first two months of this year have been the most violent since the year 2000, with 65 Palestinians killed, including 13 children. This year, the Muslim holy month of

Ramadan coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Al-Haram al-Sharif, aka Temple Mount, is significant, as I said, for both Muslims and Jews. Muslims believe it's the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and the Jewish people believe that it's the site of two biblical temples. Regardless, it contains the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently, and it's been there since 1035 AD. And it's, again, the third holiest site for Muslims and an incredibly sacred place for prayer and worship. It's, I'm sure there's like an energy there. Like I'm not

religious, but I kind of feel that energy sometimes where like everyone thinks or believes in a place and it becomes important just as a place. It doesn't even need to be explained, I think, in general. And maybe I'm biased because I was raised muslim but still there i think it's silly to pretend that this is at this current point in time like there's a reason for them not to be there or there's a reason there's a reason for like a synagogue to be built instead like i think it's just so stupid my vocabulary isn't expansive enough to actually describe how i feel but you know what i mean yeah no it's yeah it and it's such a barbarous thing to do to take this thing and like to destroy it that's so special to

literally more than a billion people yeah and be like now fuck you like we have more guns so we're doing our thing now yeah and it was correctly speculated because of this coincision of ramadan and passover that it would be a potential flashpoint for violence and two regional meetings were held under united states supervision to hope to preclude any major escalations from this time and uh it didn't work obviously on. On February 26th, Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian, and American officials met in the Jordanian city of Agaba. They emphasized a commitment to a, quote, de-escalation on the ground to prevent further violence. And Israel pledged to stop authorizing new illegal settlements in Palestinian territories for six months.

On March 19th, the second regional meeting happened, and it was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the Palestinian and Israeli officials committed to uphold the status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem, quote, both in words and in practice. And they emphasized the, quote, necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians to actively prevent any actions that would disrupt the sanctity of these sites in general, but especially during the upcoming holy month of Ramadan. I feel like every time Israel says anything, you can't actually believe anything they say. There's pledges don't matter. The UN's labeling them as an apartheid state doesn't matter. Nothing really matters because it's all empty words. And Netanyahu's government hasn't been upholding the status quo in words or in practice. He is

allied with far-right and ultra-religious forces that have openly stated that the Israeli recognition of the Zirginian guardianship of the holy sites was a historic mistake that they are bound on rectifying. So not only are they meeting just like to save face i think they've openly said that we don't respect this this this group that is being held together we want we want to we want to change it we don't like i don't understand how anyone can believe anything this country says even within israel right like people who can recognize that this this current current Netanyahu coalition is opposed to the basics of their constitution and their democracy. And when you have people within the IDF being like, now, dog, you've gone too far, I think that says a lot.

But they're not saying you've gone too far in throwing stun grenades into a mosque, right? Yeah, exactly. He will get away with pushing that shit further and further and he has gotten away with it it's it's atrocious um and will continue to when he gets domestic pushback right like because like aggressive zionism is the kind of unifying like the grand unifying policy that brings people together for him and for his coalition. So he's going to, he'll keep doing this,

and it would be irrational to expect people in Palestine not to respond. I know there are lots of new groups that are popping up to fight back, which you'd have to be incredibly naive to expect that not to happen yeah it's just uh what happens when you push people in a corner and then i think what they actually like is an excuse to fight back too so like when these when these groups do attack that's always their excuse as to why they're attacking so it's almost like they're provoking an attack on purpose to give them a reason to attack which is stupid again that word is the only word in my head right now okay yeah yeah i was thinking about this thing that they do again which just seems to be like sticking a miggle finger up it's like that they like to

withhold the bodies of people they've killed uh-huh yes quite often uh and like i just don't like what do you expect to gain by doing that other than just being unfathomably cruel and the burial process for muslims is very sacred it's a very sacred ritual and so they're purposely denying them of that it's like i mean the geneva convention is like a pretend thing um that it doesn't matter but uh it's still inhumane right it doesn't matter if some some people some old white dudes a long time ago decided it was inhumane or not because i think anyone with their head screwed on can be like that's that's fucked up yeah i agree yeah and speaking of the zionist movement and the far right movement 2023 started with the far right minister of national security etamar ben gavir he entered al-haram sharif and this provoked public anger across palestine under his watch the raids by israeli

settlers on the muslim holy site of al-Aqsa Mosque. They were under the protection of the Israeli security forces and they've only intensified. Ben-Gavir and other extremists in the government are Netanyahu's only chance to stay in power and to avoid going to jail for corruption. And they know that and they're taking advantage of the situation to support, by all means possible, the violence that the Jewish settlers have unleashed onto the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank and continue to erode the status quo at the holy sites. All of this is an aim to establish new facts on the ground, aka full Israeli control. All of this is with the aim of establishing full Israeli control. And Netanyahu does not mind this violence. He encourages and

likes it for his own means. For him, violence is a useful distraction from the anti-government protests which have plagued his sixth term in office. Because I did an election episode about Israel that you can always listen to, but Netanyahu being in power wasn't supposed to happen again, is the main thing. And him being in power and bringing in this terrible government, there's a reason why it's all happening so intensely. Yeah, it's just years of Zionist encouragement finally coming to a head, especially now that a lot of Zionists are in power. finally coming to a head, especially now that a lot of Zionists are in power. And war is not really in Israel's interest. It's currently preoccupied with the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. It's worried about Iran's military presence and diplomatic successes

in the region. It's been striking Syria regularly. Even just days after the devastating earthquakes that happened this year, they bombed Syria. And they want to curb Iranian influence. And they're also concerned about Hezbollah's role in a recent roadside bomb explosion near the border with Lebanon. So starting a religious war, quote unquote, does not suit their, I don't understand the motivation there other than to further assert dominance and to scare the Palestinians. On the other side, Hamas in Gaza has tried to take a measured response.

Again, it warned Israel against further raids on al-Aqsa. And it is reluctant to escalate this because it would take attention from the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank because Hamas sees the main area of conflict with Israel as the conflict in the West Bank. Armed attacks in the occupied territories cause much more anxiety to the Israeli authorities than a confrontation with Gaza. Hamas's strategy now is to encourage a popular Palestinian mobilization in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel in order to serve as a barrier to further encroachment on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And that said, Hamas may find itself under pressure to act decisively, especially if Israel's brutal violence against worshippers continues.

The Palestinian people, I mentioned this in a previous episode, but they have reacted angrily at the weak response from the PA, the Palestinian Authority, and its inaction. They're frustrated that the supposed protectors or liaisons that they have to negotiate or protect them, they're not doing anything. So that anger becomes this pressure on someone to act. And it's usually Hamas because they're the longest standing and most powerful group in that area. The Hamas leadership would not want to be perceived as passive, and they may feel compelled to abide by popular demand to take a tougher stance and intensify rocket fire towards Israel. And this would repeat, as I mentioned earlier, the 2021 war on Gaza, which was also triggered by Israel's raids on al-Aqsa Mosque. And this would only

further escalate the violence well after Ramadan. It's not going to just be contained in this month. Yeah. And let's take our last break. We'll be right back. And we're back talking about the escalation of violence. And there have been repeated warnings that Israel's actions in the holy sites could trigger a quote-unquote religious war. In January, Jordanian ambassador Mahmoud Daifa Lahmoud told the UN Security Council that Israeli attacks on Al-Kharam al-Sharif are provoking, quote, the feelings of nearly two billion Muslims, and this could spark a religious conflict. So the people that are saying it's religious

may actually have a point if this actually comes to a head. Because it's actually not, the whole Israel-Palestine quote-unquote conflict is not about religion. It's about occupation and colonialism. But in this particular instance, when it comes to the mosque, the anger is very rooted in faith and a direct like slap

in the face of that faith yeah it takes a yeah you can make it a religious conflict i think as like other colonial powers have been very good at doing by like desecrating holy sites of a religion yeah right like um it's kind of yeah you you risk alienating like i said a billion people or you know uniting a billion people uh in opposition when you just flagrantly do this shit like this like i don't think anyone who like i'm not a religious person either and like i watched that video of the cops or soldiers i guess kind of the same thing. And like beating people with chairs and shit. And like, that made me furious. That made me want to hurt someone.

And that's not something that's especially special to me. If it was, I can imagine I'd be even more furious. It shouldn't make anyone mad to see someone treated like that. You know what I mean? It shouldn't make anyone furious to see that kind of terror taking place uh yeah i think a lot of people have trouble putting themselves in someone else's shoes maybe or like they have trouble caring about something that doesn't affect them and i think that is a very dangerous path to go on um it's just very self-centered and main character-y and heartless in my opinion

it's very odd that as humans like we've normalized the existence and to an extent people will like simp for the existence of like this state right which is like an abstraction of capital and like then the state exists as an abstraction of capital and it has boundaries and rules and if you transgress it even if you don't if you're just like uh like antithetical to its vision for a piece of land then then people can come and beat the shit into you while you're praying now like that's just a thing that's gonna happen and like i don't know if i feel like sometimes if we if we sort of re-round the past two or three hundred years and we're like hey peasant in the 1700s like do you

want to be in a place where like someone could walk into this mosque at any time throw these stun grenades beat the shit out of old ladies and like no one would go from like a to b right but we're at b now and people don't seem to want to like investigate how we got here and what we can do to change it yeah they yeah they regard it as like just a thing that happens in order for Yeah, they regard it as just a thing that happens in order for humanity or civilization to progress. Yeah. It's so backwards. It doesn't have to be like that.

No, people can read The Dawn of Everything. They want to know about that. But yeah, or you could just, you know, not assume for cops. That can help. That's a good first step is to fuck cops um but there is a growing concern that with its aggressive actions in al-aqsa nanya whose government is seeking to impose restrictions on the access that palestinians have to the holy site the way that it was done with the ibrahimi mosque in hebron that i mentioned earlier this mosque was divided by the israeli sections that Muslims and Jews can visit to supposedly prevent further violence because a massacre happened there in 1994 when a Jewish settler opened fire on Muslim worshipers and killed 29 people who were there to pray.

So it's, we've talked about how history repeats itself a lot. And being afraid of that happening is not illogical. It's not irrational because it's happened before it could happen again. Yeah. The IDF always backs up these settlers, right? Like they did it yesterday. I think like a kid was killed in a refugee camp in an incident. I think we'd started when, if I'm not wrong, there was a march, like a bunch of settlers were marching

into an area and claiming that, you know, Israel should legalize it and normalize it and do another colonial conquest. And yeah, they're willing to shoot a kid. Like, you know, they seem to be willing to back these people, especially when they form, if I understand correctly, like an important part of the coalition that Netanyahu is relying on right now? Oh, it's a huge part. And also those marches by settlers are usually protected by cops. They're like they're shielded by the IDF. It's not like they're there to stop any kind of conflict. They're there to protect the settlers. It's just backwards.

kind of conflict, they're there to protect the settlers. It's just backwards. History repeating itself, and if these measures are imposed on al-Aqsa, it would be a clear violation of the status quo under which non-Muslims are allowed to visit only at certain hours of the day and they're not allowed to pray inside. But this is obviously not what's happening. And so far, there have only been condemnations issued by Arab states and the EU and the US. What Arab and Western capitals do not understand is that unless there is a harsh response to Israeli actions now, Netanyahu's far-right allies will only be emboldened to go even further in their efforts to take over Muslim and Christian holy sites and settle there. Israeli aggression in al-Haram al-Sharif is turning Israel into a detonator

that will sooner or later blow up the whole region. It's really felt like that for me for a long time and for a lot of people. It's like this metaphorical ticking time bomb and Israel themselves is provoking it to detonate. And I think this pressure cooker of a situation is bound to have an apex. It's not going to be boiling forever.

And the violence isn't just contained at al-Aqsa. Israel didn't take a break from all their other terrorist activities, focus on just one, because their other terrorist activities are still happening. As he mentioned, on April 10th, a Palestinian child was killed by Israeli forces in the Aqaba Jaber refugee camp in Jericho. Mohammad Fayez Balhan was 15 years old, and he was shot in the head, chest, and stomach. Make it make sense. On April 8th, the Gaza Strip endured a night of bombardment as Israeli fighter jets conducted air raids on several sites in the territory. as Israeli fighter jets conducted air raids on several sites in the territory. The first Israeli airstrike that hit was near Eldora Children's Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip. Some reporters talked to people that experienced this event, this act of terror,

and so I'm going to read some of their quotes. Samar Elwan talked to Al Jazeera about her terrifying experience. When she rushed to her two-year-old daughter's bed to pick her up, moments later, the glass from the window next to her on the bed shattered and crashed onto the cot. She said, my daughter miraculously survived. Last night, we were sleeping in the ward. Suddenly, we woke up to the sound of terrifying airstrikes. There were moments of massive fear. The glass was falling. I immediately rushed to take my child out Jesus Christ. tension prevailed among all the mothers and the medical staff because of the intensity of the bombing. Glass from the windows was falling and shattering. There were some windows that fell onto the beds of sick children just moments after they had been picked up, and this could have caused a catastrophe and a large number of injuries. The Gaza's Ministry of Health said,

this is not the first time that health facilities have been targeted and it is unacceptable. These attacks not only put patients' lives at risk, but they also create a sense of fear The same mother from earlier went on to say, poor in Gaza they do not enjoy Ramadan or Eid or any other occasion they are always threatened with fear and destruction that may come their way at any moment yeah that's um we did an interview a few months ago with some some young men from Gaza that we haven't put out yet but we will um but I've spoken to them quite a few times and I remember one of the things that they would say to me that really sort of like was very affecting for me was that like they they got they had very young boys who would come and stay and they would do parkour together and that these eight-year-old boys would routinely wake up in the middle of the night screaming yeah like like with horrible ptsd and they get the fuck

their children like they they shouldn't be anywhere near that stuff people will talk about precision airstrikes in Gaza even if you manage to somehow not kill any people then you're still going to fundamentally alter the course of someone's life in a terrible way

there was a study done, I'm paraphrasing it but it basically showed that the children in gaza are in a perpetual state of trauma like they had they never they never get over the phase where they're out of that fight or flight mentality yeah yeah they're stunted in this the fear part of ptsd and it's so sad because that's their reality. They've never known anything different other than fear and violence and the loss of life at any moment.

Yeah, and they can't leave, right? Like it's extremely difficult. Like our friends have tried to leave. It's taken them years of trying to leave. They can't go anywhere else. They're trapped in the most bombed place on earth. And that's the whole reality. Gaza has been referred to an open air concentration camp.

Like it's not just a place where people live. It's been just the main target of Israel for a really long time. And I always recommend this movie, but Gaza Fights for Freedom is a great movie by Abby Martin. It's free on YouTube. I would watch it if you want some more examples of what's happening in Gaza, because it's horrific. It's a hard watch, but it's important if you want more information. In the Altafa district of Gaza City, raids were also taking place. Majdi Abu Nima and his family

woke up at 3 a.m. for suhud, which is the pre-sunrise meal right before you fast the whole day. So they woke up at 3 a.m. and then suddenly Israeli warplanes were attacking the empty land next to their house, and this caused severe destruction to their home. Abu Nima is the father of seven children, and he told Al Jazeera, it was like an earthquake. We were terrified. Immediately, I rushed to my three daughters' bedroom to find my two-year-old daughter covered in shattered window glass. I can't forget her shock, fear, and her heartbeat. Everyone in the house was screaming.

Until now, I don't understand why they bombed our area. How could an empty land be bombed without any justification? There are no resistance fighters or any military sites here. And there was a lot of destruction that happened, as I said. There's no excuse for it. The oldest son in this family, his car was obliterated, and it was his only source of income. And he told Al Jazeera, Conditions in the Gaza Strip are unbearably difficult. The bombing came and destroyed whatever we have left.

Life here has truly become hell. Jesus Christ. Like, do you want it spelled out any differently, people? But I don't want to end this episode completely on a terrible note. I was really happy today when I woke up and my mom sent me this video of Bernie Sanders calling Israel a racist government, like in those words on television, which is very, very important, especially as a Jewish ally. Because I've said this before, but Jewish people that defend Palestine are some of the

most important allies we can have because there's no excuse for anyone to be like, you're anti-Semitic because it's not about that. It's not about religion or anything. If you're anti-Zionist, you're not anti-Semitic. It's very different. And so having Bernie Sanders be the one to call out Israel is very important. So I want to play that clip because he'll say it better than I can. And yeah, that's the episode. Do you think that democracy is in peril in Israel right now? I do. And I am very worried about what Netanyahu is doing and some of his allies in government and what may happen to the Palestinian people. And let me tell you something. I mean, I haven't

said this publicly, but I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel. And I think we've got to put some strings attached to that and say you cannot run a racist government. You cannot turn your back on the two state solution. You cannot demean the Palestinian people there. You just can't do it. And then come to America and ask for money. Has the administration, have you talked to the administration about it? They've been very careful in criticism of the Netanyahu government. Well, I am not careful about it. I'm embarrassed that in Israel you have a government of that nature right now. And are you going to introduce something? We may well, yes.

To try to attach strings to USA? You cannot give, if you have a, you know, whether it's Saudi Arabia or other authoritarian societies, if a government is acting in a racist way and they want billions of dollars from the taxpayers of the United States, I think you say, sorry, that's not acceptable. You want our money? Fine. This is what you got to do to get it. 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. Snow Hill. 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 close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. It's still Shereen, and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, anytime. The listeners, they get what they want, you know? They demanded it, and here we are delivering. Log on to the subreddit no i mean their voice is heard i was interested in having someone else receive the information i had because it's really hard to do it by myself and it's also hard not to like sound like a bored professor or something because i just sound like this something i have experience with yeah yeah you don't sound like a professor, but it's also very emotionally challenging

to just be like, here are some terrible fucking things that have happened again. Exactly. Yeah. And when you're by yourself, it's like, it feels a lot heavier for some reason. And so I'm glad to have someone else on. Anyway, thank you.

Today, I wanted to talk about something that happened 75 years ago this month. So there's going to be some history here, but I think it's really important history. So please stay tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But 75 years ago this month, before Israel was officially established, the Deir Yine Massacre happened. This massacre was part of the Nakba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even 75 years later, and it should always serve as a reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized, have people killed and forcibly removed from their homes, renamed, terrorized, have people killed and forcibly removed from their homes.

And the indigenous people were expelled from their homes. And the ownership of their own land was granted to someone else. And I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that happen is extremely important because we're not that far removed from that brutalization. It's not like we can say like, oh, that was medieval times. Like, people were different. It's like, no, that was like less than 100 years ago. Shut up. The Nakba, aka the catastrophe in Arabic, it refers to the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias in the new Israeli army during the State of Israel's establishment between 1947

and 1948. The Nakba was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the euphemism quote-unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today would be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nakba and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today, they lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the late 1800s, when some European Jews, influenced by the nationalism that was sweeping the continent, they decided that the solution to anti-Semitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state for Jews in Palestine. They began immigrating to Palestine as colonizers, where they started depossessing indigenous Muslim and

Christian Palestinians. In November of 1947, following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision or choice to make. Regardless, the UN approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of Palestinian people. It gave 56% of that land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact that Jews only owned about 7% of the private land in Palestine and made up only 33% of the population. And a very large percentage of this percentage of 33% were recent immigrants from Europe.

So handing over more than half of someone else's land truly doesn't make sense. I don't care what religious text you're citing. It was wrong at this point in time to take that land. It was just wrong. The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just 42% of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and were indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after the partition plan was passed, the expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias began. Months before, the arming of neighboring Arab states began to be involved. So there was no

other person to say, don't do this. Or like there was no one else to fight to hold them back, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And by the time these Zionist militias and the new Israeli army finished, the new state of Israel covered 78% of Palestine. So they didn't even follow the rules either. They just kept on swallowing up the land that wasn't even theirs to begin with, with this violent Nakba that it's just, it's a terrible, horrific thing they did. There is a film on Netflix called Farha. It's the first film that depicts any kind of story about the Nakba. And it's by a Palestinian filmmaker. It's really powerful.

I would recommend seeing that if you want an example of what happened because it's all factual as far as like the terror that they did um so i'd recommend that film give it five stars for the haters you know what i mean oh god i can imagine the reviews are just like yeah death yeah that was the film that the israeli government tried to ban. And a lot of Zionists were commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one star or whatever. They wanted Netflix to take it off Netflix. But no, we... Fuck the haters.

Help us out. Five stars. Put it on the background of your TV. It doesn't matter. Just keep streaming it on a loop. Just keep streaming it. Exactly. Yeah.

Strike a blow against colonialism but that's just an example of how important and and scared they are of the truth uh because it's a movie it's a fucking movie yeah control of the narrative is so important in these things exactly yes and even the way you refer to it right not? Not calling it the Nakba, like calling it a transfer, not a cleansing. Exactly. Calling it like, not referring to it in the same terms as we would do like the genocidal settler colonialism

that settled this country or the way that Britain and France and Germany behaved in Africa, like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state right when when that's what it is that's what it does like all of those things are so important and they might seem like petty battles but uh they they really control how we see things i think when you control language you can control how people perceive things 100 and i think controlling the narrative is so parallel to like controlling the history books because that's what gets remembered by the people that want to

the narrative to have a certain thing not all history books obviously but a lot of the times the things that are considered facts are biased you know um i don't know if that makes sense yeah or you're only getting half of the the things right or like yeah like i mean as a historian like we are all biased um and so we we should declare our biases and sort of go forward that way rather than presenting our biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a biased thing which is what we tend to get in the US, especially when we look at this stuff, right? Yeah, no, totally.

I love that I like, I didn't bash historians, but I criticized them. But you're like, I'm a historian. Yeah, I will not jump to the defense of Zionist historians. I've worked with like, there's a chapter in my book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. And like about 30% of volunteers were Jewish people, right? And many of them had been like, couldn't go back to like,

there are some of them who like fought in the Spanish Civil War, were guerrillas in the Second World War, survived the Holocaust in some cases, and then were anti-Zionist. And so like, they didn't have a place like they you know there wasn't a place for them as people who had had stuck to their very decent principles of like you shouldn't impose shit on force by people who don't want it and we're opposed to fascism or opposed to colonialism there wasn't a place for them in in that sort of post world war ii jewish movement that zionist

movement there were in other places but yeah it's very sad that their stories aren't like like a friend of mine was the person who first wrote articles about them but like their memory is completely erased right and or at least it's not present and then they should be people that like any reasonable person would be very proud of right they were willing to die for someone else's battle and then yeah they were kind of that they're they stuck to the same principles the whole way through and the world kind of moved around them yeah and i mean i think as time goes on those things won't even be existing in people's reality you know what i mean like if no one remembers that that happened if no one is part as time goes on, those things won't even be existing in people's reality.

You know what I mean? Like if no one remembers that that happened, if no one is part of what happened, like it's just going to go away. It's going to disappear. Yeah. That's why it's so important to do history and to do like to use different sources,

right. And to do history from a people's perspective, not from a perspective of people who are in power. Exactly. Wow. That's powerful. That's what we call it. say that sounds one more time if people call it history from below but uh like and to look at other sources right like um without like riding my hobby horse too much um like i was primarily a historian of sport and anti-fascism and like specifically sport i got

a ton of pushback on when i started because it's not important right um it's not you know it's not like fucking i don't have any charts or whatever uh and um like it's actually very important it's where people are able to express who they were and who was on the team and who was not on their team right and that's where you find these people who are very impactful lots of other areas and i think like if i was a younger person and i was trying to find my way from my identity and be like hey designism seems wrong like in the same way that other things seem wrong to have those people to be like yeah these people also saw that right like they didn't want a boot on anyone's neck yeah not not just not no didn't want it to be their boot on someone else's neck and that was

fine you know they'd like having seen the Holocaust, having seen what happened in Spain, they were like, nah, this shit is wrong. It's still wrong. It doesn't matter if we're doing it. Yeah.

Their humanity prevailed. Yeah. And it's important for people like to have those, those stories to be like, okay, well, I'm not fucking crazy. Or it's not that I just don't understand what it was like back then.

Because a lot of people could see it and were like, we shouldn't be doing this yes wow historian James thank you for joining me today sorry no why are you apologizing I love that shit fucking nerd no I love it uh history from below is what you said yeah that's quite an old theme now I mean I think it's a good thing to to abide by. So I'm glad that there's a little catchy phrase for it. Stuart Hall and things like that. Yeah, we'll do another episode on this one day. Yes, please.

So as we mentioned before, Israel stole about 78% of Palestine. And then this left 22%. And the 22% was compromised of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and these regions fell under the control of Jordan and Egypt, respectively. In the 1967 war, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards. And just to give you some numbers, I think they're important sometimes just to get the context of the scale of something. But the Nakba by the numbers is what I'm about to continue. Between 750,000 and 1 million Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and they were made refugees by Zionist militias, amounting to approximately 75% of all Palestinians.

amounting to approximately 75% of all Palestinians. Between 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians were driven out from their homes by Zionist militias between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29th of 1947 and the establishment of Israel on May 15th of 1948, prior to the outbreak of war with the neighboring Arab states. Several dozen massacres of Palestinians were carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli army, which played a critical role in prompting the flight of many Palestinians from their homes. More than 100 Palestinians, including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were massacred in the Palestinian town of Dariusin near Jerusalem on April 9th of 1948 by Zionist militia. This is the main massacre I

want to talk about today because it's been exactly 75 years on April 9th, but it was one of many massacres and it was the one that is cited as igniting a lot of the domino effect. The massacre at Deir Yassin was one of the worst atrocities committed during the Nakba and a pivotal moment in Israel's establishment as a Jewish majority state, and again it triggered the flight of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and beyond. The Deir Yassin massacre is commemorated annually by Palestinians around the world. Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in 1948, a quarter of them internally

displaced. These Palestinians, who are sometimes referred to as Israeli Arabs, were granted Israeli citizenship but stripped of most of their land and governed by violent undemocratic military rule as of 1966. As of 2023, there are more than 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, comprising more than 20% of Israel's population, and they are forced to live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens of laws that discriminate against them in almost every aspect of life because they're not Jewish. Let's take our first break here, and I'll come back and tell you more terrible things so prp okay we're back i'm going to finish up a little bit more of these numbers and then i'm going to talk about dear yassin more than 400 palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by zionist militias and the new israeli army or they were repopulated with jews between 1948 and 1950 most palestin, including homes, businesses, houses of worship,

vibrant urban centers, they were destroyed to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners, who were now refugees outside of Israel's borders, or they were internally displaced inside them. Today, there are more than 7.2 million Palestinian refugees, including Nekba survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and neighboring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. And they're denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland. This is the last big number I want to say just because I think it's so big I had to say it. Approximately 4,244,776 acres of Palestinian land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after

the establishment of the state in 1948. Millions of acres. Like, it's not just a tiny little place that no one was in before. Like, no. Millions of acres of land were forcibly stolen. Yeah. So, yeah. And all of them, like, land that people have had for generations, that they've farmed. Like, this is, like, it's not the oldest settlement on Earth,

but people have been living here for tens of thousands of years. I said El Uxla yesterday was built in 1035. Like. Yeah. it's not the oldest settlement on earth, but people have been living here for tens of thousands of years. I said Al-Aqsa yesterday was built in 1035. Yeah. This shit is very old. And like sometimes the same people or people's sort of family have lived. It's not just a like loss of property. So lots of everything that's sacred and like the Al-Aqsa mosque or these things that are sacred and important to you, you know?

Yeah. And similar to what you said earlier, it's like, we have to remember these things because otherwise they'll get forgotten in the, in whoever's recording the history. You know what I mean? Like it's.

Yeah. I mean, they have been here, right? When we look at how America sees itself, it sees the land that it, it, it expanded into,

it's like terra nullius, like, like empty land that was unoccupied which it was not there was not a wilderness to tame like there were people living here and they were living very happily and they were living in they weren't like i don't want to do the whole like uh like in in commune with nature thing but like this wasn't a wild and savage place right there were people existing here and taking from the land and living on the land and like we that just doesn't get fucking like ruth bader ginsburg was citing

the doctrine of discovery you know like you know all the libs love ruth bader ginsburg but like it's so subsumed into what america is uh that like like obama did a fucking tweet like this nation was built on peaceful protest it was built on fucking genocide like fuck off yeah but we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten right like you don't go to school in california and be like oh there is a fucking unit that just changed actually there was a unipro has set a high school and like this is a person who did genocide like we wouldn't have a fucking goebbels high school in germany uh you know and britain does a shit too i'm not not like uh yeah i'm in a glass house so i don't say that but uh yeah we this wasn't an empty place and it's really important to remember that because that is so often the talking point of fucking stupid people that try

to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to now the main massacre or topic I want to talk about today, which happened on April 9th in 1948, just weeks before the creation of the state of Israel, when members of the Ergun and Stern gang, Zionist militias, attacked the village of Deir Yassin, and they killed at least 107 Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages, massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive to clear the way for the creation of the state of Israel. And this was one of the many massacres that happened during the Nakba, where again, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 fled their homes as refugees. It ignited a very terrifying domino

effect. This year, the UN will host its first ever high level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel in May of 1948. So this is the first time ever that the UN has recognized that the Nakba even happened, or like, has happened enough to mention it and commemorate it. But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the loss of each village that was once part of their homeland. Among them was Deir Yassin, and it was a village perched on a hill west of Jerusalem. And this massacre has become emblematic of the suffering that Israel would inflict on the Palestinians. Many of the

people slaughtered, from those who were tied to trees and burned to death, to those lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns, many of these people were women, children, and the elderly. And Farhad does a really good job of showing this lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie that I mentioned earlier. As the news of these atrocities spread, thousands fled their villages in fear. So again, on April 9th of 1948, the Israeli militia struck Deir Yassin, where about 700 Palestinians lived. According to the Israeli narrative, Operation Nashon, N-A-C-H-H-S-O-N, apologies if I mispronounce that, but this operation aimed to break through the blockaded road to Jerusalem, and the fighters encountered stiff resistance

from the villagers that forced them to advance slowly from house to house. It's kind of silly and strange how the same excuse is being used a century later to justify acts of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them, and that's why they butchered them. It's pathetic. It's stupid and pathetic. And for having the, I don't know, temerity to be like no you can't take my home yeah they carried out a collective punishment on yeah and that's the israeli narrative that's what their history books say is that this was the aim of this operation they were

simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to go from house to house like that's it's just a fucked up narrative. But Palestinians and some Israeli historians say that the villagers had signed a non-aggression agreement with the Haganah, which was the pre-Israeli state Zionist army. They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in mass graves. According to a 1948 report filed by the British delegation to the UN, the killing of, quote, some 250 Arabs, men, women and children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed and then slaughtered by automatic firing. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality. This is from a 1948 report filed by

the british delegation like it's in the record weren't they both like the uh the stern gang and the uh the whatever the militia was called that beguine was in it's like izl i think were like they hadn't really done any military operations before right they'd just been they just like bomb like they did car bombs and shit yeah yes to this like and the british had already like like that they were like they were killing british people and uh i guess uh arab people in palestine before this yeah yeah it's i mean the escalation in violence was like pretty severe. Right. But I think they would have gotten there eventually.

You know, they just kind of hit us forward. I think they'd already like established an intention or like a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in their way. And they wanted to show that they were like, unlike the, I guess, the labor-aligned Zionist movement, that they were like more hardcore than that. Exactly. That's why they made a spectacle of violence like this.

They're establishing their power and dominance. Right. Israeli historian Benny Morris said that the militias, quote, ransacked unscrupulously, stole money and jewels from the survivors and burned the bodies. Even dismemberment and rape occurred. I mean, there's nothing to say to that. Yeah. The number of dead is disputed, but it ranges from 100 to 250.

A representative of the Red Cross who entered Deir Yassin on April 11th, two days later, they reported seeing the bodies of some 150 people heaped haphazardly in a cave, while around 50 were amassed in a separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the time that such events had been quote-unquote infamous. In Deir Yassin, hundreds of innocent men, women, and children were massacred, he said. Let the village remain uninhabited for the time being. Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of war and a warning to our people that no practical military needs may ever justify such acts of murder.

He also noted that Deir Yassin had a profound demographic and political effect. And he's referring to the fact that the news of this massacre spread and it prompted hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next, Chaylounia, Seres, Beit Saruk, and Bedou. Deir Yassin was no mistake, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pape. Ilan Pape has been called a Israeli quote-unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth,

the actual truth of what happened in their history. Yeah, the concept of revisionist history is nonsense. It suggests that there is a settled history at some point, which there's not, right? We're always looking at sources again. We're always looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not like there is this monolith of history and then some meddling

bastard comes and chops it down it's fundamentally like misunderstanding how history is done uh yeah why you shouldn't pay attention to malcolm gladwell for that and many other reasons but yeah it's a ridiculous idea he's not he's not like it's not like everyone was like oh yeah this wasn't a bad thing and then he came along and like injected some kind of political animus into his history he came along and looked at maybe new sources maybe the same sources that people had i don't know and was like now you you guys have you got this wrong you called this wrong like but that's what historians do like you can't fucking write your phd without disagreeing with someone and doing some new history like that's what takes you from a master's to a doctorate and like you're supposed to do three articles in a book to get tenure like your articles can't just

be like yeah we pretty much called this one right the first time you know like the process of doing history is to revise and hope to better understand things from different perspectives totally i like that the point of history is to revise because you're right. And I just think it's so discrediting of his work to call him a revisionist historian. It's condescending, you know? And someone that interviewed him called him this. Yeah, I mean, hopefully he gave them both barrels

because it's kind of a ridiculous... Yeah, it shows that they fundamentally aren't qualified to be discussing the topic i guess yeah um i want to talk about what he said but i realized that i didn't take the last break and i want to right now and that is my choice so okay proud of you thank you and we're back we were talking about Ilan Pape, a revisionist quote-unquote historian, but not really. He was called that because he was talking about Israel the way it should be talked about with actual historical facts. a consequential war event, but a carefully planned strategy, otherwise known as Plan Dalet, which was authorized by the Israeli leader Ben-Gurion in March of 1948. Operation Nashon was, in fact, the first step in the plan. And, as I said, the massacre unleashed a cycle of violence and counter-violence that has been the pattern ever since this happened. Jewish forces have regarded any Palestinian village as an enemy state or a military base, and this has paved the

way for this blurred distinction between massacring civilians and killing combatants, according to the historian. So what does all of this say about Israel's vision today? This is why I wanted to talk about this, is because this started this whole cycle of violence that we still see perpetuated today, and it's why Palestinians refuse to forget it and forget what happened, and they'll always talk about Palestine because they don't want to be erased from history books. Deir Yassin has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a historical fact Israel must confront when retelling its national narrative.

According to Pepe, given that terrorism is a mode of behavior that Israelis attribute solely to the Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a part of any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's past. One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one, with the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior. Israeli historians, as well as Israeli society, they've only been able to admit to the massacre in Deir Yassin by attributing it to the right-wing group Irgan, but have covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one in Tantura in 1948. This was carried out by the Haganah, the main Jewish militia, from which the current-day Israeli

military has evolved from. And despite this shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and amnesty international have labeled israel itself an apartheid state i've just seen the worst ever op-ed in the jerusalem post about about what tell me it's about this uh but it's about like the nakba like it contains like this kind of narrative that like oh the nakba was was coined by pal uh by like historians to, to like explain the failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which is like,

a, like what does that fucking matter? Uh, and be like, what are you, what are you saying? Like, well,

yeah, like that contains within it, the notion that they would have to defend themselves from someone who was that. Um, and then like, uh, like going back and forth on the number of people killed like which you know like low estimates are as low as like 107 high estimates were in the 250s um based on claims that the militias themselves made right

so like again uh what is it cool to kill like 100 people people, but 250 people is like, you know, we should step in there. And, and just like, I was just checking the author's affiliation. Cause that's always fun. And he's a research fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly, but when the organization you work for is,

is, is, is memorializing heritage of one of the dudes who led the massacre um you might want to like um to step aside from yeah i mean oh not right but just or just shut up just dive the fuck in but like you you are flying your flag as a fairly part like i said right all historians are biased but uh yes when like you know if if uh if i work at the colonel custer heritage center like please take my account of the united states uh like violent assault on the lakota people with a pinch of salt because like i'm i'm coming at this from

a certain perspective uh and yeah it's here we are 2023 still still doing the uh doing the thing where we were like rather than just like taking the l and just being like oh like it's bad actually to rape and mutilate and murder people trying to trying to equivocate it's funny you mentioned articles though because i just saw one and when i was researching for alexa yesterday uh of this is this Israeli cop that admitted That the videos he saw was A bad look, like that's what he said It was just like Good cop And of course the solution to that is to not allow people to

Take videos of you brutalizing Yeah that's the real issue here Tim Apple Known anti-cop Anarchist So Human Rights Watch and amnesty international have labeled israel as an apartheid state and human rights watch said in 2021 we reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination

by jewish israelis over palest Palestinians. As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand. Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. And apartheid is a very light word to use, but I did want to just mention that an organization said that, not just like, I don't know. It's officially on paper that Israel sucks. Like, why are we still defending it? I'm just like, go re-watch the Bernie Sanders video from yesterday,

or audio, because there's no reason we should be funneling any kind of support into that country. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's mad. we still made a lot of money selling weapons to israel but they used against like um i know robert and i pursued a public records request going on two years um for like uh these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke grenades and flashbangs uh a US company is selling to Israel yeah, it's great

they can fire them into a mosque I mean, not surprising no, it's just annoying the wrong word, but yeah there are people who make a lot of money every time things get more violent there, and people are very invested in that

and yeah, that's ghoulish as fuck it is um and that's actually all i have uh that's a good good place to end if any um but i hope you learned something if you didn't know something this episode and i hope you go watch farha or gods of fights for freedom i don't think this is history that should ever be understated or forgotten. So I'm always more than happy to talk about it, even if it's depressing. So thank you for joining me today, James. It's okay. It's been very uplifting.

I don't, but you're right. It's important. It's very important. Hopefully one day we'll have the PK Gaza episode. Yes, that'll be great. Yeah. I guess if you're in the uk and have old copies of men's health you can read about uh young people doing parker in gaza um

it's pretty hopefully i will have another story about that soon but yeah where should people i think a good thing maybe if we could end on like uh where where is a good place to find news about um palestine where can i really like el jazeera especially their opinion pieces are pretty good Uh, where, where is a good place to find news about, um, Palestine? I really like Al Jazeera, especially their opinion pieces are pretty good because a lot of the times they're written by people that are really passionate about what they're writing. Yeah. Um, I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always a, uh, good call. Like Mohammed Al-Kurd is one of the most

prominent voices recently that has been uplifted and I would follow his social medias. His sister has one as well. His family's house was, basically, had the threat

of being demolished last year. His house was in Sheikh Jarrah, if you remember any of that stuff from last year with the violence

going on there. I also really like Subhitaha. He's on Instagram mostly. And he has a podcast now. I would highly recommend following his stuff. He is so informed and so just easy to understand, too. So I would watch that. And yeah, Mohamed Al-Khurt actually was on some news program like like face the nation

or it's no maybe not that but he was on recently uh like basically uh handing the asses of the people that were talking to him about israel and palestine um is that the right way to say that i don't know he was just stating he was he was not willing to be uh talked over and whatever yeah which i like yeah he shouldn't be um my friend hossam is a photographer in palestine um most of those al jazeera pieces you'll see are his photographs actually well um hossam salem g uh he's photographed we've worked together before but, if you're a person who'd like to see pictures, his pictures are very good. Yeah. That's a good point too. Also there are a lot of accounts that are solely about Palestine and a lot of

these Palestinian activists follow them and share them. So you will find more organizations by following them. There is a eye for Palestine. There's's i think it's like land palestine like i think there's a lot of really trusted accounts on the internet you just have to find the the ones that are trusted and uh a lot of times it's stuff from the ground and that's the stuff that needs to be seen and shared because if if there's going to be any upside to fucking internet and social media it has to be to spread stuff like this around and make sure people know about it i don't know yeah yeah i think it's uh it gives us a way to like get underneath that like hegemonic narrative

and see what happens to real people every day yeah so yeah that's that's all oh okay whatever that's the episode bye welcome i'm dan 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. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.

Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

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

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

to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen Here with with me andrew of the youtube channel andrewism and i'm joined today by it's me it's just james today just james sounds like a cringe fan from the 90s really i was not aware just out of curiosity james do you play um any paradox games i don't i don't know what that is i don't think is that like a type of computer game yeah yeah this was well it's like a uh game development company and

also they also distribute games as well okay um you've hit an area about which i have very little knowledge indeed yeah and by the way, this isn't sponsored. It's just, it's how I ended up stumbling upon this topic, right? Okay. So just, you know, humor me for a second here. So one of the Paradox games is Crusader Kings 3, right? Right, yeah. It's, it's...

Okay, no, I'm really interested to see where this goes. So yes, it's a medieval grand strategy game um it's sort of like it's it's a combination of like those classic sort of well grand strategy games and also a bit of sims flair uh you're playing as a character and you You're playing as a character and you're also playing as that character's dynasty. So you'd play as the grandfather and then the father and then the son and then the grandson and so on and so forth.

Yeah. And so I actually, if you can't tell, I play the game sometimes a little bit too much, but I appreciate the role play in the setting it's a set between either 867 or 1066 and 1453 which is considered the end of the medieval

era due to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans so you know at a certain point in playing the game after playing pretty much every corner of the map I was looking for a new religious movement to spread across the map for fun, of course. This is something I do with my free time. And I started reading about all these different strands of Islam that they have in the game, like the Karmations and the Ibadis and the Sufis.

Yeah. And that led me to stumble across the Mu Tazilism and the Najadat. And please bear with me with the pronunciations of everything I'm about to pronounce in this episode. But Mu Tazilism and the Najadat, I started digging into this stuff and that led me to make the decision to talk about what I've been learning. Before I begin, I know even the idea of religious anarchisms is somewhat controversial, particularly the discrepancy between the anarchist slogan of no gods, no masters, and of course the history of various faith-based class struggles. And of course the history of various faith-based class struggles.

My stance on it is complicated, but whatever my stance is, I don't think we could deny the reality that religious anarchisms have existed in the past and still exists today. No, I'm really interested in this. I'm, I'm just, I'm working on a book at the minute about anarchists at war,

or I guess how anarchism beats war, and people variously sort of defining anarchism narrowly and widely. I grew up in the early 2000s, I guess, with the kind of new anarchists, as Graeber called it. And there were always, amongst that broader movement opposed to like neoliberal globalization there were always religious people and i'm not a religious person and right um i went to a school where there was a priest and the priest had been a member of the anti-apartheid movement in south africa and um was wanted there and had left for doing violence again,

which like it's pretty based. And so like I have a lot of time for a lot of religious people. It's always been kind of an area of, I guess, interest to me, this like religious anarchisms. Yeah. It certainly has a very eventful history so I wanted to talk a bit about the rather interesting history of just

one tradition although the whole thing about the anarchism that I'm going to be discussing is that I wouldn't really call it anarchism at least not by our standards it's more of a distinct and notable resistance to centralized authority,

or a minimization and decentralization of that authority. I think it's more akin to a minarchism than an actual anarchism. But it's still interesting to see, I guess, the seeds of anti-authoritarianism through history, right? Yeah, very much so. So these particular movements, they have a sort of an anti-Khalif, Khalif being the religious leader in Islam. They have a kind of an anti-Khalif action that expanded into broader philosophical and political conclusions. philosophical and political conclusions. So we can start in the city of Basra in Iraq in the 800s, where a discussion was taking place regarding how the Ummah, or Islamic community, should respond to a leader of the Abbasid Caliphate who had become corrupt and tyrannical.

Now, the two mainstream opinions were that of the activists who believed in staging a violent revolution to instill a new legitimate leader and the quietists who believed in patiently persevering under tyranny or passively resistant it's funny how we see these kind of um ideas about change uh rearing their heads again and again and again throughout history, despite various different contexts. The other people were like, yeah, let's go get it. And the other people were like, let's rock back a little bit and take things a bit more passively.

So that's interesting, right? Now, Abu Bakr, the guy who was the first caliph he made it clear in his inauguration that obedience is not incumbent upon his followers if he contradicts the will of allah and for those who don't know allah is god in the islamic religion um and yet the dominant position uh in islam has been the quietest position even to this day the activist position is less popular some would say some people have this idea that the only manifestation of islam can be the one seen in the autocracies of western asia and the arabian peninsula but even back in islam's heyday there were there were Muslims willing to resist the tyrannical control of even religiously ordained rulers.

So back to Basra in the 800s, there was also a third category of solutions proposed, which we can call anarchist in the general sense, but not really in the actual sense. Most of the Muslim anarchists believed that society could function without the actual sense. Most of the Muslim anarchists believed that society could function without the caliph. They proposed a kind of evolutionary anarchism where private property was not abolished per se,

but because the ruler was considered illegitimate, the titles of property the ruler granted would also be considered illegitimate. They also argued that the caliph must be agreed upon by the entire community, which is no easy task considering how Islam divided between Sunnis and Shias

almost immediately after the Prophet Muhammad died. However, without this consensus, no legitimate caliph could exist, and it was widely accepted that Allah did not impose obligations that were impossible to fulfill. So then it was reasoned that then there was really no obligation to establish a legitimate caliph if no consensus could be found. So it's a little loophole, basically. We need full consensus. We're never going to get full consensus. Oh, well, shrug.

You know? Yeah. oh well shrug you know yeah and then at the time in the context remember this is you know medieval times you're seeing a lot more uh uh you're seeing several different political configurations and formations and ways of organizing society so some of them at the time were seeing their neighbors the bedouins and the Bedouins were living without rulers like normal. So they were like, well, why can't we live without rulers like normal? And so they used that as a justification as well. And so they also had many proposed solutions, ranging from a radical decentralization of public authority to a complete dissolution of public authority.

authority to a complete disillusion of public authority. One particular genre of proposals involved replacing the caliph with elected officials, either completely independent of each other or joined together in a federation. These elected officials would be temporary and only remain in office when legal disputes arose or when an enemy invaded. When the problem was resolved, they would lose their position and society would return to, quote-unquote, anarchy. There was even a minority sect which called for the complete abolition of the state, called the Najdiyya. And they argued that if there wasn't sufficient agreement to establish the Islamic belief, there could never be enough to establish law at all.

They wanted not just political independence but intellectual independence because according to them individuals should be able to reason for themselves and have no one above them but allah basically the religious uh anarchist slogan one god no masters yeah right but don't get it twisted of course all this radical stuff uh apply to them within their group alone so if you weren't part of their group you could still be enslaved or killed this is kind of a selective yeah yeah it's a bit it's a bit selective in their uh freedom mindedness yeah then in 817 so a couple years later the center of religious power in the muslim world collapsed with the fall of baghdad the chaos of civil war ensued uh but in the absence of public authority there would naturally emerge an order

out of the chaos without central planning as we've seen it again and again and again throughout history people self-organize to protect themselves and their positions collectively in times of natural disaster in times of crisis people come together without having a state having without a state having to organize them and tell them what to do and how to do it yeah Such has been the case for centuries. And speaking of centuries, we're going to jump ahead a little bit to the 12th century, where we could see a sort of a pseudo-nihilist anarchist movement called the Calandaria, a movement of wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes from Andalusia and Spain to Iran, Central Asia, India, and Pakistan.

Many of the Kalandaria had body piercings and tattoos in explicit defiance of Islamic traditions that regarded such practices as haram. Here's a bit of an interesting story. One of the earlier dervishes of the Malatomia was once being followed by A crowd of admirers And in reaction to their praise He paused Pulled out his peepee And urinated On the ground

So it's a sort of a Radical, it's almost like What's the name of that Greek guy? Oh, the one who like It begins with a D Diogenogenes right so he kind of kind of like a muslim diogenes um a sort of rejection of society and rejection of its values as a lot of people a lot of these dovishes they chose voluntary poverty and nomadism as a lifestyle. They would reject civilization.

They would have an active nihilism directed at society. One of them has been quoted in saying, in effect, that money is... Well, I don't know if I could say that. We could probably cross that out. I think we get we get the idea of course again not really anarchism in the classical sense

or in an actual sense but a manifestation of one trend within or one streak within an anarchist movement so we jump ahead again to the 19th century now with perhaps the first anarchist to convert to islam ivan agrelli born in sweden in 1869 agueli was interested in philosophy, spirituality, ideology, and literature, and he explored new ideas ravenously. He joined the Theosophical Society in France,

and he met anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in London in 1891. He also began reading the Quran around 1892 and converted to Islam in 1897 and Agueli wrote about Islam and anarchism fairly frequently but he didn't really connect them together however there was another one another anarchist who

converted to Islam, Isabel Eberhardt she grew up in Geneva and converted to Islam, Isabel Eberhardt. She grew up in Geneva and converted to Islam around 1896 or 97. And she challenged both Eastern and Western norms through her writings and praxis,

pursuing a nomadic lifestyle in Nigeria, joining a Sufi order and expressing her unconventional spirit by dressing as a male when she felt like it, taking on a male name and pursuing a lifestyle of purported promiscuity, journalism, smoking keef, and journeying across the North African desert by horse. I think she would also be considered a figure of queer anarchist history. I wasn't able to find anything about how she identified personally but

apparently um i don't know if she was a cross-dresser or if she was trans or uh something else entirely right like you get especially in that period like uh like misogyny is is so rampant that like it could be necessary to like i guess to present as male even if you weren't like trans in your gender identity just to have access to things that were constrained or like delimited as male right yeah exactly makes sense yeah it's it's i think it's why it's to just be like we don't know rather than to necessarily like lay claim to someone's identity stuff when all we know is their presentation stuff. Agreed.

Also during this time in the Ottoman Empire, there was a not insignificant population of European anarchists, mostly Italians. of European anarchists, mostly Italians. In Alexandria alone, there were approximately 12,000 Italians living and working, often in the building sector. By 1876, anarchists there had organized a branch of the Syndicalist International Workers Association. And in the early 1800s, Enrico Malatesta and other Italian anarchists joined the Urabi uprising against the British. And this was perhaps the first time that Muslims and anarchists fought a military campaign side by side. Although the uprising was squashed, anarchists were less harassed in the Ottoman Empire than in many other parts of Europe. Later on in 1901, anarchists co-founded a free popular university, the Université Populaire Libre, or UPL, in Alexandria. It provided free courses on subjects like Tolstoy's and Bakunin's ideas,

the arts, pragmatic topics like work and negotiation strategies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However common, if you were indigenous to the region tough luck indigenous muslim and indigenous muslims and arabic speakers weren't really part of the upls program weren't really included pretty much marginalized from the education entirely and the upl graduate became more and more aimed toward and controlled by upper class interests so that sucks yeah that's uh yeah lame very lame a lot of disappointment once in this episode people who are like nearly there and then kind of there of course yeah but that's that's that's part of history right

jumping ahead even more in the 20th century we got to see the fall of the caliphate in 1924 and two new influential currents of salafism or salafism yeah the muslim brotherhood which is known for their social democratic lean ends and theis, who are known for their monarchic lean-ins, to put it lightly. Yeah, that's a good, generous... Yeah, put it as generously as possible. a sort of an Islamic liberation theology developing that dismissed bin Laden as senseless and lifted up the examples of the revolutionary Bhabi movement of the 1800s, Malcolm X, and Ali Shariati's quest for a just and classless society. Then there was also a neo-Sufi group known as the Murabitun and the inclusive mosque initiative in London as other examples

of how Islam could be used to resist some Islamic traditions. And there were also several individuals today who have explicitly and publicly self-identified as Muslim anarchists. Not Muslim anarchists, but specifically Muslim anarchists, including Abdinur Prado and Mohamed Jean Venues. That's cool. So that's a sort of a basic rundown.

But I think inevitably with these sort of topics, these sort of fraught ideas, something like an Islamic anarchism, there are going to be some challenges and criticisms, right? Yeah. Like for one, you know, it's a fairly new concept, the idea of Islamic anarchism. Like I went over, there were certain trends that can be described as anarchic, if you're being generous. But the idea of Islamic anarchism, as in something born out of the afterdevelopment of anarchism and through anarchism as a political philosophy, is fairly new. And it challenges a lot of the traditional Islamic teachings on authority and governance. So some scholars and practitioners have pointed out that with the emphasis of social order, the emphasis of authority of the state and the rule of law, this idea of rejecting hierarchy and authority as advocated by Islamic anarchists is heretical, practically.

by islamic anarchists uh is you know heretical practically there's also some criticism that with islamic anarchism's rejection of all forms of authority and hierarchy um it undermines the concept of taweed which is the belief in the oneness of god um and by you know rejecting that by undermining that concept and promoting individualism and self-rule, it sort of goes against that teaching. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, there's also this challenge to the idea that Islamic anarchism or Islamic anarchism could be compatible socialists would argue that Islam should be seen as a liberating force that can help individuals achieve freedom from oppression and exploitation. The same argument is made with a lot of other strands of religious anarchisms as well. And so to bring things to a sort of a close, I'd say that, you know, like every religious anarchism, like every political philosophy detached mysticism as well as pragmatic daily concerns, traditions of violence and traditions of nonviolence, moderation and extremism.

In anarchism, tensions exist between pacifism and insurrectionism, syndicalism and individualism, nationalism and anti-nationalism, collectivism and individualism, nationalism and anti-nationalism, collectivism and individualism, again. And I'm not a Muslim. I'm not a religious anarchist of any variety. But I think that there is room for, even if I may not agree with it in all cases the conclusions some people draw i think there's room for these sorts of dialogues to be had um and there's room for exploration to the history of all sorts of uh historical movements and ideologies and religions and ideas um because i mean there's a whole legacy of billions of people who have lived and died long before us and i think i find it

interesting at least as a thought exercise um to see how they came to their conclusions as well so i hope this episode was thought-provoking enlightening and interesting to those who tuned in yeah it was it's always interesting to see these yeah like we don't have to agree with all of it but i think it's interesting to see where people come at these things from and it was i was wondering if you were going to get to or not but like one of the things that you saw in um the spanish like don't really the civil war as much but in the second republic was the socialists and and like left liberals explicitly selling out uh like moroccan muslim people and north african

people more generally whatever their faith and anarchists being like no we should express solidarity with these people like even if we if they are aren't and some of them were part of like they were anarchists in spanish north africa of course but like even if they weren't being like we should oppose colonialism and uh like when every other kind of left stripe didn't um it's kind of one of the failing sort of public not to so yeah there's been these conversations i guess for a long time it was interesting to hear about those sufis in spain uh and think about how long those conversations have been going back and forth you know exactly exactly i think the whole iberian peninsula is really interesting region in terms of the confluence of cultures i I did miss that particular historical instance

in my research without also pointing it out. Yeah, don't worry, I'm a big nerd for that stuff. Is there anything you'd like to plug before we go, Andrew? Sure, sure. So you can find me on YouTube at Andrew Razum on patreon.com slash stdrew and I've logged off of Twitter but if you want to

get the updates when I do decide to log in to post updates here and there you can follow me on Twitter at underscore stdrew thank you Andrew take care everyone peace sure thank you andrew take care everyone peace welcome i'm daniel thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

nocturnal tales from the, 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 Duda Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died

trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, boy. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less depressing than that. This is going to be a mix of both of those things.

I'm Robert Evans. My co-hosts for today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are we both? How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling? I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, so I'm excited.

Like a kid at Christmasmas yeah so james that answers my question for you but mia have you ever heard of lord miles rutledge i have seen him on twitter and i am i i cannot express how excited i am for this so we are talking about a real piece of shit today this um this is kind of relevant to – I try to always justify our purview is broadly speaking collapse, what we call the crumbles. And Miles Rutledge is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and conmen who sort of seep in at the edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever. You know, in Behind the Bastards, we've done a couple episodes on like different white people who tried at various points to like conquer Latin American nations and like the 17 and 1800s, just kind of during these periods of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on.

And so like some group of mercenaries would be like, I bet we can like steal Nicaragua, right? Let's go. It's worth a shot. You know, you get these kind of like these kind of people and Lord Miles Rutledge is sort of the lower body count end of that. But in some ways, a lot more frustrating because at least look, there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another country and then getting murdered yourself. There's at least like a degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge, is like purely like doing war tourism in order to like pump his TikTok and his Instagram and his YouTube. Yeah.

And I find that worse than like, I don't know, those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and got captured by fishermen. Yeah. So. They were great. Yeah. And then laid in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story.

Perfect story. Yeah, took a BB gun with them. Such a good story. That was the best part. And this one has a similar, this story, thankfully Miles's story has it has a is an ending almost that satisfying so miles rutledge was born on james actually i'm gonna i'm gonna bring you in for a second how do i spell this last name r-o-u-t-l-e-d-g-e he's british

route ledge on the yes route if it's the same as the academic publisher, which is spelled the same, then it's Routledge. And look, I don't give a fuck about how this guy feels, so let's just say it however we want. Yeah, okay. So Miles Routledge was born on September 14th, 1999, probably somewhere near Birmingham. I don't think we have like,

it's just kind of based on shit he said, you know i don't see why he'd probably he'd lie about that i don't think people brag about coming from birmingham just yeah yeah it's not one that like one of the more glam yeah yeah so uh unfortunately thanks to generations of medical advancements he survived to adulthood because he does strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't have done that in like the 1800s. He got into the University of, I'm going to need your help here again, James, Lauberow? Loughborough? Loughborough?

Unbelievable. Amazing! That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War II German aerial division or something. Yeah, yeah, the Loughborough? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's like the very bro-y section of the lufftwaffe yeah so uh he gets into the university of lufft bro as a fucking physics student um or so he says and sometime within the last two years he got an internship at an investment banking firm.

Oh, this is a kind of guy. A kind of guy is emerging. He's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece of shit. Yeah. But I haven't found much in my casual research about his financial situation or how much money he was born into. But I think he was like, I'm going to guess his parents were at least comfortable because as a young man still in college, he had the funds to travel pretty extensively, starting in 2019 when he visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Now, this is one of the most popular destinations in the world for what is called dark tourism. And this is largely, this is people who live kind of boring lives otherwise, traveling to places that sound scary in order to impress people on like the TikTok or whatever.

Now, I just said that, but like I don't think there's anything wrong. Like now there's like a lot of problems with getting to Chernobyl because of the war. But like prior to the expanded innovation, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyl. see Chernobyl. My thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or whatever is like, are you increasing the odds of like causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources in a way that like harms people who have no choice in being there, right? And visiting Chernobyl, whatever, you're not really putting anyone at risk, so that's fine. But in May of 2021, though, Miles Rutledge made the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that was distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist, Afghanistan. Now, he decided to head over there during kind of the end stages of the war, although

if you guys can remember back that far, the collapse of the the afghan government that the united states had backed happened more rapidly than most people had predicted so it it was kind of like less clear i think when he booked his trip that things were going to fall apart quite that quickly yeah um few marines who feel the same way about that yeah yeah yeah So yeah, it's one of those things where like Miles, you know, his plan to go there was, again, not as like he's not heading there as a journalist. There's not like a story he wants to tell. He's not traveling there for kind of a practical purpose. Like he really does frame this as just he wanted to go on vacation. And he wanted to go on vacation specifically for what I think is probably like

the dumbest reason i've ever heard of anyone choosing a vacation location especially choosing fucking afghanistan uh as a vacation location i'm gonna play a clip from one of his youtube videos now why am i in afghanistan well that's a really good question during covid lockdowns afghanistan was the only country open without a vaccine mandate. So I just went. I've never heard his voice before. I'm more angry now. He goes to Afghanistan because they don't have a fucking vaccine mandate.

Oh, my fucking God. Real warrior for freedom. Yeah, just the dumbest idiot. I hate him. So anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of young British men who have gone out to Afghanistan on a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something called Everybody Wiki, which, yeah, yeah, which I hadn't heard of that one before, but it very hilariously lists his occupation as, quote, posting online during the 2021 siege of Kabul.

That's great. That's actually pretty funny. Him and Tim Kennedy. That's great. So for obvious reasons, he encountered difficulties. He wound up sleeping by the side of the road one night. He was taken into Taliban custody while he makes a big deal out of this I actually don't think he was ever in serious danger

particularly not compared to for example the people fighting and dying or the civilians in cities taken by the Taliban who had to endure an often violent change of regime when the Taliban was taking over here in let you know obviously there's the danger of like accidents on the road, which is always a significant danger in a place called like Afghanistan. There's the danger of, you know, being caught up in a fight or something potentially. But the Taliban in this kind of late stage of their takeover had no desire to harm a British citizen like Miles or to harm like, you know, Americans who were in the country. And in fact, we're working kind of in the later stages of the US evacuation to try to make sure it happened peacefully.

Not because the Taliban are such good guys, but because like there's no geopolitical benefit to them from like a random British traveler dying. It's just going to cause problems for them. Yeah, it's just not worth the stress and bother. Yeah, like they didn't have, like, I don't believe they were, the Taliban was ever, like threatened

his life in any way uh miles though posted through it reporting that he was stuck in a pickle uh and giving details of his experience to fans on 4chan and twitch he started using the name james you had asked about this he started using the name lord miles due to the fact that he had purchased a 15 pound lordship certificate as a bit. I knew it. I fucking knew it. Yeah, not that surprising, huh? What a cunt.

I can't say that. Sorry. No, you can. You're British. It's fine. Okay, Dan, I'll leave that one in. That is my sincere conviction. Hey, what a twat.

Sorry, what an absolute prick because he's what's really fucking frustrating everything about his existence is frustrating right but like so is what's so annoying is he's playing this fucking twee parochial version of britishness for an exclusively an american audience right if you're born near fucking birmingham like we're not all like we are not all pride and prejudice people and if you move to another country you will constantly encounter people thinking you grew up in harry potter land but like we're not all turfs either um but like he's fucking doing it like and he's doing it like a naive american like there are like the scottish parliament has made statements about not buying these stupid Scottish titles.

Yeah, here's a prick. Yeah, it's very silly. He justified this by saying, because I think he buys it while he's in Afghanistan. He explained to his followers, the Taliban may see that as a reason to keep me alive, thinking it may hold some negotiating power, as they'll think I'm important.

They don't care. They don't want any fucking Westerners dying in the country because it'll fuck up their chances of like you know they want to get integrated to the like fucking global economy they want to qualify for like loans and shit like they don't want to they don't want the problems that you dying bring like you being a lord has not going to impact this in any way yeah yeah and they don't i don't want like the british government deciding like oh shit they killed someone now we need to just bomb like cobble for eight months or whatever now i don't want to say in his defense because i would not like to speak in his defense but i will say that the one person who might be conned by a lordship you bought online is boris johnson yeah no that might have an impact. Yeah, you're right. That could have an impact on Bojo. Yeah, but it is not defense.

It's not like Bojo's going to be sticking around for very long, right? You have to, like, every, like, seven weeks, you are rolling a dice as to whether the conservative PM is someone you can con with a lordship title. Yeah. Well, none of them in the last few years have been what i would call intellectual titans that's true but but but hope springs a turtle rishi sunak's in trouble too so

they might i don't know put well we might get swell a braverman or some shit you can just really go down the uh the fast road i really i feel sorry for you all across the pond i can't imagine what it would be like to have your politicians be national laughingstocks i mean that's just gotta be that's just gotta be hard no american would ever know we'll ever know what that's like yeah we we are ruled by the hero of ireland yeah um oh i was gonna talk about you know my hero the governor of florida and his best, the pedophile who just committed suicide. Wait, is this a different pedophile? No, this is the pedophile who like backed Santas's like early political rise and now just killed himself after he got exposed.

Oh, so this isn't Ali Alexander. OK, never mind. No, no, no. This is a different pedophile. I'm losing track of the GOP pedophiles. There's too many. Every day there's a new one. I can't keep track.

It's not Matt Gaetz, his other friend, who's also a pedophile. Just to be clear. Now, you know who I cannot prove at this point is a pedophile? Miles Rutledge. So let's get back to his story, please. So he also claimed during this period where he's kind of like, quote unquote, on the run that the 4chan users he was posting with kept him alive by giving him updates on Taliban progress through OSINT as they advanced through Kabul.

impossible. So the idea that Miles, again, I don't believe he was ever threatened by the Taliban. They are, again, not nice people, but they're not like unhinged, they're not ISIS, you know. They are a government. They don't have a benefit in something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though,

played up the idea that he was something between a tourist, a journalist, and a philanthropist. Billing his trip to Afghanistan as a, quote, little charity thing, at the same time as he said that he was prepared for death when he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country. Eventually, a United Nations safe house took him in,

and he was given a seat on one of the last planes out of the country. Now, this is an actual act of evil. Yeah. That's frustrating. Because, like, there are people in danger from the Taliban who couldn't leave, right? Like, he took one of their spaces.

Somebody didn't get out who is in danger because of him. Yeah, like very good friends of mine. Like I spent much of that time, like I've written about Afghanistan. I've worked with translators. And like, good friends of mine sometimes and left afghanistan but many of them still have their families there right and every single day they have anxiety about whether their families are okay if something terrible has happened to them yeah and this twat is just like sitting on a plane posting on 4chan it like that

makes me properly angry yeah it's it's and that's again what I was talking about. Like if you're going to if you're going to go to a place that is that is beset by conflict, you know, by civil war, by violence or anything like that. Number one, you have a responsibility to like have a reason to go beyond. I wonder what it's like. And you have a responsibility to not make things worse for people who don't have a choice about being there and he did you know that's like fundamentally why i hate this guy is he absolutely took an opportunity to escape from i don't know some woman's rights activist or something you know

some somebody who or some terp or something somebody who didn't have a choice about fucking being stuck in afghanistan yeah just some fucking person who wanted a fair crack at life and isn't a prick. Yeah. Yeah. And he could have stayed. I have friends who stayed through that time and covered it. Like, your concern is for your sources, not yourself. Yeah.

Or he could have done the thing that his ancestors did and just walk across the border into fucking Pakistan. Like, your ancestors did this. This is the border into fucking Pakistan. Your ancestors did this. This is the one thing I'll give them credit for. They ran like hell. Hike through the Khyber Pass and then become Sherlock Holmes' best friend. You know, that's a

proud tradition. I thought you were going to go with dying there, which would have also been a very acceptable moment. That's another proud tradition. Getting sniped by a gazelle in the fucking Khyber Pass. Absolutely. So he had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and immediately pivoted because he built up

a big social media following around his posts there, pivoted to a career as a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an Ireland, not an Ireland. He traveled next to an Island in Brazil. There's this Island off the coast of Brazil that like, like you're not allowed to go to. Cause there's so many fucking snakes. Like it's just,

it's extremely dangerous to go there. Cause it's covered in fucking snakes. And he like went there wearing armor, but he didn't actually run into any snakes because snakes don't like, you know, they're, they're not generally aggressive. Most of them. He got arrested in Kenya for, as best as I can tell, being a prick near a refugee camp.

And then he he traveled to Ukraine right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to try to make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people about him. The highlight of that trip was he claims that he drove a woman and her kid out of the country and rescued them and also brought people snacks. Whatever. Miles has always been two things. He's deeply enmeshed in right-wing meme culture, and he is at least superficially committed to Christian extremism.

He is like kind of a, at least it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian. He's like, he's super fashy, right? Like this is not like a hidden thing within his videos and stuff. I found one write-up of him on a right-wing religious news website that gives you an idea of how he bills himself to his ideal audience. Miles Routledge is a self-described Catholic independent war journalist and charity on the ground. At just 21, he headed to Afghanistan

when the Taliban seized control, and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates that are peppered with humor, reality, and a little naivete. In the past, Routledge went to war-torn countries and into areas no NGO or charity

dared to go, according to his GoFundMe page, so he can hand out Bibles, food, medicine, and money. Well, there's a special place in hell for some type of giving a starving person a Bible. And also like he never went to places other people wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you everywhere he went, there were already like people like the Free Burma Rangers

or even Medicine Sands Frontiers or Journalists Without Borders. Like there were people there because he's not- He was in Kabul. He's not like, I've seen his videos. He's not going anywhere special. How many people are in Kabul?

Like 10 million people? Yes, these are big cities. Four million people, sure. He's playing off of kind of the provincialism of his audience and the fact that most people in the West, when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine, when they hear it,

or even a place like Kenya, which is a massive country with major cities and all sorts of stuff, that like, oh, these places are just death traps and you don't go there. And like, no, man, even like, I would get this when I'd go to, I've visited Iraq seven or eight times

and it's like, no, man, it's like most of it's just a country. Like, yeah, there's specific things you have to keep in mind that are dangerous. But like, it's just a place like millions of people live there and don't die every day. Yeah, this is ludicrous to suggest that he was in any. Yeah, like you could go to all these places and stay in a five star hotel. And like, you're not in any danger especially as a rich white british guy parading around yeah to the extent that he's like in ukraine and traveling near the front where there's like

random missiles and shelling yeah there's some danger but again it's danger that he is exposing himself to unnecessarily and then creating a situation whereby if he is injured, that's a bunch of morphine and antibiotics that can't go to a fucking civilian who had no choice because they were raised in Constantinivka or whatever, you know? Like, yeah, fuck him. He's a prick. Yeah. Yeah. Just morality free. I mentioned a little earlier, he's definitely a fascist.

And, you know, when I say that, sometimes people do the whole, oh, you left, he's definitely a fascist. And, you know, when I say that, sometimes people do the whole, oh, you lefties will call anything a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one. So shortly after his famous trip to Afghanistan, he published a book about his very brief time in the country. This book included some interesting claims, like that he was the last person to enter the country on a tourist visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting. He wrote, quote, my response was simply an A4 sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it. It was accepted without question. I was ready for my very own white boy summer.

white boy summer he also notes that the last oh yeah right um which was at the time kind of like a meme in you know fashy online nazi circles it was all over telegram he also notes chet hanks tom hanks is a very problematic child yeah although not problematic in this sense chet did not i think mean for that to happen um he's just problematic in other ways. So he also notes that the last thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho, which he described as a sacred male experience. I will remind you all that that is a movie directed by a woman. writes about the fact that he ordered a meal at the airport before leaving, but decided not to eat it because it was likely filled with soy. He goes on like a whole diatribe about how Afghanistan is probably safer for him because there's no soy in the food. Just. So the weird right wing memes and signaling, all of which are like,

he's always like a year or two out of date on his like far right signaling and stuff, too, which is weird. All of it makes a little more sense when you realize that the book that he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing, which is a- Oh. Oh yeah, yeah, James, you recognized that, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's coming in from the far right of the publishing sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the antelope hill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath it, you've got the

main book and it's like, if you like this book, read these books, are a collection of, one of the books is a collection of speeches from Kai Morose, who is a Finnish right-wing activist who was formerly a Maoist, but is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who supports total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He advocates for an uprising in the UK in which all university staff will be executed by death squads. So he hasn't gone that far from the Maoism. So not that far from the – like, look, there's still pieces of it. So the next book that's recommended, if you're interested in Miles's book, is The Death Company,

which is a firsthand account of the Italian Arditi in World War I that was very influential among early fascists. And then there's Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I found a review of this book on a website called the White Art Collective, and I'm gonna read a quote from that now. So this is a Nazi reviewing this book

by a Nazi, right? Good stuff. Yeah. Here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen is a big city writer sent on assignment to interview James Alexander, the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who has revived his state with, among other things, a Christian-themed public works program and Mount Calvary, an artificial mountain which villagers climb up and pass the Stations of the Cross, then view a live-action recreation of the Crucifixion with music by a live choir. The first few chapters, until Rob meets Alexander, feel like a deadpan satire of Apocalypse Now. Rob didn't want a mission, but for his sins he was given one. He's a fish out of water who has to navigate and improvise his way to the goal.

There's a magical realism vibe to the book, despite nothing overly supernatural occurring. And maybe this is why Phillips calls it a mundane fantasy, but it's also a mundane fantasy for the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described in the book are so far beyond what is possible that suspension of disbelief is required. Even the Nazi seems like to think it's kind of a shit book, which is very funny to me.

So again, if you publish your book with antelope hill like you are comfortable at the very least comfortable with having your book advertised next to explicitly nazi power fantasies yeah i mean you're not going to antelope illness you know like we've both published books like yeah it wouldn't have occurred to me to even try. Yeah, they are the Nazi, one of the Naziist publishers out there. In April of 2022, Miles attempted to reenter Afghanistan.

He claimed in videos that his goal was to rescue a tour guide and his family who were threatened by the Taliban. But he wound up stuck in Pakistan, claiming that this guide had lied to him and claimed that the border was closed to British people. I mean, to be fair, I have no issues with this. No, that would be fine. And he gets like, he starts like freaking out in the video. He's like near tears and stuff.

He claims that he'd spent 15,000 pounds on the trip and now he was broke. So obviously he uses it, he has to beg for money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if that was just the whole pounds on the trip and now he was broke. So obviously he uses it. He has to beg for money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if that was just the whole point of the trip. He also pointed why posted whiny status updates, claiming his life had been ruined by the failed trip quote. This means I can't go on a date with a girl.

I really liked. It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend. I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end, but I know big baby. Yeah. Despite his failure, with my friend. I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end. But, I know, big baby. Yeah.

Despite his failure, he did not give up on his dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again for the sake of content. He put together another trip for the start of 2023.

In late February, as he geared up to go, he made some tweets to his followers that give us more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is. From February 27th.

A flatmate saw my Bible and said, that book is a fairy tale. So I threw my empty mug at his head, broke on the wall behind him. This isn't the first instance. And after a while you have to stop playing nice and defend your faith. Yeah. Great guy.

This is the tweet that I remember seeing. Yeah, that was a great one uh now people used to send me his shit so often he's infuriating yeah there's a worse one uh the most infuriating tweet i found from this guy came a bit further down and it's it's a picture of him i think in might be dubai i think it's dubai so he's like got his back to the skyline and he's just kind of looking off into the distance pensively. It says, friends say I space out all the time.

My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. If you don't remember, Sentinel Island is the forbidden island in the Andamans, which is part of India, where in 2018 an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and endangered the lives of an entire tribe so he could satisfy his

narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to death by them via arrow before he could get too close and hopefully did not spread any diseases to them. I'd wish Miles success in reaching the island and meeting a similar fate, but if he gets anywhere close to them, there's just such a high chance that he will spread deadly disease to the people there that I hope he, the Indian government keeps him away. Even though it would be very funny if he got shot to death by it. Like that, that would be quite a, quite a laugh. Yeah. Truly living out the dreams of being a British Lord.

Yeah. Yeah. Continue a real time-honored tradition, getting fucking murked by the natives on an island. Yeah. So the good news is that friends of the pod, the Taliban, may have taken care of, you know, this guy for us. Shortly after making those posts, he re-entered Afghanistan. In a video posted several days later, he bragged about entering, while he's in Afghanistan,

he brags that he made a fake visa in order to get himself into the country. So he breaks Taliban law, entering the country in a fake video, and then posts a video while he's in Kabul bragging about it. So first off, genius brain, unbelievable, uh, smarts there. So this,

the first video that he posts back is it's titled something like shooting guns with the Taliban. And it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad to see what kind of guns are available. He talks a lot about how all these us guns and gear are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it. Like most of the video, he's in like this fucking,

I'll show you, he's in like this fucking gun bazaar and he's like really awed by this giant AR style Turkish shotgun. Oh, we've seen some of those. We have seen some of those, James. They're terrible weapons. They are definitely,

obviously the Taliban got a hold of a shitload of u.s gear nobody's questioning that these shitty turkish shotguns are not american weaponry well that that's that's probably why it's in the bazaar and not like in someone's like garage or something yeah yeah the taliban have access to a lot of american gear he is kind of just like looking at, I don't know, like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like trash guns. So I'm going to show you a first clip from this video here. There are bad desires, sometimes a little bit dangerous. So there's a lot of Daesh there.

If you don't know who Daesh is, it's basically ISIS. Now ISIS, they don't outnumber the Taliban. However, the weapons market and maybe in areas, could be quite bad for me. So I'm going to have to be a little bit careful. But if you're seeing this footage, it ended up okay. I'm just going to take a moment to tell you guys about my sponsor, Tendies. What the fuck? This is not official media, but...

Jesus Christ. That is one of the most jarring ad trends. Like if you're not watching this, he's like standing in the desert and like talking. There's that brief clip of like a picture of some ISIS guys, but then he's like back in the desert talking. And then suddenly a shot like it cuts very harshly to him in his hotel room doing like a fucking ad for an investment banking app. It's so fucking, or like a stock trading app. It's so funny. And then he has his bandana on.

Yeah, that's the, has he got the Shahada written on it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sure does. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah, I was going to say people should watch this, but just to spare yourself, like, God. Yeah, he's wearing his white headband, which I can't see it anymore,

but it's something written in Arabic on it, I guess, and doing it as much for something called tendies. Yeah, something which is like, yeah, some sort of like stock trading app for i'm going to guess people to get their life savings scammed from them yeah yeah that's my apologies tendies if i'm getting you wrong but you're you're sponsoring lord miles backer yeah ah damn it's okay we've got enough sports betting companies that we'll be okay. Yeah, Ronald Reagan always sees us right.

Yeah, Ronald Reagan, gold coins or silver coins will take care of us. So again, one of the things that's very funny about this is the amount of time he spends flipping out over this dog shit AR style shotgun. For those of you who aren't gun people, the Turks make a number of different shotguns that kind of look like AR-15s. They're all very impressive looking to people who don't know anything about guns. They're terrible weapons. One of the reasons they're terrible

is that shotgun shells do not work well in magazines. The reason, most shotguns are tube fed because like shot shells are plastic and they have a weird shape to them. And if you stick them in a magazine like a normal bullet bullet they just tend to like jam and misfeed a lot it's just not a good way for it yeah exactly um yeah it's the one gun the one actual like producing a factory gun that i'm aware of that the folks in myanmar are like nah fuck, we'll just 3D print what dude did. We don't need these. We are desperate, but these are just...

And he spends a lot of time talking about how cheap guns are. You can get guns here cheaper than you can anywhere else, because this AR shotgun is $200. He's like, man, I can get an AR shotgun for $200 in Portland, Oregon. They're terrible. Nobody wants them. So, he does eventually go out with what he claims is the Taliban.

As far as I can tell, it's a guy who has an M-16 that he probably paid like 100 bucks to go shooting with. Right. Maybe the guy like a lot of people in Afghanistan are technically the Taliban. But that doesn't mean like much. Right. Like at this point, they're the government. Like, you know, you get like your uncle, you know, gets you a fucking gig

or something watching a road or whatever. I don't know. I don't know anything about this guy. He claims he's the Taliban. So I'm going to play you a clip of him shooting this guy's M16. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No hearing protection.

Sweeping people. Just sweeps them again, pointing the barrel at them. Oh, bro! What is he doing? Fuck me! Thank you, my friend. The Taliban guy is visibly nervous about him using the gun. He's glad he got that back in one piece. He's backing away.

He's just like Shooting into the air I love how like Visibly nervous the Taliban guy is He sweeps his legs With the gun Like points the barrel at that guy's legs Like three different times Shoots up into the air

He's just an incompetent asshole with it He's doing all of these like 80s action movie poses. Yeah. Chuck Barrett. It's very stupid. He has no hearing protection in so he hurts his ears. It's just

comprehensively stupid and sad. So this video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up with two other UK citizens who were in the country. One of whom Oh, whatever. At any rate, Miles goes missing in early March. And after several days, the Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two other British guys and also two Polish guys into custody. And it's a little unclear why, but it seems to be due to them breaking some laws with guns.

It also may have something to do with the fact that Miles broke the law entering the country. He seems to be being treated reasonably well at present. It's unclear what's going to happen to him. I hope. I mean, honestly, like of all the people who deserve to be in a Taliban prison, Miles Rutledge is the one. That's amazing.

Like, yeah, keep that. Go ahead and keep that guy taliban like very excited for whoever's in the prime minister's chair next week to like yeah maybe get around to start negotiating with the taliban i hope they don't the british foreign office just don't give a fuck anymore like i've had to contact them with when colleagues have been detained, etc. And like, they'll literally be like, now computer says no. And just like tell you to fuck off.

So hopefully they do the same for him. Yeah, it doesn't. I haven't seen anything like the most recent news stories about him were like more than a week ago, it looks like. Yeah, I'm not seeing anything recently. So it doesn't look like I'm guessing we would have there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed. Yeah.

Daily Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like, yeah, he was he was there to try to find himself. Yeah, it's very funny. He says he claims at one point, like, yo, guy's been taken by Afghan intelligence for taking like $1,000 out of Western Union. Suss him out. No internet, no idea when this will end.

Everything is good, but please excuse my lack of communication. That was like March 8th, something like that. And he hasn't really been back on in a while. Like he's kind of been dark for, for quite a spell. So I don't know, maybe something terrible has happened to him or what happened to him at which point, or in which case, like that would be kind of funny. Fuck him.

Yeah. That's where I am officially. Yeah. I mean, he fucked around and found out. Yeah. Like you keep again, man, you want to like, yeah, you he fucked around and found out yeah like you keep again man you want to like yeah you keep fucking around you like go to a place with like a famously uh like dangerous uh authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are like i'm going to brag about

breaking the law for a youtube video but yeah man maybe they'll get pissed it's like the same shit with like obviously like the romanian government's like the same shit with like, obviously, the Romanian government is not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind of shit with like Andrew Tate where you're like I'm going to go to this other country and brag about the fact that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws. That's a pretty good way to get them to

fucking cause problems for you. Anyway. My favorite Miles post, if I'm remembering this right i'm pretty sure like two weeks before he like got arrested he he posted a tweet about how like he's safer and he's safer in afghanistan than he is in uh that he would be in san francisco in brooklyn yeah in Brooklyn. Yeah. Oh yeah. I forgot about this. He tried to be homeless for a day. He spent, no,

two days. He spent 48 hours, quote unquote, homeless in Brooklyn. Yeah. for again, for content. Um,

and yeah, it is, it is funny that like he is in a lot of trouble now. Um, hopefully. He tried to go to, um, uh,

Mission Texas as well. I don't know if he ever went but he was gonna do oh i missed that yeah he was gonna do something fucking horrific with people crossing the rio grande oh god oh you see the look that's where we get the base butterfly lady with her you're not gonna hear this often from me but critical support to the taliban like they're they're they're really fighting the good fight for all of us by keeping this guy behind bars i was it initially seemed like he had uh he had fallen into the hands of like uh the islamic state khorasan province and uh i was gonna have to yeah you rarely have to hand it to islamic state but we may have and that one occasion i don't give

isis a lot of credit but that that it is like um you know what i'll just i'm gonna go ahead and say this on behalf of the rest of the world taliban if you keep him locked up you know we will erase one of those big buddha statues from like the list of taliban crimes we'll all agree to forget one of the buddhas like hold i. I feel like that's fair. I'm not signing on to this. I'm still mad about the Buddhas. Just one of them, come on. We need all the Buddhas.

Anyway, fuck this guy. He's fucking sad. I hope they're feeding him tofu. Yeah. I hope they're feeding him tofu. Yeah, I hope they're feeding him all of the soy in Afghanistan. Yeah. Like, fucking park a soy truck up to that guy's cell. Yeah. Anyway, that's a story.

These guys are like, especially in the social media, I mean, they've always been a part of war and of conflict. You know, there's a degree to which like, this is not a new story. Like, this is actually kind of one of the older stories in human history is like, dudes kind of stumbling into war zones

in order to write about it or otherwise, like, make it about them. So, you know, fuck these people and fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. I hope we I hope he winds up like those

Venezuelan mercs or not. They weren't Venezuelan. They were in Venezuela who are caught on video pissing themselves and then lying in the piss. That's that's my dream for Miles Rutledge spending some time lying in piss before he's sent back in the piss. That's my dream for Miles Rutledge. Spending some time lying in piss before he's sent back to the UK. Yeah.

That's what I got. Nice. Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like they did to the British people. He did make a bunch of posts about how cool the Taliban were. So I don't know. Like, yeah. We can don't know. Like,

yeah, we can dream. Look, man, you said you wanted to live there. Uh, here you go. Yeah.

I don't know. Um, I, uh, I think he's a dick and I think this is funny. That's my official stance. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal 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 iheart radio appio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

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

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. Happy Earth Day. And by Happy Earth Day, I mean the Earth is dying and people are killing it.

Yeah, welcome to It Could Happen Here, the Earth Day episode. Now, quick question, Mia. What is Earth? So the Earth is one of many, many, many planets in the universe. It's a congealed rock. There's some, like, melty shit in the middle of it. But on the outside, there's a part of it that's nice to live on, and it'd be nice to continue to have it be that.

Ah, okay. This is different than what I had been raised to believe, but I'll humor you here. Please continue. Yes, and so okay, we're going to be talking today about one of the many attempts to destroy the Earth, and also Garrison is here too. Hello.

Yes, hi. I'm here also for the Earth. For the Earth, yeah. Yeah, and this is a special episode featuring a bombing. Oh, good. I love a good bombing. Yeah, this is very exciting. Actually, technically speaking, it's two bombs.

So it is near midnight on July 10th, 1985. The crew of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, which is docked in the harbor of Auckland, which is New Zealand's largest city, a thing that I learned while researching this episode. Wait, really? That's New Zealand's largest city? Yeah. Yeah. There's not a lot in New Zealand other than Hobbits and that one show about vampires.

A lot of cheese, too. They make a lot of milk. So, yeah, the Greenpeace boat is docked in this harbor. Most of the crew is asleep. Some of them are playing cards, and they are relaxing after having celebrated the birthday of one of their crews. Suddenly, a massive shock rips through the boat. Water starts flooding into the ship. The lights go out, and the crew thinks they've been hit by a tugboat by accident.

That lasts a couple of minutes until a second explosion hits the boat. Mr. President, a second explosion has hit the boat. 9-11 joke. Yes. Very excellent. Good work. So the crew, like the people fleeing 9-11, the crew flees the boat, but they realize that their photographer, a guy named Fernando Pereira, is missing.

And Pereira, like, hasn't quite realized that the boat is like under attack and so he runs back to his cabin to grab his camera and then the second explosion hits and the boat sinks so fast that he never has a chance to get back up um and he drowns to death and the crew very quickly realizes that this is not an accident um and rescue divers discover there are a massive there's like massive holes in the ship from where it had been blown up from the outside and they eventually determine that this boat

which is again a Greenpeace boat that is doing non-violent civil disobedience has been sunk by limpet mines oh boy oh I love a good limpet mine I'm so happy that we're getting limpet mines in this episode yeah yeah we're getting limpet mines there'll be some special forces boats later or I say boats it's one boat I'm so happy that we're getting limpet mines in this episode. Yeah, yeah, we're getting limpet mines.

There'll be some special forces boats later. Or did I say boats? It's one boat. But yeah, we're going through all of the sort of naval combat greats here. Excellent. But this raises the question, who would commit such an act of terrorism on the... I can't actually say on the soil of New Zealand because it's technically in the water of New Zealand. In the waters of New Zealand, yeah. Yeah, yeah, on the soil of New Zealand because it's technically in the water of New Zealand. In the waters of New Zealand, yeah. Yeah, yeah, off the coast of New Zealand, sure. Yeah, we get it.

Yeah, but, okay, so to answer this question, we need to talk about the anti-nuclear movement. And, you know, there's been a kind of rewriting of history about what the anti-nuclear movement was actually about. To basically, like, sort of purely focus on the anti-nuclear movement as something that's just about nuclear power, but that was never true. The movement was always way more larger than that, and a huge part of it was about opposing nuclear weapons, both in terms of like opposing nuclear tests and in terms of fighting for nuclear disarmament

on the fairly simple principle that having weapons that can kill everyone on Earth around is a bad idea. that having weapons that can kill everyone on earth around is a bad idea well i mean it's a bad idea if you don't want to destroy the entire earth but that's true yeah if you want to destroy the earth it's a pretty good idea actually unfortunately i'm on a living kick right now so i'm i'm now anti-destroying everything on earth yeah it's good that you can admit your bias up front though that's yeah yeah This is a very important thing in journalism. Yeah. So, you know, okay, so we should talk a bit about nuclear testing because it doesn't happen anymore.

Nuclear testing, okay, so we used to just, like, detonate nuclear bombs, like, in the air. You're goddamn right we did. Yeah, and it turns out this kills enormous numbers of people. But the problem is that it kills them very slowly with increased cancer rates, which is very difficult to sort of track or like prove direct causality. And, you know, this is aided by the fact that when countries do nuclear testing, they are almost always killing people. Well, they're almost always dropping the nukes on indigenous land, which means that they're killing people who the government and most of the country just like does not care about and you know you you can literally map colonialism and sort of the value that a given like a given state places on people's lives by you know where they tested nuclear weapons so

for example the u.s tested nuclear bombs in places like the bikini atoll the marshall islands a former tribal land in nevada and new mexico and in hatesburg mississippi okay so jesus christ all those are bad except except mississippi no no that was also bad because uh guess get uh get guess get guess what race the population of hatesville miss, Mississippi was. Okay, all right. Yeah, they got paid $10 to get relocated, quote unquote. Yeah, this is not a white city that they are blowing up with a nuclear bomb. It's not like a gated community for white men in their 50s or something. No.

No. No, the only good nuclear testing we did was back in the day when they used to set off nukes right outside of Vegas. And so all of the Vegas people would watch the nukes go off and then get irradiated. That was that was kind of funny. Yeah, they also they also irradiated the Area 51 people one time. And that was also extremely funny. They sure did. And there was that like guy.

I think it was uranium there was like one of the dudes who was on the manhattan project there was this like dude who uh there was like an accident and he just sucked down a bunch of nuclear fuel um and they had to like he could never work in a lab again after that and he every for like decades afterwards his breath tested positive for like radioactivity but he lived to be like 80 something like it didn't for him doesn't seem to have hurt him um he said it tasted kind of like like sour candy uh okay so he's tasted the forbidden nuclear water yeah no one else has to now we know what it tastes like yeah oh yeah donald donald mastic was he was sprayed in the face with liquid

plutonium chloride and swallowed some um but apparently that's fine so there you go everybody drink some plutonium you'll live a long life so the u.s i guess i guess also tests it on their nuclear scientists but yeah so that those are those were the u.s tested the ussr test the nukes in kazakhstan which there's an amazing story about baria going where there's nobody nobody lives in this part nobody lives in kazakhstan so we'll be fine it's like okay baria people in fact you live there um china tests its nukes at a site called lop nor which is in xinjiang because of course it is. And the French do their test

in the Sahara and Algeria until the Algerian revolution forces them out, which, good for them, death of betrayers, the Algerian workers' councils, etc., etc., etc. But this means that the French now no longer being able to bomb their colonial possessions

in Algeria, yeah, they start testing their nuclear weapons on particularly the maruro i don't know how to pronounce this i'm really sorry what is it a toll in the in the south the south pacific yeah that i mean that sounds close enough yeah sure yeah and so they they start these tests like in secret. So there are people on islands nearby who don't know that there's nukes going off. Like they don't even have bomb shelters, right?

It's real loud these days. Anybody notice how loud it's gotten here? Yeah. I was like, you know, you can see the fucking mushroom cloud, right? But like these people, you know, the French military scientists are like, oh, it's fine, they're not going to be in the fallout. They're unbelievably in the fallout radius. If anyone ever tells you you're not in a fallout radius,

that's your first sign that you are in fact in a fallout radius. Yeah, it's never a great sign when that's happening. I don't think anyone has ever assured a group of people that they're not going to be exposed to radiation and been telling the truth. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. If they had merely gone to these people and said, you're not going to be exposed to radiation, it would have been better because then at least it would have had a chance.

They just didn't tell these people at all. They were testing a new. Sure. They just blew it up. Great. And so they detonate like they detonate nukes all over polynesia um in in uh actually a few years ago there there was a there was a thing called the marua files which was a bunch of investigative journalists got together they got a bunch of

classified french military documents they did they they they got some scientists together and they they did a whole thing about the you of influence that the effects of this nuclear testing has. And I'm just going to read from that quote. According to our calculations, based on a scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately 110,000 people were infected. Almost the entire Polynesian population at the time. Good God. So it radiated like the entire population of Polynesia. This is this is great.

So I mean, that's not ideal. That's not ideal. I'll give them that. And OK, so I obviously I nuclear testing has negative effects on humans. I feel like I don't need to explain how nuclear testing has dropping a nuclear bomb on a place has a negative effect on the environment. That seems. Are you sure? Are you sure?

It seems pretty obvious. I think we're all more or less caught up on nuking things being bad for them. Yeah. Well, except for underwater aquatic lizards, which seem to do really well when exposed to nuclear tests. Yeah. They, they, look,

they can, they, they, they, they have atomic breath now. They've got. Absolutely. Yeah.

Big, big, big. They get to star in a movie with a, a surprising number of members of the cast of Simpsons. Yeah. It's, it's all,

it's all upsides. Oh, and that Ferris Bueller, I think was in it. So that's pretty good. Yeah. Did these people get to star in a movie with Ferris Bueller? No, they died of radiation poisoning or genetic defects.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. That's unfortunate. Yeah, and so these tests and some other tests of the U.S. are doing the Marshall Islands are the origin of Greenpeace. So there have been environmental groups like the Sierra Club have been involved in anti-nuclear activism because, again, bad, bad for the environment, dropping nukes. But OK, so the activism that the Sierra Club people are doing is based on bearing witness. And the Greenpeace people rightly are like fuck bearing witness they are dropping nuclear

bombs we are going to try to stop these bastards the only way you can beat a bad guy with a nuclear bomb is a good guy with a nuclear bomb I'm introducing I'm introducing a new initiative to arm all Greenpeace members

personal tactical nuke. Not a joke. The Davies Crockett. This is, I am not kidding, France's rationale for why they have nukes, which is that the thing is literally called the weak deterring the strong or something.

And it's like, ma'am, you are France. Like, come on. Okay, yeah, sure. France is acting for the protection of the weak against the strong. It's like, ma'am, you are France. Like, come on. Okay, yeah, sure. France is acting for the protection of the weak against the strong. It's like, oh, my. I mean, look, I would, if I had the option, I would keep a nuke in my basement, you know, just in case. Yeah, someone comes to my house, you know, I've got the option then, right? Like, what if, because like right now, okay, say Pakistan decides to try to rob my house.

I don't have a counter to their nuclear arsenal. But if I keep, you know, and I'm not even talking like six to ten megatons in my basement. That's enough, I think, to discourage aggression, right? Or if like my neighbor decides to call the city on me, you know? I've got an option. There's a problem with this plan, which is, how are you getting the nuke from your apartment to Pakistan? Well, I mean, look, it's if they come to my house, right?

That way I can nuke all of my stuff so they won't want it, and that way they won't rob me in the first place, right? This makes about as much sense as actual nuclear doctrine. It's worked for decades, Mia. I don't know what your problem is here.

If it's worked for all of these great powers, it can work for me. Or I could do what the British do and send some of my people out. I could send James or Garrison out underwater with a nuclear weapon and just have them always waiting in the sea to nuke

my adversaries if somebody takes me out. Much like the British nuclear fleet. See? We as a human race are really good at coming up with good ideas. Yeah. Our ideas are amazing they rock we never have any bad ones it is funny that there's just like some guys who are expected to like follow a dead man's orders at the end of the world uh for for unclear reasons like there's just a letter and it's like if all of your loved ones die open this letter and do whatever it says.

Nukes are really funny when you think about them. Yeah. So, OK, so in the late 60s and early 70s, there's people who are like, this is a terrible idea. We should not, in fact, drop nuclear bombs. And these groups in the late 60s become Greenpeace in 1970, 1972. OK, so good for them. Okay. So. Good for them. Good for them. Yeah.

All right. So we, we've, we've talked about the, like the French having to move their nuclear program, uh, into, into the Pacific after being ran out of Algeria.

Um, Greenpeace starts doing direct actions against French nuclear testing. Mm-hmm. And so, so in, in, in 1972, Dave McTagctaggart is one of the founders of greenpeace sails his boat into a french nuclear testing area now okay i i i have my issues sort of

in principle with like non-violence as your like pure organizing political principle but if you are willing to sail your boat under a nuclear bomb to stop it from going off that is pretty based yeah man I have trouble like coming up with any critiques of that no this rips and like the other thing is like you know this isn't a stunt right like they are actually prepared to get nuked

yeah no that seems like a pretty commitment yeah I'll give them that it's sick and so they refuse to leave and the French Navy eventually gets so pissed off that a French Navy ship rams their boat like a fucking trireme

in order to get them out so they're forced out because they're rammed by a trireme happens to the best of us we've all been there so sometimes sometimes you just get you just get rammed i don't know it happens so true so they they greenpeace tries to go to the international court of justice to get a ruling to force france to stop the testing and the french government uh stakes out what i i i I claim is like the primary status political principle, which is that what is justice to a man holding a gun?

And they just absolutely ignore the International Court of Justice. So in 1974, they're trying to do another set of nuclear tests. And this time, you know, Greenpeace is like, OK, well, we're going to we're going to send like a flotilla of boats out this time. Did you just say a flotilla? Yeah. Is that a word? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a group of boats, Garrison. That's like a murder of crows thing? Yeah. Yeah, but this is a very common name for a bunch of boats. I've never heard that before. Now you have. A flotilla. Yeah, L. Ron Hubbard had a flotilla of boats that

he made teenagers pilot and jump off of when he was angry at them. You know, I was thinking about this. I think this is actually the first flotilla of boats that we've had on any of our shows that is good. That's not commanded by L. Ron Hubbard? Yeah, or like the Moody's.

It's a whole, it's a whole sort of line of bad, but this, this, this is a good flotilla, but the Navy this time is like, okay, we're not going to mess around with these people like,

and you know, let them get inside the testing zone. I, they, so they just board McTaggart ship and just beat the shit out of him and his crew. And so the, the,

the French Navy claims that like, Oh, the Greenpeace people just like turned around on their own and uh mctaggart you know mctaggart's like very badly visibly hurt so he like shows up to the press and the the french navy goes oh i mean he's like mctaggart is like he is he he is but blind in one eye for several months like he is very very badly beaten and uh the french navy claims that was actually the result of a fall which i i i will allow you to draw your own conclusions you walked into a door yeah i i'll

let you draw your own conclusions about parallels between the state and domestic abusers but yeah yeah unfortunately for uh the french navy the greenpeace crew have managed to like get the beatings on camera and they're able to smuggle like the film canister off the boat and get it to the newspapers and so the newspapers the next day just have a bunch of like pictures showing the french navy just beating the shit out of these like random greenpeace people and this eventually actually works right uh there's there's there's sort of there's i mean there's there's a sort of political pressure campaign that greenpeace is waging there are these there are these campaigns in the french courts to get the government to stop.

And eventually, in 1974, the French government agrees to stop conducting atmospheric tests and nuclear weapons. Now, Robert, do you know who else stopped conducting atmospheric testing after years of public pressure campaigns? The U.S. and the USSR? Yes, but also the products and services oh that support this podcast yeah no i mean uh most most of them most of them ah we're back uh and you know that i'm i'm hearing now that we uh we did have an ad from blue apron in there who does continue like low Earth orbit atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. But, you know, it's the only way to get your food boxes to you in a timely manner.

They have to use the Orion Drive, which is a special spacecraft engine that relies on popping nuclear weapons out of the back of a spaceship and using them to accelerate it to near light speed um it's actually that's a you can look that up it's a pretty cool idea i think we should do it it is very funny to me that it's like okay we have this incredibly convoluted drive that's powered by nuclear weapons and it it gets you to around the speed of light maybe it's it's not even convoluted. It's literally just the spaceship poops out a nuke and it makes it go faster. It's a fun idea.

I'm going to be honest with you. I think it's a fun idea. It is, but it can't even get you to the next solar system very fast. Well, nothing probably ever can, which is why we're all doomed to die alone in the dark. Yeah, very sad. Other thing that's sad. Okay, so the French government agrees to stop doing like tests in the atmosphere, right?

However, this is just atmospheric tests. I never agreed to stop doing like non-atmospheric tests. So in 1985, the French government is gearing up to do another round of nuclear testing and greenpeace is once again bringing a flotilla to try to stop them now greenpeace are already in 1985 they've been involved in another anti-nuclear well okay really it's just it's it's all the same anti-nuclear campaign but so the other people who are dropping nukes in the pacific are the u.s and when they they nuked the marshall islands the people of this uh island called rongalap uh began suffering

from radiation exposure even though they were also once again told by the american government that they were fine and so the u.s is going to drop another nuke and they refuse to evacuate these people and so greenpeace like brings their boats like brings the rainbow warrior and these people asked like greenpeace for help so greenpeace like evacuates them all to another island and like brings like construction materials and supplies so they can like set up on a new island and it's this really i don't know it's it's a really sort of grim look into what you know like what this nuclear testing actually means which is that a bunch of people who've been living in a place for hundreds of years are forced to flee for their like you know the state won't the state won't even like ethnically cleanse them right like they

they are they are forcibly relocated from their homes but the state won't even ethnically cleanse them, right? They are forcibly relocated from their homes, but the state won't even do it because the state's like, no, it's fine, you're just going to die of radiation poisoning. And so they have to get someone else to move them? I don't know. It's really bleak. These people survive, which is good, but the U.S. doing nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which I'm betting at least 40%

of you don't know of the US control. Yeah, it sucks. So, okay, so they get done with this evacuation, they're back in Auckland, and then their flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, gets bombed. And Greenpeace talks later about how they actually got really lucky because,

you know, remember what I said earlier, there are people who are still awake, like playing cards. If those people had been in their cabins, a bunch of them basically would have drowned immediately because the cabins got flooded instantly by the first bomb. So they got very lucky. Only one person died.

I, I, to this day, I do not understand why the people who did this thought they could do this without killing anyone. Like I, it's baffling to me. I,

I, I don't know. I, well, at least they claim they weren't trying to kill anyone. I, so New Zealand police start investigating, you know,

Hey, there's been a, a, like a terrorist attack on a boat in our harbor. Sure. Yeah. That seems like a thing you'd look into. Yeah.

I get that. They get very, very lucky. And they get lucky because there are two people in this boating club who are watching the harbor trying to catch someone who's been stealing diving equipment. And in the middle of the night, they see a man in a black wetsuit carrying a Zodiac inflatable speedboat ashore and get into a van. Hell yeah. Now, it's unclear to me which model Zodiac this is, but for people not familiar with boats, Zodiac makes something called the Mill Pro, which is a like it's an inflatable speedboat that is used by like most of the world's special forces units. And so these two guys are like this is really sketchy and so they and and

so they they they're you know they they put two and two together when they realize that a boat's been blown up and they're like oh my god it was probably these guys so they go to the police and they're able to get the license plate of the van and so the staff at this like van depot have to like sit there and like stall the two people in the van and keep them from leaving long enough for the cops to show up. Which is something I really, really desperately want a video of. It just sounds really funny. I do love the idea of like the average people who work at like a car rental company being asked like, hey, could you do like a little bit of counter-terrorism for us today just like a skosh of it in between denying people rentals because they don't have a credit card

um it's amazing and okay so the cops show up and they arrest this this couple who are claiming to be newlyweds but the the new zealand government quickly discovers that both these people have forged passports from sweden hell yeah yeah they're on a fake swish and so they discover their real names and uh by god is that the mercy is that is a man with a baguette it is the french cia they have planted this bomb and what is the french cia called uh hold on because we can't just say the french cia yeah so it's the it's the directorate general for external security or dgse that is oh that's a much worse much definitely we're gonna we're gonna go back to calling it the french

yeah i'm gonna read it i'm gonna read it police, I think we can all agree, secret police need to have three-letter acronyms. CIA, GRU, FBI. Like, it just doesn't work with four. Or you need to have one kind of sinister-sounding name, like the mucabarat, but like the DGSE. Oh, my God. I'm sorry, that sounds like a bank. Yeah, I mean, it's the Direction General de la Securidad.

No, no, that's trash. Atrocious. France, you have been suppressing people for so long, and you don't have a better secret police name than that? That's shameful. Yeah, by the way, their address, 141. MI6, that's a great fucking name for your secret police. Good name.

Incredible. Or MI5, that's a great fucking name for your secret police. Yeah, MI6, good name, good name. Incredible. Or MI5, whatever the real one is. Yeah, anyways, if you ever want to go, like, take a visit to these people, their headquarters is on 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris, France. It's at 48.8744 North, 2.4067 East Latitude. I don't need to go back to France. Yeah, go fuck with the DGSE. I'm not that big a wine guy.

It's fine. So they catch these agents whose names are, I shit you not, Jean Camas and Jean-Luc Castaire. No. Yeah, that makes sense. No. So the police catch these two. There's like 10 other,

well, there's like eight other people involved. Two of them get, I think like maybe two, one or two of them get caught in Australia, but the Australian police aren't able to hold them long enough for the forensic evidence to come in. So they have to release them and they flee, and there's this whole thing where, like, they flee on a yacht

and then they get on a submarine and the submarine shoots the yacht to sink it. It's a whole thing. I actually, okay, it probably is worth mentioning here that as silly as the CIA's name sounds, like, they have

one of the most extensive networks of surveillance and sabotage of any intelligence agency in the world. It never gets talked about, but they have people everywhere. They are lethal. They absolutely suck. But, yeah, so they get caught, and the

French order an investigation and their first investigation concludes that like well we asked okay so these people are our spies right but we just asked them to spy on Greenpeace we didn't ask them to do a bombing and everyone's like

okay yeah sure French government so the French media does well no okay so you may have caught two of our spies dragging a Zodiac boat while a guy in a wetsuit dragging a Zodiac boat into a van, but that doesn't mean he did the bombing. And the French media does their own investigation and quickly concludes that not only did the French order the bombing,

the bombing was personally signed off on by French Defense Minister Charles Herdu and also quite possibly French President french president francois mitterrand and well okay at least mitterrand's got a good name for an evil president yeah well this is interesting right because if you know your french history for those of you who know your french history you will note that mitterrand is a man of the French left. He's the president from France's Socialist Party, right? He has a program of amnesty

for Italian communist terrorists where if you're able to make it to France, they won't extradite you. That's pretty cool. The communists would never have a nuclear bomb. So very famously, Antonio Negri, who's the guy who writes a bunch of books that are very famous in the early 2000s uh he he's like he's one of the founders of the

autonomists uh he flees to he uses this to flee to France after the Italian government accused him of being the mastermind of the red brigades who had just kidnapped and killed former prime minister Aldo Moro so Negri gets himself parliamentary immunity by getting elected as an mp and then flees to france which is just very funny and then midiran refuses to extradite him so okay so on the one hand you would think that midiran is like i don't know kind of cool i i don't i i don't think so i don't i yeah so midiran i okay so in terms of sort of being sympathetic midiran isitterrand is a kind of different kind of neoliberal than the kind that we sort of know. So I would classify in terms of sort of neoliberal politicians, right, like neoliberal heads of countries, I think there's sort of like three kinds of them. There are sort of the right-wing hardliners, people like Thatcher, like Pinochet and Reagan.

There are sort of the right wing hardliners for people like Thatcher, like Pinochet and Reagan. The Reagan's weirdly Reagan is slightly less hardline than like Thatcher is. But yeah. So, OK, so there's there's those people. There's the sort of like third way neoliberals like Clinton and Tony Blair, who are like, I guess, like liberals in the American sense, but are still sort of like real hardliners on economics. real hard liners on economics and then there's a group of people i would call like the the quote-unquote socialist neoliberals like mitterrand and italy's longtime socialist party prime minister bettino croxi like i don't know if i can actually call him the most corrupt man in italian politics but like he's like at least in the top five but he's prime minister for like 20 years and he he's also like this so these are these are

people who are nominally socialist and we'll talk about like doing socialism but then are also like implementing neoliberalism and you know the i i think the closest thing to this in the u.s is like if carter had beaten reagan we still would have gotten neoliberalism but it would have been sort of like softer than it was under Reagan. So, you know, you have your sort of kinder, gentler form of neoliberalism. And do you know who else advocates for a kinder and gentler form of neoliberalism? Oh, not Blue Apron. No, they support going right back to the old days. We're talking like East India Trading Company. In fact, as we speak, Blue Apron's flotilla is on the coast of India right now, ready to try their hand at making another Raj in Calcutta.

Wish you could all see Garrison's face. It's amazing. It's fine. It's fine. Ah, we're back. So, all right, the consequence of this is that, you know, despite the fact that mitteran is like nominally a socialist he is completely committed to nuclear testing as part of his

like nuclear deterrence program um funny funny how that funny how that always happens huh yeah you know now supporting colonialism is not out of character for mitteran who as part of a previous coalition government in the 50s had presided over the guillotining of Algerian rebels. But his reaction to his government and possibly also him personally bombing the Rainbow Warrior is not good. Yeah. That's nice to hear, at least. Not a great look, buddy. to hear at least not a not a great look buddy yeah so so because french people are extremely normal the reaction in the french public about their government carrying out a terrorist attack

is that there's a giant nationalist upswell and people get really angry because uh they're demanding that the two french intelligence agents who again are serving 10-year manslaughter sentences in new zealand for bombing a ship involved in nonviolent civil disobedience in the harbor of a country that France is not at war with. People are mad that they are being held in prison and they're demanding they be released. That makes sense from the French nationalist side. It's the French far right.

They're pretty yeah right like like again like lots like lots of just like non-far-right people in france get involved in this and they had this whole thing about the way they talk about it is amazing that they talk about it in terms of liberating them it's like they just murdered a guy with a bob like the multiple but they use two mines to blow this ship up it's just like and so the midlands government's response is they start putting sanctions on new zealand's exports

that's funny that's funny and this is this is a huge deal for new zealand because uh there they have a you know new zealand's economy is like in large part an agricultural based export economy and they export just an enormous amount of cheese to france yeah i did not i did not know that yeah well so i i new zealand is like one of the world's leading dairy producers yeah i thought they mostly just made those like elfin dwarf and

wizard movies but oh yeah i mean they do make a lot of money producing limbus cakes, which can keep you going for an entire week, you know? Wait, I'm realizing now, I'm not, Gare, do you know the story of how New Zealand was, like, dragged into supporting the Iraq War and sending troops to Iraq? No. Okay, okay, I need to tell the story, because I'm realizing there's some of our listeners who might not have heard this the last time I told the story. Okay, so in the WikiLeaks papers, it comes out that New Zealand sent troops to Iraq because – so New Zealand had had a milk for oil program where they would trade milk to Iraq for oil. And the US threatened that after they invaded Iraq, they were going to cut off the milk for oil deal. invaded Iraq. They were going to cut off the milk for oil deal. And this was, this was like Fonterra. They're like the giant, uh, like milk cooperative in, in New Zealand was so powerful as a New Zealand government was like, fine. Don't, don't cut, don't cut off our dairy, uh, our milk for oil program. We will go to war. So yeah, uh, New Zealand, New Zealand did not go

to war for oil. zealand went to war for the milk market and and that's why we called it a coalition of the willing yep oh new zealand is a truly a cursed place and and you know and the the i mean i i don't think new zealand's the cursed one in that it's true but they also like this is the this is the second time that New Zealand is going to capitulate to, like, the demands of a violent imperialist in order to save their cheese market. I mean, that's like a fair criticism of New Zealand,

but as an American, I do feel like I don't really have much room to, like, talk shit on this particular issue. It is our fault that this is all happening yeah i i just i'm not gonna blame new zealand for this okay that that's fair that's fair i i i will kind of blame them for this one although this is also france's fault so what what they're able to do is they're able to well okay partially also so like eight of the other people who are involved in this bombing like are just got out

free and so new zealand is like hey will you guys like send us these people so we can try them in fact it's like no absolutely not in fact we will impose sanctions on you and what they're able to do is they're able to force new zealand to like enter un arbitration even though again they've already arrested and convicted these two guys right because they obviously did it and the un in typical un fashion goes okay so france is powerful and new zealand isn't so fuck them and they negotiate a deal where like these two french officers are going to be like released and stationed in this like tiny island at the french control for three years and so the french doesn't they don't even do that uh. They pull these guys out in less than two years.

So New Zealand is... It doesn't go great. I mean, I don't know. I say it doesn't go great for them. In the short term, they suffer a series of catastrophic defeats. In the midterm, the French eventually get ordered

to pay $8.1 million to Greenpeace who use the money to make another boat called the Rainbow Warrior 2 and continue to like sail fleets to stop French nuclear testing. And I'm going to read from Greenpeace's website quote in 1995, the Rainbow Warrior 2 was boarded by French commandos as it led, as it led further protests against nuclear testing at Moria Atoll. When Greenpeace activists were asked for their names, they only gave

one, Fernando Pereira which is the name of the guy who the French had killed earlier. They have their I'm Spartacus moments and eventually it takes a very, very long time. But they win in 1996

France and China do like one last nuclear test and then sign the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty India and Pakistan do a pair test each in 1989 but since then no country has tested a nuclear weapon except North Korea who does it all the time

but you know I don't know what Greenpeace is supposed to do about North Korea testing nuclear weapons. balance of nuclear power certainly provides a degree of protection to some countries. But my argument would be not having tested your weapons makes them more frightening. If you're France and you're like, look, man, anyone who tests us, we don't know what's going to happen when we fire these things. We don't know if they're going to go to the right place. We have no idea what will happen when we fire our nukes. So come on and fuck with us.

But literally anything could happen. That just seems like a better threat to me. I'm not going to advocate that one. I think that's the stance. Build increasingly large weapons and never test them

so that we just know if shit goes down we could all die. You know, okay, it doesn't involve nuclear testing, so I'm coming around to this position. Yeah, never test them. Just build increasingly large doomsday devices and be like,

no one knows what'll happen if we have a war. Why not? Maybe none of them work and we all get to really think about what we've been doing. You know, in all seriousness though, this is a massive victory. There are millions upon millions of people across the world and millions of people who have yet to be born who are going to live their lives free of the effect of radiation poisoning because people stood up and fought nuclear testing. Yeah.

people stood up and fought nuclear testing. Yeah. And, you know, this is the message that I want to sort of end Earth Day with, which is the people who are destroying this world are incredibly powerful and they are willing to kill protesters in order to keep their power and keep maiming the world further.

But if you just keep fighting them, no matter what they throw at you, if you just, every single time they hit you, if you just come back and keep fighting them again, you can win. And this is the way that it happens all right well that's that's a good that's a nice that's a nice note to end on so everybody get out there um and get nuked once and then everything's fine yeah yeah get nuked once

and you'll be okay like that scientist who drank the plutonium, it's surprisingly easy to not die when you get exposed to unbelievable quantities of radiation. That seems like a responsible note to end on. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now

until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Thanks for listening. most terrifying legends and lords 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 Tex 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions.

So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.