The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak - Part 8 w/ John Fieldhouse

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

65 MinutesPG-13Pete continues his reading of Edward N. Luttwak's "Coup D'état." In this episode he welcomes back John Fieldhouse to comment on the middle section of chapter 4.Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Coup d'ÉtatPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and ad free, head on over to freemamandbeonthewall.com forward slash support. There's a few ways you can support me there. One, there's a direct link to my website. Two, there's subscribe star. Three, there's Patreon. Four, there's substack. And now I've introduced Gumroad, because I know that a lot of our guys

are on Gumroad and they are against censorship. So if you head over to Gumroad, and you subscribe through there, you'll get the episodes early and ad-free, and you'll get an invite into the Telegram group. So I really appreciate all the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to part eight of my reading of Kudaita by Edward Lut-Wak. John Fieldhouse is back. How are you doing, John? doing well sir all right i'm gonna get into it just start reading uh sandy and i left off at a city entry exit road links so here we go during the active phase of the coup the unexpected arrival of even a small contention of loyalist or uninfiltrated forces could seriously endanger our whole effort when a government

discovers that troops of its own armed its own armed forces are taking part in a coup in the capital city its logical reaction may be to call on troops stationed elsewhere, in the hope that the infiltration of the armed forces is limited to those in the capital city. As it is not easy to infiltrate forces in the entire national territory, the government's hope may not be unfounded. We will attack the mechanism that could lead to the arrival of loyalist troops in the capital city at each separate level. We will arrest those who would call them in.

We will disrupt the telecommunications needed to reach them, and we will also try to isolate identified loyalist forces by direct, though purely defensive, military means. We must also prevent the intervention of these forces by controlling the last level, the perimeter of the capital city, and scene of the coup. There's a figure here, physical targets of the coup. Check it out on the video. If the law... Go ahead. No, nothing. I was just going to say the biggest issue is something like this.

It's just controlling main... choke points there. You don't have to control every inch of the roads if you can control the choke points. If the loyalist forces are to intervene in time, they will have to move rapidly. This will require the use of either the major roads or alternatively air transport. If we can set up efficient defensive roadblocks at the appropriate places, we should be able to deny their entry into the capital city for the short period required. That is, until we have established ourselves as the government and receive the allegiance of the bulk of the state bureaucracy and military forces. Thus, by the time the forces of intervention have reached the scene of the action, they will be isolated.

They will be isolated band of rebels. The most suitable places to block a road with a small number of men and limited equipment, as well as the techniques and implications of such, are discussed in Appendix B and also in Chapter 5, where we deal with the direct neutralization of the identified loyalist forces. Figure 4.4 illustrates the locations that would be chosen in a particular synthetic example. But our control of the physical access to the capital city will also serve other purposes. It will be one of the ways in which we will establish the physical presence of the new regime, and it will also allow us to prevent the escape of government leaders and other personalities we have been unable to arrest.

One of the dangers we will face will be the revitalization of counter-coup opposition, which could result if a major governmental figure escapes from the capital city and joins loyalist elements outside it. After all the efforts we have made to neutralize such forces by internal means and by interference with their transport and communications, our whole work could be endangered. The loyalist forces could fail to reach the capital, but the political leadership could reach them. The means at our disposal will not be sufficient to hermetically seal the entire capital city, though, of course, much will depend on its location and spatial spread. Brasilia, though open on all sides, would be easy to seal off simply by closing the airport because distances preclude rapid road movements from two other major centers of the country.

Helsinki, on the other hand, would be spatially convenient because, though not remote from the rest of the country, it is surrounded by the sea and lake so that a number of roadblocks would effectively seal it. Focal traffic points. The site of tanks in the main squares of the capital city has become a symbol of the coup, but is also an expression of a very real practical requirement, the need to establish a physical presence in the center of the political activity. Every capital city has an area that is the local equivalent of Whitehall in the United Kingdom,

or Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks near the White House in the United States, where the main political administrative facilities are concentrated. We will select and defend certain positions, around and within this area, and by doing so, we will achieve a variety of aims. A, the positions will form a ring around the main area within which our active teams will operate so as to protect them from any hostile forces that may have penetrated the capital city. B, they will assist in establishing our authority by giving visual evidence of our power. And C, they will filter movement to and from the area, thus enabling us to capture those whom we have been unaresolved.

able to arrest directly. Another figure with showing how you would do that in this looks like a pretty urban area. It's designed to be, it looks like there's an airport right here on the outskirts. Yeah.

A coastal city. Yeah. Which many most capitals in the world are. Yep. In order to achieve these difficult objectives, our blocking positions must be individually strong, otherwise they will tempt any extent loyalist forces into a counterattack.

In any case, unless adequately staffed, they will be unable to act as efficient filters to individual movements. We must, therefore, resist the temptation to secure every important location by blocking positions that are individually weak. As only a few of the possible locations will, in fact, be covered, it is essential to select them with special care. Focal traffic points will be easier to select in a coastal or riverine city where a definite shape has been imposed on the capital city and on the traffic flows within it. This is illustrated in figure 4.5. In each particular case, the area which is the center of political and bureaucratic activity will be well known to the local inhabitants. Therefore, it will be a matter of selecting a perimeter of straight and fairly broad

streets at the intersection of which we will establish our blocking positions. The avenues and boulevards of Paris are ideal from this point of view. Airports and other transport facilities. One of the classic moves in the period immediately following the coup is the closure of airports and the cancellation of all flights. This is part of the general tactic which aims at freezing the situation by preventing the uncontrolled flow of people information. There will also be other, more specific objectives.

By closing the airport, we will prevent the escape of those governmental leaders whom we have been unable to arrest. we will also prevent any inflow of loyalist forces into the area of the capital city. Because of the short time frame in which the coup takes place, air transport will be a very great importance. Either we or the government could tip the balance of forces by flying in quite small contingents of our respective supporters. The size of the forces that can be moved by air may well be very small, but in the context of the delicate balance of the active phase of the coup, they could still play a decisive role. Air transport is, however, very vulnerable insofar as it still relies on long and interrupted landing strips. Therefore, if at all possible, we should avoid having to rely on it.

To the extent that we are independent of support arriving by air, we should prevent the use of all airfields in and around the area of the capital city. Some of these airfields will be military ones, but even if they are not, they may still be heavily guarded. This could be a serious obstacle if the government still controls significant military forces outside the capital city and if transport planes are available to bring them in. Seizing a defended airfield will certainly be difficult, but denying the use of one is very easy. A few vehicles parked on the runway either by covert means or with a little cooperation from the inside and covered by a small fire team to prevent them from being moved will suffice to neutralize an entire airport. A few warning shots from suitable

positions could also prevent any landings taking place. It's just a great point. I mean, force is less important than the ability to implement force. Did you know, those Black Friday deals everyone's talking about? They're right here at Beacon South Quarter. That designer's sofa you've been wanting. It's in Seoul, Boe Concept, and Rocheburoix. The Dream Kitchen, check out at Cube Kitchens. Beacon South Quarter, Dublin, where the smart shoppers go. Two hours free parking, just off the M-50. It's a Black Friday secret. Keep it to yourself.

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When the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Yes. Most people don't understand the difference between force and violence. And there are distinct differences when used properly and when used strategically. And like he said, if you park something on the runway, the runway is out of use.

which is even better than blowing it up, because now you can use it in the future. Other organized forms of transport will only rarely be important in monitored conditions. In many undeveloped countries, railways play a very marginal role in the transport structure. Even where they are important economically, they will often be removed from the main population centers, having been built to connect mines and plantations with deep seaports as part of the colonial export economy, rather than as links between the main population centers. In Europe and those parts of Latin America, where this is not the case, railways will still be unimportant from our point of view because of the time element.

In any case, railways are extremely easy to neutralize. In the 1926 coup in Poland, staged by Joseph Pilsutsky... Joseph Pilsutsky. Pilsutsky, thank you. A great deal of the action revolved around the railways. system, but rail-borne troops never arrived in time to decide the issue. Both sides found it easy to prevent the other's movements, though not to ensure their own, where as in Ethiopia, the railways are important, or rather the single Adis Ababa-Jabudi railway line is important. Technical neutralization

should be used. Yeah. Railways rely. Yeah, the big problem with the railway is, you know, anywhere along the line, somebody can take it out of action by just taking a couple of links out, and nobody in the world has enough personnel to guard every single inch of railway. Yeah, and also, well, the good thing about doing that, too, is it's not hard to rebuild build. I mean, if you start taking out runways, it's a lot easier to put rail back in than it is to rebuild a runway. Yeah, and a lot of times you don't even have to take off or take out pieces of railway. you just have to, there are technical means for blocking certain areas.

And if you control those key choke points, you know, you control everything. Yep. Railways rely on a technical chain system par excellence, and if a single section of rail or signals is sabotaged, the whole system will temporarily stop. The gap between two sections of rail is easily crossed, but probably there will be no rolling stock on the other side. Public buildings. The need to provide the bureaucracy and the masses with visual evidence of the reality and power of the coup is one of the continuing elements in our analysis.

Otherwise, this will be the least defined and coherent of our groups of targets. The buildings we will have to seize include the residences of these government leaders whom we have selected for arrest, and those buildings that house facilities we require, such as the radio television building. In the first case, it will be a matter of a brief penetration to achieve capture or arrest. In the second, however, we will have to seize and occupy the building, and perhaps resist attempts to make made to recapture it. But there will be other official buildings we will also have to occupy or, at any rate, control the access to. Those can only be loosely defined as those buildings whose possession is associated with the possession of political power. So things like the internal security forces, the Ministry of Interior.

there. Most countries have some form of elected assembly, a parliament, or its local equivalent, but in many of them political power emanates from the palace of the president or other ruler, or the central committee of the party. We should not be deceived by constitutional fictions, and after spending so much effort distinguishing between effective political power and its symbols, we will not make the mistake of using our scarce resources on the latter. Yeah, one of the best example of this in the recent past is Liberia. Because Liberia, when it was actually still controlled by the American Liberians, the actual descendants of American slaves who are set back there,

yeah, they had a constitutional government, which was essentially copied off of the United States. But the reality is a huge amount of the power in the country was exercised through the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons, which we all immediately would question that as a country. conspiracy theory, but the reality is it worked as the fraternity for America Liberians that could be kept away from outside view of the rest of the world. So capturing that building and eliminating its ability to be used was essential for natives in order to take away, yeah, take away the

organizing ability of the American Liberians. Nevertheless, there will be certain symbolic buildings which could play an important role in the crucial transitional phase of the coup. Their possession by one side or the other will act as a signal to the masses in the rank and follow the bureaucracy in the confused period where it is unclear which side is in control. Does that sound like something that they, like Alcazar and Toledo, why Franco was so hell-bentz on making sure that it was preserved? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely part of it, right? I've been, you know, the worst place to probably get political quotes from is Game of Thrones, but was it Tyrion used to always say political power, you know, exists where people believe it exists. So, yeah.

Our possession of those symbols will then give us the allegiance of those who were waiting to choose one side or the other. Thus, though useless indirect material terms, it may be worthwhile to seize those buildings which have a symbolic value. In the Ghana coup of 1966, that brought down the Nkuma regime, the very efficient and practical-minded leaders of the coup felt it necessary, to fight their way into the presidential residence, Flagstaff House, though it contained neither Kumar himself nor any important technical facilities. They realize that though it was an empty symbol par excellence, its possession was essential to secure the support of the Akra masses

who naturally associated the control of political power with that particular building. Fortunately, by the very nature of such symbols, there will be one, or at most two, such symbolic buildings whose possessions will be an essential requirement. Apart from the purely symbolic buildings, there will be others whose possession is highly desirable. These are the administrative headquarters of the Army, Police, and Security Services. Thus, in each case, the group of targets will include the following. A. The seat of effective political power. This could be the Royal or Presidential Palace, or the building of the elected assembly, or of the party president.

Presidium, Presidium or Central Committee. Yeah, in the case of the modern world, usually you can identify that place because it has the most communications running in and out of it, which obviously won't necessarily be visible to the public as a whole. But in the planning stage, you're going to see that through a variety of things, just like electromagnetic traffic or, you know, who's wired the most into the communications network. The main administrative buildings, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, police and military headquarters, if separate. C, symbolic buildings.

Often the appropriate building will fall into one or another of the classifications above, where, however, there is a cultural lag between the development of the country's political life and the traditional attitudes. The masses will still associate political power with an obsolete building. The coup will be practically over in its active phase by the time the citizenry wakes up and starts to investigate the possession of building symbolic or otherwise. We can therefore postpone the occupation of some of these targets to the later stages. Since in direct practical terms, other targets will be more important or at any rate more urgent, the best way of dealing with the symbolic and administrative targets will be to use them as assembly points for those teams which have already completed their primary mission.

Yeah, part of why it's important to point this out is because again, a coup, an act of coup is going to minimize the amount of communications that are done in the red, right? The amount of communications that the opposition of the public can see. So using a symbolic building as a rallying point after you've accomplished one phase is a great way to, you know, minimize communications beforehand and during it when you're actively, you know, doing things and you don't want, your communications are still in danger of being intercepted. It's a way of, you know, setting a pre-made rallying point where people are going to show up as soon as they've accomplished that

their earlier phase, their earlier missions, and you can go and assign them to future missions, again, without compromising yourself or without doing your communications in some place where the enemy can intercept. There's so much rugby on Sports Exeter from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lot at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end.

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Not many, but we must remember that even one well-organized demonstration or a well-timed strike could pose a serious threat to the coup in a delicate transitional phase. And so it is essential to identify such groups and, once identified, to neutralize them before the coup. Once it is known that a coup has taken place, the leaders of the militant organization or organizations, will immediately prepare for action. They themselves will then be more difficult to arrest, and their organizations will be halfway underground. In countries where political conflict is limited to the verbal dimension, this kind of dramatic and rapid response to political change will be unknown. But elsewhere where political conflicts can be violent, where all organized forces, whether primarily political or not, can be drawn into them, this type of response is more

or less automatic. Islamist militias in the Middle East and trade union movements in southern Europe have little in common except, A, their ability to respond to this way, and B, that even without the weaponry that some of them have, they could be a real threat to the coup. We will conduct our analysis in terms of those three types of political forces because their feature will largely subsume those of other kinds of organized groups, which may be relevant in particular countries. In the United States or the United Kingdom, for example,

where neither trade unions nor religious groups nor political parties are sufficiently militant to oppose a coup after it has seized its initial targets, the groups which may have this capability, such as paramilitary movements of the paranoid right, will be organized in a manner that includes features of all three. It feels good to be a hero in this story. One of the points we must bear in mind is that not all the organized groups considered important in normal political life will also be important in the highly restricted in spasmodic politics of the coup. Conversely, groups which in ordinary political life are of little, are of very limited importance could emerge as real threats. If, for example, we failed to neutralize the organization of, say, the national,

Rifle Association in the United States or the National Union of Students in the United Kingdom. Their reaction, however, ineffectual per se, could still endanger the coup by slowing down the process of political stabilization in as much as they could provoke conflicts that might reopen the whole issue. Other more prudent groups would then re-examine the possibility of challenging our position, while the use of violence to stop the agitation of the groups we have overlooked could lead to further opposition since the side effects of the violence would increase the awareness of and hostility to the coup. The easiest way to get the National Rifle Association to stand down in the event of a coup is just like start spouting boomerisms.

Yeah. Or throw some boomer slogans at them. Or incorporate them in some way. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're going to have to convince them that this is, you know, The, yeah, the solution to 1984 or 1776 or some shit like that. Yeah. And then you can always hypothetically mobile call for them to assemble in different places. And you don't, you can neutralize them just by giving them tasks that are outside of. Yeah.

Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. I agree. I'm just, I started thinking what those tasks might be.

And I started laughing. Yeah. Well, make them guard inland poets. just because the Corps of Engineers stopped dredging most inland waterways in the U.S. like 20 or 30 years ago, so a lot of them can't really be used anymore. So it looks important, but they're not really used for anything. Finally, there are certain political forces which must not be neutralized, apart from those groups that have agreed to support us.

These are those groups that are generally regarded as extremists, but whose effective powers are limited. By allowing them, nice to be included, by allowing them a certain freedom of action, we will give them an opportunity to oppose us, and their opposition will have two favorable byproducts. We will be able to gain the support of those political forces which fear them more than us. We will be able to step forward and fight other groups after having associated with them, associated them with the extremists in question.

This can, however, be a dangerous game to play in the confused and dramatic situation of the coup. the extremists could gain in power and political support and it is possible that the time we have allowed... There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby.

For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby.

Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month. for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. ...them to discredit. The opposition will work in their favor. Religious organizations. In economically developed countries, religious organizations no longer have much political power,

though they may still be important social force. I would immediately men NGOs. I mean... Yeah. I'm sorry. You were saying, sir. No, I was just saying he says that they no longer have much political power. Well, the ones that do want political power now just become NGOs. Yeah.

And they do, and they actually do have, you know, some political power. Yeah, and there's also a reason why the, I think the establishment left is so fearful of the Mormons. You know, we may have serious theological criticisms of them and find them rather milk toast. But it's easy to conceive how in a circumstance like this, they could be an important counterforce. The leaders of religious groups can be influential in social and to a degree political life, but the allegiance to the believers is rarely expressed by direct and forceful action in the political field. In economically backward countries and in those whose development is limited or very recent,

it is otherwise. Where the newer technology of humans has only been recently applied, or not at all, the older technology of God is still of paramount importance. Only if somebody of one specific ethno-sectarian group could make that claim. This can be a source of very considerable political power to the organizations identified with the appropriate beliefs and able to channel the sentiment of the believers. Leaving aside local cults, which are too fragmented to be important in terms of national politics, in which, in any case, tend to be a political, we see that even universal religions will differ in their degree of political involvement. The role of the Catholic Church in Italy since the Second World War illustrates the power that can be accumulated by a well-organized religious group, even when operating in circumstances considered unfavorable from the religious point of view. Though most male Italians seldom or never go to church, Italian women are keen and regular churchgoers.

Italy being a democratic country where women have the vote, it is obvious that if the organized church is willing to direct its followers to vote for a particular party, that party will gain the bulk of the women's vote before it even opens its electoral campaigns. Until the late 1960s, the church was generally willing to give such specific directions, and one particular party used to benefit the Democracia Christiana, D.C., aided by its assured majority of the female vote, the D.C. ruled Italy, alone in various coalitions from 1948 until its 1990-190 to 1991 collapse under the attack, of investigative magistrates. Corruption accumulates when there is no alter alternation of moderate ruling parties

long precluded in Italy by the weight of the Communist Party. Corruption accumulates when there is no altruism moderate ruling parties. They can have lecoed, but... That would be one of many cases, probably, of that. I think we've seen in the last two years that in the UK, that's very much a case with the conservatives, the Tories.

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Thus the URC and all the best European rugby All in the same place Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra Jampack with rugby Phew, that is a lot of rugby Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months Search Sports Extra New Sports Extra customer only

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And it did so largely because of the support it received from the Catholic Church. It is hardly surprising then that the church was able to dominate the D.C. And that through the D.C. it influenced every aspect of Italian national life. After 1991, however, Italy discovered that no other political grouping could replicate the D.C.'s successes in steering the Italian economy. The post-D.C. technocrats made the fatal mistake of taking the muddled Italian economy into the all-too-clear waters of the euro. After 1994, Berlusconi arrived to teach the Italians that there was something worse than corruption, i.e. institutional paralysis to persist while the

supreme leader looks after his own business and his own fund-filled personal life. Hence, Italy underwent the socially tragic consequences of prolonged economic stagnation and chronic youth unemployment, which post-Burlusconi leaders have failed to remedy as of 2015. This sentence reads like it's written by somebody who's extremely jealous. Or, I mean, was Berlusconi-patic? particularly critical of a certain group? Yeah, and again, I don't know enough about Italian politics to make any judgment one way or the other. But just wait five minutes and it'll change, so. This is no vague influence exercised in a plane of generalized authority, but rather a constant supervision of political activity,

conducted at the provincial level by the bishops and at the national level by the Pope and his associates. It's really weird that Litwak is just going on about the Catholic Church. I have no idea why he would bring them up. At each level of the state bureaucracy, the church, directly or indirectly, exercises its influence on civil service jobs and promotions, on the allocation of investment funds and of the various kinds of government grants, on administrative decisions dealing with zoning and building regulations. This influence has brought it rearwards. While the facilities of the state bureaucracy have steadily deteriorated compared with the dynamic private and semi-state sector, the Catholic Church's educational and religious facilities have steadily expanded. Money to build and the permissions required to do so have never been lacking. Yeah, on that note, I think one of the interesting looks just at the role of the Italian, yeah, the Catholic Church and Italian politics is of all things that HBO series, the Young Pope and the New Pope, is it they actually look explicitly at the kind of damage to the internal status quo of the Italian states that Italian state that an actual conservative Pope could actually wreak on them. I need to watch those.

I haven't watched them. You recommend them? Yeah, I do. It's a rare case of like a mainstream, you know, fiction series on Christianity. It's actually really good. All right. If we failed to neutralize the organization of the church in Italy,

it could inspire and coordinate opposition to us through its capillary network of parish churches. parishioners are used to hearing political messages from the pulpit, priests are used to receiving detailed political briefs from the bishop, and the latter received their instructions from the, the Vatican. Our neutralization of the telecommunications facility will not prevent the flow of instructions. The Vatican maintains its own radio station, and this could be used to contact directly the organization throughout the country. There's a reason why so many NGOs are now called Catholic,

at least in their title, despite having non-Catholics running them. Isn't it insane that you can just start an NGO and call it Catholic? And then you look at the board of directors, and every single one of them is, of a certain tribe? Non-Catholic, yeah. Yeah, non-Catholic, yeah. Let's call it that. Let's call it that, yeah. The Catholic Church plays a similar role in certain other countries, where it has a 99.9% nominal membership in the status of the national religion, but the stronger state structure of Spain

and Portugal, let alone France, has denied it the preeminent position it has in Italy. The intervention of the church would, however, be a powerful factor in much of the Catholic world including South America, especially if the motive behind the coup was identified as being anti-clerical. Which has a long history of happening in Latin America, like, you know, the Mexican coups in the early 20th century. Assassinating priests in El Salvador, things like that. I mean, it was just, yeah. Islam, which has the comprehensive nature of a religion, a political system, and a civilization is much decayed to culture.

is much decayed culturally, but the doctors of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the main theological institutions of the Muslim world, are periodically prompted by the rule of the day into openly political declarations. No single leader in Islam has the authority of a pope, but in each country local religious leaders can still be important. Even before its abrupt disappearance, the once very noisy theater of Arab socialism did not impair in any way the position of Islam, and governments that followed an extremely left-wing line in all foreign and some domestic matters were still unwilling or unable to challenge the status of Islam as the state religion. When such a course was tentatively suggested by an obscure member of the nominally bathist,

hence nominally secular Syrian government, the leadership was forced to denounce him officially. Whether this resilience means that the Islamic leadership of particular countries could function as an act of political force is another matter. The structures of Islam as an organized religion are fossilized. The fluid and dynamic Islam of its early days of conquest has been replaced by a dogmatic and extremely conservative set of beliefs whose inflexibility is the major cause of the present travails of the Muslim world. Yeah, just for the in American or Western audience, it's really important to understand that within Islam there's a huge difference in administration between

and Shiites and Sunnis are essentially congregationalists, which means, you know, every mosque is essentially autonomous in terms of its hierarchy, whereas Shiites actually have, you know, a defined clerical authority. So it's something more like, more like the Catholic Church than Protestantism in terms of how it's run. When he says the fluid and dynamic Islam of its early days of conquest, I'm wondering if he's referring specifically to like 7-11, Spain through 4, 7-11 through 1492, Yeah, I imagine he did, which, you know, we know about one specific group that tended to do very well under early Islam, but the reality is other groups. I mean, there were no shortage of Christians and Zoroastrians who were elevated to an extremely high level. And yeah, they had huge limitations on their political rights, but they were also exempt from military service, which meant that they weren't the people dying for their state. Well, I mean, something that I've said recently is that, you know, from studying that period 7-11 to 1492 in Spain, I, as a Christian, you would feel more safe at that time in Spain under Morris rule than you would feel now under the regime that we're under right now. Yeah, ironically, right? I mean, Muslims are much less of a threat in an Islamic state than they are in the West. Yeah. By contrast, there has been a great deal of fluidity and dynamism in the more or less violent Islamist movements that exist outside official or traditional religious institutions.

Ranging from the historic 1928 Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Al-Iqan al-Muslimun, which spread to Syria in the 1960s and the jihadi movements of Pakistan that spread to Afghanistan after 1979, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. which, for a while, had global pretensions to the newest, the Islamic State, which as of 2015 boasted of its own caliph, i.e. the sole legitimate ruler of all Muslim nations everywhere, and of any territories ever ruled by Muslims, such as Spain's Andalusia. I want to remind everybody that the fact that the IS, our ISIS's head, called himself Caliph, is a lot like the mayor of Orange County, California, calling himself the head of Christendom. It's a very pompous title that nobody in the world outside of, you know, his direct immediate support and it's actually thought meant anything.

And I would also like to remind people that ISIS, when they bombed Israel 10 years ago, took out very publicly to apologize. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What the jihadi groups have in common are four rather odd characteristics. First, for reasons that are not easy to explain, they are utterly obsessed with the role of women in society and rather the importance of their exclusion from society and their reduction to a status not far from that of valuable domestic animals, a status limited to procreation.

As a cowcalf, a cattle rancher, I get the point, and the servile service of their husbands in and out of bed. some groups are less restrictive, but none of the jihadi movements afford females any political role whatsoever. They can fight, but only as suicide bombers. None allow women to be educated beyond some capacity for reading the Koran, if that. And none believe that an unmarried woman can have any professional existence of any sort or even drive a car. The widows might take in laundry and such. I don't deny his point about the sex aggregation among most. most Islamist groups, but I think it's more accurate to say that it's a reaction to the West

and the transformation of gender relations in the West and the last century than anything inherent in Islam. Absolutely, and I'm not going to argue with them at all about restricting women from voting. Second, the jihadi groups always speak in the name of Islam, period, but they only act for Sunni Islam, habitually persecuting or simply killing any non-exam. non-Sunni Muslim who falls into their hands, whether the 12th or Shia of Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria, the five or Aidae, Shia of Yemen, or the sevener, Ishmaelie, Shia scattered worldwide, but also present in Syria. In that regard, while Iran's great Satan is the United States,

as indeed it is for the Ayatollahs who must rule incurably pro-American educated elites. For the jihadis, the great Satan is Iran, not an unhappy conjunction in as much as it sets equally murderous Shia Hezbollah and Sunni jihadists against each other. Now, understanding this point, we can see why it's so ironic that the neocons have always gone other way to identify Sunni and Shiite groups together, despite the fact that Haiti. other even more than they hate us. And it shows the other strategic incompetence of trying to equate those two groups when the last 20-something years there could have been some made at reproachment with countries like Iran in order to end this threat and achieve some kind of lasting

peace. Well, I mean, the redirection in Iraq was basically we need to stop empowering Shia And by doing that, we're going to empower Sunnis. Yeah. And that whole issue, I mean, Scott Horton's talked about out of length, and he's demonstrated, right, under the Hussein regime. So the Ba'ath Party in Iraq was largely a vehicle for Sunni rule, as opposed to what it was in Syria. But at the same time, you know, there's some amount of Shias who were co-wopped into the

Bath Party. There was some amount of, what do you call it, Kurdish groups. that were you know co-opted despite being non-Arabs so yeah this it essentially ensure or essentially required the Sunni majority or Sunni minority rather to actually hold the political power in iraq and once we eliminated them destroy the bath party you know that meant the shias who are the the majority at least in the the part below Kweristan are going to win any democratic relation or any democratic situation which turned brought iraq into a line with Iran, which is why how we end up in a situation where the government backed Iraqi official

government militia, the head of that was assassinated under Trump, you know, and this is somebody that was empowered by us. So it's the pure asinine incompetence of America's policy in the Middle East. Third, the jihadi groups are, of course, anti-Western and reject Western artifacts, clothing, et cetera, as well as Western ideas. But they are keen in some of the United States. But they are keen in sometimes talented emulators of Western media techniques. Fourth, the jihadis consistently attract volunteers who are notably more committed and therefore potentially more effective than the salaried soldiers and police who confront them across the Muslim world. And because of their skill in utilizing Western media techniques,

members of the jihadi movement are able to attract volunteers from the West who bring their valuable Western skills with them, the leader of the 9-11 attack on New York for instance. was a German engineer of Egyptian origin. Yeah. Again, one of the things that I think our establishment, especially the media, fails to recognize, is that people in the world, many of them actually believe in their religions

and are willing to kill and die for them. And it's not just a window dressing that the establishment assumes it is for everyone. Sandy and I were the other night we were trying to figure something out. Maybe you can help with it. Do you know what an, can you describe exactly what an al-oite is? Okay, yeah.

In fact, yeah, here's a good point, and depending on how long it takes me, explain. All right, it is an endogamous ethnocectarian group in the Levant that is nominally Shiite Muslim. All right, when I say endogamous, it means that it originated in one ethnic group of people who founded was it al-Nusar which I think I'm mispronouncing it but that was the name of the religious leader out of Iraq who formed this group centuries ago. Indogamous means it's descended from those people unlike the Druze which are another endogamous group in the area. I think the Alwhites actually allow some amount of integration and conversion and the children of mixed marriages to actually integrate in the community but again it's an endogamous community It has what are called esoteric elements, which means that they have the outer form of the religion,

and then fully initiated members of the religion get further secret knowledge as part of it, which is something that historically saw in many religious movements. So the outward-facing part of the religion is essentially Shiite Islam. Inner movement, as far as we can tell, is probably some remnant of occulted Christianity with Gnosticism. with maybe even Hinduism or Buddhism because they believe in reincarnation and things like that. So again, this is essentially a ethno-religious tribal group, much like certain other groups in the region, that has a close society in which it's not just a matter of being born into a group, because that's a prerequisite, but you actually have to be initiated in the inner circle in order to become a religious,

excuse me, a leader within that community, which means you have a group that's forced to deal with everybody, usually on asymmetric terms, meaning other people have more power than them, so they have to navigate their way historically. But it has a reinforcing discipline and function that requires them to, you know, commit their loyalty to the organization and its movement and its ideas in order to, you know, become a leader in that community, which means it, you know, it's forced to both deal with the outside world while maintaining cohesive.

And I know I'm rambling here. But, yeah, so that. religious ethnic community exists primarily in the Levant. So in Syria, there are small numbers of them in Lebanon. There are even some in Israel, in the Golan Heights, some of whom even had Israeli citizenship. I don't know if that answers your question or not. Yeah, it does. He asked the question, and for my study, I just said it's Shiite Muslim, but it seemed like there was, like they were closer to Christianity than probably anything else. far as we can tell again that's one second sorry but um so yeah as far as we can tell part of the problem

is because it's a closed esoteric uh religion we only have a vague idea of what the inner teachings of the movement are because they're not communicated to outsiders and like any other esoteric movement when it when somebody spills the beans it's not really clear if they're telling the truth or just making shit up um so yeah we only have a very very very idea of what it is. All right. We only got a few more pages here and then we'll get out of here on this little part right here. The political sterility of official Islam in recent times has meant that though it has been used by governments to propagate their political initiatives, Islamic leaders have only spoken out in response to direct attacks on religious orthodoxy. Consequently,

unless our coup has a definite anti-Islamic coloring, religious leaders in Muslim countries will not initiate any action against us. Clearly, we must prevent our opponents from imposing, from imposing such a coloring on our coup. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, in the intermittent political warfare between Arab socialists and the monarchies, while the latter was accused of being tools of the Zionist imperialist oil monopolies, the former were accused of wanting to eradicate Islam with their godless beliefs. Actually, even the self-styled. progressives did not dream of challenging Islam. These days, with Arab socialism long dead, the competition of rulers with ultra-Islamist jihadis has resulted in the further Islamization of the

Arab world. Such a phenomenon is equally present in Turkey, but for a very different reason. The downfall of the military-based and fiercely secular establishment has allowed the village Islam of the unwashed Anatolian masses, its democratic expression, and what they want is a decidedly illiberal return to Ottoman practices, starting with headdresses on all women. This is a regression that the loudly Islamist justice and development party, I'm not going to pronounce that as AKP, has been happy to deliver, along with frenetic mosque building, even on previously strictly secular university campuses, and Sunni Islamic policies on all matters, starting with foreign policy.

The Turkish AK, good. Yeah, not to interrupt. would not a good time to interrupt yeah so the kamala's regime named for kamala atta-turk who basically transformed the remnant of the old ottoman empire into modern state of turkey as a republic a secular republic there were some very key rules that were enforced number one basically religious institutions number one had they had to be approved by the state number two could not have any direct involvement in the state they essentially practiced the french concept of laicite, which means more than just secularization.

It means basically the non, it basically forbids the public integration of religion into civil and political life outside of the religious institution, which is why in France so often they have public debates about head scars and things, because it's, for a long time, it was actually illegal in France, even to wear a clerical collar outside of church if you're a priest, because you cannot wear

or have any kind of public, influence of religion and civil and political life. So that was the thing that happened in Turkey, like he said, until very recently with the end of the political influence of the military on politics. At the same time, the AKP is kind of interesting because, and I'm not approving of it anyway, but it's not quite as Islamist as we would think, right? It's essentially like a Turkish identitarian political movement in which Islam is a key way or key aspect of the society. the same way that like, you know, our Catholic niths is essential to being Spanish, despite the fact that, like, you know, we said that Catholic church tends not have a big

political role in Spanish society. So building mosques, even in, you know, public universities, which to us that may seem weird right now, but keep in mind, most old universities in the U.S. had chapels on them, even though they've probably been secularized at this point. Headscars are also a really weird aspect of Turkish culture because it's as much are seen as much as a political social choice by women as anything because wearing a headscarf for a woman is sort of a way of thumbing their nose at modern liberal culture by saying that no, religion is important to them. And I understand it doesn't necessarily mean that they're like the semi-chatel relationship that we think of in ISIS. It doesn't mean that at all. And again, I'm not approving of the AKP. But he's basically glossing over a huge amount of nuance in Turkey,

where there is a lot of nuance in the real world. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more.

That's the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampacked with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply.

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On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee. A visit filled with festivity. Experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions and finish your visit with brett taken views of Dublin City from the home. home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories, and the gravity blur. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts. Be Drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. The Turkish AKP semi-literate leaders seem to honestly believe that democracy means the absolute rule of the majority, forgetting the bits about the consent of the minority,

individual rights, the rule of law, and so on. And there we go. Conveniently believe in those things. Yeah. They have rolled accordingly with just over 50% of the vote, utterly ignoring acute secular unhappiness, as well as the substantial 15 to 20% minority of Alibus, whose faith is entirely too moderate for the AKP. The levies are a Turkish-descended ethno-sectarian group that is 12 or Shiite, but essentially preserves a form of like Zoroastrianism with in Islam and they're another one of those really cool but really weird Shiite minority groups. And it's pronounced Alevis? I've heard it pronounced Alevi in English. My understanding is in Turkey.

Alawi and Alevi are pronounced the same way, but they consciously spell them differently and pronounce it just to make it clear that they're not talking about the Alawites. Okay. Hinduism is another faith that has no central institution. or hierarchies. Indeed, it is a gathering of many diverse cults that share the same library of ancient texts, some magnificent, and the same cast of godly characters, each emphasizing this or that text or God, and which was only represented as a unitary religion under British rule. None of this prevents parties and politicians from trying to harness Hindu sentiments for their own advantage, and there are organized Hindu militant groups, including some that repudiate the serene tolerance of most Hindus. by murdering Christian missionaries and organizing anti-Muslim riots. The banning of cow slaughter attracts more mainstream support,

and it has been legislated in several jurisdictions. U.S. hamburger chains serve chicken in India or simply go vegetarian. But if we stay well clear of cows and temples, we can ignore Hinduism as a factor. An extreme example of the potentialities of a dynamic religious leadership was the mainline Buddhist movement of Vietnam. as it then was before its political identity was obliterated by the northern communist conquest of 1975. The almost continual warfare of its last 15 years, along with a politically destructive effect of the DM regime and its military successors, resulted in the collapse of the social and political structures of the country,

while its economy was reduced to localized subsistence agriaculture, allied with urban dependence on U.S. aid and U.S. military spending. Precarious conditions weakened more modern, economic, political, and social movements, allowing older groupings based on religious affiliations to emerge as the only valid civilian political forces in Vietnamese society. Apart from the Buddhist movement led by the monk Tikritu Kwang and other regional leaders by early 1968 on the eve of the momentous tent offensive by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese that ultimately induced the United States to abandon Vietnam, the following array of religious and political groups could be found in the country.

Do you know how to pronounce this? How is that? How is how it's usually pronounced? Yeah, hohow. Ho-how. A reformed Buddhist sect with a large following in the southern delta part of the country. Their leadership was politically oriented

and except for strictly local alliances was anti-Viet Cong. They had acquired the rudiments of an armed militia. Yeah, the whole hour were important because they didn't believe in monasticism, because most Buddhist sects believe the only people were going to reach Nirvana, are actual monks. And again, the whole how had their own militia that the South Bia Mays government had to deal with. Cowdae, an important Buddhist sect with a history of political participation. They're not Buddhists. They're basically a mixture of French existentialism, Catholicism, and Buddhism, as well as a bunch of traditions within Vietnamese folk religion.

And basically they're important as the communists didn't like them because they are a very cohesive subgroup within society and they have a tradition of their own militias. Is this pronounced bin Juen? I think Ben Shuen or something like that. A small but very active part sect and part secret society. Its main area of strength was in the Saigon region, and before the DM regime displaced them,

the bin Juen were said to own both the city's police force and its underworld. The sect had been influenced by the Chinese secret societies from across the river in Sholan, Saigon's vast Chinatown, and the effect of the repression at the hands of DM was to drive it underground rather than destroy it. Yeah, essentially these were the Vietnamese branch of Catholic, excuse me, Vietnamese branch of Chinese tribes. And the triads actually have a religious orientation or religious origin, which, again, makes it really hard to infiltrate them. That's really interesting. I'd like to learn more about that.

Yeah, I was saying within Chinese society, the actual history of like eschatological religions, those that actually believe in like some kind of end of the world is just absolutely engrossing. Catholics. Until DMs fall, the substantial Catholic. minority was able to dominate the Buddhist majority. Many of the South Vietnamese Catholics were refugees from the North, and as such fiercely anti-communist, moreover, under the French, many Catholics had cooperated actively with the colonial power and served in the French armed forces. As the South became increasingly weak in the prospect of a conquest by the North approach, the Catholic community reached a desperate impasse. Their activity against any pro-Viet Cong or just pro-peace coup would have been immediate, and,

probably very effective. Yeah. Like we talked before when Dark Enlightenment was on, many of the Catholics in Vietnam, they actually originated from like civil service families, a lot of these that had been like traditionally Confucian. So yeah, they have a strong history in the government. Many of them were even from North Vietnam. You know, they dominated the ZM regime.

And even when there was the military coup in South Vietnam and they started purging everybody connected with DM. they end up having huge numbers of Catholics left in the command structure just because they were the competent people. And again, the Catholic Buddhist divide is just so huge in Vietnamese culture. It's like if you ever have or ever live in a city in the U.S. with a large Vietnamese immigrant population, the joke is you will always see an intersection to Vietnamese restaurants facing each other. And without a doubt, it will always be one Catholic and one Buddhist restaurant. And that's just the divide in their culture.

all these religious groups could have intervened against a coup. Their meeting places could have been used to assemble and shelter out opponents. The pre-sid could have inspired and coordinated mass agitation against us. Finally, their direct influence on the army and bureaucratic rank and file could have been used to resist the imposition of our authority. The religious groups that can be important in particular countries will differ doctrinally, but they will tend to be sufficiently similar organizationally to permit. us to rely on the same general method of neutralization. Their access to internet social media must, of course, be impeded if not blocked. If they operate private broadcasting facilities such as the

Vatican radio or the small radio stations of American missionary sects in many parts of the world, we will put them temporarily out of action. Religious meeting places should not be closed by administrative orders, which are liable to foment rather than stifle opposition, but access to them can be impeded or even barred by incidental roadblocks. Which is part of why when the communists controlled Central Asia, they always limited the ability of individual mosques to organize events, but they never made any kind of effort to close permanently or ban those mosques. The leadership of religious organizations presents a special problem

when it comes to neutralization because of their particular psychological role in the minds of their more committed followers. It will usually be extremely unwise to arrest the hierarchical leadership, as well as any prominent preachers who will, in any case, be stripped of their social media access. Fortunately, the actual decision makers within religious organizations will often be younger men who are not in the public eye, but who are the key figures from our point of view. If the real decision makers are not also the hierarchical leaders, we will arrest them, but if the two roles are embodied in the same person or persons, we will,

will not. In concrete terms, a treaty quang, who was very much an effective decision-maker in South Vietnam, but not formally in the higher leadership, could have been and should have been arrested, but a pope who is both representational and the effective leader cannot be arrested without stimulating a great deal of opposition, the impact of which will outweigh any advantage to be gained from the arrest. Yeah, one of the things you see in, um, all kinds of religious and civil institutions is as people live longer, very often the titular leader, the person who's officially in charge is not necessarily the person running things behind the scenes as we wouldn't have in the past. Now, the official leader very often has final authority, but it doesn't mean they're the person running around taking care of finances or, you know, logistics and making sure people at remote sites get fed. And so yeah, you have to be reasonably young and somebody willing to show up every day and work long hours in order to do those kind of things.

So, yeah, the older the population, the more likely that it is that a formal leader will also have, you know, unofficial leaders behind the scenes who are doing most of the day-to-day work. Okay. The less than two pages left, and I might need your help with pronunciation here if you can. In jihadi movements, the military, political, and religious leadership is usually embodied in the same. person, evoking the caliphate, which Muslims of all stripes, even the most moderate, must view as their ideal of governance for the Umah, the planetary community of all Muslims, and the, and indeed for all humans, once voluntarily converted in due course, or killed if stubbornly pagan. But modern advocates of a revival of the caliphate, they amount to a substantial semi-public

movement in many countries, hardly ever refer back to the famous caliphates of history, but history from the splendiferous umyad defeated by the longer-lasting Abbasid, which were then extinguished by the god. Umayyad and Abbasid. Umayyad and longer-lasting Abbasid, who were later extinguished by the Mongols in 1258, or the Egypt, or the Egypt-based and tolerant Shia Fatimid, Fatimid. Fatimid. Is that Fatimid?

Yeah, it's named after Fatima. They're claiming dissent from Mawah. its daughter because you never had a son. Ah, okay. Between or the Ottoman that lingered till 1924, let alone the extent and genuinely moderate Ahmadiyah caliphate

that most Muslims condemn is heretical? Yeah, it pronounces amadea. Amadea. Instead, supporters of the caliphate wax lyrical about the rule of Muhammad's first four rightly guided successors, the al-Kulafa al-Rashidun. Yeah, something like that.

Who followed one another after his death in 632. Unable to assume Muhammad's prophetic role, his best-place followers took control of his movement as his successors, or Kulafa, hence the English caliphate. In greatly celebrating the Rashidun as modern Muslims afflicted by afflicted by the contemporary difficulties of the Muslim world are wont to do, the violent instability of the institution is disregarded, no doubt because they celebrate are the colossal victories over the infidels

who now very regularly defeat them, undermining Islam's central promise of victory. But from the very start, the institution was violently unstable. The first caliph Abu Bakir Asidik had to fight tribal success. throughout his short reign to impose his rule. His struggle was further intensified by the very first Shia, the partisans of al-Imabbi-Talib, Muhammad's son-in-law.

There was also a bitter property dispute over the date palm orchids of Fardak. Abu Bakir, what do you say? No, I just think the property dispute being essential, too, says a lot about humanity as a whole. Yeah, yeah. Abu Bakar died of illness, a privilege denied to the second caliph, Umar Ibn al-Qat-Ab, killed by a resentful Persian soldier. Or the third, Uthman Ibn Afan lynched in his own house in Medina, or the fourth and last, Ali Ibn Abi-Talib, Muhammad's son-in-law, who was assassinated by a more extreme extremist of the Karajit sect,

which demanded unending war against all non-Muslim and denounced all who disagreed as apostates deserving of death. Muhammad had done the same, sending assassins to behead apostates and irreverent poets. Muslim violence around the world is, therefore, perfectly traditional and allows us as coup-planter, is presumably Muslims in a Muslim target country to act accordingly. The patron saint of modern jihadis, Saeed Khatub, I think. Katoob, I think. Kutub, was hanged by the Egyptian military dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser,

who nevertheless remained wildly popular as of 2015. The contemporary military dictator of Egypt, a fine fellow by all accounts, has procured death sentences against the leaders of the Iqwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, without losing his considerable popularity. Hence, any Muslim religious leader who crosses our path can be straightforwardly eliminated so long as our Muslim credentials are solid.

It helps to have a dark spot on the forehead left by the bruising of enthusiastic worship and bowing down to the ground. That's one of many reasons why the Alawite leaders in Syria go out of their way to emphasize their religion as a type of Islam, because they were the only people. to actually suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. All right. That's where this is a good natural stopping point. So thank you.

I appreciate it. You're going to be out. You'll be out of, at a range for a little while. Yeah. We'll see if, we'll see if still doing this when you get back. Yeah.

Any time. All right. Well, yeah, I appreciate it. And take care. Have a good weekend. Thanks, sir.