Shinzo Abe Killed By Electric Blunderbuss

talking about three D printed guns and people who hate butterflies. Yeah. Yeah, this is this is truly a dark day for democracy. I'm saddened by the horrible loss of a great leader. Um, A hero to feminism and women. Um. And I guess a hero to those who defend war crimes. So I guess before before before wefore we get into one of the funniest things that's happened in maybe twenty years. Um. You do you want to like talk about who you are? Because you are now one of us and I'm very

excited about it. Yeah, I'm one of Yeah, I'm now a podcast Yeah. Um? So who I am? I am a journalist, I guess, uh, and a historian and I wrote a book about the first week of the Spanish Civil War and my PhD is in the history of international anti fascism, building international anti fascist alliances through physical culture, which is very nerdy, but yeah, I love that stuff.

What else? I'm British if that had not been made abundantly clear by my accent, and I live in southern California, which means this is a Now, this episode is a majority Commonwealth episode. Really exciting. We made it? Yeah, well we do in the national anthem in a minute here and we'll all just stand up. Uh so, ex Prime Minister kind of he's not around anymore, is he? No? He is dead as fuck? So all right we should

I guess I guess we should explain who Shenzo Abe is. Yeah, um, okay, if if you want a really really long account of what the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party is, because they are some of the worst people who've ever existed democratic, how can this be? So? The very short version of this is that the Liberal Democratic Party is a party that was founded by Nobusuke Kishi, who is one of history's worst war criminals, person like personally responsible for enslaving hundreds

of thousands of people in China. Uh he's the guy who basically he's the guy who was in charge of the economy of the fascist war machine, like like in Japanjua War two. He was the guy who ran like the sort of fascist puppet state called Manchuqua that was run by Japan after they conquered it. Uh. Real war criminal. Also just like personally raped a like extremely large number of people. I think that, like I was almost never discussed when people talk about him, almost like like a

shockingly high white number. Yeah. It's of sex crimes, it's wild. Yeah. And he's also I mean, he's involved with the Japanese military sex slave program, which you were here referred to as comfort women, and I refused to call the comfort women because that is a fucking horrifying euphemism for again,

a program of military sex slavery. Uh. He also was one of the people who signed off on Unit seven thirty one, which was Japan's chemical weapons testing unit where they fucking like purposely infested, infected and tested chemical weapons on prisoners. Uh. Yeah, he's one of the worst people ever.

And then he got a bunch of CIA backing and so backing from the y Aakasa because the CIA is working with the yakuza on early uh fifty Japan and she's a will basically to force all of the other conservative like people to join his party, and the sort of the merger of the of the Liberal Party, Liberal Party and the Democratic Party is now the Liberal Democratic Party. This is Keishi's party. He founded it, he drags everyone else into it. He does an immense amount of corruption.

He tries to bring fascism back. He narrowly fails. Shinzo Abe is his grandson. Uh the LDP Liberal Democratic Party,

Yeah has Yeah, it sucks. It's like like nothing. The way that I've been thinking about, like how do you explain this to people who don't who don't have like a background in like Japanese like war crime stuff is like imagine if like one of Hitler's generals had like survived World War Two and then the CIA made him made him the prime Minister of Germany and then and he got more fascist because people were saying mean things about his grandpa. He's like, oh, I don't like that

they're calling him bad names. I'm going to get more fascist now, so like ill be abbe himself. He's car He's been carrying out a lot of the same things that that she was trying to do. Kishi was trying to sort of restore the sort of full fascist power of the police. Abe has been doing a whole bunch of shifts of centralizing power in the executive and spatting the police's power should just arrest whoever the funk they want.

Um So. One of one of the other things about Japan is that like legally in their constitution they can't go to war, and like both Kishi and Abbe like this is like they're big fucking things that they want. They want to fully rearm Japan. They want Japan be able to go to war because they want to do the fucking empire again. And you know, so this has led. Yeah,

Abe has been doing that. Um He also the thing he's probably most famous for in terms of like the reasons people think he's bad because he is he's like

just actually a monster. Is he's just like a like unfathomable degree of war crime denial like he he pulled so Japan in the nineties had admitted that they fucking kidnapped and enslaved like an enormous number of people from of people from Korea, people from China, and I think they also did they did in the Philippines and Indonesia too, although there's less sort of coverage of that, and like turn them into military sex slaves, did things to them

that are like, I fucking unspeakable. Um And so the Japanese government the nineties had admitted they did this and apologized for it, and Abe was like, no, funk that that's that's wrong. He's also a part of this group

called Niponka guy, which is like a fascist group. And okay, so this is this is this is according to a US congressional report, what they believe quote Japan should be applauded for liberating musch of East Asia from western colonial powers, that the Night Tokyo War crivate stripe units were illegitimate, and that the killings by Japanese troops through the nineteen thirties seven Nujing Massacre were exaggerated or fabricated. Oh boy. They also openly yeah, yeah, yeah. They they also saw

the nudging denialists. They're they're they're sex slave denialists. They openly call for the restoration of the monarchy and the institution of Shinto as a state religion. Umb Like ab Like has continuously said that the sex slave like did it were like did were there voluntarily? Does another thing that but but but but Hillary Clinton just tweated that Pregns was a champion of democracy and a firm believer that no economy, society, country because achieve its full potential

if you leave women behind. Why you know, she to be fair, to be fair, to be fair, both Abbe and nobody. She did in fact believe in using women

to fuel the economy, just not in that way. He also, there's there's neverthing that so probably these most like famous most controversial thing was So there's the shrine called the um Yasukuni Shrine, which is is the shrine is dedicated to soldiers who like died serving the Japanese emperor and in in this so there's this thing called the Book of Souls that has like lists of names right of just like the other people who died, and a thousand sixty eight of the people who were of the people

in that book are people who were who were convicted of war crimes. And there are also at fourteen Class A war criminals who either died or were executed who are considered martyrs. There and Abde fucking like visited there and like braid and ship and this piste off everyone.

And I mean this is like there are lots of people who have gotten mad and me already for celebrating Abby's death and my, my, my, My official line on this is, if Ab didn't want me to celebrate his fucking death, maybe he shouldn't have celebrated the lives of the people who killed my fucking family, So fuck them. Yeah,

so he's not not not a great dude. The real pack and automatic the every thing we should mention too before we go into sort of like the details of the shooting is that there is an election actually but but but by the time this episode drops, I think the election will have happened, um, where there is a real chance that the Liberal Democratic Party is going to sort of lie just fucking sweep it. Because Liberal Democratic

Party immediately starts to blame me the left for this. Uh, there's a whole bunch of I mean just absolutely horrifying stuff where they're blaming Korean people who live in live in Japan, which if you know anything about Japanese history, when that stuff starts happening like in in In after the Canto earthquake, h a bunch of people just started blaming Koreans for the whole thing, and they fucking literally exterminated almost the entire Korean population in several major Japanese cities.

And so this stuff is very scary. Uh, It's possible that this is going to set off like an incredible right wing lrici of Japanese politics, and there's a chance that this, this this could be the actual thing that like full on triggers Japan like we are being and you know, going back into sort of just being a pure fascist empire. So this is not Yeah, that that part is really bad. The motivation for the assassination is still, at least at time of recording, still slightly unclear, very unclear.

According according to some politics Asians and news media, we do know the suspect is Hyo Kojima, that you can you can infer a little bit fased on. So yeah, there's there's like French politicians and a Greek news channel who are using pictures of video developer Hideo Kojima and passing them off as the shooting suspect, which is really funny.

It is funny pictures of Kachima like inside like a Russian like communist hat fucking thing, pictures of him wearing a joker shirt and standing in front of a Jacobara picture, and they're using this as proof that it's via left wing terrorist and it's actually video game developer Kojiba. It's yeah, So, like, I guess what we know about the actual shooter, Um, we don't know that much. Is a forty two year old guy who was a former veteran of the of

the Japanese Self Defense Force. He was he was a Navy guy, which I guess partially explains why he can shoot a gun. Um, but yeah, the details are really murky. What we've got at time of recording is the Japanese police saying that it wasn't because of a political thing, and that it was because of a group that he was that I was a member of. Who the funk knows what that means. That can mean any number of things. I I'm not going to speculate live on here because

I I don't know. Yeah, but also it was extremely funny and we should we should talk about the weapon that was Yeah, this is why this is one of the reasons why it's extremely funny, and we we should probably gonna hands over to James because James is a bit a bit more of an expert in this type of uh D I Y weapon rate of So what what the fund is going on with this home made gun? Yeah? This ship, Yeah, this ship is fucking this ship. This

is crazy. Um yeah, it's extremely funny. It's extremely funny that all these people with fifty thou followers on Twitter who quote and quote do ocean like immediately label this is a three D printed gun, which is not. It does not look this gun is being held together with duct tape like that. That is that. That is the kind of weapon that we're dealing with you. This is this is a homemade gun, like held together with fucking duct tape. It is extremely It is like he got

blowed up by an electric blunderbuss. It is. Yeah, like there could very well be three D printed parts in like around it. But it is. But it's not. It's not looking. It's it's it's not like it's not like an f DC nine or anything. Um, it's it's a

weird like electronic pipe duct taped together shotgun. Yeah, it's I think perhaps if people don't understand, we should like break down how firearms work broadly and and how this one works specifically, right, So, like, and there's no reason why you should be familiar with this, but like you need something to explode, something to make it explode, and something to go at the end, and a way to

make sure it only goes in one direction. Right. Uh. So what this character has done is seemingly it's yeah, it's like a blunderbuss or a musket in that it seems to be like muzzle loaded from the front. Uh. And uh, I'm looking at it now and it really is just covered in duct tape. I tweeted a picture of it. It's a gay. Yeah, this ship is is very old fashioned. He seems to have made his own powder to like it was very very smoky, which you can do. I'm not gonna tell you how to do it,

but it's the thing that is possible. And so essentially from what I'm seeing here, it looks like it's like a piso electric ignition which then ignites this homemade powder that he had. Uh. And then he's put something in a shotgun means it doesn't have rifling, right, so it doesn't imparts been on the projectile. So he's basically got two pipes a pierzo electric ignitis, some homemade powder, and

then he could have put nails in there. He could have put a castlet ball, anything, bolts, And this wasn't the only homemade weapon he had. The police rated his house. He had a whole bunch of supplies that looks it looks out of like it looks like it's out of like fallout or something. It is like there was one like blunderbust that had nine different barrels, all duct tapes together.

It's like exposed wiring, exposed circuit boards, like it's it's like it's extremely JANKI yeah, it's like I'm not entirely sure that the nine barrel one the central barrel isn't touched by the by the structural duct tape, and I'm not sure that it wouldn't have moved in one direction or the other when he fired it. In Yeah, I think that's a that's like a yoga. I can't he's put something on the He's made a butt stock with that one, so like he can be shoulder it, I guess.

And I don't know if that's like a piece of tire or what. But yeah, yeah, this is not a precision weapon. Wooden boards. There's like some type of like reflect It looks almost like a smartphone's attached to some of the wiring, or like there's something reflective screen that looks like it's like like an electronic control box, which

could could just be like an old smartphone or something. Yeah, I wondered if he could, because that's what you use for for an improvised explosive device, right, it's a it's a cell phone to actuate it. So it could be maybe he had a plan to just put it near where are they was going to be and then call it and then that would be well, I mean, this is a this is a much better assassinated it has

the stock, So I'm guessing. I'm guessing would he beginning to hold it because otherwise there's no reason to put the butt stock there? Yeah, but who knows, Like this guy is operating on a different level. We have no way to know what he was saying gig at least at least at least not at the moment. What he was thinking was I want to kill shinzo Abe with my pipes and planks. He did it. He's exactly whatever you think of him. This man didn't successfully kill Shenzo

Abbe with a gun held together by duct tape. It's it's pretty impressive, Like I think the everything about this is kind of impressive. Is a he so so he there were there were two barrels on it that each fired, and he managed to hit him from like a pretty good distance away. Like we don't have there's there's no video that directly well at least not that's out yet

that's like directly shows the shooting. We have a lot of video because ib is giving a speech, right, so we have a bunch of video of like filming Abbe and it's and because of where it is coming from off screen, like that was a pretty good distance. And as best I can tell, he only hit Abbe. I don't I don't think. I haven't seen any reports of anyone else getting hit. So I yeah, impressed. That is Actually that is actually kind of slightly surprising. Yeah, there was,

there was no one else hit. It's like he just got the guy he was. It's like that that that is genuinely pretty rare, and assassinations like like basically like a homemade blunderbust cannon was like surprisingly surprisingly controlled that accurate. Yeah, I just found a picture of it with the Cyberpunkies seven logo underneath you, which is pretty great. Yeah, that's rule. Yeah he did manage to cause it kind of just put like a large, massive lead ball in it, I guess,

and yeah, whatever, because I don't think it. I don't think it was one thing. So that one of the one thing I could say about the that we guys we know about the EMMA was that like there they were like a bunch of like they're they're one of the much of the reports about the injuries that he suffered. We're talking about like he got hit in the back, but they're also holes in his neck. So my guess from a lot of there's a lot of blood from a lot of different places. Yeah, I guess there wasn't

one thing then, But I don't know. Everything that is kind of interest about this is like the extent to which Okay, so like he was like it was like very clearly dead, like people people had like reported him at the scene is having no vitals and they were like, yeah, his heart stopped and they helicoptered at him to like

what Tokyo, Yeah, tokyo. But the Japanese government did a very good job of making sure the press had like no information, and so there was just like there was like many many many hours where they were like pretending that he wasn't dead and like wouldn't confirm that he was dead. And he's like this, this man is clearly dead as ship. Like he has gotten blown up by a blunderbus like in the back. His next gone. He's like, I mean, he's not not gone like his his next

his next been shot. His heart is stopped and they just sort of like keep it there for for a pretty impressively long long time. And that's the only thing we we know very little about what happened and why. Um, the press has been keeping the government's be keeping a very tight lid on information about the shooting so far. Yeah, I guess we want to pivot into the gun control side of this. Um, I guess. Okay, So the I

mean like there was a mayor shot a few years ago. Yeah, just Yaka is a guy shot the mayor of Nagasaki, so like, and like there's a there's been a lot of people like journalists and people who are like supposedly japan experts who are like, oh, this is really rare in Japanese culture is like no, it's not people get assassinated, like like the Japan has a very low rate of gun violence, but of that gun violence and the number of politicians going to get asassinated it is like unbelievably high.

And you know, I mean like that there have been there, There's been a lot of us. I mean like Abe's like grandfather, it was a yakishi like got stabbed right after we left office, like and he only didn't die because the guy who stabbed him claimed that he wasn't trying to kill him, he was just stabbing him, which is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard. Like I don't know, I suspect some yaks of bullshit was going on there. But yeah, like Japan has assassinations. Um it.

There's there's this weird thing where people think Japan is this place that's like like no violence happens, like it's a completely orderly society. It's like all this all this like weird stuff famously past Japan. Yeah, it's like like this this is a country, like this is a country where people like like even in like the seventies and like if through the eighties, people would charge like rb

convoys with sticks and like fight them. Like. This is a country that like like people, they have a sort of ape ship switch that just like, Yeah, they have their fair share of like cults that do acts of violence like this, fair share of political streamists that do as violence like this, and like everywhere else in like

like everywhere else in the world, stuff just happens sometimes. Yeah, I think it is interesting that like Japan has extremely strict gun control, right, like licenses, test background checks, prohibitions on most people learning and carrying. But like it's kind of interesting that this is more of a like a First Amendment question, I guess in American terms, right, Like, if you're on the internet enough, I'm sure it looks like this person has just googled how to make gun

and like this is what came up. And so I think it's kind of fascinating that that this person has been like aside from their possible connection to any criminal networks, but like, I know the Yakuza were selling guns to people in me and Mark pretty recently, so they have

access to this. Yeah, and like the mayor who got whacked by yaks, a guy like if the Arkansas is going to do like, I don't know if yours is going to do a killing like they like they they have access to web, they would use a real gun, were abductive together. Okay, so like probably, but also like I wouldn't completely rule it out because I wouldn't rule out them just finding some guy and doing this thing the FBI does and it's like, hey, you're gonna go

do an attack now, Like it wouldn't. It wouldn't surprise me if if they did that as like a plusable an ideally thing, but like we don't know. Um, I still don't think we can rule out that head out. Kajima is the mastermind behind this, um and it's all I know, right, it's it's just employed to play his next game. UM, just have to add a few like nonsense names to the all the all the people involved, like Blunderbustman, and then it's just it's it's easy, easy.

But yeah, it's fascinating that this person was seemingly like maybe had other plans or had tried several other like craft firearms, and settled on this one. But yeah, they have access to a lot of pipes, that's for sure. M did you guys see the yuk as a guy who was arms dealing to me and Ma. No no oh for fucking wild. So he was like extensively stung

by the Feds. To this guy, he was yuck as a He was part of it like a ongoing sting operation for like several years where he was selling like basically like trading guns for drugs, trading guns to buy drugs. He was selling to a couple of groups in Me and Ma. He was two groups in like the Tamil region and a couple of other people and he uh, he was at least one of the people he thought was a buyer was actually a fed And they've captured all of these amazing conversations where they call the guns

like cake and ice cream. Like one of the one of the things in the in the criminal complaint, it's a picture of him just with like a a law like an anti tank weapon and he's just like giving it like the V sign, and he's wearing these like yellow aviators and a leather jacket. Like. The way they arrested him was at a steakhouse I think either in New York or New Jersey, but like they lured him into a steakhouse meeting and then he got busted by

the FEDS. But yeah, these guys were trafficking like serious stuff like surface to our missiles some things. They have access to some pretty heavy equipment. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty old Like the octicer has been sort of like I don't know how you describe it, like a kind of like para arm of the Japanese state in a lot of ways for a very very long time. Like there are there have been like the acts of

people with basically special forces training. Um, they they at one point like kidnapped and killed the Empress of Korea as part of like a thing to like justify starting a war. So they are they're very well hooked up.

I I I don't know, it's still unclear to be because like that's the obviously everything again, like they're the LDP has a lot of Yakuza connections because kind of okay, partially kind of everything is, but partially also because the Accusa were like I sort of founding like political block of the l d P in the first place. So who knows, Like LDP people have gotten like attacked by Akas people before. It could be that it could be something else. We sort of just don't know yet. Um, yeah,

there's nothing identifying this guy. Like I'm just looking at a picture of him, and there's nothing particularly sort of identifying his clothing or anything like that. Yeah, I guess. I guess that's the deficians of extremely critical support to Hideo Kajima and all of the other freedom fighters. Oh, I guess I guess we could talk a little bit about the international response to this, Yeah, because people have

no idea what's ethnic. Yeah, I mean, like so like all the Americans are sorry of like are doing the all American liberals sort of doing like, oh my god, he was a good guy. It's like, no, he wasn't. This guy was a monster. Um okay, I will say this, both the Chinese and the Korean embassies are being surprisingly diplomatic about it, as in, no one they haven't no one has actively insulted him yet social media wise. Likely

that's a good move for like inter country relationship. But like, I okay, like try Japanese relationships with Korea, with South Korea and North Korea are really bad, And a lot of the reason why they're really bad is specifically because of Chang Sawabe and because of all of his bullshit. They're happy, but they're not gonna like Rubb it. I mean, it's it's not clear to me that they wouldn't have done this if this had happened to like the two

thou Tangs, Like these guys really hate each other. Um. Yeah, there's been some sort of like people people are trying to do a Taiwan angle on this because Obb is like a Taiwan supporter, But I don't Yeah, I don't think there's actually that much. The Peo people want this to have much more geo political like significance than it probably actually will. Um yeah, yeah, well it's meantime. Yeah, fascist is dead. That's always funny. It happened Uh yeah,

it did in fact happen here. Well it happened over there, but you know what I mean, Um, it could happen here. Sure, statistically we are we are about to do Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't need to to deductate model in America. No, with the amount of firearms here. It is kind of a little is sometimes a little surprising how little stuff like this actually happens. There's obviously a lot of work that goes into like preventing it, but but still sometimes it's it's kind of it's kind of shocking. Um yeah,

Like I think, I think. I think if you look at the last twenty years, I think more Japanese politicians have been assassin to the American politicians. Like I'm trying to think of an American politician because because they do a lot more American politicians and a lot of guns they killed. They killed when they went after Gabby Giffordge they killed someone, I think. But yeah, I don't. I'm trying to think of anyone else other than that, um not in recent memory. The guy who showed Reagan is

now touring. Yeah, but he didn't even kill him. That's not even assassination. That's just an asassination attempts, like a very bouched one. Yeah. Yeah. Cross that crossover between John Hinckley and Hideo Kajima. It's possible that will be the game. I'm just gonna keep referring to the suspect of Hideo Kajima. It's worth noting that like he did have armed God, so were um God's present that you can see their

guns in their health series. They take down the person who shot him, but they they were not on their a game that day. Yeah, that you can see in the video there's like one of the guys I think, trying to like get a bulletproof briefcase in between Abbe and the guy and just doesn't work. It just it just it just fails completely. They had one job they didn't yeah, like the operation meat Shield. They weren't just on, they weren't just not on their A game. They completely

failed that. They're over. Ye. Yes, it's not like the guy even tried to run away. He just like stood there and got arrested. Yeah. Yeah, he did not really put much of a did not put up much of a fight. Yeah, yeah, he know he didn't. Yeah, he he went down pretty fast. I guess he went with like this small again, maybe to conceal it, because it looks like he was pretty close. Yeah, that is that

is very likely. Well, a very dark day for democracy, um, dark day for feminism um, as Hillary Clinton said, Uh anyway, yeah, yeah. Luckily they have Rama Manual as ambassad to a pan to comfort them in its difficult the the the l d P are the only people on earth who does who actually deserve Rama Manual. So look, if if you if if you didn't want to have to deal with Rama manual. You should have taken all that's your money?

Is this this is now their curse? Well, I'm sure we'll talk more about these types of homemade weapons and all that kind of kind of stuff in the future because it is. It is interesting, and you know, places where places where like actual firearms are hard are harder to get. We're seeing more and more ship like this popping up. Yeah. Yeah, and that'll that will definitely be worth be worth getting into along with three D printed weapons. All right, anything else to add? Does that? Does that?

Does that? Do it? Yeah? I think that's a wrap. All right. Well, follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, But Happened Here pod and cool Zone Media, Uh see you next time, and critical support to Hideokachima. It Could Happen Here as 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.