Ah boy, welcome to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less depressing than that. This is gonna be a mix of both of those things. I'm Robert Evans. My co hosts for today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are we both? How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling?
I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, So I'm excited like a kid Christmas.
Yeah.
So, James, that answers my question for you. But Mia, have you ever heard of Lord Miles Rutledge.
I have seen him on Twitter and I cannot express how excited I.
Am for this.
So we are talking about a real piece of shit today. This is kind of relevant to our I try to always justify, you know, our purview is broadly speaking, collapse, you know what we call the crumbles, and Miles Rutledge is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and conmen who sort of sort of seep in at the edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever.
You know, they're in behind the bastards. We've done a couple episodes on, like different white people who tried at various points to like conquer Latin American nations, and like the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, just kind of during these periods of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on, and so like some group of mercenaries would be like, I bet we can like steal Nicaragua, right, let's Goways
wear the shot. You know, you get these kind of like these kind of people, and Lord Myles Rutledge is sort of the lower body count end of that, but in some ways a lot more frustrating because at least, look, there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another country and then getting yourself. There's at least like a
degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge is like purely but like doing war tourism in order to like pump his his TikTok and his Instagram and his YouTube. And I find that worse than like, I don't know, those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and got captured by fishermen, so they were great, yeah, and then laid in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story, perfect.
Story, took a be begun with them.
Such a good story, and this one has a similar this story, thankfully, Miles the story has has a is an ending almost that satisfying. So Miles Rutledge was born on James. Actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring you in for a second. How do I spell this last name r O U T l E d g E.
He's British age Routledge on believe if it's the same as the academic publisher which which is spelled the same, and then it's Routledge. And look, I don't give a fuck about I Skyfields, so let's just say, how have we won?
Yeah? Okay, So Miles Routledge was born on September fourteenth, nineteen ninety nine, probably somewhere near Birmingham. Uh, I don't think we have like like it's just kind of based on shit, he said. But yeah, I don't see why he'd probably he'd lie about that. I don't think people brag about coming from Birmingham.
Yeah. Wow, it's wonder like. Yeah. Yeah.
So unfortunately, thanks to generations of medical advancements, he survived to adulthood. Because he does strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't have done that in like the eighteen hundreds. He got into the University of I'm gonna need your help here again, James Lowborough, Luffborough, Luffbrough. Unbelievable.
That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War two German aerial division or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like the every bro each section of the LUFTWAFFA. So he gets into the University of luft Bro as a fucking physics student, or so he says, And sometime within the last two years he got an internship at an investment banking firm.
So a kind of guy.
He's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece of shit. But I haven't found much in my casual research about his financial situation or how much money he was born into. But I think he was, like I'm gonna guess his parents were at least comfortable, because as a young man still in college, he had the funds to travel pretty extensively, starting in twenty nineteen when he
visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Now, this is one of the most popular destinations in the world for what is called dark tourism, and this is largely this is people who live kind of boring lives otherwise traveling to places that sound scary in order to impress people on like TikTok or whatever. Now I just said that, but like,
I don't think there's anything wrong. Now there's like a lot of problems with getting to Chernobyle because of the war, but like prior to the expand innovation, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyle. Mike thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or whatever is like, are you increasing the odds of like causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources in a way that like harms people who have no
choice in being there? Right, and visiting Chernobyl whatever, You're not really putting anyone at risk, So that's fine. But in May of twenty twenty one, though, Miles Rutledge made the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that was distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist, Afghanistan. Now he decided to head over there during kind of the
end stages of the war. Although if you guys can remember back that far, the collapse of the Afghan government that the United States had backed happened more rapidly than most people had predicted, so it was kind of like less clear. I think when he booked his trip that thinks we're going to fall apart quite that quickly.
Yeah, humor to feel the same way about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So yeah, it's one of those things where, like Miles, you know, his plan to go there was again not as like he's not heading there as a journalist. There's not like a story he wants to tell. He's not traveling there for kind of a practical purpose, Like he really does frame this as just he wanted to go on vacation, and he wanted to go on vacation specifically for what I think is probably like the dumbest reason I've ever heard of anyone choosing of a vacation location,
especially choosing fucking Afghanistan as a vacation location. I'm going to play a clip from one of his YouTube videos.
Now, why am I in Afghanistan? Well, that's a really good question.
During COVID lockdowns, Afghanistan was the only country open round of vaccine mandate.
So I just think I've never heard his voice before. I'm more angry.
Now he gives to Afghanistan because they don't have a fucking vaccine mandate.
Oh my fucking god, real warrior for freedom.
Yeah, just the just the dumbest idiot. I hate him so anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of young British men who have gone out to Afghanistan on a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive
his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something called everybody Wiki, which yeah, yeah, which I hadn't heard it that one before, but it's it very hilariously lists his occupation as quote, posting online during the twenty twenty one seeche of Kabul.
That's great.
That's that's actually Tim Kennedy. That's great.
So for obvious reasons, he encountered difficulties.
Uh.
He wind wound up sleeping by the side of the road one night he was taken into Taliban custody. While he makes a big deal out of this, I actually don't think he was ever in serious danger, particularly not compared to, for example, the people fighting and dying or the civilians and said he's taken by the Taliban, who had to endure an often violent change of regime when
the Taliban was taking over here. And lets you know, obviously there's the danger of like accidents on the road, which is always a significant danger in a place called like Afghanistan. There's the danger of you know, being caught up in a fight or something potentially, But the Taliban in this kind of late stage of their takeover, had no desire to harm a British citizen like Miles, or to harm like, you know, Americans who were in the country.
And in fact, we're working kind of in the later stages of the US evacuation to try to make sure it happened and peacefully. Not because the Taliban are such good guys, but because like there's no geopolitical benefit to them from like a random British traveler dying. It's just gonna cause problems for them.
Yeah, it's just stress and the.
Yeah, like they didn't have like I don't believe they were the Taliban was ever like threatened his life in any way. Miles, though, posted through it, reporting that he was stuck in a pickle and giving details of his experience to fans on four Chan and Twitch, he started using the name James. You had asked about this, he started using the name Lord Miles due to the fact that he had purchased a fifteen pound lordship certificate as a.
Bit I knew it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, not that surprising. Huh.
What can't say that?
Sorry, no, you can You're you're You're British. It's fine, okay, Daniel, Yeah, I leave that one in. That is my conviction. I what a twat, Sorry, what an absolute prick because he's what's really fun frustra with everything about his existence is frustrating right now.
So it's what's so annoying is he's playing this fucking twee parochial version of Britishness for an exclusively in American audience. Right, if you're born near fucking Birmingham, we're not all we are not all pride and prejudice people.
And if you've moved to another country, you will constantly encounter people thinking you grew up in Harry Potterland. But like, we're not all turfs either, But like he's fucking doing it like and he's doing it like a naive America like there are like the Scottish Parliament has made statements about not buying these stupid Scottish titles.
Yeah, here's a prayer.
Yeah, it's it's very silly. He justified this by saying, because I think he buys it while he's in Afghanistan, he explained to his followers, the Taliban may see that as a reason to keep me alive some negotiating powder power, as they'll think I'm important. They don't care. They don't want any fucking Westerners dying in the country because that will fuck up their chances of, like you know, they want to get integrated to the like fucking global economy.
They want to qualify for like loans and ship like they don't want to. They don't want the problems that you dying bring, like you being a lord has not going to impact this in anyway.
Yeah, and they don't. I don't want like the British government deciding like, oh, ship, they killed someone, now we need to just bomb like cobble for eight months or whatever.
Now.
I don't want to say in his defense because I would not like to speak in his defense, but I will say that the one person who might be conned by a lordship you bought online is Boris Johnson?
Yeah, have an impact on Bojo, yah, but it is It is not defense.
It's not like Bojo's gonna be sticking around for very long.
Right.
You have to like you every every every like seven weeks, you are rolling a dice as to whether the Conservative PM is someone you can con with the lordship title.
Yeah.
Well, none of them in the last few years have been what I would call intellectual titans.
That's true.
But but but Hope springs a turtle, Rishi sud acts in trouble too, so they might I don't know, a brave shot.
You just really go down the fast road.
I really I feel sorry for you all across the pond. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your politicians be national laughing stocks. I mean, that's just gotta be that's just got to be hard. No American, we know, we'll ever know what that's like.
We are ruled by the hero of Ireland.
Oh I I was gonna talk about you know, my hero, the governor of Florida and his best friend, the pedophile who just committed suicide. This a different pedophile, No, this is the pedophile who like backed Santus's like early political rise and now just killed himself after he got exposed.
Oh so it's Alexander.
Okay, never mind, this is a different pedophile. I'm every day there's a new one. I can't it's not Mike Gates. Who's other friend who's also a pedophile.
Now you know who I cannot prove at this point is a pedophile, Miles Rutledge.
So let's get back to his story, please.
So he also claimed during this period where he's kind of like quote unquote on the run, that the four Chan users he was posting with kept him alive by giving him updates on Taliban progress through Osent as they advanced through Kabul. That's broadly speaking not impossible. So the idea that Miles again, I don't believe he was ever threatened by the Taliban. They're again not nice people, but they're not like unhinted, they're not isis you know, they
they are a government. They don't have a benefit in something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though, played up the idea that he was something between a tourist, a journalist, and a philanthropist. Building his trip to Afghanistan is a quote little charity thing. At the same time, as he said that he was prepared for death when he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country. Eventually a United Nations safe house took him in and he was given a seat on one of the last
planes out of the country. Now this is an actual actor. Yeah, that's frustrating because like there are people in danger from the Taliban who had couldn't leave, right, Like he took one of their spaces. Somebody didn't get out who is in danger because of him.
Yeah, like very good friends of mine, like I spent much of that time, like I've written about Afghanistan, I've worked with translators and like good friends of mine sometimes and left Afghanistan, but many of them still have their families there, right, and every single day they have anxiety about whether their faunilies are okay, if something terrible has happened to them. Yeah, and this twat is just like sitting on a plane posting on four chaney Like that makes me properly angry.
Yeah, it's it's and that's again what I was talking about, Like, if you're going to if you're gonna go to a place that is that is beset by conflict, you know, by civil war, by violence or anything like that. Number One, you have responsibility to like have a reason to go beyond. I wonder what it's like. And you have a responsibility to not make things worse for people who don't have a choice about being there.
And he did.
You know, that's like fundamentally why I hate this guy is he absolutely took an opportunity to escape from I don't know, some woman's rights activist or something, you know, some somebody who was some turp or something, somebody who didn't have a choice about fucking being stuck in Afghanistan.
Yeah, just some fuck you wanted a fair cracket life. And and yeah there's a prick. Yeah yeah, I mean it's yeah. And he could have stayed. I have friends who stayed through that time and covered it, like your concern is for your sources, not yourself.
Yeah yeah.
Or he could have done the thing that his ancestors didn't, just walk across the border Pakistan like.
Your ancestors did this.
This is the one thing like hell.
Through the Kyber Pass and then becomes Sherlock Holmes his best friend. You know, that's a proud tradition, which.
I thought you were gonna go with dying man, which would have also been a very well.
That's another proud tradition.
Getting sniped by a jizil in the fucking uh Kaiber Pass. Absolutely so. He had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and immediately pivoted because he built up a big social media following around his posts there, pivoted to a career as a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an ireland, not an Ireland. He traveled next to an island in Brazil. There's this island off the coast of Brazil that like, like you're not allowed to go to because there's so
many fucking snakes. Like it's just it's extremely dangerous to go there because it's covered in fucking snakes. And he like went there where armor, but he didn't actually run into any snakes because snakes don't, like you know, they're not generally aggressive, most of them. He got arrested in Kenya for as best as I can tell, being a prick nearer refugee camp, and then he traveled to Ukraine right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to try to make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of.
People about him.
The highlight of that trip was he claims that he drove a woman and her kid out of the country and rescued them and also brought people snacks whatever. Miles has always been two things. He's deeply enmeshed in right wing meme culture, and he is at least superficially committed to Christian extremism. He is like kind of at least it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian. He's like, he's super fashy right, but this is not like a hidden
thing within his videos and stuff. I found one write up of him on a right wing religious news website that gives you an idea of how he builds himself to his ideal audience. Miles Routledge is a self described Catholic, independent war journalist and charity on the ground. At just twenty one, he had to do Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control, and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates that are peppered with humor, reality, and a little naivete.
In the past, Routledge went to war torn countries and into areas no NGO or charity dared to go according to his GoFundMe Paige, so he can hand out bibles, food, medicine and money.
Well, there's a special place in hell for some time giving a stopping person a bible.
Yeah, And also like he never went to places other people wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you everywhere he went, there were already like people like the Freeburmer rangers or even medicine sands, frontiers or journalists without borders, like there were there were people there. Because he's not He's not like I've seen his videos, He's not going anywhere special.
Yea, there how many people are recallable, like ten million people?
Yes, these are big cities. He's before million people.
Sure, playing off of kind of the provincialism of his audience and the fact that most people in the West when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine when they hear it, or like even like a place like Kenya which is like a massive country with major cities and all sorts of stuff like that, like oh, these places are just death traps and you don't go there, and like no man even like I would get this when I'd go to I've spent a lot, visited Arax seven or eight times,
and it's like, no, man, it's like most of it's just a country. Like, yeah, there's specific things you have to keep in mind that are dangerous, but like it's just a place, like millions of people live there and don't die every day.
Yeah, this is ludicrous to suggest that he was in any Yeah, like you could go to all these places and stay in a five star hotel and yeah, like you're not in any danger, especially as a.
Rich white British guy parading ground by.
Yeah, to the extent that he's like in Ukraine and traveling near the front where there's like random missiles and shelling, Yeah there's some danger, but again it's danger that he is exposed, using himself to unnecessarily and then creating a situation whereby if he is injured, that's a bunch of morphine and antibiotics that can't go to a fucking civilian who had no choice because they were raised in Constantinifa or whatever, you know, Like, yeah, fucking yeah, he's a
praise Yeah, yeah, so I mentioned a little earlier, he's definitely a fascist. And you know when I say that, sometimes people do the whole ou lefties will call anything a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one. So shortly after his famous trip to Afghanistan, he published a book about his very brief time in the country.
This book included some interesting claims, like that he was the last person to enter the country on a tourist visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting. He wrote, quote, my response was simply an a four sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it. It was accepted without quest. I was ready for my
very own white boy summer. He also notes that the last right, which was at the time kind of like a meme and you know, fashy online Nazi circles, It was all over telegram.
He also.
Very problematic child.
Yeah, although not problematic in this sense. Chet did not, I think mean for that to happen. He's just problematic in other ways. So he also notes that the last thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho, which he described as a sacred male experience. I will remind you all that that is a movie directed by a woman. He also writes about the fact that he ordered a meal at the airport before leaving, but decided not to
eat it because it was likely filled with soy. He goes on like a whole diatribe about how Afghanistan is probably safer for him because there's no soy in the food, just so. The weird wing memes and signaling, all of which are like he's always like a year or two out of date on his like far right signaling and stuff too, which is weird. All of it makes a little more sense when you realize that the book that he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing.
Oh yeah, yeah, James, he recognized that, didn't you. Yeah, yeah yeah.
It is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the Antelope Pill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath it, you know you've got the main book and is like, this is record. If you like this book, read these books are a collection of One of the books is a collection of speech speeches from Kai Murros, who is a Finnish right wing activist who was formerly a maoist but is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who suppose
supports total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He advocates for an uprising in the UK in which all university staff will be executed by debt squads.
So he hasn't gone that far from the maw is.
So not that far, but like, look, there's still pieces of it. So the next book that's recommended if you're interested in Miles's book is The Death Company, which is a first hand account of the Italian Arditi in World War One that was very influential among early fascists. And then there's Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I found a review of this book on a website called the White Art Collective, and I'm going to read a quote.
From that now.
So this is a Nazi reviewing this book by a Nazi, Right, good stuff. Yeah, here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen is a big city writer sent on assignment to interview James Alexander, the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who has revived his state with, among other things, a Christian themed public works program and Mount Calvary, an artificial mountain which villagers climb up and pass the stations of the Cross, then view a live action recreation of the Crucifixion with
music by a live choir. The first few chapters until Rob meets Alexander feel like a dead pan satire of apocalypse.
Now.
Rob didn't want a mission, but for sins he was given one. He's a fish out of water who has to navigate and improvise his way to the goal. There's a magical realism vibe of the book despite nothing overly supernatural occurring, and maybe this is why Phillips calls it a mundane fantasy. But it's also a mundane fantasy for the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described in the book are so far beyond what is possible that
suspension of disbelief is required. Even the Nazi seems like to think it's kind of a shit book, which is very funny to me. So again, if you publish your book with Antelope Pill like you are comfortable, at the very least comfortable with having your book advertised next to explicitly Nazi power fantasies.
Yeah, you know, going to Antler Pill. You know, look, we've both published books like. Yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even try.
Yeah, they are the Nazi one of the Nazist publishers out there. In April of twenty twenty two, Miles attempted to re enter Afghanistan. He claimed in videos that his goal was to rest thank you a tour guide and his family who were threatened by the Taliban, but he wound up stuck in Pakistan, claiming that this guide had lied to him and claimed that the border was closed to British people.
He was like, to be fair, I have no issues with this.
No, that would be fine, and he gets like he starts like freaking out in the video, he's like a near tears and stuff. He claims that he'd spent fifteen thousand pounds on the trip and now he was broke, so obviously he uses that he has to beg for money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if that was just the whole point of the trip. He also pointed posted whiney status updates, claiming his life had
been ruined by the failed trip. Quote this means I can't go on a date with a girl I really liked. It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend. I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end but I know, big baby.
Yeah.
Despite his failure, he did not give up on his dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again. For the sake of content, he put together another trip for the start of twenty twenty three. In late February, as he geared up to go, he made some tweets to his followers that give us more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is. From February twenty seventh, a flat mate saw my Bible and said that book is a fairy tale. So I threw my empty mug at his head, broke on the
wall behind him. This isn't the first instance. And after a while you have to stop playing nis and to fend your faith.
Yeah, so great is the tweet that I remember seeing.
Yeah, that was a great one.
Now people used to send me his shit so often. He's infuriating. Yeah, there's a worse one. The most infuriating tweet I found from this guy came a bit further down and it's it's a picture of him. I thinking it might be Dubai. I think it's Dubai. So he's like got his back to the skyline and he's just kind of like looking off into the distance pensively, and it says, friends say, I space out all the time.
My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. Now, if you don't remember, the Sentinel Island is the Forbidden Island and the Andamans which is part of India, where in twenty eighteen, an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and endangered the lives of an entire tribe so he could satisfy his narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to death by them via arrow before he could get too close,
and hopefully did not spread any diseases to them. I wish mild success in reaching the island and meeting his similar fate. But if he gets anywhere close to them, there's just such a high chance that he will spread deadly disease to the people there that I hope the Indian government keeps him away, even though it would be very funny if he got shot to death by.
That would be quite a laugh. Yeah, truly living out the dreams of being a British lord.
Yeah, yeah, continue a real time on our tradition getting fucking mrked by the natives on an island. So the good news is that friends of the pod, the Taliban may have taken care of you know this guy for us. Shortly after making those posts, he re entered Afghanistan and a video posted several days later he bragged about entering. While he's in Afghanistan, he brags that he made a fake visa in order to get himself into the country.
So he breaks Taliban law entering the country in a fake video and then posts a video while he's in Kabul bragging about it. So, first off, genius brain, unbelievable smarts there. So this the first video that he posts back is it's titled something like Shooting Guns with the Taliban, and it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad to see what kind of guns are available. He talks a lot about how all these US guns and gear are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it.
Like most of the video he's in like this fucking I'll show you. He's in like this fucking gun bazaar and he's like really odd by this giant ar style Turkish shotgun.
We've seen some of them.
We have seen some of those.
They're terrible weapons. They are definitely obviously the Taliban got a hold of a shitload of us. Hear nobody's questioning that these shitty Turkish shotguns are not American weaponry.
Yeah, well that that's that's probably why it's in the bizarre and not like in someone's like.
Or something. Yeah.
Yeah, the Taliban have access to a lot of American gear. He is kind of just like looking at I don't know, like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like trash guns. So I'm gonna show you a first clip from this video here.
Sometimes a little bit dangerous, so there's a lot of if you don't know who diesh is, it's basically isis now is you know, I'll number the Taliban. However, the weapons market and maybe in some areas could be quite bad at the me so I'll have to be a little bit cam If you've seen this footage ended up, Okay, I'm gonna take a moment to tell you guys about my sponsor tend What.
The fuck.
This is not official medium, but Jesus, that.
Is one of the most jarring ad Like if you're not watching this, he's like standing in the desert and like talking. There's that brief clip of like a picture of some isis guys. But then he's like back in the desert talking and then suddenly a shot like it cuts very harshly to him in his hotel room doing like a fucking ad for an investment banking app. It's so fucking or like a stock trading app.
It's so funny.
And then yes, yeah, don't see uh have you got the shahata written on it?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, it sure does.
Oh yeah, I was gonna say people, she was, but to spare yourself, like god, yeah he's he's wearing his white headband.
I can't see it anymore. But you see something you're in and Arabic on it, I guess, and doing it as much for something called tends.
Yeah, something which is like, yeah, some sort of like stock trading app for I'm going to guess people to get their life savings scammed from them. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's my apologies Tends if I'm getting you wrong, but you're you're spider. Yeah, ah damn, it's okay. We've got enough sports betting companies to that. Well we'll be okay. Run Regu Jesus right, yeah, Runald Reagan gold coins or
silver coins will take care of us. So again, one of the things that's very funny about this is the amount of time he spends flipping out over this dog shit AR style shotgun. For those of you who aren't gun people, the Turks make a number of different shotguns that kind of look like AR fifteen. They're all very impressive looking to people who don't know anything about guns, they're terrible weapons. One of the reasons they're terrible is
that shotgun shells do not work well in magazines. The reason most shotguns are tube fed because like, shot shells are plastic and they have a weird shape to them, and if you stick them in a magazine like a normal bullet, they just tend to like jam and misfeed a lot. It's just not a good way for it. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's the one gun, the one actually like produced in a factory gun that I'm aware of that the folks in me and R are like, naw, fuck, it will just three, like we.
Are desperate, but these are just and he like, he spends a lot of time like talking about how cheap guns are. You can get guns here cheaper than you can anywhere else, because like this AR shotgun is two hundred bucks like, man, I can get an ar shotgun for two hundred bucks in Portland, Oregon. They're terrible, nobody wants them. So he does eventually go out with what
he claims is the talent ban. As far as I can tell, it's a guy who has an M sixteen that he probably paid like a hundred bucks to go shooting with.
Right.
Maybe the guy, like a lot of people in Afghanistan are technically the Taliban, but that doesn't mean like much, right, Like, at this point, they're the government, like you know, you get like your uncle, you know, gets you a fucking gig or something, watching a road or whatever. I don't know. I don't know anything about this guy. He claims he's the Taliban. So I'm gonna play you a clip of him shooting this guy's M sixteen.
Yeah, oh yeah, another one.
No hearing protection sweeping people.
Just sweeps him again, thank you.
The Taliban guy is visibly nervous about him as the guy.
He's not. He got that vacuum one. Yeah, he's backing away.
He's just like.
Shooting into the air. I love how like visibly nervous. The Taliban guy is his legs with the gun like points the barrel at that guy's legs like three different times, shoots up into the air. He's just an incompetent asshole with it.
He's doing all of these like like eighties action movie poses.
Yeah, touch, it's it's very stupid. He has no hearing protection and so he like hurts his ears like yeah, it's it's It's just comprehensively stupid and sad. So this video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up with two other UK citizens who were in the country, one of whom was he's described in most of the news articles I read it's just a charity medic and it's this is all a little unclear. It seems like this guy was in possession of a firearm without a
proper permit. He claims that he has a permit, but that was lost or something whatever. At any rate, Miles goes missing in early March, and after several days, the Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two other British guys and also two Polish guys into custody. And it's a little unclear why, but it seems to be due to like them breaking some laws with guns. It also may have something to do with the fact that
Miles broke the law entering the country. He seems to be being treated reasonably well at present, it's unclear what's going to happen to him. I hope, I mean honestly, like, of all the people who deserve to be in a Taliban prison, Miles Rutledge is the one that's amazing, Like, yeah, keep that, go ahead and keep that guy Taliban, like.
Solid, very excited for whoever is in the Prime Minister's chair next week to like maybe get around to start negotiating with a Tealipan.
They don't. The British.
The British far and off is just don't give a fuck anymore. Like I've had to contact them with when colleagues have been detained.
Et cetera.
Like they'll literally be like now computer says no and and just like tight funk off like so hopefully they do the same for him.
Yeah, it doesn't.
I haven't seen anything like the late most recent news stories about him were like more than a week ago. It looks like, uh, yeah, I'm not saying anything recently, So it doesn't look like I'm guessing we would have there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed. The Daily Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like, yeah, he was. He was there to try to find himself. Yeah,
it's very funny, he says. He claims at one point, like, yo, guy has been taken by the by Afghan intel diligence for taking like a thousand dollars out of Western Union suss amount, no internet, no idea when this will end. Everything is good, but please excuse my lack of communication.
That was like March eighth, something like that, And he hasn't really been back on in a while, Like he's kind of been dark for quite a spell, So I don't know, maybe something terrible has happened to him, or what happened to him at which point or in which case like that would be kind of funny fuck him. Yeah that's where I am officially. Yeah, I mean he fucked around and found out. Yeah, like you keep again, man,
you want to like, yeah, you keep fucking around. You like go to a place with like a famously like dangerous authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are like I'm going to brag about breaking the law for
a YouTube video. Yeah, man, maybe they'll get pissed. It's like the same shit with like, obviously the Romanian government is not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind of ship with like Andrew Tate, where you're like, I'm going to go to this other country and brag about the fact that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws. That's a pretty good way to get them to fucking problems for you.
Like, anyway, my favorite Miles post. If I'm remembering this right, I'm pretty sure like two.
Weeks before he like got arrested, he he he posted a tweet about how like he's safer in he's safer in Afghanistan and he is in uh that he would be in San Francisco in Brooklyn.
Yeah, yeah, he.
Spent no two days, he spent forty eight hours quote unquote homeless in Brooklyn for again for content, and yeah, it is it is funny that like he is in a lot of trouble now.
He tried to go to.
Mission Texas as well.
I don't know if he ever went, but he was going to do so I missed that.
Yeah, it's gonna be something fucking horrific with people crossing the Rio Grande.
Oh god, oh you see the look the lady.
You're not gonna hear this often from me, but critical support to the Taliban, like they're they're they're really fighting the good fight for all of us by keeping this guy behind bars.
I was it initially seemed like he had he had fallen into the hands of like the Islamic State Chorussan Province, and I'm gonna have to yeah, you rarely have to hand it to Islamic State, but we may have had that one occasion that.
Don't give ice us a lot of credit, but that that it is, like, you know what, I'll just I'm gonna go ahead and say this on behalf of the rest of the world, Taliban, if you keep him locked up, you know, we will erase one of those big Buddha statues from like the list of Taliban crimes. We'll all agree to forget one of the Buddhas. Like feel like I'm not signing on to this.
I'm so bad about the Buddhists. I just come on, we need all the Buddhists.
Anyway.
Fuck this guy.
Yeah, I hope they're feeding him all of the soy in Afghanistan, like fucking park a soy truck up to that guy's cell. Anyway, that's a story like there's these guys are like, especially in the social media. I mean they've always been a part of war and of conflict. You know, there's a degree to which like this is a not a news story, like this is actually kind of a one of the older stories in human history.
Is like dudes kind of stumbling into war zones in order to write about it or otherwise like make it about them. So you know, uh, fuck these people, uh, and fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. I hope, I hope he winds up like those Venezuelan merks or not there. I mean, they weren't Vezela, they were in Venezuela who are caught on video pissing themselves and then lying in the piss. That's that's my dream for Miles Rutledge spending some time lying in piss before he sent back to
the UK. Yeah, that's what I got.
Nice.
Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like that they did to the British people.
He did make a bunch of posts about how cool the Taliban were, so I don't know, like, yeah, we can dream. Look, man, you said you wanted to live there.
Uh, here you go.
Yeah, I don't know. I I think he's a dick and I think this is funny. That's my official stance.
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