Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: So this is the final episode in our Israel Gaza Palestine conflict. Fucking series extravaganza.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: But it bears mentioning that there was an anniversary this weekend. There was an anniversary this weekend of the Ukraine conflict.
Two years. Two fucking years that's been going on.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Wild.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Which is wild, clearly, vividly. I remember the unease which it caused in me, the unease which has kind of been sat there festering ever since.
It hasn't gone away.
The disconnect, the disreality, if that's a term of being stuck in traffic on the way home from Birmingham and listening to kind of rational and just completely free of hyperbole and just discussions of nuclear war on radio for fucking cool, that's fun. Yeah, it was horrific. And the fact that that conflict is now two years old, I think bears some discussion. What has occurred in those two years?
What has been the toll of those two years?
It might not shock you to hear that by all accounts, russian state media largely swerved the anniversary.
Didn't really mention much of it, didn't say anything about the progress of the air quotes special military operation for whatever reason, whether that's thus far its failure to achieve its aims, whether it's to avoid talking about the human costs.
Opposition media in Russia estimate that around 75,000 russian military personnel have died in Ukraine since the start of the invasion.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Okay, since how many?
[00:02:20] Speaker A: 75,000 russian personnel.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Wow, look at what happens when the US gives money to fight the occupier.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, well, wild. More on that. More on that. More on that shortly.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: 75,000? That's insane. That's horrendous. I mean, those are people.
That's a lot of people.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: I haven't even begun yet to talk about horrendous. If you want to talk about horrendous fucking, stay tuned. Dear listeners, military casualties in Ukraine are less easy to come by.
Only this last weekend did the ukrainian president talk about what the ukrainian impact was. There was a forum in Kiev this last weekend where Vladimir Zelensky told attendees that some 31,000 ukrainian soldiers have been killed.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Okay.
But comparatively much fewer.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Fuck ton. It's an absolute fuck ton. But I want to talk more about the civilian impact.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: It's going to be a theme today because that's absolutely what I'm going to talk about when we get into Gaza as well.
There's war, right? The military, people fighting each other and what that is. But then there's the whole other thing of the people who are just trying to live and civilians are then caught up in this.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Families, people trying to fucking. Just grind out a living farming people, communities. Let's talk first about refugees. Okay, this is the last update from the 15 February. So very fresh data just in Europe. In Europe, there have been 6,004,100 refugees from Ukraine recorded in Europe. That's 6 million Ukrainians.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: How big is Ukraine? I feel like Ukraine is a lot bigger than I was giving it credit for.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Do you know what the population is?
[00:04:40] Speaker A: I don't. If you give me a sec, I can fucking find that out.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: We have the tools to find out how many we should because 6 million is a lot of refugees.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: What if I said 43.8 million?
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. A lot bigger than I thought it was.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: And just over 6 million of those are displaced in Europe.
475 and a half thousand recorded ukrainian refugees beyond Europe. So in the wider world. So that's just almost bang on. Six and a half million ukrainian people have fled the country.
But when it comes to civilian deaths, and obviously there are obstacles to getting accurate civilian casualty data. Lots of verification, know, lack of transparency on both sides, different organizations, different sources, providing different info. I've gone with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Sounds at least like you're going to be in the right ballpark.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: They are meticulous about verification, and this is about as close to legit as you're going to get. Right.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: So as of February 15, there have been 10,582 civilians killed in just in Ukraine or Ukraine. Ukrainian civilians?
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Ukrainian civilians. 10,000 killed in two years.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Ten and a half thousand killed in the last two years. That's almost 10,000 adults and 587 children. Now, in terms of injuries, way, way higher.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure, yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: 19,875 injured civilians.
18 and a half thousand of those are adults, 1200 or so children. So the killed or injured so far gives us a total of 30,457 people killed or injured.
All right. That's a fucking ridiculous figure. A colossal figure.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: It is, yeah.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Now that skews very heavily towards men, whether that's.
Men are more likely than women and children to go to the front line, women and children more likely to flee frontlines, even the country, from the violence.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people send their families away.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Exactly. This can't go exactly this. But what I really want to focus on is the means by which that 30 and a half thousand people have been killed or injured. Some of the fucking chief causes of this death and injury to the civilian population.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: This is literally exactly what I'm going to do during this as well. So, man, we managed to be right on target with each other in our talks today.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: But go on, buckle up. Friends, I apologize if this isn't the most cheery jo ag you've ever heard, but this is our mission. This is what we have to do.
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights classifies the biggest loss of life and the biggest cause of injury as occurring through explosive weapons with wide area effects. All right.
These have been responsible for killing almost 9000 and injuring almost 19,000.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that really is the vast majority of the people who've been killed.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yes.
So we're talking shelling from artillery, tanks, mlrs, which are multiple launch rocket systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, airstrikes, including also, quote, loitering munitions and other unmanned aerial vehicles.
78% of these injuries occur near the front line. Artillery shells, airdrop bombs.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: So are these cities that are just close.
What is the front line of the conflict here?
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Larger populated areas.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Towns and cities disproportionately affecting older people, aged civilians, those who either aren't able or aren't willing to leave their homes. People over 60.
Fucking mad people over 60 make up 36% of civilian casualties, even though they only represent 25% of the population.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: And to talk about how these injuries occur, shrapnel wounds, amputations, burns, internal organ damage, completely overwhelming infrastructure, hospitals, lifelong disability as a cause requiring ongoing care and rehabilitation.
PTSD, complete economic fucking.
Just absolutely mangling people's lives and the lives of those around them. Right.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: So that's the biggest cause of death and injury. Explosive weapons with wide area effects. The second biggest. The second biggest cause of injury, killing 343 people and injuring some 770 OD. Mines.
Mines and explosive remnants of war.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Okay.
Again, disproportionately affecting men and boys. 88% of this figure is men and boys.
And quite a significant number of the emergency services killed.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's common.
Yeah. Because they're going out there unprotected, trying to get to people, and they're going to be the ones who stumble upon whatever is left behind after someone bombs or lays mines or however that stuff gets there.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Exactly. This. And the great thing about mines and other explosive kind of ordinance left over is that it'll completely fuck a region even after the conflict is finished.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Forget farming, forget rebuilding your industry, forget reassembling your infrastructure.
When an area is mined, it is lethal, ongoing.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Right. Until the last person steps on something that blows up.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: There's always the chance they're going to be there.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Yes. So we're talking unexploded ordinance, artillery shells, bombs, grenades.
And they cause the same horrific injuries as other explosive weapons. So amputations, burns, internal injuries, blindness, deafness, psychological trauma. Here's the thing about minds and explosive remnants.
Super susceptible to children. Children are particularly vulnerable to minds through the fucking fact that they're smaller, smaller bodies. Curiosity.
And a child injured by a mine is then a disproportionate burden to a family already struggling.
Forget school, forget contributing to the economy or household income in the future.
You damage a child with a mine, that child is then damaged for the rest of their life.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Really, kind of when you're trying to just completely destabilize a people, make it so that either there are no future generations or those future generations are unable to contribute to anything and thus creates another level of destabilization.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: It's almost fighting a war against the future of a country as well as present.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: 1000% absolutely fucked.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: And then you've got a small but not insignificant other.
So 1341 people killed, 288 killed by other. So fire from small arms like weapons due to crossfire escalation of force incidents. Okay.
When the military perhaps opened fire on civilians perceived as a threat. Willful killings, road accidents involving military vehicles driven by military personnel.
155 civilians. According to the UN, 155 civilians have been killed by summary execution.
Yeah. Most of the men in their homes, taken hostage, taken captive, summary executions. 155 civilians.
Wild shit.
So let's talk about the kind of the state of play now, right?
ABC News polled share of Americans with this question. Is the US doing too much to support Ukraine?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: In 2022, that was 14% by autumn last year. By September 2023, that had gone up to 41%.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Just, you know, the news of the last weeks, there's 60 billion in aid for Ukraine being held up by bickering and bullshit through american politics.
Let's be fucking honest. Your next president is going to be Donald Trump.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's quite possible, but, yeah, I mean, this whole thing is like, the problem here is that all of this is terrible. Obviously, this is what I'm going to be talking about with Gaza, too. All of this with civilians and things like that. Governmentally, Ukraine is shitty.
And we have a place that we wouldn't be supporting, except that we have sort of an enemy of. Our enemy is a friend sort of situation going on here. And at a time when Americans are basically fucked on everything in our society and there is no money for us, there's a degree. I mean, some of this is conservative bullshit. Obviously, there's plenty of this. Just Republicans who are like, now we're kissing Putin's ass, and they're like, we actually love him. And it's like, well, yeah, fuck, what are you doing? And I think that's a lot of the people that are holding up the aid. But from your everyday american perspective, what it looks like is we have billions and billions of dollars to spend on this war and arming people. And all of these civilians are dying and dying horrifically. Dying horrifically. And we have no money for anything else but to just keep having people blow each other up. Where's the diplomacy or anything like that happening? All we do is send weapons. That's it.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Why are we doing this?
[00:15:49] Speaker A: My angle certainly isn't that Zelensky himself is problematic as fuck.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: You know what?
I'm not blind to this.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: My angle is more an emboldened dictator. You know what I mean?
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Taking another fucking country by force, that is fucked. That is so fucked. And of course, Trump is doing his usual routine. I want everybody to stop dying. They're dying. Russians and Ukrainians, good people on both sides.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Good people on both sides.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: That fucking routine.
Aid that has been promised to Ukraine is regularly arriving late. So the ukrainian defense minister, a guy by the name of Rustam Umaryov, this weekend, has said allocation of aid doesn't mean delivery. 50% of aid doesn't arrive on time.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: This is another thing that's a huge part of this when it comes to aid that we give wherever we give it. There are so many things that keep things from going where they're supposed to go, whether that's corruption, bureaucracy, all kinds of stuff. And it's deeply frustrating to just keep throwing money at stuff and be like, why isn't anyone making sure that the civilians are safe and that they're fed and that the hospitals are functioning and all this kind of stuff, it's so infuriating.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: And just to close this out, again, to quote the ukrainian defense mechanism, defense minister, we're looking at our enemy. Their economy is worth about $2 trillion, and they're spending up to 15% of their gdp on the war effort. That's over 150,000,000,000 is coming from Russia to fund their war effort.
And even though the early narrative was, hey, Ukraine, these fucking scrappy lads are holding it up. They're holding it together.
The fact is that the maths are winning out, and the future, I believe, looks bleak as fuck in that's.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, just another element of this is this being a two year anniversary just raises that.
What's the plan?
Know? Because Russia is a place that throughout its entire history has been willing to fuck itself over.
It's a dismal place and it's always been a dismal place. And they'll keep going unless someone assassinates Putin or something like that, which is a thing that it's always surprising. No one's.
But this will just keep going.
There has to be something other than simply giving more bombs to people to solve this. And this is such a frustrating thing as an american, whether it's this or Gaza or whatever, genocides around the world and things that we stick our hands in is like, we do so little besides pay and we pretend that we can't do anything about stuff.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: We probably could at least try something else.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: At least.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Why not have an idea?
[00:19:03] Speaker B: And obviously, like you said at the beginning of this, there's always that, like, okay, well, we have a threat of nuclear warfare. That's a pretty big thing to have hanging over our heads and all that kind of stuff. But it's the thing that we talked about in the cold war, mutually assured destruction.
Putin doesn't want to know, is he going to blow us up because we tried to be diplomatic about stuff and then he dies too?
Probably not. So why don't we try something? Why don't we try something else besides this so that people don't keep dying who have nothing to do with what's going on, who are just trying to go know living, but it ain't happening.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: You know what.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: It is? Two years and there is like, no progress on what.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: In a way, it's kind of like, you know when I rang into Jeremy vine and said, why don't we shoot all the rubbish into space?
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Right? And the guy's response was, no, we can't do that. It's best to solve it on earth. It's best to do it responsibly and sustainably and to really work at cleaning our own climate. But that's not fucking happening, is it?
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Right, yeah. The issue is, will someone do it?
[00:20:22] Speaker A: At least shooting all the rubbish into space is a fucking idea that nobody else is talking about. At least fucking.
If that's a shit idea, come back at me with a better one, then. Because we aren't doing the things that we obviously need to do. And the same seems to be happening here.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it all just comes down to the people in power, and humanity is not as terrible as our leaders. People who are in power don't want solutions.
Solutions make them less money and it makes them less powerful. And whether it's what we do with the trash on earth, or whether we keep supplying various places with weapons for forever wars or whatever the case may be, that just works better for them than actually fixing shit as their people demand it. And it's deeply frustrating.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: So this is how we open this week's jackal graves.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Folks.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: I would love to tell you that it's going to get more cheerful from here, but I would not want to be a liar.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: I appreciate your honesty.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Yes, please do.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, Misensen.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said misel Sen in such a horny way before.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal received.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm going to leg it.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it.
Hey.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Welcome to Jack of all Grace.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Welcome.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: We're here. We're back. We're closing out our series on Gaza and then getting back, know, normal stupidity that we have here on this show. Like it's time for us to get back to being dumbasses, Mark, I think.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah, fuck. Look, I said this right at the start. I said this four weeks ago. It's a necessary thing that we do here.
Has it been fun? Fuck no.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, this journey sucks. But we're doing it because this is what we do here. And then hopefully maybe next week we'll get like another murder sub or something and homeostasis will be returned to the podcast to the world.
But for now, we're going to get into probably the darkest chapter of this series. Really saved the worst for last here. So I just warn you in advance, it's going to be a downer when we get to our main topic today.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: I think you said earlier on to me that you're going to put these in a kind of a compendium.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: I am, yeah, for people who don't want to listen to all of our shenanigans, our opens and are joking around and what we watch and all that kind of stuff. I am going to put all of these together the past four weeks as like one super sewed. So be like 2 hours or whatever that you can listen straight through if you don't need the intermissions of us being silly and all that kind of stuff. And if you wanted to recommend it to someone else to listen to or things like that, I will do that so that it is in one place. You can always refer back to it and. Yeah. So look out for that. That'll come tomorrow.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Excellent. Are you going to burn the midnight oil tonight? You're going to fucking smash through that tonight?
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Oh, no. I mean, it's not going to take that long after this. I'm very excited. There's an app called too good to go.
I don't know if you have.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: This is that way you get food.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: You get food. Yeah. Basically so that restaurants don't waste food at the end of the day.
Yeah, you can buy a surprise bag and it's like stuff they had left over at the end of the day. So I ordered some too good to go from a. And after, you know, probably crying on recording today, I got to go and get myself and kio some cheap portuguese food.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: What is the signature portuguese dish?
[00:24:40] Speaker B: That's a good question. A lot of portuguese food is stuff that I don't eat because it's pretty meat heavy there. But they like a potato. They like a know things like they.
When we were in Portugal, I was like, it's a fascinating place because they eat a ton of meat, but they're not like a lot of places. It's all about, like, oh, tons of seasoning and stuff like that. And that's not really their bag.
It should taste like the thing. It is authentic meat, seafood, all that kind of stuff. All they do really is like, maybe some salt, things like that to whatever you get. But we'll see what comes in the surprise bag. Hopefully some potato heavy things and whatnot that I will enjoy.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Delicious. I am engaged in a pitched battle with a bottle of Carolina reaper sauce, which is currently in my fridge, and I can't quit. Just, I know it's bad for me. It makes my insides burn. It makes my head sweat.
I'm fresh off a clean shave, and I love a fucking smooth dome. Right? Look how smooth that dome is.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: It is very smooth, isn't it?
[00:25:51] Speaker A: And I've been mixing it with mayo to kind of try and cool it down.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: But you're making your own little, like.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it's so delicious, man. It's so. Just pequant and just so sharp and spicy and hot. But I am a wreck. My fucking innards, man. My innards.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: That's a lot of what it's like in our house all the time. Keo loves to eat spicy things. I like spice, I love the taste and all that kind of stuff. But you know how I am. I think ahead.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: You're a planner.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: I'm a planner. I think about the repercussions and I'm like, you know, repercussions reapercus for real? And I'm like, maybe not so much.
There's a great video of this. You've seen hot?
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, sure.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: And it's like they have like a couple side things or whatever. There's a video of Sean, the host and this other guy who was known for eating very hot peppers, popping the reapers and just like sobbing as they eat these. And it's like, oh, it's so beautifully destructive.
Really delightful to watch. But there's also a video where on one episode of Hot Ones, david Blaine was on, and at the end, I'm never watching that.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: I hate him.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: You hate David Blaine?
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I do.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: I love David Blaine.
Also recognize problematic, but I know I hate magicians, but, like, david Blaine isn't really even a magician.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Yeah, he call him.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I guess he's an illusionist. But the thing is he's not doing. He does some tricks or whatever, illusions.
He does tricks and stuff like that. But the vast majority of the stuff he does is just like, he trained his body to do something that he shouldn't have and he has just a high pain tolerance. And so you're just like, let's see what weird shit David Blaine's going to do with his body.
But on the episode of Hot Ones, at the end of it, he eats a Carolina reaper and is like, unfazed. My theory is that he didn't eat it. Keo thinks he did, but he's just trained himself well enough that he can bear it. But I think sleight of.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: And sorry, but you invited this, I think, just like Darren Brown. Yes.
Who will have you? You know Darren Brown, the british David Blaine? Really?
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I'm sure I've seen him.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: He's actually really cool, right? He's super charismatic. He's super likable. And he is quite open about the fact that everything he does is lies and misdirection.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: I mean, that's what they all are. Everyone knows that.
Nobody's claiming it's real.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Darren Brown is way more likable for admitting that.
I guarantee damn to you without having seen the video that he palmed the fucking pepper, you know what I mean? Or stuck it down.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: I mean, it's not that obvious. You can tell like everybody is looking for that. He knows everyone's looking for it. And so I find it fascinating that he must have done it somehow. And I'm looking at him on a video and I can't see what the fuck he did with the reaper. I'm like, I can't do that. So that's cool. I think it's.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: He wants you to believe that he ate it, and he's just super cool and blase and I've trained my body through years of fucking. I've developed.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: No, you that yourself. He doesn't say that. He's just on there. It would be so lame if the entire shtick was just like, I'm going to do a thing and it's not real. Fuck you people. Why would you watch that?
Yeah, of course it's not real. Wrestling is not real.
Yeah, but he still trained himself to do stuff that I can't do because I didn't train myself to do it. So it's fun to watch and have a little suspension of disbelief or even sit there trying to figure it out, because we know it's a lie. We know it's an illusion. So how the fuck did he do it? That's fun. That's a fun thing to do.
Have a little whimsy in your.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: When right there is very little separating David Blaine and Chris angel mind freak, as far as I'm concerned. Nothing very, just gossip. A thin wisp of separation between the two.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah, because they do the same job. They have the exact same profession. Just one is aimed at weird pickup artist people and one is aimed at the rest of us.
It's just to me, I'm like, yeah, you spent your whole life learning to do this thing that confounds the brain and makes us all. Oh, that's wild. How'd they do that? And I think it's cool. I think that's a pretty neat thing to share. Okay, fair enough. But yeah, watch the end of that hot ones and see if you can figure out how David Blaine palmed the Carolina Reaper.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Well, I wish I'd palmed the Carolina reaper, let me tell you that.
And I know I'll do it again. I'll do it again tomorrow.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: There's got to be a sauce that tastes good like that, but that doesn't wage war on your internal organ.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: I'm wide open to suggestions. If anyone knows what that sauce is, fucking link me up.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Please offer mark some sauces that aren't deadly because the reaper is, like, hardcore. That's like, not even that pepper is too much.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Oh, man. But it's so delicious.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Fair enough.
We had a watch along the other day.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: A beautiful mess of a watch along.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Beautiful mess of a watch along. It was very fun. I hated the movie, but it was so much fun. We watched natural born killers with the gang, and somehow only like three people had seen it, and the rest of us were all going in noobs on it.
You realized, like, the day before, you were like, oh, yeah, I can't wait to do this. I think you're going to hate it. And I was like, what? I always thought I'd like the movie. And then the day before, we're like, I think you actually might hate that.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: And then when it started, and it was way more full on than I remember it being. It's a fucking absolute mess of a film.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: It is. It's a disaster of a movie.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Sensory cluster fuck of a film, right?
[00:32:33] Speaker B: It's like the first ten minutes of it, I genuinely was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to watch this. Both me and Sam were dizzy. I was like, I'm going to throw up. I don't know if this is going to work before it kind of somewhat settled. I mean, it's at an angle the entire movie.
It's basically like a series of music videos loosely bound together.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Tv commercials.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Super 90s.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: There is no restraint.
It's a mess. It's all over the fucking place. And seeing it through adult eyes, it is not subtle, man. I mean, 16 year old me was.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Really saying something here. Yeah, the media, man.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Serial killer culture, man. Yeah, it's just another commodity, isn't it, for people to just consume, man.
But as a bloke, I'm like, fucking.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: L.
As you pointed out, you were like, robocop makes every single one of these same points and just does it in a lot cooler, more subtle way than this does it. And a lot of things do. I mean, it goes back to the reason that I know you like it, but I don't. Like.
What's the home invasion movie?
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Oh, funny games.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Funny games, right? Like, it's like, oh, look at me saying a thing. No, we understand that thing.
You're not saying anything.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: That one clip of you just saying that is funny games.
Look what I said.
Confronted.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah, natural born killers definitely has that vibe. But it was good fun to watch it in a posse, I think. Especially because it's like, for you and whoever else had seen it, there was kind of a like, oh, yeah, this is a little different through adult eyes. And for the rest of us, kind of like, what is happening here?
[00:34:39] Speaker A: I particularly enjoyed Eileen just trying to filter it through a scientific mind.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Right, yeah.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Wonderful. Great.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Every now and again, a baffled comment.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: And you know what? We've already fucking locked in the watch along movie for March.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: We have. Yeah, we did have a theme we were going to go with, but I guess we'll save that one for April. Yeah, we did. Ryan suggested adaptations.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Oh, of. Yes, yes. And that is a good one. That is a good one.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: So we'll save that for April. We'll do adaptations.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: But for March, we've already informally locked in, thanks to my good fucking friend Sam, we have already locked in the fly. The best remake, I think. Or is it the thing?
[00:35:27] Speaker B: It's probably the thing. Realistically.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: I don't know. The fly is elevated by its writing and its performances. The writing on the fly is peerless. It's so good.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: It's a tier. It's like best friends, right? Like best friends isn't a person. It's a tier.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Excellent. Yes.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Best remake.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: Best is a tier.
Stay tuned. One weekend, the end of March, I think, weekend of the 24th, and we're going to publicize this one as well.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: And we're going to. We are happening. I was surprised how many people showed up when we didn't not really tell anyone this was happening this time.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: What does that.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Great job, everyone.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: We have a tight knit, dedicated community of joag faithful. And I swear to God. Right. Both Corey and I would take a bullet for each of you, indeed, each one of you, without even much of a good reason. Just ring me up for the heck on a Wednesday, Mark. Take a bullet for me. I'd be like, yes, tell me where and I'll fucking be there.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Right, you and Anna. Yeah, Anna is always waiting to get stabbed or shot just for the heck of it.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Interesting.
Much to consider.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Much to consider.
So, yes, that will happen. But thank you, everyone who showed up. This was delightful. Such a blast to watch a very weird movie with a posse of our dear friends. And we look forward to the fly next month. We've also got some new stuff up on the Kofi, so make sure to check that out. We got a watch along, which is very fun of what's the last of us?
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Last of us two? No return.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: No return. Which is like last of us, but a rogue like. So that was very fun for me to watch happen.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Possibly my favorite of our. Let's play so far. I think the conversation.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Mostly because you pranked me, but I got you good.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: You got me. So if you want to hear Mark pull a dumbass big brother prank on me. You can watch the episode up on the Ko fi at any level of support. You can watch that. And then we put a snack up for our great bunch of lads and above yesterday in which I asked Mark various true crime trivia and we chatted about all the things that each of those questions sort of spun off into for us, which was a lot of.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: Fun, I guess that let's play and the snack give you a little bit of that tomfoolery that maybe have been lacking the past through this journey.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: We've been making you sad.
A good place to go is to our kofi, where we are busily being stupid, which is a favorite thing for both of us.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: So you can still find that stuff if you want it right. You just got to do the right thing.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: And I announced that we've got more content coming to the Ko fi. Kristen and I have a new side pod coming, the jo ag fan cave in, which we're going to subject Kristen to horror movies, which she famously does not watch. And we're going to tell you some more stories from our weird little nerd history, backgrounds and whatnot. So it should be a very fun time. So if you want to hear that, make sure that you are a member. Kofi.com jackovallgraves I love what you and Latty have.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: I think it's very special.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: It is. Yeah. Love, Latti. I am blessed with the best friends in the world. I would not trade them for anything. They are the best people on earth. And I have a sizable group of them, which I think is unusual for. It is a 38 year old to have. And yeah, Kristen is just an absolute treasure who I've been very happy to know and become such close friends with over the past, like almost 20 years now at this point.
Delightful. So, yeah, you can listen to us be weird on Kofi next month.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: So let's just smash through some movies, shall we?
[00:39:39] Speaker B: We shall.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Hey, this is interesting. This is happening more and more. I took a recommendation of yours and watched it.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:39:50] Speaker A: This is happening more and more, which I'm changing.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: You are. This is a different guy who sits before me.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: I'm not the same. I'm not the same fucking man. I'm a different guy. And not only did I watch same.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Man I was before.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Oingo boingo.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I love oingo boingo.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: I don't know who they are. I keep hearing them referenced, but I've never listened to a single Danny Elfmanbra. I know. Yeah, I know.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Delightful stuff. Anyways, go on, go on.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Not only did I watch it, I watched it the fucking day after you.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Like, in the morning.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I was mad keen to watch it, and I'm very glad I did.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: This was past lives.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yes. It's everything you said it would be.
Just a couple that never were, just reflecting on their lives as migrants, as people, as individuals, as friends.
Like I said, they're just lovers who never really loved. And it is wistful and it is heart wrenching, but there's no kind of air quotes emotion in the piece. It's very cold, I find.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: And whether that's cultural, whether that's a culture, they both come from korean, is that correct?
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Whether it's a cultural thing, it deals with displacement.
The lady, having moved to New York, we follow the careers that they had. We follow their relationship with their parents, with one another, with their cities, with their countries. And all of it is underpinned by this. Just a question. All of it is underpinned by the what ifs.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: The choices we make, man. And it beautifully ends with that question.
Maybe we're already together in the next life.
[00:41:45] Speaker B: Isn't that fucking beautiful? Right? Love that.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Maybe this is a past life.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Maybe we're together. Maybe this is a past life, man. It's so fucking good. Watch past lives.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: It's beautiful.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Yeah. It's just. You feel it. You feel the whole thing in the pit of your stomach. And I think that is such an accomplishment, considering, like you said, it is cold.
They're not fighting.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: There's no fighting and fucking and all these kinds of.
Well, don't give away, like, I'm not.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Going to give away anything, but there's a bit at the end where they're waiting for a cab together, and I was just like, just kiss a little.
Maybe just hold hands or just fucking. Just acknowledge this yearning, just fucking give some kind of payoff. But they don't, man. It's just unresolved yearning. That's what it is. And it's beautiful.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Right in the gut space. Yeah. Big recommend. Past lives.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Great.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Quick question. Is your mic balancing on something?
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yes, it is on an iPad.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Okay. I can hear when you move.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: It goes like, I will move less. I know. I became animated.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yes. Which is great. I appreciate the passion.
[00:43:10] Speaker A: I shall refrain.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Yes. But to not drive our listeners crazy.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: Sorry, lads.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Hands to yourself. But yes, past lives. Watch it.
Do you want to talk about what else we watched together, or do you want me to go through my watches?
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah, go on. Do some of yours.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Well, I finally, after a bajillion years, watched Guillermo del Toro's the devil's backbone.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Why?
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Which, it's a really good question, I think something, the night that I watched it was telling me tonally, I wanted that Guillermo del Toro feel. I was like, that's what I'm going for right now.
And it was great.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: It is.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: The thing about Guillermo del Toro likes to break our hearts, and he's not afraid to be like, I'm just going to kill children or things like that and absolutely just devastate you in something. And so you've got this movie that's like a ghost story set amidst spanish civil war in an orphanage, and just watching these kids sort of go about their lives while there's this underpinning of war and terror and something horrible happening within the orphanage itself.
Yeah, I just was so good.
I was heartbroken, but I enjoyed that entire ride.
I'm pretty much a stan. There's not many of his things that miss for me. There are some, but not his.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: What are his misses, then? Don't you dare say Pacific Rim. Don't you dare.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: No, I wasn't going to say Pacific Rim. I was going to say the Bradley Cooper one with the.
Ooh, yeah, it was terrible. I can't even remember what it's called, but no, yeah, that was awful.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: That's when I tried, I think, on three separate occasions to watch.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: And I never got to the end of that fucking movie, man.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Which is unfortunate because the last ten to 15 minutes of it, I think is hilarious. It's almost farcical. It's just like, it ends kind of where you would expect it to end, but it's on this beautiful twilight zony irony that I thought was very funny as like, oh, man. Ha.
This came around to bite this character in the ass or whatever, but, yeah, that was a. What the fuck was that movie called?
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Midnight Darkness Alley Alley.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Nightmare Alley. Nightmare Alley.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: It's got a good title, even, but was just a waste of time. Devil's backbone is not a waste of time. However, this is one of the winners, so I big time recommend it.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: I really enjoyed Crimson Peak as well.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Crimson Peak. Oh, man.
Such a big fan of that movie.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: He's got a lot of tools. He's got a lot of tricks up his sleeve as Big G. Yeah, he can do your fucking huge action spectacle.
He can do your horror. He can do your kind of period pieces. He's very good at his historical kind of context.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: He's got a fantasy. Fucking. He's a g. That man is good people.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah.
Who are the other? So it's him and Inoritu. And there's one more guy in that trio of mexican directors. And I think I'm less of a fan of Inuritu, but all in all, those guys. Yeah, they had tricks. They have tricks up their sleeves, and they are men with range who do some really interesting stuff.
But I also watched whatever happened to Baby Jane, which I always think I haven't seen. And then I think it's like the same part of the movie every time where I go, oh, yeah, okay, I've definitely seen this.
But, of course, a classic about a woman, or, well, two young girls starts who are growing up in the showbiz light. One of them is a successful child star, and the other one becomes more of a successful star as an adult. And then after a horrific accident, one of them ends up in a wheelchair, and the other basically locks her up and punishes her for having had such a successful life when she thought that she deserved all of that attention and whatnot. And, of course, it's Betty Davis being fucking crazy, which she's very good at. And of course, the two leads hated each other in real life, which I think also adds something to it. So, yeah, whatever happened to baby Jane is a bonkers movie that I think is a lot of fun. Excellent. Have you seen it?
[00:48:27] Speaker A: No, I haven't. Do you know, all the while you were talking, I was just thinking to myself, I am so fucking excited to watch the fly again. I cannot fucking wait to see that movie again.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: It was like yesterday. As I was talking the whole time, all you could think about was the peppermint baddie. It's like every time I broke from conversation for a second, you would just bring it back to the peppermint patty.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: What fascinates me, and sorry to repeat myself, I know I've gone to this before, but I can't quite pin down the british analog.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Right?
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Because we've got versions of what you got. Versions of what we got. But I can't fucking pin down what we've got. That's a peppermint patty.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: We'll find out. We'll find out.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: You will?
[00:49:10] Speaker B: I watch a movie called no way up that came out, like, this past week or two weeks ago, which is a movie in which a plane crashes into the ocean and then sharks start eating the.
Okay, it's very, very.
And what's upsetting is that Colin Meanie is in it. And I don't understand why. These are the movies that he's been relegated to. Because what has he done for us? But give us bangers, right? His performances are always bangers. And this is what he does now.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Well, he's got to eat.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: I'm not mad at him. I'm mad at his agent.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: What was that one he was in with the goblins? Unwelcome. Is that what it was called?
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Which I did really like. I will give him that one.
And you did too. Until I was great. Fucked it up by ruining it for you until entirely my fault that that movie got ruined. But it just feels like he deserves better after the illustrious career he's had than doing a shark plane movie.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: I think his legacy is safe, isn't it?
[00:50:32] Speaker B: Well, that's for sure.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. He's got nothing else to prove.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe he doesn't want to do anything. Maybe he's just like, every now and again, I need to pay a bill.
I'm just going to do whatever someone fucking puts in front of me.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Bruce willisification of his career, right.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. That's going to be my head cannon. It's not that he's not getting offers. It's that he can't be bothered to do good stuff. He's just, perhaps, maybe one of his.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Children needs to go to university or something.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: Right? He's like, okay, I got this. Let me work three days oil.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Just call my agent.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: I like that idea, actually.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Redeemed employee.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Feel good about that.
I watched the zone of interest, one of the Oscar nominated films.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: Definitely on the list for this week.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So I won't talk a ton about it, but it didn't work for me. Super well, kind of in, it's the opposite of natural born killers and its tone and all that kind of stuff, but in the, like, it's saying something, but I think it thinks it's a lot smarter than it is sort of thing. Because it's basically, I told al this the other day. I was like, it's like if you gave a class the prompt, write a script based on the banality of evil, and it's like exactly the script the whole class would write.
Here are some very boring people who run a concentration camp and live next to the concentration camp being boring.
Yeah. No, I get it.
Evil people aren't necessarily interesting people.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Sure.
Look, if you found the film not as smart as it thought it was, and I'm not as smart as you.
You know what I mean? I'll be like, what a fucking smart film.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: I won't take that away from you.
But I just felt like it was like a very on the nose sort of story. When I read the book in the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson, that floored me, like, being like, oh, american diplomats were just, like, out partying with Nazis and stuff like that, instead of stopping shit from happening and whatnot. And that's when I think of really what blows my mind about the banality of evil. It's like, stuff like that. Not just that they could be boring and live next to a concentration camp and be unfazed by it, but the fact that a lot of them were interesting and were out partying and telling jokes and stuff like that. They mentioned this on.
Actually, it was because Marcus was reading in the Garden of the beast. Now I think about it. But a lot of these high up nazi guys, who were the worst human beings you could imagine, were funny and people liked them, and they were charismatic. And I think that, to me, is more interesting as a look at this than just, like, she had a garden next to a concentration camp.
I see. That was my thought process with it is like, I get it. I get what it's doing. It just, to me, wasn't as, like, I don't know, it just felt very on the nose instead of really telling an interesting story about how just, like, these are just people who didn't give a fuck.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Evil has a human face, right?
[00:54:12] Speaker B: But I also rewatched a fave of mine that I hadn't seen in ages. It's never streaming free anywhere. And finally I just sucked it up and bought it. I bought frequency yesterday.
I love frequency.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: You do, don't you?
[00:54:28] Speaker B: So much. That movie has everything.
It's got Sci-Fi and time travel. It's got murder. It's got a serial killer. It's got adventure and fire and things like that. It's got heart. It's got, like, a father son story.
Everything is there. It's stressful.
It's Jim Caviezel. Before we knew he was batshit.
You've got Denis Quaid.
You've got one of my favorite canadian actors plays the serial killer in that, like, man, it's just so good from start to finish. And I was. I. It's been like a decade since I've watched this. It was one of the few dvds that I had when I was in college, so I'd watch it all the time. And there's, like, this one line in it where Jim Caviezel says to Sean Doyle, you went down 30 years ago, pal. And I yelled the next line, just like in my bed, fist pumping. You just don't know it.
Ah, I fucking love this movie.
So, yeah, frequency is my jam.
I've explained to nothing about the movie. If you've never seen frequency, this is a movie in which Jim Caviezel is kind of a down and out cop who finds his dad's old ham radio.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: Or CB radio, finds a massive plot.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: Device under the plot device, and he suddenly is able to talk to his father in the past who died in a fire. And he prevents him from dying in that fire, but it sets off a stream of serial killings that now he has to stop, including one that killed his mother. And it goes from there. So, yeah, frequency is a treasure. I love it.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: You've certainly sold it.
[00:56:23] Speaker B: Yes.
And the last thing we watched together.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Super quickly, if we're talking about how I've evolved, if we're talking about how I've changed, not only am I watching movies that you've recommended, I'm also reading books you've recommended, for fuck's sake.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:56:41] Speaker A: What the fuck is up with that? I'm ripping through.
I'm ripping through Naomi Klein's doppelganger. And it is excellent, right?
[00:56:50] Speaker B: It's like Naomi Klein has a way of addressing these things that makes my heart know where I'm. Like someone is saying the thing that I've been thinking, but deeply researching it.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: The central conceit of the book is excellent, but the way that she uses it to hang all of these fucking various issues with our time on is very deft, and it's almost seamless. You never get a sense that she's reaching to.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: She's not forcing the doppelganger into things like.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: No, exactly.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: It's all there.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's superb. And thank you. Thank you for the wreck.
[00:57:30] Speaker B: Good. I'm very glad. I feel like this is probably a phase, but maybe just keep it.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: Let's just ride it.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: Yeah, let's ride it out. Let's ride that wave.
But we watched there's something wrong with the children this week that for some reason people don't like, but it is a perfectly delightful horror movie.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Who doesn't like the something wrong with the children that's got.
[00:57:53] Speaker B: Well, like, the rating on letterbox. Oh, I don't think it is.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Well, fuck those guys.
This is a perfectly fucking serviceable. Hey, cheap is the one word that kept coming to me as I was watching it because you've just got, like, four guys and a couple of kids and that's it.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: Nothing else.
[00:58:16] Speaker A: They probably paid a little bit for the location.
Some 1015 minutes of effects work at the end. That cannot have been an expensive movie to make.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Definitely. And yet it seems cheap to make, but it doesn't have the sense where you're watching it and you're like, this was made for $5. Yes, of course.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: And I'll tell you what elevates it. The fucking music is great.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: Yeah. The music is phenomenal.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: Original, kind of gothy, kind of synthy. Sisters of Mercy style pop rock tracks which you might be forgiven for thinking sounds shit, but it isn't.
[00:58:55] Speaker B: It is a good vibes.
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Vibes on vibes all over the place.
It's the anti ring, isn't it, in that it uses lots of really nice colors. Really well, green chiefly.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: But this is red.
This one was a lot of red.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: I don't know, I thought what it had to say about parenting was quite authentic.
It felt like it's a movie that knows the kinds of things it's writing about.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: Kids can be shit, basically.
Kids can be shit, that's for sure. I don't think that's the ultimate message. Obviously there's more to it, but, yeah, it is certainly one of them, but, yeah, basically the conceit of this being two couples, one of which has kids go on a little staycation type thing, just to the woods or whatever, to a cabin and find this cave that changes the children somehow. But only one of them seems to notice that the kids have changed.
And thus he starts to look crazy.
That's the basic conceit of this movie. I thought it was a lot of fun. You thought it was a lot of fun?
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Super tense.
[01:00:14] Speaker B: Yeah, totally worth watching.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Good movie.
[01:00:18] Speaker B: Think that's everything?
[01:00:19] Speaker A: I think that's everything. Watch alongs, fucking movies, books covering it all.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: Peppermint patties.
Well, then, let's bring the mood down, shall we?
[01:00:33] Speaker A: If we could. I was starting to feel good about my life.
[01:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah, everything was feeling really nice for a moment there.
So now I am going to leave us feeling absolutely miserable, if that's all right with you.
[01:00:45] Speaker A: Just super briefly. I've got aliens on in the background. Right. I've got the 4k restoration of aliens.
So Vasquez is on screen. Yes.
Who is actually also John Connor's foster mother in Terminator two.
[01:01:03] Speaker B: I think I only noticed that the last time I watched Terminator two. I was like, looks really familiar. Oh, little Cameron, overlap happening there? Love it.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: All righty, Corrigan.
[01:01:18] Speaker B: All right, so Mark, I talked about the Cold War last week and alluded to how the US would happily prop up a dictator or other distant group if it meant shutting down someone we felt was a threat to our capitalist values. So, like backing the coup d'e t that saw military dictator Fulgencio Batista take over Cuba or trying to shut down the Soviet Union and in doing so, funding the Taliban. And as I discussed in the first episode of this series, a lot of our worst political impulses have been carbon copied by Israel, and that includes the accidental creation of Hamas while attempting to shut down a different leftist enemy in Palestine.
Now, I'm just going to keep giving this disclaimer like last week. This is an overview.
We're not behind the bastards. Robert Evans does like six part episodes on individuals because there's that much to talk about. And here I am trying to cover 75 years of Middle eastern history in these small chunks each week. I can't possibly do that, so please go read the books. The shoppable list is linked in the description and in our blog. If you want to dive deep, deep. There are so many things to read, but I'm going to summarize the best that I can.
The origins of Hamas begin in the late seventy? S and early 80s, when Palestine was currently being led by a leftist secular group known as the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, and their Fata party, headed up at the time by Yasser Arafat. Sure you've heard of him. I remember on the news all the time when I was a kid.
Hamas sprung up from a social party called the Muslim Brotherhood. And at the time, Israel granted them a license to operate as a charity in Gaza known as Mujama al Islamiyyah. They built an islamic university, mosques, clubs and schools. And they were known basically for like welfare programs and stuff like that, kind of like a religious version of the Black Panthers. Basically, Israel was like, all these guys want to do is study the Quran instead of some social stuff. We're into it. Let them cook.
But in 1987, during what's known as the first into Fata, which is like an uprising against Israel by the Palestinians, Hamas went from being a social party to a political party, and one that, like Fatah, was in resistance to israeli occupation.
The military arm of Hamas was named the Izadin al Qassam brigades. And they wanted to be able to present armed resistance against Israel to liberate Palestine.
But Israel was like, these guys aren't that big a threat. And it's actually in our benefit to egg on infighting between these two groups that both don't like us, let them focus on each other, kill each other off instead of worrying about it.
So israeli brigadier general Yitzhak Segev told the New York Times that he helped finance the palestinian Islamist movement as a counterweight to the secularists and leftists. They apparently were not too concerned with the Hamas charter that called for the complete destruction of Israel. They didn't think it was going to get that far.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: And at what point did that become Hamas's goal?
[01:04:39] Speaker B: Basically, from the point that Hamas became like an entity that was in their charter, that they wanted the destruction of Israel and the return of that land to Palestinians. So it's always been there.
[01:04:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah. In 2006, Hamas won the democratic elections in Gaza. And in 2007, the US and Israel basically orchestrated a civil war between Hamas and Fatah that ended in Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip while Fatah held onto the West bank.
There is, in a sense, a strategic benefit to Israel letting Hamas control Gaza. Part of that was that Israel felt that the PLO was a much bigger threat and figured it was more important to get them out of power than to quell this Hamas stuff. But also by going, well, they elected Hamas, and Hamas controls Gaza. And we, Israel are not in Gaza anymore. They could then claim that Israel is a jewish majority state.
I'm sure that you or others listening to this have encountered people who argue that, oh, well, Israel left Gaza in 2005. They don't occupy it anymore by sectioning off Gaza. That's 2 million Palestinians who aren't part of Israel anymore. So Israel isn't an apartheid state.
Gaza is its own thing over there. Most of the Palestinians are in Gaza, and the blockade is simply there to keep Hamas, a terrorist organization, from coming and fucking things up in Israel.
Never mind that Israel controls everything in Gaza, from electricity to water to access to the sea, for fishing to ability to grow crops, to freedom of movement or lack thereof. The idea that they're not occupying Gaza, the idea is that they're not occupying Gaza. They're just containing Hamas, which is obviously bullshit. And if you live in Gaza, that's an absolutely meaningless distinction, like, oh, they're not occupying us, but they run every element of our day to day life.
As Mekdi Hassan put it, quote, first, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of palestinian political islam in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors. Then the Israelis switched TAC and tried to bomb, besiege and blockade it out. Of existence. And as Andrew Higgins explained in the Wall Street Journal, Israel had tried to find a flyant palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence. And it backfired. He goes on to say Israel's experience echoes that of the US, which during the Cold War looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism. Antisoviet forces backed by America after Moscow's 1979 of invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda. So we can see this doesn't really work out well.
[01:07:30] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:07:32] Speaker B: Tarek Bakoni, author of Hamas contained the rise in pacification of palestinian resistance, explained the language that the Israelis and the american officials have been using to demonize Hamas has been entirely based in the effort to depoliticize the palestinian struggle and to present any form of armed resistance against what is a violent apartheid regime as a form of terrorism. The impact of this is really to try to give Israel a carte blanche to continue dealing with the question of Palestine, with the quest by the palestinian people to gain their inalienable rights through force and through a security doctrine. President Biden's linking of the attack that happened on 7th October to 911 is really a carte blanche for Israel to do what it wants to in Gaza Strip. And it's an affirmation that all the lessons that have been learned after America's own 911 have really been lost because we did all of this stuff, went and just like terrorized the Middle east or whatever as like a retaliatory thing.
Obviously, we had other goals in.
[01:08:41] Speaker A: Is it a stretch to say that America's operations in Afghanistan, then their kind of super hasty withdrawal without any kind of onward plan for infrastructure and whatnot, just left a vacuum for al Qaeda to fill, right?
[01:08:58] Speaker B: Exactly. 100% that, yeah, absolutely nailed it.
But yeah, in this case, in other words, presenting Hamas as a purely terrorist organization depoliticizes what they actually are, the military of a state that has been occupied by a deeply oppressive force for the past 75 years?
You can argue about their tactics and whether you agree with them all day long, but it has to be acknowledged that they don't just do this because they hate Jews or israeli freedom or anything like that, which is a lot of the kinds of stuff that we used, again with Afghanistan, Iraq, things like that, like, oh, they don't have any reason why they hate us, it's just our freedom that's the problem and not destabilizing their entire nations and things like that. So you've got an occupying force that restricts the rights of indigenous people. And the political party that was elected to run that oppressed region has a military that carries out its political aims. The only reason we call them terrorists and not Gaza's army is basically racism and islamophobia. We don't have the same trouble with resistance fighters in Ukraine. Have you ever heard anyone call a ukrainian resistance fighter a course?
[01:10:06] Speaker A: Of course.
[01:10:07] Speaker B: It's not a thing we understand. When white people push back against an occupying force, that's a good thing. It becomes hazy when it's brown people, especially Muslims. And as long as they're terrorists, not a valid military, they need to be crushed, not negotiated with, eradicated.
And honestly, all of this stuff makes me wonder, who did people root for when they were watching the Hunger Games? It's like Katniss is a terrorist, right, by the rules of that movie and that series. But when you put this in context of Israel or whatever, it's the capital. The capital is the good guys. It's just bonkers to me that we take in so much media about shit just like this and take zero lessons.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Miss the fucking point?
[01:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah, miss it entirely. It's incredible.
Beckhani goes on to explain that what happened on October 7, while obviously a surprise to Israel and to the world, was actually probably just as much of a surprise to Hamas leadership. Israel presents itself as an impenetrable force. And to most Palestinians, there's an understanding that Hamas might be able to take a couple soldiers down in a suicide bombing or rough up a few unwanted buildings with a wayward rocket. But there isn't really any way to put up, like, an actual fight against Israel with its huge army and american weaponry that they have there. And Israel's done a lot of pr to make it feel that way, including just straight up lying about instances in which they got their asses kicked in various confrontations because it would have embarrassed them and led on that they aren't as unshakable as they seem. And obviously, we talked about this last week as, like, one of the reasons that the, like funds Israel for everything is because we look at them as our watchdog in the Middle east and we count on them to be able to carry out our sort of Middle east proxy wars. So they don't want us thinking that Hamas can put up a fight against them. It's important to cover up anytime that.
[01:12:05] Speaker A: That happens, just for my clarity, just so I can have it spelled out, the states and Europe, I guess, and the UK are funding Israel.
[01:12:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:12:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we give them tons and tons of money, both, and weapons we send weapons there. I know Britain definitely, like, the UK definitely sends money. I don't know how much they're involved in the military elements of it, but the US for sure, not only sends weapons, but works in tandem with Israel to create weapons, which is why they have some of the most incredible military hardware in the world and create things like the Iron Dome, which basically stops missiles from hitting them.
They have software, like surveillance software, that now our cops use that. They developed it in Israel to surveil the people in Gaza. So they take that stuff that they deploy against the people there and deploy it against american citizens afterwards.
So, yeah, it's crazy.
Absolute bonkersness. But that's what we get out of this relationship with Israel.
So when the attack happened on October 7, it's likely that Hamas was expecting far more resistance from the Israelis, and instead it ended up being like shooting fish in a barrel. Bakoni said, instead of any form of effective defense on the israeli side, what we saw was a complete shattering of this illusion. We saw the reality that actually Israel's army is not invincible and that the blockade that is placed around the Gazip strip is perfectly penetrable, and that Hamas was able to overturn Israel's myth of invincibility very, very quickly.
And that would seem like a win for Hamas, except that this means that they very likely weren't prepared for the scale of the retaliation that would come as a result.
Israel always hits back harder than they were hit. But killing over 1000 people and taking 200 hostages was unprecedented. A lot of folks have reacted to this with a sort of like, yeah, well, then what did they expect?
They killed all these people. Of course Israel was going to come and smash them the bits, but when it comes down to it, they did not expect their attack to be that.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: Efficient, which is one of the reasons why I'm, or have been so vague on. Who the fuck do you root for here?
[01:14:35] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Understandably.
[01:14:41] Speaker A: You can understand why, because there's massive brutality happening on both sides, right?
[01:14:48] Speaker B: And one of the things I think that's perfectly valid, especially when you don't have any context, right? Because that's kind of how it was presented, right? Is know. Everything was super peaceful, there was a ceasefire, everything was know. And then Hamas came in out of nowhere and just slaughtered a whole bunch of people, as opposed to know this is people who were being slaughtered daily before this even happened, coming in and fighting back against people who have been doing this. And that's not, of course, to defend the killing of civilians, but also one of the things that Hamas has said in press releases and things like that was not expected either. That their expectation was an engagement on a military level and that this was how it ended up sort of playing out. Again, that's not to excuse it.
We'll get into the complication of all of this kind of stuff. But that is to say, like, when you put this in context, it didn't happen out of nowhere. They didn't just go and kill a shit ton of people because they were bored one day or whatever. It was part of an active war that has been happening for decades here.
Let's see, where was I? Oh, so this is why this being a much bigger thing than they expected is why Hamas keeps being like, hey, we'll give these people back to you if you stop bombing us and give us the hostages that you took. Israel keeps rejecting that because they don't want the hostages. In fact, they've killed many of the hostages.
They want to level Gaza and then build settlements there, and thus there's no benefit for Hamas to make concessions. Israel has already said they're not going to stop killing Palestinians, so why would they be like, oh, okay, well, here are the hostages. Out of the goodness of our hearts, then. In fact, just this morning, I saw two stories on al Jazeera, one in which Netanyahu said that even if they make a deal with Hamas, they're still going to invade Rafa, and one in which Israel's defense minister said that they are going to continue bombing Lebanon even if a truce is reached in Gaza. So they plan to continue the violence and eradication no matter what they do. So why giving back the hostages is not an answer.
When people get on social media and comment like, just release the hostages or Hamas should surrender, what they're really saying is that Israel should be able to eradicate them without pushback. The only thing that causes Israel any pause is the bad pr they get when israeli soldiers are killed. So if Gaza doesn't want to be wiped off the map, they have to keep killing this. You see this happening a lot, that one of the reasons that there is so much pushback within Israel is because people are fed up with israeli soldiers getting killed and with the hostages not being returned, they're like, what are you doing? Like, you're letting our people die. And that actually gets pushback against the government. If it was simply like, oh, they're over there killing Palestinians, then nobody would fucking care. So it's in Hamas's best interest.
Know, make sure that Gaza isn't leveled by keeping those hostages and killing more israeli soldiers.
And here's the thing. I don't give a fuck what you think of Hamas. It's complicated for people in Gaza, too. Palestinians aren't a monolith. Their previous leaders, who still lead the occupied West bank, were secular leftists. So the idea that they're all super pumped on conservative Muslims being in charge is obviously not true. And by many accounts, because Hamas is a conservative muslim organization, they have been extremely brutal and repressive to the people there, and they shut down any form of resistance to them and things like that. So, like, Hamas is not necessarily good guys. That's not what I'm trying to say here.
[01:18:42] Speaker A: And what does that oppression look like?
[01:18:45] Speaker B: It's harsh. Sort of like a brand of sharia law that is being carried out there. So it has very restrictive things for women, for the way that you practice your religion. It is not huge on the christians in Palestine. Things like. But like, moreover, the fact that they don't leave any room for people to fight them. There's no opposition party to Hamas in Gaza because they will not allow that. And they imprison and torture people who try to push back against them in that.
You know, this is complicated for people in Gaza as well. It ultimately is what it is. But in times like these, their popularity grows hugely because they're the only group who has any means to fight back at all against Israel. And because they are still a social entity, they do what they can to provide food and water and take care of people. They have built infrastructure that makes Palestinians extremely educated, that tries to keep them from going hungry and all of these kinds of stuff. They tried to create welfare within, again, complicated. You know, this is not like a sort of black and white good guys and bad guys situation. And the people of Gaza feel that way too. Many are vehemently against Hamas and many support Hamas. But during times of war like this, where they're being so unilaterally slaughtered, that backing for them increases hugely.
Netanyahu has said that there will never be a palestinian state, period. They will either wipe these people out entirely or they will continue having them live in an open air prison. And we want them to condemn the one group of people fighting for their freedom.
The US had a violent and bloody revolution against England because of taxes. And we're supposed to think a people whose literal caloric intake is being restricted by Israel should just sit back and take it? For the response to Israel killing over 13,000 children to be, well, they shouldn't have voted for Hamas is truly unhinged, monstrous logic. They've had their pound of flesh and then some.
As trans jewish lawyer Cheryl Weichel put it in a blue sky thread, when you force someone into a campaign of violent resistance, they're not going to turn to three philosophers and a poet to lead them. They won't have time to run background checks, and they aren't going to care if the people they turn to are slightly shady, because that's a luxury colonized people don't have. They need people good at killing, and people good at killing are usually not the best folks around. But here's the reality. When you force people into violent resistance, who they turn to and what they become is on you. You put them there, you made them that, and you can't complain that your inhumanity has damaged their humanity, which is absolutely correct.
[01:21:48] Speaker A: I think that's probably the best summary we've had in the last four weeks of the situation.
[01:21:53] Speaker B: 100% like just casually tossed out in a blue sky thread. But that is so spot on to what is happening in this situation.
And such a perfect answer to the critiques of what's going on.
Approval of Hamas in the West bank leapt from 12% in September of 2023% to 44% in December, just three months later because of what was going on. Meanwhile, support for the US backed anti Hamas palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has plummeted, with 90% of Palestinians saying he should resign. And this is ironic in and of itself, because Abbas is part of Fata, the very same group that initially Israel let Hamas trounce. But FAta supports the blockade of Gaza in order to weaken Hamas and supports a diplomatic solution rather than a military solution to the conflict with Israel. Abbas lamented the violence on both sides after October 7 and called for the release of the hostages. And as you can imagine, a people who've been slaughtered in the streets for months are not interested in wishywashy both sidesism from someone who thinks it's fine that they live in a concentration camp.
They want action which they see themselves getting from Hamas.
And what really gets me is that Netanyahu's government is a transparent, far right extremist government, and american liberals will still support all of this because of our unquestioning fealty to Israel. We know Netanyahu is bad. Biden has been quote unquote leaked, saying how bad he is, which is obviously a transparent attempt to make it seem like he's just like us.
[01:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[01:23:32] Speaker B: Gosh, guys, he's such a bad dude. Wish there was something we could do about it. But meanwhile, we keep approving massive amounts of aid to help him continue the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Israel.
Israeli anti zionist scholar Ilan Pope said of what's happening in Gaza right now that it's the worst he's ever seen, that in the past he would have dubbed what was going on ethnic cleansing. In fact, that was in the title of his book, and that's terrible in and of itself, but he wouldn't have called it genocide. This, on the other hand, is, and it's mirroring the very genocide that Israel keeps chastising us for referencing the Holocaust.
Israel's national security advisor said, there cannot be a situation in which children and women approach us from the wall. Anyone must receive a bullet.
Human rights watchdog Euromed monitor noted groups of ten to 20 israeli civilians at a time were permitted to watch and laughingly film palestinian prisoners and detainees in their underwears. Underwear as they were tortured and abused by israeli soldiers. Civilians allowed to watch them being tortured for fun.
As the Palestine Chronicle noted, zionist ideology calls for racial purity of Jews in Palestine, of course, at the expense of the native inhabitants of the land. To achieve this, millions of Palestinians had to be forced into exile. Hundreds of thousands needed to be killed, wounded, or incarcerated. The current israeli government sees this war as an opportunity to finish what Israel started with Fanaqba, which was a failure in that they were unable to completely eradicate the Arabs from the region and thus still have to deal with them.
Now, if there's one book that I've read and recommended over the course of this series that I think everyone should read, it's the one. I'm going to close this by talking about the 51 day war by Max Blumenthal.
Reading this brought back memories for me of what it was like first learning about the Holocaust. When I was in fifth grade, we read the book the Devil's Arithmetic, which was about a girl from 1988 who gets transported back in time during her family's Passover Seder and ends up in a concentration camp. And I remember every detail of that book. It really scarred me. And then after that, she had us watch Schindler's list as it was airing on NBC without commercials, coincidentally, almost exactly 27 years ago, February 23, 1997.
Weirdly, every week of this series I've managed to talk about something that happened on nearly the same date as we recorded, which is OD. But anyway, all this stuff had a huge impact on me. I had nightmares about the Holocaust. My best friend at the time was a jewish girl from South Africa. And I constantly thought about what people in her family must have endured, even though we never really addressed her own familiar experiences and what they'd been.
But all that to say that the atrocities really stuck with me. And being a pretty empathetic person, it was impossible for me to fathom being the kind of person who could inflict that kind of pain on someone else, or who could sit by and do nothing as it happened. It was just so horrifying to me. And there have obviously been a few other times over the course of my life that I've encountered things that are similarly horrendous that shake me to my core. I mean, we're constantly finding out about some horrendous genocide happening in Africa that makes me want to die. There's these things that come up over and over over the course of my life, and this book is one of those things that brought back all those feelings that I had as an eleven year old hearing about the Holocaust for the first time.
The depths of the dehumanization and callousness and the gleeful violence inflicted upon the Palestinians is beyond my ability to properly convey. But I'm going to try.
But pick up the book. Read this one. The 51 day war by Max Blumenthal so in 2014, three israeli teenagers were abducted and killed by a rogue Hamas cell who thought that if they kept the kids hostage, they could arrange a prisoner swap with Israel.
One of the teens attempted to call the police from his cell phone, and in a panic, the kidnappers shot them and buried them in a shallow grave. Netanyahu found out about this shortly thereafter, having heard the recording of the call made to the police and easily tracking down the culprits.
But he kept that to himself and his people. Seeing an opportunity to start a war, he had the police tell the teen's parents that the kids were still alive, and a gag order was issued to prevent journalists from giving any details of what had happened, including the suspect.
This was because that rogue cell who did it was known for going rogue and for violating Hamas'ceasefires with Israel. Hamas had no fucking clue about the kidnapping. But Netanyahu didn't want the israeli people to know that he set his sights on the power sharing government of Hamas and Fatah, meanwhile working to cover up the murder of two unarmed palestinian boys by IDF soldiers around the same time they went before the UN and demanded to know why the international community wasn't helping them to reclaim these poor kidnapped kids, even circulating the hashtag bring back our boys on Twitter, echoing Michelle Obama's bring back our girls campaign after the kidnapping of nigerian schoolgirls by islamist militants. It was brilliant propaganda and the US fell for it hook, line and sinker. And Israel used it to rampage through the West bank in what they called Operation Brothers keeper. Under the pretenses of looking for these boys that they already knew were dead, they raided schoolhouses, coffee shops and private homes, making mass arrests of people who were nowhere near and had nothing to do with the kidnapping.
Israel caged in Hebron, trapping 680,000 people inside.
Meanwhile, the people of Israel were in a rage. One Facebook page demanding that Israel execute one palestinian prisoner for every hour the teens weren't returned home.
It was 18 days before the bodies were finally found. And at this point, the floodgates of israeli rage burst open.
Netanyahu called the palestinian people human animals, and israeli public sentiment was with him, especially among young Israelis who assembled in Jerusalem chanting death to Arabs and trying to find any Palestinian they could to assault.
Politician Islet Shakhed, 38 at the time said that Palestinians are all enemy combatants, including the mothers of the martyrs who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons. Nothing would be more justice. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
And as angry Israelis searched for anybody upon whom they could inflict revenge, they came across 16 year old Muhammad Abu Kadir sitting on a stone wall outside his house, gazing at the olive groves.
Three men pretended to ask him for directions, then threw him in their car and drove off, locals trying in vain to chaste after the car and help him.
Hours later, his body was found. He had been bludgeoned unconscious, covered in gasoline, and then burned alive.
And while it was clearly an israeli revenge killing, the israeli media insisted that it was actually a muslim honor crime and his own family had done it because they found out he was gay.
As the truth came out, Kadir's family was punished, several of his relatives arrested, beaten, their homes ransacked. And this was just the beginning of the horrors that would befall the Palestinians in what would come to be known as the 51 day war in 2014.
At the end of seven weeks, over 2000 people were killed, the vast majority of which were palestinian civilians. And that number feels like almost nothing now, given the extent of the current genocide. But obviously that's a huge amount of people in a small area, 2000 people. That's almost 911 worth of people. And we're from a country of bajillions of people.
I'm not going to go into all of the back and forth military actions between Israel and Hamas. Again, read the book if you want to know all of those details. But what I want to harp on is the treatment of palestinian civilians as all of this was happening. And I want to talk about that for two reasons. For one, I think it's important to see the level of brutality Palestinians were dealing with and continue to deal with. But for two, because so many people are under that delusion that all of the poor treatment started after October 7 and that everything was fine before that, but Hamas fucked it up. That's not the case. Israel has always looked for a single inch from which they could take a mile in retaliation, using their vast propaganda resources to convince the world that it's all part of their right to defend themselves.
But that's simply not the case. It's been a 75 year project of trying to eradicate a people and using unthinkable levels of violence and oppression to do it.
On July 16, 2014, israeli gunboats began shelling a beach where several young palestinian boys were playing. A beach where a group of journalists happened to be looking on from the Aldira hotel restaurant 200 meters away. The boys tried to run from the explosions, tried to wave down the journalists for help, and as the journalists watched in horror, shouting, they're only children. The gunships murdered all the boys who had just been playing hide and seek. Four brothers from a family of fishermen that was aligned with Fata, not Hamas. And because this was witnessed by a bevy of journalists, there are photos all over the Internet of the carnage. But of course, they weren't allowed to publish this in any of their publications because it was too gory.
But all these kids were blown to pieces for the crime of simply playing on the beach. While palestinian.
In Cairo, where negotiations between Hamas and the Netanyahu Yahoo government were being held, Gaza was offered a temporary ceasefire, but with no humanitarian concessions and with the caveat that Israel could keep assassinating Hamas'leadership. During the ceasefire. And our man over here, John Kerry, was like, Hamas should definitely take this deal or it's going to have a huge impact on their people. But the deal was just to go back to violent occupation, starvation and oppression, and Israel will try not to kill as many civilians. No promises.
And as Israel basically told Hamas to fuck off with its demands, they meanwhile headed into a population center called Shijaya, east of Gaza city, where they would proceed to absolutely fuck shit up. Hamas'soldiers roundly trounced them, or at least insofar as Hamas had the power to do that, they put up a good fight, killing a handful and wounding dozens, a thing that hadn't really happened before in an actual battle between Israel and Hamas. And this was a disaster for Israel. So they changed their tactic. Fuck fighting with people with guns and training, they'd go after the civilians. Instead, from here, they implemented a strategy they referred to as mowing the lawn. And it's as dehumanizing and horrifying as it sounds.
The israeli military began launching shells into Gaza indiscriminately. According to a Pentagon briefing, Israel had deployed eleven battalions of heavy artillery against Shujaya. This meant that at least 258 artillery pieces blasted the neighborhood with some 7000 high exploding shells, including 4800 during a seven hour period. One israeli soldier explained that they were firing a shell into Gaza every two minutes, signing them with cute little messages to the people they were killing. Quote the shelling depicted in the newspiece appeared to be so random that the soldiers must have had little idea where the munitions were falling and the atmosphere was so casual they had time to play batgammon and eat. Delivered sushi in the shade. By the end of the assault, the neighbors'stately homes were reduced to rubble and blackened concrete shells, making the area pretty much uninhabitable. Homes had been vandalized with Stars of David on the furniture and on the walls.
Yaakov Katz wrote in the Jerusalem Post that the IDF is using this as an opportunity to do some maintenance work in Gaza and to mow the lawn, so to speak, and otherwise. In other words, sometimes you had to go in and do a little indiscriminate murder to keep things tidy.
The israeli human rights group Bisalem found that the IDF was using an open fire policy in which residential buildings were attacked from the air or ground, causing them to collapse on entire families. This meant that they could be very efficient in massacring civilians without the risk of IDF deaths, since they were firing from the air. And in Shujaya, Israel had used us made 155 millimeter howitzers with a kill radius of 164ft.
According to a senior us military officer, the only possible reason for doing that is to kill a lot of people in as short a period of time as possible. It's not mowing the lawn, it's removing the topsoil.
One palestinian, Tamar Attash, recalled watching his neighbors jump from fourth floor windows as their homes burst into flames. Quote we said our last prayers and that was it. Because we know that when the Israelis lose one of their soldiers, they become lunatics. We just knew they had suffered something. We could sense it, which is, like, chilling, right? You know that if an israeli soldier dies, they are going to wreak havoc on, like. That's a horrifying knowledge to keep.
In one home, Blumenthal was told that four of a man's brothers were all executed, including his mentally disabled brother, who likely had no idea he was about to be killed. On July 20, during a temporary ceasefire, 23 year old Salem Shamali went to search for missing family members, along with volunteers from the international solidarity movement, all clad and green, to indicate that they were rescue personnel. Despite this, a sniper shot Salem, and as he tried to stand up, he was hit by another sniper shot to the chest. And finally, a third shot killed him during a ceasefire with rescue workers.
When his family was finally able to retrieve his body, it was burnt beyond recognition and had been thrown dozens of meters from where he'd died, from bombardments that had occurred afterwards. And because Israel had killed so many civilians, the cemetery in Shujaya was too full to bury him.
They eventually had to place him in a grave that was already occupied.
On the 22 July, israeli forces abducted local Imam Khalil al Najar, stripping him naked and parading him through the streets. They then tried to get information on Hamas out of him, which he did not have. And when that didn't work, they brought him out into the street and had him call all of the young men to assemble outside, a thing they did because they were used to his trusted voice calling them to prayer. The men were then all separated from their families and taken to prison. The mosque was bulldozed and another blown up with c four.
On August 2, a humanitarian ceasefire was called. And as the carnage was being surveyed, the body of a teenage girl was found among the many corpses, a few feet away from the wheelchair she'd used in life. Her name was Gadir, and she was with her family as they tried to escape an israeli assault on their neighborhood. She was severely mentally disabled, and her family asked soldiers for permission to pass into Han Yunus, where there would be an ambulance for her. Instead, the soldiers opened fire on them from tanks.
Gadir couldn't get away. She was found filled with shrapnel and partly decomposed, ripped apart by tank fire. When her family tried to bury her, israeli drones fired five rockets into the graveyard.
Khuza, where she had been trying to escape, was hell. Civilians were doing everything they could to keep soldiers from killing them, including tearing off their clothes and lying on the ground, shouting civilians in hope that this would prove they were unarmed and not a threat because they'd seen it in other videos.
A soldier on a tank told an elderly man to step forward from a group of terrified civilians that were hiding behind a mound of dirt.
When he emerged, the soldier shot him to death. The soldier called another man forward and made him strip naked and turn around. The group was then allowed to march behind the naked man amidst shelling of the road they were on, surrounded by corpses. Some of them were unable to avoid the shelling and died on this macabre march. This one really, really gets me. It's like straight out of Auschwitz. Yeah. Just calling someone forward and murdering them in front of a bunch of terrified people who don't know if they're going to be next or not.
It's horrifying. Similarly, an ambulance driver named Mohammed Abdallah, who had come with two others to collect the body of a man who'd been lashed to a tree by both arms and shot in the leg, was told to exit his vehicle, walk 5 meters forward and switch on a flashlight. When he did, they shot him in the chest and killed him.
Even in semi safe areas, there was ever present danger. Israel's spot and strike system is an automated weapon apparatus controlled by female soldiers at Negev Desert army base. If one of them notices someone whose gate matches the gate of a terrorist, they aim remotely, press a button.
[01:40:56] Speaker A: And which is what exactly?
[01:40:59] Speaker B: Right? However a terrorist walks, that's a thing we all know and can decide and just snipe someone out of existence as a result of fucking insanity.
And the last story I'll tell you is another that shakes me to my core. That's the story of 19 year old Mahmoud Abu Sayeed. And I'm just going to take this straight from the book instead of trying to paraphrase it.
The entire Abu Sayid family had gathered at his spacious home, including 30 cousins, when a platoon of israeli troops appeared on the dirt road outside the house. The terror began. The soldiers ordered the family to evacuate the house under the shelling their army had just initiated. Then they summoned Mahmoud's father, Abdul Hadi al Sayeed. As soon as he appeared at his doorstep, they asked him if he spoke Hebrew. When he answered in the affirmative, the soldiers shot him in the chest, leaving him to die. While the other members of the family fled to safety in the urban center of Rafa. The soldiers grabbed Mahmoud and didn't allow him to leave.
Mahmoud said the israeli troops dragged him back into his house, blindfolded him, and wrapped him in a blanket on the floor. They began to blow holes in the walls to use as makeshift sniper slits what us troops in Afghanistan called murder holes.
The soldiers then stripped Mahmoud to his underwear, handcuffed him and slammed him against a wall and began to beat him with an M 16 at his back. They forced him to stand in front of open windows as they hunted his fleeing neighbors, sniping directly beside him and over his shoulders at virtually anything that moved. When they were not using him as a human shield, Mahmood said the soldiers left him alone in the room with a muzzled army dog who was off the leash.
After all that, he was blindfolded and taken to jail, where he was routinely beaten and questioned about Hamas tunnel networks and resistance activities for six days before he was released.
This goes on and on and on. One israeli death or humiliation, and that's the pretense for wholesale torture and slaughter of the Palestinians. And our government sanctions it because, well, Israel has the right to defend itself.
And there's a quote blumenthal took down from someone he met there, referring to a boy traumatized by the violence. He said, that kid wants to make an atomic bomb and obliterate Israel. Why? Because he saw his family members die in front of him. How can you raise kids to want to make bombs?
And this is why, like I said, I don't give a shit what you think about Hamas and why. It doesn't matter what I think about Hamas. You can't sanction horrific crimes against humanity and then be like, whoa, why are these kids so mad? Why do they support this violent group?
What we westerners think of Hamas is utterly irrelevant. Completely. We are funding the occupying force that is murdering families, leaving their orphaned and traumatized kids with few other options than maybe being able to get a little revenge. As Blumenthal points out in the beginning of the book, the 2 million people in Gaza are mostly under the age of 18. And because of the restrictions put on them by Israel, most of them have never and will never see anywhere other than Gaza. They have nothing to look forward to but more death and illness and starvation. I'm simply not going to focus my energy on telling them love conquers hate. Instead, I'm going to focus on telling our people and our government that we need to stop this.
[01:44:37] Speaker A: So I return to the question that I asked last week, pragmatically and realistically, how does this get fucking resolved?
[01:44:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that is the question. And I think what I like to think is that because for the first time, really ever, there is massive pushback from people all over the world that we can see in the change in Biden's rhetoric about this. And the people who speak for Biden about this, that they realize this is unpopular and however facetious you might have been being and serious at the same time, this is probably going to hand Trump the he's not that he's better on Israel and Palestine. He absolutely supports the same slaughter. But this has lost Biden so much support.
And so they're trying to change the tack with which they talk about this to try to act like we're doing our best to prevent the loss of civilian life and our hands are tied, but we don't want them to do this.
And just even seeing that minor change shows that it's like we know there has to be something that we fix about this policy in the Middle east.
And so I think as a people, as citizens of the world, whether Americans, British, Irish, whatever, Europeans, people in Africa, it doesn't matter where you are. What we can do is assemble and talk about it and spread all of this kind of stuff and make sure that it is clear that we want an end to it and that we know who the bad guy is.
And that involves telling that to people around us, that involves contacting the people who represent us, making hard phone calls like that, or sending emails, whatever the case may be, and just making it clear you lose our vote. That's non negotiable.
You can't skirt by like this and be like, oh, okay, I hear you, but literally you lose our vote if you keep supporting this stuff.
I think that's like the first step. And it seems very minor, but a lot of people have a hard time making that step.
But also we see what that's doing. We see that even in minor rhetorical changes that it's an acknowledgment that this is not going to stand. And I hope that as such, that actually leads to something. And not just all of us sitting here watching as over the next few months, Netanyahu manages to bomb them out of existence.
Because the thing about this is that, you know, 20 years from now, how we're going to look at this, right? Sure, we all know that. We're going to look back and go like, God, that was awful, that they genocided all those people. We're going to have days of mourning and remembrance and shit like that, and we're going to pretend that nothing could have been done about it. I hope that we do something before it's just a foregone conclusion like that.
What does it make you want to do mark, where does this put you?
[01:48:20] Speaker A: As you've been talking over the last kind of 1520 minutes, I'm wondering to myself, what are my lines of communication with who are going to be our incoming ruling party?
Because every single poll is indicating a change of government.
And I would be astounded were we still to have a conservative government six months from now, eight months from now, whenever the election is towards the end of this year. So I'm wondering, what are my lines of contact with my representatives, be it local or national.
[01:49:05] Speaker B: Which is huge in and of itself, because I know starmer supports, you know, having those lines of communications, know, getting other people, you know, to say to whoever is running in your localities and things like. Like tell them, you don't get my vote.
If you support, like, especially on those smaller levels, people are more likely to listen.
You try that on Rishi Sunak. What the fuck does he care? Exactly. But the person who is local to you, if they realize their constituents are not going to vote for them because of this, that's huge deal.
[01:49:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm thinking along those lines. That's where my head is to, if we are about to elect in another Israel supporting party, I would like at least at a local level to be told.
Absolutely.
[01:50:05] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Yeah. That's what we need to demand, I think, is, go ahead, say it to my fellow face. Tell me why exactly we support this. Right. And explain to me why 13,000 dead children doesn't move you. Why? To reverse what you were talking about with Ukraine, that it is mostly women and children who have died in Gaza. And that's intentional, as we can see from this strategy that I just talked about.
They don't want to fight Hamas.
Fighting Hamas is they might get their ass kicked. They are going to fight the most vulnerable people in the community because that's how they win and that's how they eradicate a people, like you said, also like this. Get them from the kids. And now you have no one to grow up into your enemy, and they deal with the minds and all that kind of stuff there as well.
Yeah, I think we have to be confrontational about all of this stuff and really take that mandate seriously. It's the thing that people always wonder, right? You always wonder when you were growing up, what would I have done during the Holocaust? What would I have done during the civil rights movement? What would I have done during x atrocity that was happening to people? And now here's a chance where you get to find out what you would have done. You're in it. And what are you going to do? And hopefully you want to look back and say, I did something.
What? In my limited power, I could. Yeah, I did that.
[01:51:53] Speaker A: Beautifully put as always, Corrigan.
[01:51:55] Speaker B: Thank you, Marco. Do you want to send our dear listeners out on a high note or on a moment of. I don't know.
[01:52:05] Speaker A: Look, these last four weeks have been a moment to reflect, a moment to clear up some fucking. Some gray areas of my knowledge.
While the journey hasn't been pleasant, it's one I'm grateful of having taken.
[01:52:27] Speaker B: You're here with you. I learned a lot, too. I've read a lot.
And, yeah, it makes me miserable in a way that is galvanizing. And I hope it has been for those of you who are at home listening as well.
[01:52:46] Speaker A: All right, we'll wrap it up there.
Lots more jo? Ag. Everywhere you would fucking seek to find it. And we'll talk to you next week. Stay spooky.
