Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 145: 2020 Beirut Explosion

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

storing massive quantities of ammonium nitrate goes wrong again. who could have seen this coming? Seamus's Substack: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/ Seamus's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Seamus_Malek Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I got to I got to check my disc space again bras. I know what's money. I can't show me. I have so many hard drives for you Just torture. You know, you know what happened is I I got the new update for city Skylines 2 and annihilated my primary drive Okay, well, I actually do retract my statement. You're still a foolish boy, but I yeah, all right I got enough space. You got it. Yeah, I have I have swastival 288 hours of recording. So if we get to like 280, yeah, if we get to the 280 mark, just sort of like give me a little like signal and I'll do it kind of wine. I would have killed shameless again. I'm already. All right. Well, in that case, seemed to all be here.

Everything is going. Let's do a podcast. Hello, and welcome to Well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Risenck. I'm the first news talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go. I'm Alex Goldow Kelly. I'm the first person who's talking now my pronouns is she and her. Yay Liam. Yeah Liam. Hi. Sorry. I cut you off a little there Hi, I'm Liam Anderson. My pronouns are he and him and we have a guest guest. Hi, I'm Shameless Mala Gafzeli and my pronouns are Steine Xingley Shameless is back after we tortured him on the last last time Look Stockholm syndrome. I think is a beautiful, observable mental phenomenon. I would love to support future studies on this in the future. We didn't even give you Stockholm syndrome. We gave you like Neom syndrome, which is like Stockholm

syndrome, but what? What? What? What? I think what I close my eyes, syndrome but the line. The line. I think what I close my eyes, I see the line. I specifically, and this is something that's been put on the back burner for now, but I specifically went to Venice, the beautiful, gorgeous city of Venice, specifically to see the Neum exhibition. Venice was secondary.

This is what's still on there. You went to the like the BNL they had for it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Wait, did they have a BNL specifically for Neon? They had something. It was some kind of like architectural fast, Neon Fest. You know, it was an art. It was an exhibition of like, I mean, I talked to Ross specifically about this. Like they had a bunch of different architectural, like mockups of parts of Niam, parts of the line and they all told the public, like, hey, go and see what they're building in Saudi Arabia. There are lots of people there, which kind of shocked me.

Hmm. Everyone wants to go see some conceptual architecture. Who just wants to see the line. Yeah, he doesn't want to see what this is like AI recombinated Zaha Hadid is doing right now. Yeah. That's what's going to happen is they're going to they're going to reanimate Zaha Hadid with AI. That woman is basically a forescost already. Like I was about to say, yeah, that's like they've done to her name. That's that's what still all the buildings look like. All the new buildings still look like are the architecturally significant new buildings. They all just look like Zaha did. I don't get it. If you were going to be like, you know, what's the, you know, 21st

century going to look like, at least the start, you know, we've settled on an art style for the moment, an architecture style. The firm still has her name on it, even though she's dead, that's not normal for architecture. Yeah. It's like when they're finding like B-sides and rarities and like unreleased material. Oh, it's released in motto, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you guys like wacky, wacky used to service materials and also glass in places that shouldn't be glass? Yeah, I heard you do. Fuck you. Fuck you. Indeed bootleg. There's a giant chard of glass that just like perfectly comes down through the center of my kitchen. Every morning I like slice an arse re on it by accident.

Yeah. So what you see on the screen here is a large crater and the remains of a concrete grain elevator and the city of Beirut. And a lot of grain. Yes, and a lot of grain on the ground. So that's supposed to look like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So it's actually supposed to be a warehouse here. Beirut's supposed to be a lot more glazed. And that's straight line of the port. You can see that's supposed to like extend all the way down instead of there's a giant crater in it. Oh, yes. So today, today we're going to talk about 2020 Bayrude port explosion. Yes.

Yes. I was waiting for a response there. I mean, I don't, there isn't really a kind of look at joke I can make. It's just kind of like, it's this is just, this is just, it's just kind of fragile and sad. Yeah, it's just, you know, put this on the little playlist with Bo Paul is like the sad and angry episodes. Well, the very least there won't be a jarring shift in town when we do the goddamn news.

So this is a fascinating bit here because I'm recording remotely from a hotel room. I don't have the drops. So we have two options here, and I leave them a demo as distractions. Either everything or, yeah, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, we just, yeah, just news-related noises. Yeah.

All right. Jesus. So we are, we are barely 1,000 today, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. High energy, you know? So someone blew up a hospital in Gaza. Yeah, although, yeah, high energy, you know, so someone blew up a hospital in Gaza. Yeah, although on Twitter, people are currently arguing about every single aspect of this, including whether there was a hospital blown up, whether there was a hospital there in the first place,

is Gaza real? Are any of us even alive? What is truth? What is truth? What is truth? So, triumph of subjectivity. There seems to be, yeah, oh yeah, gross rascal going. I was just going to say, now since we released these episodes, usually about a week after we recorded them, all of our takes will age like milk. Yeah, we puffed up this up to be perfectly wrong about anything that happens. It's so small of us. Yes. Man, if I can attempt to strike some sort of balance in which the show will be able to age

at least somewhat well. At the moment, I would say that I should climb down from my assertion at least yesterday that this was an air strike. I have been seeing theories that make more sense that this was either a drone strike of some kind or an air defense, any air defense system in Israel that went haywire, would make more sense considering the video that we have of it, which shows a missile like speeding toward the hospital courtyard. Whenever it is, it came in hot, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes a bit more sense to me also considering the crater that I think is in there, which is obscured by this angle, but it's more clear. Somewhere like that. Somewhere like that. It's not a big crater. Yeah, a lot of people are saying that it just doesn't exist. That it's just like, you know, if actually 500 people or whatever didn't die

and what happened is somebody like burned out like, what was that like a dozen cars, you know. Yeah. There's would be nice, I guess, you know. What would have been ideal? But there's better pictures of it that show the crater, however small it is, and I would agree it doesn't match up with the traditional

IDF ordinance mainly because I can go to the other side here. There are assertions that I've been seeing in the Iranian papers this morning that a specifically an mk 84 bomb with them is dropped on the courtyard and I don't know if anyone here is like a military ordinance you know guy gal No, no, no.

Okay 84 if you just go on Google, I mean this is easily seeable. The creator created by the MK 84 would have blown the hospital completely out of existence. I mean, it's about 1,000, 2,000 pounds of ordinance. I really was not that kind of bomb that was dropped on it if that is a deep place. Yeah, in the sort of moments before any like footage, your images came out, that's kind of what I think

everyone assumed how to happen. Yeah, it's like, how are you gonna kill 500 people if you don't level the hospital? Well, it turns out apparently there's a lot of people sheltering in this courtyard, where whatever it is it. So that's not exceptional. And then you got all these cars burned out,

presumably there was a parking lot fire afterwards. The crater is actually very small. So you could sort of see how one of those tiny little Hamas bottle rockets could have done that. But the other thing is that there does seem to be, even then, still a little more damage than you usually see from a Hamas tiny little rocket. I mean, there's a lot more windows blown out. There's a lot more. The damage is a little bit more know, tiny little rocket. I mean, there's a lot more windows blown out. There's a lot more, you know, the damage is a little bit more extensive, but it seems too small for Israeli J-Damn air strike, you know.

You know, like, oh yeah, Alice, please. No, no, go ahead. I think I hate to use this phrase because it sounds very like Aaron Sorkin, he, yeah. But I think the truth here is probably somewhere in the middle in that likely if the story that seemed most likely to me was about the anti-aircraft from Israel going haywire in some way, maybe it locked on to the hospital and some foreign other from the heat generated

by it. Just like really, really getting the sort of iron dome brief wrong and being like, you know, looking at a hospital, is there so far some rocket? Yeah. And in addition to that, again, the things that Israel is asserting is, and also the Ocent Twitter narrative that is going around that it was like a fragmented piece of a rocket. That's clearly bad. But also, but then the IDF narrative is that it was a PIJ, Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired. I don't know what the angle of that really makes sense.

It's like, direct shittled that. I don't know. You wouldn't think it would come in that hot, you know? The IDF were like being really like weirdly cagey about this too, like for a minute, the assumption that like every like crank Israeli war blogger with a blue tick made in the first moment was like we hit a hospital, we're not sorry, suck it from the back. And then, and this sort of like hours after that, it then shifted to, you know, Islamic to hard or whatever. And that, I mean, that stinks, but it doesn't necessarily implicate Israel, it just kind of like...

I'm sure it's weird. It's fucking weird. Yeah, you had a very quick retraction of we hit the hospital and they deserved it to I was an accident by Hamas or the first of the usual IDF here. You know, normally you start with the denial and then move to the kind of bragging, but here's what I think happened. Cause you know, these guys have been receiving phone calls. They got to evacuate the hospital like several times a day. They've been harassed with Israeli rockets all this time. You know what I think happened? Is there like, all right, we're gonna send them another nice friendly roof tap. Let's do it in a

parking lot this time. And I didn't know there was a whole bunch of people sheltering in the parking lot. They get their smallest whatever, shoot it into the parking lot. And then they're like, oh shit, there were 500 people in there. Fuck. Fuck. Makes sense to me. Yeah. That would imply of course that the Israelis have any decency at all about bombing hospitals. This is true. Yeah. Someone's mad at a kind of way how much how much decency like when did that decision making? Yeah. Right. Well, but I was reliably informed on Twitter that like they have lawyers look at every targeting decision they make. So, you know, there is the assertion. We remember after a great march of return when they said they know where every single bullet

was fired. Yeah. And then they stopped saying that. Oh, they know. They just shouldn't be firing them there. Yeah. Great. Still, the the the ethnic ones and continuous irrespective of whether or not this is, you know, the IDF or P.I.J. or whoever the fuck. Yeah, exactly. You know, since this, since this guy with a car full of propane tanks, you know, yeah, exactly. You know, since this incident, it's been like, you know, they blown up a refugee camp and

a school at a mosque, you know, and that's in the past eight hours. So I mean, all the schools are operated by the UN as well, which makes this in the past eight hours. So I mean, first, all the schools are uprised by the UN as well, which makes this like double bonus war crime. Oh my God. Yeah. I love covering Palestine, guys. Great, isn't it? I, I, I will say, I got a call

from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia because I went on birthright, sorry. And I, I, they were like, hey, we're having a unity march for Israel. I'm like, absolutely the fuck not. Like you, I said verbatim, I think we should sit this one out and they hung up on me. Wait, did they call you a doing a sort of like marine rickfrucis? Yes, trolling.

Yeah, they called, they called me like yesterday. Oh, they called me yesterday.usa, yeah, they called they called be like yesterday. Oh, yeah, no, this is like the time we need to Or the ever our strongest soldier. Yeah, no, I I went on on a unity march against Israel, I guess, and it was it was the only thing besides being on my phone that has felt a tall cathartic in any way. So, heartily endorse processing. Yeah. You know. Yeah, and then there's, there's, of course, organizations that could use your money for

relief, but some of that can't actually get into Palestine right now. And in your country, it might be illegal to donate right now. Yeah. country it might be illegal to donate right now. If your country is Germany, which is decided just to go like fully insane about this, you know. The front I see behind them for what I understand too. Everything I see out of the Berlin government especially is making me feel completely insane. Oh yeah. The amount of things that are putting out the restriction. I honestly it's so nuts

Like like people saying that people who are doing I think slogans of in support of Hamas whatever that means Like they should be reported to the police Yeah, I mean just like Writing like that. Well in in Berlin schools now wearing like any Outward symbol of like Palestinian solidarity is like a disciplinary offense. What the fuck? Wasn't there that woman in France who was arrested for saying hello in Arabic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said so long to some builders and her neighbors

reported her and she was arrested by counterterrorist police who was rational after the fact was these days you can't be too careful. Least racist French neighbors. Yeah, I think perhaps, and just to thought this may be controversial, I think perhaps these days you can be too careful. Um, um, Alex coming in hot with the Yeah, crazy. Oh my god. Yeah, so um, uh, shit's bad. I'm getting worse. Yeah, but what's also bad in put this in here on an equal fuss. I love what he's so much.

You were saying that. Remind me. Right. The Hesteruck is a... So Hester's a store. Hester's a gas station. Yeah. And every year, every Christmas, they release a gas tank.

A toy truck. A toy truck of some kind. Right. It changes every year. It's a different theme. So in the past, it's been like, I don't know, a regular semi-trailer. Sometimes it's like a truck with a helicopter on it. I think there's been one year they did a space shuttle. They've done. They do a whole bunch of stuff.

Very cool ways of transporting gasoline. This is true. They usually have like, you know, they've got flashing lights. They've got a lot of fun things for the kids to play with. They're really big too, which is cool. So but this year they've decided as the Hestruck represents the mood of the nation. This year they've decided what they need is a big SWAT team van with a sort of police APC type thing inside it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's rules. Seen from the like creeping police militarization, you know, yes, exactly.

This is for the, this is to patrol the post-apocalyptic landscape caused by climate change, caused by the Hess company. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, if back in the like Bush administration, if you'd have been like, if you'd drawn a bunch of like oil company logos on a police vehicle, that was the most subversive leftist act that was like possible. Caution Jarrick. So we're going to be Mickey Mouse drinking piss. Yeah. Yeah. It's the cops actually like work for Shell. Have you thought about this? Yeah. Yeah. This is

actually, no, they work for Hasse apparently. Yeah. Cornering the market on like private law enforcement now. Yes, smart. So what do we got here? We got 74 lights for realistic sounds. I wonder what they are. Stoke resisting. Sound of the camera. He's got to go.

He's got to go. Yeah. Slide out, battering ram. Are you serious with this? Slide out battering ram on the police vehicle here. This reminds me of the funniest thing that's maybe ever happened in a law enforcement context, which is when Steven Segal became a part-time Louisiana Sheriff's

deputy, his TV show, Steven Segal Lawman. And in the course of doing a no-knock raid for that show, he drove a, like, an APC, like, he drove the Hestruck through a wall of a guy's house and killed, like, 10 dogs. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's, okay. And I'm gonna say, what to kill the dogs anyway? Oh, 100%. But like, normally the cause of death, you know, and this sort of like cop dog interaction is like gunshot wound, not like.

They have the morals to meet that dog face to face like man. Ha ha ha ha. I just, there's something about that story. It will never, ever leave my mind. So yeah, thank you, Hestruck, for reminding me, really time and action, really pop an action. We'll stay with the girls doing rotating, turn it with two spotlights and free shipping batteries. I mean, to be honest, when I was a little kid, like, I would have stood a chance

against this, you know, and I would have developed some very strange attitudes about the place, which I definitely have. So, A-Cab includes a Hestruck cops. Yes, exactly. A-Cab includes the Hest Corporation. Yes. And a third piece of news. Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da. So this should be relevant right about when we release this. The city of Cincinnati,

Ohio is selling its railroad, the Cincinnati Southern, the only, uh, municipally owned railroad in the United States of America. They're selling it to the other Palestine bombing bombing company. Norfolk Southern, Norfolk Southern, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, that is reprehensible. Yeah. Three seconds, yeah. So, those job, bras. Yeah. Wait, is it true that you don't pronounce it? It's like East Palestine, you pronounce it's East Palestine. It's East Palestine, yes. This Ohio doesn't have a pea sound. It's actually East Palestine, but... LAUGHTER You know, it just got romanized that way, and it just kind of stuck. Disgusting, fucking Orientalism.

I hate that. Edward Said warned us about this. He specifically called that Ohio. Edward Said's, fuck know, you specifically call that Ohio. Edwin Sayyid's fuck Ohio and other assays. Ohio will be eliminated. Yeah. So, um, you know, they want to sell this for $1.6 billion. The proposal is they're going to put this in into a trust fund for infrastructure,

which means roads. Oh, good. Highways. Yeah. It's going to be the first most fun city. It's going to be really annoying. You know, oh, well, when it's starting to broad, it's going to, it's going to like move to Manhattan instead of Brooklyn and like really try and find itself.

You know, and there's like the theory behind this is like, okay, we need to sell this railroad because railroads are going to be obsolete in 25 years when they renegotiate the lease. So it's better to have a liquid trust fund than a stranded asset. Obviously that's that's sort of bullshit. This has been supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the mayor, the city council, the unions, including trade unions and Cincinnati and the brotherhood of locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, a bunch of environmental groups. It's still a stupid idea and you should vote no. Yeah, it's issued 22 on the November 7th ballot. I know railway workers United has also come out against it

and they've only really, as of recording time, had started to hold any kind of public hearings on it. So you know, this is, this is, this is a bad move by the city. I think better to have the railroad, maybe be able to get some use out of it, you know, because right now they just lease it to Norfolk's other and say, do whatever you want with it. You know, maybe you could have passenger trains on it in the future. If the city keeps control, as opposed to selling it, and then, you know, you never, you never see that again.

The job lies on that right. Yeah. So especially since I want to say M-Trek wants to do some stuff on this line eventually in the near future it would be better to have that kind of leverage and whatever. So yeah I would. It just isn't a railroad story unless it culminates with that noise. Yeah. grunt. Yeah.

So anyway, I would recommend a vote no on this. If nothing else, despite Norfolk's Southern. Good reason. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That was the goddamn news. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but Yes, I'm just going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say

that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say version of alcoholism. What, MV Rose? Yeah. I mean, it is kind of a wreck is the thing. Like, this was built in Japan as like a... Sir, roses of the nights of the round bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was built as a dredger in Japan. Oh, God. And yeah, yeah, in like the 80s. And it just got, it fell out of the Japanese shipping industry

into this kind of like international dark shipping world, where it was renamed five or six different times. It was reflagged too. And I have the list here. South Korea believes Panama, and then again and again and again. It was like, it's in this broad swath of the economy of like marine transport, where not only is it very difficult to say who owns this, it's very difficult to say what it's carrying, where and why, and I don't think anyone's going to sue us or assassinate us for this, but there are

a few sort of legitimate reasons why that's the case, you know. Mostly you're trying to do stuff on the cheap, or you're trying to do stuff that you shouldn't like break sanctions, or you know, disguise what you're what you're moving where. This is so so roses by the time it is named MV roses is ostensibly owned by a Russian guy called Igor Gratushkin. Oh, okay. Well, I, yeah, it's serious. I'll tell you the goddamn does that sound criminal? First, first time owning his own ship, which might be a bad thing if you believe

that he owned it at all because it's also suggested that it was owned by this Cypriot guy, Carolumbus Monoli. I hate to say this, but I would love to say this is half of me is from the Global South. All of these people have names that sound criminal. These are the names. Oh, criminal. Not even like these like triple, like double barrel, I don't know, I don't know.

I don't know. I played too much Max Payne, you know? No, no, no, you're right. You're right. You know, you know, I'm achieving a crappy boat costs. I mean, you gotta be a criminal just to have the money to afford the boat. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, do you know, I'm achieving a crappy boat costs. I mean, you gotta be a criminal just to have the money to afford the boat. Yeah, no kidding.

I mean, this is like these people are self-made. This is also like kind of with wake, wake, and not judge about it. Yeah, yeah. It's a conversion, right? Because it's built as this dredge of what they do to turn it into like a general shipping thing is they just like tear all the stuff out of it lengthen the hole so it's a stretch ship.

And then change all of the registrations. So it's then reflected Georgia and to Moldiver and they'll off the Venn number. Yeah, essentially yes. Yeah. I mean there is no shortage of these. This is a huge, huge proportion. Like, you know, maybe even a plurality of like international shipping is like this, you know, where it's sailing under a flag of convenience. The crew are all like hired in. We'll talk more about the crew in a minute. And it's making sort of like, saylings which are suspicious. Ostensibly, what this is doing is it is taking ammonium nitrate, which we'll get to in a minute, from a Georgian fertilizer maker to an explosives manufacturer in Mozambique, which in itself is a weird journey.

However, it's been variously suspected that neither the origin nor the destination are actually like true. Okay, all right. All we really know about this is that Somimonium nitrate ends up on board. It leaves betumi in Georgia. And it's trying to go to Beirut, in Mozambique, doesn't get there. Instead, it ends up in Beirut. And it ends up in Beirut for like, again, very difficult to say reasons. Like, the owners maybe say

that the crew were trying to extort them, the crew say that they, you know, couldn't afford passage through the Suez Canal because, you know, this guy who allegedly owned it wasn't even paying their salaries, it was barely sea worthy. And so, when they end up in Beirut with these bags of ammonium nitrate, 2,750 tons of them, the Beirut port authorities take one look at it and they go, yeah, no, you absolutely cannot go back on the ocean with this because of how absurdly dangerous it is. Next slide please. All right. So what is ammonium nitrate

and why do we care? What have they got 2,750 tons of on this very shoddy looking boat? It's a fun chemical, it's a salt, right? It's NH4-NO3, that's so nitrogen, four hydrogens, and a nitrogen, and three oxygens, right? And those are the NH4 and the NO3 are the cation and the anion respectively, right? So that's what makes it a salt is those two put together.

So this is used for fertilizer a lot because it's very stable, doesn't lose nitrogen in transit like liquid fertilizers do, but it also has this fun property where when you heat it, it reacts with itself, right? And that's an exothermic reaction, which means it releases heat. So your NH4 and your NO3 turn into N2O and 2H2O plus heat. Both of those are released as gases. That means they expand very rapidly. So if you have this sort of runaway reaction that occur, can occur,

you get a boom. Great. Great. So I'll just move it down. So, if you go to the next slide, this crew, they're all Russian and Ukrainians. I think mostly Ukrainians, the captain is Russian. And the ship gets impounded and Beirut is seen here on the port of Beirut, and they send most of the crew home, but it's still got to have like three or four people on board, like the captain, the boss and the chief engineer. Sort of scarlet and cruel. Exactly, just to like keep an eye on it. And they don't like this, because they haven't been paid. Gratushka and the Russian guy has like fucking disappeared at this point. So they're not going to get paid. They're stuck in port

in Beirut. Can't leave the ship, can't leave Beirut. And they're just kind of there with this ammonium nitrate, which they know is extremely dangerous. This is the kind of part where they start appealing to people. So they appeal to the Lebanese government in its various manifestations and get nowhere, which is going to be a recurring theme. So the captain begs the Russian embassy for help and their response like allegedly verbatim is what do you want put into do sense spets knows. Yes. Which is just like a beautiful moment in sort of like Russian bureaucracy to be like listen. What do you want me to do my job as a diplomat. We don't really do that, you know I mean you sent you sent spets now's after the owner

You know that's true Able rescue operation for the Russian working class. Yeah I run into this but I'm the least guys. Yeah, so then they try and go like public with it They're just a bunch of these guys. Yeah, so then they try and go like public with it. And you see here that their science, Lebanese release me, let me go. The shipping press kind of take an interest. And there are a few articles from like, you know, 2014

or whatever that are like, these four guys are trapped sitting on a floating bomb, which is fantastic. If we go to the next slide, we can see this is also like, surprisingly common occurrence in international shipping, where owners just abandon the ship and then there's some guys who are legally required to sit on the ship forever.

Yeah, nobody knows who owns the ship, nobody knows who owns the cargo because no one's taking an interest in recovering it, which is itself is pretty fucking suspicious. We see here a couple of Ukrainians and their cargo, that's the ammonium nitrate in these bags. And it's just, it's just heat top on deck like this to the point that it like buckles a couple of the hatches that is resting on. You need that. It's amazing how even before the war there are still photos of Ukrainians casually sitting around a bunch of high explosives. It's like it's just like it's sitting on a pier, like kind of out of the way in the Florida Bay Road. And, you know, nobody's kind of paying that much attention.

And it stays that way for years. In total, right, this cargo will not move from the port of Bay Road for six years. At which point it will move very, very quickly. Right. But yeah, so these guys are just like stuck waiting. The boss, the next they hear of him is that he's bankrupt. So the Beirut port authority seizes the ship.

It seizes the cargo. And after a year on board, they're finally, these, these poor fucking guys get to go home. All right, all right, well that's good to hear someone. Yeah, so I bet it's going to be a real sad for me. You know, we've, we've got these like, they had to go home to a nice, relaxing Ukraine. Oh, or nothing bad would ever happen again. Yeah, and these bags of monomitrate are still setting that for the moment.

And the friendship between Russia and the Ukrainian nation remains to this day. Yeah, it was forged in that moment and it remains strong. Next slide, please. And here I'm going to rely heavily on shame as because the thrust of this one was what is leponon? Do you just want me to go off of that prompt? Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like James read the Wikipedia page, Lebanon is, you know, the Lebanese Republic. It's, I'm not, okay. No, Lebanon is an extremely small country in the Levant, in the Middle East.

It's kind of at the center of multiple different regional conflicts, which means that it's small size does not matter. It has an outsized importance for sure. I mean, the Iranians are fighting the Saudis within influence systems there. The Iranians are also fighting these Israelis. All of it kind of goes through Lebanese territory and Lebanese aerospace. And there's one government which is institutionally sectarian which is an interesting, so it is a holdover of the peace agreement after the Civil War that the posts in any Lebanese government are like decided by what religion that guy is

So the president Has to be a Maranite Christian the prime minister has to be a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament has to be a Maranite Christian. The Prime Minister has to be a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament has to be Shia. You briefly explain what a Maranite Christian is just for making. Essentially just like a Catholic. Okay, thank you. But like in the context of Lebanon.

Thank you. Very gross oversimplification in a Catholic do not come for me. I'm just, I cannot go into the specifics. But so the presidency has kind of come and gone through a couple of the people prime minister obviously. But the speaker of parliament, Nebi Berri, has been the same speaker since the early 1990s.

He is the kingmaker in that respect. Lebanese politics is infamously stagnant, very little changes from year to year, and especially since the economic crisis in 2019, it's been even more stagnant. Right now, Lebanon has spent over a year without president. This happened before, actually, before the economic crisis, where they spent almost a year trying to elect

the new president who eventually became Michelle Aum. Aum left at the end of this term, and now they're still trying to elect somebody. In addition to that, there is no firm prime minister. There is a caretaker prime minister who resigned in 2022, back when I was still in college, and I graduated, I have my diploma, I now live in Bayroot,

and he is still technically the prime minister because no president has been elected, and in addition, there are no other candidates for prime minister who want the job. Yeah, no, no, I'm once a... Yeah, but the other thing is, there's an image of Lebanon and Beirut specifically. Beirut, which, you know, at one time was the Paris of the East, right? I picked a very nice picture to show that it's...

That is a street in downtown Beirut that I go down very often. It is a absolutely gorgeous part of town with absolutely no businesses of any kind. It's completely justified to shit, but it is very well attended to. And it is very nice. Yes. And on the left, I have so nice. It's so nice there Yes. And on the left, I have, it's so nice there, they removed the yellow filter. Wow. Yes. On the left, I have a screenshot from,

I think it was Fox's home land. Yes. I remember this episode specifically. Yeah. It is a glorious part of the homeland universe in which Al-Qaeda, led by the horrible Abu Nizir, is holding a public meeting with Hezbollah by closing off. How does he do?

We know the world. You know, holding hands. What they're doing right now is that there are Hezbollah trucks going down Hommer Street and they're closing off the neighborhood so that they can have this meeting in public but also in secret. Having like a New England town hall meeting. Yeah.

I should say, and I think I was about to say this, but that is not what Hommer Street looks like. I mean, any way shape or form, it's not like a narrow alleyway. Humber Street is a very wide, very lively street with a Nike store, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts. There are numerous bookshops. Sorry that you have to have a Dunkin' there are so many Duncan's in Bay Area, man. There's two different ones in the airport now. Maybe so it is. Yeah, it's just extremely eastern, extremely east Boston.

That's why I call it the Boston of the Middle East. It's a tour of respect. Do they have any weird menu items on Duncan Donuts over there? I don't believe so. I think it's pretty typical. Unfortunately. I wish they had something specific. Can you just get that Oreo shake with like 3200 calories or whatever? I have a test in it, but I'm sure they love that shit.

Fine. Essentially, the perception of also the idea that you could close off like Gates to Homra, which is just like a neighborhood near the university absurd, not based on anything, they filmed this in Israel. Yeah, it's like, oh my god, they have the film of the history. They filmed this in Israel. The history of the film. The history of the film in Israel. Not only did they film it in Israel, but they got like Arab-speaking

graffiti artists to do some like threatening graffiti for people who don't read our wreck to do in the background. And all of them said shit like homeland is racist in Arabic. And then nobody knew, nobody checked. So I made it on screen, which is, you know, as late as I have. So yeah, Americans, I think, and Brits, to a lesser extent, still think that Barut is the place that you go to get kidnapped by sectarian militias. And while I guess if you put your back into it, you could still get kidnapped by a sectarian militia. We're not comfortable with that level of absurdity that you could get kidnapped by a sectarian militia outside of Duncan Donuts. So it has to be the like dusty narrow street with the you know technicals and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, I should, if I could take 30

seconds, pitch your audience. Beirut is my absolute favorite city in the entire world. I feel in love with it completely entirely, almost like you would a woman. And it's beautiful, it's lively, it's exciting, it's wonderful, and also rent is extremely cheap, always has been, and you can get a wonderful apartment for what a department in New York City used to cost in more reasonable times. Great city, wonderful country. I hope to go back because right now I'm in Oregon

and I hate the United States. Yeah. So I do want to talk a little bit about the Lebanese. We're moving it, we're moving it, everybody move. That's right. The Lebanese is coming. We're moving right now. We're like, come on.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, give you time to get back and give things time to calm down. Yeah. So, so Levinon is, as you say, give you time to get back and give things time to calm down. Yeah. So, so Levinon is, as you say, a small country. It's a very import dependent country, which means everything has to come in like largely by port, largely in the port of Beirut. It's a nice, deep port port, very, you know, well equipped, you know, well-equipped, you know. It also has a currency, the pound,

which was pegs to the dollar, which is a bit like handcuffing yourself to a very strong idiot. And you rang. And so, if you recall, about like 2009, as a consequence of the 2008 crisis the like the dollar shortage That fucked the Lebanese economy for like well to date arguably And this that led to like this huge huge program was like you know the world, doing what the World Bank does and demanding so maximum austerity in exchange for bailout funds

that had to be filtered through this stagnant government that was constantly working against it. So next slide please. Not on ever wants to go with the simple, easy solution. They work for Italy and Greece for so long just have a continually depreciating currency. No one wants to go for that. Even that works great. So this is Warehouse 12. It's on the key. It's next to where the Roses was mored. Any port has a bunch of warehouses like this. This is like a bonded warehouse where

the Lebanese port authorities control the access to it. And they look at all of these bags of fertilizers sitting in the sun and like someone finally goes, okay, we should move those and we should move those into warehouse 12 12. Store all of this like extremely hazardous material securely. Now, everything that gets seized goes into Warehouse 12. I mean, so like, whatever, like cocaine, AKs, Samasda, like, fertilizer, You know, Sam is like fertilizer and in this case fireworks. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like, okay, we had to seize this ship carrying 400,000 cubic meters of fire and store that next to the ampoh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not able to buy a modium nitrate. We built these fuel oil bunkers underneath it. Now, yeah, to that credit, as far as I can tell, every single person in Beirut has at one time or another emailed their boss to say, you know how fucking dangerous this is, right? Like everyone involved in this, the port authority,

the police, the intelligence services, the military, the fire department, everyone has been like, this is a horrible idea, the warehouse is like visibly falling apart, you know, that the sacks of ammonium nitrate are leaking, there's like tears in them, there's like, there's like fertilized roll over the floor and shit, this is going to be obscenely dangerous. Um, the thing to, I think, know about Lebanese bureaucracy, which I'm sure exists in many other great nations along the world, is that the business of like, there are so many letters sent around different departments, different agencies every single day, thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions. The purpose is not to get anything actually addressed. The point is to have stamps put on them and for them to be inevitably sent to somebody else, which can then collect either fines or just straight up bribes or you wait for

somebody with connections to move something along as kind of a personal favor. It's it's about as stagnant as stagnant can be and that is horribly annoying when you're dealing with something like a municipal complaint. And then it just escalates into something completely catastrophic when you were dealing with something. Like as you said, yeah, everybody notices, everybody has been alerted to the fact that the emotium nitrate in this warehouse is, it's a ticking time bomb of horrifying conditions, but everybody kind of thinks it's somebody else's

duty or responsibility, and they just kind of keep asking around for years and years and years. Yeah. Nobody who could claim to own this fertilizer is interested in taking it back. So it's just on the portal authority now. And they try and give it away.

They try and give it away to the Lebanese military, to explosives companies, and nobody really, they try and resell it, nobody wants anything to do with it. If I see a fae one at the well, this is the thing. There is someone who takes an interest. And the reason why you know this is that this could have been much, much worse as insane as that is to say, because they later worked out. This is from some great investigative reporting into this, that when this decenates, which we'll

get to in a couple of slides, there's only 20% of the cargo left. So in between it coming to Beirut and then someone has abstracted the other 80% of this fertilizer and no one knows who or where it went or why. Now if I had to speculate about why a shitload of first lies are might be going from Georgia to Mozambique and then unaccountably ending up in Beirut. I would suggest that maybe someone was trying to take that first lies to Syria and they weren't trying to use it to first lightest things except very indirectly, you know. But no one knows. I can't prove that, no one can prove that. So yeah, it could have been much worse, but much like sort of like emailing your landlord or texting your landlord and you say, you know, the roof is imminently falling

in on my apartment and also the one. The referralizer. Yeah, the roof is imminently falling in on my apartment and also this one. The Fritalizer. Yeah. The roof is imminently falling in on my apartment. Everything is needy, even water. Also, there's one light switch, doesn't work. The tactic is to ignore all of that and fix the light switch, right?

So someone at some point says, hey, one of these doors into the warehouse is busted. Yeah, genuine. I was going to pick up my aunt from the house. one of these doors into the warehouse is busted. Yeah, genuine. I was going to pick up my anfo, my ammonium nitrate, I was swung it over the border into Syria and I noticed that it was still a Y. It's like a mother fuck. There's a start. Yeah, it's squeaks a lot. Yeah, it's not very good. Someone should take a look at that.

Yeah, and so they do. So what happens is a crew comes out to weld the door. Next slide, please. I just, so everyone knows I keep saying, amp phone, that's a monium nitrate and fuel oil. Very common, very stable explosive. It's a blue-up Oklahoma City, you may be familiar with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that was Oklahoma City, you may be familiar with it. Exactly.

I think that was straight ammonium nitrate. Was it? Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, I'm out of my bad. Yeah. So we see here, Warehouse No. 12, dawn No. 11. And I get to do the thing because 1745 local time on the 4th of August 2020 the fire department gets a call that warehouse 12 is on fire and

They send a team of nine fire fighters one paramedic fight the fire And they go man. There's something weird about this this fires like Way too intense. It's making a bunch of like weird noises, which are probably the fireworks. They, you know, try and get the door open and then next slide please, like not 10 minutes later, just goes up, you know. Yeah. Jesus. You can see like so many videos of this. I don't recommend it, but they exist. This is really one of those things for like, help the investigation, because you had a lot of video of this mushroom cloud

went up from a lot of different angles. But yeah, everyone who heard it, remembers hearing this raw, like fight a jet's going over of I guess just air and then one small explosion and then one huge explosion. And you know this is one of the things where filming is very very bad for your health. You want to like it because people go outside to film the big fire right which is already kind of like you know Yeah, the plume is going up And they're either like on their balconies or they're like standing in front of their windows

and so When this explodes like there's a ton of people who are looking directly at it, you know, there's like the glass and stuff Yeah, yeah, it's really like it's like threads, you know, it's horrible. And I should say that the amount of glass that was broken in the blast, it's still not all cleaned up. When you walk around Beirut,

you will oftentimes come across big piles of broken glass that have not, they've all been gallant to this pile, but they haven't been cleaned up. It just kind of sits there because no one is around to take it back. So, lots of, like, there's still, to struck me, we'll go into this video.

Alongside all the destruction from the blast that's still extant, those tiny reminders of just how expansive the blast that still extend those those tiny reminders of just how expansive the blast was are are still there very large and small. Also, Justin, I think you had something about the like the color of this cloud as well. Yeah. So this is this cloud is very red and that's not from like dust or anything or a particular coloration.

You know, you expect okay, it's a little bit red from the yellow filter, right? No, that's a red orange cloud from nitrous oxide. It always, when you have a big ammonium nitrate explosion like this, it has this big red orange cloud, regardless of what color filter is applied to the local area. Going over this, I'm like a Mont-Golfier balloon getting the biggest laugh and gas high of your life. Yeah. Next to inhaling smoke particles and dying, but also that. Don't worry about that, Pete. Next slide, please. So it's hard to pick one image to represent exactly how bad this was because it was devastation.

I mean, people felt that cypress, as huge explosion, tons and tons of TNT equivalent. Yeah, you're talking about 1500, I wanna say tons of TNT equivalent. That's that's one and a half kilotons. That's I forget how much the atomic bomb was on Hiroshima. Um, but it's it's it's like it's comparable, you know, it's it's up there. Um, it's a big really big

year. 15 kilotons. So 15 kilotons. So it's one 10 for Hiroshima. That's a lot. I mean, that's a fucking lot. So, yeah, I mean, obviously anyone in the port just gets vaporized instantly, which is kind of a mercy. Because everybody else, like every window in Baruch breaks. A bunch of the cladding, just like, is like blown off of buildings, a lot of the like structures of them are just like twisted and destroyed. A lot of buildings collapse. And you know, there's a crater like 42, I think 42 meters deep in the port here. Jesus Christ.

You see all these big modern buildings with you know, all glass buildings. And it's just all gone. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, all of the like fanciest that you like your hotels and like museums and shit like that, the like largest hospital in the city is like down the street. Just like takes out entire wards of it. And yeah, in terms of raw numbers, killed about 220 people, I think. But under 300. Yeah. And in general, the homelessness coming off, this is like one of the striking things. And the thought of that, that she's as close. Yeah, because like, even if your house isn't like sustaining huge structural damage,

if you like, you know, lose all of the windows out of it, along with everyone else. That's fucking bad, it does it. Yeah, and you know, you kind of like struggling to book a glaser at that point, you know. It's bad to say, you know, the one person to be good to be right now would be a glaser at that point. You know, it's bad to say, you know, the one person

to be good to be right now would be a glaser. I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless in that kind of instant. And at the moment, you know, a lot of people overturned the neighborhoods in Beirut but around the poor itself in neighborhoods like Shemezah or Marmichael, the vacancy rate of these buildings in certain districts,

especially around the old electricity, do the ball building, which was also gutted in the explosion. Some of these vacancy rates are approaching like 90% over 90%. Wow. There are single, what you'll usually see is that there are single businesses on the first floor

At street level, but then virtually every other apartment Above it is empty and has been empty likely for months if not years A lot of landlords took the opportunity either to get out of Lebanon entirely which case you were lucky They didn't have to pay rent anymore, or they demanded higher rents in return for repairing your entire apartment, or they told you to kick rocks entirely, and they gentrified, helped gentrified the neighborhood, and they wanted more, they renovated it, they asked for better tenants, in which they're supposed to, these apartments stay empty. It absolutely accelerated the gentrification

of these working class neighborhoods that were around the port, which are already becoming major bar and restaurant districts, but are now almost entirely for people who do not live in these neighborhoods. They're awake, up until 2, 3 a.m., constantly partying, and the actual people who still live there have to appeal to the government just to shut down the music. It has to go up that far. I mean, there's no capitalism like disaster capitalism, right? Oh, yeah, it's a good time to do your sort of like land grab and open the worst pizza

restaurant in the event that is not in Israel. There are like 10 of those that I have been to our others it was Alice is that kidding. Next slide, please. Of course, one other consequence of this, one massive consequence of this, is, you know, I said that Baroot is very important, and a lot of it comes through the port of Baroot. What's one really quick way to functionally

make the port of Baroot inoperable for months? 43, you're kidding? Yeah, and that's, you know's not only is all of the stuff that was already meant to be coming in, coming through there, but like this is where you would ordinarily bring your aid as well. So you just sort of like, I mean, not to sort of like over dramatize this,

but the state that the Lebanese economy was in, it was like on its knees before this, and then there's just like, you know, fucking hooks out one of the thighs from under it too. Like, just having this, like, this huge, like cornerstone of like how all of your economy works, that all of your imports come through, just be like a disaster area and said is, as you can imagine, you know, a huge sort of burden. Next slide, please. I should also, this is going to be Justin's part of the main part, but I think we should probably explain why there's grain everywhere. It's one of my real bits of this.

It's like, why is to real bits of this. Why is this orange? Because there's corn over it. Because of this, you can see the ruins of it. It's the tallest building left standing in the port. This is a gray elevator, which is, again, it's a double-edged sword, because it's so tall, because it's built so strongly. It shields a significant like, access of Beirut from worse damage.

It's just this like wall behind which, you know, you're not necessarily gonna get as bad destruction. But on the other hand, that's where you keep all the fucking grain. And so all of the like grains, and she like go round with a shovel, sifting corn off of the ground. You just lose a bunch of food, and your capacity to store it also is fucked now. And this is August, so you're heading into awesome winter, which is cool,

because it still gets cold. Next slide, please. Yeah. So this was a big ass concrete grain silo and these are some of the toughest structures in existence today. They're notorious for being impossible to demolish, impossible to repurpose, impossible to sell. If you ever been to silo City and Buffalo, New York, you can see these huge band instructors, no one can tear them down. They're just too tough. Kind of a real flat to them. Yeah, exactly. Inspired Lake Hubo's EA to invent modernism, so on and so forth. Bay root got there is in 1970 that was comparatively late. A lot of these structures were built in like the 30s. But yeah, this is just a big series of reinforced concrete

cylinders that you fill with some form of bulk product usually grain, right? And then it's got a shed on top for mechanical equipment and offices. So there's a lot more structural material in here than a typical building because it has to hold solid grain instead of comparatively light stuff like people, right? Yeah. And grain loves to explode as we've told you before. Exactly. It's got to withstand an interior explosion as well.

So what happened here is this thing took one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history to the face sideways, and part of it was still standing. That's pretty fucking impressive. That was the silo. These are incredible structures, and that sort of protects a lot of the city that's to the east of the structure this way. Now a lot of the city is unfortunately to the east of the structure this way. Now, a lot of the city is unfortunately to the south of the structure, so that didn't necessarily come off too well as well as most of the parts of the port that handled break bulk.

So, but it did do a lot of shielding to the east and just to talk about how impressive this is if you compare like the other famous structure that survived a huge explosion, which is the the atom bomb dome in Hiroshima, now that was at ground zero of the bomb blew up, right? Which meant that most of the force on it was vertical, as opposed to horizontal. That's why all the walls are still standing because compared to the weight that they can stand, the vertical force of the atomic bomb isn't actually that much. It's very hard to crush a building like that, but it's very easy to knock it over. This thing, the explosion was trying to knock it over, and it survived. And Beirut is better

off for it, you know, other than all the grain being destroyed, obviously. Sad to say that the rest of it did collapse a couple of years ago, but it took that long. The thing is interesting, because on the two-year anniversary, yes, most of the columns that collapse, but there's still a couple of them still standing. So, when you are walking along in those neighborhoods alongside the port, those silos are still there, and they haven't been cleaned up, they haven't been really touched. They repaired the stuff around the port in order to restore to some sort of working capability. But nobody wants to do anything with the silos one because we'd be too much work. We have as allergic to. And two, there's debate over whether or not they want to keep it as like a

memorial of some sort as like a reminder of some kind. But there's no obvious public debate about it. There's no procedure to it. There's no tender obviously. So it just kind, but there's no obvious public debate about it. There's no procedure to it. There's no tender obviously. So it just kind of sits there. And I assume the point is at the weight for that to collapse. And then it's all for hands. Yeah, I mean, the thing is I would probably keep it as a memorial because if he wanted to demolish it,

the only way to do that is to do the explosion again. So that's not that. No, not a feasible option. Yeah, I mean, apparently the like the bit that collapsed had been tilting since the explosion and then the grain that was left in it just started fermenting. So, yeah, and then that caught fire and then you know a bunch more of it collapsed. Just got to just got the Suddenly Beirut's largest distillery in that in that one silo But yeah, so this is this is this is what saved a good chunk of the city from being hit much worse

Another thing is this thing rolled over a whole cruise ship Another thing is this thing rolled over a whole cruise ship. I don't know. I didn't know about this. Yeah, so it only had crew on board at the time, but this was the cruise ship Orient Queen. It was just north of the blast site. It sustained some pretty heavy damage from the explosion. Two people on board were killed, but everyone else survived and got off the boat before it rolled over. And I think it's still there. It may not be still there. I'm not sure.

I definitely haven't seen it, but you know, my eyes may lie to me. I mean, the ship who's fertilized this was the roses. That's still in the breakwaters sunk off of Beirut. Just because after they finally like took all the shit off of it, they just towed it out there and then it just kind of sunk on its own and it's still that. I will do it. Yeah.

Next slide, please. Yeah, so I wanted to talk a bit about the sort of the rescue efforts which were remarkable how little the like government or the military, like how little interest they seem to take at the time. It was like ambulance crews and like just people for the most part in the early days. And then at some point like some like international aid came in sort of like a bit later

and there was like pulling people out of the rubble for you know, like weeks afterwards as this usual urban search and rescue stuff. Again, it's just pure dysfunction, which I struggle to imagine the feeling, but I can at least plot its consequences, which I think we're gonna talk about on the next slide. And this is much more like open-ended, but I want to talk about the kind of like, political like aftermath of this. If you can even say aftermath, it's still going.

Right, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. After the poor explosion, the prime minister resigned, a bunch of other politicians designed, but as is a similar situation right now, there really was no one who wanted the position. After the fact, Lebanon is very much a singing ship.

So the amount of money that you can extract out of it is shrinking day by day as people kind of take the rest that's out and go elsewhere. So the prime minister at the time has sent the app who was already itself a politician they had to get out of nowhere. He was a professor at my university before they took him. He used the education minister, but he had just been teaching, I think, computer science or some sort of economics at AUB. With sort of like kidnaps to be prime minister. Sort of, he was also a municipal site. I mean, listen, it happens to the best of us.

I remember that picture of Sad Harriere with MBS. He's going to, like, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's written his résumé. I want to say was close to a thousand pages. Wow. He compiled himself into like a book that you could get. No, he had an extreme sense of self-importance about how much you could do for a loan on and then when he gets in there obviously get in when he thinks. So he resigns after the blast and then he stays on for months and months and months because they can't find a new prime minister who could dig after him. They consider South Henry again, even though his resignation was brought has sent the app into the prime minister ship. Yeah, eventually there are they they find someone who is prime minister before Naji Neknathy of a centrist party to come back.

He's a billionaire, one of the richest men in Lebanon, again, like Saturday. Every interview he gives now, I watch them. He is so depressed about how little he can do. There was one just a couple days ago, I want to say, when he was interviewed by Al Jendi, where the reporter asks him about Hezbollah on the border and what the Lebanese government can do.

And the prime minister is like, he's not wearing a suit, he's just wearing like a button-down shirt. And he just tells the reporter, like, are you in Lebanon or are you, you know, in a caracco? Like, you know the situation here. Like, I can't do anything about this. This is out of my hands, like I just kind of watched it, observe. Yeah.

He's depressed about it, he's upset about it. I mean, maybe it's better than the, the, the, the Alon press conferences where he would say, like, you know, if you don't love the government and want to kiss it on the mouth, you can go fuck yourself and there would be like two days of riots. What? Oh, he genuinely said, like, if you mouth, you can go fuck yourself and there would be like two days, riots. What?

genuinely said, like if you can't find it in you to like have faith in the government, you should leave Lebanon. And this was in the midst of like six week process, like Arab Spring sort of like depending on how you count it like process, revolution, whatever. Literally, just if you don't love America, you can kiss my ass. You know? Absolutely. No, there were protests that erupted after this. Obviously people demanding that the government should fall as they've been in 2019.

Obviously, that didn't happen. It kind of just fell out of the national consciousness. The currency kept collapsing. Economic concerns became paramount. The poverty rate, national poverty, I want to say is around like 86%. Now food inflation through the roof prices keep rising. Almost everything in the country is dollarized now

in the sense that dollarized now, in the sense that you can pay with Lyra, but shops, restaurants, businesses would really prefer that you pay to dollars that are in pristine condition, that they can use to buy imports, which Lebanon is completely dependent on, for basically all of its food supply, everything that it operates on.

Again, as I mentioned before, there is no firm prime minister, there is absolutely no president at all. That position is completely vacant. The elections that happened after this, that were supposed to bring in new revolutionary voices, total bunk, didn't do anything. 13, quote unquote, revolution MPs are elected who had no consistent political ideology.

The party that espoused a consistent left wing political ideology, the MFFD, none of them were elected. And so you were kind of at the mercy of these people who had no agreement in policy other than opposing the current power structure, but that spans the length between like Nookto's Lebanese Liberals who believe that we should oppose Israel through like a BLM type deal instead of firing rockets at them. And also, people who think that Syrians should all be deported and should essentially be genocided. Yeah, the Lebanese far right is a fascinating rock to kick over. I'll spend 10 seconds on that because it's one of the terribly fascinating things in that a lot of Lebanese people are primarily

Maranite Christians don't believe that they're Arab, even though they speak Arabic. They believe that they're Phoenician and that their ethnic identity is distinct because they also speak French in English At the risk of making you spend more than 10 seconds on it. What's the I like half remember this? What's the fucking like tiny like splinter? that the are militants that are like Not just like far right but like the semi-autics of like the Nazis specifically like that. Oh, oh Kiteb. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Kiteb, they were the guys who started the Lebanese forces, who did the Separate Shadeela. They're right now, they style themselves supposedly, nominally, as a social democratic party that supports the evolution of gay rights, and that specifically tried to take advantage of the protest in 2019 and 2020. The position themselves as an opposition party in that respect. Are they still doing this was to cause an Hitler and the armed violence?

Well, not necessarily, but if you go down to Marmi Kyle right next to Rewak, they root Ray Bar, great, trans-friendly bar. There is a mural, I could have mural where someone, I assume a Kiteb fighter, I'm going to demonstrate here, is doing a Nazi salute, which is kind of curved up a little bit, huh? Which is very obviously a Nazi-styled salute. This is because the founder of the party, Pierre-Jamel, verbatim, he told us the Robert Fisk, went to the Berlin Olympics and said, we should have that here.

We should at least need discipline. The Middle East needs discipline. And so he explicitly styled Catelle after the Nazis. And right now, the leader of the party, is again, it's been in the Jameil family ever since. It hasn't abandoned that ideological history. In modernizing, liberalizing, social, democratic Nazis. This is like I say, fast-nacing.

And these are the people that are ostensibly supporting, quote unquote, supporting the pro-dessuant against government. So it's all cannibalistic. There's no real way out of the situation other than another election, which is probably going to be even less revolution at least, because I've disappointed everybody so much. It's an entirely, yeah.

It's weird to have a party that, you know, heard someone say, you know, national socialist German workers party and take the socialist part seriously. No, they, it's, it's difficult for me to like, I keep saying it's like, there's no hope, it's stagnant, like, I keep saying it's like there's no hope, it's stagnant, like, it's circular. But it's difficult for me to like, overstate just like, how, like, fucked, brim moment. Like an IMF bailout has been on the cards since, again, I was even further back when I was at college. I was a junior in college. I did an assignment in which I had to write for my opinion writing course about why Lebanon should refuse the IMF bailout. I have to take that

decision. It is three years later and the IMF bailout has still not been authorized. In most other countries, in IMF bailout, we put on the table and despite all the austerity measures that have been implemented, there was a recognition that they were in desperate straits, and they had no ideological barrier to it, and they would just take it. It'd be really easy. And now Lebanon is at the position where they're not opposing an IMF bailout because they're socialists, or they believe that the Lebanese economy can be saved by progressive taxation and and you know measures of this kind. They are they are austerity hawks right. There are food subsidies that they that they want to keep up but like they are capitalists through their bone. They want this money but they also

know that the strings put on them by the IMF would be too much from the bear, because it would require reforms that would slightly break up the corrupt machine that they created, and they can't have that. So they are attempting a, you can tell me, if the sounds sound, where they are hoping that the increased tourism numbers from this year, from last year as well, we'll put them in a better negotiating position with the INF because they got money from tourists.

Yeah, I mean, I'm remembering that during those weeks of process, I talked about the one of the sparks for them was trying to tax WhatsApp messages. So, I'm not like, yeah, over-ed by like that, that like policymaking impulses. No, all they want is to try and make more money from the absolute poorest and make sure the rich are free to make as much money as they want, but not in a traditional kind of, what you might imagine Republicans do, really try to couch it in some other way. The Lebanese government just straight up says, hey, we know that using WhatsApp to get around

the highest telecom rates in the world, basically, we're just gonna tax that, and we're gonna hope that you're all right with that, and that nothing bad will ever come of this. Even though you're not seeing any improvement in any infrastructure, medical care, anything. And I would say the, the TAR is a mouth look for that region at least in the immediate future.

Seems pretty poor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Before we recorded this, the US was like, the travel advisory came out. They're putting it on par with Sudan, Syria, Ukraine. Yeah, not looking good.

I fucking left, I left in such a rush recently. I left dishes in the sink and I left laundry like on the drying rack. So I stupidly assumed hey, this probably blowover in like a couple of days. And yeah, I don't think it's going through. So, this sort of like Yeah. Couple of days. Yeah. I don't think it's going through. So this sort of like government barely worthy of the name was forced to do an investigation.

Yeah. So they were pressured to appoint this judge, this investigative judge, Fadi Soan, who by reputation as I understand it was like, you know, not sectarian, not corrupt, good at his job, all of this. And as a result of that, a year later they just kicked him back off of it. And as of now, they are still investigating. And I think that investigation will go until the heat death of the universe. Well, the thing is, is that after that judge,

I believe there was another judge which got a little bit further, who was Ta-Dak-Bitaar. And Ta-Dak-Bitaar did the right thing in that he collected evidence and then he directed arrest warrants and asked for interrogations of people who were directly involved in the ministries that were responsible for the ship report. Wanted questioning from all these different people.

And as soon as this would happen, the people accused would exploit loopholes in the 11th industrial system to stop needing to to a C to these warrants, to these interrogation requests. And they would be held up for months as the judge would then be taken off the case and then inevitably reassigned to the case and this would continue and continue and continue. And it eventually reached a point in which Hezbollah supporting protests, there's went down to the palace of justice or the protest, taught at Bita's reappointment because apparently it got too political because he had been asking for people from ML, which is a Hezbollah ally party who were in control of the ministries responsible. It's not just like someone out of

fucking thin air. They go down, they protest it, and then snipers from the rooftops. Jesus Christ. Suspected to be from the Lebanese forces. Start firing. And there is a gunfight in the Tayyuna neighborhood, which was not terribly far from the neighborhood in which I live. Yeah, no, no, no, it immediately became completely radioactive, because even if, like like I don't personally believe that Hezbollah, the emergency, you know, belonged to Hezbollah, but Hezbollah absolutely does not want this investigated because it absolutely implicates all their allies in government. And once their allies in government are implicated, that jeopardizes their political king making ability.

It opens them up to questions about their complicity in the corruption in the government. It opens it also would require investigation into all of their intelligence capabilities back in based on the fact that Lebanese government didn't like the Tesla had a separate telecommunications system that they just were telling people about. They tried to shut it down and then there were gun battles in the middle of the group. Everybody posting or deaths. Yeah. Nobody wants, like every party to some extent, even if they're not technically guilty, it exposes all of them to a certain extent. it exposes all of them to a certain extent. That's so true of like any of the investigations abroad as well. Like the reason why I mentioned like Syria and why I mentioned like Mozambique and all of this is that like the like journalists have been through and they've tried to trace all of these like shell companies to find out exactly who owned this ship, who owned the cargo, and where it was going.

And the place that it's led is this company, Savaro, and a Ukrainian oligarch called Volodemy Verbenol. So the ammonium nitrate probably came from Ukraine. And this company was like operated by another shell company called InterStatus. And the director of that has said, you know, oh yeah, I know who owns it and they just won't say. That's so cool. And I will say, for legal reasons, we're gonna phrase this very carefully. I'm just reading from Wikipedia here. There's this Syrian Russian businessman. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, yeah. He's a fun guy, George Kasswani. So he's like, he's in with Assad big time,

also Putin. He's asked my sort of implications about Syria. And they asked him about this. And they asked him, like, how come your company runs through the same shell company that owned, you know, the Simone M. Nitrate? And he said, and this is a quote, I am living my life normally and laughing because I am someone who knows well that I have nothing to do with this matter at all. Which is, I think, the funniest possible thing you can tell the haters. Oh my God. We have laughed.

Thanks for making me famous. This is what I'm saying. When I'm out of the way I'm thinking about my ex-girlfriend. I'm living to do what I'm doing. I'm living to do what I'm doing. I'm living normally in laughing. Yeah. New Swisser bio as well.

Yeah. And I mean, maybe he does. You know, maybe he is living his life normally as well. And maybe he does. Maybe he is living his life normally and laughing. Oh my goodness. But yeah, yeah. So there is one small, small glimmer of hope here. Oh my God. Okay.

Yeah, I know. This is like relatively new news. This is from this year in June of this year. So some of the survivors sued this holding company, Savara, because it's registered in the UK, because we love to be a hub for world shady middleman dealing. And although they didn't make them disclose who the owners were, they did force this company to pay about a million dollars in damages, directly to victims, which is not much, but it's something, and it opens them up for more liability in other jurisdictions that they hope.

So one of the claimants says that, as a quote from him in this Royce's story about it, where he says that it's telling that everything that's moving forward is outside of Lebanon. You know, that's the only place where there's progress. But yeah, I would say in addition to that, like when we talk about targeting Iranian officials for investigations and certain things, and we talk about like, oh, we'll do things in Europe, we'll sanction them from the United States, oh, we'll do things in Europe. We'll sanction them from the United States. They won't get anywhere near American assets.

That doesn't affect like Joe Schmo on the Guardian Council who was not taking vacations in Paris and in Berlin typically. But Lebanese officials, that absolutely affects them. People in Kiteb, people in other parties, other than I guess, Hezbollah, they love being in Europe. They love being in Switzerland. They love going to American colleges and French universities

and living it up on the European dime. Being shut out of those systems is absolutely something that they fear to stomachs that. I mean, saturday, really, isn't even in Lebanon anymore. He doesn't want to stick around. He lives in Dubai now. He flies around all these different places. They don't like being in that country. That is the only like small, smaller free. And they're really, yeah. They're closely interconnected with the European system.

There is a level that if anyone in Europe has any interest in pulling it or being forced to pull it. Yeah, but they keep threatening to pull it. I mean, the French, the French have been, Macron has been trying to like mediate the INF they allow and government formation for years and years and years. He's always saying like, hey, I'm gonna sanction you know I'm gonna sanction, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that And then it never does. So yeah, it's always present and you can pull it and it would actually have effect, but he chooses not just doesn't want to do it. For reasons that are beyond me, but hey, I'm not the fucking at least a power. So wherever. Yeah. Well, what have we learned from all of this? Other than surround every port with

grain elevators, which are really destruct off. They did a bunch of investigations after this happened. A bunch of port authorities got scared, all across the Middle East, and beyond, to be like, wait, how much of this shit do we just have lying around? And there are a bunch more close calls like this. They very, very nearly sort of like missed like in Iraq that they found like tons and tons of this in on cast just like fucking like sitting out that they had to like remove.

You know, this is the great thing about containerization is you can have the same amount of ammonium nitrate hanging around, but you don't know about it. Yeah, it's in a container. I'll make. Yeah. Out of, right until your pork goes up and flames. Yeah, so yeah, this is, this is a, well, what did we learn?

I mean, I guess like, um, store your shit good. Yeah. Yeah, um, maybe I oil your bureaucracy a little bit, um, have like one guy that works every ministry who does listen to something. Yeah. That's as a signed role and everybody else can kind of fuck off, like have that one guy. It's a really weird system to end a civil war by going, okay, well, we'll just do strict religious closures. Yeah, don't do that. That is not doubt for like

anybody. I agree. It's better than the system that existed before the Civil War. Recreations had their supremacy was enshrined into law, where they had more seats in parliament than the Muslims. But we can also just get rid of all the quotas. That might be soft, some third things. Who knows? I'm just a simple boy from Matt Sippos Council. I don't know enough about nothing. I'd say a whole point of this thing.

I'm a good guppity. Yeah. Yeah. Big thing we learned is, if there's something on fire within view of your apartment that may explode, stand doors. Don't, don't look at it. Yeah. If you have to film it, put a stationary camera out. You should not look at the explosion. You will have shards of glass in your eyes. That's why in the movies, the cool guys are always facing away from the explosion when it happens. We don't have a generation that has that like

duck and cover experience, you know, that knows not to like be looking out at Windows and explosions. Yeah. A little PSA. Yeah. And uh, yeah. Just walk away from the explosion and slow motion that's much safer. People don't know what how to do that anymore because of streaming techno streaming movies. It's just doing one. Now it's all about um, welcome. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How about Disney plus? I don't do that shit anymore. It's just doing one. Now it's all about um, welcome. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How about Disney plus? I don't do that shit anymore. It's Well, we have a segment on this podcast called safety third. Now, bow down. Oh, we didn't even do this last time because We ran to work. Oh no, it's just too long. We we we just their time

Far far more responsibly and now go to like you can invest hour and a half. That's a movie, you know I'm a short movie these days Yeah, exactly. Hello, Razz Alice Liam and guest if applicable. Yeah, you did a hell day. Yeah Following is my submission for our beloved closing segment it involves many of our favorite elements namely gross in competency British Empire fetishists museums and target targeting bank buildings with, and a government agency trusting university students to handle both homemade explosives and extremely antique firearms. On top of this, this work site was mentioned in the Halifax Explosion episode. Good call back there. And I believe a joke about this very thing happening was made.

Good work on a foreshadowing. Did you accidentally shell Halifax They shouldn't keep the cannons pointed at scotian bank. They don't want us to sell it. Oh, it's actually pointed. I found out today It's actually pointed at TD bank. Oh The danger the danger brothel in question Is the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site in Halifax Nova Scotia? Yeah, I've been there. He were there together, man. I worked at the Citadel for a number of years and Ken with confidence say that no job I've since I've had since has been as nonchalant about safety violations. Cool. I will spare us all the lengthy explanation of what exactly this place is,

both because we have access to the internet and because it can honestly be an entire episode on its own. In short, it's a large Victorian era for it, staffed by military reenactors. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. The site has been met. Yeah.

The site has been managed and staffed by the same organization since the early 1990s and has been the employer of some of the most Batfuck unhinged individuals I've ever met or heard of over to course my tenure there I had frequent encounters with both co-workers and management that left me seriously unsure as to whether or not we inhabited the same reality and Uncomfortable amount of these conversations left me questioning if they really thought they were actually a member of Queen Victoria's armed forces. Oh no. Oh no, you want to have a clear separation between all and up stage with your little history.

Exactly. I'm convinced that the water on site was cursed with the gin. Why did that place run on spiten satism? Hey, it really is victory. I mean, it made it a different kind of gym, you know? Yeah. It was not uncommon to witness a hero of a colleague being pushed to complete physically demanding tasks while exhibiting very clear signs of extreme heat exhaustion or heatstroke

exclusively for the pleasure of whichever corporal or sergeant, both of those in quotes, have to be in charge that day. I put corporal and sergeant in quotations because while they were all very much likely to, like you to believe that they were actual NCOs and would sign off on e-bails as corporal so and so, they were tour guys with an extra stripe on their uniforms. I mean, if they're like, hazing, I feel like you're entitled to like, Vesseron's benefits at this point. Yeah.

At this point, just make him an actual pass of the military, like always as constitution, you know. I could do this as constitution. Isn't that where they, they filmed that one porno, right? Very specific. Yeah, this is a lot of how ready you were for that. No, no, I remember this. This was like, this was like a piece of knowledge I learned years ago where they filmed two like multi-million dollar porno's on the USS Constitution. Oh my god. Wow.

Pirates I think. Yeah, they lightly lied to them and they said that it was a Disney movie. And then they filmed pornography and all of the all of the chambers. That's incredible. Wow. Yeah. Like do like that. Like the one infantry regiment, the US Army has the just like dresses old-timey for fun. Like what film a porn oh of them. Yeah. Film a porn oh of the film of these guys. What about this is unclear? Yeah. I could make an entire podcast dedicated to the stupid shit that I had to endure during my years there. But the reason I am writing you today

is to recount the crown jewel of fuckups that happened there. Dear friends, I want to tell you about the time we nearly harpooned the TD bank building. Yes. We called our shops. Well, that shop. Yeah. When I was at the Halifax Citadel, I. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that shot. Yeah. When I, when I was at the Halifax,

it had a, I was like, that cannon is pointed right at that building. Oh, anyway. Anyway. In a tradition dating back to the founding of the city, a cannon is fired from a top the hill every day, except Christmas to mark 12 o'clock noon. Hence the name, the noon gun.

I do not know how many times a tourist would ask, excuse me, what time does this noon gun go off? Depending on my mood, sometimes I would only answer with a simple yes. The procedure for firing the gun is the same as it was in the mid 19th century. The movements are taken straight from the drill manual and is complete with lots of shouting and rigid movements. If you ever witness in wonder, why the fuck are the shouts literally incomprehensible? It's because they've all done this so many times that it's become muscle memory and the one shouting like to see just how unintelligible they can make themselves while still having their squad perform without crushing someone's toes

or doming someone off with a large wooden-handed spike that they use for maneuvering the gun. Briefly, the process is the following. Roll the gun back from the embraisher. Perform a quick inspection. Use various ramming implements to clear the inside. The first has a large corkscrew on the end and is used for clearing out any pigeons or other implements to clear the inside. The first has a large corkscrew on the end and is used for clearing out any pigeons or other garbage that might be hiding inside. Oh my God. The second has a large sponge on the end and is

used to swab the inside of the barrel to ensure that there are no embers or hot spots that could cause an accident or detonation. Then you use the aptly named Ramrod, a charge is placed at the mouth of the barrel and then rammed all the way to the base of the gun. Due to the length of the gun in question, the Ramrod is approximately 8 feet in length with a flared base on the pushing end. The diameter of the base being only slightly less than the barrel.

While I wouldn't make a completely airtight seal if the gun were fired with the Ramrod still in the barrel, the one pound black-pow powder charge would put some significant oomph on it. Now take a guess where this story is going. Oh, there. Now you roll the gun back into the embrace here and insert insert the friction tube, which is the thing that makes the spark. And you wait for the one to yell fire or the one and charge the yell fire on the day and question almost all these steps were followed correctly. The misstep being the man in charge failed to ensure the ramrod was removed from the gun before having his crew move the gun back into the firing position. Had that day's firing gone ahead, the TD bank building and downtown Halifax would have been the very rapid, rapid recipients of a

charred ramrod parpoon. Luckily for those thieving bank bastards, in a stooge security guard outside the Fort Walls, noticed a protusion emanating from the embrasier with only seconds remaining until firing. As many of these security guards who retired members of our armed forces, they immediately recognized what was happening and were promptly shouting into their radio

to abort the firing. The message quickly reached the gun crew, who were able to retrieve the Ramrod and proceeded with the firing. The message quickly reached the gun crew who were able to retrieve the ramrod and proceeded with the firing with only a slight delay. Oh wow, it's like a Van Dam movie. Yeah. The man in charge for that day's firing was himself very nearly fired, somehow managed to keep his job likely on account of the place being an old boys club and he had been there since the 90s.

Well the 1890s? Probably. Oh. And the aftermath, he was no longer allowed anywhere near any weapons of any kind and face a kind of punishment worse than death, a demotion from her majesty's Victorian army. This is why they couldn't fire him as they couldn't find the manual about a cashier someone. To this day, the TD bank building and Halifax continues that decades long streak

of being unperforated and almost, certainly, completely unaware of how close they were to losing that streak. Annie, thanks from a long time listener your show has brought me many laughs over the years and I look forward to many more. Well, thanks so much. Thank you. That was good. It was good for this. It was good.

Well, that was safety third. Down, down, down. Oh, man, it's a danger. It's right. Okay. Our next episode will be Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? Yeah. Shamus. Shamus. Oh, yeah. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

I'm sure. I mean, where can they find them? They can they can find it at a website that I write at, which is my own. Shamus hyphen melagafsili.com is a brilliant website in which you can read all of my horribly depressed musings about the state of the Middle East. What I hope is an informative, well-reasoned way. I guess it would be the operative word there. Yeah, I've been told people enjoy it in ways that are hard to. They should follow you on Twitter too. They should also do that. I always appreciate getting, as I've gotten very recently, very frenzy to messages that are both very supportive but are also deeply inquisitive in a way that I am uncomfortable with.

So subscribe to the subsite, follow you on Twitter and do not violate your boundaries. Yeah, exactly. I'm a human being and I live in my house and I would like the wall to remain there. Thank you. All right. Well, we have a Patreon. You can subscribe to it. You can subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. It's about to say very close to the hundred thousand. Very close. Very close. Probably got about seven days left as of when this podcast comes out.

Anyway, yeah, smash the subscribe and like. I'm doing a I'm doing a Mr. Beast face right now. I cracked my jaw doing that. That's fun. I will give my personal recommendation for the, well, there is your problem, YouTube My, one of my favorite activities is listening to my old episode on repeat and thinking about how funny these guys are and also how funny I am. Yeah, but hysterical. Is the main thing. It's great.

Great channel. Well, thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. I think that was a podcast. Bye everyone. Bye everyone. Bye everyone. Yeah. Yeah.

What are the odds? Yeah. Time to go back to reading Israel Palestine tweets and panicking.