Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 18: Our Wars Today

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Hey all, this week I spoke with Our Wars Today (@ourwarstoday2) and he had alot to say, including: - His work with Atlas News - His time in Ukraine  - The Instagram journalist community  - Queen is dead memes - and much more 

Hey everyone, we're live and this week we're joined with R.Wars today. He's a member of the Instagram journalist community. You see him running around a lot on the Atlas News website. He's a good friend of Chase Baker's and I'm really excited to see what we have to talk about this week. So, hey man, how you doing today? Yeah, man. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's glad we actually could get some time together and shoot shit. Yeah, no, it's, it's been a chaotic summer all around. But it's really nice to get on here and talk about things. And yeah, I'm rwars. I run a variety of social media pages primarily on Instagram and telegram reporting on conflict news, journalism, all types of geopolitical events. That, uh, I guess real quick, like, you're not a journalist, are you? You're just a guy

who's interested in what's going on in the world or Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, I kind of like, my, my joke is I'm a jet. I'm a journalist in training. Because like, I want to, you know, work in the journalistic field. I want to, you know, do the work I'm doing as like a journalist under the auspices of Atlas News. So for instance, like when I went to Ukraine over the summer, my media pass was under Atlas News LLC.

And so, you know, I had the press credentials from the Armed Forces of Ukraine under Atlas News. So I mean, in that way, I'm a journalist in terms of like a formal education training outside of college, not really. You know, I mean, I'm taking college, but not for journalism specifically. And, but that's what I, you know, that's what I kind of want to work towards at some point.

But I also kind of see the work I'm doing now in a lot of ways is being like in that field. I just have like a blend of a lot more OSINT usually. What do you go into college for? History. History major. Yeah, I connect news and history really strongly. And so for me, it's I think a common saying and it gets misattributed to all different types of people but the Quokka's News is the first rough draft of history

And so I kind of see it connected in that way where everything's you know, how we remember history is just how news recorded it basically and so In that way, you know, you can interpret the current times through our historical perception, but also we can sort of connect history and news pretty quickly because it's essentially the same medium of content. And it's always interesting when you mentioned that the rough draft of history because you know, usually, what's the saying, history is told by the victors so yeah there's always two sides to everything but if there is a rough draft they're like yeah there was a battle in a 1066 but anyways here's both sides of the story so yeah in the middle yeah it's it's a it's a tough line to walk for a lot of um i think historians because there is like a lot of issues with how history is recorded especially depending on where

you're looking in the world um and of course mean, that's sort of like something that's considered when you're examining history, you have to take into account that there's stuff which has been misattributed, which has been misrecorded or, you know, and historians are always going at it. I mean, they can argue all day about who's right or what was the correct, you know, recording of the history from one side of the other. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so with a history major, do you have like an interesting minors like geopolitical studies or something like that? Or you're just kind of like, you know, generic? Just, I'm, I'm studying media, media for a minor. Gotcha. Yeah, so media and digital work. So I mean, that actually came in halfway through college, because when I started college, I was going history, but I kind of figured maybe I should have a backup in terms of like, just experience. So I was going with an economics minor. And then I got a couple classes into that and realized I really didn't like taking economics

classes. And I was like, all right, time to pivot. And I was like, I'll find something that sort of fits what I'm doing now. Because at the beginning of college, I was already doing our wars, but to a limited degree. So, you know, going through college, I decided, you know, as I'm my interest or evolving war with like journalistic type stuff, I don't pivot that in my studies as well. So it's paid off as well, because I learned some really interesting things in my media classes that I don't think I ever would have learned anywhere else in terms of like how media is perceived globally and different cultural things. Yeah, I want to see globally is you can go CNN is everywhere. So you can go to Barbados, Brazil or South Africa and everyone's watching CNN or BBC. And so it's, that's really cool. But then

I was talking to Colin Mayfield last week about how in say Puerto Rico that the only outlets that focus on say Puerto Rico or any islands in the Caribbean at all are like Latin based. And so the Americans are in Western world in general really doesn't focus on what's going on there. And so, yeah, it's definitely interesting to see how the news is perceived around the world. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It's the way people digest it around the world is really,

I mean, it differs so greatly. I mean, one of the classes I'm taking right now, we're talking about how technology has enabled the spread of media and just like the difference in between areas which had access to certain types of technology like the telegraph or, you know, early radio waves, television, et cetera, versus areas that didn't.

And even now there's disparity in a lot of areas which have like, you know, greater access to mobile technology and the internet versus those don't and the way they disseminate information is really fundamentally different because it's usually oratory as opposed to anything else. You can always see those breakdowns to say, folklore, folktales or something, because it was usually like you just said, an oral translation of what happened.

And so it kind of builds that. And this is thinking way bigger, but this is more like we're, you know, the cornerstone of society is storytelling. And so, I mean, yeah, this really happened, but then you started to fluff it up and then it's, yeah, I mean, Americans and the Western world really focus on the internet and what's going on in the world or to see what's going on in the world. But then you can go to say Africa or somewhere in Southeast Asia and it's all just oratory. So you know, it's a really interesting divide with that.

And I mean, I think a lot of it can be attributed to like, you know, how those areas developed, probably under colonialism, I think probably for, I mean, it would be a big guess of mine in terms of here, break it down, just because obviously some areas weren't having the, their own national industry and technological development where they could support their own media networks. And so, yeah, it's really interesting. And it really deeply does affect people's world views as well. I mean, that's the important thing to take away is that, people have different ways of disseminating information,

but the ways that happen can like greatly affect the societies that exist within because they can have totally skewed worldviews, maybe not like, you know, wrong worldviews necessarily, but they skewed ones compared to other people's worldviews because if you're consuming, as you said, like, you know, any type of mainstream media constantly, you're gonna have an incredibly different perception of how things are going. Oh, yeah, of course. And then especially in America, in a lesser degree, Europe is very politicized as well. So this means a new story breaks, it always goes, all right, what camp are

we putting this? Is it conservative? Or is it liberal? And then there's no real room for. And I was talking about this last week with Colin that like the center, kind of just like, I want to tell a story kind of guys go, well, we need to have an agenda. And that's kind of how, again, it perceives in a direct, I guess, a society's or the world's perception of what's going on. And going back to like you and Atlas News and all, I guess, everyone in the community, which is everyone's pretty just clean cut down the middle. Here's what's happening. Like Tesserawn's a great example of.

Yeah, here's what's going on. Here's everything. I here's everything going on in Ukraine. Oh, I was banned. Great. Thanks. of, yeah, here's what's going on. Here's everything I, here's everything going on in Ukraine. Oh, I was banned. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's interesting. We have, we have certainly an interesting mix up of different people who can like represent different ideas for Atlas News. But yeah, but we also, you know, sometimes trade here to this pretty like, you know, try and report it for what it is.

And, you know, we usually try to get away with what we can, especially when you're dealing with Instagram. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have noticed that Twitter's cleaned up a little bit on how they censor, I guess, some pages, but yeah, Instagram's just the iron curtain meta in general, where you could post whatever you want on Facebook, but then it's just going to go into the void because there's not going to be any outreach related to it. So it's yeah, that

whole it is a pretty interesting community. I like them. Yeah, the problem with growth is a big issue that I see because I mean, I mean, obviously the platform that we find on Instagram has an opportunity for organic growth that you can't really find in a lot of other places. And it's just, I mean, it's really limiting when you can't use Instagram to grow a community in that way, which is why you see people like Tessarron, even myself, other pages, when you get banned and you basically just have to either wait it out or appeal to Instagram to see what can happen

because I mean, growth is good on other platforms and you can certainly get and grow an audience on Telegram or Twitter or you know, something else by itself, but the visual component of Instagram and the way that the reels and their algorithm makes it so accessible to share your content just really has a whole different capability, which is why it's like, it's like, you know, don't like the platform because of, you know, who owns it and how they moderate it and how they organize it and treat its users. But on the other hand, the, the reach is insane.

Absolutely. It's Instagram is, I mean, I've been on it pretty sure since it came out and it's just amazing to see how it went from not even DMs where you can send a message. It was just a picture and then you had to put the little text in there and then it only had like a character limit. Just crazy stupid stuff like that. And here we are 10 years later and an entire business empires are being formed on Instagram. And so I don't know if you watched that, the Joe Rogan with Mark Zuckerberg from like two weeks ago. No, I didn't see that one. It looked interesting though.

Yeah, it was pretty interesting to see his thought process and that Mark Zuckerberg's thought process on everything. And he specifically called out news on Metta. And he was like, we have a lot of independent news guys coming out there. And, you know, that's probably the biggest issue we have. And I was like, oh, that's fine. But that's cool. Yeah, fuck you too, Zach. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, it is interesting the diversity of the communities have I mean, not in terms of like, just like, thought, but like global.

And that's like a big thing too. A lot of platforms I mean even stuff like Twitter um and uh which is very international telegram too. Um I feel like there's a lot of social media traditionally in the west that like you know every different country has big social media websites that aren't Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. And, but I feel like Instagram does because of the visual component of it, where it's not text based necessarily, because everything has to be a photo, one form or another, you know, or visual, you know, something. It's like it has this mass appeal, which doesn't, isn't on the platforms.

Like Twitter, yeah, Twitter you have characters and obviously this translate, whatever. So, you know, there's ways to understand what's happening in their countries, but that the visual component, I think, is what makes Instagram so powerful, which is why TikTok takes off as well. So similarly, in terms of how the algorithms like recommend stuff, which is like, you know, why I actually tried to get on TikTok for a little bit funny story. Yeah. And I just kept running into all these problems because literally anything I post would get banned. I tried posting it was during some fires that were going on. I don't know where it was California. I posted a video like some firefighters, not even like in a particularly dangerous situation and tick tock or roof that and then I post another video that showed a soldier and like a trench line or something and tick tock or move that. And then I post another video that showed a soldier and like a trench line

or something and tick tock or move that. And then I tried posting like, um, like an armored vehicle on the move. Like it wasn't even combat going on. It was in conflict. Just moving it down. I was like, all right, well, I guess this is not the platform. That's going to be welcoming to this kind of content. You're like, yep, this is it.

I wanted to take a step back real quick because you mentioned telegram and. Yeah, your telegram is great. It's just flooded with everything going on in the world. And it's impressive to see that you're on top of everything that's going on. And, but I think the big attraction for telegram was, yeah, it's a wallet text. Yeah. You can have, you know, war porn or whatever you want in there. And the whole premise was like, no one's getting censored. And then the Russians invade Ukraine, they're like, every Russian outlet is now censored. We're like, well, I guess we lost that platform. Because, yeah, that was like, yeah, say what you want, but RT News talked about what the Russians were doing. So like, it was cool to see inside their thought process down to like the societal

level and not the propaganda or propagandized videos coming out of the Kremlin. So Yeah, it's tough because it's like you have to the companies like, you know, the media hosting websites like YouTube or whatever that we're hosting stuff like RT and Sputnik and other Russian outlets, they're, you know, they have to position themselves, you know, with probably what they see as the most profitable option. And, you know, the fact is, they probably would have been really heavily boycotted in some way, or at least received a lot more flack if they hadn't removed those channels I think I think at the end of the economical decision for them just because they've been they see what the profits are and that's

not siding with Russian news outlets during You know this type this type of very very political ideological war political ideological war. It does suck. We can't see that because I mean, as as fun it is to scroll through Russian telegrams clicking translate on every post, it would be nice to have a little easier access to information like maybe some of like the updates like I don't want to have to go to TSSS and

you know, to translate on every single post they make when you know, normally, if it was not wartime, it would be reported somewhere else. I mean, it's hard to say because it's also like, maybe like, oh, you don't want to give propaganda platform or people obviously gonna be like misled or, see things are not true, but it's like, well, you also see things from other sides too like that.

It's not exclusive to Russia, splitting propaganda. So I don't know. Oh yeah. I do want to pour one out for some of those Russian pages that got nukes on Instagram in late February, where those guys were comedians. They were, they were like, they were news outlets, but then they were like, we're fighting award. We're winning.

And so it was just, yeah, they were hyping up. They were talking about, and I think Russian soft was one of them. It's like Russian underscore soft, which was, they were so funny. They just kept saying like, Oh, remember no Russian with that picture of all those guys in the elevator. And it was just, I was like, Oh yeah, Oh, they're gone. All right. That was funny.

And then you have someone like on telegram, like Intel Slava, who's been going back and forth for a long time now. And I think he's been pretty quiet recently. been going back and forth for a long time now and I think he's been pretty quiet recently. Dude, Intel Slava is like the most interesting case study because I don't I can't tell who this person is and and I mean even today like they were posting like pretty sorrowful messages regarding the Ukrainian push and capture of Kupansansk and they're on the outskirts of Izium and Leimann and they're sounding pretty like, you know, not remorseful, I guess, I don't know, they were very subdued, you know, you can definitely tell in their messages

they're like, they encircle us, this will be a disaster. You know, they were very subdued, you know, you can definitely tell in their messages, they're like, encircle us, this will be a disaster. You know, we are taking a tactical retreat, you know, to reorganize and to regain our strength and this sort of stuff. But yeah, very different messaging. The transition overall of Russian no bloggers in the war, especially the past couple months following the arrival of high Mars, has really been a fascinating thing to watch on telegram. I'm not the most up to date with telegram just because I have like a crazy amount of channels. I mean, I would, I would say probably over like at least 200 channels. And most of those are not in English. So it's like to go through every single one when they're constantly posting and

every single one of them, I have to, you know, click translate, wait for the, you know, video or photo to load. You know, it's just very time consuming and I can't really put more than like an hour or two into it a day. Um, I do remember, I think it was like mid March and, you know, the Russian defense had started to stall and they were getting bogged down and the whole world was essentially just dunking out Russia and it's so Vicky.

I think it's yes. So Vicky is one of the Russian news pages. And I remember I just jumped on there randomly and went to the first comment and translated it and it was like, bro, it doesn't matter what you think about Putin. We're going to lose this war if we don't get some support back home. And it was very like different than someone of Intel Slava going yeah t-72s yeah it's the greatest tank in the world it was no we're gonna lose if we'd uh don't actually start doing our job so yeah the Russian it was pretty fun yeah there was a whole big shift even

after after uh the i think it was one of the air bases got hit in Crimea. Right before that or right after that, Putin had to actually apparently summon a bunch of Russian millbloggers to the Kremlin and talk to them about how they had to have a more consistent message, I think, or had a more supportive message of the Russian war effort and not to be detracting so or like making comments about like inefficiencies. And I think the conclusion was online, they just pissed off Russian millbloggers and they went and like talked more shit on their telegram channels. That is pretty funny. Yeah.

And but yeah, there has been definitely a really a big shift. And I mean, it's it's it's been fascinating to see. I don't know. I think it's it's also it goes back and forth because, you know, Russia will take some advances and then they'll kind of switch back. But I think the most interesting part of it I saw was like the criticism of the Soviet military structure, which was something I've seen popping up for. Yeah. Oh, on the Russian side? Yeah, how they're just there, you know, sort of the problems with storing ammunition and like, supplies and central

locations are easy to be targeted, like an older, more archaic way of like distributing forces, where it's not as well distributed, like they're more concentrated in certain areas, like strategic points, not really built to defend a whole frontline, like all this sort of stuff. And now we're kind of seeing what happens when you have this older military structure that hasn't been fully adapted to modern combat, or maybe just maybe not well maintained in general. And then, or even maybe just maybe not, you know, well maintained in general. And then Ukraine takes advantage of that.

We kind of just seeming like now like a psych out, like they psyched them out and they're thinking they were pushing fully into Kyrgyzstan, which they did launch like a limited offensive on some positions, but then switched it up on them and said, it's like we we're going to carkeep instead. Yeah. It was, uh, looking back at the Soviet structure, cause I was in the

military and used to study at a lot. And so I do remember thinking that the idea of conscription is never good. You know, we saw that in Vietnam. It's not good to scoot kids off the streets and send them into the fray. But like their idea of everyone's, everyone's a grunt, your infantry, once you're conscripted, then after that, you could be like, you know, I don't know, calm or an Intel officer or something like that. And you have to stay in. So the more professional guys are the older guys and the younger ones who are essentially just soaking up bullets while everyone else runs around and does the moves. And so I thought at the time I was like, that

makes sense in theory, but no one's seen it applied since the 80s with the Soviets in Afghanistan. And looking at their invasion structure into Ukraine as in Afghanistan, it was remarkable to see that they went the exact same way. They went right down the roads. They didn't seize any terrain to the right or left. They just sat on the road and they were like, yeah, in theory, we have all of everything north of, you know, Kiev, but then in reality, you're just sitting on a road. And so the entire structure was highlighted. Yeah.

Go right up. I was gonna say, yeah, taking the road is not helping. You can actually run the buildings. Exactly. So it's like, in theory, yeah, you do have all the logistical means and you can actually run the buildings. Exactly. So it's like in theory, yeah, you do have all the logistical means and you can move around, but there's a guy in a bush, like he's got an AT forward. So yes, yes, it really highlighted how weak and, you know, ill prepared the Eastern block is. And so that was really highlighted with China when they try to mobilize their military for

Pelosi's visit and they couldn't and I was like dude your whole base is on the Russians who are getting destroyed right now so it's yeah it's really fun so yeah in a war yeah we're definitely gonna win but yeah and I think it's uh it's because you mentioned the the way their military command structure works for the younger ones or, you know, like grunt level and as you already progress. But I mean, a fundamental flaw with this is if you're not continually at war, and the people who are older are not going to have as much experience. And they're just going to have any war, man. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know, but it's just that Russia, I mean, like, you know, to like maintain that, you know, in some ways, I feel like you have to like,

at least have some like a constant influx of like modern combat experience or at least like situations in Russia, you know, Russia, Syria, Russia's Africa. You know, they have different areas where they are engaged in conflict. But like, you know, it's asymmetrical warfare. You know, they're fighting mostly to support, you know, at this point, they're fighting mostly to support, you know, at this point, Syrian security forces and you know, in in Africa, 99% Wagner, defending gold bases and, you know, from ISIS and stuff, you know, gold mines and diamond mines. So it's like there, it's, you know, it is combat, it is conflict, but it's not, you know, conventional warfare with a, you know, a fully,

you know, armed military like Ukraine has that has heavy mechanized armor, air, long range artillery missiles and stuff. So it's, I don't know. I think they, it is like, I could see it being possibly maybe working to some degree if you had like war every year, but Russia has, you know, even though they are engaged heavily in military and conflicts, I mean, their last major war, I mean, aside from the caucuses, which you know, they are those were wars, but again, asymmetrical in some way, due to like the, you know, the size of Russian army versus, you know, Georgians and Chechens. And it's probably as he said, Afghanistan, and it seems like they haven't really learned a lot of lessons since then. That was something on that. Yeah, go right ahead. And I was just gonna say, speaking of the military experience, it is interesting, because when I went

to Ukraine, that was something that they were struggling with as well. Because, you know, Ukraine's a post Soviet state. So of course, they're going to inherit a lot of the same military traits. And Ukraine is even less than at war, you know, Ukraine's post Soviet states. So of course, they're going to inherit a lot of the same military traits and Ukraine is even less than at war, you know, besides since 2014, but has been, you know, has lacked a conventional war as well for a long time. So their training has to really have to make up for the fact that a lot of the dudes just don't have any experience for. So speaking on that and shifting away from Russia more towards the US, we had Afghanistan for 20 years. And I guess like, you know, NATO too, but they didn't really want to play after a while. But when it comes to same thing like Afghanistan, that was the perfect sandbox to keep, you know, Marines, soldiers, airmen, sailors, anyone trained up and actually like experience of what's going on because yeah, the Taliban, there was no way they're going to win like conventionally against the Americans. So all you have to do is just, you know, dry runs of yeah, we're going to grab 15,000

guys, we're going to drop them into Helmand province, we're going to have them sit there, shoot at them, shoot, get shot at, shoot back. And then they'll go home after six months or a year. And so that really kept our military really, you know, well-oiled and groomed because like, yeah, they're still going overseas, but now they're not. Now the Americans are going more into a peacetime mode where you might've seen it and it's heavily memed on, but the global war on terror ribbon,

the fire watch ribbon, the one where you enlist in a period of war. And so you get like this little yellow and red ribbon. Anyways, it's going away. So yeah, it's over. I saw that. Yeah. So at that point, you're like, well, America is definitely in peace mode. And so, like you said, we have consistent fighting, but then after a while, we're going to get to this point where there's no actual, you know, veterans that are actually know what they're doing. Yeah, they're in the military, but they're not experienced. They haven't deployed one of those things. And so, yeah, it's almost wrong to compare the Americans to the Russians because they came out

of the Soviet Union. They got smacked in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union collapsed. They had the 90s. The country almost went into revolution. And then for less 20, to be honest, Putin's the best thing to ever happen to Russia. Oh, yeah. 100%. I mean, the dude fucking 90s and early 2000s in Russia was terrible. Probably the one that, like in contemporary history, I mean, aside from like maybe living under like Stalin or something, it was a really bad time to live in Russia just because of how much crime there was, poverty, really big problems. Yeah, it's, you know, you've seen it, the Molchat Doma, the band from Belarus, Molchat Doma, Monster House, and all their music just sounds depressing. And you look at the videos, you're like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what I thought it was going to be. Yeah, like it's just cold and it's wet and it's gross and it's gray and Eastern Europe has a really good ability to make

everything look like it was filmed in the 50s, even if it was formed film today. So it just looks grimy and gross. And I mean, you were there, we can talk about that, actually. But yeah, I mean, I'll touch on the thing you said about America, I do think it is interesting how, you know, as you said, we have this like pretty well alarming because we've had a constant rotation of service members going out, you know, to a pretty heavily in peacetime, but fully. But, you know, I mean, we still have, you know, deployments to Middle East and Africa in limited ways. And, you know, I'm sure stuff starts to maybe heat up in Asia, we'll have more people sent

that way. But, or, you know, or Europe as well, although they're not going to be getting any combat experience probably in Asia or Europe. At least not immediately, hopefully. So I think over time, I think we will have, you know, not to the same degree that Russia has like a non professional army because they just haven't had, you know, the, the maintenance to keep it up. But I just think, yeah, we will see a lot of people with less experience in conflict. But yeah. I think coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq

with two huge L's on our back, America's definitely gonna need a rebound to kind of flex on the world. So I kind of, the post Vietnam situation where America was like, yeah, we don't want anything to do with war. We got to calm down. That was depressing. And then we rolled right into Grenada in golf or one and just smoke checked everybody. And so it was more like a morale

boost for us. And then it was also to show the world like Soviets are gone. I'm in charge. So I can see America doing a limited operation sometime in the next 10 or 15 years, maybe even small to pick on. Yeah. We need some, we need someone to like kind of squish under our thumb and be like, ha, look, we still got it. Uh, since me, we're like, stop, he's already dead. You're like, yeah, just let's go dunk on another African country. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's see. Like, I don't know. What would be a good target for the U. I mean, strategically, like, what's like, yeah, South America would never have made the most sense. Maybe just take like, well, yeah, hey, hey, you know what, Queen just died. Falklands look pretty, pretty vulnerable. You know, they're not gonna wanna fight over that again. I know that mentioning the Queen, I because everyone of

like the Instagram or Twitter, Twitter's a little different, but they usually seem to walk a fine line of like no political bias. But every time there's like a national issue or international event, their true colors come out and they were like, Oh, you didn't like going, did you? And so it's, or someone's like absolutely, you know, through and through patriotic about the queen. And then you're like, all right. And now that's what we were talking about Ukraine.

Yeah, no personal opinions here. So it's, it's funny. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I feel like, you know, like the, what I report on, it's like, I try to do it as like, it's, I'm, you know, I'm reporting it in a way that I'm trying to interpret the facts of what's happening in different situations and in news stories, like, you know, to as much an unbiased manner as I can in terms of reporting them correctly and accurately as it happened in real life. But at the same time, like, you know, I'm, you know, journalism and op-eds exist for a reason. Like that's, you know, the fundamental core of journalism is having a position on something and feeling strongly about it and reporting on it in a way that you feel like accurately affects the reality because you feel strongly about that reality. So yeah, I mean, I definitely I've

been trickling in the queen means they've been coming in. Yeah, it's I was like, I'm going to take a different perspective on this one. She was the goat. She was a veteran from World War Two, give her a break. Like it's, it's one of those. It's funny. The. So I noticed that you have several Instagrams, and there's like our worlds in our wars, which is the news one, can you like, what is the difference? Why do you have so many? Yeah, okay. So I mean, originally, I just had our wars today. Well, actually, I mean, I just had our wars today Well, actually, I mean I'll take you know a little just like like back stories. I I did

Vietnam War first and that's I started like 2017 I think 2016 2017. I did Vietnam War today and In that I would just post about What had happened in the Vietnam War 50 years ago to the day. So I started in like 1966, 1967, and I went until 2019, so like 1969. And after that, I started to get a little tired of doing Vietnam. I'd been doing it pretty consistently every day

where I would just like post on a combat report or a story that had happened during the day. Um, like we can burns at that point. Yeah, no, exactly. I was really beginning. Ken Burns was one of the things that got me the history. Yeah, I had the American Civil War seriously did. I watched that when I was like eight or nine and I got really into that. And yeah, and then so I transitioned to Cold War today for a while. And I just posted about the Cold War in general, that only lasted maybe like a year or so and it's kind of like a hiatus as well at the end of that. And then right before Afghanistan, I actually

like the withdrawal a couple months before that I had started getting back into it more. And then just so happened that I was starting to get into OSINT and those circles, like in, you know, May, June, July. So by the time the withdrawal started happening, I was already tapped into like the Afghanistan OSINT community. And so I just found myself with an insane amount of like, just crazy footage coming out of Afghanistan. And I was like, well, I already started reporting on it like a little more like instead of doing historical stuff, I'd started doing new stuff. And then I was like, Oh, this seems like a good point to transition. And I gained, you know, it was a very large response. I gained a lot of followers from that.

I went from like under 10,000 before Afghanistan to like over 30,000 afterwards. And if you ask anybody in the domain to cut you off, but I think if you ask anybody in the community, it's what got you interested in what you're doing? You're like Afghanistan. Yeah, cool. All right. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty universal. And so, I mean, I went from there and my page shook getting banned because of course, you

know, you're poured on the Taliban, you're port on ISIS, you know, you're going to probably have your page taken down even if you sense the names and sense the images and whatever, you know, Instagram's just think about that sort of thing. And so I got my page taken down like three or four times that fall. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to start, I'm going to lose this. I made our worst day too. And I started posting random stuff here, like mix of everything. There's mostly like just like backup memes or pages. And then I made our words today revival.

And then I made it. And then after that, fast forward to like end of December, I got my page banned again, and then one more time in January. And then that was the last time I had that main page was in January. And so I was sitting at about, I think just above 30 K on our worst today too, at that point. And now, now look at you. Yeah, well, and then, and then, and then so at that point, I think I made our wars forever, which is now like just a meme page, you know, basically, and our wars today revival is just ideally a mix between like history,

just sort of like interesting stuff, animals, people, sort of things I want to highlight. And then our wars are dot wars dot today is just like my backup backup page. So like that's the one I like, you know, just to keep followers on and like occasionally I'll do collabs with it just to get some more engagement. And then our dot worlds today is just any news that I want to post. It isn't about war basically, but I, I, I want to post about it, but I don't think it fits on the wars pages. And yeah, but then, I mean, Ukraine happened and then my page blew up pretty fast because

I was saying I did the same thing I did for Afghanistan, which is I just barely ate, slept, showered or do anything else but post news and OSINT for like a week straight. And it's I mean, it works because people notice and like, you know, you people start saying like, Oh, my god, this dude is posting 24 seven, like a fucking madman. And, you know, let me share with all my friends and they can see all this stuff that's happening. And especially at the time, you know, there's the intense, you know, spotlight on it because of the global situation now not so much

like, you know, engagement and interest in Ukraine has certainly died down. In terms of like, you know, this is the one thing this is the funniest thing I heard from a bunch of Ukrainian people who are volunteers that is who are who are in Ukraine, that would kill the momentum was the Will Smith slap. It was. Yep. It was almost like it was strategically placed. Yeah, that it took it took all the fucking momentum and like eyes off of Ukraine and back to America. And then like, you know, like, fucking half the world just forgot about Ukraine after that.

No, yeah. And so you go on, you know, Facebook or Twitter and everyone's going, that's still a thing. Just give it to them already. They're like, I don't really care about what's going on in Ukraine. But then, you know, they're the ones waving Ukrainian flags and wearing traditional Ukrainian clothing. You're like, I don't know. I don't think you're Ukrainian, man. But it's, yeah, it's a funny thing to see. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I remember when the war started, everyone asked me who's going to win. And I went Amazon. Have you seen the protests in DC?

Everyone's wearing like their colors. That's funny. That's yeah, it's true. Cause I live in like the DC area and although it was an eye joke about this, it's really funny that there was so many Ukrainian flags in every street corner. Then one or two started to come down and then I guess they didn't have enough colors for June. I think there were 15 or 16 too short.

So yeah, I haven't seen a lot of Ukrainian flags since then. Yeah, I'll see them. It's interesting. The quantity I'll see. And then, and they're not usually where I expect either. I mean, I guess, you know, I guess you can expect them wherever, but I seem out like a lot of like business places, uh, residential know, I guess you can accept them wherever, but I seem like a lot of like business places Residential homes apartments. I've seen a couple like really big ones like really like, you know

Like like they'll have like a very big American flag already and they'll put like a very big crane fly next to it even in some like I know it's like very popular like some politicians or officials and stuff even but like even on the level State positions positions I've seen them with a flag. So it is interesting to see how it's disseminated within our culture this conflict and Especially I mean in my opinion, I think well, you know, I do think that Ukraine has a and you know the right of self-determination and the you know

National sovereignty to have their own country, and I don't think that Russia should infringe on that. I do think they're a big reason a lot of people in America, especially if it's more political or ideologically involved, it is more of an anti-Russian position than it really is a pro Ukrainian position. Or they're just kind of like, well, you know, I support Ukraine. So they, so that they can attrition Russia, you know, that's not the, uh, I don't support or I don't want Ukraine to win. I want Russia to lose. That's exactly about Ukraine.

Yeah. Cause they get annexed or Crimea gets annexed. And then two weeks later, everyone's like, hasn't it always been Russian? Let's consider the phone. Yeah. Yeah. That was so funny. I mean, I wasn't I wasn't in the community at all when you know that happened. But just looking back on it, I'm like,

how the fuck did they get away with that? They just took that as such a huge amount. I mean, you know, obviously, it's very pro Russian and they pulled out a pretty, I don't know, well planned coup and annexation, or at least how they stormed every single building on the peninsula. But you know, it's wild. I do think it is like there is like a lot of people who just like they just want to see Ukraine, like weaken the Russian army as much as possible. You know, it doesn't like they don't care about like what territorially happens. They just want to see the Russian forces get like attrition as much as possible. Yeah, no, I think especially for Americans who are like older Americans who are more like conservative leaning like Ukraine's fighting the war that

they wanted to when they were kids. They were like, go get them. That's true. I didn't know. Yeah, they're like, Oh, yeah, red dawn, brother. Oh, yeah, like everyone above the age of 40 who's like a Midwest guy where with a goatee and a bush latte shirt is like absolute hell yes, go kick those Russkies, you know, one of those. But yeah, you know, when whenever I post, I have noticed like it is interesting that like, despite what I post about Ukraine, if it

involves Americans or like American weaponry in any way it always gets so much more engagement which I mean I guess it's just you know given the fact they have a lot of American followers but I feel like even in the news it's like it's like all the all the like there's like so many big stories that happen in Ukraine or like even across the world and like they just kind of like it's like oh I think I'll report it on maybe they won't but as soon as it involves like one fucking American it's like holy shit this is the biggest goddamn news on the planet. You know, it's like, I mean, I get it. But it's funny to me, because I'm like, I see everyone is like, you know, even though I am an American, I'm like,

you know, and like, very heavily consume American media, I'm like, you know, I think everyone's and it's not like an American by themselves, the human has like more inherent worth and like, I don't know, like Argentinian or something. So it's like, when I see a story with like, inherent worth than like, I don't know, like Argentinian or something. So it's like when I see a story with like an American, like, oh, it's just another person, but it's like the way media treats it is very different. Right. All right. Actually, now that you mentioned this, because you just mentioned the Falklands a few minutes ago, and now you just mentioned the Argentines, Falklands is a very similar situation to say, I don't know, Ukraine, where the army is being told every single day that like, Oh, we need to take this back. This is ours. Falklands is ours. And the army of completely as conscripts, getting to the government buildings and start walking around there like nobody here speaks Spanish, everyone here speaking English, nobody wants us here. And it's like, Oh, it's almost the exact same thing that you just pump the youthful of propaganda and absolute like this is the answer.

This is the way. And then, you know, Crimea is kind of an outsider because everyone there does speak Russian and it's only because they are Russian and it's only because Stalin killed all the Ukrainians there. So, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's it's yeah, it's just all these one offs. It's really interesting to see that like, oh, yeah, it's just repeating, you know,. It's really interesting to see that. Oh yeah, this is just repeating. Time is a flat circle. It just keeps repeating. But yeah, I see it. I think that's an interesting concept. I see it a lot as, in my mind, humans, no matter where they are, even if they

have really different external influences on their environment, so different cultures, different religions, traditions, ways of, you know, societal roles for different people. I think, you know, we still at the end of the day are all humans and we exhibit the same behavioral traits and have the same tendencies and like relationships and like diplomacy negotiations or, you know, and some people are just naturally more prone to aggression or certain, you know, tendencies are less desirable. So I think, you know, when you see like these very similar situations popping up over and over again around the world throughout history, you know, conflicts which look like each other or have the same, you know, trends or the same sort of, you know, divvying up of the sides and power. I mean, it's really just like humans falling into like this natural order of like, this the same shit we've been doing since we were cavemen,

where we you know, we want something and someone else has it and we're like, Oh, this is ours. Like, well, no, this is ours. And like, well, you're not a real this and they're like, well, you're not a real this, you know, you're not even a real, you know, thing by itself. You're part of us. You know, it's like the same stuff, right? It's like, you just change out, you put x and y in there, and then you just switched out for every national nationality and landmass and,

you know, culture and religion, and it kind of fits. It's interesting, because I see a lot in my, in my, in my historical work as well. Well, like looking at it from more like a military side, you know, you have to make your targets human shape. So you get conditioned to shooting at people. And then when it comes like early 2000s propaganda against or even early nineties against the Iraqis and Arabs in general was like Bart Simpson saying, fuck these guys. You're like, hell yeah, we don't like these guys. Bart Simpson likes it on. And then so it's like you're conditioning everyone to go like,

no, it's we're better. This is how it is. It was regardless of you can be the most puritan, you know, perfect person. You're like, you're going to have that subconscious idea that I think I'm a little better than the next guy. So, yeah, yeah. No, I think, uh, propaganda is, I mean, incredibly effective, especially for the youth. Um, and so, yeah. Oh, I was just going to mention that you can see it in language where

the term whole hall and pinko has come back so much recently that I thought it was a joke. It was like, wow, everyone apparently remembers these words that because yeah, the Ukrainians, you know, that's their, their term, the Russians call the Ukrainians, you know, whole hall. And then, but then Americans are using it jokingly now. And they're like, I don't know, man, it's, it's not too many steps away from going, I think the Russians are justified. So, yeah, I, if I've seen American and saying, ho ho, I'm like, all right, you're kind of sus now. Like, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't subscribe either.

I mean, at the same point with calling Russian orcs or anything like that. Um, like, I don't, I mean, you know, I understand people who feel angry or Russian want to, but at the same time, I feel like they're just humans. They have a shitty government and a shitty leader and that's fucked, but I'm not going to dehumanize them just because there's a lot of bad people in a lot of countries, but not all of them are led by a bad government. And there's also a lot of good people in countries led by bad governments. So just kind of the reality of how we are. Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. Real quick, I want to like, I guess transition over like

your Atlas news stuff because you went to Ukraine under the Atlas news name. Do you have anything else coming up? Yeah. I mean, I'm planning to actually go back to Ukraine. So that's that's the the current plan right now. I have to finish up school. And so currently the plan is this next summer or spring, late spring or summer, bring back to Ukraine, which should be interesting. I still have yet to publish all the stuff I discovered in Ukraine because I got back from Ukraine and immediately had to move houses and then moved

houses and then two weeks later I went off to school. So it's been like a very chaotic transition back from Ukraine and right now I'm like in the trenches with schoolwork but it's you know starting to get there you know it's my my last year it's my senior year of college so things are starting to get a little bit heavier and I have have to, you know, it's like in between managing the daily news, managing schoolwork, you know, relationships, personal stuff, you know, for hanging out with friends, it's just like, and then to add on top of that, you know, some projects, it's like, I'm still trying to figure out

the good balance of my workload. But yeah, you should see some articles coming out soon about my time in Ukraine, both working with the military trainers that I met, some Americans and Brits, and then also with some, an animal shelter that I volunteered at and talked to the workers and then spent some time with them. So yeah, so that should be, it should be some good articles coming out soon on that. And but yeah, then aside from that, just Ukraine, the future and then after that, I low key kind of want to go to my top two probably would either be Africa in some area probably on the west coast, or Myanmar.

That is one nobody talks about anymore. That is, that country's in civil war and everyone goes, I don't know, are they Ukrainian? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What are they fighting? Well, the thing is, if we can finally, if we can, because it is true that China heavily supports the Myanmar military junta. And if that information become become more well known, I guarantee you they're getting some fucking high Mars, bro. No, um, that'd be crazy. But no, I think yeah, it's really underlooked conflict. I mean, that I would say Ethiopia, but I heard Ethiopia is pretty dangerous to go right now.

Wait, it's another one. Tigray, that full situation. Remember that? Yeah, I mean, not Ethiopia in general, but I mean, to go to the conflict areas in Ethiopia, I think it's considerably more dangerous in some ways. At least what I've heard from other people. I mean, I wouldn't be saying no to it actually. I think I have actually a lot of Ethiopian friends and they're all pretty awesome and their food they cook is really good. So I'm like maybe I'll give it a try. Yes probably Myanmar would probably be. I actually one of the volunteers I met in Ukraine told me a crazy story about he actually was in Myanmar too because there are a lot of like the same people you know in the military foreign volunteer sort of field and,

you know, they, a lot of them, you know, most people probably associate them with like having experienced the YPG YPJ or, you know, the YDS or whatever, you know, the various Kurdish groups, but the guy I was talking to had spent time in Myanmar, uh, working with their resistance groups there and one time he was saying they were taking a bus between cities and This man walked on with like a woman who was kind of like his captive Mm-hmm, and you know, there was like this long bus ride like for hours. She just like screaming like She was I think it was she was saying she was saying AA, she was like screaming

AA like over and over again. And the guy was like hit like hitting her and like beating her on the bus. Like he was like, he was trying to try to step in. But then like his body was like, no, that dude's like special military police, like he'll be fucking thrown in like a prison if you even try to touch him. Or you know, something he's doing. Yeah. And apparently apparently it turns out the woman because they were in the north, choosing a which is like the the Arkana army, which is one of the resistance groups there. So she was like, just like hours apparently on the bus. And it was, I mean, it sounded like tough, because he

just had to like set through and just like hear her like yelling and screaming for hours as the dude hit her. So I mean, just like intense situation, definitely, but something that I feel like is very, there's, especially when you consider like the war crimes, the Myanmar military is committed against different villages, just like burning, looting, mass executions, there's been sexual assault and rape, there's been intentional targeting of like artillery on civilian villages, you know arson and just like really horrible stuff. I mean I even saw one where early and this is a couple months ago only they tied up a bunch of villagers with like barbed wire and then burned them alive and then you could like you know that then only you know tons of images of just all these bodies like just you know intertwined

up with barbed wire just charred and it was like you know, in a, you know, twined up with barbed wire just charted. Um, and it was like, you know, half women and children sort of stuff, you know, really barbaric things. And, um, yeah, unfortunately they really aren't getting the help. Although I have seen, um, I mean, you know, there's people like the Burma free Rangers who are doing a lot of great work out there. Um, and I have seen a lot more videos recently that have indicated they're getting at least some more advanced weaponry, like, uh like uh and they they also are just making it all themselves i mean they have you know j stark's fgc9 they have other 3d printed guns they have homemade cannons homemade artillery

homemade rocket launchers so that's interesting that's that whole conflict is so underreported there used to be that instagram page the boys in Myanmar. Oh man, I missed that. Yeah, they're gone. Like, yeah, right now while we're talking, I was like actually had like a little portfolio of Myanmar pages and they're pretty much all gone. So, yeah, they've got they've been cracked down I was on among some telegram ones of the KNDF, which is the Korean nationalities defense force. And I have a bunch of different pages and like one of them went like black for like five months or no, like three or four months. And he came back and he was like, Hey guys, bad situation over here, really desperate times, you know, just send, send money, send whatever you can, like a sort of stuff like you just, you know, not exactly great outlook.

But then there's other pages which are doing just fine and still posting content as they did regularly. Like a really good sort of news sources, Quitfit Media, KWIT, THIT media, they do really great, Myanmar coverage, and they do, they cover it from both the KNDF and other stuff under the National Unity Government, as well as like the PDF, People's Defense Force, and even the Northern Armies like ARCAN and stuff.

So it's a good conglomerate of information. But yeah, it's definitely under the conflict. And yeah, the pages like Boys in Myanmar have been shut down. And the only thing that's hard to tell is, I mean, it's just really hard to know whether it was because of what they were doing and that the government somehow found out and they got, you know, targeted or discovered somehow or if Instagram to be down. The promise was kind of really hard to tell. I am still in contact with some of them like I'm the two pages I work with now, I liberate Myanmar and full bodies feast or something I think is their username is, and they're still posting on Instagram. But yeah, it's a shame to see other pages get taken out. I haven't seen my DMs on Instagram is full of just blank Instagram users.

Oh yeah, it's like you can pour one out for those guys. I remember I was, I was bored. I just scrolled back to like February 25th. There's so many, it's just nuked pages. Even guys to talk to this week, like, oh, he's gone. All right. But it's, I think it's a healthy mix of getting nuked from Meta itself. And then just people going,

I don't want to do this anymore. So, cause there is this kind of like migration away from social media. It's kind of like a trad, you know, movements kind of like, you know, get away from social media, go touch grass. I don't know. But I don't know if you see anything like that. Oh, yeah, no, no. I mean, yeah, I'm fully aware of that sort of stuff. I mean, I don't know, it's it's it's a mix in between. I mean, there's a lot of people who are getting into more like ecological interests, especially online younger people. You know, I mean, there's a lot of people who are getting into more like ecological interests, especially online younger people. You know, I mean, you definitely have like the more extremes of that emerging with like eco fascism and you know, various brands of anarchism and other stuff in which sort of, you know, it's like extreme, you know, like traditionalism in that way where it's like they want to, you know, destroy the, you know, internet and they everyone goes back to,

I don't know, antibiotics or something, I guess. And- Full tech and then skate, yeah. Yeah. But I was varying degrees of that. I think, I don't know, I'm not a big fan of social media myself, despite how heavily intergrained I am with it.

Like, I think I like it from a perspective of I can share information, I can gain information, but I think as overall as a tool, it's been very harmful in terms of how it's affected people's stability, mentality, and like outlook on the world. And the problem is obviously also it's like, you know, I think, you know, I think most people are generally pretty smart and can discern between reality and fantasy and fiction, you know, fake news. But, um, No, man. I mean, go to Walmart real quick and ask some questions.

Well, I mean, I say a lot of people, I don't mean a majority though. You know, it's like, I think a lot of people can and have that ability, but it's like, also this, you know, to what degree it's like, yeah, they might be skeptical of information from like 10 new sources, but they're, you know, digesting 30 new sources, right? So it's like, you know, you have to, they're only some people hold that suspended belief or like, you know, like, Oh, I'll take this with a grain of salt, but like, it's only for a selected, you know, you know, range of information. Meanwhile, they're happily accepting all the other information from other news sources. And I do that too, to some degree. I mean, you know, I try to do my best, but I'm sure I've made mistakes,

and I know I have to. But that's, I think the big problem is that there's just, at the same time, there's so many people who are very easily misled and gullible. And the type of misinformation or like, I put like, misinformation in the same category as like misleading information, where it's like, they're intentionally like excluding facts, information or posing in a certain way where it's like, technically true, but like also kind of like, you know, like very obviously, like, like, biased in some way. A double speed, just a written version that

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's good description. And I see that in the same category. And I think that's unfortunately, it counts to a large amount of social media information in the end mainstream media to be fair. But that's also the same thing at this point. I mean, shit, more people will probably watch Fox and CNN on YouTube than they do on the fucking channel. It's, I mean, I just read a thing the other day that Tucker Carlson is the number one, you know, conservative voice. And then Hassan Parker is the number one, like left his voice. And I was like, I don't know. Your two choices, your two choices. Which path do you take Western man? Yeah, exactly.

You're like, how do you feel about Turkey? And that's pretty much decides what's going on. Yeah. That's funny. You know, I mean, it really is. I mean, I think that probably speaks to the polarization more than anything in between viewpoints. But also the difference because I mean, obviously you have someone like, you know, Tucker Carlson, who is primarily targets and demographics are older, you know, more likely to be watching cable TV,

more likely to be watching cable TV, more likely to be into that older media form, where you have to wait for a time slot, basically. And he does get a lot of... I mean, his show is the most watched, as you said, during that time slot. I mean, he dominates Fox, he dominates all media, basically, in the US in terms of mainstream media. And his viewership is pretty crazy. And then you have someone like Son Piker, which is like you know he's what like entirely exclusive on Twitch I think or he's got YouTube I think he has it gets a lot of views on YouTube too which you know Karl Carlson does to even a greater degree but Twitch is a very interesting platform I think in terms of how it's emerged as really like this new way for people to interact with

how it's emerged is really like this new way for people to interact with media and just content creators in general. And, you know, so the live aspect is certainly cool. Absolutely. Yeah, the look is you're also interactive. You can get in the chat and just spam shit and then just like see what happens. Like notice me and then they maybe do. maybe you don't. I don't know. But I did laugh really hard when Sam Hyde called out his son, Piker, and he was visually frustrated on the stream. It was pretty funny, but I think, I think they should box. I think that'd be funny. Uh, I think it'd be hilarious, but yeah. Yeah.

Uh, I really liked, um, the I dubs, uh, boxing matches that he put up for like the youtuber clash you see that oh yeah that was no time yeah that was that was good epic meals oh that was even I mean shit he didn't hold his own um against uh I don't even know who was fighting some oh Dr Mike right or something yeah I'm like uh yeah I you got beat the fuck up but then it was yeah it was it was I see I've gotten more into, I wasn't as much into it, like probably like five years, even four or five years ago, but like MMA, martial arts, like just watching different fighting stuff

that has been certainly something I've gotten into in the past couple of years. And it's interesting to see like how it's, it's now making its way into like communities that haven't traditionally, you know, been involved in that sort of activity. It's just like, you know, basically gamers. Yeah, there's gamers and then you have like Hasbulla who is openly calls anybody out and then they're like, you're going to beat up this, you know, 17 kilogram waiting dwarf, like, there's no way. I said video and punching check. That's funny. That was a bizarre crossover. I was like, why is this seven foot four giant hanging out with this kid that's like 18 inches? So this is insane.

How's it looks like in his 30s, right? Or something. He's 19 or 20. Oh, really? Okay. That's what's funny because That's older than I thought. That's what's funny because he looks both like an infant and an old man at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I thought he was like, uh, older because I think he kind of had like that like, wow, 19 years old, damn. Okay, because he's because he's like at the same. I mean, he is young in that way. But he's also, you know, that's interesting. It makes it kind of honestly explains a lot more of his behavior. Because I sometimes I'm looking at him, I'm like, there's no way a dwarf a grown man is acting some like this in some ways. But now that makes sense. 19. Yeah.

Did you see that YouTube video that got him banned where he threatened to kill a woman? It was pretty funny. No, that's crazy. I've seen him. I've seen a lot of people. It was pretty funny. No, that's crazy. I've seen them. Yeah, I've seen them. Been a lot of people. It's, it's very funny. And it's like, he's talking to his sister and she's like, how's like his sisters,

like a five, six Russian woman. Like she's regular. And so she was like, has bully, you're very famous. It's ruining my life. This woman took a picture of me and I didn't like it. And he looks into the camera. He's like, and she'll allow, she will not be able to continue to breathe unless she deletes the picture. And it's like,

and then immediately was banned. And then the video came up and he looks so frustrated. It was, yeah, I'll send it to you. But it was, that's funny. Yeah. So that way off the rails here. No, no, no. Hey, Hasbulla is the unifier. Everyone can relate to him. He's low. He will, he's, he's's going to bring the East and West together. Man, when though it was like early March or something like that and has bullet does all those live streams. So every time he starts up, I'm like, why are you and your friends not in Ukraine? It's because he is Russian, right? Yes. Yeah.

So like what how's that? I mean, has he is Russian, right? Yes. Yeah. So like, what, how's that? I mean, has he like spoken on that? I mean, you know, I mean, he basically has blown up in the same period of time that Russia has been blowing up Ukraine. You know, like he came out and said, I think he came out and said he doesn't care about issues that are outside of the Palestine conflict. So he was like, that's all I care about. Very basic. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very, that's all I care about. Very basic. Basic. Yeah, very, very dialed in. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.

Do that kid cracks me up. But yeah. I think we're getting to about that time unless you want to keep going. I mean, we definitely can. But Yeah, I'm done to I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm like, Oh, yeah. What's going on here? What's going on? Very funny. I kind of would wish that era comes back. Yeah. Tucker Carlson. I mean, I don't know. He's just a crazy influence for the ideas that he puts out sometimes. I mean, I guess he gets it about like anyone who is like a major influencer is like, you know, political, but like some of the stuff I mean, like, you know, I don't know. There's like, you know, there's baseline normal like conservative stuff Um, you know pretty standard like, you know republican stuff

It starts going on like the fucking like white replacement theory rants bro. I'm like I'm like dude, what the fuck are you doing? I mean, I I mean before I don't you know, listen to Tucker Olson at all You know in that matter, I don't really media political pundits or talking heads I don't think it's pretty listen to Tucker Olson at all, you know, in that matter, I don't really see media political pundits or talking heads. I don't think it's pretty boring. Most of the stuff they talk about, it's just sort of like, you know, it's stuff for the masses, right? It's, it's what to talk to, you know, so they can get the, what 70% of the people,

you know, to vote for them or, you know, exactly. And it's not targeting everybody. They're just targeting the people who are already ideologically aligned with them. But when he starts going on, some of the crazy rants, bro, I'm like, like, dude, you have such a huge platform. It's like, this is what you choose to do with it. Like, I don't know, I feel like even in the idea of like, you know, like, even, you know, ignoring the idea that he's just like, talking about like, like a crazy conspiracy theory, which is just how demographic change works in history. The fact that like he could be using his position, strategically for the Republicans to better themselves. And as he doesn't, which is just really interesting because I feel like he could literally, I mean, him and DeSantis could take over the party easy.

I could see that. So he's taking that. Daddy DeSantis, his following is insane. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. Like, I mean, DeSantis will like literally, he can, I mean, you know, aside from the die hard Trump fans, which will never abandon him, you know, DeSantis can suck up a lot of Trump's constituents. And you know, if he has Tucker Carlson on his side, or, you know, Tucker supports him

in the way they supported Trump in terms of like political messaging and just sort of like ways that, you know, interview him on the show or whatever. I mean, I could definitely see a presidential run being pretty close into Santa's future. And even a tight one at that. But the thing is like, I mean, you don't see that happening. I mean, I see it happening in terms of like Santa's but took a cross and like he just like he just locked in on his rants, bro. He just he's I don't know, he's just all over the place. What is going on? What is going on? The liberals, he is a media Democrats, they want you to believe one thing, but

actually, it's a different thing. Or it's this thing. Maybe it's this thing. This Jones man Jones was the best at just schizo echo chamber. Just mindless rants for hours. It's like Tucker Carlson is not even remotely close to that. No, we lost Joe. Yeah, I watched. Yeah, I watched Jones more. I tried I feel like as I grew older, it was like harder for me to watch him just because I'm like, not because like I necessarily like was like,

I don't know, I not because it ever stopped being funny. I don't think it ever really stopping it's always so it's like absurdist it's like so like against the grain and like in contrast with reality it like makes you laugh I just kind of get so red when he talks like he's speaking from the heart yeah no and that's the end of the thing I mean he's so like convincing with it and then I think it's just the fact I mean I don't know I think I became like more like after a while like I think sometime sometime late high school, I started like reading about more what he had done in terms of like Sandy Hook stuff. And then just like some of the more like fringe theories he had pushed, which, you know, a little more, you know, like dangerous or, you know, like actually like having like harmful real world effects where people were like listening to Alex Jones and then like doing some crazy shit in real life, which is like the problem, which is like, you know, that's when it reaches like actual danger. It's like not when he's doing the

comedic bits or like satires when people don't understand that he is literally playing a satirical character and he has argued that in court multiple times. Which is interesting because that's also something that Tucker Carlson's team has done in court on multiple occasions, which is claimed that he's playing a character in some way and that the, what he's saying shouldn't be fully taken as reality. What's insane is Jones and his wife got divorced and he got custody and immediately went to Australia and got a DUI and his wife's like, can you please give me my kids back? Immediately got it. Immediately went to Australia, got wasted.

Yeah, it's, it's one of those like, you know, legal issues when you go to Wikipedia. So funny. Remember when it happened, I went, there's no way that's real. There's no way he got on a plane immediately afterwards and got a DUI and all straight up. It's insane, because it's like, I feel like the traditional presumption is like, even if, you know, there's like, you know, there's obviously like, I think that the assumption is like, there's a discrepancy and how, like, divorce court and, you know, custody works in America, where generally, even if, you know, maybe one partner is more qualified, generally, if the mothers tend to easier for them to get custody just because of the fact you know it's like you know birth from their and you know it's their children and usually they're considered like you know more traditional um like home tenders or you know like children rears or whatever by society um but then you have alex jones one possibly one of

those unhinged men in america and the is like, yeah, fuck it. You gotta take them, bro. I was watching his Joe Rogan interview again, where he starts out of nowhere, like breathing heavy and it was like, my ancestors are coming down there possessing me. I'm living the lives of millions of men. Jones is like, are you okay? And then immediately after I think, like kept threatening to fight people. He's like, I'll throw his right now. Joe, don't even doubt me.

Yeah. What are you talking about? Dude, I'm so excited for the you watch channel five Of course. Yes. Yeah, did channel five the new interview with alex jones. Oh my god. It's gonna be amazing I can't wait to see every time red scare Which is the most bizarre crossover between like shack and hesbulla is the red scare Scare girls and Alex Jones go into the shooting range together. I was like, what, what is this? Are you familiar with those, the Red Scare partners? Yeah, I mean, I'm aware of them. I'm not like, I'm-

Too dialed in, but when Jones came on, I went, yeah, I gotta listen to this. I gotta see what this meeting of the minds is like. Yeah, I definitely, I've heard some, I've listened to them a little bit and I've heard some interesting things about the hostess, like about their backgrounds and just some of the stuff they've been involved with online in the past. So I don't know.

It's, it's, it's, it's all over, but yeah, no, that was an interesting crossover. I think, I don't know. It's out there. Oh man. Imagine if we got Alex Jones and Sam Hyde to fight. Brother. Two, two, two, the mat, the match of the monsters, the behemoths hosted january 6 yeah live live from the catholic life from the white house launch yeah i don't know i wouldn't know who would be fun

or more fun to watch sam heid and his son pike or sam hiding jones because jones is just large yeah because i feel like i don't know. I don't even know Sam Hyde's pretty tall. He's like over six foot. He's like six, four, six, five and like 265. It's insane. That's rigorous. I mean, for reference, like I'm six, five. So, um, yeah, yeah. So it's uh, I he's like, definitely up there. I feel like you might have it you might have too much of a height advantage on Jones So I feel like Alex Jones Jones is 510 maybe yeah, I might have Alex Jones. Hi cuz Does not say 510 yeah Yeah, you got it

I don't know. I think honestly this, honestly, this is all going on tangent here since we're talking about show anyway. Um, I'm a, I'm a big advocate in some ways, not like, okay, I'm not like a big, I'm not like an activist for this, but I believe, uh, to a degree that there is a way you could successfully implement like, uh, types of blood sports. I like fighting sports, and you could use them to better social conditions for people. And it would probably be a combination of like, I think there should be different tiers.

I think there should be like a civilian tier where people can volunteer and fight each other in arena to like, not fatality, but to, you know, at least, you know, to a degree of injury with blunted weapons or whatever they desire. And then, you know, gladiatorial type combat, and then they'll use and then it will host by a company. This is all very technical and probably has a ton of abuses built into it. But like either hosted by a company or government that has like a,

so for a watchdog organization to make sure abuses isn't happening. And then the money from the pay to watch, uh, streams from it could be used to like reinvest in a communities and society and like better things. Because my God, bro, you, you put people in an arena and you like tell them like fight to near death. You're going to get some crazy views, especially, and this and this is this is this is where it gets really good you sound like you have a lot of time on your hands man just this is just something i found in the past and uh uh the the but this is the capstone part of it is you gotta make it like the roman collateral

arenas because they had some crazy arenas and i want to see the return of naval combat uh in like coliseums, you know, they would just fill a giant Coliseum with water, just put two big ass boats in it, the bunch of dudes with swords and they just like board each other and hack it out. I mean, that would go crazy if you were wise nowadays, like, I mean, you would just get millions of people all over the world watching that and the revenue it could bring in be pretty significant depending especially if you got like more popular or successful people to fight in them and then my other idea you might have to like give them a little incentive like we'll give you some fentanyl if you go stand in

this room and beat people up well i mean it definitely be like a like a like a prize thing you like i don't know like 100k 100k afterwards or something um and then my other idea was that you could apply that same idea and this is the part where it becomes a little more tricky with legality, like a volunteer, a voluntarily only gladiatorial arena for prisoners. And they can, you know, volunteer not to get time taken off of their sentence necessarily, or anything like that. But maybe, you know, to get, you know, slightly better living conditions or something, or like, you know, to get, you know, slightly better living conditions or something or like, you know, some sort of like, you know, I don't know, cafeteria money. I don't know, sure. Something. But, and in that way, I mean, you know, especially, and this is of course the only problem is that, as I was seeing this idea, like a while ago, I was like, also concerned idea that maybe giving a bunch of prisoners combat experience is maybe not like the best idea, especially like in heavily, you know, like really being taught like brawl to the

death of their people. And then like just going back into prison after that, and then filling an entire prison full of people like that. I may not be like, just like, take it a step further. Just put a little wall around like Baltimore, Detroit and be like, all right, guys, this is it. little wall around like Baltimore, Detroit and be like, all right, guys, this is it. Yeah. This is Truman show this one. Yeah. The dome 2.0.

Um, uh, you know, I don't know. I do think, I don't know. And beside all the, you know, prison stuff, I do think that like, there could be a, a way that you could monetize combat in a way that I think a lot of people, like, especially a lot of like young people and young men specifically who are like, you know, have a lot of like anger or just want to fight. And maybe, you know, they, you know, they don't want to join a gang or the military or the police. And this was like an arena where they could, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And an arena,

but one that could be like used to generate profits to actually like better society. And then a lot of people would probably watch. So if it was done right, I mean, you got to do you got to do it up, you know, you got to do it like WWE stuff, you know, like, like, like theatrics, but at the same time, like an attitude era, WWE fight club, that's like gladiatorial Roman style. That's that is insane. That is. like gladiatorial Roman style. That's that is insane. That is wow. And monetize for public consumption. Everybody's winning. It's a humbling experience for everyone who loses and you get to watch this guy get beat up. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Yeah, that's pretty funny. That's one of my plans after I become a billionaire. I'm just gonna build my own little gladiatorial arena, fight club

setup, going back to where you talked about like height differences between like Jones and Sam Hyde. I know this is like a few minutes ago, but I met Chase Baker a few months ago and he towered over me. I was like, wow, I was not expecting you to be this tall. He was like, yeah, dude, what's up? It was, it was, it was funny. you to be this tall. And he was like, yeah, dude, what's up? It was funny. I met a few of the journalists guys here in the community and he was the one I was like,

I did not expect you to be like 6'3". So. Yeah, we, same height, same voice. We're just the same person really. That's it, yeah. But yeah, I don't know. I can't say, I can't speak to the height of other Atlas members.

I think, I think Tesseron is five foot something. Sorry for the sorry for the If he's six foot, I'm sorry, Tess. But that's why I feel like it's like it's like a high. He's like I think he's like five, 10, 511 or something. I can't remember what the other guys are to be fair. I haven't I only know I never met any of the Atlas members in real life, you know, all our interactions have been online I've only seen a number of their faces Still a couple guys who I haven't but I mean, you know We still generally work together and we're adding on new members to like we recently had a good history

Join us as a contributor to the website. So you know, it's like it's we're not a stagnant team of people, but we're definitely looking for other contributors. It's just like, right now we already have like, you know, we're figuring out everything that has to do with the website. I know Atlas and his team, the guy who runs Atlas page and the other people who do run the website. I know Atlas and his team, the guy who runs Atlas page and the other people who do run the Atlas website and servers and stuff are figuring out better

ways to work out how we can get other contributors because obviously I have received a lot of messages from people who are like, oh, hey, can I write for Atlas? Or, you know, I do conflict reporting or I do journalism and I'd like to write for them. So I think we're definitely trying to move to a point where we could, or, you know, we're there trying to look for more people. But yeah, it's been an interesting process. I mean, really, I mean, it kind of came out of nowhere in some ways, like it literally, all Atlas new stuff just stemmed from us basically getting shadow banned and

banned and removed from Instagram and so have we chat going, you're like, I have an idea Yeah, exactly like no literally. I mean that that was all where I started was in the group chat where we were just talking about like different ways we could like grow our platforms and atlas told us that he was looking into like website and servers and stuff and having map and We're all on board and she's been a growth since then. I mean we only launched and like what I think I want to say like late spring I think it was like May or May or something May or June maybe March and since then I mean it's been really positive feedback everything

we've heard and we're still adding new stuff too like right now it's been really positive feedback, everything we've heard, and we're still adding new stuff too. Right now it's more of a traditional news site where it shows the articles, but the plan is to have Reddit-style comment threads as well. So there can be active discussions, private DMs. So it's going to be...actually, I don't know the private DMs part, but at least the comment-style discussion threads, where, I don't know the part of the DMs part, but at least the comment style discussion threads, where there'll be more of like the, you know, we're trying to bring things over that have made platforms like Instagram

successful where users can interact with each other in the content and new ways. It's going to be awesome, man. It's really impressive to see, because I've followed Atlas since like 2014. And yeah, it's pretty crazy to see him come from doing this, I guess, on the side when he was bored to creating a little media outlet empire. And yeah, everyone inside the community is really nice. And I like to, like you said earlier, there's different political views and everyone has their different opinions, but then they throw it in like a real dialed in tight package when they do the writing. So yeah, that's really good. I like it. Good job.

Yeah, I mean, hey, I mean, I think a lot of the credit has to go to everyone individually. I mean, it wouldn't be possible if we weren't all putting in effort to like make it what it is. I mean, obviously, and like, you know, you have someone like Tesseron who writes insanely more articles than the rest of us. But that's also because he was posting so heavily on Instagram and then his account kept getting banned. He said, fuck it. I'm switching over to like posting primarily on Atlas because it's just not sustainable. You know, he wanted to post what he wanted to post.

And the problem is like, you know, if you want to post about a Taliban or like, you know, any type of like terrorist organization or anything that's like even remotely, you know, has something that Instagram my sensor was and you know, understandably so he got fed up with it and I mean his account was banned for his main account was banned for like Good like four or five months. I think So, yeah Yeah, it was an RIP moment when he came back. He's like I'm gonna go back on Instagram and what 12 hours later He was a yeah deleted. Yeah, I mean, they do that too. Like, it's like crazy, because it's not even probably I don't even think it was the content. In

my opinion, I think it was the fact that his account was inactive, and then it came back to life and Instagram assumed it wasn't real, which is something that I've had happen to me too, where they tried to verify my, like, identification because they didn't think it was real because they kept making so many different accounts. Like something's going on here. I've seen this email a lot. Yeah, well, I didn't create a different email for every account. Just interesting. I have a lot of inboxes, but that's me for hours, like any of them really. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, I think all the credit really goes to individual contributors,

you know, myself, Chase, the Filthy American, Renegade, Brendan, Justin, who runs Rose Warfare, Narcotic Void, Tesseron, Atlas. Yes, I mean, you know, we, we, and now we have good news doing stuff for us too. And uh, yeah, it's been a, it's been a really interesting process to the evolution of a bullet pages and what we've moved from. Cause I mean, definitely, I mean, you should even go back like a month or two before the war and it was a very different situation in terms of like what we thought we were going to be able to accomplish.

I mean, my page was not like, you know, not small back then. But, you know, for me, it was, you know, for now, if I look back, I'm like, Oh, wow, you know, I have a lot more followers. Although, you know, even though my engagement has gone up significantly, I would still say, I think a lot of my followers on my page are kind of like, foe followers, if that makes sense in a way. Like, like they're followers, but only because like, there was just this huge time when, you know, I was posting all this news, you know, updates. And you know, I, in the first two wars, or two weeks of the war, I got like, 80,000 followers or something. It's crazy. I'm out like in such a short period of time where I

was like literally gaining like, you know, like 10,000 followers a day. And, you know, like really, you know, like 10,000 followers a day. And, you know, like really, you know, like, I think literally like February 25th to February 26th, again, like 10 or 15 in one day. I mean, it was, it was wild. And, you know, now, you know, things have slowed down, I still have a lot of followers. But one thing I noticed I have a really high turnover rate. So I'll gain like 5000 followers in a month. But then I'll lose like 2.5 1000 of them. So yeah, really, really only my game will be two and a half thousand followers, even though I've gained 5000 new followers. So I noticed that on my end, pretty much the same thing you're saying I've noticed that where it's like, you know, you do your analytics, you're like, I'm up 1%. But then you go, you know, when the last week, you're, you're a couple hundred thousand followers, and

then you go down to the numbers, you're like, wow, I actually lost more than I gained. But I think we're in the green at the moment. So yeah, no, I mean, and it's like, you know, and we'll go up and down, like, there's definitely been points where I've lost more followers than I gained them, especially when I, you know, post things that are like a more, you know, either like opinion oriented. Or I just talked about like controversial issues that it's in the like divide people. Like I took a pretty strong stance on like saying that I didn't think that Roe v Wade should be overturned and stuff like that. And that just a lot of people off and a lot of unfollows from that. Or I think at times when I sort of tried to be like, you know, objective in terms of like saying, you know, we should, you know, try to, you know, parse through information about the war from both sides and, you know, not to humanize people, even if we don't agree with their beliefs.

And, you know, a lot of people on both sides don't like that opinion either. So you know there's a I've run into some you know my own little controversies there's the the famous cracker incident which is actually what got my account banned finally my main one which is is that during the controversy when Cracker was in the news back in like January, when it was like this whole thing was happening, I literally, I went to a historical website, screenshotted like the history of the etymology of the word, how it basically came from describing braggarts and people who would crack jokes, you know, cracks from Ireland, which is the origin of the word crack, you know, cracker and how it was like the term that British would use to describe them because they were making jokes all the time. Literally all I

did was screenshot that and then I put a caption I was like, I was like, you know, I was like, it's ridiculous that it's being compared to other words when it has such a non oppressive history. And then that got my account banned finally. That's so stupid. I know. I know. It's the fucking I was I was so pissed at it. But it's like also the funniest shit because I meant someone had to go in there and report

the shit out that post that someone was so heavily offended by that, that I was saying that, you know, I was like, as a dude who is of Irish and fucking English and Scottish descent, that I was saying that this word is not oppressive in any way. And then they were like, no, that's so wrong. I have to take down your entire pitch. I lost so many followers by posting that farewell queen just post. It was like just farewell period. And it was like a lot of messages like go fuck yourself. And I was like, yeah, I thought she was cool, but all right. Yeah, it's people. All right. It's like, I mean, it's like, I mean, I don't really, I'm like, I'm not like celebrating. I think it's funny. The memes are

funny. That's, I mean, that's, that's honestly for me. I don't, I mean, I think, you know, human dies. It's like, you know, it's, I mean, yeah, it's sad. It's, you know, whatever it's the loss of a person, but like, at the same time, I think the memes are really funny. And absolutely know that Diane has been waiting for. It's like those memes are so funny. I mean, it's like, it's so sad that Diana couldn't be alive right now. To see this great, you know, to see this happen. Yeah, but also I think the people who are like, I mean, I don't know, it's like, I think people in my mind to get like crazy about like defending the royalty, like a little more odd in my opinion and not like in the fact of like saying farewell or anything or

like just respecting them as like a world leader, like people who are like rabid monarchist, you know, like, like super into the royal family, like Brits, but I'm just like, oh, it's a monarchy. Like, I mean, you know, like, we got rid of those a long time ago for a reason, like we've been transitioning, like, that's like, it literally went like feudalism, monarchy. And now we have like republics and democracy and stuff. Like, it's like the opposite direction of where we're going. I don't know. It's just, it's also the amount of money that I was gonna say, like, Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I remember when uh, was it, Markle came out and she was like

the queen's racist and I was like, wow, the queen of England's racist. I never would have guessed that one. What a breaking story. Yeah. A woman, a woman, a woman whose family oversaw the active struggle against decolonization. That's like, that's like she didn't take over the world. It was her grandmother. Give her a break. Yeah, she only prevented the world. You know, she only tried her best to prevent the world from leaving the British Empire. So funny. But hey, man, I do have to take off here soon. So I'm gonna cut this. So yeah, I mean, if you want to take a second to plug what you got, we've talked for a while, but yeah, um, if you want to check out more of my content, you can do so on Instagram at

our worst today too. And then the rest of my accounts are linked in the bio that if you want to check them out as well on telegram It's just our wars today And on there I post considerably more than I do on my instagram So I would definitely recommend checking out if you have telegram or even downloading telegram to check it out either way It's pretty fast download jump in the channel and you can see I post a lot of stuff from news Uh osin Updates, uh, and like especially a lot of uh stuff focusing on like military equipment guns stuff that's captured conflict footage and beyond that i have a twitter account which i

don't really use but also rwars today um but yeah thank you so much for having me on man i really appreciate it it's it's a great time talking to you absolutely it's been really fun just shooting the shit for what is it a while now i mean yeah, yeah, I mean the time doesn't really matter was a good conversation I had a good time and you know, everyone who's listening. I hope you enjoyed it. So alright, I uh, I'm gonna Cut this and then Talk to you later. Okay So So Thanks for watching!