The Ukraine Episode: Featuring Boba Fett

that does have something to it. But I don't know, man, there's an internal rhythm. I think I think we can make it work. It flows to the beat of jazz like a cosmic gumbo like it is like a cosmic Gubbo Grrison's here today. Hello, hey Cody, You're so glad to see them? God, how did you? How did you feel about the Bubba Fette shows? The Bubba Here's how I feel about the Bubba Fette show. Um, well, the Mandalorian I would say it's like pretty good in terms

of direction. It was trying to take the star war. Um Boba Fette is an interesting show because me, Cody uh from let's say fifteen years ago would have uh immediately watched it as soon as it was put up, and probably watched it a second time and watched all of it. Um, I haven't seen a second of the Boba Fette show. Good for You, Good for You. It's good, is it? I liked it because it's basically just more of the Mandalorian It is not show, which is nice. I don't care about Boba Fette. I just like I

like it's fine. I like it's like it's kind of a it's kind of a wonky space Western thing, which is all all that I wanted from it. I'm not going to watch it a second time. That's when you want from I watched. I watched it. I enjoy the fights, I the characters are They're all actors that I like seeing do stuff. And I don't I don't have like strong feelings about it. The show is a list strong feelings. Well, it doesn't that I comprehensively enjoy it. See that's the

thing about it. Like that's why I haven't watched it. It's like I have no feeling about it. It has it has no feeling. It is so sanitized and corporate, and the show is so uninterested in Boba Fett as a character because no one should be interested in him because he's boring. Ye, he's not any counterpoint from someone he has hasn't seen The Mandalorian or Botha, and he's not gonna Sometimes you just need something whatever to put

on with good fights. That's that's kind of enough actors, and especially when the world is looking like it is now. I have not watched or cared about I have not cared about a Star Wars in a long time. I didn't care for any of the new movies. I did not care for any of the prequels. Um, but I've liked some of the comics and the Bubba fet shows fun I like, I enjoyed, I enjoyed it. Uh, it's good, It's not for you, Robert. Yeah, I would enjoy a Doctor Offer TV show, a Doctor after TV show, and

the night. The thing that I liked most about the Bubba Fete show was black her Santin showing up, which made me think like, oh, we might actually get the thing that I want most. Well, so yeah, that's a thing. Like with a show like this, I'm like, well, don't do a Boba Fete show. Just do like literally tales for the past Star Wars anthology series much better, I think, But I feel like they did that. They just stuck the name Boba Fette on the top that the clicks

and I don't but like care you're Disney, You're on Disney. Plus, uh, you're doing Star Wars. You don't need to get the clicks. Like it, like people will be there no matter what, no matter what you do. Here's my attitude. The fact that Disney launched what they claimed was a Boba Fette show and then in the middle of the series and turned into the episodes not feature Boba Fette is the bravest decision I've seen them make yet in the Star Wars realm. And very funny. It's really funny through it's

literally just becomes the Mandalorian season whatever. Like he's not he's not in the it's just Pedro Bascal doing ship episode. Yeah, there's that's very funny. I thought funny. It turns into a show with and get I like Mark Cambell and that's what the show is. Here's what I like to see. I didn't like the c G I Mark Cammell stuff. I'll go that was the most off putting part of it. Tom Garrison. Yeah, I thought the number one. If you're going to do c g I mark Camill's face to

make him look young. Okay, I'll take the argument because like he's a big part of the Star Wars expanded universe. Just let Mark Hambill do the voice. Don't. Don't get weird with the greatest voice actor alive. Use him. Do the thing that other things have done, which is get the actor to do it and then d age him like the try, you know, like, if you're gonna do the weird fucking you know, the deep fake thing, at

least use his real voice. But that is that is the real problem is that it's also a deep fake voice via the program Reespeecher, and it's not good so emotionless, right, it's just like, yeah, it's a robot. It's a robot

trying to Yeah, And that part I didn't like. But what I did like about it is that in terms of its construction, like it's bizarre for a TV show to be a stably based around a guy and then he disappears for half of the series, But it's not weird for a comic book like comic it's true and that that's kind of what I thought might be, that we might be heading towards something kind of neat where they actually are building up to just doing what they've

been doing pretty well. Like the latest run of Star Wars comics have been good. And I said, again as someone who's not particularly a Star Wars fan, like I like all that ship, the Darth Vader ones and stuff, like, there's some good stuff in there, um, and it's my hope that like they'll just kind of keep spinning towards that and they'll get really weird with it. Like there were some moments of like cad Bane showing up and ship it's like without wow, okay, you guys willing to

get kind of strange. Um. So it was as it was also fun when he did a drug trip with the Tuscans when he took the best episode was episode two when he just did drugs with the Tuscans and that was actually incredibly rad. There's some fun ship in there. And my must to you, as this Cody, if you watch the Boba Fetts show, you will be frustrated at

some points, you will be entertained at other points. You will probably not be thinking about the looming specter of global conflict for most of the time that you that's so anyone can ask for from specifically Star Wars to like no one's asking you to make like amazing art speaking of global conflict before we pivot to the news. Um, I just this has nothing to do with Star Wars either. But it's a really good show that I know, and I want you to watch it. I want you want

to watch it. And it's called Patriot, And thank God Prime, I thought you were going to see Euphoria. No, I wasn't going to do that. I truly think that you would all enjoy the show Patriot on Amazon Prime. And I've heard it's a show on Amazon Prime. Um, it's great. Um, it's got only got two seasons outstanding motherfucking cast um. And I don't know how much to say to not

spoil it. But it's basically like a guy works in the government and his son is a not secret service beat is off the book jobs for the government, and but he's all fucked up from one trip and he has to go straight into another one to intercept some cash. Blah blah blah, and its spirals out. But it's very funny. It's so funny, and it's heartbreaking and well written and full of action. And it's also like a lovely family story. There's like a brother relationship that's very special. It's really

it's good. Nobody watches it and is disappointed. I will, I will check that out. It's good to have a good show to watch when times are like this, if you need to like just that that sounds fun. I have been people all over my timeline. I've been talking about Euphoria, which my favorite thing about this. I don't I know nothing about this show. I haven't watched it. I don't plan to watch it. But the very fun part is that, like all of the commentary for weeks

has been like, oh, it's high school kids. They're dealing with like drugs and you know, one of them's trans and like it's all this, like you know, it seemed like a normal, like basic basic stuff. And then someone's people started playing a clip from apparently the last episode where Okay, you watched the show, huh, I do watch it, iry see, I have no idea what I watch. That's not a secret that I watched television. Cody as another spoiler, Boba feats he gets out of the hole, he gets

out of the pit. Pit. We started the show saying I've not seen the boat show yet. The class getting out of a pit, getting out, he got knocked into accidently classic feet, like a yeah, you know, I I think classic Boba Fett is just falling into the hole. And now we're we're expanding his character because he's able to get out of a whole. The end of the Hero's journey, crawled out of the hole. Do you read? And then he crawled out of the hole. Should we pivot? Yeah,

we should probably pivot. Probably. We've we've literally gone like probably a year or more without talking about TV, but now everything is so bad that we just talked about for eleven minutes. Last time we talked about it, it was it was well, it was gay Superman was the last time. That's right, god man. That was like forty seven moral panics ago. It was at least I forgot we had gay Superman. Yeah, they were the days Superman ruined society by having a gay son. Look where we

are now. Things have gotten worse. So we had a gay Superman and then Vladimir Putin started a war because of it. Because of it, I mean, he did give that speech a few months ago about wokeness and PC culture in the West. So, yeah, I mean NATO stands for nobody ever takes no no as taste. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I was going to try to tie it in, but there's no way I've got I've got nothing. What how are we all doing? What's going on in

the world were pretty bad stuff. Patient You're like, shouldn't we talk about like what we're here for? Yeah, I don't know. It's been a hard week. I didn't even know how to start talking about everything, you know. So I think the thing that is most notable to me is that there are two, Like there's what's actually happening in the war, and then there's the Russian propaganda, which is fairly incoherent and not particularly because of like how rapidly a bunch of ship was d platformed. There's very

little visibility of that um in the West. And then there's the Ukrainian propaganda, which is most of what people who are listening this are seeing on their timeline. Which doesn't mean that like it's not none of it's happening or anything, but it does mean that like a very skewed view of what's happening on the ground is being

passed two people because largely that it feels good. And like again, there's all sorts of like there's all sorts of there's always mixes of truth in with it, like for example, the you know, you now have the thing that happens anytime a person in a position of power doesn't funk up, which is that a chunk of libs have gotten real weird and sexual about it, very very horny, and that I I felt because I you know, I there's a lot of really valid criticisms of Zelinski, particularly

prior to the outbreak of fighting. Among other things, one thing that is, he repeatedly kind of downplayed what they believed as the risk of a full scale Russian invasion um to the point of like really arguing with a lot of the U S intelligence, which you know, I think there's an argument trying to keep it from panic and everything. But at the same time, people needed to leave. Yes, there's a lot of civilians who did not adequately get

to prepare for what was going to happen. And and again I think that's a really important point to not just like the fact that they've had Russian military and on their periphery for a long time. You know, they were invaded not that long ago and eight years ago, I mean, but you know, it happened, and they've been you know, Russians have build up, weeks have build up. But I think, from what I'm understanding, just people didn't quite they didn't until it happened. They didn't believe that

it would happen. And there's so much disinformation that always rounds were so much disinformation surrounding this. It's not the kind of I'm not gonna like condemn Zalinski is a human being forever for that failure of his administration, but it is a failure and it deserves to be noted as such. UM. And there have been some other things

that are really questionable. One of them is this is probably not questionable from a military standpoint, You could argue with the right thing to do, but it's a deeply

morally questionable act. Which is the forced conscription of every adult male under the age of sixty UM, which is like to some really brutal moments, particularly at the border, as families try to flee and they are separated from their their sons and husbands, UM, which is again in the long view of history, when we're looking at this years down the line. Depending on how this all goes, people may say, well, this was you know that, this was what what allowed Ukraine to eke out a victory.

This was necessary, you know, just like so many horrible things that had to be done by the Allied forces in World War Two wound up being necessary. Or we may say well this fed a lot of young men into a meat grinder, a lot of families without kids,

and it didn't affect the the old. We can't know, right, these are things that are worth discussing and worth being potentially critical about, but we also have to acknowledge as like, well, nobody, no nobody ever makes perfect or even mostly good decisions in a war. I think that that would be fair to argue, like, you can look at fd impossible calculations inspiring moments of FDR from World War Two while he was like locking Japanese people up in internment camps. You know, um,

the same thing with you know. So I'll give us a scale a lot of credit for staying and repeatedly putting his life on the line and refusing to do what I think nearly every other world leader would have done, which is get the funk out of there and hide in a mansion and you know, Germany or somewhat and try to direct this from a distance, which is by far the norm. And the fact that he didn't speaks better of him as a person than I can probably say of any other national elected leader on the planet

at the moment um. And it's certainly caught the world's attention if it wasn't paying attention before. And you know, the morning is weird and I hate I hate it when that happens. I hate it because it makes me feel like, you know, I made some posts being like this is something that should be law to the specific act, you know, refusing to leave that is, you know, an

act of courage that we should appreciate. And then when a bunch of people get really horny about it, it's like, well should I even are you feeding into that by just like commenting on this thing that is legitimately good And these are kind of there's a lot of It's the same thing with like, are you feeding into unreasonable and unrealistic optimism about the course of the war if you celebrate specific kinds of victories, what happened of the

broader struggle, what happens, what we see happening. I mean, Garrison, you put some examples in this doc I'm sure, but this this idea that it's like a movie playing out and he's are unlikely hero the guy with this game, I know, but like because he's got this storied past and it reads like a play. It is very funny that he played the piano with his testicles on stage at one point. That's that's that's great and fine, but

also we don't need a New York party. A New York Post article saying we share discast Jeremy Renner as Lensky in Fantasy Ukraine. It makes me sick and everyone everyone doing that should be flung into the sea. We're like watching dies, but thousands of people. People are dying, like vacuum mombs are being detonated in crowded city blocks. Um, some of the most terrifying weapons that exist on this planet. Yeah, you can. You cannot stand precedents like you don't need to.

Like you can. You can recognize that certain leaders are doing things that other people maybe too cowardly to do. But you can recognize that without getting weirdly horny about it because because the drive of hero worship specifically towards

politicians and political leaders like is not good. Like, there's lots of other people who are putting their lives on the line way more, but we default always too politicians and political leaders, um and as and as as cool as it maybe that he's sticking around like this is a purposeful like like propaganda move like it and it's good, like it's it's it's very well done, but it does have that dual purpose and and and I think part of why one thing you have to clarify when we

talked about it is a propaganda move. Propaganda doesn't just mean or even necessarily in a case like this, primarily

mean something directed outward. It's it's this. The thing that I think is probably most successful about what Zelinski is doing is that it's it's having and from everything I can tell a significant morale impact on soldiers on the ground just knowing that, like, well, they would probably feel less bad about the fact that many of them are going to die if the guy who was ostensibly leading them was hiding in a mansion in Berlin or something, you know, um, which is understandable and and as a

as a military choice, as a tactical choice, is a strategic choice is really more of a strategic than a tactical choice. UM, I think you probably lee with what Zelinski has done, get more people who are willing to fight harder and do things like what what we're seeing in um um Mariopol right now, where you've got the entire city now surrounded and cut off by an overwhelming

number of Russian troops. And there's a pretty good chance that every single Ukrainian soldier there, if they don't surrender, is going to die fighting along with a funckload of civilians. And maybe people wouldn't be willing to do that if Zelinski had not made the example. And but that and that that also the question that we cannot answer until this is over is will that alter things? Has he made a decision by getting by increasing you know, doing

these things that have improved fighting spirit so much? Is that going to help Ukraine fight off this aggression or is it just going to mean that when everything is settled, a hell of a lot more Ukrainians are dead and we you don't know, this is not a kind of thing you can condemn or applod it's a tactic, you know, and and it's not a tactic that we know the efficacy of yet um from I guess from a moral level,

I can applaud fighting for your homeland. I think that's fighting for your homes against aggression is a good thing. But like as it does it, is it going to work or is it just going to be more bodies on the dirt? I don't know. Well, we need to take a quick break and then we'll come back and keep having this conversation together. Everything get back, And that's

what we are. We are politely respectfully. We are a politely respectfully back So yeah, outside of you know, we've we've I think discussed Zelinsky to the extent that is useful for you. Just like keep the homosexual ship to yourself. Yeah, and if he dies, it's fine to mourn him. It's fine to like respect the choices he's making because I think he's handling this as well as a wartime leader possibly could, given everything he is capable of going and

everything that we know I don't actually have. Like, it's fine to say that you don't. You don't need to talk about him being hot. That's not helping, and it's really basically disrespectful actually, and it's it starts intersecting with like the fantasy Ukraine invasion film type idea. It's not the numbers of people are going to die and have

died already, you know, it's it's it's not okay. I wanted to respond to one thing that you had said that we've been talking about right before the break, if they should have surrendered or if they should surrender versus how many people are going to die and making that decision. I think it's important to note that, like this is this whole thing is so fucked because it's very clear that even if they do surrender, there's nothing about this

that will be peaceful. People will continue to die, there will be uprising, the gay people that will be massacred with civilian The civilians are not going to stop making Molotov cocktails. They're not gonna like just walk peacefully into this. So either way, this is unfathomable bloodshed. You know, this, This is a situation a guy who's been handed a

nightmare and a country that's been handed a nightmare. And there were a lot of points at which things could have been done to stop what we're seeing right now from happening um, beginning much further back than eight years ago, which is when the Russians invaded Ukraine initially, um, and nothing was done. You know, nobody, nobody did anything, and

it's internationally nobody did anything. And if you want to talk about like the moral culpability of the United States or of NATO, it's in the fact that Putin number one went up in charge at all, which had a lot to do with US decisions that were made to r e Boris yelts In. It's the fact that a number of of Russian aggressive moves and backing of of dictators in a variety of countries around the world, particularly area where Russians tested weapons and tact experience, nothing was done.

Nothing was done about Czechnia when they leveled gros ni Um, nothing was done. When when they invaded Ukraine eight years ago. And when you have a guy like Putin and nothing keeps being and no one pushes back effectively, at least over and over again, they keep grabbing more and more, and um, we are seeing the result. It's this thing I talked about when when Turkey, you know, moved in

the northeast Syria. Um. And it's this thing I talked about a lot, because there's been this huge problem on the left of folks who have decided that, like this is a fight in any sort of struggle where the US and Russia can be opposed, they should be on

Russia's side for vaguely anti imperialistic reasons. And and this kind of has been extended and for years was extended to it's it's part of why international support for the Arab Spring collapsed, and it's why you have these people who you know, stand Bashar al Assad as a socialist here or whatever the funk, these these gray zone scum fucks. And when you you cannot let a dictator mass murder people, because it never stops there, it'll spread. It's the same

as ignoring cancer cells in your body. And what we are seeing in Ukraine and these threats that are these fears everyone has that are growing now that this is going to get nuclear. Uh, the seeds of this were sown, I mean much further back than you know, the start of the Syrian Civil War. But the Syrian Civil War was a major factor in all of this. And you can't just keep again at this point, there's no good solutions right every every and we'll talk a bit about

that later. Every possible resolution to this is real ugly, and every possible tactic to resist what Russia's doing is

real ugly and very problematic. There was a time when that would not necessarily have been the case, but we all just sat on this ship unless you're you know, someone who was fighting in the street against Assad and somebody who was, you know, resisting Russian aggression, and there's somebody and you know, the fact that not to be entirely Russia centric, the fact that the way in which the United States invaded Iraq has had massive impact on

how the Russians proceeded in Ukraine. Um, and it's a big part of why so many people were willing to buy the idea that number one, all of the what the State Department was saying about the Russian invasion, all of this intelligence was was flawed and nonsense. Like the fact that so many people on the left believe that is understandable in part because there was a time in our immediate past when they lied a shipload about stuff

like that, and that's consequences were tremendous. So there's a lot of You can't trust your government, You can't trust what they're saying. Yeah, decades and decades in tech. Yeah, it is um fuck at all. How don't say and it't me saying this. Um, it is very frustrating to watch to talk about. I mean what I'm about to say. I'm not suggesting that we should be invading the United States, should be coming in on you know, the white Horse.

I understand what's at stake here, unders there's no He also knows that we've got a nuclear device pointed right at him, but he doesn't seem to care. He's not like some rational actor. We're not going to start sacrifice with Russia, but he could start. He could deploy tactical

nukes and see what happens. Like, he is a dice rolling guy, and that gives him the power in this situation because he can conceivably and realistically threatened, Hey I'll get nuclear if you guys move troops in directly, you know, um, letting him do what he wants. Um. Yeah, And we're throwing out sanctions and stuff, which is a deeply questionable

in a number of ways. Um well yeah, but uh yeah, I mean this is but the like This is what happens when you kind of seed all sort of initiative to the authoritarians, and when you do authoritarian ship yourself often enough that like there's no reason for anyone to

trust you above them. There was a period of time, I think after World War Two, in the period of time after the end of the Cold War where there were real opportunities for an international system that would have made it a lot harder for dictators to do the kind of ship that's being done now. But all that also would have been an international system where again, for example, the United States would not have been able to invade Iraq.

We right, there's so many instances of just like we we pushed this envelope in our own way for so many yes, absolutely that it's like, well, how can we what do we do now? We we made sure that the bottle was open and so that we could do it, and um, yeah, you have to be willing to acknowledge that and see that otherwise you don't see the shape of the problem adequately without letting that be the end

of your analysis. Because also the fact that the US did all of this fucked up ship and still does fucked up ship does not matter to people in Kharkiev who are being subjected to thermobaric artillery right now. Um, and that is the problem that we have the ability to do something about right now as a as a species, I guess, um. And so then the question becomes like, well, what what what could make the situation? What is the least awful way for this awful situation to potentially resolve?

And I think that's kind of the thing to discuss next, and and it's it's very much muddled, and it kind of depends on there's a lot of um, you know, to quote one of the guys responsible for this situation, there's a lot of known unknowns, right and then you know, you never know the unknown unknowns are I actually do like fuck him, But I don't think that's a useless thought schema to go into something. But like, what what

are the unknown unknowns? Is worth asking. And one of the biggest ones, maybe the biggest one in the situation is how solid is Putin's actual grip on power? You know, what, what are the odds of a palace? Who we can see? Last I checked something like people arrested in several Russian cities in protests since the start of the war, which is enormous for I think it's an enormous number of people, given how illegal any kind of protest against this sort

of thing is in Russia. Um, And it seems to be growing the can it ever, Is it even theoretically possible for it to grow to such a level that it threatens the stability of the state where I have no way of No one has any way of knowing that to a point of certainty, that seems unlikely. I

think most people who know Russia's say. The thing that is more possible, not that it's likely, but it's more or possible, would be the term they use as a palace coup, right, which is people around Putin not being willing to deal with the consequences, economic and otherwise of this invasion and to some extent either minimizing him or

taking him out of power. And there's some reasons to believe this is possible, including according to some reports at least he's kind of had really interesting response to COVID, shall we say, and has been hiding away from basically everybody, um, which would tend to suspect that maybe he's more atomized kind of from from a lot of people, and maybe there's more room for these people, for folks who who might otherwise have been too much under his sight to

like make some moves. It's possible that the perception is that he's in a sort of a weak state or something by the restation or whatever. But we just don't know how realistic that is, right, certainly not something you can bet on, you know. It's it's the kind of thing where if if it happens, everyone will be kind of surprised and kind of not surprised at the same time. It will be like, oh, I didn't real lies this was possible, but also well, of course it might have

been bought. You know, we're there, right, and there's nothing you can do with that hope sort of space where like literally, I mean not literally, but like pretty much anything is possible. There's no way to predict the next you know, twenty four hours, little in twelve hours or anything like that, and so it's like this sort of thing you have to wait and see. We don't know what's real, what's false, what to what information to trust.

And that's partly why I think that, like it's so easy for people to get stuck in that like, oh, it's like a movie. Who's going to play this guy? Because like there's a sense of helplessness because we're not, like we can't influence the events really. UM. You can like donate to places you know are helping, UM and things like that, but like it's just we're just here

watching TV. UM. And I think that also that's sort of like the past However many years have like let us up to this point where like it just seems like you're disconnected, but you want to feel connected. And it's just like it is like I say, one thing that you can do, I mean, just reiterating what we've said, don't do what we're saying, you know, and be aware of what's of not being just not reacting immediately to

something like double check it look at who ye. Like this is rampant right now, Like literally you're sharing the bad information any Twitter is something that is how you should go about your day, especially saying I'm saying, I'm just saying that, like that is a problem every single day on Twitter, especially if there's like a disaster like a hurricane, a hurricane, any sort of disaster situation, or

like a mass shooting UM. And the most during a war h like because not only is there they're just bad actors doing like with misinformation, but like, yeah, there's gonna be propaganda from everywhere. You need to sift through it because it's very easy to get caught up in it, Like wow, Ghost of Kia, if we're gonna like very cool, it's like yeah in theory, but like wait a minute, and it's going to be a mix of propaganda just

like you know. One of the most viral initial story from this was those those border guards on Snake Island who you know said which absolutely told a Russian warship

to go funk themselves. And the initial report was that they had all died, and now it seems like they did they all didn't, yeah, and they didn't, Like there's no way to know, like what was that propaganda initially from the government or were they just like, well, we didn't, like we just lost contact with these field that one feels less like propaganda as a story that we all

reacted to before having all the information. One point I'll make is that while this isn't the first war during social media, of course not um this kind of thing, everyone's paying attention to it. What's happening and invasion of another country. We have social media, we have videos on the ground. It's it's not like the story takes happens and then five days later we're reading it in a newspaper.

We're seeing it happen in real time, and so we are learning things and relatively real time, and that changes. So the place was bombed everyone you maybe think everyone's dead. It became almost like propaganda because we're all watching, we're waiting, and we're looking, and it becomes this hero's story and we start to martyr them immediately as you don't know what's going to happen to them. There's lives are in danger. Still. Also think about propaganda, is that like it doesn't some

of these propaganda doesn't automatically mean that it's false. It's not like it doesn't need to be a falsehood. It doesn't need to be a complete lie to be propaganda. Like this event, it is like sake, I isn't think, Okay, that happened. They said this. That's all we know. We can use that piece of information for like like we're talking we're talking about earlier with morale or just like

general propaganda usage. It's not a lie. Um, it's just being used for some purpose samply with Ghost of KIAV in terms of it being yeah, this this tool that people in power are using to raise morale, and the truthfulness of it honestly does not even matter because of the way it's being used as a tool, because yeah, we we can you can point to all of the things being like, no, all the pictures that people are posting are actually of French helmet test photo shoot simulator

and all and all all the videos are from video games that are all cut. And this has been going on, by the way, for years. It's happening for a long ton of this stuff happening, Like the Russia in particular had a thing of like posting footage from video games and then saying it was from you know wherever. Syria um and and the Ukrainian government is doing the same thing. They're posting videos that are from digital combat simulator and they're very good at it. They're doing there. It's been

it's been extremes. They have definitely been Uh, whatever is happening on the ground, which we can talk about in a bit is debatable in in terms of propaganda, they've definitely doing of the propaganda war um, which is not nothing, especially when you when you talk about like, um, you know important yeah, yeah, and there's like, you know, caught up in the middle of like all of this glory.

We we just dropped an episode and it could happen here today about it will have been a couple of days ago, but it's called Escaping Ukraine, and it's about what it's actually like at the border and all of these people getting to the border right, whose stories are much less attractive than these these brave stories of resistance UM and stories of UH, particularly like black people, black Ukrainians UM, a lot of whom are refugees themselves getting

denied the ability to cross at the border. UM. And it's it's a little unclear to me at the moment how much of that problem is with Polish border guards and how much is with Ukrainian There's a lot of like people are arguing about it enough that I don't feel comfortable confident saying which is more responsible, But it's

happening that there's certainly evidence that like that it's a problem. UM. Another article that just dropped today as there's a number of trans people in Kiev in particular who because of you know, just the realities of transitioning. Their passport did not yet match their their gender identity, and they are afraid to flee because they do not know what will happen to them at the border, particularly given Poland has done been great in general about Ukrainian refugees, but also

Poland not super pro LGBT as as a rule. Um And but also obviously like a lot of those people would just be fucking murdered if if, if Russia takes over, because that's what that's what happened in fucking Czechnia, you know.

And in fact, there's a pretty good chance that the guy who orchestrated like mass killings of LGBT people in Czechnia died fighting in Ukraine recently, although we know, we've got confirmation that decent numbers of his troops have we're we're wiped out because we've seen like the wrecked vehicles and stuff and see an in footage. Um, I don't know that I haven't seen that guy's body anywhere, although you know, he's been claimed by the Ukrainian government that

he's been killed, So it's hard to say. There's a lot of Again, fog of war is a thing UM for a reason in video games that it happens in reality, and there's UM. When it comes to like what you should and should not share, I think it's generally good to to share UM articles that are written by journalists who are there on the ground and seem to be trying to do with the knowledge that like that's not

going to be perfect either. UM. You know, there's there are people on in places like Twitter journalists who are doing the best job possible of curating stuff and a verifying. Some of my former colleagues at Belling Cat have been doing a lot of work verifying, people like Eric Tohler, Giancarlo Um, people like Christo UM have been putting a lot of effort into attempting to verify things and and doing stuff like, Okay, here's a video that shows an

air strike. Can we confirm this is in Ukraine? You know, can we confirm this wasn't you know, six years ago? UM? And so those would be people to UM, those would be people to look at. I'll try to grab you one more name before we go out of here. But in general, like you're sharing and retweeting combat footage or memes about fighting um or or jokes or you know,

celebrating Russian defeat preemptively is not gonna help anything. Um, it'll help people feel good about themselves, Yeah, they will, and then they'll feel like something impossible happened when the war doesn't go well. Um. Because like here's here's the thing. It does seem fair to say, based on the things that we can like know to a point of certainty. Um,

the initial Russian invasion was was kind of a cluster fuck. Um. And there's a number of reasons for that, right if you want to look at this as an attempt at blitz greg And it does seem accurate based both on what they did and based on some leaked conversations that have come out between a chechen leader in the Russian government, because this dude was just like recording voice messages and sending them over and um, I think the Guardian published

that article that the initial plan that the hope and the belief among the Russian command staff and among Putin was that, as Hitler said, we need only kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse. Right. That was this idea that like, there's not going to be much of a fight if we can kind of shock and awe them. Um, you know, the cities will collapse quickly, the government will collapse, and we'll we'll be

able to take command. And so as a result, if you're looking at like how you know a blitzkrieg type situation is supposed to work, um, like what the Nazis did in France quite successfully or for a time successfully in in Russia. You have what's called your first echelon, which is your first wave of troops, and they move in and they move forward as fast as they possibly can, and they do not engage with every enemy they can.

Their priority is to move forward and take in and like advance more than it is to engage with and destroy the enemy. Um. They do engage with and destroy the enemy at parts when they're blocked, but that's not their primary goal. And so the first echelon leaves large numbers of intact enemy forces behind them as they advance because their goal is disruption, and their goal is making it kind of impossible for the enemy to effectively react

and to effectively engage resistance. And then a second echelon comes from behind them and they engage more of those troops that were left behind them, there's a third echelon, right, That's how a blitzkrieg tactic is supposed to work. That's not what the Russians did. In the first five days or so of this invasion. They sent in that first echelon, which included a tremendous deal of very elite special forces operators, airborne troops, um, you know, spetsnaz and they sent in

elements of battalion task groups, but not cohesive ones. So to the extent that Russian soldiers were engaging with Ukrainian soldiers, it was often individual little units as opposed to like combined arms forces where you have air support and artillery support.

And because the Russian army is is alart more than anything an artillery army, right, um, And that's why you've seen such terrible casualties and they do seem to be Again, the Ukrainian government numbers can't be trusted, but there's enough verified videos of of of successful Ukrainian drone strikes and

attacks that like they they have suffered significant losses. Um. It's because they, I think, thought that these these sort the sort of first echelon is all they would need to collapse everything, and then they could bring in National Guard troops and conscript troops and and and and sort of riot police kind of troops in after that, and they would not be required to do some of the things that they have had to do in places like Sear. They wouldn't have to shell these cities into rubble. Um

that that that things wouldn't go that far. And clearly Ukrainian resistance has been significant enough that they're going to have to. So part of what we are seeing now is Russia kind of reorienting their strategy and the fact that this has been a funk up for them in a lot of ways up to this point, and claim the fact that they did not immediately gain air supremacy, Um that they seem to have lost a significant number of air assets and artillery assets to Ukrainian air power,

which still exists at this point. Um, that's evidence of some substantial strategic and tactical failures by the Russians, But it's not evidence that they're fucked, because Russia has a lot of reserves to Yeah, they can keep going. Yeah, the thing that we just saw yes one day ago.

By the time we we we are recording this episode, it will have been a couple of days, since you know when you hear this is the deployment of thermobaric weapons, which so artillery and air strikes do not work as well as the people who advocate for their use like

to think. And one piece of events you can look at like battles in World War One where you know, the British or whoever would would fire a million shells at a chunk of trench line a few miles long and then get machine gun to pieces by the people there because they didn't kill very many of them. Actually, because if you're well dug in and whatnot, that doesn't

work as well. Um. And likewise, at the start of this war, you saw a lot of Russian missiles, a lot of Russian precision munitions like striking military targets, and then still tremendous Ukrainian resistance. All of this sort of shock and awe was not successful and disrupting Ukrainian command and control. So now the Russians are deploying starting to deploy what are called thermobaric weapons. And thermobaric weapons are

the most frightening weapons humans have developed. They are not nuclear. Um. The way they essentially work is it's it's a couple of stages. So you have a precision munition that strikes a target, it releases a cloud of explosive material, often just like fuel, and then a second explosion ignites the cloud. Um. So what that does is, among other things, sucks the oxygen in from an area and and and it creates

a vacuum, right like. One of the ways people die from thermo barracks is the the the the error is ripped from their lungs um and the explosive force of the blast is titanic. Some thermobaric weapons, like the Moab which Trump famously used in Afghanistan, and the Russians have their own version of this, are equivalent to low yield nuclear weapons in terms of their destructive pair. They're not radioactive.

Obviously they're not nuclear, but in terms of the actual radius of the blast and the weight radius of the shockwave, they are equivalent to nuclear weapons. And there are no functional fortifications that can really withstand them, at least not unlike a tactical level. They wipe out troop formations. They are nightmare weapons, and the Russians have a lot of these to deploy, and the Russians have a lot of air power to deploy, and we're starting to see that

being moved into position more effectively. Ukrainian resistance is still fierce. You're also seeing stuff like as this, you know famous now the current big I don't know meme of the war. Is this Russian convoy heading towards Kiev, right, and there's all everyone it's seventeen miles. No, it's just three or four, No, it's forty miles. Like there's a lot of debate as to how what kind of impact this, this, this will have.

And you're seeing Ukraine adopt tactics. There's been a lot of um an increasing kind of guerrilla tactics, taking supply vehicles and whatnot from this caravan, and like precision strikes and whatnot. Um So i'min. We're not saying the situation is doomed from their standpoint. There's a lot that could happen. And in Russian losses have been very heavy, including on

some of their most elite troops. But at the end of the day, if Putin commits fully, if there is not a level of unrest in the streets of Russia that they can't deal with, or a palace coup, and if there is no outside intervention. Russia has the capacity to level every building in Ukraine until there is no resistance. They have done it in other places. It is not a thing that is beyond their capacity. Well that was really, yeah,

depressing to listen to. And well here's together down. The one other thing that I would like to get your guys thoughts on specifically is and we talked before about how there's like, you know, having to verify footage, how there's you know, a lot of footage is like actually from from other places, from other kind of conflicts. So there's been multiple instances of video footage and pictures from Palestine being distributed to being from the Russian invasion um.

And it's interesting looking at but like how actions taken in those photos are so people have there there's so much more valid in the Russian Ukraine conflict that they are in the Palestine Israel conflict. And I want to talk about like the selective validity of nations and how efforts to defend your home from invading attacking forces are viewed differently when all these extra political forces are at play, like all like the xenophobia and racism happening um. In

one instance, um. And then you know, everyone accepting all these refugees from Ukraine because they're white people. Um. So I would I would like to get your thoughts on on those kind of notes that that have gathered. I think the Boast the most striking example of that as a video of a little girl who appears to be a white girl in the video, like you would like, that's what most people guessed upon seeing the video. They

just she looked white to them, um, like kicking a soldier. Um. And like the video was claiming like this is a Ukrainian girl like kicking you know, a Russian occupier and like look at the courage of Like the reality is that she's a Palestinian girl kicking an Israeli soldier. And she went to fucking prison for she's she's a very she's actually relative relatively famous Palestinian activist who is part of a family of activists subens organizing since to us

an eight Um. And she's been to prison. Her brothers and cousins have been have had their faces blown up by a regular by violence from from from Israeli forces. Um. Yeah. And and she she has gone to prison for a long time because of her efforts to combat and stand against these invading forces for her, for her home country. And to be clear, she ended up going to prison

later than that picture was taken. They didn't imprison her at age five, but I think she's But the point is correct, this misinformation, but also these double standards that we have, you know, like blindness to the conflicts going on on around the world. Okay, well America evaded lots of places and nobody cares. You know, there's conflicts happening all over the world. Um, we're still paying attention to this one. Yeah, there's the there's a bleak and there's

a less bleak way of looking at it. And I can't tell you which one is right. Both of them have shades of right. One of them, which is true is that, well, the victims are white and people care because Ukrainians are white and that's why this is getting outraged when what happened and the civilized nation, right, that's right, that's the line that civilized conflict, like this isn't Africa, this is Ukraine and Syria. You know this exactly whatever Syria?

Where we get the alphabet from anyway? Right of a collection of like statements made by people on maintream platforms. There was that Ukraine Deputy Chief prosecutor was on the BBC. He said, it's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde terror being killed on on on CBS, there was a foreign correspondent uh said, this isn't Iraq or Afghanistan. This is relatively civilized, relatively

European city. Relatively it's it's like simolanously racist too, huge chunks of the world and also pretty, but even place, even places like even even places like Al Jazeera. There was a commentator said, what's compelling is looking at them, the way they're dressed, their prosperous middle class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East or from North Africa. They look like they look like any European family that you could live next

door to. Yeah, I mean, actually you can live next door to anybody. Yeah, its not just European families. I spend days on the refugee trail in two thousand and fifteen talking to Syrians who had just immediately fled the carpet bombing of their cities, and like, yeah, a lot of them were like doctors and accountants and lawyers and professors. I think it doesn't doesn't make it more valid. But like, well, the judging people they look, You're like, yeah, they're leaving

right now, they've just become refugees. Yeah, they're leaving their homes in this moment. But I just mean, like the idea of like you're you're talking about a stereotype of what you think of refugee is without like they're the type of people are reported. No, every refugee is leaving their home and then they lose their ship and they don't have a place to sleep and they're running and they're on the road and they can't you know, like fuck you. It's it's it's it's frankly one of the

most gusting things. That's a commentary on this. There are a couple more quotes if you want to, because I think they're like, they're all worth I think you can just thin because they're all pretty nasty. You do something, Oh good. So here are words that I don't believe, but I'm reading it. This is a quote. Um, we are in the twenty one century, We're in a European city, and we have cruise missile fire as though we were in Iraq or Afghanistan. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?

It's an important question talking can't? Yeah, can you? We're not talking here about Syrians fleeing. We're talking about Europeans. Excellent stuff. This time war is wrong because the people look like us and have Instagram and Netflix accounts. It's not in a poor, remote country anymore. Fuck you, you piece of human ship. Daniel Hannon like maybe like worries, what does this fucker do for a living? Daily Telegraph? Okay, yeah, so somebody who should get a brick. God, that's a brick.

That is if you're looking at how you can help in this current conflict. Brick people like that Instagram, Netflix accounts, Fuck you, piece of piece of dogs. Like there's it's it's so comprehensively wrong, but that like, do you think that having an Instagram or a Netflix makes you more human? And also do you think they don't have fucking Instagram and Iraq? Like do you think they don't have That's

what I thought. It just like even just like if you like, it's not even taking it out of context, if you just wrong because people look like part of that sentence there was this very popular tweet from it's like a like a like a a news aggregator account, um that's popular in this region. That was a quote Polish border guard carries a young Ukrainian girl across the border to safety in Poland. This is how real refugees

look like when in children. It's very it's on the Belarusian board where it's mainly Middle Eastern men trying to cross into Poland illegally. Unbelievable, Like it's really it is, like it is it is believable. So like but it's it's just gross. It's like it's it's it's really it's like full full mask off on all these people. It's yeah, um yeah, just like saying like yeah, so I guess we know why you didn't care. Um, it's just really obvious.

Um and kind of like I don't know, I get like it's one of those like you know, remembering back in you know, the other wars. Um, just like it's just awful. Take like month of just like okay, just like flood with like the worst opinions you could possibly imagine,

and it's all okay because it's war coverage. Like we don't like there's uh like everyone's like less discerning, less careful with their words and how they frame things, and uh, you know, some of these people might not even realize what they're saying because they it's like you gotta say something, you gotta talk, and like I'm gonna let myself out

all of that. And I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but it was some motherfucker being like celebrating, you know, Ukrainian resistance and being like, you know, what Putin didn't count on is that this is the first war. We're social with social media, We're like, we're seeing everything else. People realize is like are you are you? Have you been fucking high the last fifteen years? I like, I know I have spent a couple of hundred hours

going through footage of multiple civil wars. I know people who have spent thousands of it. Every second of the Syrian Civil War has been either live streamed or tweeted or facebooked or instagrammed. Same thing with the Iraqi Civil War. Same thing to a substantial extent with what's happened in Libya. Same thing to a lesser extent, just because of I think some realities of infrastructure. But to a significant degree

with what's happening in Ethiopia and Tigray right now. Like you you are, there's no limit to the amount of combat footage you can find. And this is not comprehensive.

It's it's in Malaysia right or in Burma. UM huge amount of that war has been documented online, has been shown in videos, including like the protests up to beforehand and like the fucking gen Z militias that are now like fucking tick talking from the battlefield like this has been happening for forever, and not only that, not just are you wrong, this is the first ward that that's been a factor in Putin understood that he knew all of this was going to happen. His gamble is that

what are you gonna fucking do about it? I have nukes and I have the ground power to win, unless NATO is willing to risk a nuclear war, which they won't. I mean, it's it's even even just as a recording I found. I found another one from UM one of the most one of the most popular Spanish TV news channels, saying these aren't like other children that we've become accustomed to. These children are blonde with blue eyes, so this is very important. I mean, and again it's it's comprehensively wrong

because like it as them being blonde matter. And it's also comprehensively wrong because, motherfucker, I have seen blonde kids in refugee camps in three countries. No, it's like like like it's so it's so rais like it it's it's

so right. Also, like the dismissal of any kind of conflict in Palestine, any conflict around like like Belarus, the Middle East, South Asia, it's like they just they it's it shows that they just view those people as less as like less human, right well, and while at the same time using images from those conflicts as propaganda for this conflict exactly exactly of why you humor that video from where like that old man is on his bike moving backwards away from a police line and a cup

shoves him and he cracks his head on the concrete and bleeds, and obviously that's fucked up. You should be angry at that, But like part of why people got so angry is he's not. He doesn't look like the people that's supposed to happen to exactly, you know, um, And that's a big chunk of this, and that's not I don't think that's surprising to anyone who listens to

this show. No, it's not surprising, but it is. It is very bare watching them just express express how they view less people, how how they've view so many people as less human. Well well, yeah, just like Jessica Cody said at the same time, using footage from these conflicts as like for their own propaganda, it's it's it's it's so gross. Yeah. Well, I will say I think there is a potential optimistic side of this. I think it's

up to us to make it be optimistic. But there is a potential here, which is that a lot of the people who are so horrified by what's going on in ways that they weren't about other conflicts that have been going on for years. It's not because like their

monsters or they're actively racist. It's because that kind of ship didn't go viral for a lot of reasons that have very little to do with them, and so they didn't see much of it, and they don't, like other than vaguely knew that something was going on in serious something they're just not and they had shipped to do right. Everybody's got life going on. Everybody's like. I've talked to Ukrainians and I did when the war started, who were like,

ID think it would happen here. As part of why I called the podcast it could happen here is when I was first reporting on that civil war, that was something people kept saying to me. Um, it was variants of like I didn't think it would happen like to me,

and maybe there. I think there is a potential in people who are now rightly horrified by what's happening in Ukraine, to get them to recognize how widely this is happening, to get them to recognize this is the consequence of not dealing with authoritarianism on a global scale, of a lack of solidarity, of a lack of active willingness to stand up for the rights of other people, and to

recognize the things going on in those countries is wrong. Um, I think there is a possibility to get people to have more of an understanding for Palestine, more of an understanding for Burma, more of an understanding and active solidarity for t Gray for a bunch of other parts of the world, because they're now activated in a moral sense,

and and and and to to a degree. That's the thing that's like, that's a thing that you can do, and I think the way to do that is not to again, you have to be It's not a matter of saying you shouldn't care about Ukraine because this bad thing is happening here. It's a matter of saying, hey, you think that's funked up. It is, in addition happening. You have to care about it. You have to care

about it in general. Not It requires people being willing to look at these conflicts as authoritarians versus non authoritarians, but not as um not as like sides in the geopolitical sense, because right Turkey is very much against what

Russia is doing in Ukraine. Because Turkey and Russia have been, for a very long time, longer than any of us have been alive, geopolitical rivals in some very specific ways that they find this threatening, and so they are sending weapons to Ukraine, and they are you know, potentially cutting off Russian access to the Black Sea, um, doing a

lot of stuff. Turkey is also engaged in continue this gradual process of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria UM, and they heavily supported a Zeriba, a Zerbaijan and ethnic cleansing in Armenia. Um, they're not good guys

because they're on the right side of this conflict. But the Azeries and the Syrian and Iraqi Kords you should see as being broadly speaking, on the same side as the people resisting Putin, because they are all standing up against people who are trying to go into their fucking homes and take that from them. Um. And and there isn't there is a degree to which you have to understand the inherent solidarity of all people suffering and fighting against this kind of of of horror without letting that

lead you to the simple simplifying things. It's like, okay, Russia bad, US good. You know, Turkey good, Uh, Russia bad? Or Turkey bad, Russia good or like all like don't don't let like because that that's part of how it is black and white. It's just doesn't black and white in terms of fucking borders. I mean, even yes, there was, it's it's so horrifying because even like there was this transcript of a Russians of arrestan Russian soldiers text messages

to his mother that kind of went viral. Jesus Christ. Two days ago. It was like his his his mom. He was telling his mom that he's no longer in Crimea, he's not in training sessions anymore. His mom asks him, like where he is and where they can where they can send a care package to He replies, what kind of parcel? Mom? What can you send me? I just want to hang myself now. And Mom's like, what are you talking about? What's happened? He said, Mom, I'm in Ukraine.

There's a real war raging here. I'm afraid. We are bombing all the cities together, even targeting civilians. We were told that they would welcome us, and they are falling under our armored vehicles, throwing themselves under our wheels, not allowing us to pass. They call us fascists. Mama, this is so hard, like everyone involved, it's all miserable for

like like for a lot of people. There is there is there is some sickos that do enjoy the war, but the special but like most of them, but he's this Russia, this Russia's shoulder who just who just wants to hang himself because of all this happening. And if you, if you miss that, I think you're really missing out on a lot of a lot of what's actually happening, because this is an important aspect to recognize, even though it's it's tough to think about. Yeah, the war, it's

a horrors of war. There are a bunch of kids that or men, young men however old, that joined the army and now, well they don't mean they don't president is making them go do this thing. They don't often choose to in Russia because a lot of them are conscripts, and even when they do the contract soldiers, a lot of them do it because it's a way to get like a government paid for apartment and they didn't necessarily

expect this to happen. And it's most military prey on uh exact, there's this fucked up like the reality is, you know, to go back to people talking about like these people have Instagrams and Netflix, like there's a there's a lot of kids who would much rather be fucking around on Instagram or playing pub g or whatever first person shooter or something, and are having are burning to

death and armored personnel carriers, um. And that's that's not that's not good either, doesn't mean that like I don't support Ukrainians firing as many anti tank missiles as they can into as many armored vehicles as try to enter their country because that's the fucking situation. Um, but it's

not Yeah, it's none of it's worth celebrating, yea. To your point in like earlier point, I think it's it's kind of a bummer that this is like the only, uh, I guess positive thing like out of so many stories where like the thing you take away from is like, well, I guess people will realize more that things are bad

in these ways that they haven't previously. And that seems to be like the case with so many things these days, where it's like, well, at least people are realizing that it's bad, um like leading to okays will like people realize something else about it, but isn't enough. And I don't want to. I don't want it to come across as like that's what I'm saying that at saying it is a responsibility to make people to make that matter, right, like that if you're actually looking at what you can do,

you tweeting about Zelinski doesn't matter. You're tweeting even you tweeting like videos of like whatever thing you think might be a war crime or whatever, almost certainly will not matter. What does matter is the extent to which you can get people to realize what's actually going on here, and that being anti war is meaningless. Being anti Russia is meaningless.

Being understanding the dynamics of the global net inner war, of this interlocking net of con lifts where different authoritarian powers are bringing tremendous violence on populations of people for the geopolitical gains of a tiny number of people. Understanding the way that networks, and understanding that the only way to actually combat it um is a mix of solidarity and at times open armed resistance as we're seeing in Ukraine, as is happening in Burmaz, is happening in Northeast, series

is happening in all these other parts of the world. Um, that is the thing, and and and and get in seeing that is connected. Seeing the struggles of Palestinians against against Israeli soldiers, as connected to the struggles of Ukrainian civilians against Russian soldiers, even though Israel sending weapons to Ukraine right now. That is something that we can all have a role in furthering. And I think that's the

productive thing that people can do. Yeah, yeah, alright, that's it for us today, I think, but we will obviously continue talking about this. Yeah. One last note. If you're looking for a Twitter account to follow that is actually putting effort into verifying videos and images that they find and is doing what I consider to be a competent job of that. Robb Ly are a Lee eight five on Twitter um has has done pretty consistently a good job of like not just vetting things, but sharing other

things that other people have vetted. If you actually want to keep up with it in that way, it's better than just watching random people share videos from chunks from video games that have been you know, color corrected or whatever. Okay, thank you, all right guys, um, yeah, watch yourself online. They'll be back. So I tried. Worst Year Ever is

a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.