Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 148 - The Time a Pyramid Scheme Caused a Civil War

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Bunkers! Fraud! A guy robbing a bank with a rocket launcher! Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm https://unherd.com/2022/01/how-albania-became-a-pyramid-scheme/ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/albania/articles/the-pyramid-crisis-in-albania/ https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.htm

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crowlow by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe and with me today is host of You Don't Know History, Mike McGinnis, again, returning champion. The returning champ, yes. I'm trying to get on your level, man. is host of You Don't Know History, Mike McGinnis, again, returning champion. The returning champ, yes. I'm trying to get on your level, man. That's what I'm trying to do. And you actually have to go down.

Yeah. I'm up to five patrons now on Patreon, so I'm almost there. Hell yeah. I remember when I started, I rarely talk about how this is my job now. And I don't regret that by any means. But I remember when Nick and I started our Patreon, I was like, SoundCloud is charging me $15 a month. I don't want to pay this. That's the whole reason why I started it.

And now there's like 1 fifteen hundred people on it. It's kind of baffling. But I mean, fuck, if I could do it, literally anybody can do it. That's how I figured, man. Like I've lucked out like we broke fifty one hundred listens today for the podcast. Dude. So like for 14 episodes, that's nothing to like, you know, shake your ass at. You know, that's that's a nice little turnout. So I'm hopefully'm hopefully you know with me being able to do a couple more bonus episodes and if i ever learn how to stream properly and that goes well like that'll help i guess

i never quite figured out streaming and then i out then i got very uh disinterested in it i got as disinterested in it as i got as fast as I got interested in it. Yeah. Like I would love to play video games on it, but I'm like a straight console guy and I'm not that good. So I suck at every game that I play, which was like an in joke. Like,

Oh, Joe's just getting murdered all the time. Like, yeah, I guess. Thankfully I was better at war in person. Otherwise this podcast wouldn't happen. Oh dude. Yeah. That's, that's how the last time I was better at war in person. Otherwise, this podcast wouldn't happen. Oh, dude. Yeah, that's that's how the last time I played like a war game, I had like a 12 year old kid talk shit to me and that hurt my feeling so bad.

I was like, I'm never playing Call of Duty. It's just I'm not doing. Did you really play Call of Duty if you didn't get shit talked by a 12 year old or someone like call you a racial slur? 12 year old or someone like call you a racial slur? I don't think so. I think that's part of the prereqs. Like you have to sign it in the terms of use that you will be verbally berated by a preteen at some point. You know, I,

you know, growing up, I was playing Xbox live. Right. And I have to say in a time before moderation that these kids today, I don't think they'd make it. Yeah. Like you couldn't get banned off make it. You couldn't get banned

off Xbox Live. You really couldn't. It was impossible. Oh, no. I'm pretty sure that you could say whatever you wanted to on Xbox Live. Yeah. People won't say in public. I'm pretty sure they were saying in public on Xbox Live.

You could send messages, and there's always grotesque death threats. I get those like on twitter now but like they're always from like burner accounts because even twitter will ban those yeah but like xbox live like had no like there was you could mute people i think i don't know there wasn't a lot of built-in moderation tools and nobody gave a shit yeah i think bill gates just wanted to make his money he wasn't worried about making a safe environment for people to game well it's a lot like yeah we'll get on topic eventually people who leave bad comments about me taking 20 minutes to get to the topic um but like i think

it's a lot like facebook yeah like when no like nobody had any idea how humans would interact when you gave them anonymity and an internet connection? Like, oh, it just turns out everybody sucks. Like, okay, now we got to quickly backpedal and clean this up. And it's now been 30 odd years and nobody's really done it yet. I'm starting to feel like humanity is not supposed to be that connected. I say as we're looking at each other on a Skype call for a podcast across an entire Pacific Ocean and continental United States. Yeah. But, you know, I agree with you there because like, dude, or I think if you're going to have this kind of like super connectability. It should only be between certain people. I don't think I should, like some people should not be

allowed to reach out and talk to everybody because like you, I get death threats for a whole other reason. And it's just like, bro, you can't spell like, you know, I have the words in their little tweet or misspelled or their instant message or whatever, right?

And then I just try and be as nice as i can be um i'm like oh you know like i throw out the old southern thing bless your heart thank you for your message and then they just gave more i always like some like hearts back where i screenshot it because it's funny one day i'm actually going to get cornered uh like when the prod boys threatened to show up to my book signing in Seattle, but I still went to and they didn't show up. Like I'm going to be like, oh, you're the guy who spelled something

incorrectly and they're just going to like stab me again. Let's face it. I don't think there's ever been a prod boy that's opened up a book or a dictionary. So I really question many of their members ability to spell and speak real sentences well it's like one of those weird things that i always get death death threats whenever i uh put out uh book events like it's not a steel like literally the whole point of the book event is you know the place and time of where i'm

currently going to be like and like i've never even had anybody come up and like troll me well i did have like a crazy ass old guy once but that wasn't his fault he got out of a home somewhere and went to a bar which i could respect because like in a long enough timeline if i somehow don't die by the age of 50 or my brain doesn't turn to complete smucker's jelly that's probably my future but like he showed up and was like huge in a queue stuff um and i slithered out from behind the chair and pawned him off on somebody else and hid in the bathroom until they left dude that's you know what when you when you're doing book event, you've got somebody from the publication company or the publication house. That's their job.

You get the cue guy while I go hide in the bathroom. There's no need to further savage my poor agent. Sherry has to deal with me. Mike, I don't know how to frame this question. This is the first time we've ever talked about this country, I think, on this podcast. And it's Albania. How do you feel about our good friends Albania? And I do need to preface this with, once upon a time, we were the top podcast in Albania for some reason.

A banter into the crowd. Okay, I will be answering to the crowd. Okay. I'm going to keep, I'll keep that in mind. But what I know about Albania, let's see. Um, it's a small Balkan country.

It was invaded by Italy, uh, in like 1939, I think. And they have a diaspora community in Kosovo that went around, uh, drop kicking Serbs for a little bit. So I respect that. Yeah, it's like everything in the Balkans. I'm going to say 10 things and there's going to be 15 very angry people in any comment section. And I see you. I hear you.

And I don't care. And like, I get it. It's the same thing whenever I talk about Armenia or Azerbaijan or Turkey. You get the weirdest, most violently reactionary nationalists and racists in your comments. Not saying Albania would do that. Albania is great. Number one, we love you. Yes. Again, I don't know why we were the top podcast in Albania would do that. Albania is great. Number one, we love you. Again, I don't know why we were the top podcast in Albania. I've

never once said an Albanian word on this show. I don't even know if Albanian is a language. I'm pretty sure it is, but I don't know. I want to say they have their own language and I hope nobody takes offense to this, but I have always had trouble keeping up with any Balkan language from the Balkans, like Serbo-Croat or Croatian or Slovenian.

They do have their own language. I just had to Google it while I was recording. You know, but I mean, Albania, we love you. I'm with Joe on this one. Albania, you are aces in my book. Number one, don't let anybody shit talk you now we do have to

talk about a lot of bad things that happened to Albania and one of those bad things that happened was pyramid schemes now as anybody in the military like Mike and myself were you're probably pretty familiar with pyramid schemes as being those things that sucker all the spouses into um or the lieutenants or your lieutenants

man or you or you're just like i had a lot of ncos that involved your first line supervisor trying to get you like a lawyer on speed dial or whatever i had one of those in my platoon it was uh prepaid legal uh and he got like everyone in the platoon as a downline except me, because I was like, no. One of my XOs, actually two straight XOs, did the healthcare supplements.

Oh, is it Amway? Yeah, I think it was something like that. Yeah, but it was like... Herbalife. It's Herbalife. They sponsor a whole fucking soccer team in la oh you know it's a galaxy i think yeah yeah it was a beckham's team that's that's all i remember that but yeah they would they would come in with like their shakes and be like hey man if you guys want to look like me uh you know and then one of them ended up going and being like one of the top

earners dude and like he got to go to la.A. and be fed by, you know, all the urban life people, you know, and it's just like, wow, man, you know, I could have had that life. But I have, you know, morals and you could make a living exploiting people. um no i i don't know enough about pyramid schemes to fully explain like banking and fraud and stuff mostly because i'm not qualified to do that so i found somebody who could or a website anyway investopedia uh i'm sure a website that is very popular with people that we strongly dislike by the name um they do do a very decent explanation of what a pyramid scheme is. So I'm going to read it verbatim so nobody can say I'm fucking this up.

So a pyramid scheme is a sketchy and unsustainable business model where a few top level members recruit newer members who pay upfront costs up the chain to those who enrolled them. As newer members in turn recruit underlings under their own, a portion of the subsequent fees they receive is also sent up the chain to the person that recruited them. Now let's assume the following. Founder Mike sits alone at the top of the heap, represented by the number one. Assuming Mike recruits 10 second tiered people to the level directly below

him, where each newbie must issue him a cash payment for the privilege of joining. Not only do those recruits, um, those tier, was it second tier people recruit 10 tier three people of their own totaling a hundred people who also must pay tier, uh also must pay fees up the tier through two and one.

In the end, Mike makes all the money. Yeah, if you remember Bernie Madoff, it wasn't like a sectioned off part like that. Remember, for him, it was investments. Like, here, I'm going to invest your money for you. That's a Ponzi scheme. And a Ponzi scheme is part of a pyramid scheme in effect. So according to hard sell pitches made at recruitment events, those bold enough to take the pyramid plunge will theoretically receive substantial cash from the recruits below them that they have to go find. But in practice, the prospective

members in these pools tend to dry up very quickly. Because I mean, by this business model, you either... The end goal is everyone is involved in your company, everyone on earth. And that doesn't even actually... Someone once did the math of how many cycles that would take. And it's actually not that many. You're like 100 people recruit 100 people recruit 100 people. And then so on and so down the line. Anyway, eventually you're going to run a people to sucker.

And by the time this scheme almost always shuts down, sometimes by the law, mostly it just comes crumbling down because people get fucked over. Or Mike in this situation, not you, Idea Mike, Pyramid Mike,

fucks off with all the money because he realizes the wall is closing in. These top-level operatives walk away with loads of cash while the majority of everyone else are left empty-handed or, in many cases, loads of fucking debt. Now, there's a couple different kinds of pyramid schemes uh

some rely heavily on fees from new recruits and uh some of these that that quote-unquote just pyramid schemes do not sell anything then they're they don't let me rephrase that they don't sell anything of any intrinsic value okay uh then then there's the mlm or the multi-level marketing company these are the things that we're familiar with because an outright pyramid scheme is just straight up illegal um an mlm is a gray zone it should absolutely be illegal but they do sell something something. Say like, you know, vacuums, supplements, or knives, or legal advice. Leggings. Or like, is that Lululemon

that's like that, or is there a different one? I think it's Lululemon, isn't it? I don't know. I think that's a chain. I don't know enough about women's pants. I don't fucking know. Now, probably the most popular and damaging scheme up until the one we are going to talk about in Albania is the one that involved Bernie Madoff. And that was a Ponzi scheme.

Ponzi schemes are investment cons that work with the premise of robbing Peter to pay Paul. So they may not necessarily adopt a pyramid scheme structure with that pyramid structure with Bernie Madoff in this sense being on top. But they do promise high returns to existing investors by taking investment money from new blood, often lured by the prospects of too good to be true returns. Most Ponzi participants end up losing everything. What would happen is like for say i'm your banking guy i've opened lion's bank donkey bank whatever um donk coin and you know it's only a matter of time before that happens now man yeah and this bank is you and 1500 people in the patreon and like i get i tell everyone if you give me your five5 for your tier or whatever, I can promise you

$20 back in six months. And you might get your money. Maybe some of it, you won't get the whole amount. But what I'm doing is I'm simply paying you with other new people's money while slowly keeping more and more for my own. So again, like every other pyramid scheme, I'm going to run out of people and eventually everything's going to crash out. I might make off with a lot of money. I might end up in prison, but you're definitely ending up with nothing.

I remember Madoff the most, especially because I'm a sports nerd. Remember, that's how they got the Wilpons, the guys who owned the Mets. It's always the Mets guys. I'm not a baseball guy, but I know enough about generalities about sports. It's always people that own the Mets that end up getting fucked over because the owner is so stupid. Dude, yeah, and that was the thing. They almost got cleaned out, and essentially the Mets were the most valuable thing they owned, but they couldn't put any money into the team.

And they're in the largest TV market, the United States, you know, the Yankees over there, the Yankees, I think one year spent close to like 250 million on salary. And the Mets were like at 80 mil. Um,

yeah. Birdie Adolph had all their fucking money. Oh dude. Yeah. And the thing is, they just got sold to, um, uh,

Steve Phelps, i believe who's one of the largest hedge fund managers like in the country oh perfect i'm sure that won't go badly yeah yeah i think his name is phelps but oh let's get back on topic all right i could i could i could talk to metz financials all day long so this and like madoff's scheme was so big he damn near crashed the world's economy which fuck Bernie Madoff however sometimes you have to sit back and admire the grift like he I have never

seen interviews with him I don't care enough about economics to give a shit but he must have been the smoothest motherfucker to ever live because he never had any he was just lying and people took his fucking word for it never had any he he was just lying and people took his fucking word for it yeah and i mean he was fixing the books and stuff like that so he's like yeah look at all these returns i'm giving you 500 now remember while we go on remember he's conning

people who are supposed to know better yeah he's conning people who own the fucking Mets, billionaires, millionaires, multiple different state and county retirement funds and stuff. So these people who are supposed to be accountants and all these other kind of guys, business managers or whatever, got conned into these things. So that isn't always the case. And MLMs in particular target poor people, people who do not have a firm grasp on investment or money. So it's really easy to fuck someone over. So you don't see the big picture like, don't you want to own your own business and shit like that? They target people that have no realistic hope of moving up our societal ladder because the American dream is a fucking lie. Herbalife and others like it it for instance heavily target uh newly

immigrated um like uh latina people yeah um who barely speak english and like yep go sell our fucking supplements to all your neighbors who we also suckered into this yeah um so it's badly fucked up um now that you kind of understand that we have to understand albania though through most of its history that we will be talking about its technical term was the people socialist republic of albania for a very long period of time from 1946 to 1992 give or take uh it was ruled by one guy and for hoaxia uh ho Hoxha was born a Muslim, though a faith he would later renounce in favor of state-based atheism. He was named

after Enver Pasha by his father, something that's personally problematic to me. Oh, man. You know, I thought we were going to be able to get away through one episode without having a reference to a war crime, Joe, and it just never meant to be. Every time, baby.

No, I mean, as he was born in the Ottoman Empire, having a reference to a war crime, Joe. And it just never meant to be. Every time, baby. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, as he was born in the Ottoman Empire, I can hardly blame him for that. Though he eventually moved to France to go to college, which was common for people of the higher rungs, you know, to leave to go to college somewhere else in Europe. Especially in France, especially in France. If I remember correctly, there was an educational exchange with like higher up the hierarchy, Ottoman citizens being able to go to university in Paris for like nothing.

Yeah, there was a there was a long period of time. I mean, the Ottoman Empire really didn't know if it wanted to be a cosmopolitan European empire or its own caliphate at various different parts of its existence. But it's an exchange of knowledge. It's pretty common. But Hoxha lost his state scholarship for being

a huge dumbass and failing almost immediately. And of course, he ended up in power. Of course. Yeah. I mean, he did end up in power for arguably good reasons he moved back to albania in 1939 fascist italy invaded the small country during mussolini's comical attempt to recreate the roman empire um now at this point hoaxia became a partisan and a pretty goddamn good one by 1946 albania was liberated and hoaxia had managed to politic his way into becoming the first secretary of the only legal party in the country, the Communist Party, which, of course, made him the head of state.

Of course. Yeah. Now, unfortunately for everyone, rather than like, I don't know, be a Tito in this situation, he became a Stalin. And he was actually just a straight up Stalinist. He loved him some of that Jay Stahls. Oh, yeah, he became a Stalin. He was actually just a straight-up Stalinist. He loved him some of that Jay Stahls. Oh yeah, he really did. Everything I've ever read, it's only been small chunks.

He became the ultimate Stalin fanboy. I'm surprised he didn't grow the mustache. He just couldn't. It's like guys who really want to get that... I mean, your beard is magnificent. I can grow a thick

beard. There was that whole consumerists blow up a couple years ago. There were people trying to sell beard oils and shit. There was people who absolutely wanted to get into that aesthetic but just couldn't because they just couldn't grow a beard.

Maybe he's like, man, the only thing between me and Joseph is I just can't grow a beard. Fuck. Or a mustache. I can't get that sweet mustache, man. You know what? Albanian people, you're going to feel my rage on this one. A lot of people have daddy issues. He has mustache

issues. He did do some good things. To be fair, Albania was incredibly rural and underdeveloped when he took over. It didn't even have a university. And he dragged Albania into the present

day, kicking and screaming in the same way Josephoseph stalin the soviet union which was industrial scale murder uh mostly through neglect and disappearing of his political enemies um though the friendship with the soviets would sour pretty badly for reasons that are pretty obvious joseph stalin died um that was it and he really did not like nikita khrushchev um it's because nikita didn't rock that stash man that's all yeah not only did he not have a cool stash he had no hair and he also denounced stalin those are three things that hoax cannot abide by yeah but i will i will say nikita did the right i like i would have failed to have seen him bang

his shoe on the you know on the podium at the un i would have loved to have just seen i think that's that is some crazy rage man he is an interesting character because like even his contemporaries in the soviet union kind of thought he was a fucking clown but i mean he smashed shoes and then like debated richard nixon in a fake kitchen one time. It was fucking weird. Yeah, man. I'm a half time. I got to find a Russian history scholar just so I can do a whole episode on Khrushchev. Like, that's what I think I need.

Now, when this happened, Albania decided we got to move closer to the other giant communist power that's not even remotely nearby. China. Oh, yeah, that's not even remotely nearby, China. Oh, yeah, sounds right. Now, whenever anything bad happened with Albania at this point, he decided he'd blame it on the Soviets because they hated Albania for turning against them, which is kind of true, honestly,

that the Soviets hated them, not that the KGB was constantly fucking with them or also Yugoslavia. He really hated Yugoslavia. Really? Yeah. I figured if he's moving away from the Soviet Union, that's like a buddy that is right next door that you can be like, hey, we can work together. It's hard to tell.

He was a weird guy. At one point, his own party, because hypothetically, the first or the chairman of the Communist Party is supposed to be able to have to answer to his own party, even though they never really do. His party was like, hey, we're kind of unhappy with how you're running Albania. And they all quickly got disappeared and replaced with his close friends and family. got disappeared and replaced with his close friends and family. I'm sure Stalin is just giving him a slight head nod from the afterlife, like, well done.

Well done, child. You know what, Enver? We could have been pals. We could have been better pals. Now, at this point, Hoxha replaced Stalinism with his version of Maoism. He also adopted like the concept of people's war and stuff which we'll talk about a little bit more later on because he

he's a little bit of a dogmatic guy and by that mean he follows things to the letter at a very stupid level but he got very into Maoism but then in the 1970s Mao died leading him to split off from China.

He really didn't believe in any kind of successor, because at this point, he's outlived all of these people. He's like, huh, clearly only I can be the leader here because you guys are mortals and just keep fucking dying. I mean, he would live damn near until the 90s i i think he died in the late late 80s um did you imagine like being that guy that's just like a follower and you see all your like uh your paragons dying off i get to see him like sitting there with like a coffee just like you know what i'm the left. I'm here to lead the people. By rules of the first international, the last head of state of a communist party left standing

becomes its leader, obviously. It's the Kumite, but for communist leaders. It's a Thailander for communist leaders. Now, at this point, Hoxha realized that Albania could only rely on Albania since all of their big daddy states

keep dying so he kind of decided that he would do the European version of Juche oh I do Joe I knew you were going there I knew you were going there I was hoping you wouldn't go there but you didn't and I mean to his credit he's not wrong

um like as someone who does a lot of history research regarding armenia small states with no real resources nobody gives a fuck about you except you everybody's trying to play you so like hoax is like you know nobody gives a shit about albania except albania so we're just going to do albanian stuff over here and at this point it officially becomes illegal to leave or come into the country holy shit yeah

and one of the ways that Albania would have to take care of itself was defense remember he had pissed off China kind of he really pissed off the Soviet Union he thought Czechoslovakia was trying to murder him in his sleep. So he just painted all these enemies that probably didn't really give a fuck about him. Though admittedly, he had seen other people that told the Soviets to go fuck themselves get invaded.

So he blew it way out of proportion, but also it was something that happened. Yeah. So he decided that he needed to buckle down and Albania needed to prepare itself for any of these possible wars. So one big downside of this, much like Armenia I just talked about, Albania's fucking tiny has a population

of around 2 million people. You're not going to be able to create an effective defense force that's going to fight off the Soviets or the Chinese with that somehow, or the Yugoslavs. Not that China's going to be in fucking Albania, but you know, he talked about it.

Oh, Enver, there was a lot of ground to cover between Albania and China, bro. A lot of ground. If China's knocking on your door, other things have happened that have taken Albania and China, bro. A lot of ground. If China is knocking on your door, other things have happened that have taken Albania out of the equation. Now, it's like I said, you're not going to be able to build a

well-trained, highly effective defense force out of a population of 2 million people. You're going to create a speed bump. But let's say he was going to do that. Small problem. Hoxha hated the fucking military. He was never in the military. He was a partisan.

Yeah. So he was never a general or whatever. And he said, you know what? He sat down along all of the people too terrified to tell him this is a bad idea. He's like, we don't need a military. We've liberated albania with militia let's just do that oh god he's a libertarian's wet dream now there was a part of chinese history which is long past this is mostly around the era leading

up to their involvement in the Korean War that the Chinese military abolished ranks and leaders of squads and other organizations would be voted on. And the only real control would be by political officers, none of whom had normal military training.

Now, China banned this because it did not fucking work. And it became incredibly apparent how bad of an idea it was hoax did not i mean admittedly china had the experience of fighting in korea i'll be like huh i guess like a chain of command is a good idea uh hoax had never fought any wars so he never he never got like slapped upside the head and told the czech his bad ideas dude and the thing is is there hasn't been a piece of history where a 100 militia based military organization has been successful i mean the closest in modern day would be like the

sdf um yeah and you know rojava but they also have a marketed chain of command for that exact reason. Yeah. And they, I mean, they had some, I mean, I would say they had some experience fighting, you know, and, and, you know, but you're not going to have like, we're not voting for our company commanders, you know, we're not voting for our squad leaders. It's a real bad idea. It's a horrible idea. That's how, that's how we end up in charge of Sierra Leone, man. Okay, that's how that happened. I mean, people being really loyal to generals and officers that give them whatever they want so they can curry favor is how we got Julius Caesar. So maybe it's not the best idea to create personality cults around military leaders based on popularity.

the best idea to create personality cults around military leaders based on popularity. Now, like I said, Hoxha was pretty obsessed with this concept of a partisan fighting force. Now, there was a regular Albanian military, but it was effectively a skeleton.

Everything else would be based on a decentralized militia. Hypothetically, there's an idea of how to control all these. It's never put into place. And because Hoax should never use anything except his Chevrolet eggs to go fight a war, he thought, we don't need that many vehicles either.

So 70% of the entire force was technically infantry. There was almost no mechanization ever attempted. And all of its weapons were old and decrepit because he had pissed off both the Chinese and the Soviets. So he couldn't get... He couldn't get shit.

He couldn't get ammo and weapons, sugar mama, to drop some stuff for him. He managed to be the only communist country in the world that didn't get like the communist weapons pipeline. Yeah. I mean, well, that's the thing. When Tito, like I said, told Stalin to fuck himself. Right.

He went stumping around the world and created the non-aligned nation movement. Right. And then look at what Yugoslavia did. And I mean, you can't really compare the two. Right. Because Yugoslavia was much bigger and probably, you know, as far as resource-wide probably had more than albania but they just started making their own shit that's how we got that's how we got the gem the yugo uh one of the most worthless automobiles ever but hey they made a car they they had a car now albania did have some resources now we're

going to talk a little bit about where those resources went. Bunkers. Now, if there's one thing people knew when they saw the title of the show or this episode, rather, they brought the first thing that probably jumped to their mind when they thought Albania was bunkers. It was a very good reason for that. Now, Albania would always be fighting a defensive war. They're never going to invade anyone. Yeah. And they would need defenses to fight from. So in 1950, Hoxha

had an engineer build a bunker prototype that was cheap and easily constructed, mostly out of unreinforced poured concrete, though eventually they'd become reinforced. And they're incredibly fucking sturdy. So the guy did. And he came up with something that looks like it

just a concrete dome sticking out of the ground with a single gun port some would eventually evolve to have two gun ports um and when hoax asked him if it was sturdy and secure he said yeah so hoax made him prove it by stuffing him inside of it and running him over with a tank. Holy shit. Which, good for the engineer. It held up. Didn't collapse. That was considered good enough. Oh, man. I don't think anybody told Hoxha, like, I don't think they're going to run these

over. They're going to shoot them. But, okay, cool. Well, fine. Whatever. Let's do it your way, bro. Just tell him it's a good idea, dude. Don't piss him off. Yeah, he might stuff you in the next bunker and that one I ran a fucking concrete. Now

anybody who studies military history knows that we have laughed at more than a few bad fixed defensive positions throughout history. The Maginot line comes to mind. But Hoxha's bunker fever puts all of these to shame a defensive line requires you you know one position supporting another with effective

intersecting fields of fire in order to create a massive kill zone long story short this is a good defense in depth yeah this includes trenches even like hastily built foxholes or, you know, ranger graves or whatever. You're going to put them close enough together so they can support one another. Because it turns out one or two guys and half of a hole in the ground. Not a great fighting position if nobody else is around to help. Hoaxha decided he didn't need any of that fucking bullshit. uh hoaxia decided he didn't need any of that fucking bullshit oh hundreds of thousands of these bunkers are built seemingly at total random all throughout the country many of them all alone in the middle of nowhere or some in the middle of the fucking street in the bit in busy cities

oh my god dude sometimes they were just plopped down at the corner of like housing projects one it's just on the beach and it gets like submerged when tide comes in can you imagine being like like it's your it's your week you're your monthly drill and you're the militia guy that's got to go in and just man your post there on the beach for the weekend. If you leave the bunker, the political officer will shoot you. But, sir, it's high tide. You'll die a hero. Give your medal to your parents.

Now, these bunkers, another part of like a defensive array of positions like this that would be important is communication. Right. a defensive array of positions like this that would be important is communication, right? Uh, you know, an overall somewhat vision of command to try to, you know, supply and talk to and get orders to these bunkers. Right.

Um, nope. Mm. Instead, they would just be the responsibilities of the families who happen to live nearby not only would they be their response to defend it uh they'd also be their job to maintain and keep it clean like oh yeah good thing i know how to fix this concrete fucking dome i work at the coffee house you asshole oh no, Alexei, I can't

go out with you tonight. I gotta go sweep out and mop the bunker. Honey, did you dust the dome today? Just with a little fucking feather duster. Now, they were drilled several times a month without any warning

at all for days at a time. Now, another important thing of this would be like we need to figure if we're going to use this as a system say like we're going to arm the whole country effectively we're going to turn the whole country into a fighting position people have guns right any guns and ammo didn't get them did not get them because you know like all tyrants you can't arm your fucking populace they'll kill you so when um when drill month or week came up or whatever they would be issued out weapons that had no ammunition

no these people ever fucking fired their guns at all come on none of the radios are sorry none of the uh bunkers had radio so there's no way to talk to one another dude even the imagino the imagino line even had communications trenches man that were lined with like telegraph wire and telephone like oh god you were a paratrooper yeah yeah that was me okay so this is my somehow out of all this this is one of my favorites um you know obviously so if you

jump back in time when like you guys would you know jump um you would be aiming for fields and stuff like that um now hoax show was worried about paratroopers like storms of the the airborne guards of the soviet union would would land all through Albania or whatever. So he's like, I have an idea. We'll simply attach spikes to the top of the trees. They're not going to be fucking landing in the trees anyway. So he had like a whole army of

young pioneers go out and just affix giant metal spikes to trees. This just gets better and better, man. What if we turned the whole forest into a phalanx? Well, in Enver's defense, I don't know if you know about this little

operation called Market Garden, but it didn't exactly go well. And if you know anything else about 82nd History, when we jumped into Panama, do you know how many of them actually hit the airfield? Only about a quarter of them. Everybody else was landing on the buildings

that was around the airport. That's why you use a whole division. If you throw enough paratroopers at a problem, you'll solve the problem, or at the very least, you'll have less paratroopers. Yes, it's true. You don't have to worry about feeding them anymore. Paratroopers are just like orcs. No, dude, if we're going disposable,

we're Imperial Guard, okay? Just massive bodies, massive amounts of bodies being thrown at the issue. Eventually, we'll get there. Yeah. Now, the problem of everything we just talked about, of course, is that in reality, building hundreds of thousands of bunkers

is very hard and expensive to do. It requires a lot of material. At one point, all of this cost 2% of all material product produced by the entire nation of Albania. God damn. It cost the equivalent of two

Maginot lines and required three times as much concrete. I mean, I'm not arguing the success of the Maginot line. However, times as much concrete. I mean, I'm not arguing the success of the Maginot line. However, I am arguing that it's a much better idea. I mean, even,

you know, we fucking bar. Yeah. You know, like we, we make fun of the Maginot line. Right. But the thing is,

if I mean, you know, this is a whole other thing. Like we can talk about it at some other time, but quickly, like France was decimated after the First World War. They were not able to fill, like, their conscription

numbers. Everybody was dead or disabled. Exactly, so like, they could only man it with, I think, like, maybe half the people that it was supposed to be manned by. Yeah. You know, so, like, I'm going to give the French a pass there because, let's face it, if Germany

is ever going to go anywhere, you know they're going through the low countries, bro. You should have built that ship further north to cut them. Hear me out. What if every neighborhood in France got its own Maginot line? Oh, bro, yes. Ember Hoxha, baby. France just started building domes,

man. If Ember wasn't busy fucking around and failing out of college, he literally could have built France's defenses for them. Just walls embrace domes. Now, obviously, a whole two percent of a national of total national output, which is incredible amounts of material. This pulled time and investment away from things like infrastructure development or literally anything else would have been more useful. Literally setting the money on fire would have been

better use because then people would be warm in the winter. They could have built their own version of the Yugo. Come on, you can't beat that. Also, a small problem with building thousands upon thousands of bunkers and irritable land is that then you can't farm on it. And you ever somehow building these fucking things also managed to kill 100 people a year.

What? I don't know how. Oh, you know what? I'm assuming they ran out of rebar. Like, I got an idea. We'll reinforce it using human bones. Get inside. Get it.

Get in. No, you know exactly how it killed 100 people. It's 100 militia members that went fucking around and found out these things. All of them were just from the beach bunkers drowning every year. This meant that they killed way more Albanbanians than they ever would invaders thousands of times over good job yeah well done edward well done though i do have to say the quality of their construction is not in doubt due to how well they were built and are secured to where they were built they were incredibly fucking hard to remove and that's why they're mostly still all over the place in albania today and causing all kinds of problems dude i

want to kind of go to albania just to see these fucking things man i would love to go me and nick joked that when we became the top podcast in albania our first live show ever was going to be in albania i'm not fucking kidding bro i'll fucking do it i i dude i want to be there it's just like i'll hold a boob mic or something dude be in some shitty dive bar in tarana yeah lions by tarana baby let's fucking go if you're albanian slide to my email tell me how we can make this happen i'm gonna get vaccinated at the end of the month everything's good now um they so they keep causing problems and hoksha is and was completely insane um he considered everything about these bunkers to be a highly guarded state secret and some of these bunkers for instance were

considered uh like integral to the state's defense so like in 2005 someone found a random unmarked bunker only a few miles away from the capital which contained 16 tons of mustard gas holy shit totally unsecure and unguarded everyone like oh look at all the fucking mustard gas i found and nobody's sure when it got there how long long it had been there, or who the fuck made it. They're like, a wild mustard gas appears. You know, it's shit like that that makes War Dogs, you know, that shitty movie based on real life events. Yeah, this is exactly how this happened. Yeah, it makes it so much more plausible.

Like, I feel like I could just go into the mustard gas business right now and have no issue getting stock missed out it peaked in 2005 apparently um i i believe they uh they like asked someone because like they lack the ability to properly dispose of it and i think like the u.s and italy disposed of it for them. I assume that means we gave it to somebody else. Yeah. Hey, Israel, you need some mustard gas? Who's found this Albanian shit? Be careful. We don't know how long it's been there. It was unsecured for a bit.

It's a little water damaged. It's like trying to sell an old Nintendo DS or something. I found it at the bottom of my old table it's a little wonky it still works um yes he's great man it's great now eventually hoaxia would die um and communism would fall apart in albania and after that a guy named asali barisha would come to power to guide it through the new way of liberal democracy yeah if you if you hear that that's that's the sound of bad tidings coming for albania in reality barisha was a fucking dick uh and he

imprisoned most of his political opponents uh someone pointed out he attempted to do liberalism with uh soviet characteristics oh my which is the most terrifying sentence i've read in a very long time like he tried to just like liberalize the economy while keeping all of the horrible oppressive state uh things in place that were already there oh oh so like what if you go to walmart but get disappeared by the kgb yeah you know i mean it's it seems legit i mean that was one of the unfortunate aspects of the soviet union falling and then you had all the former soviet satellite states uh you know you end up with presidents for life and quite a few of them sometimes you get to azerbaijan yeah there we go fuck you Azerbaijan fuck Azerbaijan in the chat now they might have to

cut that out I'm not sure how many times I can say fuck Azerbaijan and stay on topic now this is the part of the story where we get to talk about a very stupid economic idea called shock doctrine or some people call it shock therapy um because you know that always equates good things right yeah yeah i mean shock shock

therapy is a net positive right yeah it's not always used in movies and books as like a way that someone was driven into insanity or died also in life because that happened a lot um now again i'm not an economist so i'm gonna do my best job that i can to explain shock doctrine without going into it too much because like all the sources on this like referred to books like i'm not reading a whole fucking book and a foot footnote to this goddamn episode yeah so i mean and especially when you when you start reading books about shock doctrine especially where we are politically, you're going to want to find the nearest heavy traffic and then throw yourself into it. You either go further left or you work for McKinsey. Yeah.

Now, all these newly emerging countries into the quote unquote world market, all the Soviet satellite states, Russia itself, then Albania. Just so there's no confusing, Albania was not part of the soviet union i'm not i'm not conflating the two they were separate i'm referring that because a lot of it was built on soviet ideas but he called it hoaxism because if i was then come up with a political outname it after myself too especially when you're the last man standing yeah when you're the last guy name that shit after yourself the thunderdome of communism um it's like that uh i keep coming back to this one movie that jet lee was in called the one when you had to kill other versions of jet lee to get more powerful every time another communist leader died and Enver Hoxha just got stronger. Yeah. Or like another dome would just pop out of the ground.

All those domes in Albania are for every communist leader Hoxha outlived. Now, shock doctrine was horrible. It did all sorts of terrible things. And what would happen is these countries that were built on a command economy or five-year, ten-year plans or whatever that most of these communist governments preferred would come out of that. And they would embrace a capitalist market economy very quickly. This meant getting rid of state subsidies, price controls, and everything else that normal people had not only enjoyed,

but come to depend upon through all of these years of command economy. To the point that a lot of people simply did not understand how things like banks worked. Yeah. Because they simply never had to deal with it or having to pay rent, things like that. And also, this needs to be kept in mind as well it wasn't just the soviet you know the old communist nations in europe it was also the global south as well especially in south america and oh yeah famously a place we never did anything bad in right yeah and not not to hijack but milton friedman was an economist who was essentially the godfather of the shock doctrine and he like there he'd never met a post-communist dictator he didn't like as long as they open up

the markets uh and and denationalized key assets like oil steel coal things like that right and you know fuck him oh yeah he's yeah. Vampiric ghoul. Now, even in the best case scenario for shock doctrine, what that looks like, I'm not entirely sure because I don't think it ever happened. This is supposed to happen gradually, like because you don't want to let me put on my liberalism cap, I guess. You don't want to throw everybody to the sharks too quickly. You want to feed them in one by one. So you're supposed to cut state subsidies and price controls and rent control and government issued housing and things like these are all things that Albanians had. Granted, the quality, not great.

I'm not saying Albania was a fucking utopia. However, these are all things people didn't have to worry about um albania would not go into this shock doctrine gradually it would become virtually overnight but in order to talk about how badly this would affect albania we do have to point out how isolated albania had become remember how i said that like immigration to and from was illegal. And Hoxha had purposely cut them off from everything else. It was this whole political theory, not to mention his paranoia. And according to Albanian law at the time, there was no such thing as private property. You had things that were like your apartment, your car.

If you had a car, most, a lot of people didn't have cars, but if you did have a car, a lot of people didn't have cars but if you did have a car uh they were considered the people's property i.e the state and it was given to you at need okay um so like you didn't own your house it was given to you and it's not like the government like knock knock motherfucker time to bounce. Unless you just get disappeared or whatever. But, you know, that little thing. I mean, at this point, money in Albania was even kind of pointless.

The Soviet Union as a whole ran into this problem as well. They're like, why bother? We don't really need it. You would work and the government would just give you what they deemed necessary. Hypothetically, obviously, it's not a perfect system or even a good one.

Now, imagine it had been this way since the 40s. It had been a lifetime since anybody had to deal with things like, I don't know, investing money or worrying about paying rent on a house uh or simply purchasing a car these are things that nobody had to worry about most importantly banks nobody ever had any business with banks there's no fucking point you don't need to go get a loan there's no loans they're not a thing that exists nobody has any day-to-day business with like the first bank of tirana or whatever um so in an incredibly short amount of time all of that's gone just yeah capitalism happens do capitalism do the thing nobody knows what the fuck is going on now the reason for this was barisha was promised international

monetary fund loans and investment. They're like, hey, you open up your shit, you get all of these loans and funds and stuff, which is the IMF is fucking terrifying for what it does to people. Yeah. Same with the WTO. But like he was like, all right, let's do this. And then, boom, Albania is open. So Berisha did all of this without instituting any new financial regulations or laws at all. So it was again, it was a libertarian's wet dream.

On accident. Yes, because Berisha certainly is not a libertarian. Granted, he's not being damaged anyway. He's he's in charge. He's never the one that's hurt by these things. Furthermore, nobody had any idea what to do. Like nobody was ever like, like hey maybe we should make like fraud illegal why would they have to worry about they never have to deal with that before

nobody had to worry about like white collar crime there was no fucking stock market last week you know uh so at the time there's only three banks in the country um and none of them were ready for an entire population of people wanting to do investments and get loans and things uh furthermore their investments were pretty bad um like they're like yeah we give you like a two percent return on your investment which is honestly pretty fucking normal right yeah it's not normally very high um but they simply could not deal with the amount of people getting involved. They couldn't offer accounts that were going to make people wealthy overnight because those don't exist. Yeah, well, I imagine those banks were probably what you would call liquid either.

Probably not. Yeah, you know, like they, you know, the state prior to opening up ran the banks they probably didn't keep a lot of it you know there'd be no reason to yeah their money isn't going to be used anywhere else it has no intrinsic value yeah you know so now you have people like doing a bank rush like yo man let me let me get a loan so i can go uh i'm heading up to belgrade to buy a yugo you know like i gotta well that's like something that something that the Soviets ran into a problem, too, is when it came to doing international deals, the ruble wasn't convertible.

Yeah. Because it wasn't based on anything, which is why they ended up trading battleships for Pepsi. Yeah, I mean, the Pepsi Navy, man, that's one of the finer episodes in your arsenal there. But I went digging more into that, which is fucking dumbfounded that, you know, soda companies had larger navies than some fucking. Yeah, it's incredible. Now, this is where the disruptors turn in.

And by disruptors, I mean money launderers and the mob. disruptors i mean money launderers and the mob um now people realize like wow our three banks in albania simply can't handle this kind of business let's do banking there was no law saying they couldn't they didn't just like start banks there weren't like we're a bank now yeah but they did frame themselves as legitimate banks and money loaners and investment firms. And they did this by simply saying they were. There was no law saying they couldn't. Now, none of these places were actually banks or investment groups. But they did market themselves as one.

So they told people, including the Albanian fucking government, that you can invest in us and we'll promise a 10% return on your investment. Now, if that sounds really high, it is. That's actually the most realistic they would go. Soon, when people were literally pouring money into them because they didn't realize anything bad was happening, they were promising 30%, 100%, 500%. It's like's like yeah it's incredible like numbers that are not real like yeah we can promise a fucking 800 return your investment for sure bro just give me all your money oh man dude they quickly realized they could simply lie and nobody would arrest like nobody's coming for and then when they did like also the cops were investing their money

the soldiers were investing their every aspect of albanian society quickly became involved in one or more of these as people assume they were religious because people were asking like barisha especially like the imf was like you have to fucking tell people to stop like even the IMF for the International Monetary Fund is like this is going to end badly like you need to tell people that these do not work and shut them down yeah if the IMF is telling you it's bad it's probably bad

because there's no larger group of opportunistic fuck sticks than the IMF yeah they're like wait we can't steal that money they need to give that money to us on these loans that we gave them. And that's probably what it was more like. But, you know, Berisha either just didn't talk

about them or patently endorsed them. So they gave them an air of legitimacy. So the people who are kind of on the fence, just pouring money into this shit. Now, in a place, there's a good reason for this now remember these uh the albanian people are are not stupid they are being exploited

that's something i need to play i need to explain these are people who do not know better they're not stupid they just are getting played by people who have done this so many times like we talked about bernie madoff he played people who have done this so many times. Like we talked about Bernie Madoff. He played people who were supposed to be smart, remember? But nobody considered these people stupid, right? Albanians got played. They got exploited by people who were professionals. Yeah, I mean, like you already said it, they didn't grow up in the free market.

They grew up in a very insular, locked-off country where everything was provided by the state. And if you don't know, you don't know. That's just... And there's always going to be people out there that take advantage

of people that don't know, and that's exactly what happened. Yeah, and they assumed that why would these people lie to me? Yeah. Straight up. And there's another good reason for this. These people were promised they assumed that, why would these people lie to me? Yeah. Straight up. And there's another good reason for this. These people were promised a free market capitalist American dream, effectively.

And most of these people lived on the equivalent of $50 a month. So the idea that they could be living like they were even in western europe was just an infallible amount of of wealth and prosperity to them so they fell for it they got fucking snookered um nobody even people who didn't want to invest didn't want to be the one person who was wrong effectively so people sold their homes their cars emptied their savings uh and in some places where they didn't have um liquid cash or things they could simply deposit their livestock which would then be sold off oh shit so the they weren't just penniless yeah at the end of this they literally had nothing yeah they took every

you could show up with fucking up your microwave ripped off the wall they're like yeah sure fine they didn't give a fuck god damn free like that like you know when the when the wall came down the soviet union fell i was like 10 or 11 and i remember seeing it on tv and as a 10 year old you know 10 11 year old kid you're like like, wow, man, this is great. And then as you get older and hear about what happened to all these countries that had state economies that, you know, Friedman and Kissinger and all those types of assholes essentially forced, you know, through things, you know, things like the WTO and the IMF. And you see the after effects. You're just like, dude, how is that okay? You know, like, how is that fucking okay?

Line needs to go up, man. Yeah, gotta have the stonks. They gotta keep going up, man. You know, it's people like, you know, the Freemans, the Kissingers especially, they don't see people. Like, they don't see the guy who is literally turning over his entire life into

some mafia controlled money laundering scheme they see you know the investments from going into albania and stripping this country yeah down to the fucking bone because it's not like there's no oil here there's no natural gas you're not fucking take you're just taking anything that holds up this country for short-term gain that's all it is because albania is still dealing with the debt with the downfall this is when we're alive this is happening in the fucking 90s that like shit like this does not go away in 30 years yeah like the great great grandkids will be dealing with this doubt like the after effects of this simply because like you couldn't bother to extend a helping hand to countries who are trying to open up a little bit rather you had you had to like no you need to like go full dick and

balls capitalism or we're not going to even give you any imf funds because you want to build a school or whatever yeah that's fucking bullshit anyway now this is about where any even corrupt government would be like okay we need to slow this shit down um maybe you know don't be so obvious about it um but they didn't um yeah the one economic advisor in the government that did be like hey you know i get it we're all making money but like we should probably stop that he got his ass thrown in prison uh when the imf warned that like you know we've done some investigations and this is all a money laundering scheme they were accused of being jealous of Albania's rapid success. Oh my god. Now, most of this money is being laundered

straight out of the country. But other parts of it is used to fuel gun, drug, and oil smuggling operations controlled by the mafia and members of the government. And a lot of those guns would go right next door into all the falcons wars where

they would use be used to do all sorts of horrible crimes against humanity another effect of this clusterfuck was most jobs and in employment sectors within albania got torpedoed now there's a reason for this um state factories can't compete with outside goods. And now that price controls were gone and the factories were no longer being propped up by state subsidies, they just collapsed. As the entire economy as it previously existed

just died. But this is also how jobs were promised. Like in Albania before this, they're like, oh yeah, you'll just go get a job at the factory or you'll work on the state farm or the state has a job for you.

Now all those are gone. They're gone and there's nothing. Nothing has replaced it. Those factories haven't been privatized. They haven't been sold off some because they're functionally worthless. Yeah. You know, I was curious about that

whether they had uh like some of those you know mafia types went and bought some of them um as like fronts um you know like i was telling you earlier i did that whole you know my whole stream about the coal strike and what you know thatcher did to the coal industry you know by mass you know massively privatizing it in the years after the 8045 coal strike, you know, you saw, I think it was like 166,000 co-workers or members of the union. And by the late nineties, there was only 200 members, you know? So like, uh, you know, that kind of massive privatization, you know, someone's going to benefit. And I was just curious whether, you know, that happened in Albania, but apparently not. is going to benefit. And I was just curious whether that happened in Albania, but apparently not. Well, maybe if they had coal.

I think the problem was because Albania was so closed off and these factories had an incredibly insular economy to tend to, no matter what, they always had customers because they're the only game in town um but now when the economy opens up one thing that does happen is is because from the outside looking in uh albania's economy does like it like it's doing very well um you know much like you know a pump and dump of a stock does like oh shit look look how much GameStop is worth. Yeah, it's worth $500 a share now.

Yeah, so from the outside, man, Albania is really turning around. So outside goods were coming in. However, that did have the downside effect of like, well, now nobody has money because they invested it all, and they don't have jobs, so they can't buy those goods either. Yeah. But most of it came down to all of the factories were being propped up by the state. And since that was gone, the factories collapsed. And maybe in a situation like that, the mafia would have bought them. But doing what everybody else is doing in regards to drugs, oil and gun running, using people's retirement pensions was a much more lucrative job to have. a much more lucrative job to have.

Now, like what always happens with Ponzi schemes like this, is either people decide they want to cash in or you run out of suckers. You run out of your vampiric pool. These schemes ran by multiple companies within Albania for years, unimpeded. And by 1997, they had finally drained the nation dry at this point two-thirds of the albanian population had some form of money put into them most of it a large portion wow the companies declared bankruptcy denied investors access to their own money and when everything

finally went tips tits up they took half of the entire nation's wealth and fucked off out of Albania. What? Oh, gosh. So, seemingly overnight, these guys robbed the country blind and left it entirely broke. People were rightfully pissed. Assuming that these things were legit and backed up

by the government, they're like, well, we need to get our fucking money back from the government. They took to the streets and began to protest. Though, despite Albania's so-called move to democracy, protesting was actually illegal. Of course it was. Of course it was.

This led to a brutal crackdown, and as most things happen, that only made the protests spread wider. Now, not only were they mad about companies that fucked them, they were not mad at the government. Protests swept through the south of the country, and soon thousands of students were hunger striking and setting shit on fire. Though things truly went off the rails when protesters decided to arm themselves at weapons depots that were left completely unguarded by the government. left completely unguarded by the government.

The people of Albania went from being almost entirely unarmed to being obsessed with acquiring as many guns as they could as fast as they could. They became a little bit American, actually, that day. Yeah, yeah. Now, the Washington Post even published a picture of people playing pool with guns instead of cues, which admittedly sounds pretty rad. Yeah, it does.

It was estimated that at the peak of Q's, which admittedly sounds pretty rad. Yeah, it does. It was estimated that at the peak of this crisis, every male between the ages of 10 and up owned at least one gun and a nearly endless amount of ammunition. So it's Texas. Yeah, it's Texas. Yeah. Eventually, all of these various groups merged together to create various loosely defined militias,

awash with new guns, and they began to march north towards the capital to demand barisha step down at this point the south of the country was virtually abandoned by the government and uh all attempts to stop this unrest which is rapidly turning into a straight up civil war stopped at this point the answer if you're British is I need to get the fuck out of here like Russia will probably take me and I need to go instead in the north of the company

where the capital is the government opened its doors to the depots where the rest of the weapons were hidden and began handing them out to anybody who is still loyal to the depots where the rest of the weapons were hidden and began handing them out to anybody who was still loyal to the government. This is like a step-by-step guide on how to create a sectarian civil war.

Yes, it is. It's literally what do they call it? A white paper on how to do it. When you Google how to do civil war, just Barisha's picture pops up like she's giving you the finger guns. He's probably in a track suit

too, you know? Though that did not stop people from simply breaking into other depots. At one point, because remember, they're breaking into weapons stores that have not been upkept or maintained in any way.

So, I mean, just like the fucking bunker with mustard gas in it. At one point, somebody tried to pry open the doors to a depot and it failed, so they blew the hinges off, which led to a chain explosion with the hundreds of tons

of explosives within the depot, which went off and then killed 200 people. Holy shit. Yeah. Oh, man. It's at this point you're probably wondering how the fuck the situation could possibly get any worse. And that

I say, you must be new here. Now people had become very, very poor overnight. We're now heavily armed. So they began robbing and stealing everything they could. At one point, a group attacked the state treasury with an anti-tank rocket.

Yes! That is glorious, is what that is. That's how I picture my revolution. Like someone shooting the Fort Knox doors with a fucking shoulder-fired weapon, man. Oh, yeah. They made off with around $6 million. like fort knocked doors with a fucking like shoulder filed fired weapon man oh yeah they made off with around six million dollars another group of heavily armed militiamen or bandits or

bank robbers whatever made off with the treasury deposits made out of gold uh in the amount of 749 pounds uh i did the math and that equals out to be around $19 million. Oh, man. Both of these things were the only cash reserves left in the country. What? That's fucking... That's crazy.

Now, unfortunately, when you quite literally rob the country blind, what was left of it, like, at this At this point, the house has been robbed. The TVs have been stolen. Your stereo is ripped out. But now you're just peeling the copper wire from the walls. Yeah. The state is functionally just flat broke, meaning they could no longer pay their cops or soldiers.

at broke, meaning they could no longer pay their cops or soldiers. Now, also, most of those cops and soldiers also had money invested and they were also broke. So there wasn't the cops versus the civilians because a lot of the cops switched sides and also their soldiers. Pretty much the

only ones left were the guys like, if I turn now, they'll fucking shoot me. I just got to ride this out. Keep my head down. Ride it out. Keep my head down. Yeah.

I mean, at this point, the government ceased to have any real control over the country, though there was like squads of cops that still attempted to raid homes to like try to keep gang leaders out of the capital and stuff. Though at one point prison guards simply unlocked all the doors to their prison and went home because they were getting paid like fuck this we outtie um respected i'm not gonna lie yeah i mean i'm not getting paid on that doing shit either yeah uh this freed a lot of regular prisoners like you know the ones that you'd expect to be in prison, but also a lot of political ones as well, to include a guy named Fatos Nano, who was the head of the Socialist Party, who went south where the Socialist Party had most of their power base. And this is when new elections began to be demanded. power base and that's this is when new elections began to be demanded now i titled this script the time a pyramid scheme caused a civil war however it's kind of hard to classify this as an outright

civil war uh because what instead you saw like what you'll read is like people's like oh it's anarchy but that's not what anarchy is no this is just lawlessness yeah um like there was militia groups allied to political groups like the socialist party for instance um but there also was not um bandits called themselves rebels and rebels who were not much better than bandits also called themselves rebels. Then there's also just flat-out fucking street gangs and mafia groups. People stole, kidnapped, and robbed people at street signs or at street corners.

Obviously, all of the societal collapse led to a refugee crisis, much like what you see today. This caused tens of thousands of people to flee over the sea into Italy. Not the greatest place to go to if you're a Muslim refugee, unfortunately. And like I said, things were not really a full scale civil war, but it was maybe quickly heading in that direction.

Yeah. The rebels were in small, really non-cohesive groups there's really no military offensives um like at one point uh nano or one of the other socialist leaders was like accused the government of sending jets to bomb the south those jets then like ran to italy which was kind of funny but also like when they landed the pilots, like, no, we don't have bombs.

They didn't give us any fucking weapons. Oh my gosh, dude. So it's hard to say like, if like at this point, it's mostly like very small, small unit level police based violence. Yeah.

Um, no real civil war. It's weird. Well, just like anything in the balkans it's it's confused it's very conflicted and very sectarian so like it's this is pretty par for the course you know this is very much a north versus south um divide uh mostly because uh ho, Hoxha and Berisha were from the North of the country, uh, where the vast majority of the limited infrastructure in favors and things. So the South,

the South felt left out. Okay. Um, but there, they would still consider themselves same religion, same ethnic group. Everything is very much a North, North V South situation.

Um, but there was no, like the socialist party's local militia. Like we're going to surround this village and take it over. Like this shit doesn't happen. There's spats of violence against government agents like cops and soldiers. But there is also gang on gang violence with like literal children with AKs and tanks setting up checkpoints to rob one another and occasionally light someone on fire. Bro, can you imagine getting shook down by a kid in a tank?

There's a video. That would hurt my feelings. When this episode comes out, I'll put it in the comment section. But there's a video of like these kids with handguns, PKMs and AKs like sitting on like a BMP. PKMs and AKs like sitting on like a BMP and it's obvious that they didn't actually know how to fire a weapon because like one of them

finally does fire their AK they all just like wince and hide like aww you're just a little guy it was less of a civil war and more random explosion of anger lawlessness and violence with random groups fighting each other

over scraps of turf rather than the government the government for its part really only try to send cops and soldiers after armed groups in the north because like we're not going to the fucking south fuck that yeah in the south

so-called committees for public salvation were formed to mediate the violence somewhat. These were mostly ran by the socialist party, though. Some, some were not ran by the party. And these were not all over the place. In some areas,

these public salvation committees weren't formed and it was a free for all. Okay. You just be at the mercy of those kids from the first hostile movie, I guess. Within a year of this, Italy declared a state of emergency due to the amount of refugees that were

crossing the sea. They also deployed their navy to board and turn back ships carrying refugees, which is a very shitty thing to do. Don't do that. No, no. God damn it, Italy. Why do you have to be assholes?

Look, we always say here, time is a big, flat, dumb circle. You see a lot of the same shit then as you do today in the Mediterranean with refugees coming from Libya or other places in Africa. The Italian press framed it as an Islamic invasion, and

some people call the Albanians barbarians. Now, the Italian government offered Albania money in exchange for an agreement that if they sent everyone back to Albania that tried to cross the ocean, they would be arrested and not allowed to come back. This meant they effectively made a handshake

agreement to create a humanitarian nightmare, just so they didn't have too many Muslims coming to Italy. Now, another problem with boarding all of these ships, there's a fuckload of them, to the point that they ran out of ships in Albania, is that accidents

can happen. In one situation of March of 1998, while boarding one of these ships, an Italian naval vessel straight up rammed into a refugee boat, killing 80 people. And then those two Air Force pilots just flew into Italy, which is really weird when you

think about it, because they declared a state of emergency. The state of Italy is in dire danger. Two jets just casually fucking flew over there and landed in the airport and be like we came from albania hey everybody this wasn't an emergency you're just racist yeah yeah i mean dude italy's got a horrible track record with shit like that man you know oh god yeah it's so bad dude and

europe in general does but like the mediterranean bordering countries some of the fucking worst stranding refugees on boats where there's no running water or food or anything just like yeah we have to simply uh categorize them first like you're there 10,000 people there and you're going purposely slow to make these people suffering even worse. Or worse yet, you send them back to Libya where they're going to be trafficked or back to

fucking, in this case, Albania where the government's probably going to rob them from all of the worldly possessions they just brought with them or that they'll get kidnapped by the fucking mafia and had to be sold back to their families yeah i mean and that that's the thing too you you we see we're seeing huge numbers of albanians trying to cross the you know the waters there um you know what was i don't know if you dug it up but like what was the percentage of the population that tried to to leave it was a very large number yeah i mean it was a population of

only two million people yeah give or take so like thousands of people leaving is substantial um now several nations launched their own operations to get citizens out of the situation that was getting worse by the day. Now, these were not necessarily humanitarian operations, but they were not invasions either. The U.S. launched Operation Silver Wake, which to evacuate embassy staff and any American citizens that wanted to leave. Their helicopters, as they flew in, were shot at by somebody. And nobody's entirely sure who.

And everything going on on the ground was so chaotic their helicopters as they flew in were shot at by somebody and nobody's entirely sure who, uh, and the, and the, everything going on the ground was so chaotic that a general Peter pace, who was the man in charge of the operation told forces not to return fire, uh, because there was a better chance at some teenage Albanian gangsters wildly firing into the air and then just randomly hit a helicopter on accident. Then like they were attempted to be shot down by organized opposition. Yeah it's not worth it just don't shoot back yeah you know he said

they're talking about but do not create an international incident asshole do not do this an incredible amount of restraint i don't expect to see from the u.s military i was in certainly oh yeah dude i i agree with you but then again you know helicopter pilots were were me anyway, from my experience, they were either beautiful things that shot things from overhead because I was getting shot at. Or, you know, these were people that, you know, were like, oh, man, it's kind of dusty. We're not flying today. So like, yeah, yeah. Now, the German military also launched their own, which is shocking for the late 90s, called Operation Labelle. And they were not so lucky.

Around 25 German soldiers aboard helicopters led in to evacuate their citizens when armed civilians riding atop armored vehicles began shooting at the civilians they were attempting to evacuate. Though their aim was so bad, they apparently didn't even manage to wound anybody. The Germans returned fire and managed to escape with only one lightly damaged helicopter after rescuing about a hundred people I believe this is one of the first offensive German operations

in Europe since World War II yeah that sounds about right yeah eventually the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1101 which would establish a international protection force to bring about the situation, bring an end to the situation, as well as distribute humanitarian aid. And this is the first time I think I've ever said this about a U.N. operation on the history of this show. This actually went really well. UN operation on the history of this show. This actually went really well.

Oh, I'm shocked. I was going to say UN actions in the late 90s were not what you would call good or successful. This might be a situation of UN history where you're like, you throw enough shit to the wall, see what sticks. We finally did some good. Look, we did that thing. Now,

the reason for this was mostly and surprisingly, Italy. Now, the same for this was mostly and surprisingly Italy. Now, the same country that originally invaded Albania to start this entire episode. Italy rightly figured that if they didn't figure something out with Albania, they'd be dealing with way more refugees than they were currently at the moment. And obviously, like we said, fueled by a healthy dose of racism. Absolutely. Now, Italy wasn't acting altruistically by any means as no Asian ever does.

The incident where their Navy kind of murdered 80 people really made them look bad. Uh, and their operation to blockade Albania was not really doing much to stop the flood of refugees. And also it was illegal. And the UN kept telling him to cut that shit out. Yeah.

Fuck you, Italy. Just fuck you. Now the reason why it's because obviously a blockade is an act of war, right? And they got around that by making a handshake agreement that with the government of Albania, like, no, no, no, no, no. They agreed. This is fine.

It's not an act of war. We're good. And the UN's like no you can't fucking do that okay it's not like they're gonna hold them accountable it's the un but whatever the secretary general's like wagging his finger at the premier of italy like no no no we're gonna write you a sternly worded letter yeah that the security Council will then veto. Yes. Now, another thing factoring into all this is while Albania collapsed, and like I said, a full-scale civil war hadn't actually started yet, Italy was really worried one was coming, and they probably weren't wrong. They figured correctly and somewhat intelligently that if we intervene now, we can stop a civil war from happening.

Yeah. Like shit is burning down all over the place and children are robbing people and setting people on fire and shit. It's a nightmare. However, we can stop a fucking civil war from happening. And not to mention they're very close by. They're going to catch the blowback from that, should that occur. We all know Italians don't want to catch blowback, man. They're not that business.

At this part, I'm surprised that Italy didn't actually surrender and join Albania. Now, this is normally where I say the UN forces fucked up and got bogged down to 10 years of sectarian conflict or whatever, but that didn't happen. In March of 1997, around 7,500 UN soldiers, most of them Italian, landing unopposed in the secured capital of Tirana. Now, say unopposed, they did come at the agreement of the Albanian government.

Berisha's like, yeah, sure. Who, by the way, he's still fucking there somehow. How? How is he ready to ask? How is Baris, if he was still there, and how? But yeah, he was like, yeah, sure, come on in. I would love for you to help secure this place. Now, his thing was, we need the UN here to secure Albania

so we can have elections, which, of course, he thought he was going to win of course yeah um because he's been doing such a good job obviously hey listen he's doing a plus work you know a plus earlier he realized quickly that like the only way to to secure albania is to find all these fucking guns. Like you can't have every male with 10 and up having an AK at home and expect this shit not to happen. And they did. Now, a lot of them at this point made their way over the border to Kosovo where they'd be used by the Kosovo Liberation Army. But they did a pretty good job at tracking most of these weapons down. Now,

a lot of that was through a buyback program, which works when everybody's piss poor and has a lot of guns. Yeah. Like, if you show up with an APC and 28Ks, we'll buy them from you. It's like, let's go! You could sell 28Ks, but still have one underneath your bed at home.

Right. Now, another thing they did was train and equip the Albanian security forces. Remember, most of which who had fucked off and gone home. They started reinstituting government institutions like prisons, cops, and soldiers.

You couldn't Tokyo drift a T-55 through the middle of the street while pretending know pretending an ak is a cock and firing into the air i would do that oh dude yeah i that's my dream i want to see the 12 year old like trying to see over like the the windscreen of a bmp like trying to see just a stack of ak's so he can boost himself up. Now, in June that same year, elections were held. And remember, this is March of 97 when the UN operation started off. This is now June of 97. Now, normally when I say this, you're like, I assume it's five years later. This is a couple months.

Elections are held. The Socialist Party wins and Berisha decides he can't work with them. He resigns, something he probably should have done years ago. Fuck, yeah. Yeah. Then in August, again, in 97, all international troops went home. Holy shit. That's like the most.

Right? Has the UN ever just stayed a few months in a place? No, never. right has the un ever just stayed a few months in a place you know never there's still fucking un troops in the congo which like admittedly they should be there's a problem there uh un troops aren't gonna fix that problem but you know like there's been un troops in places for decades yeah and i know my brain is poisoned by the you know forever war that we fight in but like the idea that like no we got here in march we're leaving in august bye like blows my fucking mind absolutely mind-blowing i can't imagine that like i i think you're right we both we've both

been poisoned by you know uh the war that's almost old enough to drink you know like yes like the idea of like a limited war is just like blowing. I like, you say what you will about the legality and morality of like, say invading Grenada or whatever, which was bad, but like last like three fucking weeks. Oh dude.

Yeah. If we did that shit now, my kids would be stationed there. Yeah. Yeah. Or you'd be going, like, if you're still, and you'd be going, like if you're still,

and you'd be going to war with your son, which he said, you know, the U S army thought was a great PR stunt. I'm like, this is not good guys. This is actually really fucking bad. Oh, I love that.

Every time like a public affairs officer posts a picture of three generations of soldiers that like bogger Merrifield, they're like, Ooh, don't, don't understand the optics of that one but okay yep well done pao well done and like obviously albania is dealing with a horrible fallout from this stuff but like when the international troops left it was done it's fixed um the fighting at least the the obvious violence was over so you'd like then

you can work forward towards reconciliation and hopefully stabilizing society again but you can't do that while people are you know flipping a bitch and a bmp and like firing rockets every which direction like a fucking video game fucking robbing banks robbing banks like goddamn anti-tank missile now by the end of all this around 2,000 people died in the fighting and of course because this is the world that we live in nobody who had anything to do with the destruction of the

country or the exploitation of an entire population and the export of an entire nation's wealth faced anything resembling comeuppance. Nobody's ever been prosecuted. Everybody escaped justice. yeah.

Dude, that's a great way to finish up this little story. God. We do have something. I can change the topic, bring it back around. All right, hear me out. Mike, we do something on this podcast called Questions from the Legion.

I'm ready. I had a banger last time it was on. So if you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, subscribe to the Patreon, which is not a pyramid scheme, I should point out. Bad example for a guy who lives on the Patreon. And you can email me, slide into the Discord, my DMs, email.

I don't know. Attach a letter to a mongoose and let it go across the Wahoo Hawaii. You'll eventually find me. There's a lot of mongoose here. Let her in a bottle, man. Slide it in there, float it over.

Joe will get it eventually go to the borders of california or washington load a message into a howitzer and fire it into the sky in my direction then i'll answer on the show all those are very bad don't do any of those

except the digital ones please don't hit my house with an artillery shell now this week's is, if you were given... First of all, I have to explain. Giant battleships are good again. That has to be good.

If you were to get the name, the next functional... It says U.S. Fleet Carrier. I'll just say any big battleship. What name would you give it? Ooh. Dude, I'm going to have to go obnoxious here uh we'll go we'll do ironic first and say uh you know the s you know uss eugene debs i think that'd be so fucked the guy who got thrown in prison because of the military named after himself uh and he was also not a big fan of the military either

so I think that would be a big fuck you to the military higher ups but after seeing a whole bunch of really angry old Vietnam veterans I would name a battleship after Jane Fonda oh yeah that is a

really good one or ooh Bo Bergdahl be a solid one too or let's go just piss off all the conservatives and name it after like Cesar Chavez you know somebody I want to name an Intel craft after Chelsea

Manning I love you Chelsea but I know everybody fucking hates you and it would make them very angry oh god that's where i'm at in my life if it pisses off anybody in the military i'm all for it like um it's just like we always we used to name boats after dumb things but now like you know one of the worst name ships ever is like the sullivan brothers yeah and it's not because like the story behind it which is obviously tragic yeah but it's like the us brothers. Yeah. And it's not because like the story behind it, which is obviously tragic, but it's like the USS, the Sullivan,

Sullivan brothers. Like that doesn't just flow off the tongue. Like, Oh, let's go. Oh, I'm on the Solomon brothers. That sounds like you're in a brother based fuck fest.

Yeah. Or you, you got, you had that long line of naming it after cities. So how about like, uh, you know, like the USS Akron, like some shit city in the rest, you know? Oh, man, that's that always like made me mad because they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to be like the USS Detroit or Cleveland or any of these other things that are just it harkens back to that time that like built an aircraft carrier battleship on the two out of like metal from the world trade center.

Oh God. I remember. It's like, what are you going to do? Build a fucking aircraft carrier out of old abandoned car factories. Like it's the Detroit. We did it. Or maybe this ship just takes on like the,

the tenor of the town, you know, like it's just depressed and run down and nobody wants to do anything. It would just be a whole boat for drunk people doing opiates. Then again, that could be any boat named after any city in the Midwest. Yeah, that's true.

The USS Rust Belt. People making toilet wine just because that's the only thing to drink on the entire boat. Alright, Mike. We've been at this for almost two hours. You can use and I've had my puppy in this room with me the whole time. That was the squeaking that you just heard. And he's run at his end of patience. Use this last couple seconds to plug your show.

Use this last couple seconds to plug your show. Okay, so I am the host of the You Don't Know History podcast, where I sit down with one subject matter expert, people much smarter than me, and I ask them questions about a certain topic. That's not entirely true. I've been on that show. Well, dude, let's face it. Not many people know about Armenia. So like I felt like having a man who is, you know, very proud of his heritage and knows what he was talking about. That was it was actually a brilliant first episode because I'm pretty sure that you are the reason I had so many years to listen to it early on. So I appreciate that. But, you know, like I do, it's not just like history stuff, but like, you know, I did a history of the International Olympic Committee of the Olympics a couple episodes ago. And this week we're doing the history of policing in the American South. So Jesus Christ. Oh, yeah. That's going to be grim.

Yeah. But I do have a big guest coming on next month to do a lighter topic. But, you know, as it gets closer and we lock down the interview day, I'll put it out there. But yeah, so you can find me on Patreon at You Don't Know History Pod. I'm, you know, the pods on all the major carriers. And you can find me personally on Twitter at BeardedCynic473,

where you'll get my love of socialism, my shitty comic book and sports takes, and just overall general clevelandness uh and the occasional shouting at joe for hating on ohio so much you shouldn't be so easy to hate god it's dude i'm from ohio and i'm starting to hate it oh i just remembered a message from my producer and collaborators um i'm not sure if that's the word that I should use, collaborators. That sounds bad. We now have pins and patches for sale on the Hell of a Way to Die

store. So if you have designs you like, like the Corpse Road one, we have the Danzig Mailman design, the Mongoose Flag design, all those patches and pins and stuff. You cannot get those on our Teespring. You have to go to the and stuff you cannot get those on our teespring

you have to go to the hell of a way to die store because teespring does not does not do that stuff um and i'll put that link in the show notes so check those out i almost forgot again i did it you gotta plug me this time i bought this stuff i bought the danzig uh sticker man so that's they're so fucking cool they're way cooler than anything I've ever made before. And I did not make those, just to be clear. Taking credit for it. So, Mike, thank you. It's always a good time. And until next time, I don't know,

don't do shock doctrine. We love you, Albania. Dude, you know what would be great is if you went to Albania, you did a remote show from one of the bunkers. Oh, that'd be fucking magnificent.