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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture, and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know, because after listening to stuff, you should know you will. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I'm Jess malady. Confetti here. Hi, I'm psychic and I'm hey shady lady and welcome to Boss Level podcast where we feature conversations with gas tube leveled up, bringing an XP boost to the table. We pick the brains of professionals, creators and bosses and industries across the globe to help our listeners achieve their own boss level. We are not just creating a podcast, but a gamified and engaged community. Listen to boss level on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Bobby Brown. You might know me as the makeup artist beauty expert, but today I'm here with a brand new podcast, the important things. On this new podcast, I'll be joined by my co-host and dear Friend International best selling author, Anjali Kumar. Each week, Bobby and I are looking for ways we can all learn to live more authentic, gratifying lives. You can look forward to learning from our amazing guests, including the incomparable glorious. Chinam charity founder Christy Turlington, Burns, and many, many more listen to the important thing starting on March 3rd on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mama, what does the chicken say? Job. Giraffe, giraffe. Really. Giraffe, giraffe. You're not going to get it, all right? Just make sure you know the big stuff. Like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their age and size. Get it right visitnhtsa.gov/the, right seat brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the ad Council. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here. And I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient. And with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want, if you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, along with Garrison and Chris, we are preempting the episode that we'll be airing after this because of events that happened in Portland, OR this weekend. On Saturday the 19th, there was a weekly racial justice March. The March again, it occurred. It it's occurred every week for a couple of years now. Umm. It is a sensibly led by the mother of a Patrick Kimmons, who is a a Portland, a young black Portland man who was killed by the police a couple of years ago. This is a regular thing. As a general rule, you'll see a lot of folks in the right talking about this March is like an Antifa gathering. This almost never gets any coverage whatsoever because as a general rule, it's it's. Just a March where people, you know, uh, protest, police violence. It's not something that that tends to to draw much attention. Even within Portland. This Saturday, a person who lived in the neighborhood where people were assembling for the March left their home, confronted a group of women who were acting as corkers. Corking is a job at protest. It's a Traffic Safety thing. It's people on a mix of usually bikes, motorcycles, scooters. You know, and you see like a one wheel and their job is to kind of route traffic around the March in order to keep people from getting hit by cars. It is a a safety thing. These folks were confronted by this person. Reports on the ground that have been covered in local news from people who were there say that he started out yelling at them, calling them terrorists, and according to one person who was on the scene, within about 90 seconds began firing. He hit and killed one woman and he wounded four others, and he himself was shot by a protester who was nearby who was to all everything we know so far. Legally open, carrying a rifle. Uhm, he is. The shooter is in critical condition in the hospital. One of the people who was doing traffic security that night is dead. I believe at least one is still in the hospital. The others have been released. That's that's the the actual like, that's. Those are the facts of the situation as they're known. The protester who returned fire quickly afterwards turned themselves and their rifle into the police. You know, the police did the stuff that they do in these instances and then released. The person who had responded defensively to the shooting and that's where we are right now. Portland police have been very cagey in saying anything about this. They have framed it as a clash between a homeowner and protesters. One thing we can say, based on where this person came out of, it does not appear that they were a homeowner. It looks like they left a would have been like a rental thing. Not that that particularly matters, but it's interesting the framing that the police are choosing to use here. And yeah, there's there's fairly little information. As of right now, the name of the shooter has not been released by the police. Neither has the name of the protester who responded to the gunfire. But we do know, you know, a number of the people who were hit. We know the person who is deceased. Avoid kind of spreading anything more specific than that until there's there's evidence. There's not yet video of this, although one of the people who was there says they have a GoPro that was taken by the police that may have something. I don't know the extent to which we will get that information again the police have been acting to. Kind of make this look like a clash rather than what the evidence that like reporters at OPB and the Portland Mercury and even the times have have found the interviews they've conducted. It seems fair to say that this was a mass shooting. That was stopped by a protester as opposed to what I would call a clash. But that's that. It's obvious Portland police aren't going to want that narrative to come out. Very tellingly, the Mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, issued a statement where he talked about the shooting as a piece of the city's ongoing gun crime, did not mention the woman who was killed, did not mention the injured, but expressed his sympathy with the police for being so tired. So, you know, that's Portland. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty sick. And like, you shouldn't like, it's not like dismissing it by saying it's Portland and saying, like, this is like, no, there's there's been growing right from the city and people the past few years that have basically been encouraging something like this to happen. And now that it has, it is also pretty sick looking at different, like media framing and police framing, talking about it's a homeowner and how it was like, yeah, it was like a clash, not like an outright attack on people. Yeah. So it's it's it's bad. It's it's it's pretty gross. But what we can do right now is support the people who were there. Yeah, they go fund me for for medical expenses and you know mental health effects in the. Yeah because bit some of the wounded were themselves plugging up the bullet holes of other wounded while they had also been shot because it was a lot of the people doubled as medics or had some sort of medical training. There were medics who were like threatened by police when they arrived on scene for not being willing to stop providing pressure to a gunshot wound. Like a bunch of ugly stuff happened. There's a mix of ugly stuff and like stuff that seems ugly, but it's pretty normal. Like the ambulance did not move in immediately, which obviously people on scene were very angry about. That is standard everywhere for like ambulances at active shootings. And it's just, I mean, it's not pleasant, but it's also like. They're not ever acting from as much information as the people who were there maybe have. I'm not, I'm not going to blame, you know, EMT's or whatnot for following SOP in this situation. I will blame the police for their responses to stuff like this, obviously, and the fact that you know it, it it it's it's unlikely that a satisfying police investigation will be conducted. That said, it does seem like we already, based on the yearly reporting that exists from, again, a number of different news organizations number to different local journalists that we have a pretty good idea of the basics of what happened. Obviously more will come out in addition to, you know, nothing but respect to the medics who responded. I think it's worth acknowledging that the protester who shot the shooter. Seems to have, from the evidence we have handled themselves as close to perfectly as you can in a defensive shooting. They stopped the threat. They went to the police, they turned in the rifle. They did not. And there's a number of reasons for this, including the fact that like the last time there was a shooting that was involved a left wing demonstrator. That person was haunted down and killed by US marshals. But it also, I think, helps when it comes to the legal stuff that's going to wash out on this, the investigation. It really helps that this person dotted their eyes and cross their T's to make it very clear that this was a. A very like legal self-defense situation. Obviously I think a lot of the folks who participate in these things don't particularly care about the law one way or the other. But in terms of how other people see what has happened and what the fallout to this is and maybe the degree to which. People. Properly put some blame on the city for this. I think it is helpful that the person who responded with their rifle to this shooting conducted themselves so carefully. So I mean, I have, I have a lot of respect for everybody on the ground. A lot of hard decisions had to be made and it it seems like in a A the worst case scenario situation, the people who were on the ground handled themselves with a tremendous amount of of thoughtfulness and and courage. I think that's everything. Yeah, I don't think there's not much else to say at this moment right now. Stay safe, be careful. And again, the GO fund me just type type GO fund me stand with Portland and to Google. It will take you to the GO fund me and you can help folks out there. Hello, welcome to. It could happen here. I'm Garrison, and today we're talking about two of my favorite things, which is unions and coffee. Joining me as a usual is Chris and Sophie. What do you guys think about, about coffee and unions and the combination thereof? Big on unions like that. Like, like making them like having them. I'm not big on coffee. It's it's too bitter. I can't do it. Unbelievable. Onions, great. Coffee. Great. Crisp, bad. Chris gets the wall. That's no, it's the ultimate cancelling that is cancelled. He's gotten more intense. We are coming down on the coffee issue. Yeah, don't I don't ever tell prop that. Don't ever tell Prop. You don't like coffee. I worry for you. And anyway, to to join us to discuss coffee and unions is a union organizer and a also someone with a podcast, so that's fun. But Kaylee Schuler, hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. You know what they say about unionized coffee? That is better. It tastes better. That's yeah, that is, that is, that is what I have heard. I much better quality. That is true. Maybe that's the problem that Chris has been having. There are no unions here, yeah. That's the, that's the thing. That's a Chris jumped to jump to conclusions, but you failed. You failed to consider the the coffee question anyway, we're going to be talking about unions and coffee and Starbucks today because there's been a massive wave of Starbucks location. Unionization is around the country. And I'd like to start by kind of discussing the origin of this like wave of unionization efforts all across the states. Yeah, so. You know, I'll just say right off the bat, like legalities, logistics. The nitty gritty is still not my Forte in all of this, so I might not do the best job explaining it, but I'm going to do my best and to get into the origin story of the whole movement. I'm just going to get into my origin story a little bit with this effort. So I started working at Starbucks last year and not long after I was approached by my fellow partner. My friend Tyler Deguire, and he's also one of our committee members here. And he was like, hey, did you hear about what just happened in Buffalo? And as you guys probably know, Buffalo was the first to unionize. And so he was really excited about it. I was like, yeah, sounds cool. Probably not my thing, though. And he was like, no, it's it is like, just let's talk about it. I was like, alright, fine. When we talked about it, I was like, oh, this makes so much sense. We should definitely do this. So as far as I know, this started in Buffalo. They reached out to workers United because they knew that this was something they needed and wanted. And then when they successfully unionized, I mean, it just sparked so much inspiration across the country and we hopped on really quick. Other locations in Boston also hopped on not long after. And yeah, it kind of spread like wildfire. Yeah, it's been wonderful to watch the kind of wave of, of, of attempts and in some cases, like in a lot of cases like successful attempts, just kind of take a, you know, just go all like how fast they've been happening in so many different places around around the country. I'd like to talk. I'd like to talk about like, why this Starbucks unionization kind of effort is so important? Like, why, why? This is like, of course, like unions are obviously like generally a net good, but like why specifically is it's is it important to unionize these Starbucks locations? Like, what types of like issues is the unionization trying to kind of solve and give, you know, workers better, better conditions at these, at these stores and cafes? So this great question and 1st I want to start by saying Starbucks is a great place to work. I I say that all the time. I reap the benefits. There are benefits, good ones. They pay minimum wage or whatever. Like the the pay is decent, we have benefits. It's really a lot of people who work at our Starbucks say it's one of the better jobs they've had. And we deserve a Union for it's. I mean, really, in my brain, it's kind of akin to insurance, right? You have it in case you need it. If an emergency happens, you don't have to pay the whole, ER, bill out of pocket. You've got some coverage coming from somewhere, right? That, at least in my mind, is what this Union is for. That being said, we also just want to obviously democratize our workplace. We want to have a spot at the bargaining. Table because we, you know, we have HR, we have people that go to, but unions are partners. Looking out for partners and that's it. Starbucks looks out for partners and. Profit. You know, it's a business, it's a huge business. So this would just give us a stronger sense of empowerment. And again, I I really think of it kind of like insurance. It's just us making sure we're taking care of at all times. Yeah. And what what type of kind of, you know, whenever the discussion of unions kind of starts at workplaces, there's always like an element of like secrecy and, you know, being worried about, you know, different types of suppression. So what types of kind of. Things have people been doing when the, when the Union is like trying to get, it's trying to get, trying to get off the ground to organise like as like are people using like signal chats like what what is, what is like in these, in this, in these stores. How is how are we trying to get more people to like be comfortable with this idea and get like get started with the organizing process. That's a really good question and we're still doing that work all the time. That work doesn't really end, especially because it's commonly known now. So I don't feel as scared to say it, but there are being there is union busting happening. It's happening all the time and it's scary and it's intimidating and it's meant to be and it's effective, you know. So, Umm, we have a majority yes vote in my store. I already know that. But it also takes upkeep. It takes maintenance. It takes checking in with people and. You know, for my money, checking in and saying, hey, how are you feeling about this? Are you doing OK? Like, I know that this is scary. I know that you're hearing things like, do you have any questions? It takes us doing our due diligence and researching the things that they're saying. And yeah, I mean it. It's it's kind of a constant thing as far as like technically how it's done. I mean, lots of group chats just like way too many group chats. That that has been most of my experience with most, most political organizing in general is just way, way too many group chats. Yeah. In terms of like what Starbucks is doing to start their like union busting response, is this website that they have launched? Yeah, I, I know you've, I know you've tweeted about this, about this site, so I would love to love to discuss it. Yeah. I mean I just went off. I didn't really think much of it, you know, I just, I saw it on there and just was like, this is lies. I mean. Well, for one, I'm I'm trying to remember everything I've read and tweeted, but the one that's coming to mind is when they say. This may affect your relationship with your store manager, and it may make it difficult for. To me, that is. That may depends entirely on how much union busting Starbucks wants to do. If you want to tell our store managers that this will negatively impact our relationship with them, if that's how you want to frame it, then yeah, it probably will. If you if you want to make it more difficult by not negotiating the contract easily with us, yeah, then that might happen. It's not. That's not a Union problem. That's a Starbucks problem that they are framing as a Union problem. Umm, yeah, I can't. What were the other things that I. Commented on. I would just like to also explain like what This site is and what it's like trying to do. Ohh sure yeah I mean it's it's. Do you need investing? It's it's giving, it's giving partners the facts that they need to know, you know, like it's it's we want to make sure that you are informed before you vote no, that's what that is. Yeah. It's this like Sleekly designed page that has a list of facts about about organizing and all the reasons why it's going to negatively represent, negatively affect your relationship with the Starbucks corporation. So this was one of the points said the Union may not negotiate for some things you were hoping for and some things you value now might go away. That is so ridiculous. That's a threat. That that's a threat. That your well-being will be changed. Like we might not negotiate this contract very nicely with you. That the Union is us. They love to talk about the third party and oh, you're you're store manager is going to have to work with a steward. The steward is going to be someone who already works in the store. Yes, the steward is us, the union is us. Why would we negotiate a contract that doesn't benefit us? That's so silly. Makes no sense. It's, it's it's it's very typical union busting kind of behavior. And if you know if they can just. If this type of propaganda, you know, can just convince a few people and and and scare and scare only only a couple of the people, that will be enough to kind of cause division and shut down efforts in the store. Right. So that that's that's all that their goal is, is to prevent, you know, at least one more store from not doing it. That's like as long as they do that, then it's then then then it's like successful. Absolutely. And you know, based on how many people work at an individual, individual store, that's not like entirely unlikely, right? It'll it will. Like you, you, you union busting efforts do work in a lot of cases and that's why they still do them. Like, that's absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And that's why it's it's really important for, you know, if there are any partners listening to this. And partners, by the way, is what, you know, we call ourselves a Starbucks. The the. Social aspect of this within your store, the checking in with your partners and seeing how they're feeling about it and having as many face to face conversations as you can have and really, really sticking by each other is really important because yeah, like I said, these tactics are tried and true, they're effective, they're intimidating and and so you have to really support each other through that and keep reminding each other like, no, there's a reason we're doing this, this, this is actually still a good thing, you know? Is on top of our jobs. And then a lot of partners are in school or they have families like we already have a lot going on and then we have to go into work and be reminded that our desire for a Union is not valuable to Starbucks. And so they're going to make things harder by. Doing all the things they're doing, you have to really, really be there for each other through this process. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, solidarity is one of the key, one of the key tenants of this type of, you know, the type of organizing. Absolutely. I know Chris is a pretty big union appreciator. I mean, I, I, I like unions, but but Chris Chris really, really, really, really enjoys it. You do. So I'm wondering if you if you have anything you like so much, he'll he'll even like unionized coffee, he'll be like this coffee. What's in this? It will convert Chris about some, some of the, some, some of the, the. There's some stores in Chicago that are unionizing and I'm like, hmm, basically we should check them out. Yeah, you should have at least at least check him out and say like, hi, I'd be like, yeah, good job, guys. What's a great thing to do? Definitely go to those stores, go up to the counter and offer or order your coffee and then ask them to write like union strong or we love unions as your name. Because when the braces are making the coffee and they like, see that sticker come through, it's we really love that, Chris. They have great tea there too. Ice cream, I think. Tea it's really good or the Chai like listen I'm saying I information though about like yeah we have that there's finally a store that's like somewhat near Los Angeles where I am that that is announced their unionizing which is exciting like OK California way to join the party late but you know it's it's cool. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, one thing I'm interested in is. Like how how big is the shop? Like how many, how many people are are sort of like, well I'm not just like just how many people there like could potentially join the Union. I mean anyone could I think we have about. 20 I could be so wrong, but I think we have around 20 partners in our store right now and yeah, any. Well, yeah, just about anybody could join, not anyone who's salaried. OK, that seems that seems pretty common across all the different stories around that. It's around like 20 union eligible people per location. Seems roughly accurate based on the stuff I've seen from, you know, Seattle to Philadelphia to Boston to Buffalo to, you know, all all places in between. And yeah, so part, part of, part of like the actual. More organizational structure is linked to workers United, yes, part of the part of the Service Employees International Union affiliate, kind of a family of unions who's kind of led the led the campaign or you know, has been part of the campaign to unionize the, you know, thousands of locations through the States and yeah, I think around like 80 locations including two of the companies flagship ones inside Seattle and New York. Have have joined this, this effort and it does seem like every day there's like more stores popping up who are who are who are saying, yeah, this is a good idea. This is, you know, whether it be to, you know, be like, yeah, some of our equipment is old and it's like, you know, it's causes like heat burns because it's not like maintenance properly or being like, yeah, there's a lot of like sexual harassment caused by like some like, some like patrons that never gets addressed by management. And or you know, saying like yeah, I may be deserve to be paid more than $15.00 an hour with rent being you know, as high as, as high as it is. Maybe we should be paying over 20 bucks an hour. I don't know how everybody else is doing but my rent situation is interesting. So I'm definitely rent has been ballooning in recent in recent months even it's been it's been really going up, which I mean I'm sure we'll talk about that again at some point on the show here. But yeah like there's a lot of there's a lot of issues that are being like. Yeah, maybe people should be paid more. People should be at the bargaining table. There's a lot of things to address to make it a safer workplace, to make it a workplace where you're more respected. And it's a, it's really nice to see people saying, yeah, I'm not gonna put up with the city war and we can do something about it because like, there are mechanisms to to do this, right? That's why it's happening. So that's that's very, very exciting to see, to see what's taking place. It really is. And it, you know, you make a lot of great points and bring up a lot of the benefits of having a union and. It just like. It just surprises me how anti Union Starbucks is is. Because it's just, it's like. I know you. Yeah, you paint such a beautiful picture because it is a beautiful picture to have autonomy and respect and empowerment in the workplace. You know they. They train us to work through the lens of humanity, you know, by their words. And it's pretty humane to let people have a say, a real say in the workplace, you know? Yeah, I think it kind of exposes that type of, you know? Pretty, pretty corporate language that performative. Yeah exactly it's I am interested in like the other like kind of union busting or soft union busting kind of stuff going on even like before this website in terms of how like men like how like management spin responding and how more like like what like what like the local responses to when stores start talking about this yeah and and another follow up to that is. I I noticed that COVID was mentioned on this on this website. Is that being brought up within union busting at all or is that brought I just? It was like a huge red flag for me that they used like, well we helped you during COVID. We were there for you, yeah. That that that is so which really we did not. That's like, yeah, that's like that's like that's like abusive terminology that is pretty manipulative to be like we we helped you during a pandemic. It's it's like, well, yes, as you should. That's where I was employed. I give something to you, you give something to me and yeah, and as I Twitter ranted in the comment. You know, like. With peace and love, we had to beg to get our cafe closed, you know, like we we like. It wasn't like we just cases rose. And they came in and said, hey guys, we're going to close it like we had. We were calling and making a stink. And, I mean, we were talking about striking, but then we remembered we're not unionized yet, so we didn't. But yeah, I mean, it was we, yeah. We were really fed up with people sitting in there for hours with their faces out, you know? As cases were rising, so yeah, great point. That's really. Pretty. Manipulative because, like, you should be helping us through COVID. That's not like a that's not a benefit. That's just, that's like. Yeah, it's it's not killing people that's like should should be something that's just kind of always there should, shouldn't be an extra, you know. Yeah. And I mean as far as, you know, sort of local interference, I guess I'll say I do want to say. In my case, our store manager, I really care about her. I have a great working relationship with her. I really respect her. She's done a lot of good for our store. And she's really just doing the best she can, having conversations with us. She has her opinions and feelings about it, and I just try to listen to them and she listens to mine. But they're definitely, yeah. I mean as soon as we filed for an election, we started actually as soon as we started organizing and they sort of caught wind. We started having. Barista meetings. Which are as vague as they sound and people who had worked there longer than me said we've never had these before, maybe once, you know in a few years. So we started having all these meetings and not even talking about the Union at first, but all of a sudden they wanted to hear from us and fix things in the store and and all this stuff and be super helpful and present. And then they're definitely just was a heightened corporate. Presence in the store, people we'd never seen before coming in. Like, hey, how you doing? Wanna talk? It's like, no, you're a stranger. I don't want to talk to you. Well, that was weird, but yeah, yeah, there's there's definitely, definitely just a shift in presence. Again, we have these meetings and. Yeah, it's been interesting. And what what do you kind of how do you see like the situation resolving like do you do you like how how, like do you have has and also like yeah what's like the state of? Of your stores specifically. Yeah. So we are on our way to an election. We've requested an election. So we're really just like in a waiting period for that. We don't know exactly when it's going to be. We've heard soon, but who knows when that is. We. Yeah, we have some. We we had to like do a zoom hearing for some of the legalities for things here in Massachusetts. That was interesting. But yeah, so we're we're just waiting for the election at this point. And the election is what will, you know, that's when we're going to cast our yes or no vote and we will find out whether or not we're going to unionize. And I I think we will unionize. It's looking that way. I'm confident and I really look forward to that. What do you think like? What do you see as happening after the vote is done? Like like assuming it is a vote yes, like how do you think this will impact working at the store going forward? It's going to be interesting and it's going to be an adjustment, right, because from the time that we vote and we vote yes, let's say we vote yes and we're going to unionize, there is it. It could take a long time. It could take a year. We don't know. It could take more and less to get from that vote to, you know, what we refer to as the bargaining table to negotiating a contract with Starbucks. And in that time there are things, Umm, and again, if partners are listening, you can do your research on this on the NLRB website. There are, you know, there are things that will be different in that waiting period, right. So if if Starbucks decides to release a nationwide spring rays because why not? We love giving you raises. We would be exempt from that because we're in. Negotiations, because we're in this sort of in between spot there, there are little weird things that we might have to just be aware of. No going in in that sort of interim. Yeah. And then eventually, you know, those raises and any other things that we've sort of been waiting on get brought to the bargaining table. I think this is an important thing for people to understand when you're doing union organizing right is, you know, you have this giant push and you have. Like you have to have the push to get you to get either recognition or to get this the the National Labor Relations Board vote. But most unions that go under go under in like before the 1st contract and you have to like that's something that you know when you talk to people who toward professional, you know union organizers they talk, they talk about this constantly which is like you you have to hold it together during during that. Between your first like between when you when you're when you get recognized, when your votes. Ends that first contract. And it's hard in a lot of ways. Yeah, because the things we're talking about, like management will do, you know, they'll intensify the Union busting because they're hoping the Union will still fall apart. But if you hold it together and if you get that first contract, your union, like, you know you now have a union and you've basically stabilized. And at that point, like you, you now have a seat at the table and you have to, like, take your seat at the table and fight. Yeah. But it's a big responsibility, yeah. When when you say hold it together during that time, do you do you mean like just through those changes and that interim and that sort of weird, awkward phase like you have to like? Just hold it together, like mentally and just kind of power through it. Yeah. Well, also, I mean, you, you have to like, you have to just keep making sure everyone's involved, which is something that is difficult because, yeah, especially after sort of the initial people lose steam, you know, because people have also have like a job to do this entire time, right? They're still, they're still making coffee, they're still making podcasts, they're still doing whatever. So you still have your work. This is sort of beside the point, but it's fun. Have you guys ever done like the 16 personalities personality assessment at some point? I've never done it. It's really fun. I just did it for school and it's the thing that tells you like I'm an INFJ T and my thing is the advocate. Sophie, what's yours? You look like you had one ready to go. I don't remember what it was, but I remember having to do it like 15 times in school. Yeah. So I also forget what I the one that I did for when I was in school as well. But I I brought it up because I'm thinking I wanna send it to my fellow organizers and be like, do this and we can sort of highlight what each other's strengths are and start playing into those. Because like you were saying, Chris, like, it really is a team effort, and I think it only really works if you are utilizing people and respecting peoples's strengths, you know, because not everyone has the same strengths. Like, yeah, you might be a ******** graphic designer, but like, not everyone can do that. You know, maybe they're better at. Hosting get togethers or they're better at writing emails or whatever, you know, I think, yeah, playing to strikes is so important in the long run because yeah, it can take a year to get to the negotiating table, which, which like is horrible like that shouldn't be like it should. It shouldn't be that long. And you know, tactics such as like specifically, you know, raising wages around a unionization effort so that people in the Union don't get it. That is like another form of union busting. That is like like don't think they haven't thought that through like that is that is part of that whole process being like, Oh yeah, you could have a union or you could get higher wages now like that's like that's that is part of what's going on. It's because they want people to not sign on to have long term benefits. So they're going to offer these short term benefits. Like it really is like because of how elongated the unionization process can be, it gives a lot of time for people to get burnt out. And combating that and like combating being burnt out is one of the most important parts. And yeah, it's, it's really, it's really challenging sometimes. Oh my gosh, absolutely, I mean. I love that conversation. I'm like a mental health dweeb. It's it's my, it's what my, my podcast is called your messy friend. And that's basically all I talk about is mental health and yeah, the burnout. I mean, I'm recovering from burnout right now. You know, it's very real. You have to make sure that, you know, while you're taking care of everybody else and making these efforts. Like, you have to make sure that you are checking with yourself every day. And making sure your needs are being met, because giving from an empty tank does not last long. As I'm sure you guys know, if you if if you're if you're if the water in your espresso machine is out, then nothing can flow through to make the anyway. Exactly. See, it was what a amazingly crafted metaphor I just did not tortured at all anyway. So what is the like turnover rate at the store like, like how how quickly are people coming in and out of of jobs and how has that been affecting organizing? The cool question? We haven't had a ton of people leave since I got there. I mean, and I definitely, I can pretty confidently say none of those had to do with unionizing. It was all for just like different reasons we've had. Quite a few more people come in recently and I would say that, I mean it's it's weird because our current store manager who's great, she was hired around the same time that we really started amping up union stuff and. You know, it's almost unfortunate because I think she thought it was it was about her and it just so wasn't, you know? But yeah, so it it I who knows if it was just because she was there now or because of the Union stuff or both, but they did start hiring quite a few more people around the time that we started organizing. And yeah, I mean, it's. You have to walk this fine line. When you have new people coming in, of course you want to get to them and give them your info, or at least give them resources to look into before corporate gets to them. But then you also they're they're learning a new job. It's really fast-paced and overwhelming, like you have to be careful not to totally overwhelm them either. I mean that that's really something I've just tried to keep in mind throughout the whole process is like when my friend Tyler approached me. I was like, I don't know what this is. I I don't. I don't know if this is necessary for me. And now I'm on the committee, you know? So you know what I mean. Like, it's that thing where I'm like, OK, if I could be convinced, maybe anyone can. Yeah, alright. Well is there any direct action that people who are listening or any call to action you have for us that we can provide to our listeners or links or anything that you think would be useful for our people to know? That's a cool idea. Yeah, thanks. Like we mentioned before, if you want to just like stop by your local unionizing Starbucks and get a coffee with the name, you know unionized. Union strong, that like that in person support, especially when you're first organizing, is really, really helpful. Even just stopping by to like drop off a card or say, hey, good luck with unionizing, that really means a lot you can follow. SB Workers United on Instagram and Twitter and just engage with us. Reach out if you need info about how to organize. The people on Instagram are so, I mean on all the platforms. They're just like so on top of responding. And. Websites. I think we have a website. Well, I would assume so I I would assume at this point, yeah. I mean, we have a pretty poppin Instagram and Twitter. But Umm, yeah, I don't. I don't think I'm forgetting anything. I think that's that's about it. And just making noise on online is also really helpful. You know, I love when people comment on Starbucks posts and they're like, yeah, how about unions though, about a little union? The website is SB Workers United. Dot org thank you. Affiliated with the the THE Workers United and the Starbucks unionizing effort which has ways to, you know, donate or buy, buy merch in support of the Union and that kind of stuff which funds all go to the go to the campaign and you know just in case it wasn't clear like, and this is something you'll hear from Starbucks, is all this about the third party and workers United is going to do this and that and blah blah. We essentially, you know, we work with that. They they promote our cause, you know what I mean? They're here to support our mission and our goals. I mean, you'd be amazed by how much partners do for this. You know, United does so much, but we, we do the nitty gritty every day, communicating with each other. We're communicating nationally now we have a platform for that. Yeah, it's really cool. And so, like they are, they're kind of like. I don't know the supporting beams of of everything we're doing, you know? Yeah, yeah, but like the actual makeup of it definitely is with Starbucks employees. I've, you know, and all the people I've been in like Twitter conversations with or Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then. Charged full price for none of that. 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Helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? Ask me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. DMS who are involved, it's like, yeah, like everyone who's, like actively involved in doing it all has worked in a Starbucks before and still and still are like it is. It is definitely being led by the workers. And yeah, that's really great and really crucial. Do you have any, do you have any other plegables, either for yourself or for. Yeah. Anything else in general? Yeah, yeah. Thanks, guys. Really fun. Thank you for having me on. I love podcasting, so yeah, I mentioned SP workers united on Instagram and Twitter. Make sure you give them a follow. Follow baristas you find along the way who are you know speaking up about this. Show them your support. My podcast is called your messy friend. You can find me, I think, wherever you get your podcasts. Definitely Spotify. That's what I use. And yeah, that's about it. Well, thank you so much, Kaylee, for joining us today to talk about Starbucks and unions. Follow us online on Twitter and Instagram at happen here pod and Cool Zone Media. And I think that does it does it for us. Can't wait for you all to win. Yeah, absolutely can't, can't, can't wait for you guys to win. As as soon as as soon as Portland locations start going, I'll definitely go in and support. But until then, I will make coffee alone in my, my, my, my, lonely, my. Like my lovely espresso machine. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for for coming on to talk. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hey there. I'm Jess malady. Confetti here. Hi, I'm psyche and I'm he shady lady. And welcome to Boss Level Podcast, where we feature conversations with gas soup leveled up, bringing an XP boost to the table. That was always my response was, like, I am like a Unicorn here, right? Like, because there's not a lot of, like, out of the closet. Female gamers want to say there's not female gamers. I know a lot of them. There's a lot. But like, it was like a battlefield. They're like this. Our cool boys club and you can't be here and I'm like, no, sorry honey, this is a very dark corner and I'm a lot of life and all the clue right into this corner, right? We pick the brains of professionals, creators and bosses and industries across the globe to help our listeners achieve their own boss level. 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India council. Welcome to it could happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and even occasionally about trying to put them back together. Today, as is too often the case, we're going to be focused more on the falling apart thing, because today we are talking about. The situation in Ukraine. Is as a type or not type because I'm not writing, but you know, you get how I'm used to thinking. As I say this, Russian troops have just moved in to two regions in eastern Ukraine that have been occupied by what are generally called Russian backed separatists since 2014. Vladimir Putin gave a speech that I will be will be talking about a bit with our guest and announced his intention to recognize those breakaway sections of the country. As independent republics, and the area that he has chosen to recognize includes about 70% territory that is currently occupied and held by the Ukrainian government. So it's a big mess. This is, some have said, like a soft version of the invasion that people were expecting. I think it's probably more accurate to say it's a slow start compared to what is potentially possible and very likely coming in the future to talk more about this and about being an anarchist. Kind of trapped in between, you know, NATO and Russia. And everything that's flinging around right now is Ukrainian journalist Romeo Kukowski. Romeo, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Been a big fan of yours. So it's a honor, honor to be here. And you are in, you're in Kiev right now, right? Yeah. Correct. And and how is everybody keeps asking this all around but how is the mood, as you know, to the extent that there's a way of saying that like I've, I've, you know, have things kind of taken a turn since Putin actually made his first big play? I mean. As much as journalists like to say, there is no magic mudon meter to check to instantly pull every resident of the city to find out, walk around and talk to everybody, just like all the four million or whatever citizens of the city. Let me just let me just ask them. Like, there definitely has been a turning point. Yeah. Like one of the big refrains that I've seen, like personally, and everyone has been saying right, is that Ukrainians are so calm. Look at these pictures of them, like shopping in malls and like going to school. What else are you supposed to do? What else are we supposed to do? But I mean, it is true, people have been called, but since yesterday evening there definitely has been a shift and even casual conversation in Kiev like I was sitting. To to paraphrase a famous columnist, usual framing, I was sitting in a cafe. And overhearing the waitstaff chat amongst themselves and obviously the the the whole conversation is, oh, is Putin going to push into Kiev? And anecdotally, we're semi. Anecdotally, I guess apartment prices in Western cities like in Lavive and Ugrad have really spiked up. Like, incredibly, oh boy. So people are. I wouldn't call that's a depressing way to pay attention to that or reason to pay attention to that. Like, I wouldn't call it a mass panic. There are no like bank runs, no like all the stores are stocked, no ones like hoarding. But at the same time there is a steady trickle of people going West and kind of making plans at this point. Yeah. And so this to kind of give people a little bit more context before we get into some of the more political dimensions of this. Right now. There has not been a massive escalation of violence outside of the areas where there have been fighting for several years. You know, there has been an escalation on the frontline that's existed since 2014, but there has not been like, you know, troops pouring across the border in other areas and stuff. And that's obviously probably the number one worry. It it looks like what's about to happen is, or at least it's hard to say because Putin has recognized the borders of this breakaway. Part of Ukraine as significantly larger than the area they actually control and he has moved troops, Russian active duty troops into that area now. Russian troops, I'm from what I've heard about 3000 have been in the breakaway areas for years now, but a significant, yeah, a significant number have been added now. And obviously the fear is that because he has recognized the territory of these, these quote UN quote and his terms breakaway republics as being much larger than what they control that Russian troops are going to participate. With the separatists in attacking and taking those territories from the Ukrainian government, that's one concern. Obviously the the concern attached to that is that it would be not at all inconceivable for a conflict that started that way to spread to a much wider part of Ukraine. This is all coming alongside a speech Putin gave that, unfortunately, is going to be one of those things people hear about in history books. Yeah. Out of its *** **** mind, utterly deranged. And it's one of those things we will talk some more about how the western left sometimes I, I, I I don't want to be like because this is also largely the the online left. But how the online left talks about Putin sometimes. This was not a I want to return to the Soviet Union speech. This was I want to return to czarist Russia's borders type speech. Like the guy has the Tsarist imperial Crest emblazoned on the gates to his palace so I'm really not sure what people would have. Yeah, and and unfortunately, he's better at his job than any of the last czars were because he's he's achieved a notable amount of success towards that goal already. And yeah, he he a number of things that were. It's one of those, like one of the things he said, which is a line that folks like him in Russia have been saying for a while, is that Ukraine's the existence of Ukraine as an independent polity is a mistake. And as an anarchist, you know, there's this like, well, yeah, I don't, I don't like the Ukrainian state. I don't like any state in particular. But if you're, if you're only disagreement is with the the statehood of Ukraine and you're fine with the statehood of Russia, you know, then then perhaps what you actually think is that people in Ukraine should not have any autonomy to disagree with the government in Moscow. And I think that's the case here. There's a there's similarities between how Putin and those like him and Russia treat. Ukrainians with how, for example, the Turks treat Kurds in the southern part of the country. There's this, this thing. You'll hear a lot from Turkey where like, there's no Kurds in Turkey there. They're mountain Turks who've lost their their language. And there's this denial from Putin and the Russians that Ukrainians are a people, that they exist. And there's this. This is something that has translated. Most people have heard versions of this. And just any of the coverage you've heard of Ukraine, if you ever heard of it, referred to as the Ukraine, what that is? Is part of a very old UM. Line that kind of exists to allow Russians to deny the existence of Ukrainians as a people and make it make it seem more like it's just kind of a geographic region, which is not the case. And why you wouldn't refer to, you wouldn't call it the Ukraine any more than you would call it the Canada. It just isn't the way you, you say, should say that. But yeah, so I I think that's at least enough of a background to get into the real beautiful we want to talk about. So, and I'm just going to kind of open this up to you to chat about. What you'd like to say and what you think needs to be gotten across to the international left because internationalism is is something we value a lot here, and it has been hard to find in this conflict. Yeah. Like? Growing up in New York in the 90s. One of the core values I kind of. Absorbed, I guess through osmosis. Is the value that every single person I met, regardless of whatever corner of the world they came from, is the exact same human being as me. And it wasn't and and that kind of realization was one of the things that. I guess I wouldn't say pushed, but. Conspired to to turn me into a leftist, a socialist Marxist. And part of that, especially when I was learning about what the hell all these isms were. Was internationalism the idea that, well, our struggle isn't within the the fabricated borders of whatever polity has has decided to impose their their authority. But. Internationally, every single worker is the same as every other worker. We're all struggling with the same issues, we're all fighting the same forces and generally speaking, we have the same enemies. Aye. Now Fast forward to 2022. I go online and what do I see? Well, Ukrainians are all Nazis, or Ukraine shouldn't exist. Or how can we support either of those? It's two fascist states fighting each other. And I'm sorry, Ukraine's got a population of 44 million. You want to tell me that every single one of those 44 million are Nazis? Like, people even say that about Germany, and they were literally the Nazi state. I mean, are the United States, for that matter? Like we had four years of Trump in openly fascist authoritarian leader and no one seems to say, well, I guess the US should be bombed. Well, I guess there are. Yeah, I mean there's definitely, there's definitely people who say that, but yeah, but generally speaking, that's not exactly the the view that people take, right. So it's it's been a long process of disappointment. Well, I say long. There's always been the the kind of, well, what do these people really think about Ukraine? But Breath of such a a strong impetus to take a side, I guess it hasn't been in the forefront. And now every day I see people that I would have considered comrades that I would have considered friends and brothers just kind of turned their back on me. Because they live here, right? Any any aggression, any action that's taken will literally affect me physically sitting here and you. So it's been it's been really, really immensely disheartening to see that every single value that I thought the left was supposed to value that that I thought the left was built on. The. Read by people with rose emojis, or hammer and sickles in their usernames, or whatever the hell it is. And we should probably talk about some of why this is and what the what the history is here. So the most kind of direct thing that people can point to when they, when they call Ukraine a fascist state, when they talk about this is the existence of the *** off battalion, the Azov Battalion, as a paramilitary organization. That means it's it's not officially a part of the governmental military structure, but it it does receive, it has received arms from the government and it functions as part of Ukraine's defense. Forces for the for the purposes of of fighting off the Russian backed separatists and the Azov Battalion and Nazis, there's, there's, you know the the you can. There's been a tremendous amount of reporting on that. On that matter. It's a a big problem and the Ukrainian government deserves a significant amount of criticism for the degree to which as off has been allowed to continue existing. But there's also a lot that gets left out when people focus on that, including the fact that, for example. The political wing of Azov right sector, which is kind of the that would be fair to call that the umbrella term for like the far right parties in Ukraine Ukrainian government have been pretty effectively siloed away from political power through very active measures to about like what is 1% of like representation and so they didn't actually pass the threshold tantor than you Parliament. Yeah, they're they're non entity politically they're just non popular. They're campaigns fail their mottos. Fail. Their agitation fails. Ukrainians do not want to vote for Nazis. Yeah, and it's it. It is it is a an ugly situation I and I remember talking with when I was reporting on the Maidan uprisings, which is when, again, for people who who aren't up on recent Ukrainian history, they had a president who tried to do a dictatorship and people rose up and fought him in the streets. It was a very gnarly time. About 200 people were shot by government forces. And eventually the president was forced to flee the country, which is what precipitated everything that's happening now, because that President was pretty closely tied with Putin and the people fighting him. We're not all they were, not pro NATO rebels, but they were more definitely more supportive of closer ties with Western Europe than they were with Russia. And that, again, those are kind of the precipitating events for everything that happened that's happening now. And some of the people who were fighting the president's forces were fascists. And it's one of those things I remember talking with protesters at the time who were like, well, am I supposed to get in a fight with them at the same time as I'm trying not to get shot by riot police? Like, what? What do you expect me to do? And it is a nasty situation, and it's one of those things. I don't know. Like, I, I, I, I I don't know what to to tell people about that, because it's it's it's ugly and it's uncomfortable and it's messy. And that's also Ukrainian history. There's a lot of ugly, uncomfortable, messy things here. There is with every country's history. It doesn't mean that people in Kiev deserve to have their house housing blocks pounded by Russian artillery, doesn't mean that people Indika deserve to have their homes pounded by artillery and whatever criticisms you want to make about. To have the Russian Government or how the Ukrainian government is handled as off, and there are many criticisms to make that's not really relevant to the people living in these areas having their homes destroyed on a daily basis by mortar fire. I just want to make like a couple of things really clear. The Azoff Medallion is like 1000 guys. Yeah, like Max. And the reason, one of the reasons that least that they rose to such prominence in the beginning wasn't only their ability to to mobilize in the early stages of the Russian war against Ukraine. It was also because they had very strong financial backing from the former Interior minister Arsen Avakov, and Ivankov is no longer in power. And one of the things you can see immediately was the like almost nullifying of Fascist St Marches and fascist demonstrations in Kiev outside the President's office. That all vanished because more like in Ukraine. Ideology is not very strong, and this is something that I've noticed a lot of people from the US in Europe have trouble understanding about Ukrainian politics. People here are not really ideological. Our parties don't map. Aside from a couple of outliers like Right Sector, it doesn't really map to any left right access. People typically will always want the same policies like they always want a pension. They always want universal healthcare to be better. They always want the roads fixed, generally policy, something most Ukrainians actually agree on. As a result, most of our elections are purely. Personality based. That's one of the reasons zawinski little dimmer Zelensky our current president won was because he was a well known comedian. Yeah, and people liked his personality. And he put out a whole TV show as a PR stunt before launching his campaign. And people voted for that personality they saw on screen. And so when. There was far right activity and and again I want to stress that that activity, even the street activity has almost disappeared. It's because the far right. Is typically used in Ukraine as a political tool by 1 oligarch or one interest group against another. That's why when the money disappeared they disappeared, because the leaderships, the leadership of these fascist groups, typically speaking we're not. That ideological themselves. But they did like having SUV's and they did like buying guns and hiring hookers and doing drugs. Like they liked the money and that's why they did it. And they would convince a bunch of teenagers to go out and wave a couple of torches and March and chant, but these guys were. Really purely in for the money and again you can tell that because when their financial backer disappeared. They're nowhere to be found. Yeah, and it's one of those one of the things that is very frustrating to me. I can remember one of the earliest projects that I did that was like a A4, Bellingcat, as we were. There was a a pride March in Kiev that got attacked by Nazis. This was a couple of years back, and we were kind of trying to identify the individual fascists who were like beating people in the street. And it's spending hours pouring over that footage. It it makes it incredibly frustrating that there are people outside of the country boiling it. Down to, well, all of those people are fascists. All of those people are part of a fascist state. And it's like, no, some, a lot of those people are quite a few Ukrainians have fought Nazis in the streets. You know, that's a reality of the situation and it's it's. And it. It's. It's ugly, in part because. If you actually want to look at what's been happening with the Russian backed separatists, there's a lot of ******* fascists over there. There's a lot of paramilitary organizations and like far right groups that have been used by the Russian government. Wagner, PMC, yeah, yeah, literally, literally named because they're fascist leader. Like many Nazis, it's it's it's it's. It's hard to to understand, honestly, from my perspective, because not only is Russian fascism have far more influence on Russian policy than any Ukrainian fascist has ever had in Ukrainian policy, it's also that the Russian project and the narrative they use there, there's this joke they call or not really joke a slur they call them that they call Ukrainians Nazi Banderas. For those who don't know, but there was a Ukrainian nationalist leader, a partisan fought against the Soviets. And he his organization was implicated in quite a few war crimes. Yeah. Significant number of war crimes. Too many war crimes. Yeah. So clearly Bender himself probably not a great guy. Yeah. But to delegitimize all Ukrainian kind of independence movements that have cropped up over the years, the Soviet government and the Russian government has always, always insisted that there is no legitimate way for Ukraine to be independent. We're all Nazi Banderas no matter what. And that's why you had. There's a picture a couple of days ago of a solidarity March in Kiev with some of heaven LGBT community holding up Banderas flags, not because they're gay Nazis, but because. It's a way of retaking this slur back from the Russians, and it it's all part of. The complicating factor here is that because of how geopolitics worked out in that period of time, there are very uncomfortable but kind of inextricable ties between Ukrainian the the basic idea of Ukraine being a nation independent from Russia and anti communism, and because of what was going on in anti communism. In that period of time, we're talking the 30s and 40s. It means that a decent number of those early Ukrainian nationalists were either directly implicated with the Nazis like Bandera, or at least had uncomfortable ties. And that's a messy part of history that shouldn't be shy away from. But for example, the same thing is true of Finland. Like you can say the exact same thing about ******* Finnish nationalism, Finnish sovereignty and whatnot. And people don't call Finland and Nazi nation. Even though, yeah, the fact that they were stuck between the USSR and Nazi Germany means that there were a lot of Finns in that period of time who made some real ****** ** choices like but also. There's a lot that has to be like you can't adequately discuss why those choices were made. If you don't talk about, for example, the whole domor, you know, which was the starvation genocide of several million Ukrainians by the Soviet government, like, honestly, to go back even further into, I don't know, burnish, my left has come down from a little bit if you go back to the Civil War itself, where a lot of this started. Most of the nationalist groups, I would say nearly all of them. There were one or two monarchists, minor monarchist groups in Ukraine, but the grand majority of them were in fact socialism or socialist. They had like the hammer and sickle and wheats on their currency and everything because at the time that was what one votes from the peasantry. But when the Bolsheviks crushed every independent Ukrainian social movement in exchange for bureaucrats that they imported from the empire and just shoved into Ukrainian cities? Well then you had Ukrainians that wanted to be independent and wanted to have a better life than under the Czar. Well, now suddenly they don't even have that support from the Bolsheviks. And obviously, as a Ukrainian, I can't talk about this without bringing up Nestor Makhno, who was a anarchist leader, the leader of the Ukrainian Black Army during the Civil War. And what happened to them? Well, the Bolsheviks betrayed them. And killed all of them and of course, the movement. And then smeared them all as how to file ****** cannibals, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of of of disinformation you can find about that time. Just like today, you know, only the names have changed. Exactly. So if there is no. Other outlet for Ukrainian nationalism and the group that you thought may be an ally in destroying the empire in granting you self-determination, turns out to be a continuation of that exact empire. Well, it's pretty logical, maybe not right. But it is pretty logical for people to go to the for people to go to the other extreme. And it's one of those. One of the things I think that should be noted more, as we talked about earlier, is that one of these stories of Ukrainian politics, particularly in the last got close to a decade since the Maidan, is that mainstream Ukrainian political leaders and Ukrainian voters have overwhelmingly rejected that sort of nationalism. This time around, and have gone out of their way to silo it out of active political power in a way that one could argue is more successful than has been done in the United States. And absolutely we didn't. Yeah, Trump. Yeah. No, you get you guys basically elected John Stewart. Pretty much. I mean, that was his. That was his whole thing. He put on satirical political sketches. That was the entire show. We did basically elect John Stewart. And, you know, I have my criticisms of Zelensky, as a lot of people do, and one of the things we love saying in Ukraine, whenever people are like, oh, look at all the look at all the Nazis there, we're so not, we're so anti-Semitic that we elected a Jewish comedian. That's how, that's how anti-Semitic we are. That we have huge minorities standing in the middle of Kiev during the high holidays. That's how. That's how anti-Semitic we are. Yeah. And and Zielinski's Prime Minister is also a Jewish man, which makes Ukraine the second country in the world to have a Jewish president and Prime Minister. Like, we don't care because it's not, it doesn't even come up in campaigns. Like what? Even when Romney was running, you'd see Democratic campaigns. Painting is a scary Mormon or the ads implying anything. You don't even have that level of religious antipathy in Ukraine. It it's it's it's just a much more complicated we're actually talking about the problems of the far right and and the fascism, you know, in Ukraine. It's a much more complicated story than a lot of people on. You know, social media or whatnot want to give it credit to because it's just easy to some things up in one sentence and not have to care about a looming humanitarian catastrophe. But that is what we are looking at. If this invasion, it will be bad. If Russia uses active forces in order to take the remainder of those two provinces from the Ukrainian government, it will be a nightmare of almost unimaginable consequence if the invasion. Seeds on the wider scale that is possible at this point, and it is. I've been. Oh, sorry. Go on. No, no, please. Yeah. I've been a doomer on this basically since I first heard about the buildup. Because. Putin has made it very clear over the years what he considers Ukraine to be like. You mentioned, he doesn't think that Ukraine should exist as like a polity. And as a result, I have pretty much this whole time been pretty sure that he's going to attack you. And now we're coming to a very definite tipping point. Just today, Putin's made a lot of moves. Like you mentioned, he authorized military force to be used in the Donbass, and actually he's gone further. He's authorized military force to be used abroad. Which I mean obviously that means Ukraine. Where else that's where his like the about, I think 70 or 80% of the entire Russian army is currently around Ukraine or close enough that they can reinforce without a lot of the active duty because the Russian military there's a smaller. Yeah. But actually competent, right. Yeah. Yeah, yes. Yeah. But the professional, the contract soldiers, yes. Yeah. And especially on the northern border, there are a lot of battalion tax groups that are basically sitting and waiting, I guess, for whatever the order will be eventually and in Belarus. And. Since Putin has given this authorization to operate abroad and he stated that he recognizes these puppet authorities, as I call him. That he recognizes their borders as the entirety of the Donetsk, Luhansk Oblast, which again only a third of those territories are under the de facto control of the public authorities. 2/3 of both provinces are still under Ukrainian government control, including the the critical port city of Mariupol. And now that Putin has authorized force to be used abroad, well. It's kind of. I mean, at least it is incredibly obvious to me what the next steps are from the Russian perspective if I want to subjugate, right? Yeah, and. I think a big failing here is people in the West, especially the western left, know very little of, for example, the Chechen wars, no God, especially the second war and what happened to Grozny. After during that war and what the Russians did, the subject that population, and if anyone thinks that Putin treasures Ukrainian lives any more than he did Chechen lives, then I've got a bridge of the protocell them, though, you should act now, because the valley is going to drop real fast. Yeah, and it's one of those if you as a good leftist, have spent a significant amount of time reading about the horrific crimes of of imperialist nations in Africa and Southeast Asia in in the Americas. What the Russian Federation did there is is on that scale. It it's it's absolutely on that scale. It was a, it was a a titanically ugly war. And any modernly we can look at what they did in Syria or what they are doing in Syria. Yeah, what they continue to do in Syria. But as it turns out, Syrians learned this lesson that I am learning now about big portions of the western left a long time ago, which is that if you can find, for example, some Syrian rebels who are ****** and Islamists or whatever, you can tar every single person, whoever. Hit up against Bashar al-Assad as a as a terrorist, which is really easy, especially if you're getting paid Kremlin money to advance that line. And you your name has been Norton. This brings us to the place where there really aren't clear answers, which is like what can be done. And it is one of those things where it's like, well that's not an easy question because you do have to when you start grappling with like all right, well like should what should NATO do? What should other European, non NATO nations do like what, what what is actually capable of like potentially altering or disrupting the the courses of action here while we're talking about the Russian state. Which has a lot of nukes. We're talking about a situation that could spiral out of control in a way that very few situations globally are capable of potentially spiring spiraling out of control. And so it is a. Not a situation where anyone who tells you this is clearly the thing to do that will work is I think trying to is probably full of **** and a little unhinged because this is a real ******* ugly one. But some of what has been done, we just got the news today that I think we both found surprising but is very positive that the Germans have cancelled construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is a a gas pipeline from Russia into the EU. That a lot of folks were saying Germany was not going to take any sort of stances, solid stances on Ukraine's behalf because of that pipeline, because of how Germany along with a lot of Western Europe is tremendously reliant upon Russian gas exports. For just like keeping themselves heated in the winter. So that's a positive move. I I tend to be critical of the ability of sanctions to do much. And if we're looking historically at sanctions, particularly to how they're most often implied, they have a tendency to just harm regular people more than they have to do. Like we can look at the sanctions in Iraq, right, which which were part of why something like a million people starved. We are talking about different kinds of sanctions in general, and we're talking about the sanctions being imposed by NATO countries against the Russian state. Right now, they're largely sanctions against members of the Duma there. There's there's a lot. It's not the same as looking at like, what was being done to Saddam's Iraq. That said, I I'm still very hesitant to say, I think that sanctions are going to disrupt Putin's course of action. I'm curious what you think can and should be done here, you know, like what is? Do you have any kind of clear idea in your own head about what might have a disruptive effect on on what's Putin is doing? Learn to teleport and shoot Putin in the head with a 9 millimeter? I mean, that would be that would be great. There's, there's. Could we? That teleport had had we that teleportation capacity? There would be a list. You know, I never put my skill points into that. Yeah, but realistically speaking, the Russian state is authoritarian. It doesn't really care what its own citizens think. It definitely doesn't care what other people think. However, Russia has been at least in. The modern realm's relatively image conscious. Which is why I think one thing that could work, for example, or not could work, but would perhaps force the Russian state to consider its actions a little bit more carefully. And I want to be very clear. When I talk about the Russian state, I'm talking about Putin himself. Yeah, the government he has, no. There's no, like other decision makers in Russia. And that was actually perfectly encapsulated during his speech the other day, where he just outright like eviscerated the head of his foreign Intelligence service on live TV for the whole world to see, just utterly humiliated the guy for no real reason just because he can. And you could see that and we're talking about. Russia's top spy, I mean, beyond Putin himself. Stammering like a frightened schoolchild when Putin addressed him just with just a hint of sharpness. So when I say the Russians say I'm referring literally to the body in person of of of Vladimir Putin. And like, honestly, yeah, I would love to see people picket Russian embassies and make demonstrations and marches and so on. Do I think that will have a practical real fact? To be honest, no. Same with the sanctions I'm sure Putin's pet oligarchs and members of his party and the the people that in theory keep him in power, the oligarchs, the the parliamentarians, the mafia Lords and so on. I'm sure they're going to be pretty miffed if their yachts and they're multi $1,000,000 properties in Miami and New York and London and the Villas and the French Riviera when when all that gets taken I'm sure. They'll they'll be pretty annoyed. But I don't think Putin cares. I think that he has a really irrational desire to subjugate Kiev. Specifically, he sees Kiev as what we call in Russian the the mother of all Russian cities. Yeah, it's the I mean. Of the kievian Russ. Yeah. The the word Russian comes from Kiev and Russ, you know. Exactly, exactly, yeah. I just don't think that Putin. Is going to turn away from that goal because a couple of his buddies are complaining that their mega yachts got taken in by the British authorities or whatever. Nor do I think they're going to care that, you know, there are a couple of marches outside of embassies in New York or something. But that may help spur the world as a whole of the international community into taking a harder line stance against Putin. Because time and time and again, like the guys a gangster, he's he's like a Security Service thug if you've ever. Like, interacted with like a petty, like Sergeant police Sergeant or something that has just a bit of authority and pretty much show impunity that that's put into a tee. The dude thinks he's overeducated and the cleverest mandal. Yeah, think the way he talks, the way he acts. He's just a bully. He's he's he's got the same basic personality as like Villanueva, you know, the, the the ******* head of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. He's like, not like a beat cop, but like one of the cops who rises to run a union or run a city Police Department. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's good at consolidating power. He's good at exercising or organizing others to exercise violence on his behalf. But yeah, at the end of the day, he is primarily a bully. And it's one of those. I don't know like when it comes to. Arms shipments, that is a historically again if you look at the history of like let's just say specifically NATO shipping arms places most of the time that does not improve the situation for people in that country that that has been a historical reality of arms shipments not just with NATO as a general rule everywhere when you ship more guns into an area that that rarely improves quality of life, but we are not talking about. A country that has had any kind of centralized political legitimacy or whatnot collapse. You're not talking about a country that is in the middle of tearing itself apart between 30 or 40 different sides. It's not the same situation as well, let's ship a bunch of guns to Libya. You know it. It just isn't there different histories different political realities on the ground. I don't know that I actually think any amount of arm shipments would dissuade Putin from advancing either. But I I don't know what else to do. I certainly am not against the idea of like OK. Guys have some GTM you know have some wire guided missiles have some javelins. Because, like, what else are you going to do? I mean, we're not going to, and I'm certainly not saying we should send U.S. troops in because again, we have to consider the nuclear situation too. I know. What do you think is where are your thoughts there? Because this is something that I, I, I'm very, I'm very mixed. Although again, I'm, I'm broadly fine with. Yeah. I mean, at least give people the ability to fight back. Yeah, it's a difficult one, especially. Like you noted, the military industrial complex has very rarely improved any situation in the world anywhere. This might be one of the few exceptions, because the fact is that. Ukraine doesn't really have the tools to defend them, to defend ourselves. We have, or at least our government claims that we have the strongest army in Europe. Which to be honest with all of the the defense cuts that European countries have made of years, that may be true and at least on the ground sense, certainly the most combat experienced army in Europe. Yeah, absolutely. But what we lack entirely is air power and air defense. And what Russia has in spades is air power and air defense and as we saw. When the US invaded Iraq. Well, you can destroy conventional army in a couple of days by just bombing the **** out of it. And the Russians have quite a few missiles aimed straight at Kiev and quite a few planes waiting on standby, I presume to bomb the **** out of Kiev. And it would be nice to have some way to to defend ourselves against that. But again, there's there's not much that can be sent. Yeah, of course, stingers and javelins and so on, that'll all help raise the cost of the occupation that follows the initial bombardment. But what if Putin goes for the strategy that Assad has used in Syria, which is bomb the living **** out of every civilian residential area in the city until the people just submit or are all dead? Well, there's not really too much we can do about that. And that is like there is a lot that individual that that trained and motivated soldiers with small arms and munitions like javelins can do even to resist a country with with overwhelming air power. The corollary to that is that in doing that, a lot of stuff, everyone around them dies. The city is turned into a graveyard. I've. I've seen that with my own eyes. And that's that's I mean gotta be the thing it it. If you're looking at this with any kind of reasonable lies and not just like trying to find a a political angle to support that has to be. Your main concern is that the potential here is for a tremendous loss of life and also for the creation of millions of refugees and this is something in another of audio clip that you published a bit earlier on Twitter you say which is that like if this. Goes as badly as it can. No matter what your politics are, this will become your problem. 100% yeah, I stand behind that absolutely because. There are a lot of Ukrainians and. While most of us have no desire to live under the Russian yoke, the majority of us are not trained fighters. We're just people, just regular people. And I know, especially in the US with our like out of control gun culture. Imagining like they're the the singular guy, you know they're they're the macho man with with all the guns. They take down the government all by themselves. I'm sorry, it's a fantasy. It's a fiction. That is not how things work, and quite frankly, most people are not psychologically suited to combat. That's why armies take so long, to break soldiers down, to teach them to murder people, because that is not something humans do naturally and the majority of people. Subjected to that kind of violence will run. And again, there are 44 million of US and they will run and run and run pretty much everyone in the world. You saw this with Syria, saw this with Libya. You've seen this pretty much with every single place that has experienced massive violence in the modern world. That's the reaction. Yeah, and that's when we run. We bring all of our biases and problems and cultural predilections to you. And it's. Yeah, I mean that's. That's really the note to end on, and it is. You get a lot of folks. You know who? Who? Rightly, you know, focus on and and think a lot about revolutionary struggles in places like Vietnam and and in Afghanistan. And we'll point out that like, well, you don't need to have. As advanced in military as your opponent to win. And again, just the corollary to that all, yeah, the corollary to that is that, like, yeah, but millions of people die. Millions of people died in Afghanistan. Millions of people died in Vietnam. That's that. That is the reality. Yeah, you can resist an imperial power with minimal technology, but you're not going to leave that fight with a family alive still, you know, like that's that's how it goes. So let's all say a little prayer for. I don't know. Peace. Uh, I hope the the the worst doesn't happen. What? You know it has there been kind of mobilization that you've seen within the, the, the activist, the anarchist community in in Kiev to, you know, any kind of mutual aid stuff like or is it just one of those situations where it hasn't started happening yet and nobody really knows what would even be useful to do if it does? I'll say this. It may come as a little bit of a shock, but anarchists are not typically the best organized. Specifically, like a lot of my friends who are active in the intercast movement in Ukraine have simply joined the territorial defense battalions or the regular Army, and will simply fight as soldiers. There has been a very strong. I don't know if you can't denial. A colleague of mine used the term doomed optimism, and I really like the sound of that. So let's go with that. Yeah, there's been this really strong doomed optimism amongst Ukrainians that the worst will not happen. And there's no real reason to prepare for anything because, well, things are going to be fine, and that's what our government tells us as well. Things are going to be fine. They don't see any massive attack groups or I mean, I feel like that's contradicted by the the open source intelligence that I've been looking at, but I I am just one guy I obviously don't have. Intelligence apparatus of a nation state. Umm. So, I mean, maybe they're right. But generally speaking, people have just been joining the army, going to tactical trainings, but this is all very basic stuff like going to the woods, learn how to set up camp and, you know, clean a rifle kind of kind of things. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant. And we start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. 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Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Nothing like combat training because where would you get that except by joining the army and going to the front? Yeah. It's the kind of training that might keep in the event of a full conflict. One out of 10 of those people alive long enough to learn how to fight. Yeah. And and that might be worth it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you're talking about, like, yes, not not to say people shouldn't be doing that because people should do absolutely whatever they can. How are you kind of to close out like as this? Like Doom, scrolling is the thing we all talk about, and there's, there's plenty of just sitting here in Portland, we just had a mass shooting on a protest this weekend, and so there's a lot of doom scrolling going on in my community. But we're not staring down the barrel of 190,000 soldiers, you know, potentially hitting us from the air and ground simultaneously. How do you, how are you like focusing on the stuff that you can do anything about and the stuff that you can productively handle without losing yourself? Than that. Copious amounts of cannabis. That's good. I'm glad you guys have decent pod access. Yeah, yeah. I actually don't know what I'll do if if my current supplies got out, to be quite honest. But I mean. It's been definitely a a struggle. In the past couple of days especially, my mental health has not been especially great. Umm. But again. I'm one dude. Like, I'm not in very good shape. I have poor vision, one of my eyes don't work. I'm diabetic. Like, I'm not going to go out and and grab a rifle and start killing every ruski I see, you know? But at the same time, I've got a job to do, I as an English language journalist in Ukraine. They have. This is your busy season? Yeah, it's my busy. Like. One of my jobs is to counter Russian disinformation and to like tell people the truth of what is going on here, and that role will only get more important if the the conflict expands. From from the the scope that it is now. So how am I doing? Well, I'm still alive. Have it off myself yet? And I'm still, I'm still working. So I think as as good as I can be under the circumstances. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope your weed supply stays stable at the very ******* my fingers. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Romeo, do you have anything you want to plug kind of as we as we go out here, just if you really want to know about what's going down in Ukraine? I am cohost of the podcast called Ukraine without hype and find it on any podcast platform and if you really want to get a look at what's going on in English with only a tinge of leftist bias. Then TuneIn you can follow us on Twitter hype, Crane and again on any podcast platform that you use so desire. Awesome. Well, check out Romeo there. Check out this podcast and. You know, just try to keep your eyes on the situation and don't let yourself be overwhelmed by what some random person on Twitter tries. To sum it up, as you know, people are more complicated than that. And we're live here outside the Perez family home, just waiting for the end. There they go. Almost on time. This morning Mom is coming out the front door strong with a double arm kid carry. Looks like Dad has the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Ohh, but the diaper bed wasn't closed. Typers and toys are everywhere. Oh, but Mom is just nailed the perfect car seat buckle. Or the toddler and now the eldest daughter, who looks to be about 9 or 10 has secured herself in a booster seat dead zips the bag closed and they're off about. Looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is still on the roof of the car and there it goes. The shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just mail the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their age and size. Learnmore@nhtsa.gov/the right seat visitnhtsa.gov/the right seat, brought to you by Nitza and the ad council. Hey, it's duliba. I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast, Dua Lipa at your service. I'll be sitting down with the world's most inspiring minds to uncover what makes them tick, what they've learned from their successes, failures and the obstacles life has thrown at them. We're going deep with people revolutionizing not just their own industries, but also culture more broadly, from Lisa to Deyo, the author redefining what it means to tell women's stories to the fashion industry virtuoso Olivier Rousteing. You'll even hear me break bread with some of the most iconic and vicious names in pop culture, like Sir Elton John. After a lot of upsets, a lot of disappointments, a lot of betrayals, it's turned out to be the most wonderful life right now that I could have ever imagined. I can't wait to share all of this and more with you. Listen to Dua Lipa at your service on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What grows in the forest? Trees? Sure, no one else grows in the forest. Our imagination, our sense of wonder and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect from this. And connect with this, we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest near you and start exploring and discovertheforest.org brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council. It could happen here, coming to you live from my room in Chicago. But but importantly, we're coming to your life. And it could happen here, central, where the gamers have seized the pod. It is me, Christopher, and his Garrison. Hello, fellow gamer. Hello. And in the gaming trenches with my Razer headset on, looking into my Navidea powered viewfinder and I'm ready to continue on the fight. It's going to be great we're talking about. Talking about gaming, we're talking about the military, we're talking about why the two of them crossing is extremely bad. And with us talk about this are two people who are somewhat less clownish than we are. This is Katie and Chris from game wish for peace, which is a initiative of veterans for peace. I welcome to the show. Hello. OK, thank you. I I take offense to being called less clownish than you guys. I'm just trying to live up to your standard. I'll have you know I am very, very clownish and clumsy and all of those good things, and they trusted me with weapons. Ah God. O. I guess starting out. I wanted to talk about. I guess very generally the, the, the history of counter recruitment because this is something that's been going on in the US military for I mean really is like from what I could tell like about as long as there's been you know recruitment for the military. But I was wondering if we could start. I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe around sort of the Vietnam era when you when there's, you know, very, very serious and intense sort of left wing kind of recruitment and then we can go from there. Yeah, yeah. So coming out of Vietnam, you have Vietnam Veterans against the war forming and there's a massive pushback on the draft. The anti war movement is pretty much out of strongest and Vietnam Veterans against war over time. He comes up veteran for peace. Veterans for peace has a long legacy of sitting at the front of the anti war movement peace movement, participating in nuclear abolition work, kind of recruitment work, escalation work out of save our VA, helping veterans get assistance with disability benefits and making sure that the the traumas that veterans suffer and the communities of impacted by the military suffer are getting treatment for the care. Deported veterans as Vietnam vets served and then got deported and that continues to this day. So veterans for peace had a multi prong approach approach to the anti war efforts. And 2000s around 2007 Ish Iraq, Afghanistan Iraq veterans against the war, later known as Iraq, Afghanistan veterans against the war comes along. And that's a new generation of veterans carrying along, built on the legacy of veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans against the war. You know, there's a long history of coffee shops, GI resistance outreach. Doing work with veterans, trying conscientious objective, objective work, GI resistor work in in there and there's a just a long legacy of just better and sharing their experiences and coming back and really wanting to make sure nobody else goes through that and making sure that they get the help they need and kind of. Slow that. That bit of the war drum that seems to media seems to always be picking up. And that's where we came in. That's definitely a good way to put it now, especially born out of the pandemic, a lot of the recruiting had to move online they didn't really have. If they wanted to keep recruiting, they had to go online. And that's where a majority of the newest generation is. They are watching Twitch. Twitch had a viewership like pretty much competing with Netflix streaming as of this summer and I'm sure that hasn't really changed much. I'm sure it is just as popular and the audience for Twitch skews very young. So that's really what started to worry members of of veterans. Piece like, OK, we might need to ramp up truth and recruitment initiatives, which is what game is for peace came out of. Because the the The thing is, if you're forming a parasocial relationship with these younger kids by streaming and forming those relationships and getting them on discord and talking to them, you're getting A1 sided view of what military service is about. And you are definitely not getting the imperialist informed viewpoint for sure. So veterans race kind of came out of that. That's like very insidious looking. Hidden and subtle way of of recruiting using the video games that have already historically been used for recruiting purposes. So it's like a double it's like a double whammy that got on us there for those not inundated in the gamer warfare like we are. How let's I think we should briefly describe what Twitch is because I know a lot of people probably probably isn't actually aware of of Twitch worries we are down in these trenches fighting off the the the cyber net. Stuff that bad, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess to which is like a live stream platform that is primarily used for live streaming, people playing video games and people kind of help their own like brands and like personalities, like parasocial relationships with an audience via them playing these games and kind of adding their commentary, you know, a variety of games. You know, sometimes it's like mostly chatting with people like inside, like a group chat while playing a game or, you know, some more focused on the game itself. It kind of varies, but yeah, it's a. It's it's it's arguably the biggest live streaming platform. I think it was bought by Amazon a few years ago. Umm. And yes, there is a, there is a US, there's a there's a few US like military channels on on there that are actually like relatively popular. I guess the other thing to kind of get into for some background is like you mentioned, you already kind of alluded to this like the history of the US military using video games for propaganda because they've been. They've been one of like the earliest funders of games for this reason. I think getting into that history is like interesting and something that some people are definitely aware of, but a lot of times can get overlooked despite, you know, Call of Duty being the one of the biggest video game franchises in the world. Yeah, absolutely. The military involvement in video game, video game design, using as recruitment, using it primarily initially. At first it was thought of as a training tool and they started looking at it for training. If you think back to like early 90s Doom, the original Doom had Ahmad released. Called the marine Mod, it was a modification designed for the Marine Corps to use to train Marines, and as early as the early 90s when Doom was at its height. And then then that grows from there. You have first to fight. What is it game called first to fight features Marine Corps Marines in dress Blues where you're tactically fighting a battle and in which you never want to do. If you know anything about the Marine Corps Blues, you do not want to be doing anything in those that isn't getting drunk. Example, just drunk and dancing and Blues all they're good for. Yeah, so you have you have a first to fight, and then it turns into Call of Duty, America's army, which thankfully just got pulled down all its platform from its platform. That's a huge win, but the army started design getting into the development of video games for training. Uh and then got into it for as recruiting and America's army is a perfect highlight of that, where they just flat out had recruitment posters and training things in there with links to how to get through recruiters or get more information about joining the military, joining the army. You have Arma two you could, you could argue, and draw the line from military training simulators to Pub G Underground, which is one of the most biggest battle Royale games, which is where you get Fortnite out of so you can draw these lines straight from the military's involvement in designing, training and recruitment materials to what our kids are playing the most these days, and really one of the most. Out of six factors of this is like how much games have been designed and pushed towards basically training people for like a trying to think of the term, but like. Combat at a distance in terms of like drawing, like drone combat, there's this like they started just using Xbox controllers for some like drone missions like like, it's like there are specifically looking at the pipeline of specifically young males who get into this type of gaming and trying everything they can to push them into a career where they just kill people in overseas countries using the same technology using, you know, using video game controllers, using like, you know, operating systems, very similar. To what we're being used in video games and we like in video games are a very effective propaganda tool. If you're thinking like, OK, I mean, I just enjoy playing war games. It's not like what's what's the big deal like? Sure, like, I also enjoy playing war games. Sometimes they can be a fun, you know, I I like this like tactics based games. But these have been shown to be very effective at recruitment to the point that video game footage and video games were like one of Isis's favorite recruitment and propaganda tactics as well. Like this is it's a it's a thing. Like it's not. It's not just like. Ohh, it's fine. Like, no, these these things are actually kind of a profile of. Yeah, they are very effective in that manner as a recruiting tool. And there is a real synergy between gaming developers and the DoD because of how effective you know that recruiting can be or that recruiting tool can be similar to movies. You know the military entertainment complex is a is a term thrown around a lot for good reason. You know you have there is a black box of politics whenever you're watching a movie that pits, yeah some sort of power structure. Against whatever the villain is doing, there's there. There's always something there. And video games are not too different from that. You just have a little bit more say in where the story goes, but maybe not even. It depends on the development, but there's article in in in the Atlantic that was it was actually like about a book from because Dexter Thomas War play. And it's all about video gaming and the, the, the, the relationship with the military. And they said the Pentagon avoids pitiful expensive efforts to create their own. Training simulators and developers get fat government checks so they can help fund these new games, new virtual reality things under the guise of it being a useful training tool for training in like virtual virtual reality environments, which scares me already. And then game developers are like, great, I can get a government grant. So even if this flops, I we still got the money out of it. That's not an uncommon phenomenon. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like filmmaking, yeah, like there's been, there's rules. They're like Pentagon contracts with film studios. Still be like, if you want to use, you know, U.S. military equipment or personnel, you need to follow these specific rules to portray the military in this light. Which often do get followed just because people want to use the cool equipment and stuff. You know, I'm still angry that my that my beloved Transformers got cucked by the US military and all of their films. And as a result, the films are pretty, pretty bad. Yeah, I'll have you know they are film art and I'm sorry I can't even keep a straight I hope. I hope as a as someone with many, many Starscream action figures, I I dream of one day of having good Transformers movies. I mean, you got the 80s classic, yeah, you're the 80s classic, you've got, you've got the touch and the bumblebee film was OK, but it's even still that one got, that one got cooked by the military pretty, pretty severely, yes. It's it's funny that you mentioned ISIS using. Yeah. Video gaming. There's just a recent report came out. It's linked to the UN. I believe it's linked to the UN Council on a counter terrorism or office counterterrorism, talking about violent extremism and gaming, the link between video games and violent extremism. And what's really interesting is it's not so much that the video games themselves are the issue. It's the gaming adjacent spaces. It's the parasocial relationship development. It's the. Meme, and it's the what what we've what we've known in the gaming world for a while is associated with, like the behaviors and culture around Gamergate and things, things like that. Where we see this, this toxic culture that is easy to cultivate inside these spaces and and be Co opted for more nefarious things. And that doesn't that's that doesn't mean that the military isn't banking or utilizing those. And principles to to get its recruiting messages across the military is another violent, extreme position, right? You're whether it's you're the the violent arm of capitalism and the state or or a violent like domestic terrorist or something like that, you're still. Opting into or your position is still getting mobilized towards potentially doing violence. And these gaming adjacent spaces are make it really easy for recruiters of all sorts to be in there and push people to more of that side of things. Yeah, one of the things I remember when I was like a teenager on Twitch was like, so I watched like a lot of harsh streams, right? And this was like these were, you know, like completely main light harstone streams. And there was, there was this artist who everyone called kebab, the German. And yeah, so it turns out that kabab the German was a miss was like a a shortening, like abbreviation of his actual name, which was removed kebab. And this guy's stuff was just being played on like every major like like Twitch, like all the major customers playing remove kebab songs. And it was like, and this, this was just like, what? Like this is just what Twitch was in like 2014, 2015. And yeah, like there there's so much like the, the, the, the extent to which just this sort of like. Let me just overtly fascists like Milia would just seep into just like you know, here's a bunch of people playing a card game and like it wasn't it wasn't even like like, I mean some of these streamers were like really reactionary. Like I've seen like I've seen TFT streamers who like will like watch videos of like cops doing rate like raids on people's houses on stream. Like, you know, like, you have those people who are like really far right. So these people were just like, I don't know, they're just a lot of them are just regular, like, yeah, just regular people setting themselves extremists by. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it's just sort of like culturally value. Yeah. Well, even then, like someone just like, I think, like with, with, with, with, like, with the Germans, like they just didn't know. Like, they just they just like, didn't know what was going on. And so they were just, you know, spreading all of this stuff. And it was like, it was it was horrifying. Yeah, absolutely. And actually I'm, I'm glad you mentioned that because about a year ago the the Army esports channel got in trouble because one of the streamers didn't catch on to two, there were two usernames that were explicitly white supremacist. One of them was six million was not enough. Yeah, yeah. Real, real gross. And I guess, like just in the whole idea of multitasking between playing a game, trying to interact with chat and trying to make sure you're you're on screen and all of those things, they didn't realize it or they willfully didn't realize it. I don't know which one and I'm not going to make a judgment either way, but they did, they had to shut down that stream. And I don't think they stream for a couple of weeks after that. They had to like, reassess some some things because they're like, hey, actively, you know, white supremacist people are on your stream, you should probably, you should probably do something about that. Yeah, I feel like if you're the US military streaming on Twitch that someone's job should just be to prevent that from happening. Like, yeah, they have the resources. Yeah, it's like they kind of have this problem, though, because Twitch has a there's there's a huge, just like. Like core, like a large enough base of Twitch users are just like fascist or like hard right wingers that do things like, there's been a persistent problem on Twitch for for years now of like these hate raids. Like people doing mass raids on like anyone who's not white and anyone who's like not just white dude and just like hate rating their channels and like, spamming the chat with like slurs and stuff like that. And you know when, when that's, you know and that that's. Too large. Like, yeah, like those those are the people. Like, you know that that's a large enough part of Twitch that, like, even even even if you're like taking the most charitable thing, which is that the US, like the army is not overtly recruiting white supremacists, which like, OK, but like, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, right, like that, that's a large enough part of just what Twitch is absolutely they have an incentive to turn blind eye. And and radicalization, specifically right wing and white nationalist radicalization in the military is well studied and well established as an existing phenomena. I knew someone personally. Who. Got caught trying to smuggle weapons for a neo-Nazi group, and that's all I'll say on that. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is a thing and it hits really close. It is definitely a phenomenon that happens in the military. And these paramilitary neo-Nazi groups actively recruit from people coming out in the military because they have the training that they want, and I mean. I'm trying to figure out a way to tie this back to recruiting online, but it like, with all of this in mind, it is very insidious that the target is explicitly young kids. And I'm not saying that just to be like, oh, you know, because we got a lot of, we've gotten pushback with saying, well, the military doesn't recruit kids. They can only sign up when they're 17. That is complete ********. Legally, a child. Second of all, it's like it's The thing is it's it's it's just like grooming children that's like that's what it is like you're it is it's the same process of grooming. That's that's what's going on. Yeah. One of one of my best friends growing up like this, he was my best friend for like a decade. Like I met him in like first grade. He was my friend for the entirety of school and then he got like because his parents sent him away to like one of those like like summer like like military school camps and he. It was just never the same afterwards. And he's like a fascist now. And yeah, that's that's sucks. Yeah, that does suck, that there's not a better word for that. That that sucks because yeah, they can't sign up until they're 17, but that's not the point isn't to convince 17 year olds. The points to the points to ingrain this idea in them when they're like ******* 12 years old on the Internet. And that is just what grooming is, right? Starting it when you're when they're young. So when they're old enough, they will be able to sign up for the thing, like that's that's what the process is. And that's what, like, you know, military propaganda recruitment's been doing for a long time, but the specifically the way it's being done on the Internet around gaming is actually insidious. It was literally, it is explicitly said by one of a recruiting officer, Dr E Casey Wardynski apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, but he literally said we have to confront this question of will you wait until they're 17 or will we start talking to them at age 12131415 when they formed the set of things they were thinking about doing with their life because literally saying we want to groom children. Yeah. So I think now would be the time to kind of get into the countering side of things is like, yes, this is this is a big problem as we've laid out the past 20 minutes of what can we do about it? Yeah. So what can we do about it? There's. A good deal that we can do about it, right? We we veterans for peace, the truth and Recruitment working group came up with an idea for the Games for peace initiative, concerned veterans, and gamers and and allies. Because veterans for peace isn't just comprised of veterans themselves, it's also allies and accomplices. Came together and started forming the an online community of our own where we have kind of adopted some four channels of change. This concept of four channels to change one do education, talking about, sharing our experiences as veterans, talking about and unpacking recruitment tactics and techniques. We're talking being extremely vocal and raise awareness around the the recruitment techniques that we've we've already been talking about, right? Second, we're doing some mentorship and leadership stuff, starting to develop a programs and local communities that offer alternatives to the economic draft, right, like just throwing it back to where we started talking about coming out of Vietnam. It was already said that Sergeant hard times is the best recruiter and it post posts a draft. So we went when we went to an all volunteer force. You have to have a reason to join. And there there's a thing called the Economic Draft, and it's the impoverished conditions that many kids and people face that force them to go into the military, right? You don't have healthcare coming out of high school. You're in an abusive home, you're not talking to a guidance counselor and no college is coming to. You don't know how to pay for college, you don't know where, what you're going to do because you're 18 and on your own. And that's what we keep telling kids. So you have the economic draft, which incurred gives an opportunity for recruiters to go, hey, this, this program will solve everything, and what? What people don't realize is what's being asked is are you willing to kill for a Camaro? Are you willing to kill just to have a roof over your head? Are you willing to kill for Medicare? Right? So we were you starting to focus on developing mentorship and leadership programs include helping kids in and young adults get into college or find mutual aid programs and within their community to start doing stuff locally. Because this the problem is pervasive, right? Not everybody needs to escape abusive home and it's fine staying in their community, but doesn't know how to survive within the community because they don't have the resources there. And we also look at the what's going on in the world today and and recognize that things must be done at a local level and youth can be part of leading that change right in dressing some of the our world concerns. We ourselves do direct actions, we go to a gaming convention, speak out, try to actually do counter recruitment right where the recruiters are. We just, it's really pervasive if you, if you, if you go to any kind of con or any kind of any kind of like game fest or whatever you know comic cons. There will always be multiple military recruitment booths there. Always like like Navy, Marines, Army National Guard, like all of them. They, they they they will all, all be there and it's not not my favorite thing to see. So it's frustrating board games aren't even safe, right? The the Army E Sports team has a 40K team. So if you play Warhammer 40K, they have nationally or internationally ranked 40K team playing and in the major circuits. You know what's most insulting about that? Sorry Chris, most insulting about that. And I know this because one of the streams that we do I hosted is called a DSLAM because we started out as like roasting military recruitment ads, but it kind of morphed into just like general. Veteran and military depictions and media and one of them was on the OR at least referenced, the army esports Warhammer 40K team. And you know how people will like take their figurines really seriously? They paint them, they look really cool. Army like spray painted them gold and it's called it a day and I'm like really, you have all of these resources, you are using the recruiting budget which is ridiculous and astronomical and you spray painted them gold. Are you kidding me? Come on. It's just an insulting that it was so low effort but they still get the praise. A lot of people report like having positive viewpoints of the military after interacting with members of, you know, the esports team or the booth or or whatever. So I'm I'm genuinely annoyed that it's also low effort on that matter and they're still getting a positive response bothers me. That's a perfect highlight because being there on like the hate using military terms nowadays, but being there boots on ground, you know, at. These conventions are doing providing truth and recruitment right? Talking about alternatives, really just being there in front of recruiters and and talking to the people that they're targeting and family members, letting them know, like, hey, we as veterans, right? Don't let this be what shapes your child's future or your future, right? There's other opportunities for you. And and you know whether that's if you're into gaming, start designing games, right? Like there's there's so many opportunities within the gaming community that doesn't want to put you into the military pipeline also, right? So it's not the games fault, it's not like it's it's a tool that the states using right now, right? And then we're trying to form our own E Sports teams also, right, so we can compete directly against them, kick their *** in some of the tournaments that they host. You know, my my dream is to see some gamers for peace jerseys getting awarded like some trophy next to the Army esports team and just dunking on them. So across all the all the we lose. If we're up there, we still get to dunk on them. See we had so much more fun. We don't have to go clean up Eric's room after this like the the ultimate goal being us being able to provide tangible alternatives. So a kid coming out of high school thinking like, well, I either go into a lot of debt to go to college or I join the military. If we can get not a hold of them, that seems predatory. But if we can talk to them or our organization can provide that alternative and say, Oh well, you don't really have to do that. We have a scholarship program that we can offer you or we can provide at least at the very least education about what they're really getting into so they can make a better informed decision. Because the main problem that I have with the way that recruiting works is that you are not getting a view. Of what life would actually be like. You were not getting a view of what you are fighting for. There's a whole lot of like these vague concepts that they tell you that you're fighting for and that you're supposed to feel great about doing. But none of those are real in practice. Liberty or protecting the homeland. None of that is what you're doing. You're helping Northrop Grumman create a profit, right? Like there's and so at least at the very least, someone who thinks that they have no other options. And in this country that might not be too far off, right? We don't have a universal healthcare system. That was part of the reason why I joined the Marine Corps is that I knew I would get health care and I knew I would get money to go to college and not be in the student loan debt that I was in. So I'm definitely not alone in that. And if maybe we can even just provide a more holistic view of what decision that you're making, that would be considered a win to us. So that was my soapbox. One of the important things is is is trying to push back on the most nefarious things that we're seeing right, whether that's games that are becoming way too trained, training simulator. There's another campaign that game is for piece work on a veterans piece worked on called the Platform 6 days with care, the Council on American Islamic relations pushing back on a game called 6 days and Flusha, which was delayed to quarter four of 2020. Two of this year, so we got it. It was pushed by year, whether through our efforts or for whatever reason, but it was pushed by year, and this game is dubbed Air Murder Simulator. As it is it is. We look at other games like escape from Tarkov as as teaching fundamental skills through tried and true teaching methodologies for military skills. You know, we were talking about. Counter recruitment and truth and recruitment to give people an opportunity to make informed, have an informed decision about their participation in the war machine. But also we're trying to push back directly on the war machine and and say, hey, there's better uses of our money for for as as a government to take care of our people. There's a lot of fundamental things. There's the contributions to climate crisis is the military's number one impact factor of the on the climate. War is never green. You can't greenwash the military. Umm. The you know we have. Just so much going on around all the ways that people don't realize that militaries involved, we have the future of drone warfare, kill cloud technology, gaming technology, and the military. And militarism is so tightly wound right now that just pushing back and trying to parse those two things apart is one of the things that is most effective for counter recruitment and also for mobilizing people to be like, hey, we actually deserve better, like get out of my gaming space and like get me some food. Sovereignty. Get me get me like, let let me be part of my community. Get out of the gaming space and stop using what is fun and has actual educational value. Mental health benefits, physical health benefits, communal impact, social impact. Like this, this gaming tool, this gaming technology we have can be used for so much good. But we need to disentangle the military's usage from it and and stop framing our our time, our time and joy that we enjoy with our friends and family through this lens at the military forces to view it through. Because there are so many great games out there, like, like we are in one of like, right now, we have the most amount of games ever released, most amount of good games, like always being announced and released all the time. There's so many great stuff to play. And yeah, there's anything that can be done to push people away from stuff that kind of promotes this, you know, colonial imperialist kind of mindset is great, right? Like, that's why I kind of appreciate the cartoony aspects of fortnight, even though I hate playing Fortnite and will never really do so. I still appreciate it. As opposed to like the heavily militaristic kind of aesthetics that other, you know, similar battle Royales show. Because, I mean, because with with with as many games out there as there is, yeah, I think, uh, any kind of attempts to. Push people away from the more problematic aspects of, you know, specifically shooting games is great. Yeah, and just noting that when you're playing these games, especially if they are relatively close to reality, understand the impact that you can have by pointing out simply that your friend doesn't respond in real life, right? And also keep in mind, if you are playing a game that that is close to a recent reality, that you could be playing through someone's actual trauma. So I'm not telling you not to play the games if they are uh, we've gone over a couple like squad and and others that are like very, very realistic in their application. Just keep in mind when you're playing it that maybe look at it through that lens like would how would you feel if you were playing through a game? But it was the exact moment of of your trauma and I'm not even saying from the military side, I mean from from the the people who are being bombed side, you know? So I just want to have more people be more mindful. With what they consume and how, and again, I'm not telling you not to consume it does. Telling you to to think a little bit about it and what that type of media can do while having that baggage onto it. There is a place for that's and the military experience in gaming, right like when I was in when I was deployed to Iraq, I took an Xbox 360 over there with me and in the bottom of my sea bag and we had on Camp Volusia, we had a local area network of Xboxes and all the cans and we sat there and played Halo and Gears of War and when that dropped walls there, right like that's how we stay in touch with each other. It's how we process like auditory things and and and our combat. Experiences, right? That's that's valid. Sublimation and and processing of of our traumatic experience is a thing, and games have that. And that's not a military exclusive thing or veteran exclusive thing. That's for all communities. But what we have to do is add context and nuance to when we're playing these games and go, oh, there's another side to this story. That's the local civilian that just had a mint mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. 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That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about or? I should have asked you like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. If we don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save chimps, forests or anything else. And that becomes very clear when you look at poverty around the world. If you're living in poverty, you can't afford to ask as we can. Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people and so alleviating poverty? Is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Cave in the ceiling, right. There's there's these, these instances where we've removed that because we're so focused on the competitive nature instead of the storytelling in the full scope of what that game is allowing us to process. And that's why I don't like. I'm not blaming recruiters or blaming, like, coming up to people in the military and going, you know, you're horrible. It's not the right thing. Hey, I was there, right? I did six years in the Marine Corps and and. You know, instead of going, hey, you're a horrible person or things like that, like we're trying to offer them, them, the recruiters and other military members community, they go, hey, you're allowed to speak out against the things that you know are ******** while you're in there. Because if I knew it was ******** while I was in there and I couldn't speak out, I didn't know I had a community to speak out too or with. And we're trying to offer community to them. And that's beyond, beyond just video games, but that's drone operators and infantry guys and and people that are just fed up with. What they see in a system that is supporting a crumbling infrastructure, right? Like, you can only deploy so many times without developing, either becoming completely dead on the inside or having developing some semblance of empathy that goes, hey, deep down, I know something's wrong here and I just don't know how to. Like, I don't know what that feeling is. Well, that feeling is is just empathy for the human condition and not wanting to see people traumatized through war, right? That that idea of us going into. Like even post 911, like immediate post 911 vets early on, they have, they went there with the right, the right idea. I wanted to defend my community. I want to be, do, do service, right. Like I don't have another option. Yeah, I'm an economic drafty, but All in all, I'm really here to help defend my people. Yeah, it was, it was it was a genuine thought, like it was a genuine idea, right. The people you can very much disagree with like the intentionality and the propaganda that like governments were doing to promote the war and the unjust. Reasons for that but for the but for the regular people, right yeah that it was it was it was genuine feelings that caused that to happen. And overlooking that I think misses what makes the recruitment to work. You know if if if if you just look at all the people who join the military being like, oh, they're just like bad people who want to kill, you know, brown people. You're like, that's you can think that, but that doesn't actually do anything to understand how recruitment actually works. And then if you can't do that, then you don't know how to actually counter it. Right, exactly. If you are a veteran and you feel like we do, this whole thing was ********. You. And that can be an incredibly alienating experience. I've been there because it feels like with the amount of veterans we saw, the January 6th events, all the veterans that you see that get through to the right wing side of the culture war just want to say that we see you. You're not alone. You are. You are not crazy, I promise you. We we are trying to build a community of people like that who understand it and promote healing through that Community, political education through that, so that you can create resiliency within your Community and as well as at least put a little bit of pressure on the military entertainment complex and the military recruiting apparatus. Yeah, that would **** the military. **** war. War. It's truth, all right? Do you have anything specific that you want to plug? Yes, join our discord. You can find if you search the discord, you can look up gamers for peace and you will see us on Twitch. We are veterans for peace all one word, and we stream several times a week gaming content, content about different alternatives to military service content, breaking down propaganda and recruiting efforts, as well as other political education things. Sometimes it's just a random community game night as well. Actually, no, that's not random. Those are on Thursdays, so go ahead and watch us there. Chris, should I, should we add anything? I got something. If if one of the first things you can do besides going to discord and checking us out on Twitch, we actually have an online can't digital direct action campaign going on that we're pushing to allow content creators on Twitch as a platform to be able to opt out of military ads on their channels. So that is our campaign that we currently have ongoing. There's a petition. It is a bit dot LY slash twitch. Military ad opt out is the URL that'll take you right to the Twitch petition that feedback through Twitch. We're looking to hit 1000 at least ASAP on that petition to get some, get a response from Twitch, and then go from there, allowing content creators to take ownership of their of the the ads and stuff that are on their channels, at least when it comes to military recruitment. And then going from there. We also are doing actions and planning things constantly, so be on Lookout, join the discord, all that good stuff if you need help navigating that. I'm a mod in the discord at Plantiff a she slashed today and you'll find me. We'll try to put that link for the petition in the show notes so people can find that with a within with with an easy click. Awesome. Perfect. Alright, well thank you for joining us. We are it could happen here. At happened here, pod. In the places, in the places, the places. You know all the places. They're all there. Well, thank you everyone for listening. And yeah, go play. I don't know, Mario Kart 8 or something. You know, something, something fun. I don't know. I, I I enjoyed the Mario Kart games as a as as someone of my age. Very, very, very integral to my driving education. So yeah, go play Mario Karte **** war, **** war. Not another generation. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Dutton. And I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Nope. Wait, sorry. Do you want to say your name? No, I'm good. Go ahead. We're the hosts of ridiculous crime. People love true crime, right? The mystery, the intrigue, the human frailty. But what a lot of us don't like is the blood and the guts and the mayhem. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Some of us do like the mayhem. OK, but let's be real. There's nothing. Only about murder. OK, that's right, our show gives you stories like the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra junior and the Max Headroom signal hijacking. Oh, so you mean ridiculous stories like the UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobars cocaine hippos? Yeah, stories like the dudes who stole buzzy, the animatronic, whatever. He was from Disney World, and the woman whose husband tried to kill her but came back from the dead and surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah, that does sound good. You can find this new podcast ridiculous crime all over the place. The iHeartRadio app, the Apple Podcast. Or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know how you live. Ridiculous crime. 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Listen to the welcome to our show podcast on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Oh, boy. It could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening to. All right, Saint Andrew's that. That's my job done today. Why don't you take over? Good job. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to another wonderful episode of. It could happen here today. Hoping to. Take a look at. Another book. Well, two books this time, this time works of fiction and this time by an English. Unfortunately, writer named Aldous Huxley, right, we'll be looking at island. And for your new world, the sort of. Twins of. Speculative science fiction, I would say. All this Oxley was, like I said, an English writer and philosopher, and he actually wrote a lot of books, 50 in his lifetime to be precise. He was also a French teacher who. Interestingly enough, taught George Orwell, but I did not know from yeah, but from what what his past students have said, he wasn't a particularly good teacher. OK, but he was a good speaker. He was also a very, very big fan of psychedelics and OHS and mysticism and philosophy and. Particularly like Advaita. I don't know if I pronounce that correctly, but Advaita Vedanta, which is like a Hindu spiritual practice. Yeah, I know he's, he's even referenced a lot. And like occultist and chaos Magic books written like post the 60s, he's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's he's like. That guy's name again. Alan Watts ohh yeah, OK yeah. Also, very interestingly, Huxley actually had LSD injected into his veins on his head. It's it's amazing. Feels like he he was dying, as you know, one does on their deathbed, sure. And that is the traditional thing to do. Traditionally, yes. But while in the process of dying because he had like advanced learning, kill, cancer, he had to write to his wife, Laura. He was just like LSD 100 intermuscular, just like, he's like, OK, hell yeah, Jackson. Yeah, she listen. Jackson ******* muscle. Yeah. And she doesn't inject him with one dose. She injects him with two doses and then he dies like several hours later, incredibly based. What a way to go. Staggeringly based. And honestly, if if he was, like, speaking on his deathbed, I would really love to know, like, what that experience was like. Like, are you just like dancing through hell? Like, what's going on? I mean. It could. It could think. I can see it being the most amazing thing and also extremely terrifying. Slightly terrifying, right? As a general rule, when, like Pete, they've done studies on like giving different kinds of psychedelics, usually psilocybin mushrooms, to like cancer patient people who are in Hospice, and it it it generally reduces their fear of death. Yeah, they could they go in peace? Yeah. Yeah. It just makes them like, uh, you know what? Everything is the same as everything else. And, yeah, we're the imagination of the universe. I'm going to go back into space. Yeah. Which is fine. Good for them. Yeah, yeah, good for them. Good for them. If I were on my deathbed, I probably wouldn't be thinking about death either. So. Yeah, I mean that that assumes that, you know, we get a deathbed, you know, and that's the kind of wild thing about death. You don't know when it's gonna happen, but. To return to the topic of discussion. Brave new world. And Ireland, right? To summarize the plots of both, I guess I'll start with brave new World. It is the more famous of the two and I think. A lot of people have heard of Ireland compared to brave new World, because, I mean, preview is like new World and high school. But I, I, I have not read island exactly. And it's like it's really says a lot about society that that that we read about the dystopias. We're not the utopias. I don't anyway. Brave new world, you know it's really up there with like 1984 and terms of you know, it's. It's notoriety. It is like one of the quintessential dystopias. It's set like several 100 years into the future. Like, unlike 1984, which, you know took place in 1984, which is several decades ago, brave New World was set in 2054. Sorry, 2540 CE. So several 100 years. Star Trek times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But however, in the book, it isn't. World's 2554 CE. It's called 632AF. EF standing for after Ford because. In this world, and I'm sure we'll get into this a bit, Henry Ford, the assembly line guy, the Model T guy, he is basically God. He is the God of their world, you know? So yeah, that wouldn't be ideal. They they say things like by Ford's name and that kind of thing, you know? And. His school sort of assembly line structure is basically extrapolated to society as a whole. Right, there's this World Street where emotions and individuality are conditional to children and everyone belongs to everyone else. And you know, there's children are created in in like factories and. Generated to be part of specific classes, whether it be alpha, beta, gamma, Delta or epsilon. So it's like. It's kind of like what's what's what's happening today, you know, in terms of the Greek alphabet. We have the alphas who are bred to be like Doritos and stuff, and you have the epsilons who are bred to be like the. Minia libras. And you have the folks in between and like, they are literally conditioned, you know? So like. In the factory, in the baby making factory, which is in this case literal and not a euphemism for the womb. You know, they they like. Hold back on oxygen or they apply certain chemicals or certain hormones in order to like condition people so they don't do like genetic. Like quoting whatever they just. They do a chemical concoctions in those sort of test tubes and yeah, I mean this story of the world is really how it's affecting. Like some of the top level people within it and sort of contrasted with the sort of reservations that exist in their world where people are. A bit less restricted. And it ends pretty tragically, but. The next book also ends of the tragically the ex book being Island, which is like. The utopian twin for a brave new world in a lot of ways in terms of memory, mirroring a lot of the seem themes that brave New World explores. Right. So in Ireland there's a specific island called Pala, which is. Fictional I mean, there was an area in India called Parlor, but the island of Palau in this world is like, it doesn't exist, right? And it's basically seen as this Oasis of happiness and freedom and where it's inhabitants of resisted capitalism and consumerism and technology. Right then this journalist and other British guy named Will Farnaby pulls up. On their island. And he's basically trying to scoop out the island for exploitation because he is friends with this industrialist who's trying to, like, extract oil from the region. And while he's going through. The island and really going through this society, going through the book. There a lot of monologues and stuff. I mean this book is kind of heavy on like the monologues and the discussions. It's kind of like other sucks leaves soap box for all this ideas, just laying them all out there, right? So Will enters Palanza cynic, but by the time he comes out, he's like. He's had like layers on layers of epiphanies and. I don't know for those who have been reading to one of everything recently. In chapter 2. There the the authors, David Wenger and David Gruber, they sort of outline some of the discussions that were happening, that were happening between Europeans and Indigenous Americans at the time of arrival, and how those discussions were shaping both, but primarily the Europeans view of society. Interestingly, it's kind of like reflected here because you know, I have this white man who pulls up with all his English ideas and it's basically these indigenous inhabitants Impala, basically deconstructing his ideas through dialogue. And through debate and discussion. And unfortunately, it doesn't end very well, despite, you know, being convinced of the purity and brilliance of the Polonez we have lived in here. He made the deal with the industrialist and Paula. Is has basically been sold by a by a neighboring country and. So it's downfall is now. Sadly inevitable. And that's how it ends. Or I know, so we'll finally be kind of. Has like an LSD. Well, not really LSD, but it's like a psychedelic trip. Yeah. It's like a combination of like maybe an insula cybin almost. Yeah, yeah. And true how that sucks. Leave fashion. Yeah, yeah. There's like a lot of the tropes and like it seems that were present in brave new world exist in island but as like their inversion. So like in terms of like. It show like, like, like Brave New World of Threatened. Before Huxley had psychedelics, it was like his his version of drug use is so different in that book, it's more like a pacifying drug, whereas the drug use in island is more like an like an enlightening drug. So, like, but there's a whole bunch of themes that like parallel, but are also inverted on each other. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And we're gonna get into those teams just now. But to summarize. Brave New world is basically humans becoming less than human because of all these technological and sociological. Efforts we as Ireland is like the opposite, where it's, you know, humans are able to come into the fullness of their humanness. While still. Using science except in a way to enhance their quality of life. I don't know if I missed any aspect of either plots that any of you want to like touch on real quick. No, no, not really. OK. Yeah. I mean, I will say the one thing is that just because brave new world also has this sort of like, weird. Like going to a reservation plot that's like, yeah, yeah, kind of a B plot. But you see sort of, it's another one of those things that kind of like. I don't know if inverted is the right word, but. The sort of. Context of it is very, very different in Ireland than it is in. Pretty world, yeah. Yeah, because I mean, in a sense you have this. Outsider protagonist who is introduced to this alternate way of living. And. Is transformed by it you know. Except in brave New World, you know. He ends up killing himself and. In Ireland? Well, he already sold out the island, you know. I will say 1 criticism that I want to get out of the way before we get into like the concepts and you know, how they might apply to politics as a whole. Really is Huxley, like a lot of authors and thinkers and ideologues of his time, has this. Very unsettling. Uh. Fixation on overpopulation. It's kind of like what we were talking about with the last book we discussed here. There's sort of weird fixation on overpopulation and, you know, people dying out and that kind of thing. In part in Palon in in Ireland. There's a sort of. Acceptance of or population as something that needs to be, you know, avoided. And so I guess it brings us to the first theme, which is. The use of contraception in both books, right? Like on one hand you have improved, you would where? There's like mandatory contraception and people are literally not allowed to, like, naturally give birth. You know they have to. Have babies through test tube, whereas in parlor, you know, there's reproductive education and reproductive choice and expressive sex and. It's really like a complete contrast. So I guess I want to do something like. I like speculating and and thinking about how anarchy would operate. I think there needs to be a lot more of that in terms of. Creative wooks and discussions I mean like. There was at the coffee by Malatesta, and there are some like utopian fictions out there, but. And and, like less than utopian, but still. Interesting explorations of anarchist societies like this lucky lequince the dispossessed it. It is interesting to me that even in mainstream sort of imagining, whenever there's an attempt to envision a utopia, there's nearly always a lot of anarchist principles involved in that. But it it it's basically impossible to imagine a utopia without aspects of anarchist theory making it into it. Exactly. That tends to be like some elements of anti work in there and like, you know? Things use they're gonna be post work, wanna be post hierarchy, you know, freedom of association. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I kind of want to look at that. Look at these. Works through that lens as well here. Mostly island, considering Ireland is very closer to anarchy than free of New world is. Yeah, I'd say so. A little bit, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Like? When you look at how? Sexual liberation is treated in Ireland. It is pretty much an echo of. What anarchists was seeing about free love in like nearly 20 years and like, late 19th century, you know, particularly like Emma Goldman, you like free choice and contraceptive access and that sort of thing. Reproductive choice, free love. It's really. Impala I would see. They have this sort of element as well, of like communal child rearing. I mean in. Which is another thing. I, I spoke about that and like my video in December on the family, like the fact that humans basically evolved in an allow parental arrangement in a cooperative reading arrangement. Yeah, because of capitalism. We've moved away from that. Yeah. There there's a lot of if you, if you study how kind of different societies that were not capitalist handle child rearing, there's a lot of like very interesting, I think my favorite is. And it was some indigenous group in South America who's, like, cultural belief was that you didn't, you didn't have like, one man have sex with a woman. And that, like, leads to child. It starts the process. And so once you've started the process of making a child, the woman then is going to pick out all of the guys that she thinks have traits that she wants to be, like part of the child she's making and has sex with them because you're like, gradually building the child. By having like, adding additional sperm to it, that that means that when they have the kid, all of those guys that she had sex and fall pregnant have a responsibility to rear the child and teach it things, which I think is objectively the best way to treat kids. That's such an interesting metaphysical concept in terms of like, what constitutes like, even, like the the idea of genetic makeup, because even though it's not, like, literally true, it's still like it if if you can convince yourself of that in your head, then it kind of is physically true and it will it will be true enough for the kid because like, yeah, really? Because most theory is like all these different fathers because we're all taught things. Yeah, exactly. Those fathers treats are gonna, like, manifest in the child anyway because they were raised by them. I think we should all agree to just act like it works that way. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean like and also like in terms of like the group living in island versus like brave new World. Brave new world, it's always like you don't you have group living because you've lost like the idea of individuality, right. Versus group living in island is more like, you know how like anarchists have like group homes and like that's it's very similar to living allows you to be the best version of yourself because the best version of yourself exists in the. Community, yeah, exactly. Supposed to. There's like, there's a barista or whatever. There's a kind of like a jokey friction fist. I think about a lot where it's like, if you see a block and look, you're looking at it like a black block, right? It's like the the way you can tell that there are Maoists involved is if you see a bunch of people actually, like, legitimately wearing all the same thing. It's like, like, it's it's it's like it's it's really like it's it's it's extremely rare that, like even even when you're doing this for security reasons that you can get a bunch of anarchists to actually literally all wear exactly the same thing because it's like, it's like, yeah, you have this sort of like, OK, this is this is not like always true, but like it's it's, I don't know, you you you have this thing where even when you're like, even when anarchists are like trying to sort of like fade into a single mass, it's like, we like, like you. You really can't do it because everyone has this sort of like this individual stream. Definitely seen people be bad at block more often than I've seen them be good at it. Yeah, it's like, I don't know. I mean like the actual hiding part of it. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know, like it's it's like it's it's. There's there's there, there, there. There's a way of sort of egalitarianism and sociality where like, you treat everyone as if they were exactly the same. And like, and you know, there's models of this where it's like, yeah, it's like, OK, you actually try to like, force everyone to be exactly the same, like everyone to be exactly the same in the class. And, like, that sucks and you shouldn't do it. And the alternative to that is everyone is just sort of like in a group, but they're all like. I am not entirely sure if this make any sense, but it's, I don't know. It's there are ways you can have within a group thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the the the purpose of the group is to like maintain, like, you know, make, like maintain the differentiation of the individual. Yeah. To foster what makes individuals really good at being like their own person and give them the tools that can. You can set that up. Yeah, exactly. Like culturally we have like problems thinking about that because like the sort of American version of individuality. Has to do with like, no, no, no. You're an individual because you have no connections to anyone else. And it's like, well, this sucks. It is bad, yeah, because. And that kind of goes back to the whole spoon building a baby concept, right? I don't think I would ever use that phrase, but. Individuals only individuals. Because their combination of influences are unique to them. Yeah, well, not just that. I mean, obviously this is a genetic component and I know a lot, but I think a key aspect of it is that, you know, because we are raising these different environments surrounded by different people, we have different experiences. That's what builds us up. Yes. You know, like I can, I can already name off the top of my head like a bunch of, like defining moments. For my childhood, you know, that basically changed my course, you know, like the one time I got cyber bullied, not physically, like shifted my perspective and my approach to the Internet, to that kind of thing, you know, it's like. It really. I really can't imagine how someone could. Come away with the idea that an individual is just. An individual on their own, yeah, they just they just pop out and or that thing. Yeah, I mean yeah cause like a large portion of you is built up of previous you and previous like exist like your previous existence is what makes a large portion of yourself. And like sure you can say you have a little bit of like ego from the start like your actual self self that in that you know contributed to the way you interpret events which then will in turn build your personality. But I think these things are not opposing these things work in tandem. But yeah yes it is they the the whole group. Within component and also in that group living components, you notice and at one point in the book. One of the children like basically in passing mentions that you know they don't want to go by a certain person because they're mad at them or whatever, and so they basically have that freedom to remove themselves from that situation and go and sleep at another house or another space until that sort of situation is resolved. And I think that also. Would really be a crucial element of anarchist society, particularly for children having that freedom of association and freedom of movement. Because imagine how many. Abusive situations could be avoided or remedied if children had the ability to come out of it, you know? Restrict children of choice. And I said allows these sorts of. Dynamics to persist. Yeah. Which then leads to dynamics that persist in the next generation and so on and so on. It's this thing that's having a resurgence in the United States right now and is like at the core of all of the book banning and the anti trans legislation, which is this idea that like. Kids shouldn't have a choice because that would interfere with parents having absolute control over the life of their child. And that includes the control to like, if a child says I'm this or I'm that, the parent can say absolutely not. Yeah, exactly. If you had like this, if you sort of like. Two would like someone from from the past. Or someone who lives in like a cooperative reading arrangement that appear on the child is the appearance property entirely. They would look at you like real funny because the child is part of the community, doesn't belong to anyone, you know, if it belongs to anything, it just belongs to the community as a whole. Yeah, as as we all do. Yeah. But. Yeah. Another element I think I find I find really interesting in. The way the Polynesian society operates is that and I guess in comparison to prove new world. Unlike in Brave New world where drugs are used like. Like RC and like all drugs are used for pacification and control and self medication, that kind of thing, to sort of like chill you out and prevent you from basically going mad in a mad society. Impala you know Chuck you says used for bonding and for enlightenment and for. Social connection and social cohesion and it is really, really interesting that that he changes what drugs do in his books like after he starts doing them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I actually don't know. You know, I used to have because I I had the opposite arc with with drugs where I started doing them when I was very young and had the belief that like they were kind of inherently this mind opening tool that could be used to expand the the borders of reality within human beings. And as an adult in part through some of the research I've done on the far right come to understand they're like, no, you can also use them to reinforce. The very limited, terrible things you already believe. Yeah. And there are folks who do that quite effectively. That sort of appeal you esotericism kind of. Yeah. I don't know if I just made-up that too. No, I like, I like that term. It's it's I was thinking of like thinking it's an accurate, it's an accurate term to describe the thing we're talking about taking it. OK. Well, yeah, yeah, I mean that that is absolutely correct because I mean, yeah. Like those sort of psycho psychedelic substances and stuff. Yeah, they can't open your mind, but. They are actually. They are ultimately drawing from your mind. Yeah, drawing from your past experiences and beliefs in some capacity. The the way I always describe it is that like, it's like, italics are an accelerant to the fire that you've already built. And they can make it flare up and it can be really cool and awesome and it can flare up and be utterly terrifying and be like, Oh no, Oh no, no, no, no, no. But it's always kind of amplifying the things that you've already built through, like the kindling of yourself. Yeah, it it psychedelics do not create things within you, but they can lead you to realize things you wouldn't already realize or they can lead you to reinforce things that you're already doing. And it kind of depends on what you go into it with. It's like, you know, Leary said. It's, I think it was leery. The set setting and dose and like your mind set is one of the most important things for what's actually going to happen when you when you take psychedelics. Yep. And if you're a Nazi, you can. Yeah. Get better being a Nazi from taking. If you're a Nazi, you're gonna see Hitler pull up on you like, yes, my son, continue the good work. That's the thing a lot of people don't understand. When I've tried to, like, when I tried to talk to people who are like, really, obviously like prosthetics and like, yeah, they're so, like, freeing. Like you think about new ways. And then I explained to them, there's like, well, like, this isn't. This is an easy segue. But if somehow the conversation goes to the point of me talking about all the Nazis who do psychedelics and and then, like, do, like, weird, esoteric. Rituals, well, doing like, like psychedelic drugs, they can, like, confuse these people because, like, how could you be a Nazi? Well, you're, you know, in that mindset and like, well, it's actually for all of, yeah, for all these reasons that we've discussed, it can actually assist within that, like, like fantastical, genocidal, conspiratorial thinking. It can really can really give that a lot, a lot of credence in someone's brain. Because if so, if you spoken to someone who has taken psychedelics and have had a specific kind of experience, you can't talk them all to that. Experience, yeah, as far as they're concerned, that is, that is solidified in their mind, you know, this is reality. I just had a glimpse of reality kind of thing, you know? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's one of those. Like, if you want, if you want an illustration of how psychedelics do not work the way some people claim, just make a note of the fact that at every street fight between fascists and anti fascists in Portland, both sides, every single person had ******* weed on them. Like the the ******* the, the far right. Like smoking pot as much as everybody else. They just also do cocaine. Yeah, where is where is that Tifa does ketamine? Yeah, yeah, Antifa does ketamine, the proud boys do cocaine, and they both have weed. Everybody's got joints, and both people and people on both sides have dropped acid and taken shrooms. Yeah, I I can. I can say this from a point of journalistic certainty because during one of the rallies where there was a permitted event at the federal park, the police were there and telling people they could not take weed onto the federal park because it was federally illegal. And every, like, both sides. People were like, all right, **** like no turning back because they couldn't walk on with the weed in their pockets. That's going to open up a whole kind of room to me because I don't know if you all saw this tweet I put out. Recently. Like there's still this resistance to drugs and to particularly to like cannabis. And you would think that, you know, after decades of research and decades of understanding and really decades, not even decades and centuries of its use in various, you know, religious and spiritual practices that by now, you know, in a post colonial country would reach the point where, you know, we let it go. Going to be decriminalize it, but. Although they were kind of in the process of it, we still have this situation where the police are like constantly. Running down like fields of cannabis, like they pull up and they're like. We just seized and burned down like. $1,000,000 worth of cannabis yeah and arrested this is that and the others like. Why are we still at this point? Where? Umm. Basic. Be sick like plants and. ***** on medicines and whatnot are still facing this stigma. Is ungrounded in any sort of reality or logic, you know, it's just. Colonial era prejudice? But that was a. Brief aside, yeah, yeah. I don't think I have much left to see about Ireland and and review world. Listeners, go home, put on some Hitler speeches, drop some, asks where it takes you. Absolutely not. That is the worst idea. Do not do that. Go to the woods. Go do do basically literally anything else besides that specific thing. It's that specific thing that is different. Different people can can disagree like that is like one of the worst things to do to your own brain and psyche. Absolutely not just do whatever. Literally anything else. Watch Star Trek and put on put on off the year I have. I've watched a lot of Star Trek while tripping. See, there's there's so many better things to do than that thing you said. Go watch the movie conspiracy starring Kenneth Branagh. See that? Took a **** load of mescaline. That that could be funny. They are Rd masculine is neither. Instructions do not compute if if acid made time different. What? Yeah, that's kind of mescaline. Mescaline is like the the active thing inside peyote. Yeah, mescaline is is a psychedelic, the most intense time dilation I've ever experienced, where, like, you will feel like weeks have passed and it's been like 7 hours. It's pretty dope. I definitely recommend mescaline. Everybody go take mescaline. Even we have to get. Well, you if you if you there is a way to get the cacti, which are legal pretty much everywhere, because they're just cactuses and a lot of people use them decoratively. And then using a what do you call a pressure cooker? You can you can get the mescaline out of the cacti. I've known people who have done it. I have not personally done it. Obviously, that would that would that would be a crime, would never, we would never, we would never advocate that. Yeah, but but there are ways to. There are ways that, like a person with minimal resources can get mescaline out of out of the right cactus, and. People have done it, you know, so there's criminals have done so bad people. There's this thing called Tor because it's obviously criminology. Pregnancy is morality anyway, yeah. Alright, Saint Andrew, that was awesome. I'm going to go redialing now. It's it's a good book, New World, and I haven't read this. I would recommend being bummed. I guess at the end of this I am kind of bummed that. As as imaginative of a guy as he was his, this was his final book too. Well, in his utopian story had to end with it being crushed essentially by industrial cap expansion. Yeah. And like cooption, I mean like it is, it is, it is interesting. Yeah. This this was his final book. This was like his like send off in like in a way that's an interesting component, right. Because like in Ireland, yeah, it's like a utopian society, but there is. King yeah. And a Queen Mother. But not they don't have like. The kind of power that, you know we were typically bestowed upon kings and queen mothers. You know they're still, they're still able to destroy the society ultimately by collaborating with the military dictator neighbor and the industrialist oil guy. But I mean they are not really that involved in the DTD run into their society, you know like. Father would be the same with or without them. And interestingly, the reason they were taking part in the destruction of pony society is because they were educated in Europe by Christians and then went back to Palo. Yeah, it it's interesting because he's kind of playing with it sounds like the same thing tokine was because, like Jared Token, at the end of his life, kind of identified himself as like this weird sort of monarchist anarchist where he wanted there to be. You thought the ideal society was one in which people, you know, there was people could not exercise power over each other, but there was a little hierarchy, and that you had a king who couldn't actually do anything, whose purpose was to act as a figurehead. And I I don't entirely get what he was going through here. He wrote a lot on the subject himself. And it's interesting that Huxley's kind of playing with the same idea, but is is obviously being like, well, this is a bad idea. You know it it could only work for so long, yadda, yadda. I don't know. I find that compelling. Again, I want to read this. And that's something I may dig into more is kind of like what how token conceived of the ideal sort of monarchy versus how how Huxley was thinking about it. I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Well, that's going to do it for us here, and it could happen here. Uh, Garrison tour.com no talk. Sponsored by tour.com? No, just drop some acid and Google Hitler again. Like, seriously, don't don't don't literally do anything else. Don't do that. Woods are lovely. The beach is magnificent. Talk to the ocean. It's so much Copper Mountain. Go up a mountain unless you have like you could go into role players moan or something. Yeah, yeah, go to go to a go to a Comic Con. Literally my suggestion? I'll talk about that experience at a later date. That is a. That is the show. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. 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