It Could Happen Here Weekly 25

and this is me an Mar printing the Revolution. It's and it could happen here special mini series, an in depth documentary investigation with me and journalist James Stout. Over the next four days, you're going to learn about the gen Z militias of the MA and Mar Civil War, three D printed weapons, and a bunch of other really fascinating stuff. Besides, So, without any further ado, here's James.

Ever since the first person built the first fence, took land from everybody and annexed it to themselves, property rights and violence on hand in hand with property, grew the state, and when the state came the police. Today most of us grew up under the control of states, and they're so ubiquitous that their violence is often overlooked until a particularly agreed to as incident occurs. But all states, even

the most benign, rest on a monopoly on violence. State to the entities that impose laws on a given area, and if you break those laws, the state can beat you up, lock you up, or shoot you up. When the state loses the monopoly on violence, it ceases to be able to enforce its laws, charge its taxes, and enforce its will on the people at rules. We've seen this all over the world, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to briefly downtown Seattle. Our state in the USA

speaks the language of rights and liberties. When we want to appeal to the state, we tend to use that language. Even though our state, as we saw in is backed by plenty of violence as much as any other, it goes a long way to camouflage that violence. Some states are a bit more mask off. They speak to their citizens more or less exclusively through violence, and when citizens need to respond to that state, they respond to their

language it uses to speak to them. That's how a teenager from Yangon, Myanmar ended up on Reddit in summer of one asking strangers how to use a three D printer and computer to make a rifle me and Ma isn't a country that is on the radar for most of the US. If it is a tool, it's probably because the State Council and Foreign Minister on Scien Succhi. She managed perhaps the history's fastest pivot from Nobel Peace Price winner to head of a government accused of genocide.

But Suki is in jail now and the Rahania, the Muslim ethnic group that the military attempted to eliminate from the east of the country under her rule, are just one of many ethnic and political groups. They're an open armed conflict with the military who now hold control of the government of Myanmar, known locally as a Tapmador. The military sees power in early one you might have seen a video of a woman doing an aerobics workout as

the vehicles rolled in behind her to seize power. Ever since that day, they've been committing crimes against humanity all over the country. Myama has a longer history of dictatorship than democracy. The British East India Company occupied the area

that now represents the country in the nineteenth century. As always, they talked about civilizing missions and freedoms, but in practice the occupation was extractive and only benefited the Anglo Burmese and a few Indian civil servants they brought with them often. But this month led to resistance that manifested itself in hunger strikes and everyday acts of disobedience, small ways of saying no. In a few instances, it became open and

unrest biled into the streets. The country became a major battle ground during the Second World War, with Japan evading and seizing the country before Allied forces took it back in a fierce campaign in nineteen As many of a hundred and fifty thousand Japanese troops died. Burmese people fought on both sides. As son An San Suki's father demanded that Britain grant him and his fellow Burmese people independence

if they fought for the Allies. The British refused. An San then went first to China and eventually Japan for support, and eventually he fought against the British with his Burmer Independence Army. But after two years of occupation, a Stan and his comrades changed sides under a broad alliance called the Anti Fascist organization. They turned on the Japanese and they once again took up arms to liberate their country. On the fourth of January, Burma became an independent republic.

The new republic's territory combined three British territories and over a hundred distinct ethnic groups. For the next fourteen years, these groups struggled to find a democratic Burma and an identity for themselves within it. Mostly they failed. The period was characterized by the Chinese Civil War spilling it to Burma, ethnic arm insurgencies and repeated demands for a federal republic

with a weak central government into the military. A rate at new demands for a federal republic stage to cop Burma spent the next twenty two years under the military rule of a council, pursuing what they called the Burmese Way to socialism. Burma's planned economy left it largely isolated from the rest of the world home the press was censored, and a type of nationalism that combined nominal socialism and Burman ethnic identity became the official state ideology. During this period,

Burma became one of the world's poorest countries. Sporadic protests were met with overwhelming force and the eighths of August and uprising began. It started among a students in Yangon, but it took real quickly around the country. The so called eight eight Uprising because of the date, began with the general strike and huge nor violent protests. These were met with gunfire. Protesters fought back with Molotov cocktails and rocks.

The military fired to hospitals, and by September eighteen they launched a coup to take the country from a one party state back to a military dictatorship. It was throing these protests on San Suki, the Daughter of Independence. Here a son emerged as a national figurehead, especially in the West. Amato. The Indian writer wrote the following about eight across Burma, people poured out in thousands to join the protests, not just students, but also teaches, monks, children, professionals and trade

unionists of every ship. It was on this day, too, that the Hunter made its first determined attempt at repression. Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators and hundreds of unarmed marches were killed. The killings continued for a week, but still the demonstrators continued to flood the streets. After the uprising had been suppressed. Multiparty elections were later held, while the new National League for Democracy party of Ang Song Suki won the most votes. The hunter used to see power.

Protests continued off and on for decades, with the two thousand seven Saffron Revolution, which the government violently cracked down on monks, resulting in the most international condemnation. Following the Saffron Revolution, the government's isolationism hindering aid after extensive cyclone damage.

In two thousand and eight, the military government finally implemented the roadmap to discipline flourishing democracy that had developed in If you're wondering about the name of the country, this officially changed in as well, but like much of the nation's history, a grand proclamation from the government didn't mean much on the ground. Both words derived from Baranma, a name that the majority ethnic group who we're calling Burman here used for themselves. Many opposition groups still use Burma

instead of Myanma. It's another small way of saying no to the military's attempt to control every aspect of their lives. Finally, on the eighteenth of September, the army took to the streets and the coup led by their Chief of Staff, General Sormon. The next day the killings began again. Yeah

The army later described these people as lutas. It was not until two thousand eleven that the military junta finally stepped down and passed on power to the Union, Solidarity and Development Party in an election that was widely seen as fraudulent. A year later on Sen su Chi was released, and by two thousand fifteen her National League for Democracy

won an absolute majority. While she was barred from holding the presidential office, she took on the role of State counselor, and Myanmar entered a period of liberalization, which, although never the federal democracy promised when the country gained its independence in n seven, allowed for significant freedoms of communication and speech, especially for the Burman majority ethnic group. Not everyone was

reconciled to the change. Many of myanmars a hundred and thirty five ethnic groups feel marginalized by the state, which tends to be dominated by the Burman ethnicity. Some of these groups have armed insurgent wings, often more than one per ethnic group, as they disagree on politics or religion. These groups have fought various Burmese governments since the nineteen forties, but many of them reached a ceasefire with the government

as the country passed from military to civilian rule. One group, however, saw a huge uptick in violence. The Rohinga ethnic group have been persecuted by Buddhist nationals since the nineteen seventies, but the campaign against them increased in violence and scale in two thousand sixteen, when the toatmah Dau began a

huge crackdown against Rohinga people in Rakin State. The persecution began in response to attacks by the Arkan Rohingas Salvation Army on Burmese border outposts, but the campaign that followed had nothing to do with the small insurgent group and a lot to do with the desire of the Totma Daw to destroy or drive out all Rohinga people, who they claim are undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and not citizens

of Myanmar. While the world praised Suki, her government looked the other way as the military carried out a genocide that displaced over a million people and killed tens of thousands. It was in the context of growing international condemnation of the genocide that Myanmar went to the polls in November of The November twenty election was only the nation's second since the official end of military rule. On San su

Chi's National League for Democracy won a resounding victory. The military backed Union Solidarity and Development Party holds twenty five percent of seats under a constitution that SUCHI wanted to change. It didn't take defeat well. The election was neither perfectly free nor fair. The Rohinga have been almost wholly disenfranchised. The government claims they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and

thus unable to vote. Areas with ethnic armed organizations which opposed the government often had poles canceled and in had cut off. According to Human Rights Watch, The Carter Center estimates that one point four million citizens couldn't vote. The one opposition party that was certainly not short changed was the military's. However, it was the Union Solidarity and Development Party U s d P, which had been calling for election delays due to COVID before polls opened. Once the

elections concluded, they immediately began questioning the results. They continued to attempt to undermine the vote for months before they resorted to force on the first of February, the day before the newly elected legislators were due to be sworn in the world largely ignored the situation, apart from the one viral video where a masked fitness instructor dances in the foreground as a PCs rolled through a roadblock and

into the parliament complex behind her. On Sang Suchi was arrested, charged with breaching COVID nineteen restrictions and illegally importing a walkie talkie, and General min On Lang was installed at the head of a military junta. If this sounds a little like a stop the Steel antasy, and that's because

it is erily similar to one. Myanmar's democracy is not what academics call a consolidated one, which is to say that democracy has never been the only game in town there, but the United States seems to be rapidly deconsolidating its own democracy. The allegations of election fraud and Meanmar were no more credible than those in Arizona. However, the military's tradition of political engagement there removed many of the barriers in between electoral defeat and the death of a short

lived democracy. Within twenty four hours of the coup, the people of Mianmar had fought back health care workers and civil servants were on strike by February third, and a boycott of Junta owned businesses had begun. Protests began with a handful of people. The memories of massacres of pro democracy protesters in the nineteen eighties kept many away, but a younger generation who had grown up with relative liberty, internet access and basic freedoms had not seen blood in

the streets like their parents. They had seen activists in Hong Kong, the USA, and Ukraine take on violent state apparatuses, and they often seen them win. By the six of February twenty people in the streets of Yangon, the largest city, and the Internet was shut down. Nationwide. Protests began peacefully with memorable signs like my eggs is bad, but the military is worse, and we are protesting peacefully, but with

the W a P capitalized, so it said whack. These signs were designed by generation of kids who grew up with access to the Internet to attract international attention. Despite the ban. They used VPNs to shore im due to their struggle. One sign read you've messed with the wrong generation. Now will never be allowed to ruin our own lives.

The tap the door, showed his cards. Pretty quickly, police began a suppression with sling shots and clubs, then tear gas and flash brag, and quickly they moved to rifles and rocket papel grenades. By the ninth of February, my way Way, a twenty year old woman have been shot

in the street. Soon those young protesters have switched signs for shields by the mid march on m forty this day, a hundred and fourteen civilians were killed in a single day, including sixty five in Yangon who were kettled by police, surrounded and then shot Quickly, shield walls were set up. Medics identified themselves in the protest movement, and hard hats and goggles were distributed, but this didn't hip the balance of power in their favor. So all In, a former

student union leader, was there from the start. In the text message, he told me I did not miss a single day as a member of the KaiA State National Strike Committee. I later became more involved in anti authoritarian protests. In the early protests, you see him in photos walking in the front of the group carrying flags and banners with his student I D card on a lanyard around his neck. But by March he's wearing a black shirt,

goggles and a hard construction hat. Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy politicians who had escaped attention joined other parties

and set up a National Unity Government in April. The National Unity Government contained members of the National League for Democracy, but significantly her Anger activists was appointed and advised with the Ministry of Human Rights, and the National Unity Government has announced it would for the first time accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court with respect to all international crimes committed in Myanmar since two thousand and two.

This would include the Ring genocide. By May, both the National Unity Government as well in her to realize that no amount of non violent protests was going through this large regime that was happy to gun down kids in the street, So on the fifth of May he left for the jungle. That same day, the National Unity Government announced the formation of the People's Defense Force or PDF. Within a month, eight hundred soldiers had affected to these

pro democracy guerilla units. Many put their guns with them. That's what didn't join the PDF. Instead, he joined one of me and Mar's many ethnic armed organizations groups opposed to the central state and its domination by the Burman ethnicity. To understand these groups, you need to understand that me and Mar is composed of dozens, not hundreds, of ethnic groups, but that the Burman, who make up about two thirds of the population, have always controlled the state and used

it as a tool in furthering their interest. Some of these groups, like the current National Liberation Army and the Kachin Independence Army, have been fighting for decades since the country emerged from British colonial rule at the end of World War Two. All of these groups draw on a combination of ethnic and police to go grievances. Many of them adminished to semi autonomous territories like the Kuran State.

In two thousand thirteen, thirteen ethnic Armed Organizations or e a o s came together to form the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordinating Team in c CT and signed an eleven point Common Position of Ethnic Resistance Organizations on National Ceasefire, or the LISA Agreement. Most of them seemed to agree that they would accept a federal system rather than complete autonomy. In two thousand fifteen, a ceasefire was signed, but conflict between ethnic armed organizations and between e a o's and

the government continued. Since the coup began, EO membership has skyrocketed, and in October the National Unity Government announced alliances with several groups under a central chain of command. Some political organizations who played a part in the nineteen eighty eight uprising, like the All Burma Students Democratic Front, have been revived as armed groups. The a B s DF recently attacked Tautama Dagh ships using an RPG. Attacks on military basis

have also stepped up. PDF units have ambushed and killed policemen and raided police and military outposts. Each time they do, they steal valuable weapons and ammunition. The top MEDAU has responded with shellings and air strikes against residential areas, executions, mass physical retribution and the murdering of civilians and aid

workers and burning of their bodies. As a result of all this, ethnic armed organizations have joined forces with anti authoritarian Berman people under the auspices of the People's Defense Forces, which are under the command of the exiled National Unity Government. We have never experienced such kind of brutalities from the military as well as a strong resistance from the people. They try to make sure the whole country submit to them, but we still refuse to allow them to be our rulers.

This defiance has led to the formation of the People's Defense Forces or PDF, a coalition of thousands of resistance fighters were carrying out surprise attacks on Hunter checkpoints, bombing army convoys, and supporting ethnic armies in their fight against the regime. Twelve months ago, these men and women were students and office workers protesting the coup. Today they're training

to overthrow the military. Bennesota is the tough choice, but the young people um they are ready to defend the community. They have to, of course, sacrifice their own daily life, ordinary life. Since March of the influx of new recruits has changed these groups. Generation Z militias like the Karinni gin Z Liberation Army have sprung up, founded by kids who were holding memable signs at protests just a few months earlier. They care less about ethnic independence and more

about beating the junta. Many Burman kids join these groups. These organizations of young fighters received training from the experienced guerillas hiding in the jungle, but they tended to adopt a less top down military structure and armed themselves by scavenging whatever weapons they could find, often twenty two caliber rifles better suited to shooting squirrels than soldiers. It was these kids who grew up online and knew that there was nothing you couldn't learn about on Reddit who tipped

the balance of force away from the state. Unlike the ethnic armed organizations and other more experienced guerrillas in Myanmar, these kids have little military experience. Their organizations have few rules and regulations. They're made up entirely of young people.

As a result, there are certain things that they're less proficient at, but they're much better at things like grasping the use of new technologies, which has led to my Anmar being the first country in the world where three D printed weapons have taken part in a revolution against the government. We're going to hear more about that and many other things as this series continues. Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is me an mar printing the

Revolution Part two. Since the dawn of firearms, regular people all over the world have had the same basic idea, maybe if I made myself a gun, the government wouldn't be able to be such a dick to me. Historically, this has had little impact on the willingness of governments to be dicks to people. In the beginning, all gun manufacturing was done by individual artisans, and thus making a gun in your home was really no different from making it in a shop as long as you had the

proper tools. Guns in this period weren't super useful on their own, and we're best fired in a volley by a shipload of dudes at once. Since individual firearms were extremely inaccurate and cumbersome to use, the fact that some poor blacksmith could make himself one wasn't much of a threat to anybody in power. It did mean that battlefield prowess came from large blocks of trained soldiers, not fudel

lords on horseback rallying untrained peasants. This change in technology led to a change in warfare and helped to change society. As firearms evolved and became these central weapons of battle, they required more intense tooling and more expensive manufacturing capacity. Nations and peoples without the know how or infrastructure were

at a tremendous disadvantage. As soon as this situation came into being, these unfortunate communities set to work finding ways to gain the advantages of firearms without the manufacturing capacity their foes enjoyed indigenous cannons and regions resisting imperialism often consisted of composite materials less sturdy than bronze or iron. In the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, Indigenous Americans in South America used wooden cannons to fight against Spanish and

Portuguese conquerors. The Vietnamese used wooden cannons to resist the French during the Coach in China campaign of eighteen sixty two. American Indians used wooden artillery to blast settler fortifications in the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. In the months that led up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the men who fought to create the United States busied themselves building rifles and cannons in their homes and communities to

resist the English. This trend has never really stopped in warfare. The day before we recorded this, James, my partner in this series, sent me a screen grab from a live stream of someone in Ukraine printing pieces for a K forty seven's on a three D printer. Firearms manufactured outside the arms industry have played a role in every conflict of the modern era. But as you've probably guessed they have had the greatest influence in the little wars of colonialism.

European nations rarely allowed any sort of firearms ownership in their colonies, except the individuals and ethnic groups that adopted its local enforces. Since most of these places had never developed their own industrial base for arms industry, colonial rebellions often relied on homemade weapons in their early stages, along

with modern firearms pilf by deserting local soldiers. Where domestic productive capacity existed, European colonizing nations went out of their way to relocate it, along with the profit it generated to the metropol All were reflected on this in his novel Burmese Days, saying in the eighteenth century, the Indians cast guns that are at any rate up to the European standard. Now, after we've been in India a hundred and fifty years, you can't make so much as the

brass cartridge case in the whole continent. Meanwhile, among the colonizers, being armed became almost a synonym for being a man. This was particularly true for the colonial police forces and militaries, but it was also true domestically. Most people are broadly familiar with the US Second Amendment the robust gun culture that it spawned, but during the higher colonialism, English citizens

are also free to arm themselves. In Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne, Cecil Marquis of Salisbury, gave a speech and we she claimed he would laud the day when there was a rifle in every cottage. In England, firearms were utterly unrestricted at this point. The first chaine to this came in with the first Law that required a permit to carry a handgun and restricted children from buying guns. Still, firearms were widely available until a red panic gripped the nation

in following the ball strict revolution in Russia. Across the ocean in Spain, where firearms ownership was less strictly restricted, where all Well himself would learn what it was to fire a rifle at someone who shot back. Arm unions and working people served as the only bullwalk to a military coup in ninety six in Madrid, one officer opened his armory to the Union militias, but another refused to hand over for the bolts for the guns they had

been issued. The Barcelona, where the anarchists left, had a long tradition of armed political violence. The coup was repelled by workers with guns and a general leading troops there was imprisoned and executed. The same pattern played out all across the country in July ninety six, when the military rose up to topple the elected government. In the cities where the government opened the armories to the people, the coup was repelled. In the cities where the government did not,

the coup succeeded. Reflecting on this in nineteen forty one or worldwide, the totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot give the factory worker a rifle and tell him to take it home to keep it in his bedroom. That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is a symbol of democracy. It's a job to see that its stays there, despite orwell's please. The years that followed the Second World War led to greater restrictions

of the ability of the public to arm itself. By the nineteen fifties, carrying any weapon for self defense was illegal. Semi automatic center fire arms were banned in nineteen eighty eight, and pistols were banned in nineteen ninety six. After a mass shooting killed sixteen children in Dunblane. This was all utterly infuriating to a man named Philip A. Looty. Loody, born in nineteen sixty five grew up on a farm

in West Yorkshire, England. We don't have a tremendous amount of detail about his upbringing, but by the time he was in his early thirties he'd become a committed crusader for an unrestricted right to bear arms. A skilled machinist with a well equipped shop, Loody began the long process of learning how to craft homemade firearms. Soon he was building semi and fully automatic weapons. Now these were not

military grade firearms. The barrels were unrifled, which made them terribly inaccurate, but every piece could be crafted from widely available things like sheet metal, washers and screws. The person assembling a Looty gun would need to be a skilled craftsman, but they would not need access to welding rigs, forges, or rather expensive industrial equipment. Looty published a book Expedient Homemade Firearms the nine millimeter Submachine Gun in ninete through

Paladin Press. In the late nineteen nineties, Paladin was one of the places you could go to mail order fringe political literature and guides for stuff like trapping human beings or disabling the drive system of an Abram's tank. In the United States, nothing about Ludy's book was or is illegal, but Phil didn't live in the United States. He was arrested several times, starting in the late nineteen nineties when a pair of illegal home built guns were found on

his property. Ludy spent the rest of his life, which ended in two thousand eleven, operating a website where he raged against gun control. His main argument was that England was headed for totalitarianism, and like Orwell, he believed only public ownership of arms could prevent this. Unlike Orwell, Ludy

was firmly on the right wing. He traced society's problems to quote a combination of political correctness and anti freedom of speech laws, legislation governing how we speak about such subjects as religion or a person's race being just two examples.

Words and phrases that have been used for centuries without malice are now insipid in people's mouths and said to cause offense by those very same speech police, who, on the other hand turned a blind eye to the violence, foul language, and sexual references blasted daily through our TV sets, a phenomenon that really does cause offense to many people. Loody never succeeded in sparking a renaissance in civilian arms ownership in the UK, but his ideas were adopted by

organized criminal groups all around the world. In Brazil, looty guns can go for as much as twenty five hundred dollars. From two thousand eleven to two thousand twelve, nearly half of the submachine guns seized by police and salpolo were homemade. Most of these arms were certainly used as tools by drug dealers or other gangsters, but some of them were surely also the tools of citizens who simply sought a way to defend themselves in a place with no real

rule of law. Looty guns have long been popular among mootor cycle gangs in Australia, and in October of two thousand nineteen, a fascist terrorist carried out the last of that year's eight chan shootings in Halla, Germany with a looty gun. His weapons, thankfully did not work well. As a general rule, looty guns were never going to be of much use to anyone besides organized criminals. They aren't great in a gunfight, but you can use them to spray bullets into a room or a vehicle at close

range pretty well. The year after Phil Looty died two thousand twelve, a fellow named Cody Wilson decided to carry on his work. Cody felt three D printing carried the possibility of eventually manufacturing arms of equality that might rival traditionally produced guns. He started simple with a single shot three eighty handgun based around the old Liberator pistol from

World War Two. The Liberator had been a single shot forty five caliber handgun meant to be dropped into Nazi occupied territories and used by insurgents to stealthily kill single German soldiers and take their guns. Cody Wilson described himself as a crypto anarchist, and when his ideas began to draw attention, he dropped out of law school to create Defense Distributed. This organization was dedicated to the development and

distribution of plans to craft three D printed weapons. It used a platform called deaf CAD to allow users to develop and share blueprints. In two thousand and thirteen, the first CAD gun file became available online to everyone. It was downloaded more than a hundred thousand times in two days. I'd like to quote now from an article on the website three D Natives. This prompted the US government to demand that Defense Distributed removed the file from their site.

What followed as a legal battle between Cody Wilson and the U S government, consisting of back and forth lawsuits. It lasted five years until in two thousand eighteen, the Trump administration legalized three D printed guns. The same year, Wilson was charged with sexual assault of an underage girl and had to step down from Defense Distributed. Nonetheless, the

organization did not cease to exist without Cody. Today, for a yearly fee if fifty dollars, users of the Deaf CAD website can access the files containing different designs of three D printed guns. And I should note here that it's probably more accurate to say the Trump administration legalized sharing the plans and printing the files and whatnot of three D printed guns, not legalized three D printed guns. Homemade firearms have been federally legal in the United States

since forever. The fighting in the courts over all. This has continued ever since, and in two thousand nineteen, a federal judge and Seattle temporarily blocked DEAFCAD. This sparked the creation of a new group, Deterrence Dispensed, which was even less centralized. The basic idea was that this would make them harder to take down via lawsuits or police action. Not stated was that this might also protect their reputation

from a Cody Wilson situation. The debate over the legality of three D printed firearm plans continues on to the present day, but the development of these arms has continued at an ever faster pace. The best modern three D printed arms can even rival conventional guns. It's worth emphasizing

that these are not purely class the tools. The Liberator pistol used a metal nail, and the better three D arms have metal barrels rifled using other craft methods that require some nohow, but arguably less than it took to manufacture a looty gun. Three D printed arms have been confiscated by police around the world, but in recent months they've begun to crop up somewhere new in the arms

of revolutionaries fighting against a military coup. Me and Ma Burman before that has adversively strict gun control laws for decades. When Georgie Orwell was a policeman there in the ninet twenties, he may have carried a gun, but the people he was policing did not. In the nineteen thirties, the British leaders allowed tact organizations similar to militias to form and drill,

but they weren't allowed to carry guns. Gun licenses under the dictatorship were issued primarily to party members, but most revoked after failed pro Democian uprising. The only civilians who were permitted to un armed with the Chin, the nation's poorest ethnic group who rely on guns to hunt for food. In many cases, these guns were flintlocks that would not have looked that out of place in a battlefield two

centuries before. In practice, though, things are very different. The current conflict is best seen as a flare up in violence has been ongoing since Britain left the country in ninety seven. The Tapma door has consistently used violence against marginalized ethnic groups in the country, and they have consistently

taken up arms in response. But unlike civil wars in the Middle East, wealthy nations in the West have not been flooding me and male with weapons for decades, and the various E A O s or ethnic armed organizations have had to turn to much more unorthodox routes to arm and equip themselves against the government. To get a better idea of what things are like on the ground, we spoke to Pierre. He's French, but he's a serial volunteer with national liberation struggles around the world and fought

with the Karen people in the early two thousands. Yes, or the ammunition is a constant problem. The shortage is absolutely permanent. And yes, there is two sources for the for the for the weapons, there is the black market, and the prices, especially of ammunition, are prohibitive. This is why I would like to have my notebook here with me, because I think I wrote down the conversation I had with some leaders of the kind of at the time asking them why we didn't do more persons, Well, like,

we just can't afford it. Uh you know, Uh, we just can't afford it. Like strictly we we don't. We we don't have enough ammunition to do any kind of uh of operation we need to. So all the operations we did. Were always focused on if we could catch you of some ammunition, if we could get you like weapons, but especially immunition. Yeah, so there is you know, that's that's the second source of of course of uh of weapon. Uh let's say source is the is the captures of course,

then the black market. The black market used to be huge in Cambodia. I don't know what's the situation now. It was in the nineties. It was it was a bit of the Albania of some Systeia at this time, right. And so there is also the other ethnic groups that received sometime say a lot of uh of of arms and ammunition from sponsors, uh like some of them like the West Townies our sponsor of China. So like the supply of ammunition, it's pretty good of of weapons. I

think it's even now that cartigo and stuff. Um. Then there is also groups that also produced locally quite good their own on arms, light arms usually. So yeah, these are the different sources of welcomes the okay in in the time I was there. In the early weeks of the protests, once it a claim clear that non violent demonstrators were going to be met with state violence, protesters began to fashion weapons. First, they thought soldiers with the

sault rifles using catapults and bows and arrows. It was incredibly brave, but it wasn't very effective. By the twenty eight to March, protesters are taken a step. First, a group calling itself the Clay Civil Army set up barricade and defended them using pressurized air rifles that fired marbles and bicycle wheelbearings. The rifles all used the same design and the same components. They were based on a video someone found on YouTube, but they weren't lethal. They helped

protesters defend their space, albeit at great cost. In that first clash, four protesters and four soldiers were killed. The protesters in Calais were able to hold out a few days using old hunting rifles and air guns. The ambush military patrols and they took four police hostage. Then they exchanged them for nine incarcerated protesters. But nearly April, the Tapmador returned to the protest camp in Calais with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns and killed eleven people. We

must fight back against them. If not, our generation will face a worse situation than us. They have no laws, a neighborhood villager who battled the regime's forces told the irra Wady, a local paper, the air guns spread around

the country quickly to avoid surveillance. Protesters talked about cooking up veryanny on telegram channels, and what they meant was desperately scouring the internet for a way to fight back and finding a way to make an air rifle out of a beautane canister, a pipe and a cigarette lighter, combined with fireworks and smoke bombs made of potassium nitrate. The air rifle gave protest is just enough cupboard to escape police charges, but they also gave the hunter an

excuse to further escalate the violence. Attitudes are hardening among the protesters too. In Mandalay, they took air rifles to the barricades on Saturday, hardly a match for the weapons of war they face, but now they know this is a fight to the death and more destruction. After a fire raged and Pgdalgon township overnight, people living there but kept away by security forces returned to find sixty homes

burned to the ground. Now all they can do is pick through the ashes, trying to save anything from the military's policy of scorched Even the Tatmadau makes its own weapons,

a highly unusual move for a relatively small nation. Totmadaw troops and police can be seen with a bewildering array of indigenously produced copies of HIM sixteen s ouzies and even five five six Galil pattern A K style rifles, as well as in three light machine guns, which are slightly updated copies of the MG forty two used by the Nazis in World War Two. After the failed eight eight eight eight uprisings in Night, the military offered concessions

to China and return for more advanced weapons. They got them, but it didn't stop China from also supplying ethnic armed organizations. E a o s don't have access to the same munitions factories that the government does, but there is a long tradition of homemade weapons in Myanmar. In more remote parts of the country, homemade air rifles and shotguns seem to have been relatively commonplace before the start of the conflict,

and they were mostly used for hunting. The country has also covered with land mines, which the e a o S used a great effect against the Topmadaw. We spoke to Pierre, a former combatant with the Karin who no longer lives in Myanmar. His experience is not that recent, but it helps us to understand the way this conflict has been fought for decades. What we used to produce a lot of uhland mines, that's uh that's produced at

the base. Yes, with like you know, very very lot of systems with a little bit of of type of plastic explosive cople of bomboom for contactors and like batfield. That's it. Pellet guns are not good for combat and E A O s mostly relied on weapons imported from Thailand, India or China. Overwhelmingly these were a K or In sixteen pattern rifles. Yeah, mostly in my and the units have been U probably majority of a K platforms in this time. Yes, yeah, definitely. I mean it's more reliable

and you know, simple to operate. It's very adapted to the to the to the type of it was. It was quite correct. I mean you swee from the moment that I switched to a case at least because at Tost I tried to use this scumperency M sixteen and it was a nightmare of malfunctions. So I switched back to a case which is the what I best known and used, or my idea doesn't have this. I never really had any any malfunction with the case. Maybe one time.

It's a faulty lot of communition. But let's see, not really the rifles, but the fight pierces has never been restrict ript into the battlefield for the top medal violence against civilians as part of their four cuts doctrine that cuts off funding, food, intelligence, and recruits for the e a O. S Now they are moving that same outlook to the cities like literally uh literally by by absolutely

no laws of wow airs. I mean like one of the first things that I saw when we went going Batrol and in the in the Karen villages, huh around the house one of operation is that there was absolutely no girl between the age of eleven to the age of seventeen. I was like, I asked, you know, my my uh commander about it, and he says, yeah, like obviously if they if they stay as they will be rapped by the model and the first patrol like the

first times they will will come. You know. So this this gives you a little bit of the tone of what they are about. They constantly ransome civilians when they don't model them like you know, shell villages for no reason or because there had been an operation of the kind and they take evenge and who they can take evenge and the civilians. You know, this is this is

how the b this is what they are. Basically the top the doll is a large army and many of the conscripts are hardly high speed operator types, but that hasn't stopped them from killing thousands of innocent civilians. I mean they have as many army defferent units with different military value. Uh let's say, uh, you know, um many times the units that they truck on hilltop in the middle of Libel zone are not like the most combative, let's say, but sometimes we will get sur highed resistance.

But yeah, except of that, when they to uh an operation in uh in a place they bring in like more elite troops. Let's say. By contrast, the k and l A, the Karni National Liberation Army and other e aos relied on civilian support to survive. The Canada operates in uh in karen H territory, and the civilians are Karen I mean pretty much when we when we arrive in uh in the village as as medics. You know that with us that the kind of the population distribute medicine.

Uh No, like I don't know what it was like quite uh it's quite a funny acquisition coming from the Totnam. This attitude has helped them, Pierre says. And they have always been open to noncurrent recruits. First of all, is not absolutely not um let's say some kind of ethnicist or organization of ethno nationalist like you know, with some hate for us, I think, including the Obama echnic group that like traditionally you know is the is our the leaders of the MODEO that have been oppressing them for

seventy years. But they have absolutely no resentment. That are extremely open to work with the Democrats, democratic forces from from every ethnical Yes, since nine, Per said, the K and l A had been willing to link up with Democratic rebels, providing them with training and shelter in order the further their shared goal of a federal and democratic

country that treated all ethnicities with respect to episode. These Obama rebels let's say, uh so trained by the currents and so by people I know very well since it was my commander then never so I've seen, I've seen the currents. I've always been extremely accommodating to the Obama opposition, meaning the Obama the Man ethnic group. I'd say this for me, for people that might not know the difference.

So and so the currents always had representation and they took like you know, political refugees, let's say, from from inside the Boma in the territories, the control mano close I was like the student and association. The exact name I contricle right now. But all these are organization of position. And so now they keep this tradition by helping the UH these new revails of the PDF to get military twinning.

And yes, by the summer of young people had flooded into the jungles, and many of them, even the ones of Burman ethnicity, we're fighting alongside the Karen and Krinni rebels. They had previously seen as troublemakers and terrorists. Just a year or two before we spoke with one of these people, Zall Lynn, who left his home in May. There was students, friends, but also young people from just the neighborhood. Most people were just above twenty. A lot of them were single.

You know, there's women as well, people whom new technology young people from UH from the technology computer uh apologists why called university. A lot of these people who knew modern technology went into the jungle too, go into the guncle to train and be able to overthrow the men online government. So there was it was very tiring. We had to go up and down on lots of hills. It was two days of walking get there, so up and down the hills and back down, up and down

until we got to the training planet. Hey everyone, I'm Rebert Evans, and welcome to episode three Printing the Revolution. Here's my partner, James Stout. In the spring and summer to millions of Americans had versions of the same experience. State forces killed the helpless man. Protesters took to the streets in anger, and armed agents of the state responded with mass violence. A lot of people's lives changed for

ever and fairly short order. What happened in Me and Mara after the military coup was that story turned up to eleven within days. The military had used live fire and demonstrators or a source for today's episode, were twenty two years old at the time. He spent his days working as delivery driver hang out with his girlfriend playing video games. On the day the coup started, he was playing pub g after a long shift. Soon he and his girlfriend took to the streets with thousands of other

gen z Burmese kids. The state responded with massacres, often firing automatic weapons into the crowds. So all had them in particularly politically active before this moment. In fact, he felt pretty poorly to woods revolutionary, supposing the government in the jungle, seeing them as rebellious troublemakers. Um In the past, we thought that the military is a group that loves all the people and all the different groups in the in the country, and then there's just a few people

who really hate the military. But especially after the who we face it with our own foreheads, with the guns. We can face the evil the military and all the human rights and things that people who hated the military before we're talking about. We understand it now because we had to face it ourselves. And then they're gonna tell

us terrorists, and however, must fix all us. We know that we're finding for human rights, and we know that each person deserves these basic things, you know, So so even when we captured a soldier, we don't kill them immediately as they're unarmed, you know, when they have sure PDF, they torture and kill them very very horrifically or horrendously, and they kill and to hurt all the citizens and ordinary bystanders. So for us, what they're calling at rebels before,

we're not rebels. They're the ones that are rebels, So we have to call down rebels. They're the terrorists. But as violence against protesters escalated, Zuill began to see through the lives he'd been told by the military of his life. What we were calling as rebels are what we kind of become. But we know why we are now rebels. That's because of their terrorism. They're oppressive Rejews and their violation of human rights. That's why we have to revolt

against them. For a time, protesters responded creatively with giant potato guns meant to fire less lethal protect ours long distances. These homemade guns will be fired in volleys well. Other protests protected them with shields. Some of these tactics were effective a points, but it quickly became clear that the government was willing to massacre everyone is standing up to them.

So his girlfriend and their friends quickly decided that non violent resistance wasn't going to work, but they didn't give up. As we get onto into June, there's two paths, right, we can be normal, we can go on the streets, we can ask for the people's power back. And since that's not working, we know that what we have to do is we need to hold these guns. Get these guns. And on the military side, all they know is that

they will solve this by holding guns. So the only thing, the only path that's left for us is to take those guns for ourselves. So around the end of May we started entering training school. So the downtour is what the word he used, and it's something like this corner part um so one corner part one to two. So talking, what that means is that in the funt things, funt things that we were doing, hunting rifles that we were using for that. So we kind of start started and

we fought at first in Demoso. If we can ask the military nicely, then there's no reason for us to be using guns. But since they don't listen to our demands or our requests at all, then the and since all we can do all they are saying, all they're doing is using the guns and being terrorists trying to shoot us. So the only thing that we can do to get what we need and what we want is to take the guns for ourselves. And so, like hundreds of people this age, so headed into the jungle in

May one. The decision wasn't even one or an easy one. But after protesting non violently, then meeting state violence with community defense, then seeing his peers gunned down in the street, he didn't have many of the choices. He'd picked up a megaphone, then a shield, and now he was heading in the jungle to pick up a rifle. The only problem was that there won't any rifles. He left with his girlfriend and quote with the blessing of his parents.

Keep that in mind for later. When he first went to the jungle, Zall went to a two week training camp where the Karinny People's Defense Force taught him the basics of guerrilla warfare, but they didn't have enough weapons to arm him and his friends. So these gen Z militants began their fighting careers with twenty two caliber rifles. If you weren't a gun person, the twenty two was one of the smallest widely available bullets. Like any bullet, it can kill, but as a caliber it's better suited

for shooting rabbits than soldiers. These twenty two rifles were handmade locally and only fired one shot at a time. But it was those rifles that Zaw, his girlfriend, and their friends carried into their first gunfight with the Totmadaw. After battling like that for about three weeks, the shooting stopped, he said in an interview. We conducted over signal. After the shooting stopped, we grouped together money to buy arms

by asking for donations. They were massively outgunned, but determined to fight on with the weapons they could make and buy on the black market until they could find something better, even if that meant taking guns from dead soldiers. The military's guns are extremely good, of course, compared to Point two two's, he said. We fight with the mindset that we must win. Our minds are always prepared to take their guns when a soldier falls. It's a mindset to

want the enemy's arms to beat your own arms. You need to want to resist injustice because we are fighting for what is right. We do not get sad even if we die. We are happy, even when wounded. We no longer care if our arms are matched unevenly now. Despite their enthusiasm, PDF units all over the country were finding themselves in the same desperate situation. When thousands of young people in Mianmar decided to take up arms against the government, They're just weren't enough guns to go around.

A K pattern rifles sell for three thousand dollars on the black market, and a RS sell for up to seven thousand dollars. The g d P per capita in was just twelve hundred and eighteen dollars and thirty five since per person, and unlike militias in Syria and Iraq, the pro democracy E a O S and Myanmar don't have the benefit questionable benefit of the US flooding the

region with its fire hose of guns and money. Undeterred, Zall and his squad took to YouTube, where they found videos explaining how to make two to three caliber bolt action rifles. Again, if you're not a gun person, two to three may not sound very different than twenty two, But whereas twenty two is commonly used to shoot squirrels, two to three is the standard rifle round more or

less for the US military. These new bolt action two two three's all and his friends were making could not match the rate of fire of a modern riot full, but they could at least match those rifles in stopping power. Once these gen z insurgents had the technique down, they created a detailed album on Facebook showing how everything from the stock to the barrel could be made with pipes, lumber,

and hours and hours of detailed hard work. Unlike their guerrilla warfare instructors, these kids had grown up on the Internet rather than the jungle, so they knew that if it exists, there's a subreddit for it. It was the Internet that came to their rescue. Three D printed guns have been around for a decade, but the early models didn't work well and suffered from a pretty bad reputation due in part to Cody Wilson, the pedophile libertarian activists

we discussed last episode. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has covered the printed gun movement extensively. Cody Wilson made his whole thing like, I'm the guy with the three D print guns, and he was on this moral crusade. The three D printed gun lads, particularly Deterrence Dispense. We're like, yeah, we don't, we don't give a ship about that we're just putting our stuff out into the world. Obviously they got the right ideas, but they weren't really wedded to

this idea of being one person. The Turns Dispensed was a group of anonymous activists who were more concerned with making printed guns that worked than making a name for themselves. Hanrahan was connected to one activist who used the pseudonym Jay Stark, through the group, and after three years of conversing online, Hanrahan met Stark in Germany to produce a documentary. Jay Stark died of a heart attack following a police raid last year, so we spoke to Hanrahan about Stark's worldview.

His whole worldview comes from this idea that you know, it's everybody should have the right to be able to fight tyranny. And if you can't fight tyranny, like you're fucked. And the way to fight tyranny in the modern era is firearms. We know that, you know, there's there's no you can't argue it's that no peaceful march gets rid of a fascist dictatorship or whatever. But he he was, he he was you know, there's some people would say he was far right, Some people say it was an anarchist.

Some people say he was a US patriots. I mean, first, he wasn't even from America, and he had a lot of He liked the laws in America, but he wasn't like some of the American kind of fan boy or anything in that sense. He liked the gun lawds. He liked the freedom of speech lords, which I do as well. You know that personally, I I in this country. You know, if you tweet the wrong thing, even in jest, like police will literally come to your house in Britain, like

it's happened, it's fucking mental. Um. So yeah, he liked that kind of thing, um. And I think I think for him it was he was very tunnel vision, you know, he was very tunnel vision. It was just freedom, freedom, freedom, And if he said, well what about this, what about that, he was like, I don't care about that Until the freedom is there, there's no point looking at anything else. And so his brain was always on people that are

living under tyranny, you know, and it genuinely would. I know, there's a lot of people, even leftist, particularly leftist had tried to completely smear him as a white supremacist. They were saying, oh, everything he said in that dog that I made was really it was secret um anti Jewish white supremacy. And then it came out that he wasn't even white. You know. It's like, very good, very good, you fucking idiots. So there was a lot of that

going around. But I honestly believe that deep down he was just tunnel vision focused on this idea of every until everybody is not living on the tyranny, I must go on this mission and okay, if if someone shoots up at school with what I've invented, so be it. You know, which I'm not saying as good, but that was just his idea. You know, he was like, so

be it. Fuck it if I can. You know, he was very genuine when he was done about the Wagers, or he was on about the mistreatment of Kurds from Turkey, and you know, he was like, look, if we can build something that can help them, well, sorry that the West might get funked up because of it, but I'm

focused on this now. Obviously, in in practice that would be chaos probably, but you know, he he just saw it the way he saw it, and that was that the cavalier attitude Stark seems to have had how his invention might be used is of course worthy of criticism, but the revolutionaries on the ground in Myanmar were not concerned with ideological debates over the ethics of homemade firearms. Then did guns and they needed them now. J Starks.

F GC nine, which stands for Fuck Gun Control nine millimeter, was simple to make, easy to use, and relied entirely on parts you could print or buy in any hardware store. In September one, a post popped up on the fosse cads subreddit, which is dedicated to the manufacturing of three

D printed guns. Stark is a hero there. The post said, wanted to say thanks to this community, the creators of f GC nine and the various mods when we could you guys are literally empowering the armed revolution against dictators and one of the most underdeveloped countries. We are now equipped with f GC nine and starting the armed revolution

to the coup leader dictator. As one poster comments, the account quote went from posting about mobile games to how to three D print SMG S two, desperately asking people to pay attention what was happening in Myanmar. Then, after the f GC nine post, it was deleted entirely. J Stark never lived to see this. He would I've loved it. What everything that he was doing, that was the main focus in my opinion, that like, it couldn't be a

more perfect, like practical actual realization of his project. You couldn't pick a more perfect version of it to happen like that, you know. And there's a lot of talk of all where there's a lot of drug dealers in Amsterdam have FGC nines. There was a Natzi recently arrested with one. You know, these people are awful, of course, But the most prevalent use of the f GC nine, at least from what I've observed, has been from the

rebels in MYRMA making them. I think that I've seen like thirty of them so far, you know, that's a lot of them, And there was one was found stashed in a bush. My theory is they're left around for ambush attacks and areas that are not as fully controlled by the rebels. First CAD, a community of mostly US based gun printers lost its collective mind, and it didn't take long for people to make the connection between the host and a desperate plight of me and my Spring Revolution.

Soon after the post, the tap the Door started posting pictures of f GC nins, often without sights, captured from fighters in Yangon and the one September, the Tapmodor's Ministry of Information released a statement, I'm the ap th way yea mint were found with an f GC nine Mark two pistol five rounds of nine millimeter an munition. They were arrested along with their drone. The military alleged they were an urban unit from the same generation Ze Freedom

Army that's all was a part of. That same month, the military posted pictures of three more captured f GC nins, suggesting that at least five are been captured by late September. Then two months later, a new post popped up in the fos cat cebreadit Hey, I'm back and the guy who posted a thank you know back in September here. Now that the FGC nines are ready known by the dictator, I can proudly announce the We're from me and mar. Yes, we are mass producing FGC nines to fight back against

the Dictator. More info about our production will be published later this time. The user you slash daddy u m c D hung around to answer questions. Those basterds didn't know we had the tech back then. Now that everything is in public, we can proudly say we're from me and mar. We are mostly responsible for production in R and D, even though we also involved in other ground missions. We distribute the FDC nine to a lot of different

urban guerrillas in urban and rural areas. Some of the units got arrested a few weeks ago, which you might have already seen on the sub credit. Apart from the FGC nine, there are other equipments and weapons that are being produced with three D printers, he wrote. He said his team were residing in ethnic armed organization areas, mainly the Corn National Union and the Kitchin Independence Army controlled zones.

He posted that they tried other three D printed designs, such as the plastic of which is a printed a K forty seven receiver, but getting the other parts made it impractical. By contrast, the FTC nine can be made entirely using a three D printer and some hardware store parts. According to another source, Mere Moust, small motorcycle repair shops made quick work of the metal barrels and bolts. Electro

Chemical machining was used to make more barrels. They also had the chance to buy a few glock barrels from Thailand, Daddy U m c d said, but those costs a lot more than the FDC nine barrels. While his account continued to post, the military continued to share photos of captured FCC nines. Three workshops that have been using lathes

to make the barrels were raided. The photos of three more captured guns popped up in November, alongside bolt action rifles still had stickers on their stocks from what looked like US gun shops. Production and decentralized locations continued despite the raids, while other groups fought on with homemade revolving rifles,

crude homemade wooden stocks, another improvised weapons. A telegram channel with instructions in Burmese on how to make the guns made sure that even when one shop or gunsmith was taken out of the fight, the knowledge wasn't lost. Although filament for their three D printers were becoming harder to get,

they'd stock piled a lot in advance. Daddy U m c D tried to manufacture automatic FGC nine and another printiple model called Professor Parabellum square tubes of machine gun, but nothing else seemed as easier as reliable as the FDC nine. Of course, read it. Being read it, people

questioned the veracity and utility of his posts. He responded, FCC nines are just part of the game because they could be use with what we have At the lowest cost available rifles of four thousand to seven thousand U S dollars at our border, f gcs are under one hundred dollars. Rifle parts are ten times more expensive than lock parts. To all those who are saying these photos

of sus we don't want to blame your suspicion. If any of you remember the threat I posted in September, you will remember that we are mass producing FGC nights. The ones in the photos you've seen were supplied by us. There are many groups like this now we do the main production, just like I explained in September. Then, Daddy um c D went on to thank the other members of the sub creddit, claiming their active help was the only reason he and other revolutionaries have been able to

overcome certain technical issues. We wouldn't be here without you, guys, especially someone who shared with me the buffer spring and fire control groups bring the measurements, he said. By late November, photos of FGC nins in the hands of fighters emerged and they showed sight. This time they had longer barrels

and home made suppresses too. The FGC nines were apparently used by urban units for close up fighting and for the training of new fighters, since they have essentially the same controls and they are fifteen or M sixteen rifle, both of which are common in ME and Moze rebel units. We have successfully streamlined variety of techniques to produce f GC nine one thousand plus efficiently. Our primary forces are equipped with proper rifles. FDC nines are for guerrilla warfare.

We started using those in hit and run and special Task Force missions too. We don't share much about the mission to the public yet. It will definitely come and when it does, are updated here if I'm still alive, ha ha, wrote Daddy u m c D on the False cat Sepreddit. Even with production in false Wing, ammunition remained a problem. Although some regions can produce twenty two and nine minimeter at home. According to the u m c D, five six can be purchased in large quantities

at the border with Thailand, but it isn't cheap. Instead, the PDF alide on raiding police and military outposts in the same way the EO has had for years. Nine millimeter is the most common center fire pistol around in the world. That's why the Turrns Dispense picked it for the FDC. Nine sees weapons often only have a handful of rounds, but that's enough to kill a soldier and take his weapon. Jay Stark might not have been around to see his invention used to fight tyranny, but Hammrahan

thinks he would have been happy with the results. He would have been made up. I think that's everything he wanted to achieve. You know what I'm saying, That really is everything you wanted to do. Even the National Unity Government me and mus government in exile has come around to at least some of Jay Stark's ways of thinking. According to Daddy um c D Ministry of Defense Minister already promised about the right to bear arms at the

first day of the revolution. Promises made by revolutionary governments are not exactly solid commitments, but it's not hard to see why a generation of kids like Zaw forged by an asymmetrical conflict with a government that possessed a near absolute advantage in armaments, might be committed to staying armed even if they win. At the moment, the future of their struggle is very much in doubt. Scrolling through Facebook photos of Zol and his comrades is a surreal experience.

They look not just young soldiers mostly look young, but they look like students, kids from some weirdly militarized university. Photos on Facebook show them sprawled out together in the grass and camo fatigues, bearing rifles, but each glued to their phones as they cuddle in together. Zow and his girlfriend, who he described to us as the girl I love, fought alongside each other until January seven of this year.

The battle that we started, she was coming within and you know, asp of sense weapons landed near her and hit her like so their bone broke so so she had to go to hospital. Three D printed and homemade guns have helped, but Zoll and his friends are still fighting against a modern military with planes, night vision goggles, and tanks. Despite this, more than a year after the coup, they're still fighting, and more soldiers affect to join them weekly.

It's hard to see what victory looks like the cities will be another battle altogether. But in the jungle camp where Zoll video calls us from, it's impossible to see what giving up might look like. Either he's still fighting, his girlfriend is healing, and they're both committed to staying out in the jungle until they are in their freedom back or die trying. I'm Robert Evans, and this is part four of me and mar printing the revolution. And then once we thought that we couldn't rest, you know,

reign sid whatever. Women as well, and we were all like try. When they came when we were leaving, they were all like very fair skin beautiful. And then we went in and then everyone got tanned. In the jungle, we're training all the time, you know, people in training camp.

We were driven with the part and the reason that we were all doing this is because of Man nine school as students and how much he has terrorized the public and the people, and that's why we were We have this morale and the ability to get through the training and be able to wield weapons. Zor and his friends went into the jungleist students, programmers and kids. Now they're fighters. They would tech savvy, young people. He says, they grew up online and that generational divide was the

Internet brought here came much later in Mima. It wasn't until twenty eleven the people really gained access to the Internet with the new ideas and identities today brought. Those generation are among the first to embrace glible connectivity, and now after having it taken away, they're refusing to give

it up. The start of the coup in February, the military school gen Z was organizing online social media and all that so and they were kind of I think this is from my experience, but um kind of organizing around like gen Z is going to be different than the generation because we have the Internet, and also we know more about the world and can come communicate the

rest of the world. I think one thing that was big was that in two thousand eight, it just took one video leaking out of the country for there to be big international repercussions. It's worth noting that when people in Burma talk about the Internet, they mean Facebook. Phones come with the Facebook app installed and it's sometimes exempt from day to church juice. For many people in Burma,

using the Internet means using Facebook. Zor and his friends are different from their parents in many ways, not at least in their perceptions of authority. This has led to a situation where the PDF people's defense force units are much less hierarchical than units of the town moidor so when we make decisions in our group, there's no master and student. There's no teacher and student. But you know the way that it works. There are people who are good.

They're older, people who are more trained, and then their new recruits, new people who just came in. So of course the people who are there for longer and know more about the situation have more voice. And when we discussed so especially people who were there when we founded this group. There were only really eight people from when we group, so those eight people kind of discussed on the bigger strategy. You know, we don't really vote their He says he wants to do it, he thinks it's good.

We are there's the seven of us we think is good, or we support him, or someone says, well, we don't really like that idea, then we don't do it. They try to achieve more gender quality as well, but there's are explained that in his unit the women are not always the frontline fighter is that's the place there's no discrimination. You know, women can women and men were training whoever could come. But like on the battlefield, people, we don't

use women that much on the battlefield. That's one thing that we do know is that it's not it's not really discrimination. But if women are with us together, we have a confusion about whether we need to protect them or they're just fighting with with them, or they're fighting in front of us. And that there's one thing that is very different. It is that in terms of mentality,

we we can't. We never take the women out really far into very dangerous flights, so often they're in the back, gets back up or two supplies or things like that. But as you know, the military government, the military terroristists are very very very unethical. They don't follow the rules, so you know they're gonna shoot wherever they see. So even if they're hanging back and they're sending medical supplies there, they can still get hit for Zor in particular, there's

a lot at stake. After almost an hour and a half of talking, I asked about his parents. I've heard of retribution attacks against the families of factors and wondered if he was worried about that. So mom and dad are both they support me fighting against the military. They're very happy. There's that really wants to do c d M, but he can't run away because the military has taken his uh mother and his sisters. He's still has five sisters.

They're all still in that military command and they're worked there in the military stool schools, so it's very hard for them to run away, right, So he really wants to leave the military, but he can't. So well, so that the fact that I am they're trying to fight against the military. He's very happy, and but he tells me to be careful about my own life. They're supportive and they really want to come fight themselves, but they

can't because of my sisters and my mother. So him seeing that I can do it is really wonderful for them. So his father, his other brother and other people, but are three of them below him. They've all usually just lived together with grandfather and stuff in the military trumpounds or near the military. So he really wants to call all the people that are still there, but they can't leave.

This is what civil Ward does. Trapped us in a situation where we can't make the right choice even when we know what it is, and in many situations it's pretty hard to discern right from wrong. In the midst of so much violence, This All has been able to fight, but his dad is stuck fighting against people like his son in order to protect his daughters. Thousands of families across the country divided in the same way by circumstance

or ideology. The military is something of a separate society, has its own schools in its own culture, but ethnic armed organizations have not been close to Ovan populations either, and so whole new identities are being forged by Generation Z while their families often struggle to abandon all certainties. As we record this, Zall is still fighting, his girlfriend is still healing. Every few weeks a video of him

and his for ends pops up on redditor Facebook. They have optics on their rifles now and are taking long range shots at the topmodal who rely on iron sights. They shoot and reload like soldiers, and they laugh like kids. The Totmadaw still controls the cities, but to move between them, they have to travel in convoys at breakneck speeds, using ambushes, mines, and knowledge of the terrain. E a o S and the PDF are able to deny the military access to

large portions of the countryside. Without a serious change in the conflict, it might stay like this for years. A report published this month detailed the attacks in the Karini state by the TOTMODAU on churches, residential homes, camps were displaced people, which killed sixty one in the months since Saw left the city On Christmas Eve. In Prusso's township, they killed at least forty civilians. Autopsies show some were

gagged and burned alive. In recent months, the TOTMODAW has increased its use of air strikes against targets that it deems legitimate. Ming Anhlang, the junta's leader, flew to Russia twice. In one he was proclaimed an honorary professor of the

Military University of the Russian Armed Forces. Quote. We are determined to continue our efforts to strengthen bilateral ties based on the mutual understanding, respect and trust that have been established between our two countries, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with the coup leader on June twenty two. We pay special attention to this meeting as we see me and mar as a time tested strategic partner and a reliable ally in Southeast Asia and the

Asia Pacific region. He went on. Min Onhlang was equally lavish with his praise, saying that he saw Russia as a friend forever. Meanwar relies heavily on Russian hind M I thirty five helicopter gunships, transport helicopters, Mid twenty nine and s U thirty fighter jets and Yak one thirty ground attack aircraft to carry out bombing raids and straight civilians. All of these weapons systems have been seen more recently

in the fighting in Ukraine. One prominent Burmese Irish family, the Kiyo Tongs, has helped the Unta avoid an international arms embargo using their global connections and a network of shady shadow companies. They have purchased helicopters under the pretense of using them for tourism and the oil and gas industry,

and handed them over to the Top Meadaw. They've also helped shuttle coastal radar to me Anmar, which the Topmadal used to track Rohinga refugees and provide cover for several aircraft purchases to fund these arms purchases, the top Meada has found willing markets for luxury goods abroad. According to Justice for Menmar, since the coup in February one, the United States has imported fifteen hundred and sixty five metric tons of teak from the Annmar, using intermediaries to avoid sanctions.

In the two thousand seventeen two thousand eighteen financial year, the last year for which data is available, the government received one hundred million US dollars in revenue from taxes and royalties applied to the timber trade. One there were more shipments than two thousand eighteen, offering the top medauw the chance to make enough money to continue purchasing weapons to use against their population. The consult in ME and

My remains complicated. It's easy to reduce the alphabet super rebel groups to E O S and the PDF, but these groups and their motivations are diverse. Pierre explained to

us that even within the Koran there are deep divisions. Well, first, you have to know that historically the Karen rebellion that started in the nineteen forty eight nineteen nine, so quite a long time ago, was led by by Christian by the Christian minority, okay, of the of the Karen people because obviously that was the most Western educated people at the time. And so this elite kind of reproduced itself in the gay who without being the guy new is

the Karen National Union is democratic movement. But you know, our elites stand reproduce themselves. And so most of the leadership, let's say, of the Karen National Union and the Karen

National Liberation Army was Christian like. And so the Burmese Junta, the Burmese military government, decided to use this to create a wedge between between the Karen Christians and the Karen Buddhists uh, and sent monks to say, agitate and try to cause this split on religious grounds no uh, And they succeeded in parts and succeeded to to separate a part of Karen Buddhists that created the democratic Garen Buddhists, the army, which then allied themselves of course, to the

to the junta and to UH to attack the to attack the kind of and the manor of plow, which of course they knew all the all the hoods there on the defenses and where was the defense is situated et cetera, and succeeded in destroying the capital of the Canon National Union in Manaplow in nine. So that was

the situation pretty much when I arrived. It was pretty hard, like uh, there was not so much territory anymore held by the caren and most more importantly, they lost a lot of income because a lot of their income come from tax at the border that they can control. You know. So yeah that not every e a O has embraced the National Unity Government directly, after all, many of its members were enthusiastically running cover for the Rohinga genocide a

few years ago. Many of the e a O s remain technically under a ceasefire with the Totmodal, and the Totmada knows that if it pushes too far into e a O territory, it risks provoking a full blown response.

The e a O s, meanwhile, have been aiding and training the PDF and still maintaining enough deniability that na Totmadal has not been forced into a confrontation e a O PDF alliances look different in different regions, and often realities on the ground bear little relationship to the back door diplomacy and official stances embraced by leadership in public, the war continues to have a huge toll on civilians.

According to United Nations, in total, some four hundred and forty thousand people have been newly displaced since Seku happened in February twenty one, adding to an existing three hundred seventy thousand who had fled their homes from earlier waves of violence and over a million people who had fled the Regina genocide. More than half the population of Corelli State has fled. Humanitarian access is hard. Much of the relief effort for displaced people occurs within the local communities.

Thousands of refugees are camping along the border with Thailand, which is defined by rivers. Initially, many people fled into Thailand, but terrible conditions in refugee camps led some of them to return to Myanmar. Now they wade across the river for international aid donations of food and water, but they can't bring themselves to stay in the crowded camps overnight, so they wade back to sleep on the Burmese side

of the bank. The U n h c R the High Commission on Refugees, it's been unable to access camps in Thailand or Me and Mar to check on the conditions. But it has urged the Thai government, which has been credibly accused of forcing people back across the border, to move people to better conditions further into Thailand instead of

keeping them in camps near the border. And here we find the unfortunate, unavoidable reality of the civil war in Myan Mar. For all the uniqueness of aspects of the conflict, the innovative ways of gen Z militias have interfaced with older ethnic military forces, the three D printed arms, et cetera. At the end of the day, this is another brutal, horrific conflict between large numbers of people who want to be free and a small number of people who want

to control them. From Me and Mar to our media, Ukraine to Syria, Ethiopia, true Iraq and beyond. The novelties the twenty one century conflict don't change the fact that at the end of the day, each war brings with it what might be the truest symbol of our current age, parents saying goodbye to their kids, camps filled with deathperate people fleeing violence, and government's all over the world willing to send nothing more than kind words and stern warnings.

This is a PostScript, episode four. It's not one that we've been intending to record, because it's not news that we'd ever hoped to have to share, but here we are. Unfortunately, we found out that about ten days after we last spoken, a couple of weeks before we released our podcast, Zor died. And he died in battle fighting with the top me door. He's really was, I suppose, an amazingly brave and courageous

young men and Um. I think that his loss is one that reflects the realities of of what war is, which is not great and glorious and exciting. It's young men and sometimes young women, young non binary folks. I imagine too, um dying when they had no quarrel with anyone, when they just wanted to live their lives. Two years ago, a year and a half forgo even he was just loving the people, he loved, having fun, being a kid, riding his motorcycle, speaking to his girlfriend on his phone,

living a happy life. And then someone who had power decided that they wanted to have more power, and they decided that it didn't matter how many kids had to die so they could have what they want, and he decided to say no to that, and that's brave, and I think all of us would agree that what he did was right and morally courageous, and that that we would hope to be brave enough to do the same if the same thing happened to us. This one's hit

me quite hard, honestly. I know this is my job, and it happens that it's happened before and it will happen again. But he was such a happy, polite, kind young man. He never didn't pick up the phone, He never got tired of explaining stuff that we didn't understand um, and he always answered our questions. It was nothing that was off the table. There was nothing that he wouldn't talk about with us. He was completely open. And yeah,

we will miss him greatly. He died fighting the thing that we all have to fight, right, fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, militarization, And yeah, we'll will grieve his loss. Both Robert and I have. We've just spoken on the phone and we found out because the contact of mine on the ground sent me a Reddit message with a link to a Facebook post and it's very clearly Zorin no doubt about that. It names him, and unfortunately it also shows him dead.

So we were not in any doubt that it was him who died, and we're not in any doubt that we will gravely miss him either. We both hoped to go over and record with him, to speak with him, to meet him. I've spoken to him several times on video, sometimes just to chat, not even to to record anything, just just to chat, just to catch up and and and look at what each of us was doing that day. So it's a hard loss for me and for Robert will As I said, we've just spoken, um, so yeah,

that's the news that we hadn't hoped to end on. Obviously, though, this is the reality of war. And as the world is looking at the conflict in Ukraine now, I'd urge you too to look at the conflict in Myanmar. To another Russian bomb killed another nice kid who never had any quarrel with anyone, who just wanted to live his life, and I didn't want to live the rest of his life with a boot on his neck, so he decided

to stand up against it. As you can probably hear my voice, I'm quite upset bye by his loss and will be probably for a few days. So I'm sorry to have to end this podcast on such a sad note. I'm sorry for his family who are now caught between the loss of their son and trying to protect their daughters. I'm sorry for his girlfriend, who's dealing with shrapnel in her own leg and now the loss of the person

she loved. And I'm sorry for his comrades. And they've said they'll go on fighting, and I hope they do. And I don't think there's any point really pretending to be objective at this stage in the games, and I hope they win, um, But I mostly just hope that like one day, young men and women and everyone else just gets to live their lives without having to kill and die, because ultimately, no one should have to and

no parents should have to bury their kids. Um. So yeah, as much as we're all focusing on Ukraine and what's happening there is terrible, Please don't forgets all his comrades, Please don't forget his legacy, um, and please don't forget him. We won't and we obviously want to dedicate this podcast to him and what he stood for. So yeah, thanks, Oh, welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, recording from a deeply unsettling airbnb right near the border of

Texas and Mexico. Um. I'm here with my good friend James Stout. Say hello to the people. Hi everyone, and we're going to talk about well, let me let me introduce briefly. You'll you'll see the episodes soon. Eno. What we're down here reporting on um a mixture of of of right wing militancy, government militarization of the border, and the attempts by people trapped in the middle to survive and avoid those authoritarian structures. So today, James and they're

going to talk about molotov cocktails. Um. But first, James, you want to talk about this airbnb. We're in for a second because you book this motherfucker deeply. Yeah yeah, yeah. So what happens when you have like less than twenty four hours before you arrive and need a place for more than two people is uh, you really get into the depth of airbnb And I've found this place, which how to describe it? Um? Yeah, YEA unsettling, Yeah yeah,

it it just feels wrong. I can't put my finger quite on where there is a basement which definitely has like murder vibes. And there's not basements in Texas normally, and it's it's it's crumbling and unsettling. There's a some pump doesn't appear connected to anything. There's puddles of standing water. Um. I think there's like nine bedrooms in this house. Yeah, but only one like it is upstairs, and it seems to have like like to be designed to command an

arqui fier around the house. Then there are other bedrooms which are like kind of in this stable block. What else is weird? Like three of the bedrooms are separate from the main house and in a built in a way that it looks like a roadside motel. And then there's a main house that has like four living rooms for We're sitting at a large kitchen table right now,

which spins around a central access. For some inexplicable reason, we have the overwhelming feeling that something horribly wrong was done in this space because it doesn't everything is a little off. None of the decorations look like people. This is some sort of trap house, but we cannot identify the kind. I think you describe it best when you said it's like one of those this person does not exist photos but of a home, and you can't work out what's wrong. But it's not human and it's not right.

So we just had to get that out of our systems because it's been deeply unsettling the last couple of days. We're here now, James, you wrote an article about Molotov cocktails that got you in a bit of a fascinating situation. I want to just kind of walk me through what happened there and what the fallout was. Yeah, well, the one that started it was about how to tear down statues, and that was for popular mechanics. In In that article, I interviewed a couple of experts and one of them

explained how to make something called thermite. Thermitees like an exotherermic reaction, and you mix a couple of things, they get hot, They get hot enough to melt some metal. So if you were interested in bringing down a statue of a bigot, that might be helpful to you. By the way, it's legal basically all of the US to possess their mite, and pretty simple to make. Not that you know, you can google it. You can figure that out yourself. Yeah, I'm not telling you how to make it.

I'm telling you that it exists, exists, and is surprisingly legal. Yes, and if you need to old some ship underwater or joined together some train tracks, it's the right tool for the job. Yeah. If you happen to be I know a lot of the Russian Army in Ukraine listens to this podcast. If you happen to be in the process of abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars in armor, their mite can allow you to stop Ukrainian farmers from towing it back to their homes. Yeah, but don't do that

if you're a Russian soldier. Just just run, um, go to the Ukrainians. I'll let you call your mom. They're nice. Um. Okay. So I write the story for pop Mac Right. It's it's just a useful guide to people who are looking to safely dispose of a racist statue. Right. And when I write it, I think their readership might lean pretty conservative, or they felt like that was a safe space. Anyway.

It immediately became like the epicenter of the culture War for like a week, including triggering one Benjamin Shapiro, who then sub tweeted me like a coward and asked when I'll be writing my story about Molotov cocktails, which I subsequently wrote. So that that gets us to the Molotov cocktail story. I was in Russia today as well, now banned media outlet No No No. I wrote it for a British magazine called Huck. I described like Huck is like like Vice but less tragic, like af device went bad,

Huck Huck school. Um, and so yeah, Ben Ben was upset. Ben orchestrated this kind of right wing panic around the story. They canceled pop Mac for a while, and I wrote a piece about the history and I guess chemistry of monotor and they're rolling democratization movements. That was really fascinating to me. So yeah, that's how we got to the

Molotov story. And you want to give me kind of some cliffs notes on the history of the Molotov and it's rolling because what I know about Molotov cocktails, I assume it's named after Molotov, of the Molotov ribbon trop packed right the at slav Molotov. Yeah, um, and I know I have been near a couple of them going off. I nearly got lit on fire by one, and I watched a colleague get let on fire by another. So I am aware of what they do. Um, But yeah, why don't you walk us through kind of the close

notes of the history of molotovs. Yeah, absolutely, so. Um. A lot of times you'll go on the Internet and you're read something about history and it will turn out not to be right, and that that's often the case with Molotov cocktails. So, yes, they're named after Lav Molotov. We can get to why they named that way in a second. But they their origin is actually with Franco's nationalist fascist national fascists, whatever you wanna call them, national

Catholic troops in the Spanish Civil War. So early on in the Spanish Civil War nineteen thirties seven ish, um, the Republic had some Soviet tanks and they were using these against the At Fentbro, they were using these against the nationalists and nationalists were throwing what they then called petrol bombs at the tanks too great effect. There's those old tanks had rubber on the wheels that turned the tracks and those would melt. So that's when they were

first used. And if you're not familiar with what a Molotov cocktail is, it's an improvised incendiary device. It's a glass thing filled with a flammable thing, topped with some kind of cloth with a flame that the goth is burning. And when you throw it, obviously the glass thing breaks, the flammable liquid comes out, and the flame catches a liquid and you have a fireball. So the first time we kind of see them is used it in the

Spanish and war. We see references to them in like British media in the nineteen thirties when British reporters were going out to watch the Spanish Civil War and they were like, Wow, what a development, what a technology, and so they used there. But where they get their names in Finland, right when the Soviets invade Finland. Why they got their name is that Molotov claimed that his planes were not dropping bombs. You'll see like a history of

gas lighting in Russian Foreign poll or Soviet foreign policy here. Um. He claimed they weren't dropping bombs. He claimed that they were bringing aid to the people of Finland, right, and Finland was like, this is ridiculous. So they kind of started calling the bombs Molotov's bread baskets, and pretty soon

everything that was shipped was associated with molotovs. Bombers were Molotov's chickens, blackout curtains were Molotov's curtains, And so the they switched many of their state alcohol factories to making Molotov cocktails, and so they started calling these these pet work work called petrol bombs Molotov cocktails, and that's how the names dug It is neat that Russia has such a long history of causing other nations to retool their

domestic liquor production towards making bombs to throw at Russian soldiers, and like, how what do we now eighty odd years on from from nine seven? Like it's it's not always Russian tanks, but it's nearly always Russian tanks, right like Spain and the Russian tanks are obviously like in the Republican Spain is much preferable to Franco Finland hungry and ninety six right um, And today in Ukraine you see people throwing bottles of petrol with flames on top of

Russian tanks. Yeah, they have a long history. Yeah, I mean it's it's among other things like especially if you don't have easy access to firearms and and no access to explosives and stuff like. It's it's not a force equalizer, but it does allow you to to do certain things militarily that that would be harder to do, um if you were like trying to manufacture something a little bit more like it's easier than making a grenade, right, Like, yeah, and it does much more damage than a rock, but

it's not much harder to come by for most people. Right. One really interesting thing I read about them was by this academic who I really like his work. It's called Ali Cadiva, and he's Iranian, and he's looked at like democratization movements all over the world. Right, so, how do authoritarian regimes collapse? And his research suggested that like peaceful extreme like extremely like quote unquote peaceful protests tend not to work, and insurgencies hadn't had that higher a success rate.

But his paper is called stick, stones and Molotov cocktails, and like his research suggested, like, if you're prepared to do violence against property by hidding it with a stick, throwing a stone, throwing a Monotov cocktail, then you are more likely to have success in toppling a regime. So like, because they're accessible to people who don't necessarily have guns, aren't doing insurgencies. They've had this really interesting role in

arming nonstate actors or arming liberation movement throughout history. I mean, that's really interesting because it would seem to suggest, like a reading of that paper would seem to suggest that, yeah, it's not so much like being willing to carry out like a militant movement, but being willing to destroy things as one of the primary signs that like you have a chance of actually overthrowing an authoritarian regime is like your your ability to prepare to to do damage, um,

like a financial nature, Like is that kind of the argument is making. I think the argument he's making is that, like, and it's an argument that can't be made enough. Right, the damage to property is not the same as damage to people, and violence against property in the name of liberation or justice is okay and tends to work. And but yeah, you have to have some skin in the game. You have to be prepared to fund some ship up if you if you want to bring down a regime

which is prepared to use violence against you. That's kind of talking about the use of these tools within liberatory struggles. But they're not I guess the liberatory strugglesm the I have the beholder that's talking about the use of these tools and kind of like street movements that are agitating

for change. But we also have this military history UM, which I think is much more muddled in terms of its actual efficacy as a as a weapon, its ability to deny area, it's ability to destroy UM or damage like enemy uh like combat ability. Do you do you have any kind of sense of like how effective like we're seeing all these people in Ukraine arming themselves with cocktails UM evidence of of of you know, the efficacy of these and calmbat as a lot murkier UM, at

least within the present conflict. Do you have a sense of how historically they're useful? They tend to be for that, Yeah, I think depending on the age of the and and then the type of the vehicle you're attacking. Right, So like these old Russian tanks UM, what they would do a lot was make something which is not quite what we would see if the MONOTORV cocktails, I had a whole blanket that was soaked in petrol, and that would get caught up in the track and then it would

destroy that. There was a bit of rubber on on the wheels interface with the tracks that it would melt and that would immobilize the tank and then folks could swarm it from all angles. That was kind of the move there, and then I think they've been more useful in Ukraine than one might have expected. Because of the nature of some of the Russian military vehicles. They tend

to carry their fuel on the outside. They also because of the mud, they'll carry lots of pieces of wood that they can use to put under their wheels like you would you know, like sand ladders on the truck um, so those tend to catch fire more easily. I know the b MPs also have fuel storage on the back door, which is is pretty optimal for if you want to walk up behind someone to set something on fire. So

that they've worked pretty well there. In other places, yeah, they seem to be more of an annoyance, Like I know, I've spoken to people who have been in the military in the UK and like the big thing in Northern Ireland right again right, you have a sort of a liberatory movement there and so they were very popular, but they didn't seem to do much of them, cause people distress,

cause people personal injury sometimes but not particularly too. They weren't game changing in terms of like the monopoly on violence there, but yeah, they seem to be very very I think they're better when you have a ton of people throwing them. I think you have a lot of people setting things on fire, that tends to be it

causes people to stop. And I think with Russia being lacking in excellent leadership, it seems like we could say in Ukraine and some of their soldiers maybe lacking in training, and with the fact that they tend to carry fuel externally so their vehicles catch fire. If you can just convince some conscripts that their vehicle is on fire, they are going to get out, run away. And we've seen that a lot, right, a lot of people running away. Yeah.

I think when I think about, like outside of military uses, where I've seen molotovas be most effective in like the time I've been covering conflict, that the first thing that comes up is the My Dawn Revolution Ukraine, where people were throwing some of the same people throwing molotops at

Russian troops. Now we're through a mix of throwing by hand and like catapult devices were launching sometimes hundreds of molotovs in a couple of minutes and like melting tank treads to the ground, which is definitely like that's a that's obviously it was effective. It's also almost a different kind of weapons system when you're when you're dealing with

that kind of volume grad molotov launcher. Yeah. Yeah, but then I can think about, like, there's this really amazing video that you can find if you look of Greek anarchists on bicycles swarming pass a Greek police station and throwing it looked like about a dozen molotovs at once, and and just like sacking a police station that way and then biking right the funk off and like disappearing into the city um, which is which you know, seemed like a more effective tactic than some of the ways

I've seen them used, where it's like a person throwing a molotov um and then the cops get really fucking angry, but it doesn't really do that much damage to them, and then people get or they hit the wrong person. Like it is, it is a tool with a high degree of chance for error if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, it's there's a decent skill requirement. You also really don't want to have like anything flammable on

your hands or shirt or anything like that. Like I've seen people really end up badly after trying to make a molotov and just hurting themselves trying to light it or throw it. Yeah, it's it's not. It's not one of those things that like you want to casually suggest people use because the odds of actually injuring yourself with it are pretty high if you're not being careful. Um, and if you if you're going into a situation where

you think people might have molotov's natural fibers people, natural fibers, nuts, synthetics. Yeah, well is your friend welding gloves your friend? Like, yeah, you don't want to be caught on fire. So let's talk a little bit about how, like what are the different kinds of constructions of molotops you've seen people using and how they changed over time. You talked a little bit about kind of the early Spanish ones were like

full blankets and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the interests where we go from Spain to to Finland right where we're seeing the same thing basically petrol or maybe ethanol or something like that inside a bottle with with just a wig, right something sort of. I know in Spanish Civil War they were using jars a lot like

jam jars. But when things started to develop, I think is in the UK, so in Britain, and you actually have this guy called Tom Wintringham who went to Spain as a walk correspondent, decided to become a soldier and then returned to the UK and tried to share what he'd learned with British people. Right in this article he wrote a picture post and he was very much into Molotov cocktails is a great way of fighting an invasion, much like actually the old guy you heard, did you

hear the guy who called into NPR recently? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was outstanding, just just turning NPR into our how to do gorilla warfare. And so what they did they made this thing called the number seventy six grenade, and they made six million of them, I think Jesus Christ. And they still find them. It's funny, they'll still find them in like when they'll be digging the foundation for a building. They'll be like, oh shit, this is not a box of beer. And what those had was a

strip of rubber that they dropped in it. It was in a bottle with a cap, and it had a phosphorus ignitor actually, so you didn't have to light it, you just hosted it. And yeah, and those were extremely effective. The rubber dissolves and then that allows the flaming liquid to adhere better to the person or thing that is hit. Right, and you're almost like making a napalm bark, yes exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah,

and the phosphorus will last for a long time. It's much less risky to the thrower and you and also have a whole box of them and just keep throwing them, right. You don't have to light each one, you don't have to have someone else like each one. So those seem pretty effective. I don't know if they were ever really used in anger, because obviously the Nazis never landed in the UK, but yeah, that was that was a pretty big development, and that kind of set the tone for

the other developments which I've seen, at least. I'm not like a Molotov expert. But people put sugar in them, people put polystyrene in them or what do you call that? What does sugar in them do? I think it gives it a higher viscosity, and I think they sort of it maybe melts when they like sticks. It like creates like a sticky kind of hot, like like if you're making toffee. I would imagine, Um, the big thing I've

seen people putting in them is various like plastics. Right, So when you look at the You've seen these videos of old ladies in Ukraine with cheese graters just grating like packing styrofoam, and they put at in there, and that that does the same thing, right, creates a more viscous kind of napalm which adheres to the thing that

you throw at. And that I think if you're talking about persuading someone that their tank is on fire, if it keeps burning for ten twenty seconds, you know you don't have a very long time to get out of a BMP, so you're going to start getting out, I would imagine. Well, and that does point to like an interesting reality of like not just this war all war, but like specifically in the context of territorial kind of

volunteers who are on paper terribly out gunned. Um. But the psychological dimension is that, like you said, if you can convince people they may be in an armored vehicle that has unquestioned supremacy over the partisans attacking them. But if you can convince them they are on fire, they will make decisions that lead them to no longer have the advantage in terms of firepower. It's not impossible to do. Yeah,

I think you saw that. I think there's some footage from my dan of them sort of ambushing some armored vehicles. And yet once you throw half a dozen monitor of cocktails from above at windows, you can only get those people to abandon their vehicle and run away. That's the goal. If they get out, there are a lot more vulnerable to further attacks from molotov cocktails or anything else. Right, So yeah, I think it. It really plays into that

kind of gorilla or sort of like underdog side of conflict. Yeah. One of the things that's interesting to them about me. I mean, you and I just finished this series that dealt heavily with like three D printed weapons, homemade guns and stuff. But you know, there's a lot that you, as the state can do to reduce people's access to firearms, or even to reduce people's access to like knives that

are bigger than kitchen knives. A lot you can do to reduce people's access to conventional arms, but everywhere has got liquor. Yeah, exactly, it's almost impossible to stop people having them. Right, If you have gasoline, diesel, alcohol, and glass things and fabric and lighter, you have access to these. So yeah, they're accessible to everyone, and they are incredibly effective. Like, they're probably the most effective thing that you could make in your home if you were doing an insurgency or

fighting Russian invaders in this case. Yeah, well, James, was there anything else you wanted to get into on the subject of molotos or other forms of cocktails? Yeah, let me think I should probably say that it's probably illegal to make them in the United States. I mean, there are specific ways you legally can, but you you need a number of different permits. Yeah. Yeah, you do have

to ask the government. So I probably wouldn't suggest to do Yes, you have to, I probably wouldn't suggest doing that, But no, I think it's always interesting to look at these like, if we want to move towards a world where there is less authority more freedom, then these things which take away the state's monopoly on the ability to do violence should always be not necessarily like things that we want that. It's interesting. Yeah, that's one of the

things that's fascinating to me. Obviously, Ukraine is a pretty standard government within the global or at least up until this point, has been like they are. They are a state that has done a number of ugly things in

its past, and we'll do them in the future. But they're in this fascinating moment where the government has really set down any claim to a monopoly on force in a lot of fascinating ways, the kind of widespread here's how to make a molotov, here's how to disable And one of the things that's fascinating, the Ukrainian government very famously sent around sheets which are like, here is where to throw molotovs to do the most damage. Different Russian

vehicles are also Ukrainian vehicles. Yeah, yeah, and also those vehicles now belong to random farmers, Like I saw that was a thing with the Ukrainian equivalent of the I R S who said, like, don't worry, you don't need to declare this tank on your income tax. Right, how does one tax a person who has a tank? Yeah, or in the case of some of them, has a twenty million dollar anti aircraft system. Yeah, who is the tax man who is willing to go and collect that?

Like they have become ungovernable, right, yeah, I mean it's we're they are in the thick of it, and maybe for the rest of all of our lives. Nobody knows how long this thing is going to last. But if if the war does end in any kind of reasonable time frame, the what's Ukraine going back to. I don't know how they go back to being a normal state when they have when they have opened the floodgates to everyone.

Is the army now? Well? I think it's Yeah, it calls into question number things, right, like that maybe you don't necessarily always need is very strict disciplinary and structure to fight very effectively. But also yeah, that like do you need the state? Right? People are just doing their own thing right now, and I yeah, I don't know how you already take that back? Like how do you go and collect the tanks from people? They know how

to kill tanks, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, the Ukrainian government in the future, if we imagine a time of people piece, it'll be quite a while before there's any chance of like, well we better send in the riot troops to crack down on this protest. It's like, no, you're not going to get those riot troops to go

anywhere near there. Yeah, Like, yeah, we're testing out this armed society as a polite society thesis, right, But yeah, I don't know how the police return to a country which is seemingly at least holding off, if not defeating, a military superpower. Yeah. It is a fascinating question, and and no one really has a clear answer, but I

do think it's interesting. Of course they have embraced the Molotov as you've kind of made the case here that's it really has this history as this great kind of democratizing force within the conflicts between people and governments and governments and governments. Yeah, and and people in capital, right, Like if you're prepared to destroy capital goods like people have done for centuries, and that that seems to be

the way to make change. Right. It's kind of interesting, I think, to reflect on from our me and my podcast, I thought was that they had very strict gun ownership laws before this, very very strict apart from from one ethnic group called the Chin. But what they've promised to do afterwards, at least according to our sources is to allow people to keep and bear arms, right, because I guess they kind of have to write because a they

can't stop them anymore. These people are three D printing guns and be the only way they got freedom or if this is if the if they're able to defeat the Tapmador, then the only way they've they've become free is through fighting for their freedom. And it seems that they're not going to be willing to give that up,

especially for the ethnic groups there. So yeah, it's really interesting to see, like what kind of a state emerges from a sort of uh, what's the sort of world like Like it's it's not an authoritarian structure, right, the militaries are not like a lot of people in Ukraine are not necessarily authoritarian instructures. So what emerges for the

state when we've had this horizontal resistance? Yeah, these are These are fascinating questions and ones that I think will all be continuing to ask and answer for for the foreseeable future. For now, do you have anything you want to plug before we were all out? James M No. You should listen to our podcast on MIMMA. You can follow me on Twitter. That's my name at stout Patreon. I write some other things. I teach at the community college. If you want to take some history courses, we can

learn about molotovs. Have a lecture about that. But otherwise no, that's about well, that's gonna do it for us here until next time. Don't make a molotov if it's illegal where you live. But but do think about molotovs, because, as the last couple of weeks have shown us, you could by next week be living in a state where it's very legal to make molotov cocktails. That could happen

to any of us. You never know, you know, you never know, So you know, do some reading online, use a use a VP a VPN to do that reading browser. If you're gonna be how to make molotov, do some very careful reading, and um, you know, keep an eye on the world. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen. Here is a production of

cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for It could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.