The Blindboy Podcast - Lucifers Toothbrush

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

How the current aggressive miltaristic tacticts that US police use towards protestors and journalists was shamefully invented by a man from Dublin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Postman, postman, p, p, postman, postman, postman, postman. No, I haven't accidentally recorded myself yearning for a postman. I got myself a new, I don't want to call it fancy because it was only a tenor, but it looks fancy, a new pop shield for my microphone, I've been using a sock, I've got like a really good microphone and I've been putting a sock on it for ages, so that when I speak, it doesn't offend your ears when I say a P or an S, and I just said to myself, what the fuck am I, why am I say a P or an S and I just said to myself what the fuck am I why am I using a sock like why what's the point of that it's cumbersome it's sometimes I have mild dust allergies and occasionally when I lean my head towards the microphone and there's a sock on it that

the problem with the sock is that not only does it collect dust but because the sock was on an electrical object I think it ionised it or something and made it collect even more dust. So there'd be times when I'd be leaning into the microphone and now my allergies are set off by a dusty sock and I said there's a solution to this. And the solution is to buy a thing known as a pop shield, which I generally don't like because they're cumbersome, and then I found this gorgeous little pop shield online for a tenor, which wraps around the microphone, and is dainty, and pretty looking, and is,

it does what I wanted the sock to do, but way better, so there you go, that's why I said Postman, if you listen to this podcast, you know that Postman is the phrase that I use to test the mic why? because it's got a P and an S and a T

and it's the perfect word for testing microphones postman, postman what if it's not? and I'm a time travelling spy working for the Soviets in the 1960s and they were able to send me into the future to 2020 Ireland

and I'm broadcasting the word postman in different tones and they can read that in Morse code through time. What if that's what's happening? It's not. So it is very early on in the month which i'm going to begin at the first of a new tradition if you were listening last month you know that i want to do this new thing whereby in order to to be as a thank you to patrons of the podcast to people who sign up on patreon i was going to pick one person each month

from at random from my patrons and that one person is going to get a hand-drawn image that's signed in the post so i've picked that person at random from patreon that person's name is amber maher and amber is going to get a drawing in the post I'm not sure what it is yet I don't know what the drawing will be of maybe a dog a dog with Henry Cavill's head why not with a speech bubble that has his piece of prose from last week thank you for the lovely feedback for last week's podcast by the way um I had John and Brenda Romero speaking about the history of video games and discussing video games as art. Very enjoyable.

I'm glad you liked it. It's nice to hear a live gig. It's nice to hear a live gig because fuck knows I've forgotten what a live gig feels like. So this week I want to do like, I've started calling them companionship podcasts based on feedback

that I got from ye we're all living underneath the the grasp of the goblin of strange and uncertain times and as a result we're in quarantine huge amount of time on our hands we're all tired and stressed tired from inactivity and a lot of ye just want to hear a lot of ye just put on the podcast to hear someone's voice to be engaged in conversation because we're not doing a lot of conversing with human beings right now because it's dangerous the act of being in another person's physical presence and having a big long chat unless they're immediate family i can't remember the last time i had a chat with a stranger three months ago so that's what these podcasts are for other people have been telling me that their sleep patterns are fucked up so some of you just listening to this podcast when you're trying to go to sleep

just to have another voice present because it's lonely enough times right now it's lonely enough times, it is for me anyway I don't want to do a hot take this week because you know that I like to provide you with a bit of escapism

and distraction and to try and not speak about current events because the news is saturated with it but however this week in light of uh what's happening in america with the black black lives matter movement with the protests against police brutality it'd be strange and disrespectful for me to carry on and pretend that it doesn't exist. I don't think that would be appropriate. And I'm getting a lot of people asking me,

Blind Boy, will you do a podcast on the protests in America and the Black Lives Matter movement? No, I won't. What you need to do is listen to the voices of black people. Listen to what black people are saying listen to when they say they're angry when they say they're marginalised when they say that they need justice you listen with all of your ears

as to why and you believe their experience that's what you need to do not me, because what what you need to do, not me, because what the fuck do I do, what do I know, I'm not speaking from a place of experience, what I'm mainly doing online, like I have a Twitter audience of 250,000,

mostly white people, mostly Irish, so I'm using every opportunity I can, to retweet, black people who are speaking about this issue so then i'm not taking up space in that conversation with something i know fucking nothing about i'm listening and then i'm platforming their voices and giving it a wider audience so that other people can then listen which i think that's the appropriate thing to do what i am comfortable speaking about is

anything that will help irish people in particular to listen better not to me but to the to black people who are speaking about their marginalization because that's a big issue i'm seeing at the moment in ireland that's a problem there's loads of people there's loads of irish people right that are concerned with what's happening in america who are on the side of the Black Lives Matter protesters who understand the injustice and who would like to see justice done and would like to see reformed there's plenty of Irish people like that but there's also a lot of Irish people who view the protesters as criminals who don't view their anger as legitimate who are in support

of the fucking police who are being very right wing saying that Trump should bring in the military would like to see violence, there's a lot of this discourse in Ireland unfortunately I heard it today on Joe Duffy which is like an Irish talk show thing

Joe Duffy's a weird one, it's like it's like this sad it's like this big sad nipple that everybody sucks on and gets this sour sad milk out of this strange Irish tradition you know it's it's how would you explain it it's like it's like it's it's what got left in the whole of catholicism catholicism blew apart in ireland and we were left with this sad little lonely crater and joe duffy the joe duffy show filled that it's where we go to suck this giant fucking leathery tit of shame but there was there was a couple of racists on joe duffy there was other people who were not racists on joe duffy and i i fucking i hate hearing irish people who can't

respect the marginalization of other people it really bothers me because the same people like if you grow up in Ireland the Irish identity is very post-colonial okay from from an incredibly young age you learn that the Irish people were oppressed for 800 years by the British Empire and we experienced all the horrors of the earth right that's part of your identity growing up it's post-colonial identity and you know i never experienced marginalization i grew up with the privilege of being in the free state of ireland with no fucking 26 counties no british soldiers but you learn about your grandfather your great-grandfather your great-great-grandfather your great-great-grandmother and the horrors that they've been through and how this is drilled into you from birth this is what it means to be Irish don't ever forget it don't ever forget the pain

that was thrown upon you and everyone's brought up with this and then there's still a huge amount of Irish people who will start weeping when they think about the famine but at the same time will shout down a black person or a black Irish person if they speak about their marginalisation

and it really bothers me because I'm not excusing like spanish french and english people because they're you know they come from a culture whereby they were the colonizers and they don't know what it's like to have a history whereby they experience systemic oppression but we actually have that history in our identity, so we've less of an excuse to be shouting over people when they're just simply asking to be listened to. When they simply say, I am hurting under a system which appears to be designed to hurt me. see my place and ethically feel comfortable using my voice around anything to do with the anything to do with the protests in America I feel comfortable using my voice when I'm trying to compassionately get other Irish people to engage more with empathy so that they can listen to black people

that role sits comfortably like a little sandwich in my moral lunchbox and I tried to do it today, I tried to do that today online on Twitter because I came across a story, an article

which I read it and it made me it made me deeply upset and deeply angry and made me feel deeply trodden upon and the story is so over in coventry in england this week um there's a legal dispute going on and it it concerns an Irish woman called Margaret Keane who died in 2018, 73 years of age. Irish born, obviously lived in the UK. And Margaret Keane is buried in a graveyard in the Diocese of Coventry in a Church of England graveyard I believe which is like a Protestant graveyard

anyway here's the issue Margaret Keane's family want to have her headstone as like a little Celtic cross and on it they want the phrase in the Irish language in Gaeilge in ar graeitha go dóil which basically means

in our hearts forever they want to put on their mother's gravestone in a churchyard in Coventry in our hearts forever but they want it as Gaeilge in Irish, in the Irish language, in our hearts forever. But the Church of England rules are that they're very strict around what a gravestone looks like. They have to have a gravestone which they describe as fitting and appropriate. And the vicar signs off on whether it's fitting or appropriate but if he's not sure it then goes to a committee to see if the design for the proposed gravestone is fitting and appropriate so the proposal for Margaret Keane's gravestone went towards the parish council which is like they call it a church court it's like a court session where they decide whether this gravestone is appropriate. Margaret's family wanted

a Celtic cross, okay, to honour Margaret's, the fact that she's an Irish woman born in Ireland, to honour her heritage and to honour I think she was involved with the GAA which is our national sport. And they wanted a Celtic cross

and they wanted that phrase As Cailge which translates to forever in our hearts so the church fucking council made up of English people I can only assume had a vote

and then they decided it was 6-5 in favour yes you can have a gravestone that's in the shape of a Celtic cross to honour Margaret's Irish heritage. That's fine. However, we can't allow you to have the inscription in anything other than English. And if you are to have the inscription in Irish, you must include a translation in English and her family were like fuck that no it'd be too cluttered it'll look ugly what why can't we just she's Irish why can't we have the inscription in our hearts forever ascailge so the situation went to church

court I don't know what church court is but what I can say is they used an actual real judge so an actual judge of the law was used to arbitrate this thing so I'm assuming it's some type of internal law thing but if they're using a

real actual judge it must be serious it must actually hold some weight even though it's within the church so the judge his name is eyre e-y-r-e so here's the bit that's quite difficult to process and swallow in 2020 so the judge who's also a judge in actual courts, in criminal cases, here's the judge's verdict, here's his actual words, quoting. It is clearly right that the memorial to Mrs Kean should record and celebrate her Irish heritage and her dedicated community service through the GAA.

The inclusion of words in a language other than English has caused me rather greater difficulty. Questions of language can raise intense feelings. Not only would the message of Irish Gaelic, there is a sad risk that the phrase would be regarded as some form of slogan, or that its inclusion without translation would of itself be seen as a political statement. So I'm now going to translate that dour, ten crumbed passive aggressive English judge's words in that tone that we are so familiar with I'm going to translate that into Hiberno English and what he basically said was I don't give a fuck if your ma is 72 you're not putting your stupid

bog trotting backwards savage Irish language on a gravestone and you know why? because when I hear something Cree whatever the fuck you're saying all I hear is Chuckie Garlaw I just hear the IRA shouting Chuckie Garlaw before they blow Buckingham Palace

to bits and I don't want your terrorist language and terrorist slogans on the graveyard on this wonderful beautiful English country graveyard why would we want Irish backwards terrorism on our graveyards why would you even suggest that so no go fuck yourself go borrow your man a bog and preserve it in whiskey or whatever it is the fuck you do over there and I know there's a few hundred thousand Irish people listening to this podcast this morning and collectively I can hear your teeth gritting with anger

because of just how wrong that situation is. And the thing is with the anger that we're all feeling right now when we hear this it's it's more than a regular anger that's a deep generational hurt that crawls from your feet all the way up your body to your head it's an anger hurt and pain that you feel for every person you love who looks and sounds like you and everyone who has gone before you your ancestors who were brutalized at the hands of that very same type of ignorant colonial arrogance i don't think that vicar in his mind or sorry that judge in his head was being vicious or being rude or being mean i don't think he believed that i think he truly believed he was right but what that is right there like it's

it's off the fucking scales it's so stupid isn't the word ignorant isn't the word. Ignorant isn't the word. What the word is right there is privilege. That right there is a phenomenal level of fucking privilege. Okay? It's more than stupid. It's more than ignorant.

It's a systemic privilege that comes from a power so great and high that they can't see down. And also, this person is a fucking judge of 62 years of age who's been a practicing judge for a long time. And this seemingly educated judge is unable to look at the Irish language, a fucking entire language with a massive vocabulary that can be used to express words and feelings and emotions, and he's unable to associate this language with anything other than,

he's only ever heard a couple of phrases and words in language, in the Irish language, he's only ever heard a couple of phrases and words in the Irish language. Most likely, Choccygar Law and other Irish language phrases that the IRA would have used in their time, because he's a judge, so in his career, when he was looking through papers and pages and dealing with people in the IRA, that's the only context he has for Gaelic,

and he can't remove it. And this, they just want to put in our hearts forever in irish on our fucking gravestone and this man's privilege and power is so high and mighty and so far removed from the subject that he is arrogantly making a decision that seems unbelievably ignorant and stupid. And that right there is privilege. That's what fucking privilege is. And for me when I heard it, the complexity of emotions that I hear is... I'll tell you the shittiest thing about it is...

I'll tell you the shittiest thing about it is my first emotion of anger was to identify with the horrible stereotype of Irishness that this man had in his head my first emotion of anger was it's like how dare you associate the Irish language only with your perception as an english

judge of criminality and terrorism and bombs he is this innocent irish family who are mourning for their 73 year old mother he is calling them terrorists and telling them that they want to put a terrorist slogan despite actual facts that are presented to a fucking judge he's calling them terrorists and saying don't put terrorism on a gravestone you silly fucking mick and the anger i felt when i first read it like i said it's unlike any other fucking anger. It goes through me through generations. And the saddest part is my knee-jerk reaction, and this is the real toxic part, my knee-jerk reaction was to identify with what he was calling us.

So my initial irrational knee-jerk emotional reaction was, well, let's all fucking join the IRA then. That was the first thing that came into my head until I squashed that and said, no, that's ridiculous. But that generational anger of the fight against British colonialism and all the effort to get rid of him and my own fucking grandfather that was in the IRA 100 years ago, it all comes right back up and you identify with it even though he's so fucking wrong and

that's my reaction I'm from fucking Limerick from the south I've never seen a British soldier in my life I just have stories that were handed down to me what about someone my age from Belfast who as a child remembers actual fucking British soldiers pointing guns at their parents. Who remembers rubber bullets flying in the windows of their houses. Or have aunts and uncles that were murdered by the British soldiers. What's it like for them? People who've witnessed brutal marginalisation in their lifetime. And then I'm hit with a second wave.

Like that initial wave, that's irrational, that's the irrational knee-jerk reaction of silly carry-on, identifying with the IRA, because that's what he wants to think I am, and stooping to that level, and stooping to that logic, then you go, fuck that, then the logical part of my brain comes in, and I feel another type of anger, the logical part of my brain comes in and I feel another type of anger which is tainted with an injustice and sadness because I think this man's a judge this man is a judge with a long career now he's only arbitrating right now over a gravestone and this is you know it's sad and upsetting and hugely disrespectful. But this man's a judge. So how many Irish people are in jail because this man's privilege and prejudice is so far beyond his capacity to see actual facts?

This is fucking dangerous, man. Who's rotting in a jail because of him? Who has been called a terrorist because of him and then you think of the gilford the gilford fucking four who were simply four innocent irish people who were sent to jail for 16 years in the 70s for the simple crime of being irish London. There was an IRA bomb, and they just found four Irish people and pinned the blame on them

because they're dirty paddy mix. They're fucking bog-trotting mix, and they fucked them in jail for 16 years because it doesn't matter if they did the bomb or not, they're just fucking paddies. They're probably in the IRA anyway. And hearing this man talk about the gravestone and making this choice in 2020 and looking at his career of being a judge

and the level of blinding injustice and not just anger but a deep hurt and understanding that hurt when I get it i understand it deeply through timelines of fucking history it's not just the guildford ford and that injustice from the 70s it's going 800 years back it's going back to the 1300s with the british aristocracy deliberately trying to eradicate the irish language deliberately trying to steal and eradicate our customs, punishable by death, to destroy our culture and our identity, to make us like them and to ethnically cleanse us

for 800 fucking years. And it goes back deep and deep and deep and I can feel and experience and know every shred of this pain in the fucking moment reading an inconsequential story about a gravestone. And I shared that on Twitter and it got tons of likes and retweets from furious Irish people,

not just my kind of followers who are left-leaning and would be sympathetic towards Black Lives Matter but it got shared by like DAS and Irish nationalists and people who are otherwise kind of being racist towards Black Lives Matter and I shared the story and it made people rightly fucking angry because you don't want to read about that in 2020 as an Irish person but then I said afterwards on the tweet underneath if this small marginalization made you angry and you understood the deep historical context of why it's hurtful and wrong then please listen to and believe others who are speaking about their much more immediate

and violent marginalizations at the very moment at this very moment you can't listen to that story I just told you as an Irish person and feel all the anger that come up and anger that's associated with your history and then pass judgment on a black person in America right now who's out protesting in the street

or who's so angry that they're fucking setting fire to a car, setting fire to a police car. You don't get to feel that fucking anger over that gravestone and then be angry or dismissive or judgmental of those people you have to use the pain that you felt over that gravestone

that's your little key of empathy to get some small tiny glimpse of what those people are going through when they see something like the murder of fucking George Floyd on camera. Because here's the difference lads. I got that angry.

Over a story that does not even marginalise me right now. That gravestone story. It's offensive. It's hurtful. It doesn't marginalise me. I'm not unsafe. Because of that dumb prick making his decision about a gravestone

his decision isn't I don't know, maybe if I go over to fucking Coventry and I decide to shoplift some deodorant in boots and then I find myself in front of that judge I might get a harsher sentence because he's got a problem with paddies highly unlikely though but that story doesn't marginalize me in america black people are getting shot are getting shot and killed and murdered and

their necks stepped on by policemen frequently and regularly and it's a pattern, and that's just one aspect of the marginalisation, not including poverty, lack of healthcare, a complete structural inequality that bears down the fact that civil rights, if you could call it that, were only achieved in the 60s, the fact that slavery is 400 years old, the fact that the Jim Crow laws, which came after slavery,

which were incredibly racist, segregationist laws, that they only started ending in the 1960s in the south of the United States of America. The pain you felt for that gravestone is fucking nothing, nothing, Of the United States of America. The pain you felt for that gravestone. Is fucking nothing. Nothing. In comparison.

To the pain that a black person is feeling right now in America. And the anger. And all of those. So all those feelings are fucking valid. And you have to. When. Listen to those people. Speak about their fucking experiences. And when you find yourself

doubting and not believing someone's pain because you don't understand it the reason we don't understand it the same way that stupid fucking judge and his mad privilege has him conflating an entire language an entire language with the IRA, that privilege is the same thing that has us not believing and ignoring someone else when they speak about their marginalization. It's the same thing. We're that judge in that moment because we benefit from the system of whiteness. So how could we have access to see that marginalisation? And it's not just African Americans, black people in America that are experiencing the pain, it's black people in Ireland. Black people in Ireland are very upset and angry about this. There

was a Black Lives Matter protest organised in Dublin there the other day which had a good turnout. The Garday decide they're going to arrest and investigate the organizers who are three irish black people that i didn't see him fucking arresting anyone when the the irish alt-right conspiracy theorists were doing their mad fucking protest during social distancing there a couple of weeks back you know but it's it's not just about using opportunities like that for empathy to listen to african-americans listen to irish black people listen to people who speak about their experiences in direct provision one problem i see with irish people and their attitude towards america because america is so very explicitly and clearly brutal and racist because like we're talking about

people being murdered black people being murdered by police irish people sometimes can look at that and they can say fuck it man it's terrible over in America isn't it Jesus they're a fucked up country that's real racism that is and Irish people will use the extreme

spectacle of American police brutality as a way to minimise experiences of irish people here so they will will say our direct provision isn't racist should aren't they giving a roof over their head how can you compare that to what's going on in america and so instead of instead of they think they're actually empathising with what's happening in America and it's like they're not

they're going that's real racism the racism that you as a black Irish person are expressing to me I don't view that as racism because I as a white person don't think that it's as bad as over there so I'm not going to listen to you and that's unacceptable as well there's a lot of black irish people speaking about the racism that

they've experienced since uh they were kids speaking about racism that they experienced from guard from the gardie you gotta listen to that as well. That too is fucking valid. And it's painful. Because Irish people like to think. Sure how can we be racist. We're Irish. Aren't we the blacks of Europe. Which is one of the most harmful fucking sentences. That was ever spoken.

I don't know where it came from. I think it might have been a Roddy Doyle book. It was in the snapper. Irish people saying that. But like. That's the other thing as well jesus christ our 800 years of fucking oppression does not make it okay for us to be racist or give us a free pass because now we're free people with fucking loads tons of privilege that our skin affords us so we don't get that anymore and in ireland we have direct provision direct provision is a deeply deeply inhumane system whereby asylum seekers

are essentially prison imprisoned right and not allowed to work and not allowed to leave and they're kept in it for 18 years if you want to hear about it i've got a podcast where i speak to ellie kiziumbe who is someone who's been living in direct provision for 18 years. And she's also an activist. If you want to hear her words speaking about the system. So direct provision is a racist system in Ireland. It is systemic oppression. We pay for it with our tax.

Not only is it systemic oppression. It's systemic oppression for private gain there's a lot of money to be made from direct provision it's a private industry the government are taking our taxes and they've figured out a way to make systemic misery a profitable product that can be milked that's how fucked up direct provision is there's also and that's very uncomfortable for irish people to speak about and to think about because what we've managed to do with direct provision it's the same shit we did with magdalene laundries you take that injustice that systemic injustice and pain and you put it in an institution

behind high walls so that all of us can say i don't really know what's happening in there i guess it's something bad but i'm not sure and it's a way for us to protect ourselves in 10 years time when the facts come out when we can go we can just say i didn't know didn't know behind some high walls we've done that shit before but fuck the magdalene laundries we can't do it again yeah you have to listen to the traveling community when they speak out about the racism they experience irish travelers are identified as an ethnic group in ireland and it's it's the one truly socially acceptable form of racism. Most Irish people, even if they hold deeply racist views,

most Irish people will never say the N-word out loud or would never feel free to use it online. But you bring up Irish travellers, they don't give a fuck. They'll say what they want about Irish travellers. No bother. Say the most horrible, dehumanising things in the world.

And. The Irish traveller thing for me. I like. I've so many blind spots around it. It's. Since I was a child in school. I was in school with Irish travellers. And they were treated differently since

i was three years of age i'm there in as a little child in school and there's these other students in the class and this is the fucking 90s there's other little kids in the class and these kids are travelers and the teacher brings them into the class at a different time to everybody else and sits them in a different section to everybody else and they have different school books than we do and speaks to them very differently to the rest of us which is a tone of patronizing contempt with a bit of fear in there and from the age of three because I'm a child a blank slate I just learned that like oh the adults are speaking those kids over there that are actually just human beings the same as me that I noticed the teachers treat them completely differently to me and treating them as lesser to me so therefore

they must be less than me and every I can't speak for everyone but that's the experience i was raised with so i have to process all of that and the blind spots come up in me all the time and when i say a blind spot a blind spot is it's when your privilege which it's it's when your privilege. It's when your privilege prevents you. From. Experiencing human empathy. Just like that judge. Conflating the Irish language with the IRA. So I get tons of blind spots.

That I have to be aware of at all times. Around Irish travellers. Because. That's a systemic fucking racism that I was raised in to benefit from in the classroom since I was three and most Irish people had that experience and you know yourself from my psychology podcast the dodgy shit with that is you learn something at a young enough age and it defines your way of thinking and relating as an adult so then you have an adult and the adult is operating like oh i have uh i have some strong views about an entire group of people based on some incredibly toxic and dangerous

misinformation that was given to me as a child which I never challenged. Now imagine that person is a guard, is a policeman. How is that person supposed to deal with the traveling community in an impartial way they can't they don't and that there is an example of systemic racism in ireland i've yet to have a person from the traveling community on the podcast to speak about these issues because again what the fuck do i know um it's something i've been intending intending to do and would have been done at this point but coronavirus put a dampener onto my live podcast as you know but uh that is going to happen um something regarding the Black Lives Matter protests over in America if it's something you want to if it's something online you're trying to raise awareness towards or be a part of just a few things that i've learned from listening to african-american organizers about

what's appropriate and inappropriate behavior online especially as if you're a white person be careful how you use hashtags be careful of using the Black Lives Matter hashtag. That hashtag is often used by protesters as a way to organise. So ask yourself if that really is the hashtag you need to use in that moment. Considering how it is being used. The other thing is like. Post and share. But like I said kind of aim it towards you're trying to reach to people

other fucking white people who aren't listening if you must say something reach that way use whatever platform you have to elevate and kind of retweet the voices of black people first rather than saying something yourself

be careful if you've got followers who they themselves are black be careful how you go sharing fucking footage of violence against black people now seeing footage that's violent is traumatic for anybody but when that person looks like you

when that person when you could be that person you have to be very cautious how you share that around the internet because there's greater trauma so if you see that video of george flied do you really need to be retweeting that is is that is that going to help anyone are you going to make someone's day worse is there another way that you can show solidarity and boost the message without re-traumatizing people if you are going to use hashtags use use hashtags that most likely the people that are doing the oppressing will see so if you use black lives matter you're just to reach, you're going to reach people who are already concerned with Black Lives Matter. You're going to clog up the feed with information that might be used for protesting and organising. So tag things that you think like the police will see, the American Armed Forces will see. Tag in such a way that judges, politicians like that will see use your tags that way

you're trying to reach the groups that need to hear this because they're the ones that are doing the oppressor rather than kind of preaching to the choir the other thing too is i don't know if you're just arsing around hashtags and looking on twitter or Instagram at the protests and you see footage of people protesting ask yourself again is this the image you want to share or is you sharing that going to end up with somebody getting identified and arrested so just those little questions to ask yourselves if you're looking for organizations in ireland to support for solidarity to either donate to them or to boost their signal the irish travelers movement massey m-a-s-i for asylum seekers um then there's merge m-e-E-R-J which again

I think is Asylum Seekers and Immigrants Rights so they're good organisations to follow if you want to listen to some of my past

podcasts where I spoke to black people about issues of race my podcast with Emma Dabbery she spoke about Growing Up in Ireland she spoke about her book

Don't Touch My Hair fantastic podcast spoke with my podcast with Ellie Kaziambe where we spoke about direct provision and my podcast with Spike Lee where we spoke about the complex and often violent relationship that Irish America has with African Americans. So before we get into part two, with African Americans so before we get into part 2 em before we get into part 2 I'm gonna do my little ocarina pause

now I've been asked specifically not to do the Aztec death whistle pause anymore because it's just not nice is it oh there's the good one ok here's the ocarina pause we're gonna be sold some shit. Woo!

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Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!! W-W!-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one

is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you.

No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real.. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year.

It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the ocarina pause so live streaming lads

I did a full hour of live streaming the other night on twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast all my technical issues are now sorted live streaming the other night on Twitch, twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast, all my technical issues are now sorted, I am ready to fucking stream, I had,

an incredibly enjoyable one hour, you can actually see it on the Twitch page, because I saved the video, I think it stays up for about six days, played Red Dead Redemption, and, what I'm doing, it's kind of like a podcast, you get the podcast hug and what I'm doing it's kind of like a podcast you get the podcast hug from what I'm doing

where it's me playing a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2 but I'm playing it in a very slow way where what I'm doing is I'm exploring a digital environment and trying to write stories in the moment as such I'm interacting with characters and then giving them backstories Trying to write stories. In the moment. As such.

I'm interacting with characters. And then giving them back stories. And it's just like a podcast. It's like a podcast. And you can. If you have an account. You can chat with me. And interact with me live.

So twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast. It's still a young channel. So follow me if you are on twitch i don't have a schedule yet because i don't know when the right time for me to be twitching is currently i'm definitely knocking around on monday nights and after that it's intermittent if you've got a twitch account and it's on the app on your phone you'll'll get a little notification, every time I go online, and then I'll work towards, getting an actual schedule of, when is blind by,

definitely on streaming, I got some audio equipment, during the week, which means that I'm going to be up and running, doing live music, on Twitch, which I can't fucking wait for, I'm going to mess around,

with that equipment in the morning, it's going to be so much crack, so that's, that's the next big thing i'm doing my twitch live stream which i'm really looking forward to um support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page right i'm twitching because i can't do live gigs anymore i don't have any live income because of the gobbling of strange and uncertain times. So my only source of income is the patrons and the Patreon page.

So if you're listening to the podcast regularly and you can afford it, please give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, okay? That pays my bills, it keeps me happy, it gives me fucking meaning. It means that this is my fucking job and i don't have to worry because this is my job and you're listening and everyone's happy if you can afford it you pay it if you can't afford it you don't have to but thank you so much to the generosity recently okay um just thank you so much and like i said said, once a month I'm going to pick a person, and you're going to receive,

pick a person, a random patron, from the Patreon, and you're going to receive, in the post, a hand drawn image, that's signed as well, it could be anything,

I might even say to you, when I pick you out at random, and I give you a message, and I say to you, you've been picked at random, we might even talk about what the drawing could be. It could be a custom drawing just for you, and I'll send it to you in the post as a thank you to my patrons, because I do not know what the fuck I'd be doing without you. I'm still kind of staying on topic but what I want to do is I won't say hot takes but I have some

analysis that I'd like to explore with you around the brutality of the police protest or the police action that we're seeing on television what I mean is the the response to the protests from the police. In particular, how they're deliberately trying to target journalists, which is nuts.

And I want to speak about where this type of quote-unquote policing comes from because there's a bizarre Irish connection. So one of the things that's incredibly jarring about the past few days is US police literally firing rubber bullets at cameras on live TV. There is

quite clearly, right, been several instances where the US police are deliberately targeting journalists on camera and most people are thinking why the fuck why is that surely is that not a bad thing why would you look so vicious and authoritarian to attack the media on live tv is this not a via everything we understand about conflict is journalists are unarmed and they're they're given immunity in any conflict zone you leave journalists alone in a free democracy one of the cornerstones of democracy is journalism.

And I think it's a number of things. Is it deliberate? Yes. It is a very deliberate move by the police. It's coordinated by the US police. It's coordinated, it's decided upon to attack journalists. And on a psychological level it's an anger at cameras cameras

I've been hearing about police brutality against the black community for fucking years mainly through the music of Ice Cube and Ice T when I was a kid i would hear stories about it then in 1992 there was the footage of the police brutality against rodney king which was a landmark case because it's like here you have on footage irreputable police brutalizing a black man and it caused the protests or what's called the riots of 1992 in los angeles now with in the past five

years and camera phones we've been seeing more and more of police brutality against the black community on camera irrefutable and it's ubiquitous and the targeting of cameras i believe on a psychological level it is police it tells me police consider the u.s police consider brutality to be their actual job and cameras are preventing them from brutalizing because they now must behave within the law when a camera is present so when they attack the camera it's an anger at this thing which is preventing them from being brutal but it's also they're firing down the lens it's a message it's an advert it's branding it's so fucking american it's an advert of fear and brutality we are to be feared you are to stay in home we are not to be fucked with and we will shoot down the lens through your television into your couch it's they've definitely borrowed it from the only other place i've seen journalists

consciously and deliberately targeted by a force is in israel it's happened for fucking years the idf don't give a fuck about journalists and they'll fire tear gas and rubber rubber bullets at journalists who they believe to be aggressors when far Trump first came into power Steve Bannon fucking prick terrifying man who thankfully fell out with Trump and is no longer around one of the most chilling things that Steve Bannon said it was about two weeks after Trump had been elected he referred to he said the media are now the opposition party which is chilling because it's so anti-democratic

the media are the opposition party and this is a huge thing the vast majority of what Trump is preaching over the past four years what he gives a fuck about is the media he speaks mostly about CNN and complaining about and praising Fox News over the past four years what he gives a fuck about is the media he speaks mostly about fuck

cnn and complaining about and praising fox news he's obsessed with the media and he really has what he can anything he disagrees with is fake news so you can better believe that this is coming from the top down that the media are the opposition party that they're to be attacked that they're not honest journalists that are protecting the constitution and keeping people safe they are the enemy of tyranny and what they want, what Trump and his

cohorts want is tyranny as such and the other thing too you can bet that the police at the front line who are going against the protesters they're the most maddest right wing cunts that they could have plucked out of the force

Trump deliberately went about hiring people with very right wing leanings specifically for ICE the immigration police. And this is well documented. He was targeting people who had right wing leanings to become ICE officers. So I don't see why he should be any different with the police. Another thing you'll notice about the police.

And I think I might have mentioned this on a previous podcast. Which is they're incredibly militarised. They don't look like police officers. They look like strange future soldiers. And they have these huge armored cars. And it's a very strange thing. And you're wondering, why are the police, why do they have these huge tanks?

Why do they have all this armor? Where's all this money coming from? And something that I find really interesting about that and the policies of Trump, the militarization of the US police of recent times is actually, it's a strange little economic one. So one of the biggest industries in the US

is the arms industry, making tanks, weaponry big big money not just big money, big employment now during the cold war which ended in 1990 we'll say

the US was up against the Soviet Union the requirement for tanks and weaponry was huge so as a result of this there were military factories all over America continually churning out military materials creating a huge amount of employment and making a lot of money then the cold war ends and you're kind of going well what do you need the tanks for now lads the fucking soviet union's gone who's your biggest enemy now america

i mean i know you need some guns and some tanks but do you really need that many because russia's gone they're no threat and what happened was you have all these towns and cities in america for a huge amount of the workforce work building tanks building weaponry this is a fucking industry so just because the soviet union collapses does that mean now that the us have to make half the amount of tanks and lay off millions of people of mostly white blue collar workers so that's not what the US does the US continues to make these tanks to keep employment in these areas for people making tanks and making guns and then they go well the Russians aren't here but let's do a deal and make sure the Saudis or Qatar or someone buys 27 jets off us that they can't even fly and the US continued with this model

of doing deals with countries where mostly Middle Eastern countries where it was kind of tied up with oil deals where it's like you buy a shit done at this office even if you don't need it just buy it off us because now there's a town in idaho that has full employment which has political benefits then for whoever's in power in america and keep buying this military equipment and as a model they were running out of

they were making more tanks and more guns and more armour and more everything than they needed so about it would have been around the time of George W Bush about 20 years ago they started to approach they're like well the Saudis are after

taking all the jets and the Qataris are taking some but yet we're still making loads and loads of tanks and guns that we don't really need and now no one will take them what the fuck are we going to do but we don't want to lose the jobs and stop making them we have an oversaturated market what did they start doing

the defence contractors who are making all these things they start going to the smaller police departments and they start going to police departments all over america with their budgets and saying maybe you need a tank i know you're just a police department but maybe you need a tank or an apc and you need a lot of these guns and armour and we'll give it to you quite cheap and that's what started to happen police forces in America start buying all these

cheap tanks, all these cheap guns because the industry can't stop or else you have unemployment and this is one of the primary reasons why when you see the US police on TV they look like the army. They're militarised.

Which it is sinister. But it's not as deliberately sinister as you think. The reasons behind it are it's economic reasons. You stop making those tanks and a lot of people have no jobs. And if you give people lots of no jobs you've got lots of no votes another thing I want to speak about is

the significance and importance of rubber bullets in these protests and it's another thing where it's uniquely strangely Irish in relation to this current situation rubber bullets like there's a lot of people Uniquely, strangely Irish in relation to this current situation. Rubber bullets.

Like there's a lot of people and this week they're first hearing the term rubber bullets for the first time. But if you're from Ireland, you've been hearing about rubber bullets since you were a kid. I grew up hearing nothing but rubber bullets. Rubber bullets were invented by the British in the 1970s as a way to as a way to combat protesters or rioters in the north of Ireland specifically for the north of Ireland the British Ministry of Defence invented rubber bullets

because they were firing live rounds and they were killing civilians and the optics of that internationally isn't good bloody sunday there were scores of innocent irish protesters marching for their civil rights i believe the number is 27 i apologize if it's wrong gunned down and called blood by british soldiers in the 70s so rubber bullets were brought in as a way to shoot people without killing them non-lethal

but I grew up all I ever heard about rubber bullets was them killing people accidentally they'd say it was also a way I think to like there was a woman shot into the fucking face with a rubber bullet

up north there's been people killed with rubber bullets they say it's non-lethal but I think it's also a way for another thing that's bad for optics is if a British soldier murders someone and then they have to

receive justice and go on trial that's bad for the whole British army but if you murder someone with a rubber bullet then they're able to step back and go unfortunately this person was accidentally killed with our non-lethal rubber bullet we're so sorry and it's one of the concerns I have

with the current protest in America now I think the rubber bullets they're using in America aren't as big as the one the Brits were using against the Irish but they're targeting journalists the journalist was shot into the throat last week with a rubber bullet the third relationship strange Irish relationship with the current protest and this is the most oddly fucked up one

if you know the history of the Irish in America and Irish Americans you kind of have to use you have to view the American police as a very much Irish institution with very racist roots

and racist roots that are based in brutality against the black community you can go as far back as the New York draft riots of the 1860s. The Irish people, when they first arrived to New York, were not considered... Some say they weren't considered white, they did not have access to the system of privilege of whiteness, but they were definitely quite low on the totem pole of a system of privilege that would have been determined by second generation Brits.

And in New York in particular, famine Irish, who would have been viewed as the lowest of the low, were living in the same communities as newly free African-American slaves from the southern states and they lived together, initially in intermarriage and harmony, but the Irish gained their privilege through acts of extreme brutality against the African-American community.

The biggest one being the New York draft riots where there was huge lynchings. And. The US police. There's a reason why. You look at all films. And the cliche is that. The cop is Irish.

The Irish became a gang. Known as the fucking police. In America. And that tradition. Goes through it. And unfortunately. When I see. police brutality today, I view it as Irish-American violence,

which is quite fucking shameful, but here's the real Irish connection with what you're seeing on television at the moment. So everything I've previously described there, the incredibly militaristic, aggressive, forward-facing marching uh approach that the u.s police are having right now towards the protesters the deliberate the targeting of journalists the full-on this is an aggressive force that marches towards that is known that's planned and the name for that model of riot control or crowd control or whatever you want to call it the name for it is the miami model of policing and it was invented

and pioneered by a man from dublin whose name was john timoney and he was born in the Liberties in the 1940s. And he moved to America and became the chief of police. He was chief of police commissioner in Miami, in Miami PD. And John Timoney pioneered and invented this incredibly aggressive, vicious form of confronting protesters and rioters that we see today on television this week so the tenets of the miami model of crowd control which were invented by this man from dublin who was the chief of police in miami um incredibly heavily armed militarized looking police who act in a soldier-like, marching forward, aggressive fashion that never stops. Preemptively arresting people. Mass arrests.

Having police officers in almost suits of armor, which makes them very difficult to identify as individuals and also dehumanizes them and makes them almost like scary terrifying monsters the conscious use of media of so the miami model of crowd control consciously places media which is pro-police pro-government in with the police to act in opposition to the protesters and also in opposition to any media which is critical of the police or government

um not only the physical maneuvering of how this miami model of policing is done but there's also an ideological element to it specifically they make sure that they refer to the protesters as not as protesters but often terrorists or they call them violent protesters you saw this immediately where as soon as these protests happened the first message that goes out is that these are not the people of this city these are foreign deliberate organized protesters antifa that are coming from other states to create disorder in this city and because it started in minneapolis and they started saying these are not the people of minneapolis these are outside instigators who are anarchists and they have a political agenda and they're coming into

minneapolis and what they're doing is they're they're creating riots and they're causing disruption and they're manipulating the poor people of minneapolis into writing isn't it such a shame that's straight up miami model right um another thing that may thing with the ideology of Miami model is, you saw it with Trump. So what Trump was saying is these outside anti-fat terrorists are removing people's right to freely protest and they are acting against the memory of George Floyd, which is hugely disrespectful of Trump. But whoever's advising him they're following the Miami model they're making the protesters believe that the police are actually there to protect them so that they can protest and what they're doing is the police are trying to weed out

the baddies this is America of course you can protest. You've got free speech. Please protest. We're just here to take away all these bad terrorists that are among you. These anti-fat people. They're not here to benefit you. You go and protest. But it's all bullshit. That's ideological warfare. And of course the deliberate targeting of media that isn't agreed with. Confiscating cameras. Attacking the cameramenamen that's all part of the miami model and there's also the use of the use of non-lethal weapons so it's a shock and awe type of thing loud bangs tear gas rubber bullets terror but not flat out murdering people but making people believe that they're about to be murdered so that right there that is the miami

model of crowd control that's what we're seeing on unfolding on television it's a post 9-11 means of crowd control which Which is different. And was invented by a man from Dublin. Called John Timoney. And that's a fact. So that's another bit of shame we can have there. So that's all I've got time for this week. I'll be back next week.

Hopefully with a hot take. Like I said this week. It just felt wrong. It would have felt wrong if I didn't address what's happening in the news if i didn't speak about it my intention this week was to not i didn't want to center fucking irishness or irish oppression in any of this as a way to speak over what's happening what i wanted to do was to try and use it as a way to speak over what's happening. What I wanted to do was to try and use it as a way to communicate a capacity and ability for us to have empathy

for people who are being marginalised so we can listen to them. That was the intention of this week's podcast. Mind yourself. Look after yourself. Look after your mental health. Enjoy the bit of good weather while it's there. Don't get heat rash wear fucking masks in public places lads look up the studies if everyone's wearing a mask if you're if you're protesting if you're going to a protest

in ireland wear a cotton face mask and make sure everyone else does as well if everybody is wearing a face mask the risk of transmission of coronavirus goes down it's I think it's 15% is the latest figure alright but absolutely wear a face covering of some description

yart I'll talk to you next week catch me on twitch rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Catch me on Twitch. That's going to be some fun coming up. All right. Thank you.