Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 107

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDRR, which means just don't look right. On season two of my podcast, What Happened To? I take a closer look at Libby Caswell's life and death. Libby's case keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. That's something that I need to know. Listen to What Happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Payne Lindsay. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, and I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains. We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, the supernatural, there's something here, truly something going on, and honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, you should be very happy with it.

You want? This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi. Do you feel chronic existential dread but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me! My podcast is relaunching! Do you fear wild, dangerous animals to the point where you're constantly watching attack

videos and reading articles about wild animal attack survivors or those who succumb to attack? Call in! We can also discuss reality shows and emergency room footage. Listen to Call Chelsea Paradeon, Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Cool, so media.

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know, this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. This could be a giant disaster.

Those were the words that Elon Musk texted, biographer Walter Isaacson on a Friday evening in September 2022, claiming that the Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, in the annexed region of Crimea. Musk had been providing Stalin-Kinternet to the Ukrainian military for months as part of their ongoing conflict against Russia's invasion, and the resourceful Ukrainians began using Stalin as a way to remotely control their kamikaze drones. Musk having spoken to a Russian ambassador, saw Crimea as a red line that, when crossed, would escalate the conflict, potentially even provoking a nuclear retaliation.

And so he acted, disabling or, depending on who you ask, refusing to enable, Stalin accessed in the Crimea region. When the Ukrainian drone subs approached their targets, they suddenly stopped communicating with their operators, and eventually washed up ashore, harmless and impotent. While the specific details of this episode are hazy, the core truth is unambiguously clear. Elon Musk is a supremely powerful individual and, through action or inaction, has the ability to influence the outcome of combat and operations in the bloodiest war inflicted upon Europe in generations.

It's a level of power typically only reserved for nation state actors, not tech company CEOs. Throughout history, we've seen plenty of examples of individuals and companies without sized country like power and influence. Musk isn't unique in that regard, noise he had a soul cautionary tale about why they shouldn't be allowed to happen. As a private individual operating within his capacity as CEO, he's unconstrained by democratic accountability. And as a private businessman, he has his own conflicts of interest, from Tesla's long

history of sourcing aluminum from Russian companies to his contacts with the highest echelons of Russian leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself. Historically, the only real accountability mechanism for people like Musk is being the media. And yet in this case, the media has chosen instead to fate the Elon Musk creation myth that he's a trailblazing real-life Tony Stark that will take humanity to the stars, rather than asking him any hard questions of any kind. This situation is the product of a media industry dominated by journalists seeking access

to popular public figures pulling their punches in the process. The most notable access journalist is Cara Swisher, who has spent decades covering the tech industry with a pantomime-like aggression, asking the quote unquote, hard questions without ever really pushing to level of discomfort that might make a source unwilling to participate. Swisher famously, in an interview during the All Things Digital Conference in 2010, convinced Meta CEO then called Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg to take off his hoodie, after asking him a challenging question about Facebook's invasion of privacy. Only to be distracted by the design of the inside of what he was wearing, effectively

objecting to her own line of questioning for entertainment purposes. Eight years later, Swisher would interview Zuckerberg about Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in the 2016 elections, lobbing softball questions like, make a case for keeping info wars on Facebook, and responding to Zuckerberg outright saying he wouldn't ban Holocaust and Saddihook deniers by asking how it made Zuckerberg feel when people said Facebook killed people in Myanmar. The swisher how style is simple. Ask a big, meaty question, and then fail to interrogate to single answer in any way, shape or form. Around a month later, Swisher would interview Elon Musk, who at that point had aided harassment

campaigns against reporters, called a man saving children a pedophile, and had his companies face multiple allegations of sexual harassment and racism. When asked about his fights with the press over Twitter, Musk claimed that the Wall Street Journal, who's wish he used to work for, outright lied about investigation and intertestless production figures. To which, Swisher asked him if he realized the dangers of him saying such things about the press, and proceeded to help Musk paper over his claims, saying that he, quote, just doesn't like falsehoods.

One of the richest and most powerful men in the world sat before Swisher and her interrogation involved asking him simple questions about why he was doing things, likely teasing him and saying that he looks, and I quote, rested in calm. To be clear, this is an ultra-powerful billionaire, and this is a, was at the time, enterprising journalist who everyone looked to. In April 2022, the week that Musk announced the Twitter acquisition, Swisher gave a strange interview to James D. Walsh of the New Yorker, defending Musk, who had, of course, waived due diligence on the acquisition and did not seem to have a single clear plan

about how he might run the site. She claimed that you couldn't pin Musk down, that he was quite complex, and that we would be surprised about what he likes and doesn't like. Musk, who was invented none of the core products that make him rich, is a quote visionary that gave swish a genuine answer, and arguably the most damning thing she could have said would call her back. That was her litmus test, that he would return her back. That was her litmus test that he would return her calls. Her ultimate defensive musk was that, and I quote, inventors were very difficult problematic people, and

the moderation on Twitter was not working at the time of acquisition. These are all, of course, demonstrably false based on the events that followed the growth of hate speech, the lack of accountability that biggest face on the platform, and the fact that every third post seems to be some kind of spam bot, either selling t-shirts or pornography or cryptocurrency scams. Swisher only turned on Musk when he emailed her, calling her an asshole in November 2022, including a screenshot where, according to Swisher, she was actually defending him, saying that the US government should pay Elon Musk for starling. Since then, Musk has gone from a difficult to pin down visionary to cover Swisher calling his social network a, and this is agonizingly, horribly written, a thunder dome of toxic

assininity. Swisher, it appears, only worried about what she called Musk's price of cocktail of ignorance and big ego until he was rude to her. One of the most famous tech journalists in the world, who was failed to take any real shot at any of the people she's questioned, across decades of doing this, has now been reduced to making epic dunks that sound like a 21-year-old Harry Potter fan trying to cast a spell. It's embarrassing. Swisher isn't the sole media figure guilty of having treated Elon Musk with kid gloves

or treating his blow-viating with otherwise-on-due credulity. This is a problem that affects almost every news outlet and reports that covers billionaires. The assumption is always that billionaires will act with empathy, patience, and grace, three things that must be basso, Zuckerberg, and their ilk, totally lack. Failing that, one would suppose they'd act like a normal person, a losing proposition if you've ever read Jeff Bezos' texts.

These people are not like us. They do not experience human struggle. They don't have bills or bosses or fear of anything, let alone authority. Each and every billionaire is effectively above the law, and that is the place that you must start to understand them. It's deeply frustrating, especially when you consider the myriad of opportunities where the media could have taken must-to task and held him accountable. Take high pleaps, for example, must's concept for a high-speed mass transit system

where pressurized capsules would hurtle between cities through vacuum tubes at speeds as fast to 760mph. Hyperloop, Musk promised, would allow commuters to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in as little as 30 minutes, and with the network powered primarily by solar power, with no real environmental impact. If anything, this could have been a much bigger deal than Tesla. High-speed Transair that doesn't burn fossil fuels could truly have changed the world. So what do you think happened? Do you think that Musk delivered on this? On this product that helped play a vital role in cementing his image as a real life Tony Stark.

Not only would it be faster and cheaper than anything currently in existence, but it would be greener too. What followed was a gushing or at least gradualist flow of media coverage, including from the Washington Post and the New York Times, both papers of record. It wasn't until the hype gradually died down that people began asking serious questions about hyperlubes' viability. An exhaustive report published by the Transportation Research Laboratory earlier this year raises serious questions about the feasibility of hyperlub, particularly when it comes to passenger

transportation. Riders, it noted, would be exposed to extreme physical and mental stress, with the noise, vibrations, and rapid acceleration and deceleration inflicting an unknowable toll on the human body. Questions about safety still linger, and then there's the thorny issue of cost, with high bloop requiring an all-new infrastructure. Even the shortest routes would involve a multi-billion dollar upfront investment. These points were, for the most part, absent entirely from the earliest coverage of high-polloup. The media also missed the fact that high-polloup wasn't even a new idea. In the 19th

century countless inventors, toured with the notion of an atmospheric railway, where vehicles traveled through a near-vac human environment on the momentum of pressurized air. A small demonstrator route was even built by Isambar Kingdom Brunel, the legendary British engineer who designed the first transatlantic steamship. While hypolouped evidence and meaningful ways, it was still nonetheless, much like many must-products, a derivative of an earlier idea. The boring company musks, hilariously named, tunnel-boring startup. An similar, credulous coverage upon its inception, driven a no-small part due to masks' decision to raise working capital by selling branded flame-throwers, dubbed the Not-A-Flam

Thrower, to anyone that paid $500. This stunt aside, the boring company won praise due to its stated mission to reduce the cost of digging tunnels, which are often an inevitable, hand-in-expensive part of road and mass transportation development. Like Hyperloop, the Boring Company fed into the Tony Stark image of a billionaire that could, through sheer force of will, change the world and fix once intractable problems. I quote Mashable when they said, Musk built machines to travel more efficiently on the Earth and above it, so traveling through Earth seems within the realm of his capabilities. If anyone can transform a seemingly absent-minded half-joke into

world-changing technology, its Elon Musk said the Guardian. And then reality here. The boring company's first commercial project, a 1.7-mile tunnel in Las Vegas, where I in fact live, wasn't a traditional road tunnel, or part of an underground metro system. It was, in fact, far less impressive. A single lane loop where human driven testless varied passengers between points of interest than the Las Vegas Convention Centre and where traffic jams are a routine frustration

for passengers. Other projects in other cities, most notably Chicago and Los Angeles, have either been cancelled or are on indefinite hiatus. There is nothing that the boring company has done. The tunnel in Vegas is useless. It's claustrophobic, it's ugly. It feels like being in an airport lounge except there's no food. It's strange.

It doesn't feel like it solves a problem other than how can Elon Musk get more attention. And that really is what he craves. Musk's wafer thin skin, his volatility and his propensity to overpromise none to the liver has never been a secret. While he's been able, with some success, to off forsaken to misdirect through a well-crafted media persona, the clues have always been there. Musk's reality distortion field goes some way to explaining how he has managed to amass the extent of the power he has and how he cemented himself into our nation's most vital industries like transportation,

communications, infrastructure and social media. He has a fairly consistent battle plan. He makes a big promise. He delivers enough to make the media believe he's for real. And then he relies upon the fact that very few parts of the media will ever follow up with him. There is no challenging Elon Musk in the media. The thinnest amounts of criticism are usually meant by a horde of crazed Tesla fans, or at times Elon Musk himself. He's created a paper-thin media image built on the smallest thinnest structures of reality. He has found a way to manipulate the media using his large amounts of power, money, and his few friends. Elon Musk is a danger to society.

He's a capricious demagogue, desperate for more power and attention, and he will do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, because we are societally unprepared for billionaires. It's no longer healthy, or safe, or honest, to see Elon Musk as a dorky charlatan carrying sinks into offices or destroying social networks to settle in sealer beefs. Elon Musk is a nation state level actor with a net worth larger than the GDP of Ukraine. He associates only with equally spurious reactionaries like Bill Ma, Ronda Santos and David Sachs, and he's easily influenced by anyone who agrees with his thinly backed beliefs. Musk isn't polarizing.

He's polarization given life, an empty man made of contrarianism and grievances, and he'll happily change the world based on his own personal beliefs. As a result of our market-driven government and compliant media, Musk has caused and will continue to cause human suffering and actual death in his pursuit of fame, power and capital. It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, an executive, or an industry blow-hard. As a result of our market-driven government, and compliant media, Musk has caused and will continue to cause human suffering and actual death in his pursuit of

fame, power and capital. It's time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, an executive, or an industry blowhard, and see him as a man who has used his incredible wealth and status to twist the world to his petty, ignorant and selfish desires. It's important to realise with complete clarity that Musk makes electric cars that are sold around the world and sells rockets to NASA. He runs Twitter, X or whatever it's called these days. One of the largest communication networks in the world, and of course Starlink, the satellite ISP, used throughout the world, that is specifically marketed to places that are otherwise inaccessible to traditional broadband. This is not just a goofy reddit of posting epic means and saying exactly, any more.

Elon Musk has chosen to, and will continue to choose to, use his influence over these networks to interfere with global events, and because the media and the government has been so utterly tepid in their approach to him, he's accumulated such power and influence that he is on some level unstoppable. Since his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, and the subsequent layoffs of 6,000 people, Musk has revealed to the world his deep seated reactionary beliefs and his notchous, pathetic victim complex. He has become obsessed with the woke mind virus, a term that he uses to vaguely refer to everything from progressive education on college campuses to San Francisco's growing homeless

problem. He's made Twitter's bot problem, one that he tried to use to cancel the original acquisition significantly worse. Literary replies with bots trying to sell your t-shirts or make you join the latest script or currency scam, some of which even include Elon Musk's face. He took Twitter's verification system, a flawed yet workable solution to verifying whether a tweet came from the person who actually sent it and turned it into an $8-month premium account that verifies nothing other than whether someone is

capable of completing a credit card transaction. And by destroying Twitter's trust and safety team, Musk has allowed the world's real-time communications channel to become one rife with racism and other hate speech, leading to Fortune 500 advertisers worrying that the network and I quote, perpetuates racism, which has raised in a semi-force story from earlier in this year. Musk has shown he is more than willing to do things based on not what's good for the world, his businesses or his users, but on what will confirm his biases and protect his financial interests.

As a result of these moronic and malicious choices, Twitter's valuation is tanked to less than a third of the $44 billion he paid for it, losing half of their advertising revenue and changing their name to X, which some have argued, killed further billions of the original company's brand value. Being a selfish, ignorant and gormless charlatan, Musk has now blamed Jewish norm profit the anti-deformation leak for ruining his company, claiming that the ADL had pressured advertisers into killing X-twitter. Musk had previously sued the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, another non-profit that published research showing the growth and hate speech on the

platform. Musk is now fine with the ADL because they resumed advertising. A deeply confused and utterly pointless exercise that only sought to further increase beggatory on his website. For all his statements around freedom of Speech, Musk is the ultimate capitalistic tater, willing to use his money to intimidate and censor those who dare to criticize him. He's already done so on Twitter, burning an account that tracked publicly available records of private jet flights, censoring over 400 tweets critical of Turkish President Erdogan in the weeks running up to an election, suppressed accounts critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and cut access to links to newsletter platform

substake when they launched a network competitive to Twitter. Musk is a propagandist willing to work with any fellow reactionaries who feel scorned by progressivism. Personally helping Republican presidential candidate Rhonda Santis launches campaign on Twitter and funneling money to alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate through Twitter's creator program.

On our nation's roads, Musk has created another problem. In March 2023, according to the Washington Post, a 17-year-old stepped off of a school bus on North Carolina Highway 561. As he stepped off, a Tesla Model Y, allegedly with Tesla's autonomous autopilot, engaged, hit him at 45 miles an hour, throwing him into the wind shield and leaving him lying face down on the pavement. He thankfully survived, but broken fractured his leg in the process. The incident, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still

investigating, is part of a growing list of victims of Tesla's open beta test of, quote, full self-driving. A buggy, dangerous software, available on list of victims of testers open bait to test of, quote, full self-driving. A buggy, dangerous software available on hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles, allowing users to let the car drive, which is resulted in the deaths of 17 people and led to 736 other injuries and crashes. In theory, activating Tesla's full self-driving

lets your Tesla take the wheel, making turns, avoiding other vehicles, maintaining speed, avoiding objects and theoretically helping you arrive safely at your destination. The problem is that this has only ever been a beta, meaning that every new release involves some sort of new bug, such as the one the electric car blog edits a Fred Lambert, claimed tried to kill him in September 2023 by trying to veer at highway speed into the median strip on the road. One might imagine that such a thing is illegal, effectively unleashing beta software onto

the world's roads without sufficiently testing it. Wood for any normal person, lead to imprisonment and at lifetime of fines. Musk, thanks to his incredible wealth and power, equivalent to that of a small nation has managed to avoid much scrutiny with the occasional government investigations that never seem to go anywhere. And despite a well-documented culture of racism and sexism, very little seems to happen to Tesla at all. This is because our society, in its government, its media and its citizen tree, is woefully unprepared

to deal with billionaires. Musk is able to operate as a noxious, abusive and reckless monster in public, using his companies as vehicles to lend himself money and political weapons with little scrutiny or punishment. On their own, one might fob off these concerns as one-time things. But the reality is there's a pattern of malicious and capricious acts, all one after another, again and again, done in broad daylight for all to see. Musk has shown he will push whatever envelope he sees fit

and his Ronum Farrow's New York magazine, P. Shows, there are very few people in the government, former and otherwise. Anywhere really, not investors, not other members of the Silicon Valley elite, who are willing or able to get in the way. Musk is so unbelievably rich, well connected and powerful that he can push around just about anybody, even if they work for the Pentagon. Yet Musk's desperation for attention and adulation mean that he can be pulled in any direction that feels like it scorns his critics. And when his critics

are pretty much anyone who isn't a right-wing lunatic, it almost guarantees he will continue to pal around with authoritarian regimes that will influence his remarkably malleable brain. The actual solution will be to treat Musk as what he is, a dangerous entity with a higher GDP than Ukraine, and an ego that rivals their invaders' precedent. Regardless of what happened in Crimea, Musk has the ability to know when attacks are happening and influence their outcome as a result of his four-profit, privately held satellite internet communications firm that the US government is paying for. Elon Musk is a nation-state global threat and must be treated as such. He must be treated as if he will make decisions based only on what he believes

will benefit or amuse him. He's the wish.com version of Bond's Ernst Avro Blowfeld, an offensive, charmless and borrish monster that has successfully bought his way into the elite and found that no matter what he does, their patience is unlimited and their scruples are few. Musk, like another high profile narcissist, the former president Donald Trump, retunally finds himself in snared in litigation, both from regulators and private individuals. Even though the government never really seems to actually do anything to him, the SEC is currently investigating Musk for security's violations concerning his acquisition of Twitter. This would be his third trist with the commission, the first in 2018, the second in 2019.

In both cases, very little happened. However, at the same time, he faces actions from former employees stiffed on Severance Pay, and from those who alleged age and gender discrimination with factors in their dismissal from Twitter. For Musk, these lawsuits are unlikely to be anything other than a minor annoyance, rather than any kind of existential threat, or something that otherwise curbs his most egregious of behaviors. There are people who could help, there are people that could sway Elon Musk.

You know, people has richer him. Tim Cook, Mark Benioff, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the world's billionaires feel no need to correct Musk's behavior. They don't need to interfere or even chide him for his disgraceful acts, because doing so would potentially make their actions and wealth more conspicuous, which is far more important to protect than free speech or human lives really, anything that normal people face. They may act as if they have civic responsibility, but the few people we have that could actually change things, the ones with the war chest, the box out mask, blocking X from app stores

and excluding him from their circles are sitting on their hands. One approach proposed by Stephen Feldstein, in the Atlantic, is to treat musk's businesses as they are, vital to national security. And as a result, take them into public control when necessary. This wouldn't be a without precedent. The legislation that allows this, the Defense Production Act, has been invoked 50 times since its inception, both in times of war and civil necessity, like the 2022 infant formula shortage. While Starlink would remain a privately held company, it would be obliged to prioritise the

national need. Full nationalisation, Falsteen noted, would also be a possibility if Musk failed to cooperate. Full nationalization would be a drastic measure, but at this point what other options exist for Elon Musk? What other options exist for someone that is so reckless, so dangerous, so selfish, and so capricious? What options exist to deal with someone who has inserted himself into the most vital aspects of the American economy,

making himself billions of dollars off of government subsidies and contracts. How the hell do you handle someone who has insulated himself immediately scrutiny despite holding immense nation-state power? Musk is not a goofy weirdo or the real-life Tony Stark, he's a fragile, mean-hearted ogre, one hell-bent on seeing his whims brought to life at any cost. The only way to write about this man, the only fair coverage of Elon Musk, the only clear perception of this man, is to frame him as a villain, a bigot, a bully, and a crook. But what do you do about the man who has everything? In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri.

We have a term called JDR, which means just don't look right. My name is Melissa Jeltson. I've spent the last year talking to Libby's friends and family, uncovering details of her life and the secrets that may have endangered it. I knew she was doing something, but she wouldn't admit it to me at first. Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Cazwell. Everyone deserves no detruth and if there was something that was not right and someone should be held accountable. I think the law is set up to punish families in the situation.

Libby's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. It's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi. Do you feel chronic existential dread

but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me, my podcast is re-launching! Subscribe and treat yourself to sound effects like this. And this! Have you ever been attacked by a bear? Yeah. Yes! And moments like this. I have an apple sweet in front of the space here. No.

And my whole leg from my knee down in my foot burnt into a squal of the big bubble. And this, kale chips are delicious. They're too oily when I go. They shouldn't be soft at all. It should be really crispy. That's what I said every single time. You are yelling at me. And this, do you want to go to the Clipper of Game

with me tonight? Do you have 25 references of mutual friends that can tell me that you're not a murderer? And this, hold on, I got to open some peanut butter pretzels. I'm not a murderer. Um, and this. Hold on, I gotta open some peanut butter pretzels. Listen to Call Chelsea Paredion, Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeart Radio

app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show, brought to you by iHeart Podcasts. Why am I getting into the podcast game now? Well, it seemed like the best way to let my family know what I'm up to instead of visiting or being part of their incessant group text. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians.

I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you, but it will be entertaining to a very select few because you don't make it to your mid-40s with IBS without having a story or two to tell. Join me as I take my place among podcast royalty

like Joel Olstein and Lance Bass. Those are words I hope I'd never have to say. Listen to Toss Show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone, it's me, James. And I am joining you today for another in long series of the little recordings where I ask you to give us your money. Once again, I'm asking you to support the mutual aid

work being done at the border. I'm recording this in November. And this week we have terrible weather forecasts that will make conditions in her cumber extremely dangerous for people who are detained out there by the Department of Homeland Security. It will mean that it's no exaggeration to say that people's lives will be at risk, and that the important mutual aid work that is already been done will only become more important as we get rain, we get snow, and we get cold temperatures, and people continue to be detained without shelter, food, water, or adequate clothing. If you would like to support those efforts, you can find the way to do so at Link Tree

slash border kindness. There's a dot before the EE, so it's l-i-n-k-t-r.e slash border kindness. I'll also post a link on my Twitter if you'd like to find it there. Thank you. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT Zinghen mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, I feel like there's a part of history that often gets overlooked. People usually say Israel was created in 1948, but the intent to create it actually started decades before that.

We're going to be talking about the Balfour Declaration, which resulted in a significant of people in the lives of Palestinians and was issued over a century ago on November 2, 1917. The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality. The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Neckba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel. The Balfour Declaration is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world.

So what is it? The Balfour Declaration, it means, or is translated to Balfour's promise in Arabic, it was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to quote, establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Declaration came in the form of a letter from Britain's then-foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community at the time. The Declaration was made during World War I, which was to serve a reminder from 1914

to 1918, and this declaration was included in the terms of the British mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. So on November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration became the basis for the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine. A week later, the declaration was published in the Times of London for all the public to see. The content of the letter is rather short, so I'm just going to read some of it right now. It goes,

Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of his Majesty's government, the following declaration of sympathy, with the Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the cabinet. His Majesty's government viewed with favor the establishment and Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. Keep in mind, at this time the British had no control over Palestine. It was still under the Ottoman Empire, but in this letter Britain was essentially preparing to take it over in the very near future.

I also want to include the at this time Jewish people only made up 6% of the Palestinian population. I'm going to play audio from a video posted by former guest of the show, the amazing Sim Kern, where they break down the last part of the declaration. Sim is referencing in this audio, Rashid Khalid's book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, a history of settler colonialism and resistance 1917-2017. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. That last bit sounds like, alright, well he's saying like, we're not going to tread on the

civil and religious rights of Palestinians, that's pretty good, right? But in the 100 Years War on Palestine, the book by Rashid Khalidi that I'm encouraging you all to keep reading along with me this week, Khalidi does a great job breaking down the rhetoric of this declaration and why it was actually a declaration of war upon the Palestinian people. Yes, they were promise civil and religious rights, but they were not granted political or national rights. And this meant that for the next 15 years, as people in Palestine tried to resist the

establishment of a Zionist state within their country, the takeover of all their land, by Zionist groups, they were unable to find any audience in the halls of power because Balfour had declared them to not have these rights and to not really be people. They weren't even referred to as Arabs or Palestinians in the Declaration, just non-Jewish. 94% of the people of this land had just been written out of existence as far as the Western powers were concerned. Caledia describes how between 1917 and 1936 almost all of the organized Palestinian resistance to Zionism was peaceful and legalistic.

They would form political committees, but the British said you're not allowed to have political activity and shut those down harshly. They would send delegations to the League of Nations to other countries to try to get to support, to Britain. But they would not even be seen in the halls of power. They would not even get audiences because they were told basically as Palestinians, you have no rights. You are not allowed to have nationalistic interests.

As I mentioned, the declaration was included in the terms of the British mandate for Palestine. The so-called mandate system, set up by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation. In retrospect, of course, it's not a very thin veil at all. The mandate system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria, to those who were victorious in the war, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria, to those who were victorious in the war. The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow

the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent. The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the postwar mandates, the main goal of the British mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish national home, even though Jews again, at the time, constituted only 6% of the population. Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose to nearly 27% of the total population.

And even though the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that, quote, nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs. Understandably enough, the document is seen as controversial for several reasons. First, it was, in the words of the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, quote, made by a European power, about a non-European territory, and a flat disregard of both the presence and

wishes of the native majority resident in that territory. In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90% of the population. Second, the declaration was one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British. Surprise, surprise. When the declaration was released, Brin had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915

Hussein McMahon correspondence. However, the British also promised the French in a separate treaty known as the 1916 Sykes-Bacot Agreement that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be swept between the two colonial powers after the war. This Hussein McMahon correspondence was a series of letters exchanged in 1915-1916 during World War I between Hussein Ibn Ali, who was the Emir of Mecca and Sir Henry McMahon,

the British High Commissioner in Egypt. In general terms, the correspondence effectively traded British support of an independent Arab state for the Arab assistance in opposing the Ottoman Empire. However, the correspondence was later contradicted by two things, the incompatible terms of the Sex Pico Agreement, which was secretly concluded between Britain and France in May 1916 and Britain's Balfour Declaration in 1917. The Declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence.

Third, the Declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law, that of a quote, national home. The use of the vague term, national home for the Jewish people, as opposed to state, left the meaning open to interpretation. Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase, quote, the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish state, but that was later changed. However, in a meeting with Zionist leader Heim Weisman in 1922, Arthur Balfour and then Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly said that the Balfour Declaration was quote always meant to be an eventual Jewish state. Okay, let's take our first break here because I have to. Okay, bye. And we're back. So we're talking about the Balfour

Declaration, but who exactly is Arthur Balfour? Sim Kern in that same video that I played earlier explains that he can be seen as the person most responsible for violence in the Middle East for the past century. Because when he wrote his Declaration in 1917, he effectively wrote Palestinian rights out of existence. And surprising no one, Arthur Balfour was a terrible guy. He was a white supremacist, a racist, and an anti-Semite. The Balfour Declaration is a statement that can fit into two tweets.

As we mentioned, Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, announced that the British government would support establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. And more than 100 years later, those written words continue to define the dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2017, marking 100 years since the declaration, Little Bitch's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Aniyahu went to London to commemorate the Centennial Occasion with Theresa May. I hope you know by now, though, that the Declaration is really nothing worth celebrating. And though he may be most known for aiding the Zionist cause in 1917, it's crucial to remember that Arthur Balfour was a white supremacist.

He made that much clear in his own words. In 1906, the British House of Commons was engaged in a debate about the Native Blacks in South Africa. Nearly all the members of Parliament agreed that the disenfranchisement of the Blacks was evil, but not Balfour, who, almost alone, argued against it. When talking about the Black people in South Africa, he said, When talking about the black people in South Africa, he said, we have to face the facts. Men are not born equal. The white in the black races are not born with equal capacities. They are born with different capacities, which education cannot

and will not change. But Balfource troubling views were not limited to Africa. In fact, despite his now iconic support for Zionism that's celebrated by Zionists everywhere, he was not exactly a friend to the Jews. In the late 19th century, Hagrams targeting Jews in the Pale of Settlement had led to waves of Jewish flight westward to England and the United States. Little insert here that the Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791

to 1917, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. So created by imperial decree, the Jewish Pale of Settlement was that part of the Russian Empire within which Russia's Jewish population was required to live and work for more than 130 years between the late 18th and the early 20th century. Although it was initially intended to forestall commerce between Jews and the general population of Russia, the restrictions imposed by the pale fostered the development of a distinctive religious and ethnic culture in an area covering roughly 386,000 square miles, or 1 million square kilometers between the Baltic and Black Seas.

The word pale, as used in this sense, comes from the Latin Paulus or Stake, one that might be used to indicate a boundary. A pale is thus a district separated from the surrounding country. It may be defined by physical boundaries or it may be distinguished by a different administrative or legal system. The Jewish pale of settlement was both a defined area within the Russian Empire and a legal entity, regulated by laws that did not apply to the Russian Empire as a whole. So back to the main narrative. The targeting of Jews in the pale of settlement led to immigration of many Jews to the West,

to England and the US. This influx of refugees led to an increase in British anti-immigrant racism and outright anti-semitism, themes not unfamiliar to us today. Support for political action against immigrants grew as the English public demanded immigration control to keep certain immigrants, particularly Jews, out of the country.

So, the scared and xenophobic public found a sympathetic ear in Balfour. In 1905, while serving as Prime Minister, Balfour presided over the passage of the Aliens Act. This legislation put the first restrictions on immigration into Great Britain, and it was primarily aimed at restricting Jewish immigration. According to historians, Balfour had personally delivered passionate speeches about the imperative to restrict the waves of Jews fleeing the Russian Empire from entering Britain. So maybe it's not as astonishing as you would think that Balfour, who's support of the Zionist cause has made him a hero among Zionists, would have implemented anti-Jewish laws. But the truth is,

his support of Zionism stemmed from the exact same source as his desire to limit Jewish immigration to Britain. Both of these things can be traced back to his white supremacist beliefs. Balfour lived in an area of stirr-nationalism, highly defined by ethno-religious identity. Because of these sentiments, the early 20th century was a time when seemingly liberal western nations struggled with the challenge of incorporating Jewish citizens. Balfour wanted to keep the UK as a white Christian ethno-state. What the Zionists provided Balfour with was a solution to the challenges Jewish citizens posed to his ethno-nationalist vision, a solution that didn't force him to reckon with them.

Instead of insisting that societies accept all citizens as equals, regardless of racial or religious background, the Zionist movement offered a different answer. Separation. Balfour saw in Zionism not just a blessing for Jews, but for the West as well. In 1919, he wrote the introduction to Nahem Sokolow's History of Zionism. In this introduction, Balfour wrote that the Zionist movement would quote, mitigate the age-long miseries, created for Western wrote that the Zionist movement would quote mitigate the age-long

miseries, created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a body which had too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. By both giving Jews a place to go and a place to leave, Zionism seemingly solved two problems at once in Balfour's mind. In other words, his support of Zionism was motivated by his desire to protect Britain from the negative effects, or the miseries, as he said, of having Jews in its population. Rather than protecting the rights of one of its minorities, Britain could simply export them, or at least, not import anymore. This is one of the many reasons Zionism itself is anti-Semitic. We can even

fast forward to now and see how Zionists are telling anti-Sionist Jewish people that they're no longer Jewish for supporting Palestine. That belief and statement in itself is extremely anti-Semitic. Criticizing Israel on the Israeli government, however, is not. But putting that aside, we can see that from the very beginning, even in its origin, Zionists associated and allied themselves with the worst kinds of people, like people who believed that Jewish people are, quote, an alien and hostile body among them. Needless to say, Balfour's view of Zionism is steeped in the same kind of white supremacy as Balfour's view of South Africa's blacks.

But his support of the Zionist dream had another problem. Rather than solving the problem of how to handle a minority living in a white majority country, the Balfour Declaration just shifted the same problem into a different geography. The tension between ethno-nationalism and equality is definitely and equally present today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where the Israeli state rules over the fate of millions of Palestinians who either have no right to vote, are treated as second-class citizens, or are refugees denied repatriation. Today, it is Israel that views Palestinians as demographic threats and sees

the quote presence in its midst of a body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile, by which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. Let's take our second break here, again, because I have to. So, see you later. And we are back. So, that Balfour's legacy of supremacy persists as much as British support for Israel does is no accident. We have arrived at this point today

because the white supremacist attitudes of Balfour informed policy lending imperial right to a project in pursuit of national self-determination for Jews by trampling on the rights of native non-Jews. Remarkably, Balfour was unabashedly aware of the hypocrisy in his stance. In 1919, he wrote a letter that said this to the British Prime Minister. The weak point of our position, of course, is that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination.

We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. Those are his words, and the letter that he wrote to the British Prime Minister. So there's no misconstruing that there. Those 700,000 Arabs, of course, made up approximately 90% of the population of Palestine. Again, bears repeating that Jewish people before this declaration was implemented made up only 6% of the population. And therein lies the fundamental problem that continues through this day, more than a hundred years later.

Palestinians are denied their right to have rights because from the outset their views, their human rights, and by extension their very humanity were consistently seen as inferior to those of others. That was clear in Balfour's perspective and the British mandates policy, and it persists in one form or another in many, if not most, of the policies of the Zionist state of Israel through this day. In modern times, as much as in 1917, the battle between ethno-nationalism and equality has risen to the foreground. We saw this in Donald Trump's rise in America and in Theresa May's Brexit-ed Britain. Rather than resolving this tension, Balfour support for Zionism merely exported it to Palestine.

And resisting the legacy of Balfour's racism is absolutely necessary if there is ever to be peace in Palestine and beyond. A little bit more history here about why this declaration was issued. The question of why has been a subject of debate for historians for decades, with historians using different sources to suggest various explanations. Some argue that many in the British government at the time were Zionists themselves. Others say the declaration was issued out of an anti-Semitic reasoning that giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution to the quote-unquote Jewish problem. In mainstream academia, however, there are a set of reasons over which there is a general consensus.

One, control over Palestine was a strategic imperial interest to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within Britain's sphere of influence. Two, Britain had to side with Zionists to rally support among the Jews in the United States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to stay in the war until victory. Three, there was intense Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in Britain and the British government, as well as some of the officials in the government being Zionists themselves. Four, Jews were being persecuted in Europe and the British government was sympathetic

to their suffering. I think that last point is usually used as a validation to why Israel exists today, but feeling sorry for our people and giving them someone else's land is really not a solution in my opinion. Of course, the Balfour Declaration was also not received well by Palestinians and Arabs. In 1919, then US President Woodrow Wilson appointed a commission to

look into public opinion on the mandatory system in Syria and Palestine. The investigation was known as the King Crane Commission. It found that the majority of Palestinians expressed a strong opposition to Zionism, leading the conductors of the commission to advise a modification of the mandate's goal. The late Aani Abadhanhaddi, a Palestinian political figure, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs, saying it was made by an English foreigner who had no claim to Palestine to a foreign Jew who had no right to it. However, it's very important to mention here that the other vital, important source for insight into Palestinian opinion on the declaration at the time, aka the press, was closed down

by the Ottomans at the start of the war in 1914 and only began to reappear in 1919, but it was under British military censorship. In November 1919, when the Alistair Kha'la LaRavi, the Arab and dependent newspaper, Basin Damascus, was reopened, one article had a response to a public speech given by Herbert Samuel, a Jewish cabinet minister in London, on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The article said, quote, Our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must remain Arab. In 1920, the third Palestinian Congress in Haifa

decried the British government's plans to support the Zionist project and rejected the declaration as a violation of international law and the rights of the indigenous population. I'm gonna pull audio from Sim's video here again. They kind of summarized in a really good way. What happened in the years leading up to the

Nakhvah. So here is Sim. And even still until 1936 Palestinians are trying to peacefully, legalistically resist decolonization, which unfortunately history teaches us doesn't work that great usually. However, inspired by the examples of Iraq and Syria, which had managed to overthrow their colonizers, starting with a general strike, Palestinians organized a strike in 1936. Again, this starts out as just a peaceful strike, but it is brutally repressed by the British overlords. We're like, no, you're not allowed to strike. You are our captive wage slavery labor force. You have to go do your work.

Caledie shows how Britain was also very strategically sowing internal divisions within the Palestinian leadership, turning people certain to their side by brightening them to work against one another. And so the strike fell apart in 1936, but then only then in 1937 did an armed revolt break out. Much is made by Zionist about this Arab revolt and how this was justification for the Nukba which would ultimately kill 15,000 Palestinians and displace 100,000-1,000 more. But this was no religious massacre and that's reflected in the casualties. Yes, several hundred Jews died during the revolt, but there it took 100,000 British troops to suppress

the revolt and the fighting was mostly between the Arabs and the British. And it's estimated that between 14 and 17% of the adult male Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. So the population of Palestinians was absolutely devastated by this revolt by the end of it. What struck me a lot reading the conclusion of this chapter was the Western media, which is so islamophobic,

portrays Palestinians as inherently violent and bloodthirsty and anti-Semitic, but that just isn't reflected in this history at all. In fact, as Kalidi mentioned, several scholars argue that, you know, the Palestinians really should have organized an armed revolt earlier. It was too late by the time they did, but they had spent 15 years since the Valfour Declaration trying peacefully and legalistically to earn their rights, and that was ultimately a dead end. But Palestinians really clearly did not want to fight a war. It wasn't until they'd exhausted every single other option to them.

They tried legal routes, they tried organizing, they tried a strike, you know, they had done everything they could, and this was a population that had been stripped of huge amounts of its land, that was destitute, that was impoverished, that was starving, could and this was a population that had been stripped of huge amounts of its land that was destitute, that was impoverished, that was starving, that was shut out from any economic opportunity. In the land, they had lived on for millennia. They were farmers. They didn't want to wage a war. They wanted to make olive oil. But because this guy didn't want Jews moving to the UK, they didn't get to have their country anymore.

Even prior to the Balfour Declaration and the British mandate, Pan-Arab newspapers warned against the motives of the Zionist movement and its potential outcomes in displacing Palestinians from their land. Khalil Sakhakhini, a Jerusalemite writer and teacher, described Palestine in the media aftermath of the war as follows. A nation which has long been in the depths of sleep only wakes if it is rudely shaken by events, only arises little by little. This was the situation of Palestine, which for many centuries has been in the deepest sleep until it was shaken by the Great War, shocked by the Zionist

movement, and violated by the illegal policy of the British, and a woke little by little. And while Britain is generally and understandably held responsible for the Balfour Declaration, it is important to note that the statement would not have been made without prior approval from the other Allied powers during World War I. In a war cabinet meeting on September 1917, British ministers decided that the, quote, views of President Wilson should be obtained before any declaration was made. And, indeed, according to the cabinet's minutes on October 4, the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour confirming that Wilson was, quote,

extremely favorable to the movement. France, surprise surprise, maybe to no one, was also involved and announced its support prior to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. A May 1917 letter from Jules Cambon, a French diplomat, to Nahem Sokolow, the Polish Zionist, expressed the sympathetic views of the French government towards a, quote, Jewish colonization in Palestine. This letter, again, the precursor to the Balfour Declaration, says, it would be a deed of justice and a reparation to assist by the protection of the Allied powers in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that land,

from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago. The Balfour Declaration again is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Necba, when Zionist armed groups who were trained by the British forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and they massacred 15,000 Palestinians. Despite some opposition within the war cabinet predicting such an outcome was probable, the British government still chose to issue the declaration, and there is no doubt that the British mandate created the conditions for the Jewish minority to gain superiority in Palestine and build a state for themselves at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the British decided to terminate their mandate in 1947 and transfer the question of Palestine to the United Nations, the Jews already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II. More importantly, the British allowed the Jews to establish self-governing institutions, such as the Jewish Agency, to prepare themselves for a state when it came to it, while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so, paving the way for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. We're going to end the episode with one more audio clip from Sim's video. I just think it really

describes and summarizes why exactly Arthur Balfour is an extremely evil person, so here is Sim. And the violence that has sprung from the creation of Israel goes so much further beyond its borders. I mean, the whole history of the Middle East and of Western imperial conquest in the Middle East hinges on Israel being there. All of US imperialism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I mean, all of that would have been impossible without the existence of Israel. So add Arthur Balfour to your list of the greatest war criminals of all time. It truly feels silly to be talking about anything else at this time. So I do want to mention here that at the time of this recording, there are over 11,000 Palestinians who have been murdered by the settler colony of Israel in their genocide

that is currently happening. Nearly 5,000 children are gone, have been slaughtered. Every time I open my phone, I see the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And there are images that we're seeing of, I mean, you've seen them, children are under the rubble, crying for help, parents losing their babies, and it doesn't make sense for me to describe the images, but my point is we have never seen a genocide take place right before our eyes. All the proof is there. Israeli leaders have been very clear in their intention for genocide. Just for example, Israeli cabinet member Avi Dykter, I don't care if I said his name wrong, but

he said that they are rolling out Neckbaugh 2023. That's one example of extremely genocidal language as being used by not just Israel, but also American politicians as well. There are photos side by side of the 1948 Neckbaugh to what's happening right now. It's happening again. The mass expulsion of Palestinians is happening right before our eyes. There are Palestinians who have experienced the Neckbaugh in 1948 who are experiencing it again, being displaced so many times in their own country. And right now, over a million Palestinians have been displaced. We are also just being inundated with the most bizarre propaganda from the I.O.F. I've decided to call them the I.O.F. from now on instead of the IDF because they are not defending

anything, they are the Israeli offensive forces, not defensive. So just a disclaimer there over my choice of words, but it's strange. They post photos of Arabic text saying it's something else. Just recently I saw that they posted a calendar that they found in a house that they say are a list of Hamas hostages. It's literally just a calendar with the words of the week written in Arabic. And that is just one example of many. And I feel like if I keep talking about this, I will never stop. But my point in bringing us back to modern times is that this all started with a decision made by men who had no business making a decision.

Arthur Balfour had no fucking business handing over a piece of land that had nothing to do with him. It was never his place. And what galaxy does that make sense to anybody? Zionism and Jewishness and Judaism are not equivalent. And I hope at this point in time people are realizing that. I hope that this episode shows some light on how the roots of Zionism itself are rooted in anti-Semitism. It's nobody's place to decide to play God and just pretend people don't exist in a place that you want. It doesn't work like that, that's not human. So I think it's important to remember history like this because something like this does not

happen overnight. It did not happen or start on October 7th. This is something that has been decades in the making and it all started with one stupid man making a decision with other stupid men that have way too much power that resulted in the suffering, the continued suffering of an entire people, the dehumanization of an entire people. We're seeing it play out right now. So I think as you learn about history, as you learn about things like this that maybe seem like they happened so far away, they really didn't. We are experiencing the ripples of those decisions.

And that's the episode for today. I hope it was informative, and I hope the genocide of the Palestinian people comes to an end. So in the meantime, free Palestine. ["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"]

["Free Palestine"] ["Free Palestine"] In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDRLR, which means just don't look right. My name is Melissa Jeltson. I've spent the last year talking to Libby's friends and family, uncovering details of her life and the secrets that may have endangered it. I knew she was doing something but she wouldn't admit it to me at first.

Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Caswell. Everyone deserves no detruth and if there was something that was not right, then someone should be held accountable. I think the law is set up to punish families in the situation. Libby's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. It's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi. Do you feel chronic existential dread but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me! My podcast is relaunching! Subscribe and treat yourself to sound effects like this! And this! have you ever been attacked by a bear? Yeah. And moments like this. I have an awful sleep in front of the space here.

No. In my whole leg, from my knee down in my foot, burnt into a squal, this is a big bubble. And this, kale chips are delicious. They're too oily when I go. They shouldn't be soft at all. They should be really crispy. That's what I said every single time. You are yelling at me. And this? Do you want to go to the Clipper game with me tonight? Do you have 25 references of mutual friends

that can tell me that you're not a murderer? And this. Hold on, I got to open some peanut butter pretzels. Listen to Call Chelsea Paredion, Will Ferrell's big money players network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay and just like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating

true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to to travel all over the place. Investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains. We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, if Bob wrote the cadaver note in his own words, he had murdered Susan Ferment. Why do they were so obsessed with dark people like that? It's maybe part of human nature. The supernatural, there's something here. Truly something going on. Our biggest fears, mental health, pop culture.

Just a adrenaline being on a film set is incredible. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, we should be very happy. You want? This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode.

We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode.

We're going to be in the next episode. We're going to be in the next episode. We the conflict landscape in Myanmar has significantly changed. The hunter and its alignment issues have taken unprecedented losses. The PDF, as well as several ethnic revolutionary organisations, have swept across the country, seizing bases, weapons, tanks, and even towns and cities. As the offensive was ongoing, I spoke to Saira Montine, a leader in the Madelaid PDF, and Billy Ford of the United States Institute for Peace. What follows is my conversation with Billy, and to minceye it's on a situation on the ground with the Madelaid PDF. You'll hear more from Saira Montine in another episode

that we're working on, but I wanted you to hear his personal on the ground perspective now as well. First, I'll let 9.9, the translator from Madelaid PDF, introduce our guest. Oh, yeah, that was a little, don't worry, yes. He is the leader of the commanding and cohesion team and you can also say that he, the leader of our organization. To start with, I asked Billy to explain to you

the developments in the conflict in the last few weeks. I mean, it's really been just the past, what is it, since the 27th, so 13 days, kind of a level change in the conflict trajectory. Whereas I'd say, I mean, you got coup February 1, 2021, major military resistance operations began September 7, 2021. And frankly, since then, it's been more or less incremental change.

I wouldn't characterize it as a stalemate as many have, but there's essentially been small pockets of progress where the resistance is capturing territory, but almost exclusively rural areas of the country. And then things changed radically on October 27th, whereas before the 27th you had a range of armed stakeholders involved in the conflict some under the deposed national unity government As well as what's called the K3C which is for of the biggest ethnic armed organizations But a lot meant a lot of the reason why we hadn't seen the level change in One of the reasons why we hadn't seen the level change in the military balance of power was because of the absence of some of the biggest and most powerful armed organizations that had more or less stayed on the sidelines.

I mean, they were arming and training resistance forces that were engaged in active combat, but they hadn't themselves in a meaningful way. But on the 27th that totally changed. This alliance called the Brotherhood Alliance that involves three of the biggest armed organizations initiated coordinated attacks in northern shan state on the border with China and have since the 27th talking to you on the 10th here of November, 150 posts have been taken. Seven towns are now under full resistance control. Seven others by my counter under partial resistance control. And the operation in northern Shand State on the border has effectively spurred resistance operations in other parts of the country. And so now you essentially have operations in all corners of the country. I mean, you've

seen PDFs taking towns in Seguin along the Indian border. You've seen the Can you taking important border. You've seen the can you taking important towns on the logistics corridor on the tie border. Corenny groups have moved into Mesa on the tie border with Corenny State. The Chin National Front has initiated attacks in Palatua and southern Chin State near the Bangladesh India border. So it's really just the trajectory of conflict has gone from an incremental trajectory where it's like this is a slow burn that can last a long time. We need to start thinking about potentially a day after. I mean, nothing is a given and the Myanmar military has been resilient in the past, but it does feel like this is a historic moment in a lot of ways, and the military is weakened in a way that we've really never seen in the history of the country.

I asked Montenay to explain a little about how he got to a point where his force, who hadn't fought at all in 2021, were able to fight alongside the the EROs and deal a serious defeat to the hunter. So in 2010-21 much he decided to go for the unrevolutions and then he started reading the books about the military and tactics and then a war for things and then he said that he is still learning and reading from books about the military tactics till now. And one more thing is we are having some problems about the other people's defense force, PDFs, that they don't have the world forming and then they don't follow the code of context or something like that. So we organize world that we won't become a blood thirsty organization, but just to fight for the military pool. and one more thing is we are following the two COC, which is a code of context and then chain of commands. Before we form a form of SD, these military organizations. A number of the EROs are acting into one of her before, and that's because they haven't been part of the conflict before. So I asked Billy to explain who the EROs in the North were

and how and why they're going to define now. So the ARCAN Army is a RECINE ethnic-based armed organization. They're based on the China border, but for those who know Myanmar geography, RECINE state is actually on the complete other side of the country. But this, like many newer armed organizations, they were essentially incubated by some of the longer term armed organizations. In this case, the Kachin Independence Army

helped for the emergence of the Rokine Army, which has really grown in the past 10 years into one of the R-account Army, which has really grown in the past 10 years into one of the strongest armed stakeholders in the country before the coup under the Anson Tsuchila National League for Democracy, government. They were in intense fighting with the Myanmar military. And Anson Tsuchis strongly supported the Myanmar military's operations against the AA. And that kind of builds some bad blood, as you might imagine, between the AA and the National

League for Democracy. And that bad blood has made it difficult to build alliance across ethnic lines and with those resistance organizations that involve NLD folks. But the key point here is that the AA is operating in two places, Rekind state and in Northern Shand state and Kuchin state, also actually it's a guy now, but there are an extremely powerful armed organization, highly disciplined, highly effective, well-armed.

The second group is the T'ang National Liberation Army. This is a an ethnic-based army in Northern Shand State that also is a relatively a newer armed organization. It's a pretty complex military environment in northern Sean State because the TNA are often in tension with other shan ethnic groups that are in shan state, including the RCS S or the shan state army south, which is competing for control

and other parts of shan state. We've also seen some tension between the TNA and the SSPP, which is another northern Sean army that's closely aligned with the WAH and Chinese. So that's a pretty complex array of relationships there, but the TNA is also an increasingly powerful armed organization, one that administers territory,

and has also been locked in conflict with the Memoramilitary for some time. The last group is the MNDA, the Memoram National Democratic Alliance Army. This is a co-cong ethnic-based armed organization that for a long time controlled a territory along the China border in 2009, Min Online, who is now the Commander-in-Chief and the head of led operations to push the MNDA out of that territory and replace it with a border guard force of another ethnic, a Kokong ethnic army. enterprise that's now operating massive scam and human trafficking operations with the support of the Myanmar military. They're commissioned under the Myanmar military.

But I think a key point here is that it's very personal with the MNDA and this border guard force and and men online. And so this is really the MNDA is an organization that has been pushing for a very long time to retake this territory and particularly this city of Laokai. And so that three constitutes the Brotherhood Alliance. There's other stakeholders in this region including the United in Wastate Army, which is the largest armed organization in Myanmar or non-state armed organization, which is very closely tied with the Chinese. I mean, they use Chinese currency, they speak Chinese. They fully administer their territory autonomously. And then the other organizations that are relevant here is the National

Democratic Alliance Army, NDAA, which is essentially you can think of it as a closely tied with the law and the Chinese. And then the Kachin Independence Army, which is a Kachin ethnic-based armed organization, very much founded as a social services. I mean, it's kind of got a different identity from some of these other groups. It's very much like a revolutionary organization with political intentions. There's kind of Christian beliefs that are embedded within the organization. So, yeah, all to say it's a highly complex array of actors

with different intentions and motivations. But in this particular case, they came together to, All to say, it's a highly complex array of actors with different intentions and motivations, but in this particular case, they came together to at least the Brotherhood Alliance came together to launch this coordinated attack. The Taang National Liberation Army, the group who received many of the young people of Mandalay, who went on to form the Mandalay PDF. Those young people started out as a strike force within mentally, but there are only weapons and Molotov cocktails, and every action they took was the risk of their

whole families if they were caught. By March, a few weeks into the revolution, Montene and others took to the mountains with the Ta'ang National Liberation Army to learn to fight. Before the revolution, he said, he had no experience and he didn't even play fighting video games. I asked him how it felt to be joining a group he'd been raised to hate and how he got there. Before we formed Manley PDF, we started as a MSG which is Manley Special Task Force. It was the first training for our organizations.

And at the time, we only have some handmaids weapons like Moltov, but we really don't use handmaid guns. But after the support of TNLE, we got the automatic rifles with the help of our line lines. And at first, when we asked the MSTF Manila Special Task Force, we restrict the rules for not attacking to the schools or hospitals or the civil leans. And then after after that we start using the handmade weapons like just like Molotov. We didn't use any handgames at the time, but after that we try and we contact

with the H&L we have, we now have the automatic rifles and then others make tiesized something like that. Now, so when he decided to contract with the TNLE, to end the nationals, what he expected were nothing else, but some few problems that about the race is because of most of the ethnic groups, the most of them they hate of Bami's people and they even called the Bami's army. So he was experimenting that we will be having a resist problem

but when he actually reached to the end region, he found out that there is no hatred to the Barme's people and then there was no problem about the racist problems. Yeah, he also thought that it's because of the communication between the Barme's people and the halal racist. Because the Barme people, they provide tea leaves and other things to the farmers people and then they make some trade-ings and then some business with farmers people. So there was no problem about that, but the only other thing was about the weather. Because of the rough weather in the mountains, it's a very different weather from the like mentally region. It's very cold in here. So we are still having

problems about the weather problems, but now we are getting used to it. And he said that he is also surprised that TNRE, the end-needs in elevation army is a well-formed military An National Liberation Army is a well-formed military, and then they are also following the code of conduct. And then they are following the democracy way, and then most of the leaders from the TNLE have the liberal ideas. And then they also, one we work on to the young leaders from the revolution forces. So he was surprised about that. Billy told me that the same dynamic could occur all over the country. And this is probably

a good time to remind listeners that we've covered the formation of the PDFs and our two previous series about Myanmar. And if you haven't had the time to listen to those, I really hope you do, because it'll make this one a lot more interesting, and this one probably won't make much sense without it. Yeah, and I think this is really a key dynamic and we can come back to the conversation maybe about day after or the political dimensions of the conflict, but there's, frankly, before the coup, these sorts of coordinations would be like incomprehensible. I mean, you'd see the Arachan Army, the Kachin Independence Army, the Taong National Liberation Army, all of

them have deep connections with mostly Bermar, ethnic, PDS, some of whom work in coordination with the National Unity Government, some which are slightly more independent, but this is an interethnic collaboration that's very novel and demonstrates a shift and interethnic and intercommunal dynamics in the country that are is very positive in a lot of ways So yeah the TNA the Has been providing weapons and training for PDFs in Mandalay the KIO the KIA has been providing weapons and training and tactical and strategic support to PDFs in Sagan The Rakan army has been maybe more than any group

providing tactical support and weapons and training to PDFs in Mago, Ayurwadi, Magway, and now more recently in Seaguin. So really the Burm and Heartland of the country. So yeah, all of these ethnic minority-based armed organizations are now collaborating, sharing resources and knowledge with Bumar ethnic PDFs. I think the main question here is, what does this mean for inter-communal relations?

What does this mean for the future of the country? Is there this indicate there's potential for greater national solidarity in the absence of the Myanmar military, fracturing communities and so on? But yeah, it's a radical shift in those relationships. Billy also shared that, as we've heard from every single PDF fighter we've talked to, that time alongside the EROs as comrades in arms has changed the way they see ethnicity in the future of their country. I think this is also manifesting a lot of the research that my organization, the US Institute of Peace, has been doing

at the, among the general public. I mean, we've done three different studies over the past year to assess inter-communal relations in the post-coupiriiod and to kind of see how relations have shifted because there's a really dominant narrative that Myanmar is kind of irreconcilably fractured and that the communities are loyal to their ethnic identities, not their national identities and so on. And frankly, all of our research has pointed to a similar trend, which is one, interethnic relations are considerably better.

There's greater solidarity. There's actually one of the experimental research studies that we did found that national identity as in being from Myanmar was more important to respondents than ethnic identity, which totally cuts against narratives about Myanmar. And yeah, I mean, I think there's been considerable gains in inter-ethnic relations. And it's hard to determine the causal linkages here, whether the improved inter-ethnic relations are spurring greater military collaboration and collaboration on humanitarian assistance and governance and so on.

But it does feel like there's a major shift and social dynamics in addition to these kind of military shifts that are taking place. I mean, I think that the research we've done has found there to be sort of extremist national perspectives still remain, but that the likelihood of them escalating to violence is reduced in large part because the public's vulnerability to incitement or to highly divisive political speech, most of which came from Myanmar military run

troll farms is much, I mean, there's much more resilience to those, that, that form of political violence. So, you know, I think there's still a lot of work obviously to do to build inter-communal cohesion and understanding, but that the the likelihood, you know, for example, in a post-SAC world that you will be, you know, see mass inter-communal violence, it seems much lower than a lot of people are presuming that it would be, that the actual horizontal relationships across communities are not as bad as many presume. Actually, one of the surveys that we did found that Myanmar's intercommunal relations are no worse than countries with much lower levels of violence, which is kind

of an indication of the fact that it's really vertical dynamics, like violent political speech, highly exclusionary governance structures, they're driving inter-communal violence. And so that those on that dimension, at least, that theto-person inter-communal relationship. I think there's a lot to be a lot of positive narratives there. Talking of positive narratives, here is some positive narratives about products and all services. Another aspect of the conflict that has played out in Operation 1027 is the role of China and the massive crime empires that the hunters facilitated along the country's borders in recent years. I asked Billy to explain some of those. So this has become the major political dynamic between China

and the SAC over the past year, frankly. I mean, it's essentially what we've seen is the emergence of these massive scam operations that use foreign labor that's trafficked into Myanmar into areas controlled primarily by Myanmar military commissioned border guard forces. So these are commissioned under the Myanmar military, which is a very key point, in most cases. And they are running scam operations at a global level that are scamming people using a scheme called pig butchering,

which is long-term relationship building and then you're theft at a large scale. This is like, these are sizable losses from individuals. So last year, for example, to give you a sense of that scale, China lost $20 billion to these scam operations. 20 billion. Yeah. And the United States lost $2 billion on scam operations emerging from Myanmar. I mean, the scale, this is wild. I mean, there's more than, there's more than a hundred thousand people being held in scams zones in Myanmar from 46 different countries.

I mean, this is a total global operation because I mean, this emerged actually before COVID. I mean, in Cihunokville, Cambodia and other places where there's rule of laws is dubious. They have initiated kind of casino operations, which are illegal in China and really targeting Chinese public. And during COVID, when a lot of Chinese nationals were forced back to mainland China, the these criminal enterprises were short on labor. And so they shifted their approach.

I mean, they shifted to trafficking people into their zones and then operating at a global scale, finding labor from around the world, you know, using not low-scale labor. I mean, these are high-skilled kind of middle-class workers seeking employment in the tech industry or some other scheme that, you know, eventually they're, you know, held a gunpoint and forced to scam their co-nationals. So that's a little bit of background. So this is happening in Cokong along the Chinese border, also in the war territories and in the NDA territories.

The largest areas are actually on the TIE BERMA border with the current border guard force and affiliated criminal organizations. So essentially over the past year the Chinese have noticed not only the financial losses but the potential for social instability because as youth unemployment has grown in China, these young people are seeking new employment opportunities crossing the border in Myanmar for high paying tech jobs and then being held at gunpoint. So you have mothers on social media saying,

I haven't seen my son in three weeks and he's being held in a scam operation. So this is, this is, Dilleteria has had two levels, the financial scam losses and trafficking, and it's all being run by border guard forces that are commissioned by the Myanmar military. And yet, you see countries around the world,

including China, going to the Myanmar military and saying, please shut this down. And of course, the Myanmar military has no intention to shut this down because these scam operations are financing the border guard forces that are their key weapon against the resistance. So they need the border guard forces and so they will never shut down the scam operations. And so what ensued was essentially earlier this year,

I mean, the Chinese came to the Myanmar military and said, we will support you at every level. We will prop you up, provide you assistance. If you can demonstrate the capacity to govern, the capacity to provide stability on our border, the capacity to allow us to pursue our economic interests. And the SAC has completely failed this test. Scamal operations have exploded.

China's economic interests, the Chalpu, especially economic zone, remains in an impact assessment phase. The lepidon copper mine is non-functional. The Mietzodam is non-functional. They're just not getting out of the SAC what they wanted. And so there was a meaningful shift recently, it appears. And I think by all indicators that we can see, the Chinese Greenlit Operation 1027, that they at least did not stand in their way. And you'll see from the MNDA, I mean, they really were the leaders of the operation,

that in the statements that they issued about the operation itself, and when they articulated their objectives, the first objective was to shut down scam operations. I mean, you can see that this is, they're speaking to a Chinese public and government indicating that we're a responsible good faith actor that will shut down these enterprises that are trafficking your citizens

and scamming the public out of billions of dollars. So this has become a really dominant dynamic in the relationship between the Chinese and the SAC, and it leads to a really weakened position for the SAC if they're not being propped up in the way that they have been for so long by by the Chinese. So we'll have to see how this kind of unfolds, but it's not looking good for the military. When we do see how this unfolds, it'll be people like the Mandalay PDF who we see leading the charge for new and democratic Myanmar. We don't exactly know what that means, but I asked them if the weapons seized in operation 1027 would allow them to arm more fighters and get there faster.

We are also not recruiting new recruits, but we have to recruit until the general is gone. And we also need more soldiers to form up the better army than the center after we won. Even after we won, we are going to need some human resources to form up the better army than the male army, you know. And for the arms and ammunition, we got a lot of arm and ammunition from the male like army, but we, it's they use the different types of the ammunition and then because we, for example, we use like AK types. We have the different, so it is not very possible to arm the better weapons from the male and the army.

We only use some of the weapons like for the artillery or something like that, but that's only a few we got from them. What we really need is about the better artillery or SEM or something like that for the air strikes. So, yeah, it's not very useful for us from the answer and ammunition we got from the mail I'm he said that the main points in the I'm revolution is it's about to capture the important points not to catch all the cities or something like that like to catch the enemy's headquarters or the important places we are going to need more plants and then

he's there and clear about that. I asked Billy what he thought we could expect in the New Myanmar. As he points out here, everything every so-called analysts has said has been proven wrong by the revolution. They have exceeded the wildest expectations of experts in London and Washington, DC. And where they go next is really up to them. Good question, and frankly, I don't have a lot of information about that.

I mean, you've seen pictures over the past 12 days of the, as the resistance has taken 150 posts. They've definitely captured a lot of heavy munitions and artillery, but yeah, I'm not sure service to air capabilities. I mean, I think the fact that the Myanmar military is not able to push the resistance out of urban areas. I mean, this is the first time really that the resistance is moved into urban areas and held them, including in Tagan.

I mean, Colin has been, they're holding it. And so, I mean, that seems to be an indication to me that the SAC's capability is weakening. I mean, yeah, their access to foreign currency and to purchase weapons is highly constrained now. I mean, their primary providers, Russia, and China, you know, ones fighting their own war, and the other is kind of a little bit more skeptical as to whether they deserve their support. I mean, just last week, the US initiated new sanctions on the Myanmar oil and gas enterprise that provided half a billion dollars in revenue for the junta per year Yeah, that's a major that's a major issue for them accessing US dollars, which they need to buy weapons I mean the ties can no longer pay the the

Myanmar military in USD and the Myanmar military doesn military doesn't want bot. So they're literally negotiating barter agreements where they sell gas for material goods. But now you have the resistance controlling part of Cawkerig on the Asia highway into Thailand. I mean, they control the borders or the Ardingto in a way they hadn't before. So even this sort of bartering or material trade is less viable. So yeah, I think they're just really asset constrained. And it does, I mean, just the fact that they haven't been able to retake these critical logistic ups. I mean, the border crossings that the resistance has, have controlled constitute 40% of the overland trade between China and Myanmar.

It's like $4 billion in value that's being that tax loss for the SEC. It's considerable losses there as well. And how long they can really hold out and maintain their air assets is really questionable particularly since they've had to massively diversify their air asset purchase which really makes it more complex to service points and look out for. So yeah, I mean, I think I'm not sure that the resistance has much more capacity in service to air or air defense, but it does seem like the SACs capacity to inflict atrocities in this way has also been constrained.

Yeah, it sort of flies in the face of every sort of like analytical idea about the assets that you need to have in order to be successful in one of these, they've really proved a lot of people wrong in a really impressive way. I know you have to go. I want to ask one more real quick. The these towns, did the SAC pull out of the towns or did they fight House to House or how did they or do it very across the country? Well, I mean, the SAC was, you know, in their barracks, self, I mean, in these towns,

it's a national uprising. The public is, you know, opposed to the presence, this is an occupying force. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's just moving in and capturing military posts. And as one person resistance fighter indicated, essentially, you fire your gun in the air and they lay down their weapons,

which is more an indication of where the military stands and the support that these highly isolated. I mean, this is a fractured light infantry force that's dispersed a post all over the country. And they're resupplying from the Northwest Command and Moinihuah to towns within 30 minutes drive by helicopter because they can't move. So there's just not logistics support to these posts. And so yeah, you've got folks in there that just the will to fight is pretty small.

Moral is shrinking from a very low base. And so I think the general pattern is just resistance taking military barracks and posts, rather than having to go house to house. I mean, there's villages in towns where there's these groups called Pusol T that are like military-aligned militias, but yeah, that's not really, you know, a nationwide fighting force. And it's in most cases, it really is just the resistance capturing posts and pushing out posts and pushing out, um, yeah, my military personnel. And I mean, there was a, they're also using drones to a high degree of effectiveness. They recently killed a a colonel who was on, he was about to be, um, uh, become a Brigadier General. The highest ranking

person to have been killed in battle from the member military, um, through a drone strike in Northern to have been killed in battle from the member military through a drone strike in northern shun state, I believe, for Kuchen. And I think that, yeah, the resistance drone capabilities have also increased considerably. And this is also an area where you see NUG collaborating a lot with the EROs. So, yeah, it's a barracks, you know, more military personnel, and they just, in many cases, just lay down their arms because it's just more alice, so low, and the probability of them to be able to fend off indefinitely is when they have the public against them and a resistance movement against them. It's just really a challenge, a set of conditions for them. We don't know exactly what the future of Myanmar is,

but it took an interesting turn in the last few weeks with the K&DF, that's a correne national defense force, fist battalion, issuing a statement of solidarity with the people of Rajava and the people of Rajava in the form of the YPG and the YPGA, their defense units of men and women respectively, recording a response at great risk during the ongoing growing campaign, expressing their solidarity and support for the revolutionary people of Myanmar. Something we're covering greater detail in another episode, but it's yet another illustration of how the revolutionary people of Myanmar have continued to defy everyone's expectations about how and where they will go next. And how they've managed to dream up a vision

for more equal and just future, even as they face the injustice and inequality of fighting a war the world doesn't seem to care about, without a single dollar of international military aid, little support other than strongly worded letters from the UN at sporadic intervals. and little support are then strongly worded letters from the UN at sporadic intervals. As we come to the end of the episode, I ask Saiyam on Tine. If he had anything else, he would like to share with our listeners. Okay, he said that if he is able to talk, he wants them to know that we are not the wide people. We, most of them are educated

and we are only paying for the democracy. But in some international news, there will be some news that like PDF, the revolution forces are killing each other or something like that. But it's like not fully correct. Maybe some of you will be doing that, but most of us are not doing that way.

It's just the propagandars from the male like them. We also pay that we are no more expecting for the help from the other countries. We will be fighting our own and with our spirit, Tasey N. And he also want to say that to the US government or the King of England or the other countries authorities that we are not wild ones. We are educated and then we are just fighting to get the democracy back to our country, easing a little bit from what you know. You see that if other governments are not helping us, because they can't get any benefits from helping us, even if they don't want to help us, just don't look at us like we are the wide ones. We will be trying to get the level of the other countries. We will always be trying for that.

If you have any chance to speak out in seminar or the workshop or any other things or any meetings, the news about killing each other of our revolution forces is just a propaganda of SAC. If there is no SAC, there will be no issues like the anymore. Most of the some issues are just because of SAC, and they spread in some rumors about that, and then fake news, you know. If you guys can come and visit us, and then you can see how we treat people, and then how we respect the civilians, and then how we follow a lot of context in person. If you want to follow the Madelaid PDF, You can search them on Facebook where they post regular updates. We'll include the link in the show notes for you.

If you want to hear more from Billy, I'll let him tell you how. Sure. Yeah. I mean, we put out a paper at usip.org yesterday on the relationship between the scam operations and the the the conflict dynamics. I'm putting one out probably next week on the day after quote unquote dynamics summarizing some of our research. I'm on Twitter at BILLEE, the number four, the letter D. So you're going to try to stay up on some of the conflict dynamics there. But yeah, the USIP websites where we published most of our stuff.

In closing, I just want to share how much hope I found in the conflict in Myanmar in recent weeks. At a time when the world seems so full of cruelty, it's inspiring to see people relatively unified, committed to respecting life and civilians, and succeeding against all the odds. This doesn't mean they don't need help, they do desperately. And I hope that as people continue to advocate for civilians in Gaza, they can include civilians and revolutionaries from Myanmar in their demands going forward.

In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDR, which means just don't look right. My name is Melissa Jeltson. I've spent the last year talking to Libby's friends and family, uncovering details of her life and the secrets that may have endangered it. I knew she was doing something, but she just wouldn't admit it to me at first. Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Caswell. Everyone deserves no detruth, and if there was something that was not right, then someone should be held accountable.

I think the law is set up to punish families in the situation. Libby's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. It's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi. Do you feel chronic existential dread

but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me, my podcast is relaunching! Subscribe and treat yourself to sound effects like this. And this! Have you ever been attacked by a bear? Yeah. Yeah! And moments like this. I have an apocalypse leaping a bear? Yeah. Yeah! Yes! And moments like this.

I have to fall asleep in front of the space here. No. And my whole leg from my knee down in my foot burnt until it's full of this big bubble. And this, kale chips are delicious. They're too oily when I go. They shouldn't be soft at all. They should be really crispy.

That's what I said every single time. You are yelling at me. And this, Do you want to go to the Clipper game with me tonight? Do you have 25 references of mutual friends that can tell me that you're not a murderer? Um, and this. Hold on, I got to open some peanut butter pretzels.

Listen to Call Chelsea Paredion, Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay and just like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains.

We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, and Bob wrote the cadaver note in his own words he had murdered Susan Farming. Why did they were so obsessed with dark people like that? It's maybe part of human nature. The supernatural, there's something here, truly something going on. Our biggest fears, mental health, pop culture. Just adrenaline being on a film set is incredible. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds.

Wait a minute, we should be very happy once. This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome to Good App and Here. I'm Andrew Siege from YouTube channel Andrewism. Join to D by...

James, hi, sorry, I'm doing my own intro. Hi Andrew, yeah, you know, I'm excited to hear about something. I don't know what yet, So this should be a fun adventure. Yes, well today we are doing a little bit of time travel and we're going to embark on a journey to explore more funds of about 200 years ago. I think is still quite relevant even today, particularly in our very technological fast-paced world. particularly in our very technological fast-paced world. So when we put in you, James, in the early 19th century in England, oh, great.

Which, you know, it was a time of great change of evil, disease, or lagers. Yeah, I think I'd have thrived. As a person with diabetes, I'd have made it approximately's made it approximately a couple of weeks. Yeah. Yeah. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. It hadn't quite reached that point yet, as far as I know. But it was transformed the way that people lived and worked. It was a time of evolution, there's also a time of great uncertainty. And amidst the classroom looms and rise of mechanization,

a group of workers emerged who became known as the Luddites. They were some early adopters of resistance. Yes, resistance to the changes of the industrial revolution. And for that cardinal sin, they have been missing to a particular sense. So today we're going to be explaining exactly who the lights were and why their actions resonate with us today in the 20th century. We'll talk about their history and their motivations and their brief stand against the relentless march capitalist progress. We'll also touch on some figures, some of their tactics, and the last

and impact they left on history, but most importantly, we'll be covering why they struggle to let us do so. So here we are, you know, in the 19th century in the Shreveleutian, Super-Thru England. British working families were going through some very tough times, as the economy was in turmoil, and unemployment was spreading like wildfire. It really wasn't a good situation to be in. There was this never ending war with Napoleon's France, there was drilling resources, and causing what Yorkshire historian Frank Peele described as the hard pinch of poverty. And to make matters worse, food was in short supply and prices were shooting up. So not only were jobs hard to come by, but even put in basic food on the table was

becoming a serious challenge. It was a really tough period for these families, and they were feeling that squeeze in every way possible. So that item emerged as a response to these seismic shifts, as a loosely organized group of textile workers and weavers who healed primarily, but not exclusively, for the Nottinghamshire region of England. At the heart of their struggle was the mechanization of the textile industry. Factories, powered by steam engines and intricate machinery were replacing traditional cottage industries, leading to unemployment and a decline in working conditions.

In the place of a cottage industry where cloth workers could work as many or as few hours a day as soon as they were. The factory had a reason where workers would work along hours at day interest machinery, be fed me gum meals and submit to the punitive authority of the former. Factory owners were winning. As I alluded to earlier, the lardites were not blindly opposed to this idea of progress as they've been misinterpreted, but they were seeking to protect their livelihoods

and the quality of their craftsmanship. Many of the original lardites were actually quite savvy when it came to technology. In fact, some were highly skilled machine operators that ended up smashing the very machines that they were accustomed to using. They had no issue with welcoming innovations that made their lives and their jobs easier, but they had an issue with the way that the new machinery is being used with the factory owners to reduce them to mayor cogs in the industrial machine. I didn't like that factory owners were using the machinery to kick out the trained and skilled cloth workers in the above child laborers

and other lower skilled workers who would be easier to exploit. The cloth for these machines produced was lower quality, but because it was so cheap to channel it and there was so much of it, the fact that you were still in a profit. And so that sucks for them, which is why the rights to resist these changes embraced a distinctive form of protest. At the time, labor organizing was illegal, so they chose a,, even more drastic method of targeting the newly introduced machines for destruction. Yeah. They were it. Is it EP Thompson who called it collective bargaining by riot? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. I think that's an excellent way to understand it. I'm sure we'll get there. But it's, yeah of labor-organizing when labor-organizing is illegal. Indeed. If no other options are available to you, you're pressed against the wall to have no other choice. Yeah. So these Luddites would gather together in the dead of the night, usually in secluded areas like forests, so hillsides to plan their actions. To maintain their secrecy, Pilates adopted a strict code of silence, making it very difficult

for authorities to infiltrate their ranks. That secrecy was crucial to their survival and their ability to outwit the authorities. And so under this code, they'd go on and break into the factories and smash the machinery and occasionally leave an etchion of the infamous Sned Ludd as a mark of their presence. Nned Ludd, by the way, was a symbol, not their actual leader. He was a legendary weaver who was set up in whipped for idleness,

so he smashed two knit and frames in a fit of passion. More likely, Ned Ludd didn't exist. He was more of a folkloric character, but the lights named themselves after him and would call him King Ludd and General Ludd. Funny enough, the authorities actually thought he was the ring leader of the whole operation, so they tried to hunt him down. Meanwhile, of course, the Luddites jokingly refer into Ludd's office and show it for us, and some of the Luddites would actually cross-dress as Ludd's wives

during their protests. Yeah, I do like every time you find an instance of like a cross-dressing in history It was just amusing to note I guess some people have decided that like I They're like cross-dressing or trans people were invented in like 2016 Not those two things are the same, but like we can find literally thousands of instances of of course trans people and also cross-dressing Like as a form of like, sometimes this transgression, sometimes the thing that just people did. But yeah, if you can see it in depictions of the Luddites, like people even took the time to paint it into their paintings.

Exactly, exactly. That's my thing. Yeah. But yeah, so I mean, the leader wasn't Ned Lod. The leader, well, it really was a leader last movement. The real instigators were just regular on the ground weavers and craftsmen. Folks like, for example, George Mellow, a weaver from Huddersfield who played a pivotal role in organizing the interactions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, best known for the time

that he fatally shot a mill owner in the balls. Where are you? Chad, maybe. Indeed, indeed. But these actions were not just, you know, random acts of vandalism and violence. They were a desperate plea for change. In fact, they merely confined their attacks to manufacturers who specifically use machines in what they called a fraudulent and seatful manner to get around standard labor practices.

The lights wanted machines that made high quality goods, and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those are really their main concerns. And besides the raids and the smashing, they also had a couple of other tricks up their sleeves. They organized public demonstrations, they sent out letters to local industrialists and government officials to lay out their reasons for economic machinery. They wouldn't just smash in for no reason with no messaging. Yeah.

And in different parts of England, you know, you had different approaches, different stances, and different, you know, material conditions. So for example, in the Midlands of England, the Lardites had the company of Freemook Knitters, which was this recognized public body that could talk to the capitalist through named representatives, and so they used that legitimacy as a recognized institution to back up their demands. But up in the northwest of England, textile workers didn't have these established trade institutions, so they used their letters to push for official recognition as a united group

of tradespeople, like an early union. Their amount of interest, of course, about smash machines, they also wanted high minimum wages, and again, an end to child weight labor. They were playing the long game. And in Yorkshire, the tone shifts a bit. They were going from letter writing to making more direct and violent threats against local authorities, who they saw as support in these nasty machines that messed with the job market. The Yorkshire Lerites meant business. In fact, they carried on these sledgehammers that they called the Crete Enoc, named after a local blacksmith who had manufactured

both the hammers and also any of the machines they intended to destroy. As they declared, you knock me at them, you knock, shall break them. Which I think is just the division that gives me is like God of War style, you know, swinging around this that hammer, smash other machines. Yeah, yeah, like I mean, they broke some big things, right? Like they weren't, this wasn't like, I've known like some sort of trivial sabotage, like a frame breaking is still a capital crime in the UK, but it's also a serious feat of strength.

Yes, I don't mean I'm getting to that. Excellent, good, yeah. I love coming from a country with normal laws. There's so many, don't even get me started on strange laws around the world. I mean, you're ensuring that there are some really strange laws, but I'm sure that could be a whole topic for a whole episode. It could be, you could suggest that they're not connected to morality, perhaps maybe the law and what's right. And wrong is not the same thing.

You might be onto something there. Yeah, ponder. So I want to think about for sure. Yeah. So a lot of these change differences in approaches, like I mentioned, really depend on their material conditions. They also depend on the background of the workers, some of them were free workers, some of them were weavers,

some of them were spinners. And so they took on different tactics and styles, depending on what they were experienced with and where you found them. Of course, they were sending out death threats to some industrialists as well. And in fact, some of these industrialists were so worried about let it attacks

that they had secret chambers built into their buildings as escape plans in case things went south during an attack. Yeah. You can imagine them coloring in their holes. Yeah. I just like it. Those were outside. Imagine being like, yeah, I'm making excellent choices in life.

I employ hundreds of people and I've built a secret hole to hide in when they're never to be trying to kill me because I've made their lives so shit. Yes, like I'm going to create conditions that are so terrible. These people are going to get so angry at me and then I'm just going to make a police to hide, you know. So I've actually rectified and the reasons they're angry. Yeah, exactly. You could simply take the money you spent on your secret escape hatch and distributed to people who are literally struggling to put food in their children's mouths,

but I guess that's not the logic of capitalism, is it? Yeah, I'll be too, I'll be too human. Yes, yeah, yeah, you can't let them get, you know, realize that you're afraid of them. And then, for all these tactics, the rights were truly fights and not only for their own jobs, but also for a say in the future of their industry

and their communities. Like regular people of today, they were just trying to provide for their families and defend themselves against the ever-expanding incursions of the captives. I don't know, James, how do you think the government and the facturion has responded to these ordinary people and their desperate

and fair pleas for change? Yeah, it was a humane response, right? Mm-hmm, from, yeah, that's what I would expect as a British person through our history of our government has really shown a lot of humanity and compassion for people. So I'd expect they did something similar here. That's what I learned in school. They're so compassionate that they created an empire that the sun would never set on. And that I read them so considerate, you knowate for people who are afraid of the dark.

Yes, that's the real reason. And of course, we're doing it to uplift civilized and Christianized that are the other peoples of the world and for no other reason. Such philanthropists. Such philanthropists. Kind people who bought tea and scones to the rest of the world. They're British Empire and they're British government. Yeah.

Am I going to learn something bad about them? Yeah, I hate to let you down, but the government and the fact you and I responded with, you know, deploying troops to quell the Vita Prizes and firing against the protesters. In one of the bloodiest incidents in April 1812, some 2000 protesters mobbed a mill near Manchester and the owner ordered his men because in addition to soldiers, you also have these private militias that Carp lists would hire. So the owner ordered his men to fire into the crowd,

kill it at least three and wound an 18. And then Solio's killed at least five more than XD. Okay, yeah, that's not quite what we'd hope for, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Many of the lights were arrested, many were tortured, some even faced execution, or even worse, tortured some even faced execution or even worse exile to Australia. Yeah, the ultimate, the ultimate crime, the ultimate penalty rather, yeah, sent to the land of kangaroos and where they put mashed potatoes inside their pies. What? Yeah, no, if you've not seen this, this is it's terrible unfortunately it's true. Are you talking about like, shepherds, pie or?

No, they'll take a meat pie, like a normal meat pie, and then they'll cut a bit and then put mashed potatoes in the top of it. Just to... What is called? I'll have to look now. I've seen it on YouTube. Meat pie, mashedoto, Australia. You can get it instead of having fish and chips.

You can get it out of van. Someone will bring it to you. I think I'm seeing it. You found it and then they put gravy as well. Oh man. Yeah, it's... I've come from a country that does terrible things to food, but yeah, it's this one is really something else.

You can see what people were. I have to say though, I do admire that it seems to be a very balanced, you know, you get in the cops, the facts and the proteins in it, you know, it's like, yeah, it all in one. That's the gym bro, it meets all kind of course, but it seems like a very efficient meal. Yeah, it's like, it's not that the Cornish Pasty is the truly the most efficient like working man's power bar because you can, you can hold onto the crust and eat the pasty and even if you have like dirty hands from working in a factory, you still get your lunch. Yeah, but we're getting a little bit sidetracked.

Yeah, we have, we've traveled a long way from the last exile to Australia. Oh, I shut up the thought. But some of them, despite that, kept their fight in spirit to the bitter end. Like, for example, John Booth and no offense to James, but you know, a lot of the names I read in like British history are the most generic sound in names. So, yeah, you just casually find somebody in British history named like John Doe.

Yeah, we do. We're choosing from a limited palette, like until very recently, we were really pretty pretty like pretty stodgy on the names, you know, like, this like. I mean, more power to you. I mean, it's iconic, but at the same time, it's also hilarious that you're like, everybody from like regular people to like some of the movers and sheepers, the leaders and the military and politicians and stuff, just all of them. Yeah. Yeah, it's like they had to decide what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just some guy.

Occasionally, you'll get like a Cornelius or a Marmaduke or just some absolute nons with like a really posh name. But yeah, we otherwise, yeah, it's like. Well, apparently like an Inoc, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to respect Inoc. Like once you go outside of England, you get some good names, but like, yeah,

we were moving with a pretty, pretty, pretty playing with a, playing get some good names, but like, yeah, we were moving with a pretty pretty, pretty, playing with a, playing with a small deck, I guess, when it came to names for a while there. I mean, I can't even talk. My name is Andrew. So, I think my name is the most popular name for boys born in the year I was born. So, can't really, can't really say much either. Oh, God, we're getting off track again, right?

So, John Booth, right? So John Booth was this 19 year old apprentice who joined one of the Lodite attacks. He was injured, detained, and died after being tortured to give up the identity of his fellow Lodites. A local priest was in the room when he was passing and his dying words became legendary. So John was like, can you keep a secret? And the priest was like, yes, my child. And then Booth was like, so could I. And then he died. There you go. What a hero. Yeah, iconic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, government officials by 1813 were trying to quash the light movement by any means

necessary. So they organized this massive trial in York after the attack on Cartwrights Mill at Rawlford's near Clack Heaton. I've got a right. Yeah, Clack Heaton, I think that seems about right where are we looking to. Yeah, yeah, we're in, I'm signing on the map. Okay, you know leads, yeah, Bradford, I've not actually spent much time in that part of the world, but if I had to guess Rawfalds, something like that, we do like one of our, another great tradition in Britain is having names, which don't bear any relation to the way they're spelled. We just write them like that,

actually, can tell if you're local or not. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we primarily use British spell and conventions internet and English. So I know all about your center with the R and then the E. Yeah, I'm working on a book at the moment and my American Microsoft Word is fighting me every step of the way on my spelling. Yeah, I mean, can't they see that the U is absolutely essential in the wood color? Yeah, without it, we wouldn't know what it meant in that language. So after this attack on copyrights mill at Raffles near Clackeyton,

the government accused over 60 men, including Mellow and his associates of various crimes related to rights activities. It's important to note that not all of these charged men were actually lullites, somehow no connection to the movement. And while these trials were technically legitimate jury trials, many were banned and due to a lack of evidence, they didn't see a quittle of 30 of those 60 men. And it's evident that these trials were primarily intended as show trials to discourage other lullites from continuing the activities. And then here's where we get to the important bit. Parliament went on to make a machine-breaking at the Industrial Sabotage, a capital crime

with the Framebreak and Act of 1812. Yeah, what a normal thing. And they've never repealed it, is that right? Yeah, I believe so. I don't think so. Yeah. Still in the books. Yeah, what a normal thing. And they've never repealed it, is that right? Yeah, I believe so. I don't think so. You're still in the box. Yeah, listen, if you're listening, do you have something? The answer was, yeah, quite.

Yeah, I was gonna say, if someone's listening in the UK, just give it a try, see what happens. It takes a quite high, but yeah, you never know. You might be able to get the machine breaking ax struck down a frame. Right, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if, you never know. You might be able to get the machine-breaking act struck down a framebreak. No, I see. I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, since it was established in 1812, if by now, a lot of the British colonies, you know, might still have it in their books as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started to have inherited that common though and stuff. Yeah. And I'm not like a legal scholar. I don't know all the deeds on that. No, I can see Liz Truss incorporating it into her platform to return to our leadership position. It's like a very insane kind of Tory position. Like there's still this bizarre British like anytime we have a protest movement in the streets in the UK, you can like log onto at like, matter or Facebook or whatever and see a certain type of British

person being like, send in the army. Like, it's like a, like there are people who have not reconstructed their opinions on labor-organizing since the last period. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. They have a conservative party. You can literally picture them like smoking cigars with top hats, except, you know, they were not capitalist.

A lot of them are just like regular workers, it's like, what are you from doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, don't you understand that your economic interests line up with these people and not with the Boris Johnson's of this world? And your social interests too, of course, but... And I mean, speaking of interests aligning, there was actually a politician who did stand against that legislation, and that is to be well known English poet, Lord Byron.

Yeah. He was actually one of the few prominent defenders of the Ladaites, especially after witnessing how the defendants were treated during the York child. I mean, I go ahead. Byron has some surprisingly good, he was part of this romantic movement, right? Let the idea that the industrial revolution spoiled the innocence of the rural working people, which it's paternalist and its core, but when at least he's not being for their blood. Yeah, actually, that attitude reminds me of Van Gogh. Oh, he was another.

All of his art was very obsessed with the peasants because he just saw it as a better way of life. Yeah. Real romanticization of the Peasantry. Yeah, I think it was a thing that sort of spread around Europe in the late 19th, early 20th century, maybe like even 18th century. No, the 19th, 20th century, this idea that the innocence of the rural peasants have been broken, it's just so reflected in so much art

from that period. You know what that is? That's literally just like the evolution of nostalgia. You really think about it. You know, it's like, it's kind of like how people today are like, hard, the 90s was so much better.

Oh, the 2000s was so much better. Oh, the 80s, oh, the 70s, it's just that, but with peasants. Yeah, yeah. And then like disco or whatever. Yeah, the ETs, oh, the 70s, it's just that, but with specimens. Yeah, yeah. And like, disco or whatever. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Like, yeah, it is. It's like doing like doing an ironic wearing a fanny pack, but with, but with a person. I'm not even just a fashionist, also like, the actual like material reason, people feel nostalgic, nostalgic as well.

Yeah, we think about, you think about safety, we think about the ways that our cities have changed, think about all the material realities that have changed in these decades. And it makes sense that just like being wished for the simpler life of the peasant, a lot of people now wish, you know, we were back to the simpler times of... Yeah, the miners strike when... The immediate post, Jim Crowe, and the post, colonial independence, furious. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, I think also we forget the hardships, but yeah,

like it's a way, and change accelerate so much quicker now because we've really fucked the whole planet and climate change accelerating and obviously technological change accelerating. So our nostalgia cycles are much shorter, but yeah, this is just like when I had an estate and I could direct the peasants to trim my trees in a certain shape, life was better for them. Kind of not. But like in a meaningful sense, right, like the lives of working class people were not improved, right? We see like the like GDP, which is a useless metric, but like the amount of like value of goods, the country produces an industrial revolution goes up and up and up, but the quality of life and even life expectancy does not, right?

Like people are dying earlier and certainly like and chiefly life expectancy is dropping because children are dying, right? Either from industrial conditions or conditions in cities and so like in a meaningful sense, those people's life was not improved. The life of the bourgeoisie was improved and like we see that later in Britain with things like the Britain's forced to incorporate the bourgeoisie into its politics, right? So it doesn't have a bigger revolution, that's what it does in the Great Reform Act, but like, working class people it continues to suppress. After this, we see it with the chartists and the violence suppression of chartism.

Yeah, this nostalgia isn't, it helps them, but I guess it's not really invested in their agency. It's more of a paternalist. I guess not dissimilar to the way Britain treated its colonies in many ways. Yeah, I think another aspect of it as well is you know when we look at this sort of nostalgia I've heard talking about this romantic nostalgia for the simple life of the peasant always working on the nostalgia of For example, if you can example from Trinidad the Oil boom period in the 70s and 80s Right. Yeah, We gained independence in 1962, and in the 1780s, we got this oil boom, and a lot of people

were living in Lafish. But either of those cases, when you look at the reality of the situation on the ground, it's like, oh, you actually go back to that time, it wasn't all that shinin'er is, you know, like, it actually was not good to be a peasant actually. I mean, there are certain things that you know, a lot better than now in terms of perhaps the the vibrance of culture or the ability of to lean on a community of support and that sort of thing. But or take for example, this oil boom situation, talking about a trend that yeah, like there was this massive influx of wealth and stuff, but there's also a whole bunch of corruption

and also we had the whole 1970 black power revolution that was born out of the frustration of the people at the time. There was an all sunshine and rainbows, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just always a sense like you see it in like nostalgia as well, right? Like the nostalgia for East Germany that German people will talk about. Like, you also had the starsy like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I get it. When I look at some of the maps of like for it, like they're talking about with Germany, yeah, some of the maps of like for like we're talking about with Germany, I think that some of the data related maps, the sociological data of things like religiosity or things like that.

Can't remember some of the examples, but there's some like stark differences between the two sides of the country. Yes, very much so. So I completely understand what people would feel like, or we feel so separate and distinct from West Germany and all that stuff. But... Yeah. When you've become like, they went from being like a nation within the USSR to like the often the less economically advantaged parts of a nation which is neoliberal and capitalist

and neoliberal capitalism is not kind to the less economically advantage people. It wasn't a great situation before either, to be clear, but I can see how to suddenly being incorporated into not everyone's going through this, but you are, and the state's not going to do fuck all to help you, is I can see how that might promote some nostalgia. Definitely. Definitely. And I mean, speaking of states doing nothing, at this time, Byron is making this his speech before the lords.

And in that speech, Laceda Fuzakasm, of course, he was highlighting the benefits of automation, which he believed led to the production of inferior goods and unemployment. He concluded that the proposed law, the Freembrick in Actuil 1812, was only missing two crucial elements to be effective. Twelve butchers for a jury and a Jeffries for a judge, which is a reference to George Jeffries and infamous hang-in judge, known for his very harsh judgements. Yeah, it's also mad that like, but also not uncommon in this period, that you are seeing

like the the left most political opinion being advanced within Parliament being advanced in the hereditary chamber, like the House of Lords. Like. Yeah, exactly as soon as the, was the aristocratic, yeah, the aristocratic realm is still, you know, having to deal with this. Yeah, it's very much tied to like a paternalism and sort of feudal attitude,

but it's just fascinating to see like, and it does happen in that, especially, and I think also there's this, a deep, deep disdain for new money that is just a powerfully British vibe that, that comes especially from the House of Lords, right? Like they don't identify with the boys, whereas he at all and then fucking hate them because they're turning up at the country cloud board. Yeah. And it's so funny, but a lot of old money, I'm going to say this and I'm going to give a contract. What's so funny about the old money folks is that a lot of the other cases, they don't even have as much money as the new money people. So even about money for them at this point. It's really just about linear, gender culture and whatever. Yeah, Britain's class thing is like a

it's almost like a caste system. Like your caste is, your class is inherited regardless of your actual financial means. Like, they're like Lord living in a castle that he can't afford to heat. It's a trope for a reason in Britain, I guess. Indeed, indeed. So yeah, with the passing of that act and in the years that followed, the right move on came into an end, but the light

actions left a lasting mark on the labour movement. The tactics of collective action, even though clandestine, lead the groundwork for future labour unions, demonstrating the power of organized resistance. Defenders of their way of life, reminders, the technology, wild transformative, can also disrupt lives and communities. The light experiences, the light experiences echo, even today, you know, in an era with the fear of technological unemployment, with discussions and the impact of automation and AI. Yeah.

You know, before he had said his infamous last words, John Booth also said that the new machinery might be man's chief lesson instead of his curse if society were differently constituted. In other words, technology can either help common food or harm them, depending on not just what the technology is, but also what society the technology develops within. Yeah, that's very true. So I'll leave you all with that for now. And next time we'll be shifting our focus to the present day and examining how lottisms principles have been applied by movements of the 20th and 21st century.

Cool, nice. That's all from me. You can find me on youtube.com slash anjurisome and support on patreon.com slash a center. This has been a good afternoon. In 2017, Libby Caswell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDRR, which means just don't look right. My name is Melissa Jeltson. I've spent the last year talking to Libby's friends and family, uncovering details of her life,

and the secrets that may have endangered it. I knew she was doing something, but she just wouldn't admit it to me at first. Join me on a journey to uncover what really happened to Libby Caswell. Everyone deserves no detruth and if there was something that was not right and someone should be held accountable. I think the law is set up to punish families in the situation. Libby's case stands out in my mind and keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown.

It's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi. Do you feel chronic existential dread but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me!

My podcast is relaunching! Subscribe and treat yourself to sound effects like this! And this! Have you ever been attacked by a bear? Yeah! And moments like this! I have an awful sleep in front of the space here. No!

And my whole leg, from my knee down in my foot burnt into a squal. Oh! A big bubble. And this, kale chips are delicious. They're too oily when I go. They shouldn't be soft at all. It should be really crispy. That's what I said every single time. You are yelling at me. And this,

Do you want to go to the Clipper of Game with me tonight? Do you have 25 references of mutual friends that can tell me that you're not a murderer? Um. And this, hold on, I got to open some peanut butter pretzels. Listen to Call Chelsea Paredion, Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay, and just like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains.

We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, if Bob wrote the cadaver note in his own words, he had murdered Susan Furman. Why do they were so obsessed with dark people like that? It's maybe part of human nature. The supernatural, there's something here. Truly something going on. Our biggest fears, mental health, pop culture. Just adrenaline being on a film set is incredible.

And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, we should be very happy. You want? This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here.

I'm Andrew Ceege, and you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel, Andrew Ser. I'm Andrew Seiz and you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel, Andrewson. I'm joined once again by James. Getting no less walkthrough as we go, but I'm very excited to learn about what we're going to learn about today. Yes, we're picking up where we left off by tackling the Luddites of today. In our previous episode we unraveled the story of Luddites who stood against the encroaching forces of the industrial revolution and more specifically the abuses of workers by profiteering capitalists. They were challenging the will of the view of laissez-faire capitalism with its increasing amalgamation of power, resources and wealth,

rationalized by its emphasis on progress. Today it seems history has we've repeated itself as we face a similar struggle against technological changes that come about to the detriment of workers, as some tech has been used by tech companies in various industries to drive down wages and worsen conditions for common workers. Take for example technological unemployment, for the rights who want to resist the encouragement of machines, we find that concerns reflected in our modern world, as our technological advancements often come with the cost of those whose jobs can be automated away. For instance in the manufacturing industry, robots and automated assembly lines of streamlined production, they then

enter increased efficiency and lower costs for companies but these efficiencies often meant the displacement of human workers and such as in manufacturing the ripple effects extend to various sectors like customer service, transportation and data analysis and so there's this fair of job displacement looms large. However, technological unemployment, which is the belief that as technology advances,

human jobs are at risk, potentially getting to widespread unemployment, has been described by some economists as a fallacy. Back in the early days of the industrial revolution when the advent of mechanization began transforming various industries, and with workers' fairing automation would render them jobless and devalue their labour, the people took a stand. But as time passed, new industries and job opportunities emerged to replace some of the old ones, ultimately absorb in that workforce. Fast forward to the 20th century, a derives of computers and automation technology, reignited concerns of our technological unemployment.

But again, new jobs were created in new industries. Today, the debate continues as artificial intelligence, robotics and automation advanced at an unprecedented pace. And it remains to be seen with the long-term consequences of those technologies may be. My position has really always been that we should be working less anyway, but instead people are obsessed with creating new jobs

even when they're unnecessary. See, of course David Crepe has supposed to do jobs. Yeah. But even if the idea of mass and employment due to tech is not true, if we end up replacing the jobs that are erased with new jobs, whatever the case may be, tech is nevertheless quite capable of destroying livelihoods, creating unintended consequences, and further concentrating power in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Every tech advancement that makes a job more fulfilling and enjoyable. There are also those who make it more tedious and grinding. I mean, yes, tech can free us from syntax. Accountants have digital spreadsheet to make their lives much easier, for example. Brighton is way easier now than the personal computers. It is more common. But while technological progress can produce prosperity, there's really no guarantee that the prosperity will reach the workers. In most cases, under capitalism, it very clearly doesn't. In fact, many of the benefits of the industrial revolution were really not felt by the workers until decades later, after many of them had been crushed or poisoned or killed or died in a factory fire or whatever

was shot down when protestant. They didn't see the benefits until much later on. It sounds like these things are introduced and boom, everybody benefits. I mean, even now, not everybody in the world is benefiting from the computer age. There are still many people, like, for example, in the Congo who are endurance, slavery, and state-of-like conditions in order to procure the materials necessary for the computer age. And yet, they're not seeing those benefits. And it remains to be seen when they'll see the benefits that many of us enjoy in various

parts of the world, and particularly that there was enjoy in the global north. Yeah. In our relentless pursuit of progress and technological advancement, as defined by capitalism, we all send up losing our nature, our community, and many cases all craftsmanship. I mean, remember John Booth, the one who would say, can you keep a secret? So can I. Yes, other words, you know, that the new machinery might be managed chief blessing in surface curse, its society with differently constituted. That's where I have to bring in the one and only the Ellis I've spoken about him before, of course, the Austrian philosopher, the theologian, the sort of everything guy, you found it.

Oh, yeah, fun times. Fun times. Yeah, he was a thinker ahead of his time. Yeah, you know, it's really strange in some of his positions, I think. But a lot of his concepts resonate today in various movements. In fact, one of the foundational concepts in the modern movement of de-growth is the concept of conserviality, which was redefined and introduced in the context of our tools in Ilech's book, Tools with Inviality. Ilech's vision, as explored by the book, is one in which technology seers humanity, not supplants it. We have convivial tools in power individuals and communities fostering creativity and autonomy while preventing the

concentration of power in the hands of the few. According to Ilech, individuals and communities fostering creativity and autonomy while preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. Equalenter Illich, Conviviality, is individual freedom realized in personal interdependence. It's basically the ability of individuals to interact and interact creatively and autonomously with others and the environment to satisfy their individual and collective needs. Convervial tools are those which are robust and durable, preserve or enhance ecosystems,

level unequal power relationships, and give each person who uses them the greatest opportunities to enrich the environment with the fruits of their vision. An account of a real society is one in which tools, which according to LH includes physical hardware, productive institutions and productive systems. So tools will be factories, hospitals, schools, farms, all those things are being included

in his definition of tools. And a trivial society is one in which those tools operate on the human scale and save the people instead of rulers. The idea of a trivial tool really challenges us to use technology as a means to enhance our lives rather than displace our livelihoods. It's a call to harness innovation for the back end of society instead of the perpetuation of radical monopolis, which I spoke about in a previous economic episode. I think a lot of lights like John Booth would have

certainly appreciated that message. Yeah. And to the lights of today, certainly do. Because yeah, I'm not the first nor the only person to see lessons to be learned from the light movement. The concept of a new light movement has been embraced by a variety of folks who may or may not understand what the original Luddite movement was about.

Like, you know, you have these primitivists who embrace the new Luddite cause because they think it means hate and technology, and you have the anarchists and the trade unionists and the environmentalists who are looking more at the labor-organized and roots of the original Luddite movement. Yeah. And of course, even see echoes of OG-ledite action in the vandalism against self-driving cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The new-ledite movement is composed of activists, workers, scholars, and social critics, who stand against the predominant worldview that unbridled technology represents progress, pointing to skied in critiques and in some cases actual action against technologies and tech companies that desecrate our planet and our society. Philosophy Lewis Mungford, who had written the myth of the machine, Pentecostal Power, reminds us that technology encompasses more than just physical

objects. It also includes the techniques of operation and the social organizations that make up a particular technology work. Technology reflects a world view. The form of technology we embrace whether they be machines, techniques or social structures, that's deeply rooted in our perception of life, death, human potential, and the relationships between humans and nature. Our choice of technology, in many ways, mirrors our outlook on the world. That outlook in the modern world is shaped by a rather mechanistic approach to life, characterized by rational thinking, efficiency, utilitarianism, scientific detachment, and a belief in humanity's ownership and supremacy over nature. That's how you end up getting in texts like the military industrial complex and the

urban sprawl. Honestly, in a sense, the older rights kind of had it easy. I mean, obviously their conditions were horrible. When I say they had it easy, I mean, it's in the sense that their machines could be destroyed by their sledge havens. Right, yeah. The technology is a lot more ephemeral, you know? It's in the cloud.

It's as nebulous as microplastics in the soil, the water, and the breast milk. I mean, it's everywhere, and it's integrated into everything. It's like, where do you even begin? Yeah, wow. In the book, when technology wounds by psychologist Chalice Glendining, a bi psychologist, Chalice Glendining, she studied technology survivors. People who had suffered injury or illness in recent years after being exposed to

various toxic technologies in their homes and workplaces, whether nuclear radiation, pesticides, asbestos, both controlled devices or drugs, and covered how they had begun to question not only the processes that maimed them, but the world that indifferently forced those processes on them under the guise of progress. those processes on them under the guise of progress. Dundinings saw these victims as the basis of a new Luddite movement struggling against what has been called the second industrial revolution, alongside thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Ivan Illich. Those survivors have gone on to create groups such as as Pasadot's victims of America,

as part of the victims of their friends, citizens against pesticide misuse, Dalcon shield information network, DES Action in National, National Association of Atomic Veterans, National Committee for Victims of Human Research, National Toxic's Campaign, and VDT Coalition. One of these, of course, are based in the US. And there are also actors groups like Oothfus that could be could have been classified under the Nielerite course. And

Oothfus strategy was to stop environmental intrusion by any means available, legal and otherwise. So there would be slash engines, slash entires, to save an engine, blocking roads. Most famously, they would drill spikes into trees in wilderness forests to prevent them from being logged by chainsoats. But, you know, while all these movements and organizations are happening in the western world, it really wasn't just the western world where this is happening. Positive, undercurrents of the light spirit has surged where indigenous peoples have led the charges against the incul the inclusion of industrialism. Cuences are mainly resistant to the machines and projects from industrialization, but

also pushing back against its cultural impact. Peasants and farmers to actually reject in participation in the various development initiatives imposed upon them by compliant governments, often under the influence of entities like the World Bank or the US State Department. For example, during the early 1980s some farmers in Mali took a stand against the construction of dams and dikes for a rice-growing program that they wanted no part of. Other communities elsewhere have rallied to hold dam projects that threatened to submerge ancestral lands and some have been successful as seen with the villagers who protested the Narmada dam in

India in the early 1990s and others have faced more daunting challenges like the people of Eastern Java who protested against the Nipa irrigation dam and faced deadly consequences at the hands of Indonesian security forces in 1993. Yeah. Interest tribes have also organized to combat deforestation and road building projects that encroached upon their territories. The Chipp-Coup tree-hugged movement in India during the 1970s and 80s

famously succeeded in stopping government clear-cutting efforts and similar projects have echoed across the globe from Malaysia to Australia, Brazil to Costa Rica, Solomon Islands and Indonesia and beyond. Churches are fishermen in many regions, such as the Indians of Constant, Malaysia, Indonesia, and multiple ports along the Pacific Coast of South America, including Ecuador and Colombia. I've also taken action against industrial fishing fleets and croaching on their waters and jeopardizing their livelihoods.

In some cases these words have involved the destruction of machinery, but sabotage is not unheard of, like in the case of a high-tech chemical plant in Thailand in 1986. The drive in force behind these actions really mirrors the lardight ethos, as they share this full van desire to preserve the traditional ways of life and livelihood in the face of industrial capitalism's relentless pull towards a wage and market system. And then of course, outside these movers and shakers, these underground activists, they are also the philosophical light, like the aforementioned Illyge. The neolilite spectrum is more diverse and intriguing than one might imagine. While it may not have crystallized into a more formal movement with clear

representatives as is expected of movement these days, it unites a wide array of individuals who share common a weakening from the allure of unchecked technology and resist various aspects of the industrial monoculture. Perhaps in the connections between these separate groups strengthen, we'd see a greater recognition of the interconnected challenges in this, you know, grand tapestry of all evolved world. But the thing is to address the challenges posed by these technologies, it's not enough to merely regulate or eliminate individual items like pesticides or nuclear weapons. What's required is a profound shift in our thinking about humanity and in our relationship

to life itself. We need to craft, you know, a new world view that paves the way for a different way of interacting with our world, our technologies, and our fellow human beings. We need to reconsider our place and the grand scheme of things and to imagine a world where harmony and balance take precedence of a domination and control. In notes toward a new allied manifesto, written in 1990, all sold by a child's clandening,

the author outlines three core principles and four prescriptions that could drive the new alliedID movement. In terms of principles, Fusty and I suppose most essentially to address the misconception, the new LID's are not anti-technology. As she says, technology is intrinsic to human creativity and culture, but what they oppose are the kinds of technologies that are at root, destructive of human lives and communities. The next principle, too, is that all technologies are political, code, a social critic, Charimanda writes in four augmented elimination television.

Bokai read some years ago by the way that I've been meeting through visit, but continuing the code. Technologies are not neutral tools that can be used for good or evil depend on who uses them. They are entities that have been consciously structured to reflect and serve specific powerful interests in specific historical situations. The technologies created by mass technological society are those that serve the graduation of mass technological society. They tend to be structured for short-term efficiency, ease of production, distribution, marketing and profit potential, or for war-maker.

As a result, they tend to create rigid social systems and institutions that people do not understand and cannot change or control. The last principle, three, is that the police know-view of technology is dangerously limited. Glendining argues that the often hooded message, but I couldn't live without my wood processor. Of course, she's writing this, you know, yes and yes, I go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a word for you.

I am my automatic type, right? Yeah. But this often hood message that I couldn't live without my wood processor. I don't know, I guess you could substitute that for smartphone or computer. That message denies the wider consequences of widespread use of computers. For example, the toxic contamination of workers in electronic plants or the certified and of corporate power through exclusive access to new information and databases. As Mandir points out,

producers and disseminators of technologies tend to introduce their creations and upbeat utopian terms. You know, pesticides will increase yields to feed a hungry planet. Nuclear energy will be too cheap to meet to et cetera. And of course, you know, you have to throw in that that pot chart had nuclear energy. It's very very 20th century coded text. Yeah. However, quote, lean into critique technology demands fully examined and it's sociological context, economic ramifications and political minions. It involves asking not just what is gained, what is lost and by whom. It involves looking at the introduction of technologies from the perspective, not only a few in use, but of the impact of living beings, natural systems and the environment.

And then there's the dual-ledite program, which loses me a bit at some point in time, and I may agree with some of the principles. And you might say that's a sign of my propagandized mind in our technological society, but I'll leave you to be the judge of that. Here's what glendoning explicitly proposes. One, as I move toward dealing with the consequences of modern technologies and preventing further destruction of life, the new, let I'd move much ahead, favor the dismantling of nuclear technologies,

chemical technologies, genetic engineering technologies, television, electromagnetic technologies, and computer technologies, which are according to them, according to her core disease and death, create the interest me to genes, in the case of television functions as a centralized mind controlling force, poisons the environment, all these different things. I mean, I get some of the justifications for some of these technologies, right? Of course, disease, death, pollution, social issues. But I just think that I don't believe in thrown out entire sciences and technologies who will see like that. It feels like a very myopic view being presented on some of these texts.

Yeah. I mean, I guess this was before really the decentralization of some of the means of dissemination of information that happened kind of later on with things like some parts of the internet. I don't want to say by any means of the internet is decentralized, but at least the promise of that which we occasionally see deliver as well, right? Like, if you saw us today, but I was just watching a video of the Yuppay G in Syria that the people in Rojava talking about the importance of women in the revolution

in Myanmar. And just occasionally the internet or technology gives us the thing that was supposed to give us the disability to connect without barriers. Absolutely. But yeah, like you say, that computer or the cell phone that was recorded on or whatever happened because somebody in the Congo in horrific conditions under D.R.C. had to dig out some rare earth chemical and got paid next to nothing.

And their ancestral home now was ruined by some rabid company that makes billions of dollars and pays people like shit. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I absolutely agree that the supply side of a lot of these technologies need to change drastically. Yeah. And also the, you know, just supply chain as a whole, you know, from raw materials to the finished products

and how it gets to us. I mean, that might mean no more of certain technologies or might mean a different approach, but it really remains to be seen. We really have untried other approaches because, you know, we live under this capitalist hegemony. The next step in the program, too, the new light movement should favor a search for new technological forms and the creation of technologies by the people directly involved in their use, not by scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who gain financially from mass production, distribution of the inventions and who will let let to level the context in which the technologies are used. I don't necessarily believe in splitting it down the middle like that, as if scientists and

engineers are not going to be the people that are directly involved in their use. So in some cases, that's true. But in other cases, people who are using the pros sometimes the people who invented it. Yeah, it originated on that to what not. Like when I think about, before they were 3D printing weapons in the revolution in Myanmar, they were 3D printing prostheses because landmines are so common there. Right. And so like for those people where the engineer is a person whose brother or sister or non-binary sibling or what have you, it needs a leg. And so they have iterated or designed a leg. And that person who's very much both benefiting from end use and doing the engineering. Exactly. I get this as kind of like a screen against the ivory tolla types, but I don't

feel that reflects on all of the, or even most of the scientists and engineers. A lot of engineers on the ground, a lot of barefoot scientists as the expression is. Yeah, when we talk about things like permaculture, the things we talked about before, like some of that is a science too, right? We have a thesis when we test it and we prove it and we keep iterating on it. Like it's a hypothesis, I should say. Like, and that's certainly a science, which is rooted in a place and people in respect for the environment.

Yeah. And so I mean, the, the, the manifesto goes a little bit further on this particular point, you know, she's advocating for the creation of technologies that are of a scale and structure that make them understandable goes a little bit further on this particular point. She's advocating for the creation of technologies that are of a scale and structure that make them understandable to the people who use them and are affected by them. She's advocating for the creation of technologies

built with a high degree of flexibility so they do as impoverished and irreversible imprint on their users. And she's advocating for the creation of technologies that foster independence from technological addiction and promise fiscal freedom, economic justice and ecological balance. There, I can't disagree, you know? Yeah, I know, I'm down with that.

I'm absolutely down with advocating for that. Yeah. The third point in the program, she says, we fear for the creation of technologies in which politics, morality, ecology and techniques are merged for the benefits of life on earth. For example, community-based energy sources utilised in solar, wind and water technologies, organic, biological technologies in agriculture, engineering, architecture, art, medicine, transportation and defence. Conflict resolution technologies which emphasise cooperation, understanding and contiguity of relationship, and decentralized

social technology, which encourage participation, responsibility and empowerment. Now, you know, I'm the sole punk guy, I'm the, you know, the anarchist on YouTube, whatever. You got me on these. Yeah. you know, the anarchist on YouTube, whatever. So you got me on these. You know, I grew with all of these, obviously. But what I find interesting is that this list seems to ignore how, you know, the technology is being advocated here, are linked to the previous technologies that were just being decried. You know, like in one section, she's talking about, you know, the fan of these

chemical technologies, but chemistry is an inevitable component of the biological technologies such as advocating for. What you say is that you don't like computer technologies. But when you're talking about like solar, wind and water energy, which to be fair can be low tech too. Yeah. There is usually some involvement of a computer in those energy systems. So I think it's, you know, site inconsistency there.

But I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, I think, yeah, like we can't sort of, yeah, yeah, we sometimes we can't sort of... Yeah, sometimes we can't sort that... To a degree, all of these systems will hire a technology. And I suppose we start to get into what is a technology, right? Before we go too far. And I think that's probably a question worth asking. But yeah, I think it's easy to thread it maybe out of our water, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, like like mom fitted said, technology is more

than just physical objects. It's also techniques of operation and social organizations that reflect our world view. Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose, as you said before, right, like, it's what I think about often, it's like, we, what we need to change is the way we see the world. And then the other stuff will change it. We'll fall into place. Yeah. I think, again, I'm going to go back. So I was just in Rojava for the last few weeks, but one of the things that I heard from everyone there, right, from like, and not just from people in the women's movement, but also from like,

random guy in the market who I'm having tea with, is like this idea that we can't decolonize a country into a decolonize a family and the notion that women were the first colonized group of people, which. Which, and that, so if we can't do gender equality, what are we doing? Well, we can't weigh where we fight this revolution to liberate our country, when we can't liberate our spouse, daughter or what have you. So, definitely. Yeah, it's a very powerful,

I know it's not like as fun as taking a sledgehammer to a cotton mill, but like if we replicate that kind of extractive capitalism is what makes the supply side of these things so bad. And it's what also leads us to think about using them in a way that can extract the most value from the worker. Yeah. So I would absolutely say that, you know, the break the frame in your mind, I don't know. That's a good point. And it's funny, as you mentioned, you know, it's fun. It'll be as fun as, you know, smashing a cotton, a cotton mill or whatever. It may be think that, you think that perhaps in a revolutionary society, I guess, a society, you may see therapeutic,

rage rooms where people think, you know, smash out some of their last frustrations against the capitalist system. Yeah. Consequences, they have left them to fix. Yeah, yeah, to get that out before you take that out on other people. So you go and rewild or something, you know, to get that out before you take that out on other people. So you go and rewild or something, you know, to get that energy out of us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, remove the toxicity. I like that. No, they get that. It's a place where you can take that anger out. Right. So finally, the fourth and final element of the program. She says that we feed for the development of a life enhanced in world view, in Western technological societies. We opt in still a perception of life, death and human potential in technological societies that will integrate the human need for creative expression, spatial experience and community, with the capacity for rational thought and functionality. We perceive the human role not as the dominates of other species in planetary biology, but as integrated into the natural world with appreciation for the dominates of other species in planetary biology, but as

integrated into the natural world with appreciation for the sacredness of our life. We foresee a sustainable future for humanity if and when Western technological societies restructure their mechanistic projections and foster the creation of machines, techniques and social organisations to respect both human dignity and the nature's wholeness. In progress towards such a transition, we are aware that we have nothing to lose, except a way of living that leaves the destruction of all life. We have a world to gain. End, quote, word. That was a nice, a nice, a nice very rhetorical flair at the end. Yeah, yeah, that's about. So I mean, in my opinion, come into the clues here, then you'll that it's a hits and a miss.

They hit a lot more than they miss. There's certain things I have some slight quibbles with. And I really, of course, I have to give them credit for doing a lot more to investigate and confront technology than the vast majority of people. I mean, they're asking the right questions, questions that you don't see be an ask the tool. You know, you get these announced ones for new technologies, new innovations, new techniques, new whatever.

And it's always just like marketing and advertising and it's just implemented. There's no say of people. There's no raising questions about what are the consequences of this be 10 years on the line, 20 years on the line, 50 years on the line, 100 years on the line, you know? Yeah. And lessons of Buddhism are very clear. Technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. technology should serve humanity not the other way around. Yeah, I think that's that's like a key take home. Like yeah, it's there to make our lives better, we don't have to not to allow us more exploited. Yeah, landscape is vast and it's constantly evolving, but the principles, the light and the vision of conveyor tools, I think they can offer

us some guidance. And I hope your way was to take that away from this two part to. Yeah. That's all I have for today. Great. Thank you. Follow me on YouTube, Andrewsm, supporting Patreon slash St Andrew. Thanks James for being part of this.

I think you, that was good. I enjoyed that. This has been It Could Up In Here. Peace. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check

us out on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. In 2017, Libby Cazwell was found dead in a motel room in Independence, Missouri. We have a term called JDRLRR which means just don't look right.

On season two of my podcast, what happened to I take a closer look at Libby Caswell's life and death. Libby's case keeps me awake at night. What happened to her is unknown. That's something that I need to know. Listen to what happened to Libby Caswell on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, and I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains. We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, the supernatural, there's something here,

truly something going on, and honestly, there's something here, truly something going on. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, you should be very happy, you want? This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Chelsea Paredi.

Do you feel chronic existential dread but love talking about delicious snacks? Call me! My podcast is relaunching! Do you fear wild, dangerous animals to the point where you're constantly watching attack videos and reading articles about wild animal tech survivors or those who succumb to attack? Call in! We can also discuss reality shows and emergency room footage.

Listen to Call Chelsea Paredi on Will Ferrellrell's big money players network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.