TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Tradecraft in the Doha Panda Express

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

For this week's bonus, Riley, Milo, Hussein, and Alice discuss an offshore oil rig theme park that Saudi Arabia is building (it just sounds like an oil rig). We also discuss the recent ICJ proceedings, and examine the contradictions in what liberal democratic states say about international law when confronted with potentially having to apply it to their client states. In the words of Bryan Ferry, you can guess the rest. Get the whole episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/97680636 *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

This is the thing. It's like the polite people thing, right? So long as you have the facade, so long as you pretend that you're like being cautious about it or you feel, even that you feel bad about it, then there's a lot of leeway built into that system for that. And I think the thing, the alarming thing, the thing that's like really making liberals feel like, you know, Christian scientists with the appendicitis

is that this seems to be like out of fashion now. And that whether you are, whether you're Putin or whether you're Netanyahu or anyone else, you can just be like, no, it's fine. We actually love this shit, cope and see about it. And so then, and so now it's like, if you're a, I don't know, if you're like Saab and you're making a new, you know, Gripen jet, you know, you're having, and maybe Israel wants to buy a few, you're looking at all the compliance required to sell them. And you're like, hang on a second, is this actually worth it?

It's not good news for Sal. We're going to have to go back to making the nine three turbo, which to be honest, was a lot more sick than some of the stuff we're making now. Right. But if you're, if you're in that situation, and then you have to think, okay, well, how do we get all of these? How do we, how do we get this stuff to our ally who we're going to be continuing to unconditionally support? Because this whole system of laws that we set up was just to support us doing this,

but it was to support us doing this in ways that were deniable and sellable. But Riley, would you say that there's a sort of contradiction in the way these things are operating that's heightening? I would say that. And if you want to talk more about contradictions and these systems falling apart, all you have to do is look again at what is happening to stuff the US is supposed to protect in the region. Like the Red Sea, now, the Houthis are striking US flagged ships, right?

Yeah, it seems like the airstrikes have not worked. Yeah. Huh, crazy. They've airstrikes have not worked. Yep. Ha, crazy. They've worked everywhere else they've been tried. Something like one time, they didn't work. I mean, what I assume is given that they don't work, probably gonna stop doing them, right? This is what I don't get.

If you wanna stop the Houthis attacking shipping in the Red Sea, like, you know, I'm leaving out, give the Houthis what they want. Just protect the shipping. Just you have like the biggest navy in the world. Just use it to protect the actual ship. Oh, sure. But it's busy doing donuts in the South China Sea, I'm afraid. Oh, okay. What for Captain Tom? Yeah, yeah, no, there's...

That Chinese are just hearing about Captain Tom due to the great firewall. I hope they built this man a sauna. He deserves it. If they're just hearing about that now, they're gonna have three joyous years of feeling as though Captain Tom's descendants got a sauna. Yeah. For funny, I think they didn't have to keep it. That's right.

So, so, so, so, right? But it's the same thing about, again, unspecified, but like sort of claimed to be Iranian-backed militant groups, striking American bases in Jordan. The West understands that it needs this to stop, but it was also going to take no steps to compel it to stop, because these are two equally powerful drives, which is support our allies against the barbarians under all circumstances, especially against Iran, but also we cannot deal with these many escalations that are happening. It is once

again another, it's not just contradictions heightening in the kind of ideological space of things like international law, but it is contradictions heightening where the West recognizes that, the West broadly speaking, mostly mostly the US recognizes that it's not really able to respond to the, to all of what is going on, either because it won't work or because it can't handle another escalation. I saw a very funny Ossent post about the attack in Jordan because those guys are fascinating. I think those guys are so funny for like saying the quiet part out loud because they pretty much not all of them, but pretty much all of them have an incredibly uncritical like Hillary Clinton

type worldview. Like the most the most hawkish version of Hillary Clinton. But yeah, there's this post where he was like Iran has struck at these US bases in Jordan. This is this is fully over the red line. Surely the US response to this has to be disproportionate. And it's like, he's spent so long commenting on this stuff that the meaning of the word disproportionate force has changed to him to mean a good amount of force. Because he's like, well, when people say proportionate, that's always doing gay shit, like not blowing up Iran socially.

Well, look, like, I mean, on a very logical level, he needs water happen for the content to keep being produced, right? That's true. It's in his, it's in his, in what, it's in their, it's in their interest for the water to sort of keep happening. Sorry, I misgendered the oscent out. For postage. Sorry, I'm sorry if I misgendered any oscent.

Yeah. Non-binary oscent. So, you'd be surprised. Yeah. Non-binary O's. So you'd be surprised. So anyway, anyway, right, this is, I got a good quote from the intercept of Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh, who said, we do not think that we are at war right now. Cool.

Okay. That's very Doctor Strange love, isn't it? This map and this territory. I mean, this is the thing, right? I think we've talked about before how this kind of economic mode of the US and the UK is shifting from, I mean, maybe not so much now, but is shifting to this kind of like productivist thing, this kind of like wartime neoliberalism, if you like. And I think one of the reasons why is to accommodate the fact that due to their being absolutely

no plan, no desire to have a plan and no coherence whatsoever, and everything being in the hands of one 90 year old man who says things like, ooh, Earth Rider, thanks for the great likes, it's just going to be crisis after crisis. Miskin alert from one to the other. And yeah, we're all kind of waiting for the other shooter drop in Taiwan, you know, how many years that takes. And you know, it comes back to, we want to talk about Western states wanting, understanding strategically that they need this to end, but also strategically can do nothing to compel it to stop, is you can look at what's going on with the proposals for peace,

that the UK, David Cameron, a man who a couple days ago was announced as being under, our lead diplomat is now under more investigation by the series broad office. Cool. Well, the obvious road office busy. The thing about the October 7th attacks, right, was that in the aftermath of them, there was this thing of like, not only can there be no ceasefire because of, you know, the horrendous crimes of Hamas, right? But it is now point blank, immoral to talk to Hamas, to negotiate with Hamas. This, as Israel was negotiating with Hamas. And I just had this

brief wave of sympathy, imagining the, the like, the SIS officer, the British intelligence officer, whose job is to sit in the like in the Salt Bay restaurant in Doha and spend most of their time talking to Hamas, being instructed that this is a sort of immoral thing for anyone to do. Well, it's the... We talk as well. We've talked before, even about this, even about Israel as well. I just think it speaks to the fundamental lack of seriousness. You should invest in anyone telling you, oh, we don't negotiate with X group.

But at the time, this was said fully, if you said that we should have ever talked to Hamas about anything, it meant that you were a Hamas supporter while the government was doing it. Well, I mean, this is- I mean, just because we fund him, uh... It goes back to, well, I guess something we've talked about before, a pattern we talked about before. I'll fund him, but I won't speak to them. They just let my ex-wife.

Um, it goes back to something we've been talking about before, which is the kind, like elected politicians, especially, like your standard, like, I don't know, like right wing, right wing labor MP is ends up being much more hawkish than anyone in the defense establishment. Yeah. Right, because they are in a, they have become so disconnected. And this is totally like- You have to talk to the like 90 year old guy who wants nothing more than to bomb Iran.

Yeah, well, this also, this is also true for any sort of like, you know, sort of mainstream Democrat in the States, but you know, Labour will sort of focus on, is that they are so removed, right? They are so removed from anything than just the appearance of toughness because when things are pretty much collapsing and they've been more or less in freefall for kind of as long as most people can remember if you were born in the early 1990s anyway, right, then all you can do is promise to be tough on the causes of that. The global war on terror, unwinnable, so all you could do is project constant toughness. Yeah, every Labour politician is like hair wet from the school toilets, like, I am tough,

a mass will never intimidate me, not unless there's a toilet nearby that they can dunk my head in. And so you again get the situations where you're saying it is immoral to ever consider anything that would involve like negotiating with Hamas, who just controls that territory. But at the same time, everyone in the security establishment being like, no, no, no, we have to talk to them every day at the Panda Express in Doha, basically. Yeah, because they're a government

because they're like basically a state actor. Like... Yeah, and there is a lot of hate to be made in sort of global North politics in never recognizing that fact because that's backing down. Yeah. We only have to recognize it at all the stuff that matters. Kim Philby being loose at the piece at the fucking panter express in Toa. Being like, oh, I suppose it's Kung Pao chicken again. I miss working for the communists. It was easier then.

Do you like gay sex? Yeah, imagining all of those people who are like, how do you as an LGBT person like support Palestinian rights? Don't you know that Hamas would throw you off the roof or whatever? And meanwhile Hamas in Doha talking to the most flagrantly homosexual British intelligence officer yet. And that's a league table. Yes.