TRASHFUTURE - PREVIEW: Fences ft. Seamus Malekafzali

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

We spoke with journalist and friend of the show Seamus Malekafzali about the events unfolding in Gaza, specifically concerned with the question of how things became so bad and the hubris of those made... the situation worse while simultaneously losing control over it. Toward the end of the episode and after a jarring change in tone, we review some new editions to Neom and investigate Rachel Reeves' frankly odd manner. To read Seamus' excellent pieces on Gaza, check out https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 And there was also like a real intellectual debate in the Middle East, Delhi City, Iran, about whether or not Israel represented some sort of anti-imperialist fashion against the Gulf Arab powers. Obviously, that wasn't true then, but it's definitely not true now, as things continue to get dumber. And Ben Veer's TikTok account is a good example because it's just him constantly day in, day out, smirking at the camera, smiling, goofing off, laughing while talking about heinous crimes that he is undertaking in his role as national security minister. I remember in particular like when he stopped serving hot meals the palisity and inmates the most basic like Right as a human being when you were wearing your depressing and he's like he's throwing around bread It's a it's a schoolyard bully mentality like a cartoon like a cartoonish villain
Starting point is 00:00:58 Doja cat was furious about being used as the soundtrack for that as well. I hear Like the dance was particularly distasteful. Oh my God. But he yeah, that is like, it's a continual dumbing down from an already intellectually void, devoid movement, but you will lose those trappings and then you're just left with Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox until it's just
Starting point is 00:01:24 nothing of any. I don'tx until it's just nothing of any... I don't know, it's got enough wonder. I want to talk a little more about the idea that, yeah, like the fighting back, unexpected fighting back, and sort of how so many of the roots of that are also in the states, and specifically, like the Abraham Accords, the pivoting of Saudi to Israel as well, which created basically a vacuum for Iran to come in and say, we're going to do this for you, but we're less of a hollowed out society than Saudi.
Starting point is 00:01:55 Yeah, this is the politics stuff. And I think, yeah, obviously this is a factor. I just think it's important to acknowledge up front that the thing undergirding all of this is still the colonialism, right, is still the apartheid. No, of course, and I mentioned this in the piece I just wrote, but the sound is a normalization, it's kind of like, if you're planning out this operation, like this is the moment that makes you, I guess if you're a home office operative, think like this is exactly what we've been trying to like,
Starting point is 00:02:29 send a message about, and this will be important in that respect. The Abraham Accords are really interesting. I wrote about this in Jacobin a couple of weeks ago. The image that they try to project from the Trump administration has like this big complicated peace accord even though the UAE and botrain were never at war with Israel at a point in their history There are two Gulf nations whose creations are fairly recent
Starting point is 00:02:58 And then it quickly became like oh, there's and the original the original reason for that was that they were doing that to stop annexation of the Jordan Valley of the West Bank. And then it turned out that they continued settling it and doing whatever they want. And then the AMR reports quickly became even more of a comical shelf themselves where Morocco normalized because America agreed to not to recognize their colony in western Sahara and then Sudan or for Dana Robacher. Ooh, I love God. It's a really crude system.
Starting point is 00:03:38 And Saudi Arabia, because they're led by essentially a petulant child who is, it is mid-30s now, I don't know how old he is, MBS. They're saying like, you can get big PR books out of this. If you normalize this real, like you'll get back in the natural stage again. People will love you again. They'll call you a peacemaker, the failure of Kingmaker. You're going to be the big OG. You'll read a line to bounce out. And he's a moron. So he's already fucking up with his own diplomatic
Starting point is 00:04:12 work and doing with trying to make peace with Iran and make things more stable. Talks about wanting to build it, wanting to build a fucking nuclear weapon. The Saudi nuclear weapon would be amazing, just like a completely gold atom bomb. Like with a Gucci belt around it for some reason. Unfortunately, they, they detonated the uranium in the laboratory when they tried to brand a fendi logo onto it. Right, right there. I should say, I'm sorry, I think I've gone way past the pressure.
Starting point is 00:04:44 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, always defeat no matter what, then you will become unaware that you're blinded by your own ideology and your own cruelty, and you can't be surprised when they fight back. But also, that it would be, it's bizarre not to have predicted it because things like that hold normalization project destabilizes all those relationships and causes unpredictable things to happen. Yeah, I know. You, I think I wish I could remember his name.
Starting point is 00:05:31 I think Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, this couple of years ago, was like, Middle East has been more peaceful than it ever has been. Like, in this one went right now. You've been from cadence there. Yeah. You. More peaceful than ever before. It's like about to get hit by a tsunami. The tide is out as
Starting point is 00:05:51 far as that. That's great. That's a great, great. And now if anything, the waves are going backwards. People are telling me you're going to be so so there's a tsunami coming. I said, well, why was the water? Why does it go backwards? Okay, no one can answer that, they can. The liberals, if I'm about to get killed by a tsunami, why is the water going out? And I talked to them and I said,
Starting point is 00:06:12 Hey, if there's gonna be a tsunami, why is there an earthquake? That's a different thing, actually liberals, I don't know that, that's science, okay? I should be clear, I should be. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. Yeah, it goes back into the entropy thing. If you have seen things shift around, you saw the UAE thing,
Starting point is 00:06:32 you saw the back bread thing, you saw the morocco thing, you saw everything else kind of go more or less how, you know, normally. You, I think, wrongfully assumed that going a little bit higher. You know, this is the semi-sider every is a big player, making Faisal back in the day, what he was like the arbiter of the anti-Israel boycott movement back in the 70s. That's a big thing, but like maybe we're past like, you know, first into the second into the final, that kind of thing, up and back off with it. But that's because you've just completely tuned out
Starting point is 00:07:06 from Palestinian society and what people have been saying and discussing and those tension points. You lose sight of things by focusing on one thing as being like the key to everything else. I mean, you saw right after Gaza, Gaza's invaded Israeli territory, the Biden administration's like, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:32 I think it's important that we keep doing the Saudi Israel normalization, because now it's, it can constantly, like it can't adapt to actual situational complexities, but it can adapt rhetorically. Because now it's something that's important as a fuck you to the Palestinians. It's also, it's been so funny seeing the Saudi diplomatic response to this, because of all the countries to put in a position where their diplomatic line is, uh, yeah, very concerned call on all parties for restraints, right?
Starting point is 00:08:07 Having the Saudis put out a statement that's like, yeah, listen, we don't support the killing of unarmed civilians. I know you support. They don't support littering, right? The trouble is if you leave dead bodies everywhere, that's why I should say I should say just this before that Saturday are up. There seems to be a real like schism between a Saudi diplomatic corps. We're trying to like do their jobs to maintain Saudi-review stability in the region and not get like fucking bombed by the Uthays. Oh yeah, with the Air Force that they have now.
Starting point is 00:08:42 fucking bombed by the boothies. Oh yeah, with the Air Force that they have now. They're trying to do their thing, but NBS just, they have to find a way to keep it off camera somehow, because he keeps like every time that guy speaks, he sets relations with Iran back like five years. It's an incredible thing. I sort of almost wonder if Neon is just sort of a sandbox. It would be nice if you just stuck around there. Yeah. God. Anyway, what was that? So I'm totally gonna say is in light of all of that, then I mean, once again, you look at what the domestic, a lot of domestic responses in Western countries, I'm looking
Starting point is 00:09:20 more at the UK, but if you look at the, you well, it's the same sort of a, everyone's door stepping Jeremy Corbyn so they can yell at him for saying, maybe there are two people involved in this particular conflict. And then, – But, first of all, why is your house so expensive? Second of all, why did you not say that the Palestinians should be exterminated for this? Yeah, it's really getting intense in Britain of all places because, I mean, partially this is like an other stick to beat the left with. And partially it is just that British commentators are authentically very racist. But it really has become this thing of like, no, we should be reporting people to the
Starting point is 00:10:04 police for displaying any kind of nuance on this. It really has become this thing of like, no, we should be reporting people to the police for displaying any kind of nuance on this. We should be demanding from people such obvious things as to say, do you think that Hamas are nice people? I mean, do you think that killing's or hostage takings are like a good thing absent any context? And it's like, you don't have to engage with this. All of you have like, you know, like the entire sort of like
Starting point is 00:10:31 political media sphere of this country, the take on this, the overwhelming take on this is just one of such denseness and fucking willful fucking ignorance. I genuinely cannot get my head around it. And it's like a sensuality, right? It's kind of like, there's a lack of interest in some ways, because like one of this kind of criticism
Starting point is 00:10:53 that was made when you sort of had the Corbin leadership and that they were actually interested or they were talking about Palestine issues, was the idea, it was used to mock them, right? Like, you know, they're too busy talking about Palestine and not enough about, I didn't know, because they don't care about anything fucking else either. So.

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