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Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, and this is Fast Politics. You may know me for my old podcast, The New Abnormal, or my articles in Vogue, The New York Times, The Washington Post, or my newsletter at The Atlantic. I do my best to poke holes in political arguments, with no fear of critiquing any side of the political spectrum. Listen to Fast Politics with Molly John Fast every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Anna Huttle Connor, a health columnist, and I'm passionate about learning and sharing how we can all sleep and live better. That's why I'm hosting Chasing Sleep, a brand new podcast from Matches Firm and I Heart Radio, where we'll connect with the people who live, work, and perform in some of the most incredible environments, and we'll see how they adapt and use their sleep to perform at the highest level. Learn how you can sleep well to live well too. Listen to Chasing Sleep on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Rachel Adams-Herd, I'm a reporter for Bloomberg News and host of Intrust, a new series from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. More than a century ago, the O.C. Nation negotiated something unique. That brought a lot of money to its people. In this new series, I look at who ended up with a lot of that land and oil money, and how the O.C. Nation is fighting to get it back. Listen to Intrust starting September 6th on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart this week. We have an episode that is in the vein of what my co-host, Garrison Davis, and I like to call, here's a problem goodbye episodes. And the problem is that there has been a massive, and as far as I can tell, unprecedented wave of swatting incidents against public schools and multiple states over the last couple of weeks. And here with me to talk about that is the person who noticed it first, anti-fascist researcher and community meeting note taker, Molly Conjure. Molly, you are socialist dog mom on Twitter where you are a sensation with your delightful little pups. And also one of the best researchers that I know in the biz. Welcome to the show. Great to be here. So, yeah, you want to start? Yeah, so this has been going on, I guess for two weeks, there's been this wave of swattings against schools across the country. And I didn't notice it until it happened here. We had to restart this so many times. I know, I know. This is like the third time. It's great though, you should. Because it happened here. I love it when you say the name of the show. And we finally get to do it. Yeah, but you know, my you know, my attention is primarily local. I was in the school, on Monday when every cop in the region was dispatched to Charlottesville High School because there was a false report of an active shooter inside the school. It was quickly determined to be a swatting. So they dispatched everybody. They locked the school down. They cleared the classrooms with guns. Kids reported being terrified of, you know, because shelter was happy to them. They were just enjoying, you know, an afternoon, a high school. And all of a sudden there was a man with a rifle in their classroom. And it was quickly determined to have been a swatting. And it was just listening over the scanner. And by the time they were clearing the scene, that's what they were calling it. So the police identified it as a swatting like through over the, yeah. And I think that may have, they may have arrived at that conclusion more quickly because a dozen other districts had it at the same time. So across the state of Virginia, districts, you know, from Hampton roads to Arlington, Colpepper, Lynchburg, like tiny towns in Shenandoah County, like a town with 4,000 people down, you know, in the southern part of the state. And almost exactly the same time with these hoax calls about, you know, gotta get somebody down to the school because there's somebody with a gun. Good lord. It's so, you know, if it happened all over the place, all of these schools were quickly cleared. No one was hurt. Thank God. But as the news was coming in, I was picking, you know, picking through, trying to find the districts where this was happening. And I was pulling up these news articles and it wasn't just us and it wasn't just that day. So it's, I think the earliest I can find in this rash was, what was that two weeks ago in Texas, a bunch of districts in Texas were hit. And the one in Houston, I think is particularly grim because the caller, the caller said, you know, oh, 10 students have already been shot. They're in the classroom. It's two guys with ARs. And they gave, this is one of the one of the ones that's the best described in the media, is that the caller gave a description of the two shooters. And that's what scares me, right? It's like the cops show up with a description in mind. They're going to act with extreme prejudice if they see someone who fits that description. Yeah, any more dress or anything. There's a Hispanic guy in the parking lot that, you know, could be a risk. Yeah. Well, and that's, that's the first one. Like when I shared your early posts on this, people from Houston started showing up and saying, like, hey, you know, we had something like this hit a couple of weeks ago. And it sounds like it's the same thing. And these are, I mean, like, number one, the scale of this, it feels unlikely that at some level, I know there's, there's certainly a, an extreme likelihood that some of these are copycat, some of these are people falling in. But the sheer number of them makes it seem, it's hard to believe that this would all be unrelated. All of these calls would be unrelated to each other. And I don't know what the background level of normal swattings is, right? Like, I'm sure to a certain degree, this is happening somewhere all the time. You know, people are saying, oh, it's just kids who don't want to take tests. Yeah. 15 schools in Minnesota were hit simultaneously yesterday. This isn't kids who don't want to take tests. Yes. That, right. Simultaneously, so many schools. And it's, there is a point there, which is, you know, because people when I started sharing this and stuff, people were like, well, what are we supposed to do? And the first thing that occurs to me is actually not a preventative measure, but it's purely just like, well, we should really have some sort of at least at a state level system in every state for letting people know how many fake swatting attempts to get schools are happening, how many like false reports of mass shootings at schools occur? Like, it would be because otherwise we can't tell if this is rising above the level of background. I think it's clear this is because neither of us can think of a time when there were this many in such a short period of time. But like, dozens a day. Yeah. There should be some method of keeping track of that because it is. I mean, I thought that was the lesson of 9-11, right? That we don't have interagency communication. Like, you know, on Monday when it was hitting all these schools in Virginia, some of the early reports were, you know, quotes from local authorities saying, we talked to the state police and this happened to two other people. And so I've already found 10 other reports. Yeah. Did the state police know about the host? Yeah. And it's, it's, this is obviously none of this is as bad as a single actual mass shooting at a school. But this isn't like nothing either. It's not like you, you file a false report about, I don't know, a break in and the cops drive around a neighborhood for a while. Like, this is kids getting guns pointed in their faces. This is children thinking that like their friends have been massacred. This is like parents thinking their kids might be dead. This is a, this, this is an act of violence. Like doing this is an act of violence. And it ripples, right? The effects of this are compound and unfathomable. You know, I heard from friends in the community saying, you know, I got a text from my 13 year old son saying, I don't know what's happening. But I love you. And even if, even if, you know, 30 minutes later, the danger has passed and everyone knows it was a false alarm for that 30 minutes, those parents thought that their kids weren't going to come home. And that, you know, that's a background fear that parents have every day when they send it. But that's the text no parent wants to get. But you know, before we lost the recording earlier, I was telling you about a surgeon here in Charlottesville. She's a surgeon at EVA hospital. So the hospital was alerted about a possible mass casualty incident so they could prepare their operating rooms. And someone gets the mass casualty incident alert as she's scrubbing in for a scheduled surgery. So she has to walk into that. She has to walk into that OR without her phone, knowing that her child's school to her knowledge in that moment has a mass shooter inside of it. Because she doesn't know if when she walks out of that OR are her children going to be in there. That's horrific. That's horrific. And also like that could get somebody killed. And this is nothing you can't serve, but like it would not be surprising if she was less able to properly provide care in that situation. That's just being a person. So this is serious, very serious. And so yesterday a rash of them hit Minnesota and some locals in Minnesota were saying that so one of the schools it was hit was Eastman, Kato high school. The day before so the day before yesterday that high at that high school, a student at that high school attempted suicide with a firearm in the parking lot. So kids came back to school the day after this, you know, the students survived in his hospitalized. But you know, they're coming to school, hopefully to, you know, access counseling resources and deal with the fact that one of their classmates shot himself in the parking lot. And suddenly they're sheltering in place and there's cops with guns. Just there's a baseline reality for these students every day that gun violence is present. And this is just cruel to them. And so the things that surprises me, you and I you started, well, was it four days ago now, kind of reporting this on your Twitter, which is where you do your reporting on local news and the anti fascist reporting as well. And so I started sharing your stuff and I we started chatting about doing an episode and my suspicion, the thing I was expecting was that like, well, we'll probably get scooped on this, right? Like there's probably like vice or somebody's going to put out something because there's just, there's two damn many of these. It's Thursday now, the started Monday. I still haven't seen any coverage of this as a, as a wave of swaddings. And I'm kind of surprised by that. There's a few like, you know, regionally people are putting together and doing these little quick hits about like, oh, this happened in a dozen districts in our state. But I'm not, I'm not seeing anyone connect the dots nationally and you know, some of these local stories are saying local authorities are talking to the FBI, but I don't know that there's a cohesive nationwide investigation into this as, as a phenomenon. So regionally there is some indication that like these calls are connected. So I saw an article that just came out an hour ago in Minnesota that all of the Minnesota calls came from the same IP address. Ah, so this that's, I mean, that's what that's the proof we're looking for though. That's the evidence we're looking for that like there's a significant degree degree to which this stuff is is coordinated. And when I, because this is something that since you started talking about it every researcher, I know who covers extremism has been talking about at least a little bit in like private conversation signal loops and the thing that keeps coming up is like, is there some shit on Kiwi farms? Is there some shit on for a chance? Is there some shit on like these these little spaces? I haven't seen anything. Nothing. So yeah. And you know, to some degree, there is the possibility of social contagion, right? Like I found a few stories that don't fit the pattern specific cases. Like yesterday in Roanoke, a 14 year old girl was arrested for making one of these threats. She didn't make all of them. She made this one. Yeah. Did she do this? Was she inspired to do so because of this? Was it unrelated? It's hard to say. So there's, at some point, even if it did originate in one incubator, it breaks containment. And I'm, I am certain that's part of the intent, right? Like when you do the benefit of if you're thinking about, because again, we don't know who did this. We don't know what kind of ideology or whatever or why was behind it. But we know that a significant number of them, like occurred from a single source, which means like something coordinated was happening at some stage of this. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw from the extent information. And I think it's just pure psychic terrorism, right? Because my first thought on Monday was, is this someone testing the fences? Is this someone timing response times? Is this someone watching local news coverage to see what kind of equipment the police have? That doesn't make sense at this scale. This isn't how you would do that because this is going to draw too much attention, right? And like, why would you want to know the police capabilities in Emporia, Virginia, which is just like three truck stops in a high school, no offense to the beautiful town of Emporia, Virginia. It is Virginia's greatest speed trap. God bless them. Yeah. But like that theory immediately fell by the wayside for me because it doesn't make sense. But it is interesting. So I've been trying to compile follow-ups on some of these reports because the initial reporting is vague. And people use 911 as shorthand so they'll say a 911 call, but was it actually a 911 call because that makes a huge difference here. Diling 911 is, you know, I'm not a genius about how technology works. But if I don't 911 here from my living room, it hits my closest emergency communication center, right? It's my local 911. If these calls are being made from out of state, it takes a high degree of technical ability to hit a 911 dispatch center where you aren't. Yeah. Right. So we know we're not dealing with someone who is capable of that. Alternatively, we know perhaps that this person knows that making a false 911 call is a separately prosecutable crime. Right. So like the articles that are specific will say that the call came in directly to police dispatch or the call came in to the front desk at the sheriff's office. So these people know well enough how to contact the, you know, the front desk at the police department and the name of a school that's nearby, right? It's not. It's not so vague as to just be dialing random police stations and saying go to the high school. Well, no, and that also again, because we've just mentioned I haven't seen any evidence of this in the places you would expect if this was the way a lot of these doxing campaigns have gone the way a lot of kiwi farm stuff goes the way a lot of swatting happens where like you have a shitload of people openly talking about and talking about bad things happening to a targeted person. And then some of those people do swattings right there's no evidence of that and the way in which it seems like the bulk of these have gone doesn't seem like the way it would happen if you were just kind of targeting someone in a public area and hoping that enough people made the decision independently to make these calls. There's a lot of things that you know it's sort of a libs of tiktok phenomenon like they're targeting schools with you know woke policies CRT gender include they're not I mean they eat Lynchburg Virginia, which is Jerry fall well country. Yeah, no demographic or political consistency to the districts being targeted. Well, in the right hasn't picked this up at all I haven't seen any kind of like very no one very few people seem to have at this point so this is just such a if I were if I were to guess where this is going down it's some some sort of communications platform where people have a degree of privacy. And I don't know if it's not testing the fences which at this point it seems too widespread to be then it may just be kind of pure I mean what one thing that occurs to me is just like there's the pure acceleration is to value of of setting up this wave and hoping that that the copy cat effect will just keep it going for a significant period of time of shutting down dozens of schools around the country of traumatizing kids of continually making the way to the city. Continually making those schools roll the dice because anytime you have a cop with an AR busted to a fucking school hyped up thinking there's a shooting there's a chance someone's going to get shot right so there's that's I mean there have been deaths from swattings and that was that was my family you know by so it happened here two days in a row on Tuesday it happened at our middle school and so like the second time they responded they didn't respond as hot and heavy. But any time you get you know cops charging into a scenario where they think they might get to or have to depending on how you feel about it use their guns the risk of someone being shot by accident is astronomical yeah and I'm honestly I'm kind of shocked that has it happened especially in the cases where you know the caller gives a specific suspect description that you know puts anybody who vaguely needs that description at great risk. But I think this is just you know Joker mode nihilism yeah that's that is if I were to like make a wrong irresponsible like public guess not that I don't think this is actually that irresponsible but like we just don't know but that's that's what this. That's the the mo this fits best so far is kind of raw I want to disrupt the system I want to scare people and I want to do so in a way that's the problem with a mass shooting from the perspective of someone like this is that you're going to die or get arrested doing it right that's the way all of them end. And so that limits the number of people who are going to be inspired to carry out a mass shooting if you can show that yeah people can can call in dozens of these fake reports and some of them you know we're going to end violently. Then maybe a bunch more people are willing to do that and the overall level of disruption and chaos that you cause is substantially higher. Right it's a relatively low threshold for involvement right you don't have to be ready to die and maybe you won't get caught although I think because especially in the Minnesota case they're going to catch somebody governor Tim Waltz's son goes to Mancato high school. No I mean the like you you upset the governor's son you're going to get caught yeah and you did it all from a single like and I have to suspect the FBI is looking at this they never. I mean it's policy they're never going to confirm that until the point at which like it becomes there's it's a big enough story that they kind of have to for PR reasons. But I would be surprised if there was not an investigation at the moment every couple days one of these regional stories comes out you know they'll quote the local FBI field and you know we're working with local authorities to help them investigate with the FBI is absolutely investigating this nationwide there's no chance that they're not. Yeah it's it's too it's too clear of a pattern. And it's not unprecedented right that a couple years ago there was that Adam Woffen swatting ring that those guys did go to prison for yeah so it doesn't have to be a lot of guys this could just be a couple of people so you know we're saying we're not seeing this leak out anywhere it's not being discussed anyway it could just be you know three or four guys. For four people in a discord with some like auto dialing apps that they've they've either coded or are found somewhere on the internet which if they if they are using some sort of like program to do this that's meant for I don't know sketchy salesman or whatever there's a decent chance that's what brings them down. Because all of that shit has terrible security but so does discord I don't know like I it'll be interesting to see what happens here I think one of the questions. For from the perspective certainly of like people listening what can be done here well in a local level one thing people can fight for an advocate for especially if you're involved in local government is like I would like to know. Every year how many times the police go to a school over a false report of a shooting right how many times our classrooms being cleared how many times of the cops showing up for this. Because that's important information and that also should tailor the way the police are being trained for this and the ways like the that there's a number of things that you should be doing if you know. Hey we had no mass shootings this year but the cops showed up with guns drawn 45 times right that that should inform the way you do things in the future in order to minimize the trauma these kids go through that's one thing that is an immediate thing people can take and that you can do. People can advocate for locally. But it's a tough line here right because you know I think every district is really eager not to be the next. And that classroom in Houston they frisked several children at gunpoint I'm sure why that they were sitting at their desk they were obviously not committing a mass shooting or in Denver on Monday they evacuated the whole school onto the football field with their hands in the air like it was. And that's what we currently live yeah there is no response to a school shooting that does not involve the police that's where we are but are they are they doing this smart yeah as a rule I think everyone can agree that given the current realities of the world we live in if a guy is shooting up a school or a lady. It's good for people with guns to come and stop them and that that's realistically going to be the police in our current system but that doesn't mean we can't be like well okay they came up 50 times falsely and traumatized all these kids by pointing guns at them on the fucking football field we should change the way in which they're responding to these like that should be the default we these are things people can lobby for it a local level that will have an impact on at least the quality of life for kids in the schools. And for parents you know like you know in you in a wall day there was the way the parent who you know slipped around the police line got into the school and got her kid yesterday no two days two days ago in San Antonio they they had a you know a hoax call somebody called in swatch showed up and parents showed up because they got the emergency alert text of the parking lot feels with parents. A father punched through a window cut his arm up and was hand looked tackled and handcuffed by the police. This is going to keep playing out or here on Tuesday at the middle school you know I was listening to my scanner after the you know they cleared the buildings the police left and then call came over the scanner and said the school is requesting that the police come back to handle the parents. Because parents are angry of course they are so how do we how do we navigate this tension of yes we need police to respond if there is a school shooting. But how do we as community communities navigate this space where we also don't want to point guns at our kids. We don't we don't have a lot of trust in communication with our police department so I don't know if that's a space we can navigate. This is a problem that has to be adapted to right there is the potential you have this problem right which is that it is apparently easy to weaponize the reporting system for mass shootings. The problem is compounded by the fact that you can't ignore the risk of a mass shooting because kids can die people will get killed if you are wrong about that. At the same time it is unreasonable to say that every single time one of these reports happens if the ratio is hundreds of false reports to one actual shooting every time it happens you go and you stick guns in the face of a bomb. And you traumatize all these parents who wind up going crazy for understandable reasons there are way there are structures that can be built into the system to mitigate those harms at least and I think that is. You know from the perspective of who is doing this and how can they be stopped that is a question that will be answered either by law enforcement or by independent researchers but that's that's a research problem right that's a cracking a case problem. My fear is that the response to this will be putting more cops in schools right it's you know the company school doesn't stop the school shooting we know that from you know empirical evidence. Yeah from twenty years in several of these cases you know the this new story says you know dispatch contact to the school resource officer said no I don't see anything so is the solution going to be put a guy in there who can look. Yeah you're going to do anything but he's going to you will say Charlesville the city of Charlottesville took our school resource officers out of schools last year two years ago times now so my fear is that even people who applauded that decision will at this point say maybe we should put him back maybe we need a guy in there with a direct line to dispatch. Yeah and I and maybe we do I don't think they need to have it needs to be a man with a gun who has the ability to arrest children right having having a first responder on scene at every school who can be the yes there actually is a shooting or no there's not maybe a symmetrical training is perhaps a different thing that could happen rather than let's put more armed men in schools right like that that's not an inherently unreasonable proposition. But I don't know that police are going to be receptive to the idea of let's ask some questions first right because as I was listening to the scanner again you know I have the most information about the two incidents that were in my neighborhood I was listening to the scanner on Tuesday and it takes time for cops to arrive at a scene even in a relatively small town by the time they had dispatched this response to the scene they had already spoken to the principal over the fall they already knew this was not true. Well see and there's another solvable problem because if you're if you're having guys with guns still show up because it's policy when someone at the school has said no there's not a shooting well that's again that is a problem that can be altered or that can be fixed to mitigate harm that seems pretty simple which is be like well maybe if somebody at this maybe if the schools principles says no nothing is happening here you don't send the gun guys maybe you still send a squad car to check it out for die hard purposes I'm sure we all remember. What that movie has to say about these kinds of problems but you know I I there's a lot that can be done with the information that this is a problem and to a certain extent I think I'm hopeful that once this kind of blows up and I'm certain this well I'm certain that maybe even by the time this launches there will be some big national stories about this because this is just this is a really substantial problem very obviously is a substantial problem. I hope that one of the things that does is perhaps lead to the authorities taking swatting and threats of swatting and communities that engage in swatting much more seriously because by God they have not so far. And it's not the laws about it are not super consistent state state that you know there's been some attempts on the federal level to make blanket legislation about this specific because you know it's illegal to make a false reports of the police it's illegal to make a false not so much more serious. It's illegal to make a false not one call but to specifically and intentionally weaponize an armed police response because you hope it will hurt someone in most states isn't its own crime right like I think in California they have specific legislation that like you can be charge like financially responsible for whatever costs to have that response yeah there's not uniform agreement that this is a separate crime this is a separate harm that should be punished in a specific way and maybe maybe we'll get that out of this. I don't know that that solves it but again it will like you were saying that this is a lower barrier to entry crime. But if you up the punishment maybe that threshold to decide to do it goes up. Yeah. Yeah again I think there's there's a variety of things that can be done now that we know this is a problem and one of the reasons why I think this is important for us to cover on a show like this is a lot of these are problems that can at least be mitigated at the local level right. You do have power if you're involving yourself in local politics to do things like advocate for a system in which you track how often this is happening to do things like advocate for changes in how the school handles this sort of thing like that is a thing that you that people can handle locally. And that is it you'll get a faster response handling it locally as well than you will trying to advocate for some sort of big national swatting law. And you're going to get you're going to get faster and better results changing local departmental policy than you will getting any law that changes how the police behave that's highly unlikely. Yeah and so I I think this is important I think it's important for people to engage with this from the perspective of like we don't know why this is happening or who is doing it yet and it may be a while before I'm certain we will find out at some point these people will get caught. But it almost doesn't matter because the system is so easy to weaponize the solution is to try to find ways to make it less harmful without reducing the ability of people with guns to show up if they need to to stop someone who's murdering kids right. Those are the two things that need to be done not reduce the efficacy of the system which is not very good to be honest at stopping mass shootings and it's piss poor at that so it would be hard to make it worse I will say when people talk about what happens if they well they're bad at it now they're terrible at it now so it's not like I'm not worried about making a change to like mitigate the response of swattings in this instance harming kids because as it is the system almost never saves them when there is an actual mass shooting. So simply reducing the amount of time that kids have cops pull guns on them in these false reports that's more of a priority to me than anything else. Yeah, when we're talking about the issue of swatting and I think there again there's just there's things that can be done there Molly is there anything else you wanted to get to on this on this subject. No, I think that covers it I just some right this is still happening it's happening today like it's still ongoing this phenomenon is ongoing I think it will continue to build until it hits a breaking point like you said I definitely think some of these people will be caught yes. But I don't know what that changes right like once this breaks containment once people see that this is a thing that they could do yeah yeah do we do we deal with a wave of this before it gets under control that gets even bigger or is that what's that. What's actually happening right now I don't know and then does this when does this I don't know and desensitize people to the idea of these threats yeah I don't know I don't know but you know no kids get shot I hope no kids get shot if you're a journalist and you're trying to are trying to report on this in some sort of concerted way you can find Molly on Twitter at Socialist Talk mom she's she's ready most of your article for you you can steal like. But I think there are a little thing to this I think it's important to tell them ask the right questions right like when you're you know when you're getting your three questions into the press conference with the local sheriff's office ask specifically where did the call come in. What number was dialed by the caller yeah right because I don't think these are 911 calls I think people are using 911 short hands so ask where the call came from with a substance of the call because I think I imagine that some of these calls are verbatim and we just don't know that I think some of them are probably identical and we just don't have any way of it's hard to connect the dots when the police won't tell us so I think if you know if journalists are listening ask more questions than you got in the press release that's critical. That's critical because if there were if there was a if there was a Virginia state like repository where every time we get a false swatting attempt against a school we report when it came in who was called and what was said over the call right all of which are things that they could pretty easily get because this shit is always recorded. I don't know that that's true those and that's another sort of technical right 911 calls are recorded but if you call the front desk at the police station it probably isn't that is a fucking good point. In any case that is another thing that could be dealt with because then you would at least be able to see there's 40 swatting attempts in the state in the last five days and 38 of them it was the exact same script there's probably a single source of this that we should be like looking at. And that can help not just law enforcement who's generally bad at these sort of investigations but people like you who are good at these sort of investigations and can maybe then start doing keyword searches and figure out where the fuck this stuff is already. The fuck this stuff is originating from if it's anywhere on the semi open internet again things there's a lot to be done to respond to this problem that doesn't start with like throwing more cops at it or or or whatever like there's there's a number of different problems that this is revealed. So hopefully those get solved anyway Molly you got anything else to plug before we go. Oh defund your local police department yeah subscribe to your local newspaper sure and yeah if if you're at a school right now good luck. So it's poor fucking kids yeah they are really the kids these days are dealing with a lot. I'm more grateful every year that my my childhood was as uneventful as it was because boy howdy is it rough to be a student today. And they still have to take their tests. Oh they're trying to take their fucking tests. Yeah they have to go to school they got to read the great Gatsby while this is going on unbelievable sorry kids. More than a movie American me is a new podcast that digs into the history and mystery of American me a film directed by and starring Edward James Almos that had a huge impact on Latino cinema and culture. I'm your host Alex Fumetto and I'll be diving into the behind the scenes controversy including an alleged backlash from the Mexican Mafia. Several people who worked on the movie have been murdered and even today people are still scared to talk about the film. Everything else I mean you know I I don't want to speak about it. And we had a sign of paper saying that if we were taken hostage that they would not bargain for us. Eddie I know he said that he had permission to do the film so I don't know where it got lost in translation. Learn about what really went down from the people that were there. Listen to more than a movie American me this part of the Mic with the Udap Podcast Network available on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story it is what it is you believe it don't believe it it's up to you it will not change the fact that I'm an innocent man. Leo Scofield is serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife Michelle a crime he says he did not commit. Then 17 years into Leo's prison sentence newly discovered evidence pointed to an entirely different suspect. Always always the fingerprints was a big question in my mind obviously somebody was in the car. Somebody knew something who was it what are they know. I'm Gilbert King a Pulitzer Prize winning author and I've spent the last four years searching for the truth behind the conviction of Leo Scofield. I am innocent and you are obligated to protect me and bring justice to my dead wife. Make it right let me go let me go. From Lava for good podcast this is Bone Valley find us on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It's Megan King and I am back the intimate knowledge podcast returns I've had my share of bad dates and even a couple bad marriages. Each week we are going to be talking sex talking life and maybe even talking a little trash and you guys know that I have plenty of trash to talk. And if you want you can live vicariously through me and all my ups and unfortunate downs and you might even feel pretty good that your dating life isn't as messed up as mine. You think that you have crazy dating stories right. Oh you haven't heard crazy dating stories you have got to listen to intimate knowledge to hear all of my crazy dating stories. Yes, so put the kids to bed put your headphones in because this one y'all this one's for adults only intimate knowledge returns with more intimacy more sex more laughs and more love. I'm Megan King and trust me you need intimate knowledge as much as I do listen to intimate knowledge on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's it's it's it's it could happen here the podcast that we open sometimes yes this is this is this is how we do this job. It is it is also a podcast that is very very often about strikes and someone's rising lead this is this is an episode that is not about the giant rail strike that everyone was focused on that didn't happen. And the reason it's not about OK I mean obviously it's not about that because it didn't happen but the other reason is not about that is that there was another giant strike that was really I think ignored by both sort of the media and the people who normally will be following strikes that was happening at about the same time and that is a massive 15,000 person nurses strike. Up up up in Wisconsin and to talk with us about that wait did I get I could I could I confuse Wisconsin Minnesota oh my god I always do this they did try to strike you are yeah. I don't know if I can get it right. There's some part of my brain that never quite like figured out which one was Wisconsin in which one was Minnesota and it just like flips them in my mind they're just like they're just the state that sort of over there for Illinois. No, I know that's the Midwest and this is a person place which I get I don't really have an excuse because like I'm from here like I've I've I've lived not in the Midwest for like six months now wow OK like a year of my life when I was like unbelievably small child. Yeah it is it is yeah there's been a lot of strikes in Minnesota and with me to talk about the strikes that are not happening in Wisconsin is Danielle who is a nurse at Methodist Hospital and a steward for the Minnesota Nurses Association Danielle welcome to the show. Thank you thank you for having me. Yeah thank you thank you for coming on OK so I guess the the first thing that I wanted to talk about is the kind of strike that you all were doing because this is something that I I've seen a lot with nurses strikes but I don't think people who aren't in nurses unions like talk about very much which is basically doing a three day strike or doing a strike that's for for a set number of days but is not indefinite. And I wanted to ask about that specifically as a tactic a bit. Yeah absolutely it's not uncommon in the health care sector at all to do one day two day three day five day seven day strikes. We usually leave like an open ended strike for kind of a last and Jeffer to get the employers attention. So there's a lot to coordinate to compensate for a three day strike. It affects everyone's job at the hospital and then after three days they have to flip everything back. That that type of disruption in capital is has been really effective across the nation. So we're hoping that they hear us loud and proud but it's challenging they have a lot of money. Yeah yeah and I think from what I've talked to other nurses about this strike and also other people have done nurses strikes is that like there's like a huge pool of scabs. And it makes things really hard and is it is it the case that part of the reason why you do one of these limited strikes is that it's a lot harder for them to coordinate like bringing in scabs for limited amount of time that it would be for like hiring them full time for a indefinite strike. Yeah exactly so travel nurses I mean they are those strike nurses come in strictly just for those three days they are oriented for you know a few hours prior to starting at seven a.m. on Monday. So there's not a lot of time to learn the entire facility and since we are gone the only ones left to orientate our managers or any nurses that have to stay for whatever reason we really didn't have many at all across the line. So it just compromises patient safety and care in general yeah yeah there's no way to create teamwork with just three days of yeah nurses. So just the hospitals just more accountable for system errors they try to keep those issues as internal as possible and not disclose them to the public but yeah there's a lot that happened. You know it's funny all the media reports are like we're just like straight up printing press releases being like there's been no internal disruption so I'm like I don't believe that like there's no way there's like it's not true. They are just lying. So lying and to prepare for us to go and strike I mean they try their hardest to discharge as many patients as possible Sunday prior to our strike to empty out hospitals the thing is like you can't just you're not a magician you can't make sick people go away yeah. There was a lot of read missions because of that you're discharging people too quickly I know that children's hospitals they actually like shut old 44 children out to other surrounding hospitals to because they couldn't get enough travelers to work you can't get 15,000 yeah. So that's what they did to try to undermine us it's a lot of moving things around and I'm hoping the public there's an uproar with the public about this yeah that's I don't know who's paying for you know the cost of shipping kids to different hospitals yeah. I assume the hospital is not going to pay for it yeah. Oh god so yeah I guess we should move into like how we got to the point where 15,000 nurses are went on strike which I think I mean it's certainly the largest nurse strike like in the private sector I can remember like it's I think I think it's one of the largest the US ever had. Yeah yeah sure yeah can we talk about like I get I know this is there's also sort of a broader question here about like what the US healthcare system looks like in year two of this play. In the sector that's already been sort of just decimated by like incredibly vinyl profit seeking degree corporations. Yeah yeah so what what what what what have been the conditions that have been leading up to this strike they got this many people off of the line. I mean our healthcare system has been unstable for quite some time hospitals have been consolidating so much like closing clinics and facilities. Just to maximize profit it's like their whole goal is kind of like how airlines overbook for flights they create like an artificial hospital beds shortage in order to maximize profit. So they've been doing that for years and then also just buying up little hospitals to control the market more. They've also are starting their own insurance companies just to double dip in the communities while it's so that's been going on prior to the pandemic pandemic hit they were not ready they didn't have enough PPE at all because it's not there's no. It's not financially incentivized to have extra PPE on hand that's their logic I remember in the beginning of the pandemic like my aunt's not going for hospital and like we were trying to get the masks and like we wound up like we were like doing contracts with like like my like my family in China was like I know a guy who knows a guy who could like who like has a mask manufacturing thing who is oh god. It was so grim. It was yeah it was a mess and we didn't have enough PPE we had to reuse constantly and we were never compensated for it either we just were forced to work harder and longer for the same pay and now hospitals are trying to normalize that staffing shortage and say well that's it that's you know. So you just have to work with what we're giving you. In this shortage is just it's causing unnecessary medical errors and deaths and it's just a disservice to our community yeah it's going kind of down a dark path so I think all of that during the pandemic hospitals really showed their true colors and I know the nurses really realize that the hospital is only there. To just like fat in their wallets they're not there for us they're not the goal is to make us all leave the bedside and just outsource all of their employees. You would escape all liabilities if you have all travelers in place there's there's no real incentive to hold the hospital accountable for institutional failures. Can you explain what travelers are for the audience people who may not know oh yeah absolutely so travel nurses come across or like across the entire nation and they are contracted through travel companies that work with hospitals. So if there's a nursing shortage there will be open positions to apply for those contract positions that are like short term so either like a four week six week or if it's like a strike contract it'd be like three days seven days whatever it might be. And they're paid handsomely I know for our three day strike those travel nurses those strike nurses specifically for three days made 10k each. Jesus for three days and they didn't even know the facility some of them never even worked in a hospital. I don't I don't understand the requirements it's confusing how yeah and i'm not trying to demonize travel nurses in any sort of way there's amazing travel nurses I work with some they're great people but they're it just undermines. Like our profession like it's it's hard to improve our profession when you have people that can replace you there's no real change we can make it's just we're fighting each other. And travel nurses are independent contractors yeah exactly so the hospital doesn't pay them benefits they don't take vacation they don't call in sick. They save the employer a lot of money because they don't have to. Like provide any hospital resources such as like employee health or workers compensation or anything like that yeah and they just have that six week contract that they focus on and they. They're definitely paid their worth there's less liability on the hospital to if there's any medical errors it's easier to like blame the travel nurse instead of blaming like institutional failures. Travel nurses they just they can't unionize there's just not a way there's not like a common area for them to come together and yeah create a union so that's the hospitals like that yeah. Also when you have more travel nurses at a hospital that's less funding that can go to our union so like we pay union dues every month yeah and if hospitals are hiring more travel nurses our union gets less funding less power sadly. Okay do you do you know who else wants everyone to work as contract workers so they can't unionize ever it's it's the products and services that support the show. And we're back. So all right I guess moving on from that well okay I guess I guess before we fully move on to talking about how the strike was sort of organized can we talk a little bit more about what staffing shortage just looks like and what the effect that has on patients is because I think people like I think people this is something people like. Kind of conceptually understand but don't like viscerally get what it means to have a staffing shortage in a hospital. So with an inadequate in ad equit nursing staffing levels by experience nurses there's an increase rate of patient falls infections medical errors increase in deaths increase in pressure ulcers increase in admission rates so having to go back to the hospital because you weren't given like high quality care at the hospital is just kind of mediocre if nurses are kind of strapped with time and have to divide their attention between too many patients. So I don't know if you actually are legally allowed to say this but like how many patients like per day roughly are like you are like you treating patients are retreating the day our hospital method is has about 400 beds and we've been at capacity so above 100% and you're probably wondering well how do you get above 100%. The ER will board patients meaning a patient will stay on a cart and they'll be in a hallway and always will be lined up with patients that are just waiting for other patients and other units to be discharged so they can take that bed so they can wait in the ER for up to two to three days. She's waiting to be like really admitted so we've been at capacity for a long time and that is that is purposely done to maximize profit just because of they've been consolidating closing other hospitals and I mean, they're charging all those people who are just like laying there in a hallway right. Absolutely or even if people come in for surgery and they have to after surgery they go to recovery they can sit in recovery for up to eight hours which normally after surgery you only need to be there like a half hour to an hour kind of depending on how you wake up from anesthesia and then you go to your room but we are just holding them in recovery because we're waiting on beds and rooms to be available because the hospital does not plan in advance at all. That's not cost effective. Yeah, well I mean it's funny because it's like it's really similar. It's really one of those things which like literally this entire process would be enormous unless expensive if you hire like four more people and didn't close every hospital around you but like you know it's not it's not about efficiency. It's about like making sure you have as many dying people like sitting in a hallway so you can charge them more it's like. Exactly. It's just like people are profitable not healthy people. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's really it's like there is just something like sort of particularly venal and disgusting about here it's like you know it's all of the same like. Okay well we've built up a monopoly and we're using a monopoly to force everyone to use our services and then we're you know we're using contract workers to replace people who would do the job but it's like well it's with health care. And it's like instead of just like every TV show being awful it's huge a bunch of people who are getting sick and dying because we just don't have enough nurses. Exactly and then the only thing the hospitals do is they have all the managers go around and tell nurses okay today we got to flex up they'll use terminology like that that sounds like. Empowering and like strong man we got to flex up today meaning we want you to take more patients than you like safely can. Meeting like if you're if you work on a medical surgical unit it's usually like fortified patients is what's recommended for winners to have for 12 hours they'll ask you to take six or seven. And they'll call it flexing up and they're like well yeah but Bob over there's flex enough why aren't you flexing up and it's just it's that type of like corporate speak and empowerment language. That forces us to risk our license yeah. And I think one of the consequences of this that I mean it's really obvious if you've been following sector all is that okay well turns out if you if you work a bunch of people like basically to death and you don't give them the resources and you're making them take too many patients. It's that people just start quitting. And yeah can you talk a bit about sort of the shortage that's been happening because of that too because that's I think a really bleak. Just in the long term to it's just yeah I don't know like if you want to have an even vaguely functioning society the fact that you can't keep people as nurses. Yeah really bad. Absolutely yeah pandemic hit and nurses realize that they're just they're not being paid their worth there's travel jobs that are you can make 200 grand a year, 300 grand a year. Travel nursing and then they're kind of sold on the idea that you own your schedule and you can just kind of plan around vacations and other times off you need and you just kind of book like a four week. Stint at a hospital if you don't like it you can leave. So they kind of just sell our jobs back to us but it's not good health care. I talked about this with like like people who work at Starbucks for example, it's like well okay like if you're just constantly moving people around and nobody's like actually stays in a place and you never you never build up a community of people who you're working with like your cares. You know it's like okay well you're not going to get good stuff but it's like yeah like this is like this is people's lives. Yeah exactly and those travel travel nurses I mean their goals are usually like financial freedom like all of our goals. So and their goals are always short term you know all I have to do is just deal with this hospital for four weeks and then I'm gone. Well how is that going to fix any institutional area errors I mean our issues there. They never will hold the employer accountable yeah and especially like it seems like you know even even if like everyone walk it like I don't I don't think you could have a functional hospital system if everyone was a travel nurse but like. At some point it feels like there's no way for there to be like. There's no way for people to like keep leaving hospitals to go be travel nurses and also for travel nurses pay to stay that high. Yeah exactly eventually it'll get saturated and that's kind of the goal of hospitals is to push all of their permanent employees into traveling so once that industry becomes saturated then you can decrease wages and we'd have to compete amongst each other. For certain jobs with certain hours that we need or whatever will just be. It's just a race to the bottom we're just going to yeah. Then the employer will control the market and it's. Yeah and I can't imagine 20 years from now trying to be a travel nurse it's just going to be hard to compete with those younger people that are that could work harder and faster and longer than me for less money. It's not sustainable for a career. It just doesn't seem like a good way to do healthcare. Yeah that also. Exactly. Yeah so I guess the next thing I want to talk about in terms of okay so how do we make this better is about. Yeah this is a very large multi hospital strike across multiple cities which is really impressive thing to pull off and I was warning for you about how how that happens. Yeah you know the pandemic really pushed a lot of nurses to want to fight for change. And I think that it all started there we all started coming together with the same issues and problems and. Yeah finally just started organizing more. All these hospitals were currently unionized but somewhere more like involved in their union than others. Yeah I'd say now a lot of nurses are more involved in the union and it's a lot of younger nurses too. Just because they're people are finally realizing that we are the union. It's not a separate entity from us it's something that we can control and be a part of and be able to use it to balance power. So it just yeah it's our only way to fight. This healthcare sector. I also want to ask about what the negotiation process. Has been like because. I mean five months is I mean you know okay like that. You very rarely get fast contracts when you're dealing with bosses but. Yeah like the contract negotiation process seems to have been really bad even by sort of like regular contract negotiations standards. Yeah for sure I mean. The our negotiations we probably have negotiations like once a week once every other week. And the hospital shows up with five of their like elites that just hide behind a corporate lawyer who is just a union busting lawyer and all they do is just gaslight and demonize us and say well the hospital. Staffing shortage is your fault because you guys are calling and sick too much or I mean they just turn everything around to blame the nurses. It's very demoralizing it's we feel very just under appreciated especially with everything we've gone through with the pandemic and they've just been dismissive of what we're. What our needs are and especially like like the calling in sick too much is like well yeah okay maybe your nurses wouldn't be getting sick if you weren't making the work with no people without adequate PPE in a pandemic like Jesus Christ. Oh it's just it's just comical the argument that they have. I know and it like we don't we can't ever get vacation that we're asking for I mean yeah one of one of our proposals is just to get a two week block vacation for every nurse in the hospital guaranteed every year. And because we don't even get that we we have a cap on our vacation hours and then we get denied our vacation constantly people call in sick because we need a day off we need a break. Yeah we're burnt out like yeah yeah like okay like if you have vacation hours but you can't use them you don't actually have them like. It's not how this works. Exactly yeah it's it's a benefit they control yeah. What one of the things that I've been reading about that you all been fighting for that it's really interesting to me because it's something I've seen in a few other struggles kind of proposed but never like really like. Put in the center of the thing is talking about like. Like giving giving giving workers a role in staffing decisions. Yeah yeah yeah can you talk about that because that that's really interesting to me. Yeah absolutely so I mean currently we don't own our profession we have no say in staffing ratios the hospitals decide what is safe care. They're doing it absolutely wrong yeah so we want to be able to take that back and control that and to say this is what we need because our patients are sicker. They're staying longer in the hospital and in order to provide. Safeer care we you know these need. This many nurses for this many patients. So what would that be on like a sort of like. Okay you like you have a negotiation you said this is like the this is just a ratio is it's like a data is this an individual data day thing. So we are asking for like a committee that's made up of I mean administrative staff but also nurses but we want the nurses to be able to have the power to implement policies and change. If they think it needs to be done yeah yeah. So it would be like a grid review I think it's nearly as what we're asking for but can be up to quarterly if need be kind of just depending on what we're hearing from other employees on other units. I think it's kind of like on a week to week evaluation to see what's working and what's not I know the hospital's argument for that is it would take nurses away from the bedside. But in reality. It doesn't make any sense. In reality it would retain staff. And also okay it's like oh no we've we've taken a nurse away from the bedside for one hour to go to a committee meeting where they say we could put more nurses in. And like we want this committee like made outside of like that like those nurses schedules. And we also want them to be paid for their time yeah hospital disagrees with all of that they only want to pay nurses for their time to create safe staffing ratios. Yeah. It's it's hard so like the people that are in power they're just a bunch of narcissists. Yeah that's all they are. And that's the only way to remain in power is to have no empathy for your employees. So that is what we're up against so every negotiation I feel like I'm just arguing with the two year old. Yeah I mean it really like it. They really seem like a kind of people who you can only actually the only language they understand is power. And like the only way you can get an investment of anything is just like. You've whacking them over the head with it. David Graber had this thing about it wasn't him. I think he had this thing about how like the. Trying to think of how he actually phrased it was basically like okay if you have a lot of like. If you have it in like a large amount of actual physical power over someone you don't need to like use eloquent arguments at all. You can just sort of like tell them what to do and they have to do it. The less actual physical power you have the more you have to sort of like use argumentation to like convince people to do things. And this really seems like the peak of here are a bunch of people who have been so powerful for so long they don't even like they don't even know how to make a compelling argument because they've never had to. All they all they've ever had to do is use brute force. And it like sucks trying to use like logic and reason against people who like by design don't know and don't want to know how to do this because if they if they're ever in a position where they have to it means that their power has been diminished. Exactly well and also nurses like we're natural people pleases were like kind of a we can be a little more submissive and we've been like that for years and we're finally standing up for ourselves and they really don't have arguments. Yeah. I mean it's like they're killing people like they're killing people for money that there's not like he does it's not actual moral justifications here. Exactly. I know. Yeah it's just God what what a terrible way to run a health care system like just. Oh I know and I know a lot of hospitals are getting more into like creating executive care and executive hospitals executive clinics and which all that is is just a hospital that is just dedicated to like be elites and you would pay that hospital like a country club membership so like 200 grand a year whatever it's they're not going to take Medicare they're not going to take Medicaid. It'll be strictly out of pocket not insurance out of pocket money and you can just get all of the care you need at that one facility. It'll have all specialties you can see them same day you can text your doctor it's just health care that's just on demand and readily available for those people that can pay it. I know I mean what meanwhile everyone else is like waiting 17 hours with like a whole in them in a hallway. Exactly like a fair view is one of the hospital chains in our in Minnesota and they're creating a thousand bad hospital for the ultra elite. They're going to be doing that soon and then they're also bargaining with the nurses and saying that they don't have money to pay them raises they don't have money to give them family leaves they don't have money to. Creep better staffing models. You know and one of the things that keep hearing about this is they're like oh like the rich hospitals will subsidize the ones that don't make money it's like no they won't like you're just going to keep all of that money and continue not funding the poor hospitals like. You you already do this you can't actually fool anyone who has been more than two seconds like looking at this works. Exactly I know I know they're going to prioritize those executive hospitals and just follow all their money and resources that direction it'll for sure be non union and they will push so much non union propaganda at least to. Yeah sucks. It's all right I know and just a lot of people don't know about it it's scary what we're we're heading towards and that's that's what we're fighting for or fighting against. I mean I will say like I do feel like like a lot of the I don't know I'm thinking about this a lot with like what happened in 2020 and like why that kind of thing happens and I think a lot of. Like okay there is an extent to which people sort of don't care about violence there's an extent to which people like are able to sort of like rationalize it but I think there is an extent to which. Like the average person on the street has no idea this is happening until there's like sitting in a hospital room and then they don't understand why it's happening. And so I think yeah like I I don't like this is not an acceptable state of affairs and I think. I don't know like the the the the the one people start to fight back and the one people like actually know about what is happening I think it's going to be like hopefully it will become harder and harder for them to do this stuff because. You know hey like yeah people are literally dying and being like previously injured because the hospital refuses to pay more. Exactly no they just the hospitals just push that propaganda that they're under funded they can't afford Sam if they can't afford this and there's a nursing shortage and there's nothing they can do about it and it's actually there's not a nursing shortage at all there's a. The children nurses that want to deal with this should yeah they're just leaving the bedside for better jobs. I think the thing I want to sort of start closing on is about like okay like there is some negotiation going on about pay raises because hey guess what inflation is happening etc etc but like. The extent to which the negotiations aren't about like aren't about pay because this is something we've been seeing this is a this is a thing with the with the rail strike that's temporarily been a verdict this is a thing is a thing a lot of places is the thing that's been driving people. Out of the workplace just everywhere is that yeah like it's like this strike isn't really like if I think it like I don't know okay. To tell me if this is wrong I don't think the strike would have happened if it had just been people not getting paid enough like I think if there was adequate staffing and I think if there was like if if people weren't before to take more patients like there wouldn't be a strike right now or there wouldn't have been a strike. Yeah possibly yeah for sure I think we're definitely not paid our worth but also that's not all we want there's definitely way more to it. Yeah it's we just we want to reclaim our profession yeah like it seems like it really seems like there like this the stuff that's happening and I think sort of broadly like is. It's not just sort of about composition it's about the fact that for I mean my entire lifetime for like 25 years before that. Employers have had almost limited power they've used their almost limited power to just make everyone's lives absolute like living hell and they've used it to sort of like just force the force people to work hours that are like unbelievable the force people to like you know like like for people to stand there with like. Cans so they can pee into while they still on an assembly line for people just like this like unbelievably just sort of horrible and degrading stuff that's like it's like no you can't actually just fix this with higher wages you actually have to change. Like it's also something actually has to change about how the workplace works because otherwise you're just going to stop. Exactly yeah exactly yeah I know one of our proposals we want to work a max of three 12 hours shifts in a row. Because right now our contract says we can't work more than seven 12 hour shifts in a row and we obviously that is way too much and that's something that we even even three is like like everything every single time I read one of these things it's like okay like hey I like yeah okay we we want for only one of our fingers to be cut off per shift instead of forward it's like this is like. Oh god it's like the the demands are incredibly reasonable considering what we asked to do like Jesus I don't know yeah we want the hospitals to have six months of PPE on hand at all types they've already declined that yeah I was like oh who who needs PPE like everyone the splashes like oh who needs to have who needs to have like stories of critical spare parts no one this this will never come back to haunt us we will never be in a position. We'll be said we don't know the spare parts when he is. Oh my god yeah I know we have a pandemic proposal we want we want to pass and that's just to give the nurses the power to decide what we need when another pandemic hits. To provide safe care and safety for ourselves yeah the hospitals and include us on any decisions during the pandemic it was yeah we were just used and abused yeah and we had to use our own sick time invocation if we were exposed or if we had quarantines or were diagnosed with COVID. Yeah which also I would like like I but. Mo did you get COVID while this is happening. I'm I really had it once that I know of yeah I mean that okay that's it. I've only had it once is like like I don't know anyone who work as a nurse who didn't get COVID at least once in most of them got it at least twice. Yeah I just I god I don't know it's just so bleak like. I know it just depended on like your patient population I'm in surgery so I'm a little more like guarded from that. So yeah I think you know we only did surgery if they really needed it done and they were positive for COVID. So we kind of got to pick and choose a little bit but other nurses obviously they could not avoid COVID yeah yeah. It's just caught I can't just like just this is just the worst possible way you can run a medical system and it's just. I know yeah and I know like I know and let's see Samford is another big hospital joint giant that's like in South Dakota North Dakota and I'm from South Dakota so this kind of all like really hits home for me. So I think that is their hiring 700 or nurses like from Venezuela Mexico wherever as like they're pretty much using them as travel nurses just to avoid actual travel nurses here. Bring them here by 2025 and they'll sign like a three year contract the hospital will provide housing for them and they will drop wages significantly and the nursing world especially in South Dakota North Dakota. They're definitely not going to be paid there were I know they're going to be exploited more than we are. I had family like that actually the ancient uncle of soccer who were doctors like we're in North Dakota for a bit and they were just like this is the worst and they like they left for like they left for a vast improvement and being in a hospital in Nebraska which is like. Yeah I also like I want to talk about this a little bit because there this is like a this is interesting with the Philippines to where like there's there's like there are whole industries of like basically training people and then shipping them to the US so they can be like just horribly exploited. And that's been like one of the things that's been like I don't know like both during the profits of the medical sector for a long time is the position just like import people and exploit them yeah like the fact that they're like god this is some like the fact that these people are going to be like living in like houses that are owned by their bosses is some real like. Yeah I'm going to be like yeah I mean the thing is like this is like standard practice in China for example and it's a disaster like I. Like I don't know if people have like actually seen pictures of what the inside of these dormitories look like but like it is like these are you get a room that is like smaller from the college dorm room that doesn't have air conditioning that like. I don't know I would talk about on this show like the we talked about a worker like a couple of weeks ago who like died in the heatwave because when he came home I mean he'd be working about your shifts and he had to work like. He had to work a shift in like 104 degrees like loading stuff onto a train and he came back home and there's no air conditioning and he's in this tiny apartment he died in this bed because you know it was too hot and like this is the kind of stuff that happens especially when you have. Like when when when you're sleeping in corporate dormitories when you're sleeping in a place that like your boss owns like this is the shit that happens. And it's really really plague and I hope these people are able to unionize and like fight their bosses but like yeah I don't know it's. Yeah well I mean fear of being exiled I highly doubt they're going to be able to unionize. Yeah because yeah because I guess everything like like the way the visa process works right like it's really easy to like if someone's here on a work visa and then suddenly you're like oh hey I want to unionize like well nope screw you you don't have a job anymore we're going to get you imported. Exactly. Yeah exactly. But I mean I guess it's it's it's it's it's another one of those things were like like we all of the different sort of disparate like fights people are having are connected like this this this wouldn't be happening like if we didn't have the sort of border that we have right now like like the immigration system wasn't just like you know and like and it just like if it wasn't just like a giant like torture machine for millions of people the stuff wouldn't be happening if you weren't in this sort of moments of like you know if you weren't where the power of unions has been collapsing for decades like if you weren't in if you weren't in a place where like I mean even even sort of like on on on the level of Obama going like we're not like like we're going to make our health care system worst because it will cost insurance jobs if you make it any better like just like yeah like I feel like I feel like the medical sector is like people do working in health care is like it's one of these places where just like every possible it's kind of it's kind of like prisons where it's like like everything that's gone wrong in our society just like gets focused into like one nexus point and it's the point where people have to go where they die I know and the only thing that's holding hospitals accountable are unions in this country yeah if there was no unions the wages would be much lower and I don't even know where health care would be right now yeah I don't know like not good I mean like I can't keep going back to China because it's like that's like the other health care system has a disaster that like I have family and it's like what I mean I just think that's been happening in the US too of like the increasing violence you can staff but like China has a huge problem with basically riots breaking out because people like someone's family member dies because their their care was really bad and so they'll just be like a riot and people will go attack the doctors and it's like yeah and it's like okay like I get why they're doing this but it's like it sucks and this is this is a huge problem they've had with with retention because their numbers are like they're like their staff to patient ratios are unreal awful and yeah and like you know like that that kind of stuff makes health care systems fall apart absolutely yeah like and that's yeah and that's kind of like they've been doing that here yeah hospitals have been demonizing nurses instead of like actually saying that they do have institutional failures and it's their fault and we're only as strong as like the safety protocols and policies that are in place yeah and like I mean the like the best nurse in the world can't be three nurses like yeah yeah yeah and yeah so they kind of do this for a nursing deal I mean South Dakota North Dakota they're right to work states so they it's almost impossible to unionize you can but it's it takes a lot of work yeah but when most your staff is already travelers like I was told by another nurse like in North Dakota Sanford their staff is 80% travelers will help help you even attempt to unionize and that's that's the goal of hospitals is just to create so much turnover where yeah yeah well I mean since yes just turning hospitals into Amazon which this is in the auditoriously works great I can't say oh exactly and travelers are less likely to speak up because they're just a creative their contract being canceled yeah or they're going to be blacklisted and blacklisted just means like there's a common website that all hospitals will go on just to look at travel nurses that are recommended not to call or not to give a contract to Jesus yeah exactly so and you can blacklisted nurse for any reason yeah and the reasons are not disclosed it just says do not call unless to that name well that completely ruins their travel career yeah it's like it's amazing it's so formalized like I know people have been blacklisted from other professions but it was like very like it was kind of an under the table thing this is just like not a not we're we were literally going to put your name on like a list that everyone just has like oh God yeah exactly I don't so if there is you know the issue that a hospital those nurses are less likely to speak up and they're less likely to even you know leave their contract because they're afraid of retaliation like that it just incentivizes just terrible care yeah okay we have we have now spent an enormous amount of time talking about how unbelievably messed up this whole system is what can people do to a health this strike and be like one help with contract negotiations and be like just in general try to like fight for better health care for people I know I've been asked that a lot too we do have a website with M&A minister of the nursing association where we do like to have people share their stories about surprise bills or first hand experiences with under staffing etc and that's something like we've just been kind of collecting stories just so we can kind of keep exposing the corruption yeah also donating to our strike fund is always much appreciated yeah yeah we will put a link to that in the description yeah that's how you create change is this public pressure yeah do you do you have anywhere anything else that you want to say I don't think so I don't think so I feel like I covered a lot cool yeah I just wanted to bring awareness to this topic yeah thank you so much for bringing on the show I'm for talking to us about this because yeah this is definitely something that people need to hear and I'm really glad you're able to join us thank you for having me appreciate it yeah this has been a good app in here podcast by coolz on media and I guess also I heart yeah you can find us in the usual places yeah make make the world a better place for nurses in a worse place for hospital executives yeah yeah yeah yeah let me go let me go from lava for good podcast this is bone valley find us on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen it's Megan King and I am back the intimate knowledge podcast returns I've had my share of bad dates and even a couple bad marriages each week we are going to be talking sex talking life and maybe even talking a little trash and you guys know that I have plenty of trash to talk and if you want you can live vicariously through me and all my ups and unfortunate downs and you might even feel pretty good that your dating life isn't as messed up as mine you think that you have crazy dating stories right oh you haven't heard crazy dating stories you have got to listen to intimate knowledge to hear all of my crazy dating stories yes so put the kids to bed put your headphones in because this one y'all this one's for adults only intimate knowledge returns with more intimacy more sex more laughs and more love I'm Megan King and trust me you need intimate knowledge as much as I do listen to intimate knowledge on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts it could happen here it's not it's not October yet but this is a preview of kind of how I'll be recording certain things when Halloween gets near so I'm done with my work for the day the rest of you can take over now I guess that that's me hide yep it's me it's Christopher what is that what is this episode about Christopher is it about a way no this is this is about a thing that did not happen somewhere else okay which I guess is slightly off kilter for us but yet also with me is garrison and tree and Sophie and hi yeah yeah excellent all right seems like the episode started good work everybody all right we did it we got there we've gotten through the introduction now we can get to I a conspiracy theory that's been like all over Twitter but not kind of in the usual places where you'd expect a conspiracy theory to be on Twitter and that is this whole thing where an enormous number of people were convinced that she's in being have been ousted in a coup and that he was being held by the army under house arrest and okay so we're recording this on a 27th earlier today I think she's in being like reappeared and it you know we had the final definitive proof that he had not in fact been like disappeared by the Chinese army yeah yeah I remember the way I encountered this was Twitter informingly that people were like discussing it and I spent like three seconds looking at what accounts were saying that Xi Jinping was being fucking cude and it was all like I don't know I'm just gonna wait to hear what's up with this one and a tick goblin yeah someone actually did like a sorry like a like a like a word cloud of like a network map of who was spreading it and it was accounts with names like that yeah I believe you and I mean it has spawn like articles from Al Jazeera's no it's it's way worse than that it's way worse than that like okay I'm I was give ahead of slight bit to the place we were at two days ago was I a republic media network which is like which one of the biggest news networks in India I saw some I saw a source claiming they get a hundred and fifty five million views a week yeah because literally in India it's like the biggest to India yeah they they they were literally running a China watchers parody tweet like he had a tweet a China watcher guy had a thread that was like him making fun of it that was like him walking to like red and pieces of being like this is a coup and they like they straight up ran the like his tweets like as a new story about the cool like on real bullshit like I know boy well this is again a point we make regularly on on all of our shows but like you can't you can't have that kind of fun anymore like it just immediately gets picked up and weaponized like making making jokes about like fake oh yeah idiots are spreading bullshit about a coup I'm gonna make fake coup news well congratulations now you've convinced a third of India that there's a coup in China yeah I'm like I think like the China watches I think we're like okay it like and this is a thing where I there are there are various specific China watch people I am very mad at because when when when they were interviewed by the press when they are writing about it they were like wow a coup could kind of be possible but it's not happening like no no it's not it is not I'm sorry like it is a joke like anyone who actually plausibly suggests that Xi Jinping is going to get overthrown in a coup is not serious this is not a serious person cannot happen like this is this is like this is like fucking I like Steve Bannon is getting the death penalty shit like it's actually less plausible than that like it's it's nonsense like and when you say because I'm not I'm not a China government no when you say it's impossible is it just because like we have a long history of what happens when like people who are in power in the Chinese Communist Party lose power and it's not coups well I mean here's the thing right so people will make a there's like there's like a whole big thing about how like who Gentao was like the first like successful like like non violent like like transition of power in Chinese history like that's kind of true like in the modern CCP because like so after Mao there's another guy who takes power and he gets like fucked up by dang show paying and like his sort of minions but like okay so the first thing you have to understand about this and this is something that's going to come up later here is that the Chinese army is not going to stage a coup like this is impossible it is not going to happen the Chinese army is not a political faction that works like this there has never been like the Chinese army has never done a coup like like the army of like the people's liberation army has never done a coup that's not how this works it is it is like it is insane it is like just bafflingly incomprehensible that anyone would think they could do this because they can't it like this is this is not what this is not what the PLA is as an institution in so far as people get overthrown inside of the party it's by other people in the party doing like like factional maneuvering against them and that can sort of happen but like okay this is the year 2022 Xi Jinping has basically like clobbered everyone in the party who like anyone who was actually going to present a serious challenge to him like was clobbered like 10 years ago so I mean 10 is probably slightly over but like you know he just finished part of the background to the stories that he just finished purging like a few of his like last remaining like kind of series like not even really serious but like he is he is he is another one of anti corruption purges and he's like had a guy like executed for corruption right like this isn't like that that that that's how stuff actually works in the party is someone gets arrested for corruption and then put in prison for a long time or killed like but like like you know executed for like corruption like that that that's how this is actually works there's there's like there are no coups this is bullshit I'm going to yell to China watch her specifically who was talking about this like at the end of this episode because I'm mad about it like so like and obviously like right now like obviously today the 27th like Xi Jinping has reappeared in public so like this is obviously bullshit five days ago we turn back the clock it was exactly as bullshit as it was then but there is there is some other context here which is that so that one of the reasons why anyone is even talking about this in the first place is that on October 16th which is like a bit over two weeks from now the CCP is going to have the 20th national Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and this is like the big one right like every five years like the whole party gets together and it's where they choose members of the polat bureau and it's where they choose that the members of the absolutely terribly named polat bureau standing committee if the Chinese Communist Party well there's like another thing there's like another like all the stuff is like it's it's based on like like this the structure of like this is based on like the party structure that the Bolsheviks set up what would be the kind of comparison to this for American politics really is there not I mean it's kind of like like the closest thing would be a presidential election but imagine for presidential election was like like imagine a presidential election was one party got together and that shows the president so it's a it's a committee that kind of gets the different bureaucratic leaders of different like sectors yeah so well it's not so much like so it's basically like it has all of like the leader sort of like going down like the ranks of the party like the you have like like each like like city or whatever like people will you send delegates to it like originally it was like like back in like the like when the Bolsheviks are doing this in like in like 19 like 1919 right like it's okay though the like these are based off of like like the whole party like the Bolshev party would have a Congress and all of the sort of leading organizers and all like everyone like all the sort of like local party factions were like elected person and they would say to delegate to the thing and then they would all fight out and figure out what their policy was going to be now it's like there's I mean there are powers right was like go on but the whole like this is an actual representative like a mass party thing is just sort of gone it's just this is this is sort of like what was actually going to happen at this one is we're going to see exactly how much power like Xi Jinping is going to take because he's I mean the big story that everyone's talking about is like Xi Jinping at the last one of these like well that's one of these this is it was it was a different Congress but he he was able to like eliminate the two term limit on Chinese leaders that have been imposed sort of like after Mao because people were like maybe this is a bad idea. So yeah he's going to get it like he's going to get a get a third term there's a bunch of debate over like exactly how much power he's going to get and like what titles he's going to get but like I don't know I'll do an episode about that after it happens but basically that there's there's this all this sort of political intrigue stuff swirling around because this is like this is like this is like the big political events like of of the sort of like modern period. The other thing that was happening well and this is also why he was like purging some of his opponents because like well you know so like I guess the other thing we should we could talk about with this is like if people have listened to revolutions like this is how Stalin took over the party which is that he figured out that the way you take over this this the state apparatus is by you you make yourself the like the head of the Politburo and then you have enough but you have like you need all you need to do is control like three people on the Politburo and you can just sort of like dictate policy down line for the party and this gives you give this gives you control the state so like this is this is sort of this that's all like that's like the like ancestor of this is still a very similar kind of structure sort of mostly it's just like yeah there's an important political event going on and the other things that Xi Jinping was out of the industry so he was doing he was doing a tour of central Asia for like like he's doing one of those sort of like fluff tours people do of like I were like reaffirming or like trade ties and stuff so he was in Samarkand and then he came back I think on the 21st and then he was just sort of vanished for a few days and the reason that he vanished was that he was in quarantine which is the thing that like is real in China but everyone else has just like forgotten exists and this he was actually doing the thing that like you're supposed to do because he was actually a national trip yeah well and also like I hate to say you've got to hand it to Xi Jinping but I guess you've got to hand it to him that is that what you should do after getting back from an international trip like like Jenny Wiley one of the few things I will say about Xi Jinping is he has gotten COVID less times than Joe Biden which is not gotten COVID yeah right like he hasn't gotten it and the reason he hasn't gotten is because they actually sort of like that there are ways in which the way that they take COVID policy seriously is not like there are like anti lockdown riots happening right now because they locked down like an entire like they locked down in entire town because one person got COVID which like whatever you can argue with the COVID policy but they right yeah he doesn't have COVID so just know that no one was like this might be an option of why he's not around well I mean everyone who was like serious like anyone who like yeah yeah it was like why it was all nonsense people who were spreading it yeah like it was all it was all random Twitter accounts I think what would kind of the missing piece here and what's actually happened is that so those of you who have followed my career well know that there's a website called bell and cat that I wrote at that has been in the news pretty continuously for the last almost 10 years because they kind of helped invent the modern concept of open source research and open source intelligence which has really had its biggest moment since the invasion of Ukraine because suddenly there's all this footage of tanks getting blown up of of Russian soldiers doing this and doing that and of you know cities changing hands and all this stuff and people have been following the war through a lot of these big osin to counts kind of the last huge moment in osin prior to the invasion of Ukraine was was January 6th and that was another big moment for people understanding it and kind of one of the popular conceptions of open source intelligence is that random guys on the internet are getting better and tell them you know the CIA or whatever which there's a degree to which that that's true because a lot of random people did become experts in stuff like you know different kind of munitions tracking and whatnot and did a better job of tracing certain things than state agencies were doing which is why like some of those people anyway it's a whole long story but the problem is that it's led people to believe that the best intelligence often comes from random people on the internet and no one one of the things if you if you're trying to evaluate someone who is claiming to provide osin the most one of the most important things to do is number one can you actually trace their work back like is it possible to like follow their their thinking and their conclusions to determine whether they're not what they're saying is nonsense and number two do you have like a track record because like for example Eric toller and Elliott Higgins who I worked with for a while have like a 10 year track record of being consistently right about things and breaking massive stories and doing stuff like uncovering Russian GRU agent operations and stuff and these were just random accounts that no one had ever heard of on Twitter claiming to have detailed figured out detailed information about a coup in the Chinese government well there's nothing behind them yeah well it's it's funny to you because like okay so once once like actual people we're gonna get this is like once actual people started picking it up like if you just Googled any of the people who were like writing about this it's it takes like five seconds to figure out this person is just nuts and but nobody did it because it's Twitter and so instead what happened is so this thing starts like on Chinese Twitter like it's it's people like but like yeah it starts on like like the Chinese speaking part of like China Twitter I'm gonna read a thing from the Indian News site first post which like did a kind of clean up job of like hey all of the other Indian outlets who are covering this I just have just completely lost their minds here's like what actually sort of happens um quote a Twitter account new highland vision which has over 20,000 followers wrote on the 22nd of September that former Chinese president Hujin Tao and former premier Wenzhai Tao had persuaded Song Ping the former member of the Politburo Standing Committee to take control of the central guard bureau from she so I don't I don't like I guess is that makes no sense to anyone on like anything that yeah yeah so this is jirku okay so what this is this is some like old school very very weird like old school Chinese inside baseball shit um the the first thing you should know about this is this is complete the first way you can tell this is nonsense is that Song Ping is not doing shit and Song Ping is not doing shit because this man is 105 years old this man was born in 1917 wow it's his time it's his turn you know what credit to China I thought we lived in a clip talk or see run by like an aging ghoul cast but damn hundred five to two be fair the queen could have lived so much longer to be to be to be to be to be clear to China like to be fair to try to this guy is like three generations out like this is okay so the sort of like fantasy here is is like Hujin Tao like taking power and Hujin Tao is like he was one of the guys who came in like like he kind of made his bones like purging the people in the CCP who like hadn't been hard enough on the chaniban protestors but he's like he's one of the sort of reform and opening guys like Song Ping is like one of the guys who like helped like Hujin Tao advanced in the part like Hujin Tao is like a guy from like the 90s right like these are like like people who at one point were genuinely powerful and are now like I don't know I mean there's persistent rumors they do stuff behind the scenes but like it's it's I don't know they are like unbelievably infarociously decrepit okay do you know what else is unbelievably infarociously decrepit nicely done the gold company that's now advertising a hot cat yes look guys listen listeners you're probably gonna hear some gold ads from a very they're very silly ads people do seem to be enjoying them I'm gonna tell you two things one don't buy gold the only precious metals you should invest if you're going to invest in precious metals which I don't necessarily recommend the only ones you should invest in let are led and and brass yeah but uh yeah I don't care about these like look when the fucking CIA or the FBI or the Washington State Highway Patrol is advertising on our show we get those ads removed I don't care you're not gonna buy gold don't buy gold don't like but we'll take their money and we'll use it to pay our salaries it's fine like enjoy it we're back boy you know what guys I said what I just said there and I I just bought a hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars in gold I'm gonna go I'm gonna go bury it right now exactly exactly I can't even buy gold I'm allergic to it for real yeah really really yeah I'm not meant to be rich wow I didn't know you could be allergic to gold I also did I knew you could be allergic to like yeah rings and stuff yeah that makes I mean like the yeah the metal I'm not like I'm gonna like die if I touch it but like yeah I came up on an allergy test so it's like I wonder if you're only allergic to like broke people gold and if you're not a little maybe more people gold I love that there's poor people gold I know I know it's just very funny that that's and I'm sure the people advertising on our shows are selling like it's like asbestos bricks covered in gold leaf yeah yeah we should talk about this not okay so back back back to a another kind of incredibly bizarre fantasy so like there's there's a group of like people who are like like Chinese dissidents or whatever but like whose thing is that like they think that like Xi Jinping is like an unreconstructed Maoist and that like you know one day like the like the people from the reform period who like ended Maoism or one day kind of like sweep him out of power like this is nonsense like it's like the only equivalent I can think of this is like every once in a while you'll see some Russia expert ranting about how like Putin is like on the verge of being overthrown and like some like the liberal no one has ever heard of the 90s and it's the same shit by the way the fake osent that comes out because it's all stuff like look they've closed the streets in Moscow and like this street you know they've got military out on it's like well yeah they're having a parade it's like a free announced parade they do this every year they hold this exact parade every year and they close the street down the same way and you can find that if you look into it but people can take like post a bunch of pictures on Twitter of like cleared streets and like soldiers blocking intersections and it looks to somebody who doesn't know anything about Russia like wow these the the osent people have done it again they've uncovered another coup against Putin what one thing one thing one thing the other thing that I'll say about coups is we like in the last like maybe three or four years have actually been a lot of coups but the thing about a coup right is that like one of the things that happens very quickly usually in a coup if the coup plotters are winning is that like they there's you'll you'll see a message from something called like the government of national salvation or some shit yeah and they'll like start putting out statements and if you don't see a statement from like the United Liberation Army of National Salvation or whatever like it's not happening that's what I'm gonna call mine well I'm just okay I understand how it spreads like I'm sure you're we're gonna get into it but I understand how it's spread to like people on the internet that want something to latch onto but if you're saying it got to like El Jazeera and all that stuff like there wasn't like age or like look so okay so there's a couple yeah we're gonna get to that like so there's just different kinds of things happening right one of the things about this conspiracy is that there's a lot of people who see it and are like like like there I saw a guy who was like an ultra maga account right like his thing was like he was like Newt nuclear ultra maga who posted a picture that was like oh my god this is an explosion in Beijing and it was like no this is from a changing explosion to you all some 15 and this is the only thing I've ever seen this the next day he was like yeah I'm sorry this actually not what I thought it was like even those guys could I could I call support to nuclear ultra mega no it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was the people you know normally expect just get pulled over by this stuff and they were like this is nonsense like what is happening you know I'm glad that we can rely on the journalist credibility of nuclear ultra mega and he's on the same time they got it's really like it was nuclear ultra maga was being more responsible than most of the mainstream Indian journalistic outlets which is terrifying yeah yeah so okay so like like the thing about this this the original version of this conspiracy though is that this is like this is gibberish nobody knows what the central guard bureau is like I had to look that up like apparently it's a like the central guard bureau is like this thing that's in charge of like protecting like high level leaders or whatever like it's nonsense like this is this is like pure inside baseball shit for like like people who are like really committed like the Chinese dissident what pads or whatever what happens next is so people start kind of picking up on it and in particular there's a person of Jennifer Zeng Zeng who has like 200,000 Twitter followers um starts she starts posting this video that claims to be PLI military vehicles heading to Beijing on September 22nd and this like goes viral um so yeah I mean I'm gonna give us three options once is footage footage from 2014 to it's footage from a video game three video game let's yeah let's think a lot well no so you said I actually think this is real military footage and I think it's actually kind of recent it's just that like it's really easy in China to just like look at a road in sea a military truck like option three it's footage of some fucking like take on the road in China I'm gonna take it was just like armored cars which is like I think that like I just move troops around I just did a road trip up to Northern Washington for a parkour conference and nerd I know and we we passed three military helicopters flying this guy we passed three we we we passed like two like troop carriers we passed a whole bunch of military equipment I'm not gonna film it be like they're in vading or I can't like what no like this this is a thing like if you take one thing out of this episode it is that anytime someone says that they are seeing troop movements it is always a lie that this was a huge danger in Hong Kong because everyone was like terrified the army was gonna show up and like every two days there'd be another video someone's like there's an army conflict moving it and every it's always fake it's never real is like the only time it's ever real is if there's actual shooting like if there's a literal war going on maybe well and it's never real you're gonna know when it's real it's also if you want to look about it at times because there are times where people do osent on military movements and it's meaningful a good example would be the month that led up to the invasion of Ukraine yeah in which case you were able to clearly show here is satellite footage three months ago of this place from the air and here is it now and there's like a million more guys there clearly something is going on and we can show this pattern repeating in a bunch of areas right but this is a very different thing from the thing that goes viral on Twitter is someone will just post a video of it and if so and if what's happening is they're posting a video of some military looking trucks that person is and that's all it is 99.9% of the time that person is full of shit yeah it's and this is like one of the most common patterns of just like weird bull shit conspiracy stuff is this stuff people like love this again the thing that's happening to open source intelligence is the thing that happens to everything cool that comes on the you have this you have this this thing is figured out that it's made possible because of new technology people do really rad shit in the case of osent it's like prove that the Russian government shot down in mh17 over fucking Ukraine and you know solve all of these war crimes being committed in different areas by figuring out exactly who the perpetrators were and where they were committed and all this shit based off of like sketchy video footage and then the thing goes viral and elements of the aesthetics of it are taken by people who just want to spread bullshit or in some cases who think they're actually doing real research and are just dumb and you know then then you you get to this point where kind of this thing that was pretty wild and pretty pretty free for a while has to there's a degree to which it has to become professionalized so that people can know who is full of shit and who is not and like who has a track record and who doesn't and I'll go back to in terms of like how you can tell us something is real osent kind of the the earliest big case study of like at osent researchers breaking something is proving that the Russian government shot down mh17 this Malaysian air flight over Ukraine when the Russians were blaming the Ukrainians for it and the way they did it is there were pictures in the wreckage of the aircraft that were taken numerous ones that showed pieces of the missile some of those pictures had numbers on them all weaponry military grade weaponry has serial numbers and shit and using those serial numbers people were able to track it back to the buck missile battery that the missile had been on and because the buck missile battery also has like numbers and shit you can trace its progress they figured out what base had originated at and then using a mix of like videos civilians had taken and like other stuff they were able to kind of trace the path of this buck missile as it left Russia and entered Ukraine and then found it in a village like a video evidence that just some taxi driver was literally a guy would like a fucking car camera on and he just uploaded footage from like driving around town you see in this town next to where the plane was shot down the buck missile launcher that has the missile that shot down mh17 driving through that town the day that the plane is shot down is like oh okay well there you go and again it's the thing in terms of like how to tell of something is valid osin you can track all of that back every stage of it makes sense every stage of it is repeatable to a lay person and and and if they're good they're going to demonstrate their work as they tell this as they like show here's the steps that I took there never just say here's a video of two army vehicles look true movements you know yeah well okay we're going to be getting into who she is after these ads oh oh um you know when I'm thinking about shooting down civilian airliners I wish I had gold in my basement yeah we're going to be came around next year we're launching our first trebuchet exclusively using gold as the projectile and the end the end mission by the end is to set up next to the airport and shoot down as many planes as possible using the gold trebuchet wow wow garrison garrison davis threatening international air travel hope your passport comes in soon buddy before anyone hears about this in the state department here's here's the vets I just got my my gold purchase flag I don't know what's going on but it's not letting me buy anymore so I think I think they're on to me wow um yeah that's that's on for listeners we need you to just buy all of the gold you can and mail it to garrison so that garrison can fight climate change with his gold powered into aircraft catapult so Chris how's it going okay so okay so the thing that also should include people in like that something was going wrong is if literally any of the people who were retweeting Jennifer Zang had like literally just Google her name because it okay so if you if you do this what you find out is that she is a self-proclaimed human rights activists and journalists who writes for like really weird right wing outlets in Japan and also right for the epoch times oh so really now now finally we can pull back the curtain and reveal what has been going on this entire time which is that and then this is yeah what what was actually going on here is that Jennifer Zang is part of the fallen Gong which is like very very weird right wing Chinese cult she was like like it she like had to leave China because she went to write a book about them like this this whole thing is but a full long gone yeah full of gong off the whole there we go back yeah okay good love it so yeah okay so people we don't know what the long gong is there they they were okay so it's a thing that kind of emerged out of a bunch of these sort of like cheap meditation practices but in the late 80s and 90s like the fallen gong it turns into this like this full scare religious cult that's like it and as as as a CCP like increasingly sort of represses them they become like increasingly anti-communist you there they're like literally like you cannot be a Chinese person in the US and not running these people fucking everywhere they'll just like march through China town I mean there's billboards for their fucking music show thing like yeah everywhere around fucking where I live you know yeah yeah they have they have a show called Shen you and like you put you I'm betting most yeah that's yeah that's them trying to before communism yep yeah and everywhere it's everywhere billboards TV the actual show is wild yeah yeah they have they have a huge network in the US and like the actual thing that it is it's like it's mostly like trying to overcome these the actual things is this weird combination of like half-ass Buddhism and Taoism and then like absolutely insane anti-evolution shit like Christian Buddhism as well it's like it is there's a whole bunch of weird like it's not it's not just like Taoism it's like it's a bigger why it's it's more Buddhist but like yeah it's it's it's there it's very it's a very very weird cult thing and like and they also operate at times of yeah a fascist newspaper yeah yep although weirdly weirdly the epoch times okay so this is this is the part of the story that's very odd which is that I'm about 80% sure about that original so so the original accounts that did this that um that did the original conspiracy that uh the new Highland vision thing was like a pretty new account had a bunch of followers and it just vanished and there were a bunch of other account like tiny accounts that were also new Highland vision I'm about 80 to 90% sure that this that was a fallen Gong thing but weirdly the epoch times doesn't really touch this it's it's it's it's it's very weird um there like I'm gonna read a passage from from the epoch times and it's like the epoch time in so far as to talk about it are citing x Indian officials talking about it but like here here here's a pack here's like a quote from a passage of like the thing they're writing about like a potential like stuff like okay yay noted in this article that Lee was promoted to commander of northern theater command in 19 it's our in 2017 by she and that Lee led the formation of flash in the military parade on the anniversary marking the CCP's takeover of China which shows that she values him like this is just like the most boring ass China watcher shit I've ever seen like the epoch times didn't like cover this as like like they didn't do the like the the thing that all the rest of long gone people were doing which is this sort of like oh my god there's a coup like they just did this kind of makes sense because if they're on the inside in any way they kind of know it's bullshit so they don't want to kind of ruin some of their reputation at least in like the far right in the states so it makes sense that they would only cover it in the extent of them quoting like other people so that they're actually not actually giving their kind of definitive opinion on it yeah it's interesting and I think also like I mean I think the thing is that they also knew that this thing has limited shelf life because the moment that she's in being reappears in public everyone knows this bullshit yeah but before then so the new version of this of this conspiracy coalesce around like four things one is the sort of military convoy is going to Beijing thing there to there's I guess there's five because there's also technically that there's there's the image of the explosion that they claim is in Beijing that's like not in Beijing it was from like seven years ago there's there's there's the big the big one is there's this image going around that is like partially it's fake and then people try to do on zentana and it sucks um is is they there's this thing that that's like Beijing is cancer 60% of its flights and trains and there's like there's so the original pictures of it are fake right and then people try to go on flight trackers to like check if it's happening but they don't know how to use flight trackers oh boy so they look at the planes are like oh my god has been canceled if you look at the actual map there's just a bunch of planes over Beijing which is the thing you would expect there to be happening and there were like and it was one of those normal things were like like the actual thing that was happening was there were there were some cancellations but like that's because flights get canceled yeah like it was just completely normal flight cancellation stuff or like it wasn't even like a statistically significant number of them which is regular flight cancellations and then like planes that had landed but people were being like they were canceled and it's like no like they got there yeah so that happened there was a lot of people trying to like do research stuff with just failing um there's there's this whole thing about Xi Jinping like missing this really important military meeting which like he actually he genuinely wasn't there but he wasn't there because he was quarantining and he like sent him he sent like a message to it which is interesting because uh the like the e-buck times actually reports on that and like that that passes that I read about like the the weird the like people trying to figure out who's holding a flags you get promoted like that that that's about that meeting um but yeah then the last thing is just like where is Xi Jinping like blah blah blah if he's fine why isn't he and this stuff like it's it's the especially the flights and the convoy stuff like start spring like wildfire and the thing that happens that like this thing should have died like there shouldn't have been enough stuff to keep it going but it hit BJP Twitter which is like so like so the BJP is basically like it's it's the fascist party that controls India they're like it's like really fanatical like Hindu extremist right wingers um they hate Muslims they suck their like I would argue I think there's a decent argument for this that this is the closest thing to like a conventional 20th century fascist party that exists on earth like on a mass scale like yeah yeah and the and the epic times that here before or at least on the masters I know I've talked about them a decent amount Chris I know you have they come up you have yeah they're kind they're kind of one of the one of the recurring characters um yeah but what's interesting here is is that one of their ops like it just the the op doesn't really go towards sort of like American right we Twitter it goes towards Indian right we Twitter which that which which is notable yeah yeah well and and the reason I think this is a long this is happening is that like so if we're number like a couple years back when like a bunch of Indian and Chinese soldiers like be each other to death in like the mountains with sticks it was pretty cool yeah yeah so like this is like a thing that there's there's been border disputes between China and India like since India was created basically like um they they they they they fought a war like okay the the war that people want to talk about the least is the 1962 Sino Indian war where Mao just kind of like invaded a bunch of India and just like absolutely kick the shit out of the Indian army and this has been a sort of like there's a sort of like a recurring in like Indian nationalist like bug bear thing where like every when when border tensions flare up like the India people you get a bunch of like really terribly animated things of like an Indian soldier with a giant staff like beating the shit out of a dragon or something this is sort of like something that happens on like Indian right we Twitter and George Jordan Peterson shit yeah literally like it's it's really funny to you you you get two of the like absolutely funniest like you you get the sort of like the Chinese like wolf warrior like accounts and the like BJP people going at it and it's just unbelievably funny to watch because they're two like two of the most like absolutely psychotic like insane nationalists in the world you just you just get a lost in fight for a bit and it's it's a good time I unfortunately like so these guys pick it up and and it rapidly like it okay like one of these like that there's this right wing Indian astrologer who predicted that in inch in inch in 23 she's gonna get overthrown stop yeah that's that is one of the worst at least that thesis ever wow that's kind of interesting to me that's kind of interesting a right wing Indian astrologer oh yeah he's like he's like he's there's a lot of right we just keep like we're into astrology sherry yeah well and it's specifically a lot of that is very influential in the rss which is kind of the Indian fascist movement that is backing Modi who's the guy who runs the country right now who's yeah it's it's not it's not weird that that that's happened given the context of Indian politics it's not surprising to put it sucks it does suck it's for sure sucks we can say that for certain I wonder what sign he is I'm trying to get my right guys fucking Libra okay so a lot of places rising energy actually so super bar in some swami who is a guy who was this guy was a six term BJP MP he was a he was a gu- this man was a government minister at one point starts tweeting about this whole thing great and then like it just it's just like it this thing just like goes through the actual Indian media sphere like fucking wildfire the the Z news which is an outlet founded by the deceased right wing media like in Indian media billionaire supraschandra who are rest in peace by the way died in August I runs a story called china coup Beijing hiding something big Xi Jinping in deep trouble what rumor suggest like the fucking economic times this is the second largest in-gloose language business paper in the world runs a story titled quote Chinese president Xi removed from power in a coup here's what we know so far is nuts yeah like I mentioned this at the beginning like part of the reason this goes viral is that republic media network like like like I'm probably India's largest TV network is just runs with the fucking like runs with it as a story like fuck and yeah well it's yeah it's like boxes but it's like they're I guess the way I would describe it is like they don't like Fox News has like a really really elaborate like like system because they've been doing this for ages right they have a very very elaborate system for like running like running a dumb thing from Twitter like and turning it into like turning into like a package story yeah that this is not what's happening here they are just like like live reporting from Twitter and I think this is I don't know like I think it's like it's it's it's it's a degree of laziness that like you you see this in American journalism a lot too where like people will just literally repote like report to it like things that happen on Twitter like this is this is how this is how like goblin mode became a thing like there's a lot of stories that are just it's just like into a Twitter thing they're basically doing this and part of the everything that's going on here is that like you know so like Indian media has just become increasingly right wing over the past decade they've gotten like increasingly more fascist and when you and you know the everything is like fascists are incompetent and like this is basically the result of the sort of hollowing out of the Indian media sphere is that these like Matt like he's absolutely titanic like cable and news networks are running this just like like stuff that is so bullshit that like like the fucking news man like there was a newsmax anchor grant stitch in field who's a newsmax host like has like a video about this and the video both starts and ends with him going this is probably bullshit and then in the middle there's like some incomprehensible thing that he like half red a epoch times article didn't understand he starts ranting about like the general of the northern war who has just been relieved of his duties as a direct quote by the way absolutely nonsense like yeah but like even even those guys were kind of like this is whack like we can't run with this but that it like the sort of like like the the the the the sort of like Indian fascists people are like so incredibly desperate for just like any like like even more so than the American right and more our desperate for just like here is an anti-China story we can just sort of like throw out because of the sort of like increased tensions around the border etc this stuff just this stuff just explodes and eventually you get like the the Indian media outlets who are like still actual like outlets who are like hey guys this is nonsense like the Hindu stand times and the Tribune write stories that are like really like are you guys kidding me like come on this is like obviously fake um yeah and and at certain point like the soul thinks it's sort of like phase but it has this there's this but then there's a sort of second wave of it which is there are a bunch of people who are like weird like Chinese dissident quote-unquote people but who aren't like who aren't fallen gong people who like looked at this and we're like this is obviously a lie I'm not gonna jump in on this laver the bullshit but then we're like okay I've got a second layer of this um there there's there's someone uh dr. Lee Mangyan who's like she's like an old school like covid bio like bioweapon like lab truth or person um she was like okay okay no no no hold on hold on what's happening here is that this whole discourse was a Xi Jinping op to distract everyone from the alliance with Putin that he's gonna announce at the party conquerist yeah yeah that that that but like like like he needs to like secretly cover up the fact that he's going to create an alliance to destroy the free world it's like it's it's it's a real it's a real circus of just like like all like you you gotta see like this is whole sort of second when third waves of media grifters like looking at the story and being like okay how do we spin this how do you say it's I don't know like I I feel like this is a part of like this part of Twitter like the sort of like it's this kind of there's a kind of intersection of like weird Chinese cranks and like China watcher Twitter where you get a bunch of these very weird things but yeah I like I've talked about this but it's like the thing is interesting to me is like the extent to which the right doesn't pick this up like this is the kind of thing like you would expect like Alex Jones to be talking about and as best I can tell like Alex Jones doesn't cover it like fucking Bucky Barnes like I haven't talked about it like briefly like on like but like while Alex is like walked out of the room talks about for like five seconds and then stops and I was like really like Alex Jones isn't gonna cover this like uh I maybe it's possible I missed part of it if she shouldn't paying it is at is if like less secure in power and can be overthrown by other elements in the Chinese government then China's kind of less scary that Alex Jones tends to betray it as so that's might be part of it yeah I don't know though we'll give him some time maybe he'll get on this later yeah I don't know he's got a lot going on right now yeah okay so the last thing I want to talk about is like so I've been saying I'm talking about China watchers this whole time there's like basically there's kind of a academic career slash profession like in the US that's like being a China watcher and so you get like some international relations degree you get some like cultural studies degree and you go to China for a bit and you come back and then like your job is to write about like the inscrutable oriental mind and I they're like one or two of these they're like a couple of these people who are like have some respect for uh real large I I literally cannot with these people um what so what the guardian writes an article about this later on they're like yeah because this is not happening but the guy they quote writes in a Twitter thread I'm just gonna read this tweet because I Jesus Christ appellus coup in a time of political pressurization is not implausible Gorbachev and Yeltsin were detained during the USSR Russia transition period a coup is not an enath them out to China either emperor Guangzhou was arrested by Dowager emperor's Seishi when he attempted to reforms that by the way the second thing he's talking about that is from like I think it's 1898 wow is the last coup he can find like you can just say shit like there's a little try like you you would literally literally say whatever the fuck you want and people will be like oh yeah no no no the uh this coup that is literally too political there are there are two entire political systems that China has had between right now and the time that the emperor's regent like overthrew the the emperor to stop the truth like I just I just calm on like why why why are people allowed to say this like why are people allowed to go oh yeah uh Gorbachev and Yeltsin got couped so that means that there can be a coup in China in 2022 like what this this this is one of the experts like I just like like one of these every single every single one of these articles has this passage where they're like oh well part of the reason why this is happening is because the the Chinese government is so unbelievably not transparent and I'm like no like part of the reason this is happening is because you guys just literally will say bullshit which means that people will just believe like literally yeah you can just say anything about China you can say that like it's like it's like it all comes down once again as every problem in the world does to the 24-hour news cycle where is this bullshit sure but like got a full airtime it's happening right now people are talking about it so we get to talk about it we don't have to say it's true we can just like talk about it and then we filled some airtime and uh you know we keep making money it's good and now we're talking about it yeah and it's like if it's a topic that people are not you know like I'm gonna say something then add a caveat if it's talking to people are not very knowledgeable about like the inner working is the Chinese politics then they're gonna be easier to believe it now even now obviously this strategy can work even for topics that people are knowledgeable about some times but especially in something related to like foreign countries that most Americans know very little about then yeah that's super easy to believe like remember a few years ago when everyone convinced themselves that uh uh uh king drungun died yeah because because people like because people are really to believe something it's yeah it's like like there's there's there's a thing I've been like I've run into a lot we're like there's there's a bunch of like there's a bunch of people in the American left who've like basically and I don't even really know how they came to believe this because this isn't something that the CCP even says about itself but like they've they've come to believe that China has universal health care which it doesn't they used to have one and they got rid of it like they they literally dismantled the universal health system like there are people who believe that like like China has like a right to housing and then everyone in China just gets a house and it's like like this is all this shit that's like I just has like it's it's so completely uncoupled from reality that like I can't I can't even trace the source to where they got this up but it's really easy to spread because yeah there's just like nobody knows and especially like yeah it's it's a foreign country nobody knows anything about it and you can and like the actual people who are experts will just like start spouting shit about how it's plausible there could be a coup against Xi Jinping because fucking emperor was overthrown 150 like 124 years ago like it's it's it's it's endlessly frustrating and yeah anyway so don't don't use the internet attack global communications infrastructure um and have a yeah by gold by some gold and if you see something on Twitter who really anywhere online instantly believe it no matter what it is yeah yeah live your life that way it's it's fine also uh should we plug our our lives our lives show that yeah yeah so we're doing a live virtual it could happen here and Q&A the entire squad will be there you can get tickets from moment dot CEO slash i c hh it's all over our socials you're looking for it and that will be on October 26th at 6 p.m. Pacific time uh marker calendars marker calendars mark your calendar oh my god c.o slash i c hh i feel that was beautiful we're dick good for you Sophie and good I know we've had a lot of debate about what we're going to be talking about and I think one of the most important things in current events right now that kind of indicates the kind of collapse of American society is all of the tri-guys discourse so we are going to be preparing a two hour two hour presentation on the evolution of the tri-guys discourse and what really happened behind the scenes and how it impacts American politics going spoilers so none of them were ever married more than a movie American me is a new podcast that digs into the history and mystery of American me a film directed by and starring Edward James almos that had a huge impact on latino cinema and culture i'm your host Alex Fumetto and i'll be diving into the behind the scenes controversy including an alleged backlash from the mexican mafia several people who worked on the movie have been murdered and even today people are still scared to talk about the film everything else i mean you know i i don't want to speak about and we had a sign of paper saying that if we were taken hostage that they would not bargain for us eddie i know he said he had permission to do the film so i don't know where i got lost in translation learn about what really went down from the people that were there listen to more than a movie American me this part of the michael through to podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is the story it is what it is you believe it don't believe it it's up to you it will not change the fact that i'm an innocent man leos gofield is serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife michelle a crime he says he did not commit then 17 years into leos prison sends newly discovered evidence pointed to an entirely different suspect always always the fingerprints was a big question in my mind obviously somebody was in the car someone knew something who was it what do they know i'm gilbert king a pullitzer prize winning author and i've spent the last four years searching for the truth behind the conviction of leos gofield i am innocent and you are obligated to protect me and bring justice to my dead wife make it right let me go let me go from lava for good podcast this is bone valley find us on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen it's megan king and i am back the intimate knowledge podcast returns i've had my share of bad dates and even a couple bad marriages each week we are going to be talking sex talking life and maybe even talking a little trash and you guys know that i have plenty of trash to talk and if you want you can live vicariously through me and all my ups and unfortunate downs and you might even feel pretty good that your dating life isn't as messed up as mine you think that you have crazy dating stories right oh you haven't heard crazy dating stories you have got to listen to intimate knowledge to hear all of my crazy dating stories yes so put the kids to bed put your headphones in because this one y'all this one's for adults only intimate knowledge returns with more intimacy more sex more laughs and more love i'm megan king and trust me you need intimate knowledge as much as i do listen to intimate knowledge on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hello and welcome to it could happen here this is shareen and you are listening to the first of two parts of the little series i wanted to do about Yemen i think um i've been really interested in the history of countries that are currently in turmoil because understanding the history of how they got there is usually so important to understanding uh their present so Yemen is one of those places i think that is always in the news as experiencing something horrific and uh i wanted to know exactly how we got to where we are so i wanted to focus on primarily uh modern events and the last several years for example and so this first episode is going to cover everything up till 2018 and then our next episode will cover the years after that but before we jump to the modern times i wanted to do a chronology of some key events that had led up to uh the 1990s essentially so we're gonna rewind all the way back to the 1500s i know but still the stuff is interesting to me i hope it is to you too let's get into it and the 1500s the Ottomans absorb part of Yemen into their empire but they're expelled in the 1600s centuries later in 1839 Aiden Yemen's capital comes under British rule and then when the Suez Canal opens up in 1869 the city serves as a major refueling port in 1849 the Ottomans return to the north of Yemen however around world war one in 1918 the Ottoman Empire dissolves and north Yemen gains independence and is ruled by Imam Yahya after 30 years in power in 1948 Yahya is assassinated so many things happened in 1948 i swear to god that year is cursed but anyway after Yahya is assassinated his son Ahmad fights off opponents of feudal rule and he succeeds his father in 62 Imam Ahmad dies and he's succeeded by his son however army officers then sees power and they set up the Yemen era republic and this sparks a civil war between royalists supported by Saudi Arabia and the republicans essentially that are backed by Egypt in 1967 Britain withdraws from the south of Yemen after years of a pro-independence insurgency and its former territories unite as the peoples republic of Yemen in 1969 a communist coup renames the south of Yemen the peoples democratic republic of Yemen and re-oriented towards the soviet block the soviet block aka the eastern block for those that need a quick refresher like i did it's also known as the communist block the socialist block and the soviet block and it was the group of socialist states and central and eastern europe east asia southeast asia africa and lin america that was under the influence of the soviet union that existed during the cold war in 1970 republican forces in Yemen triumph in the north Yemen's civil war in 72 there are border clashes between the two Yemen's the north and the south and a ceasefire is brokered by the arab league in 1978 alayab al-Assalih becomes president of north Yemen he's going to be popping up a lot in this history and also some modern times so salih is a name that we should remember going forward in 79 a year after salih becomes president there's new fighting that begins between the two Yemen's in 86 about seven years later thousands die in a power struggle in the south which effectively drives the first generation of leaders from office hide that abubekat al-Athas then takes over and begins to work towards the unification of these two states in Yemen however this unification is pretty uneasy and the early years in the 1990s after the re-unification of Yemen in May of 1990 alayab al-Assalih transitions from president of north Yemen a post that he had held since 1978 to the president of the republic of Yemen at the same time these aideshia group on suh allah or the houthis gradually gain power and the group's rise has at this point the tacit support of president salih at this point the sovian block implodes the tension between these former states indoors even though they're technically supposed to be united at this point the former states of Yemen so i'm talking about here sovian block is over so in 1994 a civil war begins just years after the re-unification of Yemen the unintegrated armies of the north and the south face off resulting in a brief civil war that resulted in the defeat of the southern army and short up Yemen's reunification in May of July of that year president salih declares a state of emergency and dismisses vice president alis al-salem al-bed and other southern officials who declare the secession of the south before being defeated by the national army a year later 95 Yemen and aratria clash over the disputed haneesh islands in the red sea international arbitration awarded the bulk of these islands later to Yemen in 1998 this brings us to the two thousands which introduces al-kaida into Yemen and i guess the rest of the world but in 2000 president salih reaches a border demarcation agreement with Saudi Arabia which is known as the treaty of jedda and he seeks to disarm the houthis whom he had previously viewed as a useful weapon against Saudi interference in Yemen in october of that year the u.s. naval vessel us as coal is damaged in an al-qaeda suicide attack in aidan 17 us personnel are killed with this attack in sebiwari 2002 Yemen expels more than a hundred foreign Islamic clerics in a crackdown on al-qaeda in october of that year al-qaeda attacks and badly damages the oil super tanker envy limbered in the gulf of aidan and this kills one person and injures twelve other crew members and it also costs Yemen a lot of money in lost port revenues between 2004 and 2010 is the houthi insurgency or the houthi rebellion tensions run high at this point between sawless government and the houthis after a sawless border deal with Saudi Arabia the houthis are led by hussain by the daidan the houthi at this time and a houthi eventually leaves a rebellion against the eminion government in 2004 in june through august of this year hundreds die as troops battle the shea insurgency that is led by her santa houthi in the north starting in june of 2004 sawless government begins arresting hundreds of houthi members and issues a reward for her saying a daidan and houthis arrest the leader of the houthis this fighting continues until al-houthi is killed in september of 2004 in 2005 between march and april fighting between the houthis which are now led by hussain's brother obdelmalik and houthi and government forces surges and this leaves hundreds dead more than two hundred people are killed and a resurgence of fighting between government forces and the supporters of the prepsley slain leader of the houthis hussain and houthi who had died before his brother hectic power and this fighting ceases after the sides reach an agreement resulting in the surrender of the houthis top military commander between 2005-2006 these sporadic clashes between the government and the houthis continue but in march 2006 president sawless grants and this day to 600 houthi fighters i think this is part of the reason that president sawless goes on to win the 2006 election and remains president however in early 2007 the houthi rebels and sawless government again find themselves at odds fighting continues for five months and many are killed or wounded in the clashes between security forces and al-houthi rebels in the north this continues until rebel leader obdelmalik al-houthi accepts a ceasefire agreement with saalah and this happens in june 2007 with the help of qatar the ceasefire had not turned a year old when even more fighting breaks out between the government and the rebels by july of 2008 al-houthi the la saalah declares an end to the fighting and the houthi dominated sadda governorate in september of this year an al-kaeda attack on a us embassy in sanah kills 12 people let's take our first little break before i forget and we'll jump back in um see what happens next and we're back uh we left off in september 2008 after an al-kaeda attack on a us embassy killed 12 people and in november of that year police fire warning shots at opposition rallies in sanah these demonstrators were demanding electoral reform and fresh polls between 2009 and 2010 as operations scorched earth in august of 2009 the eminem military launches operations scorched earth to crush the houthi rebellion and sadda at this point houthi rebels begin fighting with saudi forces and cross border clashes tens of thousands of people are displaced by the fighting this fighting continues until after rounds of offers and counteroffers saalah scofferman agrees to a ceasefire with obduo eminem al-houthi and the rebels in february of 2010 the eminem military simultaneously carries out operation blow to the head yes operation blow to the head this is a crackdown on both the rebels and al-kaeda and the arabian peninsula which are known as a q a p thousands flee the government offensive against the separatists and the southern shabwa province in september of that year government forces besiege the governorate of shabwa in southeastern jeman to route out the a q a p militants by 2011 the arab spring reaches eminem in jenuary demonstrations calling for the end of saalah's 33 year rule begin saalah offers some concessions promising not to seek re-election but the protests spread security forces and saalah supporters launch a crackdown that eventually leaves between 200 and two thousand people dead there's such a huge discrepancy between the death toll because it's hard to know how many people are suffering and how many people die from these kinds of attacks especially when there's not a lot of international interference or international care essentially in april 2011 saalah's general peoples congress the gpc agrees to a gulf cooperation council broker deal to hand over power but the president refuses to sign on this prompts the influential hasheed tribal federation and several army commanders to back the opposition after which clashes erupt in center in june 2011 president saalah has seriously injured an abomin and he travels to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment in september 2011 saalah returns to the presidential palace amid renewed clashes it is not until november 2011 that he signs a deal that states that is deputy adra bua mon sur al-haddi assume power and form a unity government this unity government would include a prime minister from the opposition and it's formed after months of protests this same month a usbord al-Qaeda leader in Yemen anwar el al-Aulaki is killed by us forces in february of 2012 had the swan in for a two year term as president after an election in which he stood unopposed however he is unable to counter the al-Qaeda attacks in the capital as the year goes on 2014 is what's considered the years of the post-Arab spring and in january the national dialogue conference concludes after ten months of deliberations agreeing to a document on which the new constitution of Yemen would be based in february a presidential panel approves of a political transition plan that includes a draft federal constitution for Yemen that organizes the country into a federation of six regions this was aimed to accommodate the hoothy rebels and southern grievances but the hoothy sees control of most of senna and august of that year and they reject the deal following two weeks of anti-government protests president had the dissolves his cabinet and overturns a controversial rise in fuel prices by october 2014 the hoothy's take control of most of Yemen's capital senna the following month the rebels seize the red sea and the port of Houdaida in january of 2015 after being placed under house arrest by the hoothies had he resigns as president despite previous attempts to craft a power sharing agreement between hadi and the hoothies the two had continued to clash the hoothies later reject a draft constitution that was proposed by hadi's government a month later the hoothies take control of the Yemeni government and a point in presidential counsel to replace president hadi but this is a move that is swiftly denounced by the united nations president hadi then flees the presidential palace and senna and he escapes to his southern stronghold of edin and this is where he later rescinds his resignation declaring himself the legitimate president and deems the hoothy take over a coup the month after that in march 2005 the Islamic state claimed its first attacks in Yemen which were two suicide bombings that targeted shea mosques and senna the capital and this resulted in 137 people being killed the hoothies start an offensive against government forces and advance towards southern Yemen president hadi then flees a done and takes refuge instead in satiravia shortly thereafter the hoothies seize parts of taiz a city in southwestern Yemen after repeated pleas from hadi who was still taking refuge in satiravia a Saudi led coalition of arab states including the united arab emirates egypt maraka jordan bahren sudan and kawait initiates operation decisive storm in support of the austin president the coalition launches airstrikes against hoothy targets deploys small ground forces and imposes a naval blockade in order to halt the hoothy's advance on edin the united states then announces its intention to aid in the coalition's efforts in april a month later the coalition declares an end to operation decisive storm satiravia announces it would move on to a phase described as operation restoring hope despite the announcement the soudi led coalition continues to bomb hoothy positions and the united states increases its arms sales for the soudi campaign in Yemen let's take our second break and we will be right back to continue this little history so be our b okay we're back and we are still in april of 2015 when the soudi led coalition continues to bomb hoothy positions and the united states increases its arms sales for the soudi campaign in Yemen this is after soudi Arabia announced that it would move on to a phase described as operation restoring hope despite the bombing campaign that the soudis are carrying out the hoothy's capture the city of atuk which is a small city and the capital of the shabwa government in Yemen it's also south east from sena and it's not that far is it only about uh 450 kilometers south of sena after three soudi officials die in a hoothy attack at the soudi border soudi Arabia boasts its border security the hoothy fighters also condemn a UN Security Council resolution imposing an arms embargo on the group calling the decision an act of aggression a month later alia billahsala the previous president had been accused of siding previously with hoothy rebels in support of hadis ouster and may salah and Yemeni forces loyal to him announced a formal alliance with the hoothies the soudis and the hoothies then agree to a five day humanitarian ceasefire u.s president brakobama convenes a gcc meeting the gulf corporation council at camp david to resolve the crisis in Yemen but only two states send their leaders which is very sad to me a month later we're in june of 2015 and the leader of the al-Qaeda in the arabian peninsula the aqaq nasad el wahashi is killed in a u.s drone strike in Yemen a month after that after months of fighting with souni tribesmen and aqaq militants the hoothies take control of the entire shabwa government the following month president hadi returns to aden after soudi back government forces and those loyal to hadi recapture the port city from hoothy forces 2016 introduces some foreign intervention which always sounds a good idea in april that year the u.n. sponsors talks between the hadi government and the coalition of hoothies as well as former president solace general peoples congress between october of 2016 and may of 2017 both sides of the conflict allegedly break their ceasefires united nations and others tried to broker peace talks and political resolutions the hoothies claim responsibility for firing missiles into sadi arabia including the capital of riyadh also in 2017 humanitarian agencies and watchdogs to cry the Yemen crisis as one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world there are thousands of civilians dead and wounded at this point and there's also an outbreak of cholera and a potential famine that would also leave thousands on the brink of starvation in november 2017 sadi arabia intercepts a missile fired towards its airport in riyadh and blames the hoothies aron and leponance has bella for escalating the war a month later after sada had reversed course and sided with the sadi led coalition fierce fighting in sana between the hoothies and the forces loyal to sada leaves the former president dead sada has now dead the hoothies at this point are controlling much of northern Yemen but they still face stiff opposition from the sadi led coalition president hadi whose loyalists control much of southeaemen has called for a popular uprising against hoothie rule in the north sada son who sada has the former president that has now died the son is ahmet Ali sada and he has vowed revenge against the hoothies for his father's assassination we're now in 2018 and a lot happens in 2018 this is the last year we're going to talk about but there's a lot of months in 2018 so let's start with january in january of 2018 and a firefight the southern transitional council the stc the united arab Emirates backed separatist movement it seeks a revival of the formally independent southeaemen and it sees as control of aidan aidan is Yemen's main southern city and government headquarters and it was also the previous capital if you remember all the way back went by march of that year 22 million Yemenis require humanitarian aid in february the un appoints long time british diplomat martin Griffiths as special envoy of the secretary general for Yemen between march and may after 2018 fighting escalates along Yemen's western coast and dozens are killed in southeaer attacks and security raids a southea led coalition drone strike kills saal Ali as samad who was president of Yemen's supreme political council making him the most senior hoothy casualties since the coalition began its activities in 2015 international opposition to the coalition's operations grows after an air raid kills more than 20 people at a wedding party in may ua forces take over the island of sakatra occupying the airport and the seaport and causing tensions with Yemeni government officials between june and july of 2018 Yemeni president adra buhman suhral hadi meets with the ua crown prince hamad bin zayed al-neighan and by july the coalition launches an offensive on the port of hudayda between august and october 2018 international outrage over the southea led coalition's war in Yemen grows after an air raid strikes a school bus killing 40 Yemeni mostly children public opinion of ua support for the war effort in the united states plummets as it is reported that the bomb that was used in the air raid was us supplied in october ua resident in washington post columnist jameh kashoggi is assassinated by southeaer agents in is stumble and this raises additional questions about the ua support for the yad's war on Yemen ua efforts to mediate between the Yemeni government and the houthi rebels in juneva switzerland are fruitless at the end of 2018 november and december the ua's political establishment begins to have some unrest for withdrawing ua support from the southea led coalition in Yemen former obama administration officials including the future secretary of state and the blinkin the future ua ambassador nominee linda thomas greenfield and the future national security advisor to president joe biden drake solivan they all sign an open letter expressing remorse for their support of the war and urging all sides to end the fighting because a letter in thoson prayer is exactly what we need in december of 2018 the ua's senate for the first time votes to invoke the war powers was elution to force the ua's military to end its participation in the Yemen war later that month after ua mediated talks the Yemeni government and the houthis sign the stock home agreement that includes prisoner swaps a mutual redeployment of forces away from the hoday de port and a committee to discuss the contested city of taiz the ceasefire is set to take effect on december 18 of 2018 overall the stock home agreement fails to achieve its goals and neither side agrees to withdraw from hoday de this is where i'm going to leave you for today really uplifting point but tomorrow will continue on starting in 2019 and it'll take us to present day where a lot of shit is still happening but i hope this little history of the Yemen has given you an idea of how exactly a country can keep having so much unrest because of constant leadership squabbles just to save the least and coup attempts and fighting and international intervention so that's all for today and you'll hear me tomorrow if you want to goodbye more than a movie american me is a new podcast that digs into the history and mystery of american me a film directed by and starring edward james almos that had a huge impact on latino cinema and culture i'm your host alix fumetto and i'll be diving into the behind the scenes controversy including an alleged backlash from the mexican mafia several people who worked on the movie have been murdered and even today people are still scared to talk about the film everything else i mean you know i i don't want to speak about it and we had a sign of paper saying that if we were taken hostage that they would not bargain for us eddie i know he said that he had permission to do the film so i don't know where it got lost in translation learn about what really went down from the people that were there listen to more than a movie american me this part of the mic with doda podcast network available on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is the story it is what it is you believe it don't believe it it's up to you it will not change the fact that i'm an innocent man leos gofield is serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife michelle a crime he says he did not commit then 17 years into leos prison sentence newly discovered evidence pointed to an entirely different suspect always always the fingerprints was a big question in my mind obviously some he was in the car someone knew something who was it what did they know i'm gilbert king a Pulitzer prize winning author and i've spent the last four years searching for the truth behind the conviction of leos gofield i am innocent and you are obligated to protect me and bring justice to my dead wife make it right let me go let me go from lava for good podcast this is bone valley find us on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen it's Megan king and i am back the intimate knowledge podcast returns i've had my share of bad dates and even a couple bad marriages each week we are going to be talking sex talking life and maybe even talking a little trash and you guys know that i have plenty of trash to talk and if you want you can live vicariously through me and all my ups and unfortunate downs and you might even feel pretty good that your dating life isn't as messed up as mine you think that you have crazy dating stories right oh you haven't heard crazy dating stories you have got to listen to intimate knowledge to hear all of my crazy dating stories yes so put the kids to bed put your headphones in because this one y'all this one's for adults only intimate knowledge returns with more intimacy more sex more laughs and more love i'm Megan king and trust me you need intimate knowledge as much as i do listen to intimate knowledge on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hello beautiful people welcome back to it could happen here this is shareen again if you listened to our previous episode from yesterday you would know that we are today continuing and finishing up this little two-part series about the history of Yemen trying to understand how its history has led up to Yemen being in present day one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world so yeah we're talking about the history in last episode we talked about the history up until 2018 the end of 2018 and we're going to continue on from 2019 because that's how time works but i will say i don't know why i feel like i need to provide a disclaimer but this is who i am i feel like i sounded like a bored professor in the previous episode so i apologize if i sounded a bit flat there are just so many dates and names that i feel like i need to get right and i'm still trying to figure out how to talk about history in a fun and engaging way if that's even possible so bear with me hopefully there were some things you found interesting and we can continue on this journey together okay enough about me please let's continue on in january 2019 in Yemen so the previous month in december 2018 the Yemeni government and the houthis had signed the stock hole agreement that included prisoner swaps a mutual redeployment of forces away from hooday deport and a committee to discuss the contested city of taiz the ceasefire was set to take effect on december 18th 2018 but overall this agreement fails to achieve its goals and neither side agreed to withdraw from hoodayda so as we enter into 2019 the fighting is continuing the houthis launch a drone attack on the anant airbase north of aden and this injures dozens and also kills the head of Yemeni intelligence back over in washington the secretary defense james mattis he had resigned in december of 2018 but his resignation takes effect in february of 2019 and this marks an end to the trump administration's efforts to engage in the Yemen peace process in april trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional measure that would force the was military to end its role in the Yemen war by june the ua e unilaterally scales back its military presence in Yemen while continuing to support the stc aka the southern transitional council and the stc had seas at this point more power in aden meanwhile the houthis step up their efforts to attack soudi territory including launching missiles at oil installations and airports the soudi and Yemeni forces capture abu usama and mohazid who is the leader of the so-called islamic state Yemen province the isyp in july the emirates or the ua e announces it has completed its troop drawdown or minimization in Yemen but by august the stc effectively assumes control of the southern governance of aden abu and shubwa by the end of august the ua e forces conduct air raids against the Yemen government forces that are headed to aden to attempt to regain control also in august the houthis launch operation the victory from god against soudi-led forces and the houthis continue to escalate its attacks on soudi oil installations these operation names i will say poetic in a depressing sad way in september the houthis claim to have used drones to bomb oil processing facilities in two cities in eastern soudi arabia the attacks result in soudi arabia losing about half its output capacity and even though the houthis take credit for the bombings the international community at large blames aron because aron was thought to have provided the technical expertise that was needed to carry out such attacks in november of 2019 in an effort to end the fighting between the coalition partners and southern Yemen sadi arabia and the ua e broker a power sharing agreement between their respective partners in the Yemen government forces and the stc the riyadh agreement which is what it was called is signed in early november but by december clashes resume between the two forces literally just a few weeks after it was signed in january of 2020 leaving up to february fighting between the soudi-led coalition and the houthis picks up houthi forces carry out missile attacks on military training caps and in soudi arabia's southern provinces the houthis claim to quote unquote liberate roughly a thousand five hundred square miles of territory from the el japh and marib governance from soudi-led forces but this is a claim that the coalition denies in march of 2020 remember when houthi forces capture the strategic city of edhuzm in the edjaph offensive and the soudi forces carry out a retaliatory air strike on sena the capital march of 2020 if y'all remember it's also when covid officially made its big world debut and i know the first cases happened in like late 2019 but i do think covid really stole the show in march of 2020 and has been the show ever since but regardless the houthis capturing the city of edhuzm and the soudi forces striking back with an air strike on sena this all happens in the midst of the beginnings of the covid pandemic the united nations urges both sides to maintain the ceasefire in order to prevent the pandemic from spreading in yemmen this doesn't happen spoiler alert but fearing that the houthi rebels would control any incoming financial aid the trump administration announced to say freeze on seventy three million dollars in humanitarian aid to yemmen which is a very big number like objectively but it's a huge number as far as what yemmen needs as far as food and shelter and money like that makes a huge difference for a country that is in deep need of assistance but trump fucking sucks okay in april 2020 soudi arabia initiates a unilateral two-week ceasefire to mitigate the risks of the new coronavirus pandemic days later yemmen records its first known case of covid-19 despite the ceasefire the houthis and the soudi la coalition are both accused of carrying out attacks in the south the stc once again demands self rule and it breaks its agreement with the national government in june the southern transitional council deposes the recognized government in sacatra with government supporters to crying the move as a kudata the following month the stc says that it has renounced its claim to self rule and will return to the previously agreed upon power sharing structure like not even two months not even two months after the stc demanded self rule it's like actually i was just kidding uh i want to go back to the power sharing uh structure from before and a lot of back and forth like this always seems to be happening in yemmen but it also happens if you just keep in mind and so many nations that haven't necessarily maintained their roots long enough for something to grow and i think yemmen has been in this soil stage for a really long time if you just want to go with me with this metaphor please in october 2020 the warring sides in yemmen carry out the complex largest prisoner swap the following month soudi arabia and the houthis have reportedly initiated back channel talks from the soudi side soudi officials indicated their willingness to sign a cease fire and deal and end the soudi air and seablocade in exchange for the creation of a buffer zone between houthi control territory in yemmen and the kingdoms borders the houthis later claimed to have fired a missile at the coastal soudi city of jedda the sember of 2020 the stc and the hattie government they formalize a new power sharing agreement in a den prime minister maine octoenmadic siaid is reappointed as head of the hattie governments new cabinet with the seats also going to both the stc and yemmen's islaw party just weeks later the new cabinet arrives in aeden from soudi arabia and an attack on the airport kills at least two dozen people but no none of the ministers the hattie government and the stc and much of the international community they blame the houthis for the attack and soudi warplanes conduct a retaliatory air raid on sena january of 2021 the trump administration uses the december attack to justify designating the houthis as a foreign terrorist organization or an ft o the houthis are still able to consolidate control over about 70 to 80 percent of the emni population and they threaten marib which is a stronghold near the northeast corner of their control zone marib is going to come up a bit so marib is a stronghold just beyond the threshold of the houthis control and then you guessed it february 2021 president biden now enters the arena and he decides to take a new path he announces changes to the us policy toward yemmen and this includes revoking the houthi ft o designation so revoking the designation that the houthis are a forest terrorist organization and biden also declares an end to the us support for the soudi led coalition's offensive operations in the conflict he appoints timithi lender king as the special envoy for yemmen biden shows his support in the u n led peace process and he provides assurances to soudi arabia regarding the defense of its territory let's take our first little break here i don't have a witty little segue to go to an ad break but you know the drill just listen to the ads or press skip or whatever you do and we'll be right back we're back this is shreen you probably knew that so okay we left off with biden showing support in the u n peace process and he's providing assurances to soudi arabia regarding the defense of its territory but it also is after he declares an end to us support for the soudi's offensive operations in the yemmen conflict so after this the houthi rebels launch an offensive in marib city marib again is the final stronghold for government forces in the north the city is also very significant because of its location it is located very close to some of northern yemmen's richest oil fields marib also hosts nearly one million internally displaced persons and intense clashes are expected to displace thousands more by march of 2021 the conflict between the hidey government and the houthis escalates in marib the fighting co-incides with ongoing houthi missile and drone attacks against soudi oil facilities airports and air bases soudi arabia retaliates with air strikes particularly in the capital of senna the u s then condemns the houthis actions riyadh aka soudi arabia they propose a cease fire and this cease fire would include the reopening of the hodeda seaport and the senna airport the houthis reject this proposal on the grounds that a full lifting of the ongoing blockade is a prerequisite for any such agreement between april and may of 2021 strikes and counter strikes continue and they escalate both the u n security council and iran's foreign minister mahammad javad zaryf they voiced their support for the cease fire between the various yamuni forces a discussion takes place between the soudi crown prince mahammad bicellman and the u s's special envoy for yemmen tim lender king lender king pushes for the soudi led coalition to loosen the blockade on hodeda and senna the u n special envoy for yemmen is martin grifits at this point and he's a british diplomat so the u s's special envoy is lender king the u n's is grifits and the houthis refuse to meet the u n special envoy to discuss any kind of the escalation of the conflict we're now in august of 2021 and a houthi attack wounds eight civilians on soudi soil and it damages a commercial airliner amid continued attacks like this from the houthi rebels the biden administration withdraws and removes its most advanced missile defense systems from soudi arabia also by august of last year nearly 20 million people or two-thirds of yemmen's entire population are dependent on humanitarian aid for their daily needs this includes very basic things like water and food and shelter electricity medical care martin grifits says that five million yemmen's are quote one step away from succumbing to famine and the diseases that go with it as houthis continue to gain ground against tadi government forces in marib the country of omun it's also officially called the sultanate of omun it's an arabian country located in southeastern aja at the purging gulf so omun attempts to broker a peace deal between soudi arabia and the houthis houthi negotiators refuse to meet with the newly appointed u n special envoy for yemmen hans greenberg before the soudi led coalition commits to the full lifting of the blockade on hodeda and sena after a very fleeting lull in hostilities in september of last year the houthi rebels renew their offensive in the marib government the habit is a key district in the south of the city of marib and government forces had previously recaptured the habit from houthi control in july of 2021 but in september the houthi rebels capture it again and they continue their offensive in the battle for marib city at this point in the timeline the eminny people are taking to the streets and protesting over the collapse of yemmen's currency and the inaccessibility for basic daily necessities government security forces forcefully respond to these widespread protests across southern yemmen and this at the time kills three protesters on september 18th of 2021 the houthi execute nine people on charges of involvement in the soudi led coalition airstrike of april 2018 this strike had killed sallah alia semat who was the houthi aligned de facto president of yemmen a week or so later on september 27th of last year a u.s official delegation is formed and it includes the national security advisor jake Sullivan the special envoy to yemmen timothy lender king and the national security council's coordinator for the middle east and north africa bret magerk this delegation goes to meet with soudi arabias mchammad bicellman as well as soudi arabias deputy defense minister chided by the selman and this is done in an attempt for a diplomatic solution for the yemmen conflict by october of 2021 the u.n. human rights council votes against renewing the mandate for the group of eminent international and regional experts on the yemmen aca this is called the g e e and it had previously been the only independent body that was monitoring all parties to the conflict an investigation in 2018 reported possible war crimes committed by all parties and soudi arabia had been accused of attempting to shut down the investigation clashes are continuing in marib at this point between the hide government forces and the houthis by october 17th of last year the houthis gained control of three districts in the shabwa government as well as two districts of the marib government basically they're slowly capturing district after districts in their efforts to have full control in november of 2021 the houthis sees the former site of the u.s embassy in sena and it detains its local employees united states calls for the immediate release of these employees and it demands that the houthis vacate the premises a houthis spokesperson announces the capture of two more districts in marib after already taking two other ones the month prior government forces prepare to defend their last remaining northern stronghold aca marib city and some two million civilians at this point are now trapped in the marib governorate coalition aligned forces abandoned their position in the port city of hudada and this allows the rebels to retake the city a 2018 ceasefire agreement had prohibited fighting between the two sides and the government forces state that they are withdrawing troops from hudada to send them to reinforce the front lines okay last ad break here we go bam we're back okay we're wrapping out 2021 and in december of last year due to falling international funding the world food program the wfp cuts food a tm in in november 2021 the wfp had targeted eleven point one million dollars for food assistance but as the humanitarian situation deteriorates the cost of food dramatically increases and becomes even harder to access in the early months of 2022 jenuary and february the houthi rebels launched a series of unprecedented attacks against the ua e and saudi arabia this included air attacks across the border and the seizing of a ua e vessel in the red sea the saudi led coalition responsive these attacks with a bombing campaign in senna an attack on a northern prison and a strike on a telecom facility in hudada this results in a four day internet blackout across the country and at this point ua e backed forces regain control of some areas near marib on february 23rd of this year the ua e treasury department announced new sanctions against individuals involved in a funding network for the houthis during this time the ua security council renewed for one year its arms in bargo on yemen and continue to travel ban and asset freeze on actors who threatened the peace the council condemns the houthi attacks on saudi arabia and the ua e that struck civilians and civilian infrastructure four countries in the ua and abstain from this ua and security council decision and those four countries are mexico arland norway in russia on march 6th the houthis reach an agreement with the united nations to address the issue of an abandoned oil tanker in the red sea the fsso safer that pose a threat of a massive oil spill the world food program declares that the humanitarian situation in yemen is worsening because of the russian war on ukraine and the houthis continue their attacks against saudi oil facilities while the coalition continues its strikes against sena and hudayda talks that are sponsored by the gulf corporation council in jade begin between various parties to the yemen conflict the houthis declined to participate in this stating that these talks should be held in a neutral country that same day saudi arabia announces the secession of all military operations in yemen as of march 30th of this year in april the ua and brokered a two month truce between the warring parties that was to start with the holy month of rama down for muslims the agreement was a notable step toward peace as the last nationwide coordinated cessation of hostilities was during the peace talks in 2016 as these peace efforts gained traction with a two month ceasefire exiled president edderbuh mensur hadi transfers powers to a new presidential leadership council this council is led by the shad al alami and members of the council were selected at a gcc sponsor talk in riyadh it also includes those associated with the secessionist southern transitional council as well as those that were formerly part of the government under hadi hadi fires vice president alimousin el afmar who has long been resented by the houthis and hadi delegates his powers to the presidential council after the transfer of power is announced saudi arabia and the ua say they will provide three billion dollars to support yemen's decimated economy despite a two month truce houthi forces resume attacks on the front lines of the battle for marib which had previously been static since february and this happens after the ua back forces pushed the houthis out of the center of one of the districts in marib the harrab district it's during this time that the houthis also sign a action plan to prevent the recruitment and the use of children in the armed conflict a senior houthi military official had said in 2018 that the group inducted 18,000 child soldiers into its army some of whom were as young as ten years old that's a that's a baby oh my gosh it really my heart hurts all the time okay we're getting close to modern times here in august of this year the head of yemen's presidential leadership council roshag alalame he ordered the ua back separatist to stop military operations in the yemen's south this notice was issued to the head of the stc and it was seen as an attempt by alalame to step in and stop an stc campaign against the rival factions within the government umbrella and this would include yemen's isla party he said that all military operations should be stopped until the implementation of a troop redeployment in yemen's south this was something that was stipulated in a power sharing agreement from 2019 and he wanted this to be fully implemented before they moved forward these divisions within the council really expose its precarious nature because all the members are often ideologically opposed and they're only united by the opposition that they have to the aron alalame houthis as well as a support that they have from the Saudi led military coalition in the southern shabwa governorate which is a very resource rich area the stc has made gains against the isla party and it said in september which is right now that it had launched a quote anti-taire operation in shabwa's neighboring governorate of abyan this operation according to them with quote cleanse abyan of terrorist organizations which would include al-Qaeda while also securing yemen's temporary capital of aden and other southern governors after the houthis kind of invaded this governorate in 2020 the stc and other pro ua e factions they blamed the isla party for allowing the houthi advance there are a removal of an isla align governor mahammad salah bin ado in december of last year this cemented the ascendancy of pro ua forces but the instability in the south of yemen really complicates any kind of ua an effort for a permanent ceasefire or an attempt to pave the way for political negotiations to end the war the ua and brokert ceasefire agreement that we talked about being implemented in april this year aka rama dawn it has drastically reduced the fighting between the two sides but the outbreaks of violence still continue this month al-qaeda attacks killed at least 30 soldiers the stc which again is yemen's main southern separatist group is backed by the ua and last month it expanded its presence throughout the southern abyan province and what it described as a move to quote combat terrorist organizations and it's singling out al-qaeda in a series of tweets the stc dominated security belt said that six al-qaeda fighters were killed after the group launched a quote terrorist attack on its forces in the uhwa district in abyan it also added that yasad nasad shai who was a commander belonging to the security belts quote anti-terra brigade it said that he was killed in the attack along with a number of his companions i just wanted to bring in that little news because it just kind of happened this month and obviously things are continuing to happen and it changes month after month as you can tell i'm laughing because it's sad but hopefully this gives some context to why yemen is struggling so much and i want to read some of the stuff uh some of the statistics about yemen really quick because the scale of this is so immense so this is from the world food programs website the wfp's emergency response in yemen is our largest anywhere in the world the current level of hunger in yemen is unprecedented and is causing severe hardship for millions of people despite ongoing humanitarian assistance 17.4 million yemenis are food insecure the number of food insecure people is projected to go up to 19 million by december of 2022 the rate of child malnutrition is one of the highest in the world and the nutrition situation continues to deteriorate a recent survey showed that almost one third of families have gaps in their diets and hardly ever consume foods like vegetables fruit dairy products or meat or pulses aka beans peas and legumes malnutrition rates among women and children in yemen remain among the highest in the world with 1.3 million pregnant or breastfeeding women and 2.2 million children under five requiring treatment for acute malnutrition sometimes i think we can forget how many people is in a little statistic millions of people were talking 2.2 million children 1.3 million pregnant or breastfeeding women just that number is so immense i can't comprehend it and the fact that this is projected to go up by 19 million in general for all yemenis by december is devastating and i think remembering how big numbers are as elementary as that sounds is pretty important from time to time because i think at this point we are kind of unfazed by numbers let me continue from the world food programs website really quick and wrap this all up the humanitarian situation in yemen is extremely fragile and any destruction of the pipeline of critical supplies such as food fuel and medicines has the potential to bring millions of people closer to starvation and death the wfp calls for unimpeded access to reach those most in need and avert famine so here we are in a quick buried oppressing summary since 2016 a food insecurity crisis has been ongoing in yemen and this began during the yemeni civil war the current level of hunger in yemen is unprecedented and is causing severe hardship for millions of people and despite ongoing humanitarian assistance 17.4 million yemenis at this point in time are food insecure and this number of food insecure people is projected to go up by 19 million by december 2022 maybe i'm being repetitive but i think it's important to comprehend the crisis in yemen is one of the most dire crises in the world and this is brought on by protracted conflict droughts floods that are intensified by the climate crisis COVID-19 and other diseases and despite all of this tragedy that we've been talking about despite this humanitarian criminal thing that is happening yemen has failed to attract adequate support from donors for years and now it risks slipping further into oblivion what a terrible depressing way to end this podcast but i really do hope that these episodes at least gave you more awareness about what's going on in yemen and just how dire the situation is and there are so many conflicts in the world there are so many causes that deserve our attention obviously but i do think it's important from time to time to think about the causes that you may not be affected by and remember that everyone is human just like you and the privilege that you have if you choose to engage with your privilege and use it for good can make a huge difference to people that need assistance at this point i'm going to start rambling so before i do that i just want to thank you for paying attention to my professory talk and saying that office hours are now closed good bye hey we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe it could happen here is a production of coolzone media for more podcast from coolzone media visitor website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources thanks for listening hi i'm on a hotdog Connor a health columnist and i'm passionate about learning and sharing how we can all sleep and live better that's why i'm hosting chasing sleep a brand new podcast from matches firm and iHeart Radio where we'll connect with the people who live work and perform in some of the most incredible environments and we'll see how they adapt and use their sleep to perform at the highest level learn how you can sleep well to live well to listen to chasing sleep on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hi i'm Molly John fast and this is fast politics you may know me for my old podcast the new abnormal or my articles invoke the New York Times the Washington Post or my newsletter at the Atlantic i do my best to poke holes in political arguments with no fear of critiquing any side of the political spectrum listen to fast politics with Molly John fast every Monday Wednesday and Friday on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i'm Rachel Adams heard I'm a reporter for Bloomberg news and host of interest a new series from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio more than a century ago the Osage Nation negotiated something unique that brought a lot of money to its people in this new series i look at who ended up with a lot of that land and oil money and how the Osage Nation is fighting to get it back listen to interest starting September 6 on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts