It Could Happen Here Weekly 162

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's me, James. And I'm joined today by Kevin McDonald, who previously served as a senior officer in the Irish Defence Forces with Special Forces Experience and has significant experience working all over the world. After that, with United Nations and other organizations. Kevin, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, hopefully I've done a good job introducing you. I'm always terrible at that.

Yeah. What we thought we'd talk about today, Kevin, is your significant experience in Lebanon with Unifil. And I think, obviously, when we've spoken about this before, we've spoken about it from a sort of looking at it from above strategic level. But what we've not spoken about is what it looks like on the ground. So hopefully you can give us some insight into that, especially having been there, both as an enlisted soldier and as an officer, I think. Can you explain at first

I think there's been a lot of confusion or misinformation about like, how do these Irish, if we look at the Irish soldiers, that's the one you've obviously the most experienced with, how do they end up deployed to Lebanon? Is it a voluntary thing? Do they sort of say, put their hand up and say, I want to do this or is it your units going? So you're going.

Okay, well, just as a brief reminder to your listeners, Unifil is the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, and it's been interim since 1978. When it started first, the Irish were one of the first countries to sign up to deploy a battalion there, and we had a battalion in Lebanon from 1978 until 2000.

And in 2000, the Israelis withdrew from what they called a security zone, about like a 10-kilometre buffer zone in southern Lebanon. So when they did that, and retreated to the frontier between the two countries, Ireland departed, it left a few staff officers there, but it didn't supply a battalion anymore. It was concentrating on the missions in Syria and

other places and then after the 2006 war they were asked to come back with a battalion and we've been there ever since with an infantry battalion.

In relation to your question about it, is it a volunteer mission? It is for most people. However, there have been people who will be what's known as mandatory selected. If they have certain skill sets, whether it be a doctor, whether it be whatever it happens to be, if the army can't get sufficient volunteers, then they will mandatory select. But generally speaking, certainly in the early years, it was actually quite difficult to get

to become a volunteer for Lebanon because so many people wanted to go there because there is a bit of financial incentive to do that as well. I deployed there as a private soldier in 1984. I wasn't even 12 months in the army at that stage. Oh, wow. And within two months I was made an acting car pro.

So then I went back as an officer in 1993, where we had a seven-day war, Operation Accountability. I was back in 1996 as an officer for another seven-day war, Operation Grips of Wrath, and I ended up there with my family as an unarmed ministry observer.

in 2006 for a full 34 days of carnage. Lebanon was always well regarded by the Irish Defence Forces because it did a couple of things. It exposed troops to not just new cultures and new areas, but it exposed them to danger as well. And it also gave a chance for young NCOs and young officers to

to physically lead their troops in a challenging environment, which you don't always get when you're at home in Ireland or with the UK or whatever, you don't always get that type of leadership experience. Plus, you're exposed to other cultures, whether it be the Nordic countries or you're exposed to different ways of operating and

Yeah, all in all, it's been a positive experience, but I would find out that since we started there, we've lost four to get troops killed in Lebanon. Yeah, it's because not in a significant amount, especially considering the Irish Defence Forces are much smaller than if people are more familiar with the US military, which is more than a million people, 48 is a significant amount.

You talked about how it exposes you to other cultures, and obviously one of them is the Lebanese people, but it's a very international deployment. You're not just sitting there on your Irish base with Irish defence forces, people are not interacting with other militaries. Can you explain some of the other countries that have this long history there? When I went there in 1984, there was a battalion from Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, ourselves, the Netherlands, Norway and Senegal.

with a strength at the time of about 6,000. When I was there as a non-armed military observer with UNSO, which is a different mission, the strength had dropped to 2,000 in 2006, which was two battalions, a Canadian battalion and an Indian battalion. And now, essentially, since after the war in 2006, they started building up, there's probably about 10,000 troops there at the moment. The recent huge interaction at the battalion level between different nations,

In other words, a battalion will have its own area of responsibility. It's responsible for patrolling in that area. With the likes of Anso, you're much more exposed to other armies, other nationalities, because essentially every time you go patrolling, you can't, like, two Irish officers couldn't patrol together, because if they see an infringement, whether it's a firing clause, whether it's

One side sending drones into Lebanon or the other side, sending Katyusha rockets into Israel. They're all violations. But to record it as a violation, you can't have two people from the same country. So, okay, you're much more exposed as it took foreign nationalities. Yeah, yeah. And it's certainly a lot of mesh. I know the Indonesians are there now and the contingent from India.

When people talk about Unifil now a lot, you'll see one of two accusations, right? You'll see that they're either like there as allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is not the case, or you'll see that there is observers for the IDF or spies for the IDF.

And obviously, the fact that they're being accused of both probably suggests that they are neither, because it would be fairly obvious if they were. But can you explain the tripartite agreement? It seems to me like that might make it difficult to do the things that Unifel is supposed to be doing. Is that fair?

I think it's a fair assessment. If both sides are complaining about you, as you say, it probably doesn't indicate that you're at least doing something right. It's a peacekeeping mission, and they're there with the agreement of both parties. In other words, the Lebanese government and the Israeli government have agreed that you will be established in Lebanon. That's the first thing to point out. The second thing, which is kind of contentious now, especially with

the extent of Hezbollah's tunnels is being exposed is that there's a lot of generally misinformed chatter about what UNIFIL can and cannot do. So after the 2006 war, Resolution 1701 was brought in to develop more thoroughly the mandate for what UNIFIL can and cannot do.

And one of the stated paragraphs is that Unifil will assist the Lebanese Armed Forces in taking steps towards the establishment between the Blue Line and the Latani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons, other than those of the government of Lebanon and of Unifil deployed in this area. And this is one of the failings, but it should be pointed out that it's the responsibility of the last of the Lebanese Armed Forces to instigate it supported by Unifil. Right.

not unifil going in looking for arms and weapons supported by the laugh. It's the other way around. And one of the difficulties that you're always going to have is that Lebanon is a divided society. It's an extremely rich and significant society. And I live there quite a lot and have great respect for the people and their traditions. However, the sectarianism is kind of baked into how the government works and that kind of works as we're done. So the president has to be a Marianite Christian.

speak with the House has to be Shia and the Prime Minister has to be Sunni. And that division was based on the last time there was a census in Lebanon, which was 1932. And since then, the dynamics have changed. So Hezbollah is not just an energy organization. It's a political organization and it's a welfare organization.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't get that. And it's Shia. And the majority of the people in the South are Shia. And a lot of them get their schooling and their medication from Hezbollah. So it's not just a military organization. And there's various estimates, but you could be looking at it, but it was prior to the present conflict.

maybe 70,000 Hezbollah in south of Beirut, shall we say? Yeah. And some of them are full time, some of them are power time, some of them are just sympathizers, helpers, friends, you know, it's difficult. And another factor that has proven extremely difficult is so when when you need to control with the laugh, there is certain restrictions that even the laugh have in terms of entering certain areas.

And what Hezbollah have done is that they have designated certain nature reserves, and generally speaking, the laugh won't go in there. And if the laugh won't go in, beautiful can't go in. So the laugh, they have a balancing act to do in terms of retaining the trust of the people in the South.

And also not causing a sectarian divide within their own ranks. Yeah, of course. And also they've had another problem in terms of equipment. They're sort of relying on other countries, the UK, the US, France, to supply them with equipment. But like say, they have no tanks. Yeah.

They have a few helicopters. There's no way they will take on Hezbollah, no way. Right, yeah, or the IDF. And the UNI for the self is lightly armed. You know, it's not gone wrong in tanks. The last time UNI for the tanks in Lebanon was just after the war when the French deployed with the Leclerc tanks, which did not please the locals because the Leclerc tanks

driving up and down the roads was nearly nearly doing as much damage as the Mercava tanks during the war. And plus Lebanon isn't a very tank friendly area to be operating against that, we say.

Right, yeah. Was that when the IDF came in and their macabre tanks and the French physically blocked them with their own tanks? I can't remember when that was. And I'm not aware of that, but it could well happen because I know certainly back in the 90s, that may have been when it was. When Israel was operating the securities on, we, the Irish and our colleagues from Finland and Norway had numerous standoffs with Israelis trying to enter certain villages and

Yeah. Well, yeah, I thought that yesterday the two, I think two bulldozers in the Mercava, or I said, yeah, two D9s broke down a UN watchtower and a UN fence at the UN had newly filled headquarters in Nakura, which is a few K from the frontier with Israel. Yes. I should find out as well for your listeners that Israel and Lebanon have been at a state of war since 1948. Yes. They've never had a seat or a peace agreement.

And the tri-party agreement is the only place where they actually meet, right? Yeah, so there is a uniform post-amieving normally right at the frontier where you can cross between one country and the other. And I keep using the word frontier because it's not a border, it hasn't been officially demarcated. The blue line, which I mentioned earlier on,

simply verifies that the IDF have withdrawn into Israel, but it's not the border. However, going back to your point about the tripartite agreement, and that's where the senior Israeli officials, senior Lebanese officials, under the chairmanship of the UNIFIL meet, and they discuss items of concern that maybe UNIFIL can help or know between the two of them. And in 2022, they managed to organize a maritime boundary.

Okay. Yeah. Between Lebanon and Israel, which was kind of fascinating because

on the western side of Lebanon and the north-western coast of Israel, the huge gas fields. So the two countries, actually, they've agreed their maritime boundary onto the auspices of UNIFIL. They still haven't agreed their land. But it's the first time that a peacekeeping mission has arranged, encouraged, developed, and laid successfully discussions about a maritime boundary. So the UNIFIL does have some successes.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think it would be wrong to overlook those. We'll take a quick break for advert, then we'll come back.

we were back. And Kevin, you've mentioned that you were in Lebanon in 2006. I think you said you were an unarmed observer at that time, is that right? Yeah, that's right, Chip. So one of the oldest missions in the world is on soap, the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization. And that essentially was established, I suppose after the 48 war, and it had offices and observers in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

They were quite effective in certain ways, like certainly the eventual peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was very much helped along by the presence of Anso in Cairo and Shamashik. The peace agreement between Jordan and Israel again was very much assisted by Anso. So they have a fairly good track record. And what they bring to the table is that

First of all, they're unarmed military observers. Yeah. Which takes some of the sting out of heaven. You know, a heavily armed guy with a head in this and sunglasses walk around. Yeah. And some, some armies, as you know, can tend to be more intimidating than others in how they carry themselves. Yeah. So I went there, I went to the region in 2005, and I was working on the occupied Golan Heights, living in the, in Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee.

with my wife and two kids who then were four and five. And in February, six, I was transferred to Lebanon. And we were living in the city of Tier. The kids were going to a local English-speaking Arab school. And Lebanon was absolutely thriving. It was happened. We had the kids in Baruch. We had them in a man down in Wadi Rum. And my narwhal routine,

We had four observation posts along the frontier with Israel. They asked why five guys would spend a week, seven days up there, then you come down four or five and then go back up again. And each team had its specific area to operate with and would say a specific battalion that we would interact with. And also, quite importantly, we had liaison assistants who were locals, like translators, but they're a lot more important than that.

And based on the sectarian nature of the area, you'd always have a Christian, you'd always have a Shia, which you could have the Druze if you were further up to the North, you could have Sunni, and each team had four or five of these, because we used to send two patrols out each day. So we had huge interaction with the local gendarmory, with the mayors and the muktars.

And we were very much a force multiplier for unifil, because we could get information from people. We used to stop and have lunch in some little restaurants and we were always talking to people and it was the window down, waving out, having a chat, learning a bit of Arabic, whereas unifil by its nature.

goes around in our cars. Right. And even if you stop and you get out and you take off the sunglasses, people will just react differently to two guys with a local that they know in the car. Yeah. It's about someone in full battle, rattle, get them out. We definitely were. But the war kicked off.

On the 12th of July, 2006, and I had done on patrol to pick up our Christian liaison assistant in her village, and literally we were heading off on patrol and over the radio, all stations got to the nearest UN position immediately. The nearest UN position towards at the time was an Indian platoon position on top of a hill. From my past experience, I had reckoned that there was a bit of

stuff going on either in the farms, which is a disputed area in the southeastern part of Lebanon, up in the mountains. So I said to the guy that was with me, I said, look, this could be over in a couple of hours. Let's go straight back to our patrol base. And we knew we had food and facilities, and we also knew we had a good bunker in the place. Yeah.

So, we headed back at a fair region, shall we say, and normally, when we would have two patrols out, there'd be one guy left in the patrol base, and he'd be responsible for radio checks and all that kind of stuff.

But what we do is when we were about maybe a kilometer away, we would inform our headquarters in Nakura that we're closing down at our final destination, which would give this guy time to come out and unblock the gate to let us in. And just as I had transmitted that, he comes up on the air and he says, don't come in, don't come in, we'll get him hit up. So at that stage, we'll replicate. And about maybe two kilometers away, there was a huge IDF position.

and they were just banging with the pine fives and GPMGs, not directly at Osborne, but kind of in the general area. Yeah, explain those weapon systems for people who aren't familiar, like, what's a GPMG for someone who's not? Oh, okay, sorry. So, you've, everyone's familiar with, say, an AK47 or an M16, which would be known as small arms. In other words, the caliber is 5.56 or 7.62. Yeah.

then you have medium machine guns which are generally belt fed and there are 7.62. And then you have heavy machine guns again, belt fed and there are 12.7 or 50 caliber. So we were getting a fair bit. But it took us maybe an hour of listening to various news channels both in Lebanon and in Israel to realize that

Hasweller had carried out a cross-border attack, hit up an IDF convoy, kidnapped two who were seriously injured and subsequently died and killed initially four, and then against their own orders, and Israeli Mercava went into Lebanon to have a kind of commanding view over where the Hezbollah were bringing these guys.

Hezbollah were new, that's what they do. And big anti-tank mine and kill four guys inside the Murcanva. So Israel had last stage and two kidnapped in the space of maybe an arm. So the reaction was fast and furious.

Yeah. It took us nearly six days to get our liaison assistant back to her village. Oh, wow. It took the UN nearly two and a half weeks to have acted with the families because at that stage, once there was a family mission. Yeah. And where I was, I could see the jets dropping bombs into fear.

And my wife could look up on the skyline, known where I was, and see the same thing happening. I was sort of used to being under fire, but it's a different thing to see your family under fire as well. And eventually, when the chartered a sort of a cruise liner from Cyprus to come over and extend offshore and send in its lifeboats to bring the families out.

So when this was being planned, Enso had tried to organize that an armored convoy would bring those on-mores that were deployed on the four posts down to Tierra to say goodbye. But where I was, we were getting hammered with artillery fire and tank fire. So I was the only one with family that couldn't get out. So when my wife and two kids that were five and seven, if that's it, were getting into the lifeboat to bring them out to the ship,

I rang him and I said, look, I'll see you when I see you. Jesus, yeah. Which is not a great way to end a family mission. Let me tell you. No. And then in the space of the next three days, we had a strength of 52 officers. And in about three days, we last over 10%. We had one Italian captain shot in the back.

He's now in a wheelchair. We had another Australian captain seriously injured. When the canvas she was in was, I suppose, targeted as probably the way to explain it, but she was thrown up against the inside of the armour car and essentially her back was broken. She was a vector waiter with my wife and kids. And then I think it was the day later or two days later.

The Israelis dropped the JDAM, which is a bunker boss to the missile, into the post, just up for me, killing four very good friends of mine. So, yeah, 2006 was a bit rough.

Yeah, if you're comfortable, could we talk about that last one a little bit? Because I think it's one of the ones that are like, there's no mistaking that UN position, right? It's not, and you don't accidentally disco dropping J dams left, right and center all over the place. Like the first thing I should say is that 21 years previously, that observation was completely destroyed, but there was no one in it at the time. Yeah.

So when it was rebuilt, it had the best bunker in Lebanon. So they dug down first and had, like a lot of the bunkers currently in Lebanon are overgrown bunkers. But this was dug down into the rock, essentially. And it had, its roof was about a measure and a half of reinforced steel and concrete with the two-story concrete building on top of it. So without doubt, it was the best bunker in Lebanon.

So that on the distance happened on the 25th of July. And on that particular day, we'd already lost the patrol base in Maroona Ras when Roberto was shot. And they had to, I have to say, in fairness, but on, there's a liaison branch that kind of liaises between IDF and UNIFIL. Okay. And UNIFIL couldn't launch one of the helicopters to do a medevac.

So the decision was made that the guys would get into an armored land cruiser and follow Israeli tank tracks back into Israel. They couldn't de-conflict the airspace to launch it or what was stopping them launching the helicopter to evacuate. There was too much connected activity.

at that place. It wouldn't have been able to land it. It was a battle ongoing. So they essentially followed Israeli tank tracks that had come into Lebanon. They followed those tank tracks back into Israel, where they were met by an Israeli patrol, and Roberta was flown to Ramban Hospital.

Well, yeah, going back to the 25th of July, we were all taken a fair bit of income. Where I wasn't targeting, it was more sort of harassment fire. Yeah. Like the house next door.

took three direct tank rounds and it was five measures away. Jesus, from our post. And our post was tiny. Yeah. But in the guys in Kiam were taken a cupid of artillery, but there was a lot of airstrikes coming in close. And again, for your listeners, the UN has a designation, what are caused a firing close. So we'll say a firing close from

An M16 is, I don't know, something like 50 meters or something like that. Firing close from an artillery shell is 500 meters, and a firing close from an aerial bomb is a kilometer. So if it lands within the kilometer, it's officially designated as a firing close, and it's recorded on both sides, it's an official account of what's happening.

And so the guys were getting a, you know, a good few firings close from area bombs. And there was three distinct waves of attack in the general area. So naturally, force commander, uniform chief of staff on so.

You and the Quarters in New York were screaming at the Israelis, you know, it stopped target in this position. Yeah. Was there a Hezbollah in the area? Of course there was. Kiam is a Hezbollah stronghold. But eventually that evening, the decision was made that the patrolist is going to be evacuated. But because of the level of kinetic activity that evening, it was going to be done as first light next morning. And since the war started, we had all been on the

24, 7, 20 minute radish. So every 20 minutes you have to respond to a radio check. So the last transmission from the post was from Canadian friend of mine, special forces, really, really cool. And I could hear it in his voice.

He was requested a login time for a firing clause. It's danger clause. It's danger clause. Get them to stop. And that was the last time that's mentioned. So when they missed the next radio check, he presumed another shell had come in and blown all the aerials off the building. Yeah. So myself and an Aussie friend of mine requested permission to take our armored land crowser and try and drive up and see what was happening. That was refused by Unifil.

So they sent a patrol from the Indian battalion, which was kind of an inference that was nearer. So we switched on to their radio frequency, to hear what they were saying. And so they approached the base, they had obviously had to break down the gate, and said the base had taken a direct hit by an aerial ban. And at that stage, we were still thinking maybe they're trapped under the rubble or something like that. And then one of them transmitted, we have found the body of a Chinese officer. So we knew the four guys were,

were killed. And the Indians found three bodies that night and brought them to the mortuary in Marijayun, which is a large Christian town. So the next morning, there was, I think, five of us tasked to open, identify the bodies.

Yeah. So first guy was Chinese, was over pressure killed him. So that was an easy one to identify. The next guy had no arms, no legs and wide. Jesus. And where his head should have been was the chain of a doubt tag. And I went down into his body pairs. Yeah. And the other guy.

Yeah, so yeah, it was a difficult, difficult procedure. And then we had to try and arrange to get the bodies transferred into Israel to where you and colleagues from Jerusalem. So they could go to Ramban Hospital and have, you know, a proper identification and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, eventually be returned to their families, I suppose. And that was a difficult procedure because

where the IDF said they could meet us. It was a minefield in front of us. And where we said we could meet them, they thought it was too exposed. So eventually, we went into an all small, tiny Indian position and about 100 meters away.

There was a gate that the Israelis used to use to come in and out when the security zone was there. But the area between the UN position and the gate hadn't been mind-swept in six years. But we had no choice. We couldn't bring the guys back to the march because it had resorted to using refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the march was full.

So there was an IDF company there under, I think, it was a full brigadier. And there's a war going on, naturally, all the time, gunships and catouches passing each other over our heads. So when we had the three lads transfer over to our colleagues from Jerusalem, I stood in front of the IDF brigadier and I lined up all the UN troops and I said, we're not going to have a minute silence in memory of our friends who were murdered in the cause of peace.

And no, having a minute silence in the middle of a battle is an odd experience. In fairness to this guy, he's still too attention. And because I lived in Tiberius, I had a small bit of Hebrew and I went over afterwards and thanked him for his respect. And we didn't find the fourth body on the left of the ceasefire. Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah, that's rough. I'm sorry for that. That's terrible to think about. So the obvious question is, I don't know what the one you want to ask. Why?

And I should have said it at the start. Anything I say here, it's my personal opinion. So it can't be construed as being the views of the Irish Defense Forces. Yes, of course. I certainly love to be with the United Nations. They're my personal views. So, you know, people should just take it. It's Kevin McDonald describing what happened to him and what his personal views on it are. So why did they do it? Well, I think there's a couple of things. Hubris is one.

I think at that stage, there were like a schoolyard bully who got better and wanted to lash out as anything and everything. A second probably more tactical reason is that the village of Kiam is on a ridge. We say at the end of the ridge, ridge closest to Israel because it's only about four miles away is where this this OP was. And that's the reason it was there. And between Kiam and we say the frontier with Israel is the Hula Valley, which is

The biggest manoeuvre space, if you want to manoeuvre armour and stuff into Lebanon, with plenty of space, that's where you do it.

In fact, society is an old Vichy French airfield from the Second World War. So it's low space. And I think they didn't want eyes on the ground seeing what they were doing. And like one of the things for military observers is you observe in your report. That's your task. Yeah. So was there Hezbollah in the area around the op? Yes, there was. But as you probably know, if you want to attack troops in the open,

He used airburst artillery shells, which the Israelis did in 1996, when they fired 15 of them into a U.N. battalion headquarters, killing 106 Lebanese men, women and children, seeking shelter in the U.N. headquarters. But you don't fire a bunker, bust a missile into a U.N. post to attack Hezbollah. It's a subtle difference. There's a huge difference, yeah.

I suppose what people will ask is like, it's I think it's important to explain this from the point of view of someone on the ground is obviously you and troops are not there to fight, they're there to keep peace, but they are an armed presence. And so they'll wonder how or why the UN can or can't defend itself, the uniform troops specifically in these positions.

Can you explain how your rules of engagement and how that works from the underground perspective? Well, the rules of engagement were set for a peacekeeping mission. We pack on to one side because they're unarmed, but for a peacekeeping mission.

So peacekeeping is generally based on three principles, consent, impartiality, and the use of force in self-defense of the mandate. So naturally, the guys there at the moment aren't going to try and take on three or four mercaffa tanks. First of all, they don't have the capability to do it.

Yeah, that's an interesting. Do they not have the gun answer? That's fine. Do they have, for instance, javelin and things like that? Do they have those weapon systems available? I'm not sure what to have currently certain we didn't have. Okay. And it wasn't ever going to be an issue because that's kind of not our job. Yeah.

The sole responsibility to protect the people of Lebanon is the Lebanese government. Unifield is there to assist. It's not there to say, okay, you step back. We stand up and protect you. That's not what Unifield are. Any peacekeeping mission. The only peacekeeping mission that eventually had an offensive capability.

built into its mandate was the mission that's now closing down in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its minuscule. And they specifically changed the mandate to include an offensive capability to go after the M23 rebels in the Kivus, in sort of the Northeast. And when they did it, attack helicopters, special forces, the last.

It was quite effective, but which kind of brings me to another point, because I just last year I completed a master's increase in conflict studies, and mandates was the evolution of mandates was what I started looked at. And heaven wrote post mandates is all well and good, or the TCC is the true country from countries.

have to have the ability, the capability, the training and the will to carry out the robust nature of the mandate. So, you know, we were saying in Ireland, April never refuses ink. You can put whatever you want into a mandate, but you have to be able to effectively implement the mandate.

Yeah. And I think often that's the reason that maybe people are kind of broad in how mandates are written. But that's for someone way further up to Fuji and then me. Yeah.

So for those, like the people on the ground then, and now there's not a great deal they can do, right? They can attempt to ask the idea to stop, which they did, which has historically not worked, and they can take shelter in their bunkers, which they did, which is only helpful if they're not going to use bunker busting missiles to destroy that bunker.

It must be terrible. It's one thing to be engaged in combat with someone, especially if you're a soldier, right? It's another thing. I found myself in this situation last year to be effectively like I'm able to respond. I'm thinking here with the Turkish drone bombing and fighter jets and bombers in Syria where I was, but it's a horrible thing to be in that situation. And is it for those peacekeepers, it must be a really difficult place to be? Well, it is. Yeah. And of course, you know, the role conscious of the fact that there

Families back in Ireland are fully aware of what's going on. Shortly after the invasion, the IDF decided that the toll was only for the one to them out essentially. Not just the Irish, but other nationalities that were not gone. So the IDF, everywhere they go in Lebanon, the first vehicle is a D9 bulldozer, because that is more robust than a Mercava.

And it can also very quickly draw art and ramparts to sort of, you know, protect from direct fire. Yeah. The IDF troops. So they decided that they would literally conjine an IDF position to the Irish position, hoping that they could intimidate the Irish into leaving. And the position's name was 6-5-2, very close to the frontier. Ironically, when the Israelis withdrew in 2000, they recognized that this particular area was what we in the military would call key terrain.

because that area overlooked a vulnerable part of Northern Israel, villages like Avavim and a few others. So the IDF requested Unifil to put a position there, which would say, stop, Hezbollah put the position there. And then suddenly, the rock close, I'm personally trying to intimidate the Irish and other nationalities as well.

So it's one of the things, and I think one of the reasons that they didn't want unifilled. And there's about 20 small positions, mainly close to the frontier.

I think one of the reasons that the, and again, this is a personal point of view. I think one of the reasons is that they didn't want unifillate in any of these positions was A, to turn it into a free fire zone would be one of the things that unifill is supposed to do is to monitor and report, monitor and observe. And of course, if you're not there, you can't do it. That's actually one of the things that unifill, even though they're hunkered in their bases with very little mobility, they can still monitor and observe.

what's happening in the general area. Now, we'll say in the case of this position 6.5.2, if the IDF's ultimate gain or gold was taken, a major has been a stronghold, which is called Binchabile. That's a good bit further north than this position. So the focus of attention would move on from with the hour guys and go a wee bit further north.

Yeah. So that's sort of where they find themselves now, right? Can you explain, like, you've got these positions along the frontier, and then you've got the headquarters that you just mentioned two days ago have been infringed by a bulldozer, attacked, depends how you want to say it. Well, it makes a change from having a tanker on fired into an orpy, which that did a few days previously.

Yeah, and they've done consistently right for a month or so now is firing directly into these observing positions.

Are these positions that are now, are they left isolated as the idea for advance past and around them, and in addition to firing directly at them? There's somewhat isolated. Now, all these positions would be well-stocked with water and emergency rations and stuff like that. And as I mentioned before, Unifield do have a liaison branch, which I'm sure are talking to the idea on an hourly basis. And it will coordinate

The movements of Unifil would say to supply their positions are, I think, last week they had a convoy went into the city of Tierra, which is probably 12k from the headquarters to distribute aid, especially medical aid, because Tierra's getting fairly whacked, like all of the south, I suppose. So there is engagement to make sure that these posts aren't completely isolated, that there is a means of doing resupply

Israel stopped one of those at some point. Was it a resupply movement? The stop things on a regular basis. As I said, there is interaction, like nothing happens in a vacuum. Like we said, the Irish battalion headquarters would not send a convoy to 6-5-2 without being communicated to the Israelis and saying, we're going to go on three vehicles at 700 hours, blah, blah, blah.

and get the confirmation back. But yeah, that's okay. Because, you know, they mentioned the fall of the war and that's often fairly real, as you can imagine yourself. It's a fairly real thing that happens. You know, sometimes, you know, yeah, instructions don't get passed down or sometimes instructions are ignored for whatever reason. So it's a bit of a delicate, delicate balancing act, but somewhat I understand it's working well.

That's good. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's working well in terms of what's happening in Lebanon is bad, and it'd be better if it wasn't. But it's not the same tier as it has been in Gaza. No, when you look at it, it would be three and a half thousand compared to 43 and a half thousand killed. Yeah. And so many of those being civilians, people who absolutely know business targeting.

And like that genocidal violence that we've seen in Gaza hasn't come to Lebanon. And in part, I think we can attribute that to their being observed. Is that fair to say? I think it's a fair point. Of course, there's no real the UN footprint in Gaza. My understanding is it's extremely, extremely light. Yeah. And as you know, there's a banished onra.

Yeah. Whereas, I mean, even for the 10,000 troops in southern Lebanon. So there's very much more, maybe there's a more consciousness, but there's still flatland in the place. But it's in terms of civilian

casualties, as we said, it's not going on as long as gas either. But on the, we'll say the combat front, they're not exactly having things the wrong way either. They've been trying to take the village of Kian for the last, I think, two weeks. And my understanding is that they haven't destroyed it, but they haven't taken it. And it was like in 2006,

They claim that the town of Binchabile was the Hezbollah capital of the South, which it wasn't a way it was. But the turn of interest was me, but they never controlled it. They were still getting attacked, you know, days after they had seized it. Right. Yeah. They've never really established like control or like a monopoly on violence in the area. And yeah, they've not done that this time. And I think,

I suppose the last thing I wanted to ask about is like we've just talked about like why this mission is important and we've spoken about for like you had your family there when they were being bombed and like this investment in being there in Lebanon being alongside the Lebanese people in your case with your own family.

It's one that Ireland has had for a long time. Ireland has historically, amongst European nations, been much better on the rights of Palestine and Palestinian people than most European nations. How is this peacekeeping mission perceived in Ireland? Are people proud that they're there? Oh yeah, or hugely proud. And the Irish have always been

extremely proud of what our defence forces have achieved, despite being a very small defence force. I think at the moment between the Navy, the Army and the Air Corps were probably looking at in total 9,000.

Well, yeah, very small. And then we're overseas in a lot of places as well. So like to dock that from the 9,000, you're probably down to eight. Yeah. But we do tend to punch above our wish internationally. We obviously have no colonial baggage, which affects some other countries. Yes. And I think generally speaking, we're seeing as, I'm not sure if Anna's broke is the right word, but certainly not as threatening and not coming with an agenda. Right. Yeah.

Whereas other countries might have a certain agenda for whatever political reasons at all. And it's certainly in Ireland's case, as I said, we were there from 78 hundreds to 2000 and now from 2006 to present day. And a lot of it has been in the same general area. So people would know Irish soldiers, some Lebanese talk with an Irish accent. I've heard that, yeah, it's mad. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

And depending on what part of Ireland the troops were from, you could even go further down like some of them talk with a very broad Dublin accent, some of them would talk with a very broad car accent. And because of that interaction and I know one of the first big projects the Irish did certainly from the early 80s was to build a.

an orphanage in a provincial capital called Sydney and they've been doing that. Even when we know troops there, guys were still sending money and toys and everything that's been demolished last week, unfortunately. Jesus, an orphanage. It's like storybook, evil stuff, isn't it? Well, there's a lot of evil stuff going on in the Middle East at the moment, unfortunately.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've personally seen hospitals bombed and all that kind of stuff for myself and it sometimes doesn't even make the news. I mean, that orphanage evidently didn't really make my news diet.

Kevin, thank you very much for sharing some of your experiences over there. And I'd love to have you again to talk about the things, the work you've done in Africa and the line after 11. You've written a book about your experiences, peacekeeping and other things. Where could people find that? Okay. So this initially started off as a lockdown project during the COVID lockdown in the Central African Republic. And initially it was just for my wife and family. But as this started writing, you kind of started remembering it.

It's not just your typical military guy tells about how brave he was. I've a separate career in mountaineering and a separate career in archaeology as well. So it's a kind of a much more different mishmash of stuff going on. So the book is called A Lifeless Ordinary, and it can be purchased online at mailbooks.com. That I am a Y-O-B-O-K-S.

Yeah, I like that balance. I've always thought that like, I'll go somewhere and I'll write about the worst things I saw there and the worst days I had there. And that'll be my story. But I've always wanted to write about the mountains of Kurdistan are beautiful. And I really loved being there.

There are other places that people think of them as wars, not countries. And I think it would be, I'd love to write about now to nearing backpacking in these places where often it's really sad that you don't get to share that part. We are right about this in the book. I mean, like, I've lived a few times in Lebanon and I've lived and worked in Jerusalem a few times.

And it's a fascinating region. Oh, yeah. And the people on both countries, some really good friends in Israel and some really good friends in Lebanon. And I've been treated extremely well by people in both countries. Certainly, if you've been interested in archaeology. Yeah, it's supposed to be, yeah. Whereas, could you? But should not want to be, you know, like, if the nation's in tier and no matter where you go in tier, you can pick up Roman pottery or you can

see all these amazing sights, whether it's from the Phoenicians, from the Romans, from the Crusaders, it's just, it's all there in front of you. Yeah, yeah, creative civilization there. Well, thank you so much for showing your experiences, Kevin. Thanks so much. Okay, cheers.

Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of a daddy are celebrated.

We'll chat this year. We have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey show, Angelica Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the black fat femme podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Have a podcast or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh, I know that's right.

About 20 years ago, maybe 30, a circus fitted to Majora, the largest island on the Majora toll in the capital city of the Marshall Islands. It came to Majora as almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanus or fish does on a boat.

After performing, they couldn't find a boat to take them to the next destination. And so the residents of this tiny island, which at times is no wider than the single road which travels its whole length, decided that they'd have to share the food that they themselves had imported at great cost. And they said about gathering apples, bananas, and anything else that they thought an elephant might like to eat while it waited for a way off an island that barely has enough room for its own people. Let alone the largest land animal on earth.

The people of the Marshall Islands, for whom hospitality is as natural as the tides of the sea, greet each other the same way they do strangers, by saying yokwe. The word has several meanings, but I'll let David Kabua explain them. He's the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, so he seems like he'd be a good source. I would say the word yapwe, yapwe is our greeting word.

as a lot of several meanings. And you can say, when you meet someone the first time, you say, Yahweh. When you greet someone, and when you also say goodbye, instead of saying goodbye, you also say Yahweh. So you can use that also. Like during the weekend, there was a tournament, fishing tournament. And if you were fishing and you got a big fish on the land, and you were really

And you're about to land the fish, but the land's not. So what do you say? Oh, yeah, wait. And hello to the fish, but you just say, yeah, because you lost the pig catch. So it can't be used that way. Like when you lose someone or someone pass away, you miss that bridge. Yeah, so-and-so he was here, but no one could hear. So you can say, yeah. So it has several meanings, but the deeper meaning of the upper is,

You are beautiful like the rainbow. Here means rainbow and place. So you combine the two words as you are a rainbow. You are beautiful as a rainbow. On the map, the Marshall Islands look like the little dots that appear in my photos of the beach at Marshall Road. But unlike those little specks of dust that manage to sneak their way onto my camera sensor, Marshall Islands belong here.

Here is a pretty vague turn. The 29 Karla tolls and five islands that allow 54,000 marshalese to live on 182 square kilometers of land span an oceanic territory of 200,000 kilometers. It's like you took a small American town and scattered it across an area one and a half times the size of Alaska.

Even though the RMI is 98% water, every inch of land is precious to the marshalies, whose matrilineal society ensures that land passes from mother to daughter, and ties families to remote islands that make up the low-lying atolls of the Republic. It was on one of the bigger chunks of land that I recorded the music you heard a minute ago. Majoros and Atoll, that's a coral ring that encircles the lagoon.

And it's biggest islands about 30 miles long, but often less than 100 yards wide. There's one road that runs the length of it, and sometimes also spans the width of it. It's also home to about half the RMI's population. The highest point on the atoll lives just three meters above sea level. If you want to get higher than that, then you're only option to houses or palm trees.

From the top of the fifth floor of the Napa Auto Parts store, which also houses the UNDP and the Marshall Islands Olympic Committee, you can see the whole island. For Marshallese people, these tiny pieces of paradise that barely poke their heads out from the top of the ocean are everything. Their land and their ties to it define them. Without their place, they can't be themselves.

Even though many thousands of marshalies live in the diaspora of the United States, they still import handicrafts made from little shells on the outer islands and coconut husks. Many of them come back to the islands to retire. But slowly, the ocean is taking those islands back. Rising sea levels and more extreme tidal surges have placed this tiny Pacific nation on the front lines of climate change.

there isn't an exact estimate as to how long the martial islands have, or what they can do to halt the creeping advance of the ocean. They've always existed under just a few square kilometers of land, among millions of square kilometers of ocean, and they depend on that ocean for everything, but now it's threatening to take everything away from them. One day, they fear their islands will become uninhabitable, a saltwater invades the water table and their trees die, or storms bring more and more frequent floods that sweep away their homes and their possessions.

They don't want to leave, but they can't stand to learn against climate change either. But the Marshallese are resilient people. They've weathered many storms to get to where they are now. The tiny museum in Madrid hosts artifacts of several crises that would seem apocalyptic. A nuclear bomb, the Second World War. But in the end, these did little to Christ the incredible kindness of the tenacity of the Marshallese.

The islands that make up the RMI have been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years. They've been variously ruled by the Spanish, German, Japanese and United States governments before becoming an independent republic. Before they were named by a British sailor, the islands had their own name.

I let Jeff, a Marshley's Renaissance man, who was at one side driver, the head of the World Health Organization's EMT program on the islands, a registered nurse, and the custodian of an incredible collection of Marshley's music. Explain what they were called before that. Before he used to call Lali, Lali, like L-O-L-E.

That's before it turns into Marshall. This is where Marshall came from this guy that found these islands. Captain Marshall. Undeniably, the Marshall Islands are not a bad place to find yourself on a summer afternoon. And in the time I spent there, I took several trips to the smaller islands around Madro Tol.

They look like the platonic ideal of tropical island, complete with coconut palms, vibrant coral reefs, white sand or turquoise water. I love freediving and dropping down onto a wrecked aircraft and dozens of brightly colored species of fish in almost infinite visibility without even needing to put on a wetsuit or a weight belt might be the closest I'll ever get to flying. But I wasn't just here for a dip in the ocean. I'm actually here to tell you a story of incredible resilience.

Much of America, both on the left and on the right, spends much of its time and money preparing for its own imagined version of the crisis. For some, that's the unimaginable destruction of the nuclear war. For others, it's the encroaching of the ocean on the land and the resulting loss of places to live and grow food. And for others, it's a collapse of basic services like power and clean water that we take for granted. These are all storms that the tiny island nation has already weathered.

And it hasn't done so in the atomized and individualistic way that so many American preppers fantasize about online. It's done so as an incredibly strong, optimistic and welcoming community. There's a lot we can learn from the people of the Marshall Islands in their story. And so this week I'll be doing my best to share the stories that they shared with me. If you're familiar with the islands, it's likely because of the history of one of the other atolls in the group, Bikini at all.

The name is a German bastardization of a martialese word. Pekingi. Pick, meaning plain surface, and knee, meaning coconut tree. It's a flat base where coconuts grow. But you likely don't know the island for its coconuts, and those aren't safe to eat anywhere anyway. If you've heard of Pekingi atoll, it's because of what the United States did there after the Second World War.

On the 18th of July, 1947, the Marshall Islands were placed in a strategic trust territory by the United Nations. This territory was administered by the United States, which was supposed to administer the islands in the best interest of their inhabitants and of international peace and security. But a year before the trust territory was created, the US began nuclear testing in the lagoon at Bikini Atoll, a site that would, over the next 15 years, become the most heavily bombed place on Earth.

with some islands entirely removed from the map, and much of their population left dead, sick, and without the land that defines them and their ability to thrive on these tiny islands amidst the endless ocean. As far as possible, I want to let the marshalies survivors of the nuclear tests and their families tell their own stories.

They call what happened on Bikini and Enewatak atoll the nuclear legacy of their country. Talking about the nuclear legacy is a difficult topic for the marshalies, especially at a time when none of them have been paid the compensation they were allotted and the US was negotiating a new agreement with the marshalies government that was very far from settled and the numbers the US were offering were very far from sufficient.

I was very fortunate to join a few other journalists on the tiny island of Boughton-Boughton, a short boat ride away from Myjira, and home to perhaps the most beautiful coral reef I've ever seen. We had lunch, walked around the island, and then had a talk on the nuclear legacy, from descendants of some of the survivors. I'll let them introduce themselves. My name is Taka Bekibion. I'm from the Marshall Island.

I am a student at CMI, College of the Marshall Island, and I am currently the president for the CMI nuclear club, which we mostly work under National Nuclear Commission with our director, Mary Silk, and now our commissioner, Ariana.

All right. Yeah, well, once again, my name is Ariana Tiwen Kaluma. I work as a commissioner and nuclear justice envoy for the RMI National Nuclear Commission. Once again, thank you very much for having us this afternoon. Yeah, well, welcome to Marshall Island. My name is Evelyn Ralpho. I'm the director for education and public awareness. Once again, welcome. Enjoy the rest of your days here.

I work with the National Nuclear Commission as an admin and physical officer. I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to cope, but since the boss said we all cope, so that's the only way to support the boss to go work on the same boat. Welcome to the Marshall Islands. She's from Megato. She's from Megato. Yeah, the three of us are all descendants of nuclear survivors.

They were exposed to fallout. Her mother was exposed to fallout. Her mother, Grace's mother, was also exposed to the radioactive fallout as well as my great-grandfather. I think that's what really drives us to share this with you. Almost everyone in the RMI has a family member directly impacted by the testing and a decade to mistreatment that came after it.

Although we know the name Bikini Atoll, the entire republic was impacted by nuclear fallout, including Majora itself, thanks to the ill-advised decision to drop bombs on a day when the populated atolls were downwind of the test site. In fact, right next to our hotel and showing the same parking lot, there's the US Department of Energy office. I asked Jeff what that was doing there. Yeah, I saw there's a DOE office, a health office in the street here.

The one in the next to the auto, that's the office where they do the radiation testing. And there's the one near the AMI, and Marshall. That's the planet for those survivors. Now the survivors, there's a few of them, like maybe less than 50. Wow. The AMI saw fighting in the Second World War. It's memorialized in murals across Nigeria.

In 1943 and 1944, the USA bombed and then fought the Imperial Japanese military, who had been occupying the island since 1914. U.S. soldiers and Marines, along with Marjalee scouts, landed on Majora, Kwajulin, and Anuito, on Higgins boats, that were virtually identical to the boat we took across the lagoon to Bocumboten. The fighting was fierce, and the scale of the destruction was immense.

Overall, the Americans lost 611 men and suffered 2,341 wounded. 261 were missing. Meanwhile, the Japanese lost over 11,000 men and had 358 captured. Today, the Bikini Atoll Lagoon still holds the ghostly remains of the ships and planes that fought that battle.

alongside the Nagato, the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the ship from whose bridge, Admiral Yamamoto, launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a shadow of this war that was evoked in 1946, when 167 of Bikini Atoll's inhabitants were forcibly relocated by the United States. They initially accepted this settlement, quote, for the good of mankind and to end all wars, in the words of the U.S. Commandant at the time.

Assisted by US Navy CBs, they disassembled their church and moved to different atolls. Nine of the 11 family heads from Bikini elected to be transported 125 miles to Rongarikato, an island with about one quarter of the landmass of Bikini atoll. Many believed the island to be haunted, and by the time the Navy left them with a few weeks of water and food, they had every reason to be afraid. I'll let Ariana explain what that removal process was like.

They had asked the people if they were willing to give up their homelands for the good of mankind and to end all wars. And because our people are people of faith in Christianity, they, and they were very afraid they did not want to leave, but because of the amount of power that the military showed up with with their big ships compared to our small canoes and the

amount of troops that were on that island on that morning. It was very hard for them to fight against what was being asked of them.

If you have time to look through documentaries of the nuclear legacy, you will see a certain part where the commander, a Commodore, his name was Ben Wyatt, he was sitting down and asking the chief at that time, can we use this island for the good of mankind? And in response, the people all respond in Yoon-e-jin, E-M-mon, which means okay.

And from their testimonies, they had to take that shot over 40 times to make sure that, you know, they all said M1 at the same time to get the best shot they could for, you know, maybe for reports to the UN. But it was a very frustrating time for them. Following their removal, the testing began. The idea was to test nuclear bombs on ships. So the US bought 95 ships fully loaded with weapons and fuel.

At this time, this would have ranked the navy of Bikini Atoll just out there to top five biggest fleets in the world. But those boats didn't stay afloat for long. Now, you might think that, given the testing was on ships, The Atoll's navy would be some kind of mid-century merry-salesce, but you'd be wrong. 3,350 experimental rats, goats, and pigs died in the service as its strange nuclear experiment.

Some of them, after being subjected to the great indignity of being covered in sunscreen, which bizarrely scientists thought might be useful in alleviating the impact of radiation. It's rather staggering that this research was being done three years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on whole cities full of human beings. But as you've maybe already picked up in this story, the possibility of unintended but entirely predictable human suffering does not seem to have been top of the priority list.

The first test of the island somehow misfired. The gathered press were disappointed and many of them went home, but the second, code name Baker, didn't. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called the Baker test the world's first nuclear disaster. It drove a 2,000-foot-wide pillar of water into the air. It sunk the USSR console, and released massive amounts of radiation across the islands of the atoll.

which at the time, the residents had been expecting to return to. Just five days after the first bomb went off, Louis-Reiard, a French mechanical engineer who was working as manager of his mother's lingerie shop in Paris, introduced a new swimsuit design named the Bikini after the Atoll. It was, one right equipped, the atom bomb of fashion. The people of the Atoll, however, gained little from the outfit or the testing.

January of 1948, just two years after their removal, Dr. Leonard Mason visited the Bikinians on Rongarik and was appalled to find the people that had almost starved to death. We were dying, but it didn't listen to us, one of them said to him. Mason, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, asked that food and water be bought immediately. The US built houses for Bikini Atoll Residence on Ujilang Atoll.

but it decided to use these for the residents of Anewatakatol, where it was also about to begin conducting nuclear experiments. Instead, the Bikini Islanders were placed in tents alongside a runway before they eventually chose Kili Island, a line of less than one square kilometre as their next home. Also evacuated were Anewatak Rongalap and Wothaw Islanders. They too thought this was a temporary arrangement and that they could go home in a short period of time.

They too found out later that this was not the case. Over the course of their exile, they've been moved several more times, starved half to death, cheated their compensation, and stripped of their ancestral homeland. For the next 12 years, the United States would drop increasingly large bombs, culminating in 1954 with the bravo shot of Operation Castle, also known as Castle Bravo, the biggest nuclear device that we know of the US ever deploying.

Within those 12 years, there were 67 known devices that were tested here. There could have been more, but all we know of is 67. One of them was the Castle Bravo shot that yielded 15 megatons, which when scientists calculated, the equivalent of the Bravo shot would have required testing the Hiroshima bomb one and a half times every single day for 12 years.

That 15 Megaton Bravo shot yielded more than 2.5 times the estimated 6 Megaton explosion when it was detonated on an artificial island in the Bikini Atoll. The device's mushroom cloud reached a height of 47,000 feet, which is 1400 meters.

and a diameter of seven miles or 11 kilometers in about one minute. Eventually, it reached a height of 40 kilometers and a diameter of 100 kilometers. This took less than 10 minutes. It traveled more than 100 meters per second and covered 7,000 kilometers of Pacific Ocean and everything in it with nuclear fallout. On the eve of the bravo shot, weather reports indicated that the quote, conditioned to getting less favorable,

But nonetheless, the decision to go ahead with the first test was taken by Dr. Alvin C. Graves. Joint task force seven ships, located 30 miles east of Bikini, and what was thought to be an upwind position, began detecting high levels of radiation just two hours after the test. Very soon after they began traveling south at full speed to avoid the fallout. But directly downwind of the blast and unable to travel, a longer lap, and a lingonaya tolls.

Ariana explained the impact of the fallout there, which residents were not warned about. American service people there were warned to stay inside, not eat or drink anything. But no such warning was given to the local residents.

some said it looked like the sky was changing colors from red to yellow to orange it was just a very very bright morning and then they started hearing like thunderous roars a couple minutes later and it was just like roars after roars and it was a very frightening time because this was just not something you know does not happen every day and then around 10 a.m.

the fallout had started to arrive. And these are comes from Rongalab Atal, which is the closest to Bikini. The fallout had started to arrive and they were not sure what was going on. There was men out fishing. There was also stories from these witnesses that prior to this test, the military had gone to Rongruk and they had movie nights and they would show the community of movies where it's snowing.

Tomorrow, we'll hear more about the consequences of the Bravo shop for the people who, despite never having any quarrel with the USA, with the recipient of the largest nuclear bomb it's ever detonated.

Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast.

A podcast where all the intersections of a daddy are celebrated. Oh, chat. This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from The Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more. Make sure you listen to the black fat fan podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Have a podcast or whatever you get your podcast, girl. Oh, I know that's right.

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas. Robert Evans here. And we had been planning to make a new come episode to give you all a white Christmas this year. But you know what? I didn't wind up wanting to do right during the holidays when we didn't have to work is spend hours researching some other weird come conspiracies on the internet. So we're just going to play the old come episode for you as a rerun. I know that's not.

the most effortful version of our job that I could have done this year, but also it's been a real shitty year for everybody. So let's just listen to an old come episode and pretend we gave you a new come episode. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Dearly beloved, welcome to It Could Happen Here. We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life, Electric Word Life. It's a thing that only happens with the addition of a couple of ingredients. And one of those ingredients is the subject of our episode today. Come. Oh, yeah, you guys like that?

Everybody really happy with that. I love that. Yeah, I'm feeling not at all like I want to kind of shower. You can hear the moment where we're all simultaneously questioning every single decision we've ever made in our entire lives. Now, we're all bonded together.

So how's everybody doing today? We've got Neil Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout. And I should let people know, I wasn't joking about the cum thing. So those of you who are too online will know this. Those of you who are not online enough, this is one of the online things that you will want to know because it's very funny. And the gist of it is that like four days ago, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson,

got sent a link to a Twitter account that is that purports to be spreading like hidden news about the evils of the Chinese Communist regime. And they put out a video that was a segment from a British milking fetish pornography video.

Now, if you're not aware, the milking, as far as I can tell, I believe they're kind of descended from the long lineage of like rubber fetishists, right? And there's like a lot of medical fetish stuff tied into it. But the idea is that men are entirely wrapped up on hospital journeys and giant pumps suck the same bit out of them. So it's like a cow milker. The machine is very similar to what you would use to make out.

This Twitter account put this up, claiming that it was the Chinese government stealing the semen of young men. And Jordan Peterson shared it saying it was an unbelievable act of evil. And then everyone had the best day of their lives. And an hour or two later he deleted it. Now, I have been continuing.

Coward. Coward. Cowards are deleting it. So strange. So strange that he left the world of peer-reviewed academia. It's wild that he's no longer a professor. It's very funny. We're continuing to give him shit for it online. But it set us off down an interesting road. And because some other stuff fell through, we're going to talk about the wide world of weird right-wing cum conspiracies. Most of them released are going to be right-wing.

There's a surprising number of semen-based conspiracies. Everybody did research on their own special thing. I wanted to start by talking about this Jordan Peterson Come video and giving kind of some of the background on it. So I believe it was last July, the Chinese human sperm bank of Shanghai announced that it was hosting a competition for college students to find out whose semen was the best in terms of like, you know,

A number of modal sperm per milliliter, I think, is the way that they judge it. Basically, the idea was that they were trying to find people with sperm concentration greater than 60 million per milliliter. If they visited a sperm bank a set number of times in a six-month period, they could receive a prize that was equivalent to about $1,200.

Now, the reason this is happening is that China for the first time as a result of a number of different policies had negative population growth very recently. And this is the thing that can cause a problem for a country for a variety of reasons. So the government is trying to shore up birth rights. And there are a lot of couples in China that have had issues conceiving. And so there's a huge amount of demand for sperm in the country right now. So this is not

a weird story. It is actually a thing that happens all around the world regularly. But right around the time that this happened, a little bit after that, it came out that a Japanese company started selling what is called in the articles I found an automatic sperm extractor to Chinese sperm banks. Now,

I'm going to send you all the link. I was hoping you would. Oh, yes, good friends. Thanks, but yes, we're all going to see this. So the machine's price listing on Alibaba, where it sells for about $5,000 to $6,000, describes it as a device that, quote, merges modern digital technology, automatic control technology, and simulation technologies with semen collection and premature ejaculation desensitization training function.

So it has a number of purposes, including guest help guys stop coming to early. No shame. It's funny that someone built a machine for it. It's extremely funny. I think you can buy on AliExpress. I personally am not attaching anything I bought on Alibaba to sensitive parts of my body. $6,000. It's not cheap.

Now, the primary, these are not being used for people who are coming too quickly. This is like the worst ever way. Or 2D2. This... It is weird. What's the orientation? Does it stand on the ground and you just approach it? You have to stand up. Yeah. But what if you're a short king? I'm sure they have options. It has the rough shape of like...

A handheld massage device, but it's kind of like formed like almost an art deco robot vagina. And basically, from what I've read, kind of the reasoning is that like, hey, we need people to donate sperm. Some people feel weird about just masturbating in a clinic, and we hope this is a more pleasant experience for them.

So again, this we're laughing because like, look, a machine designed to capture semen is kind of a funny thing. That's okay. No shame on anybody for that. But the fact that you have both the government trying to encourage people to donate sperm and this weird machine kind of created fertile ground for a bunch of right wing weirdos to start making. I'm grounded. I know fertile ground.

To make the completely ungrounded claim that, like, the government was trying to steal people's semen, right? And that is the basis of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's fundamental freakout on the internet. And I will say, you should try to find the videos of the automatic sperm extractor, this amazing Japanese machine, because it is fascinating.

I think we should share some of these on the cool zone account. Do they have to like, like, chain? Like, I assume they, like, change the tune. Yes, they change every time. Yeah, you can't clean that. If you watch the video, there's like a, there's a rubber part that like, uh, comes out like a, like a sea urchin.

The thing that the penis goes in is also the capture device. So it is removed with the sperm donation when you take it out. So again, this is funny because come, but there's nothing sinister here. It's just in the same way that literally everything is, people have spun it up into a nonsense thing. But because of this beautiful, beautiful story, which I hope we've all gotten to enjoy, I got to do a lot of work on the

Some of you, if you've worked in agriculture, you're not going to be surprised that stealing come is a massive industry. There is a lot of money to be made in stealing semen. There's enough money to be made in stealing semen that there are two different official terms that I have found for semen theft. The first is sperm-jacking.

How can it get better? How can it get better than that? Oh it gets better because the second the second is spurgling.

These are like professionals who like, come up with these terms, huh? These are, that is a mock. They're genius. There actually is. I did find in my research, there is one actual Chinese based sperm conspiracy. It's just not a very sinister one. There's this Chinese businessman, Jesse Jabezu, who stole, there's this, I think it was a Canadian company. No, it was a US company.

who had, so this is for like bull semen. And one of the things that you want for a bull semen is you don't want, if you're in siminating cows, you want all of the babies to be female generally, right? Because bulls are not very, with outside a certain specific, if you're like trying to make more breeders, whatever, if you're in industrial agriculture, you don't want any of the boys, right? You just want to keep making those sweet, sweet lady cows that are more useful to you in a financial sense.

So there's a US company that developed a method of before insemination, looking through the sperm and like sorting out the sperm that will make female cows. And that is apparently hard to do. I mean, it sounds like it would be hard to do, right? And this Chinese businessman was like reverse engineering there. It's kind of actually, it's basically the same story as Jurassic Park.

Um, in any way, this guy has, has gotten sued for a bunch of money. Yeah. He got chased down by a loss of raptor. I hope it works out just as well as Jurassic Park. Yeah. It's very funny. I will say there's a couple of really wild lines from this, the CBC story I found. I'm just going to read one to you.

Um, zoo's activities could best be described as Machiavellian at various points. He outlined a plan to make X, Y. That's the American company. Quote, feel all the time the sort of damocleses on their heads and the law is strong, but the outlaws are 10 times stronger. Okay. Okay. This guy is a look. Yeah. Jesse Jabe Zoo, my hero, the sperm bandit, incredible sperm jagger, one of the best. In the business.

This man lives on an island with his cow raptors. What a hero. There was also a case of a Japanese man who illegally took Wagyu cattle sperm to China to try to give them sperm. And like the Chinese government immediately caught him and was like, no, this is actually incredibly dangerous. Like you're not allowed to just take animal breeding material into the country without, you know, there's a wide variety of reasons that that could be in horribly. So he got in the shitload of trouble.

Yeah, anyway, that's my that's my sperm stories, everybody. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for spurgling my knowledge, Garrison. We're back in James is here to talk to us about the kind of sperm jacking that you do when you don't jack. I'm talking about jacking your own sperm by keeping it inside of you semen retention.

Yeah. How was that, James? Was that unscripted? Did you just like do that? Didn't even write that, yeah. Didn't even write that. So on the back of his hand, he had a brainwave at two in the morning and he got that down. Those are the kind of things you can do when you've been podcasting as long as I know. Robert's been in the cum space for several years. I've been in those soggy trenches for a long time.

All right, we are after all that work, so let me continue. So I'm going to talk about what happens when you keep your calm inside you. Okay, yeah, this is a thing. What are we doing today?

This is a critical journalist. We are making content. Talking of content, let's talk about the content of some Reddit posters. What is called the semen retention movement? This will shock many of you.

Let's begin on Reddit.com. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like so many wonderful things. I feel like I feel like it's getting weird with their own Reddit. I feel like if you type that into your phone, it would have finished the sentence the same way. What is an auto directed you to Reddit? Believe me, we're going to go there, Garrison, because when you Google sperm retention, you do indeed find some stuff on Reddit. So I'll bet.

Now, they've spun off from Reddit, right then I have their own organization, which is nofat.com. Nofat.com is a community-centered sexual health platform. I'm allowing them to define themselves here, I guess, designed to help people overcome poor addiction and compulsive sexual behavior, which is not necessarily really not all semen retention, as we're going to learn, is based on helping people overcome addiction to porn.

But so far as that is a thing that people actually have. And if someone was accusing Robert of being addicted to porn on his timeline this weekend. That would be because I keep ratioing Jordan Peterson with the pornography video that he mistaking me posted. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. I just want him to respond so I can ask him, Jordan, tell me in your own words what you thought was happening in that video.

I really hope he thinks it's like milking. They have RFID colors and they get fed based on their production level. That would be great. What did you think? You're a medical doctor. Did you think that cum actually worked that way? You can just stick a sucker on somebody anyway.

Just get it out. Okay, so after it's movement began already.com, it quickly pivoted to kind of offering all kinds of weird physical and mental health benefits. And that's where it was adopted by friends on the podcast, the proud boys.

Luckily, we do have a bit of insight into why, into the exact nature of the no-fat fascism that the Proud Boys practice, thanks to Kyle Cheney, who's a political reporter, who was reporting on the trial of one of the Proud Boys accused of sedition on January 6, called Zach Rel. In that trial, for reasons that I'm not exactly clear on, the Proud Boy, I guess it's like their handbook, like the Proud Boy Bible was introduced, and into the record.

Yep, it's in the court record, buddy, because what the lawyers decided that it was pertinent to the case. So a proud boy may not ejaculate alone more than once in every 30 days.

That means he must abstain from pornography during that time. And if he needs to ejaculate, this is really weird, it must be within one yard of a woman. Fascinatingly specific. Yeah, yeah, right. And I like that they've gone with imperial measurements. With her consent, so that's nice. The woman may not be a prostitute.

So that's the proud voice nature that I know of FabFascism. But I think the way of understanding why some people practice this perhaps best is to go onto Reddit.com. So I found a post by Reddit user, u slash monk191817. It seems like a nice guy. And there are 480 upvotes on this. But what I did was I went to semen retention. I looked at, you know, sorted by popular posts.

found this one from a bunch of numbers. And so this guy has nine years of experience with semen retention. So I'm just going to read. I'm presuming. Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Him and some monks off the coast of fucking Lynn's farm. Well, he could not be healthy. No, I don't think it is. There is a will get to this evidence that you shouldn't do this. So

In his nine years of experience, he has experienced the following things. Seaman, when retained in our bodies, has healing rejuvenating effects. Loss of semen has the opposite effects. This may not be scientifically proven, but it's proven by experience. That's a red flag. That's interesting. Getting ready medical advice, while attempting any tasks that demands high physical, mental or intellectual abilities, if we are semen retention powered, we would actually enjoy the task, which would otherwise seem dull.

This is called sexual energy transmutation in layman's terms. Oh, no. Wait, that's the layman's? What is it? What's the non-layman term? It's just it's got even more I have no idea. Spurmozoic fucking fission.

So, for peak performance, it's always necessary to be powered by semen. It will be best to use semen only for regeneration purposes, since nature originally intended it for regeneration and not use it for sexual purposes apart from to create a child. If not serving that purpose, master whatever techniques are useful in not letting the seed out while having sex.

At the end of the day, don't let your seed out like a worthless thing. There's more, so just contain yourself. Great, great. Which is exactly the reason why core religions are based on celibacy, because opposite of regeneration is degeneration, which will cause a man to fall into a lower state controlled by his lower nature rather than when he's subduing it.

we should let semen retention be part of our lives, not something that is done for superpowers. For superpowers are, in my experience, the sudden ecstasy that we feel wants to be transitioned from the degenerated to the regenerated state. And that will stabilize after some time, similar to how a flight maintains stable altitude after takeoff.

Very similar, actually. That's what you can hear when the engines are spinning up. It's just a do-trying really hard not to nut, and it makes that noise. I'm so excited for the next Marvel film. We're the superhero that gains his power from... The whole run has to not come so he can get tiny.

No fat man. Yeah. So yeah, he didn't, I should add that this person confessed us to having lapsed at some point in the nine years. Pozer. Pozer. Pozer. Yeah. Yeah. It's stolen. That's like when I learned land. I'm strong was on steroids. It's just disappointing.

Yeah, no one would have seen it coming. See what I did there? Okay. So this person then urges other posters on the scene of retention subreddit to not use streaks to outperform others or look better about ourselves or bring others down. The battle with lust is a lifelong fight and the more we get better at finding victories. Yeah, buddy. The moment we come better at finding victories over internal battles, the better we become as high valued men. Hell yeah, brother.

I've often wished that, you know, if the pandemic hadn't been a thing and I could force you all to work in a central location, I could have like a wall of murals where I put under each of your faces a quote from an episode that you've participated in and games that that would be your quote. The battle against lust is a lifelong struggle.

Yeah, that vowel gets some t-shirts knocked up and we can do a fundraising. When we eventually get the cools on many offices, we have a portrait hanging on the wall of each of us with one quote underneath. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like on a plaque with a, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. When we get the cools when we when we when we take over the meta offices three weeks from now. Yeah.

There is a marketing company that has been emailing me for about six months, telling me how cheap it is to buy a billboard by the side of a road and send a message to a loved one. So maybe, maybe I'll do the billboard on the street and see my-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they will be until I put my positive messages about the controlling lust and holding semen inside our bodies. True. True. And return men to their former glory. So a lot of the Reddit posts rely on a couple of different studies, right? One of these studies, measured participants, a lot of what they're doing is they're claiming to increase testosterone, right? Right at the back, testosterone does have as long as Armstrong can tell you some performance enhancing benefits.

Sure. Yeah, it increases your muscle growth, your coverage from exercise, all that stuff. One of the studies measured participants' testosterone levels of baseline before masturbation and then in 10-minute intervals after masturbation. And then they were asked to abstain for three weeks and they came back and they did the process again.

Testosterone was higher in the baseline measurement at the end of the three weeks of abstinence, right? But the sample size was pretty small. And there's some theorizing that the boost was actually caused by the anticipated masturbation that they were about to do at the second. It was so ready to go. Yeah, he's got ready to pop.

after three weeks. The second study looked at a 45% increase after a few days, seven days of abstinence. But even the study showed this was a temporary peak that returned to normal, even with continuing abstinence. So there's just these two studies. They're pretty

They happened a long time ago. We'll post some more on the show notes if you guys want to read more about No Fap Science. But we should just point out that there is in fact a multitude of evidence that this is a bad idea that having sex is actually good for you. Having sex will try not to ejaculate. It's probably not good for you. Probably not good for your relationship either.

one would surmise. They are a usher into that. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's your thing. You do do you. There was a study that investigated the motivation for semen retention among semen retainers.

And a lot of it, it seemed like people were people who felt that like either sexual masturbation was unhealthy or wrong or sinful. And there is evidence to show that like feeling like a guilty about yourself or like living with stress and self-loathing like that is bad for you, right? And that will reduce your testosterone level. There's also some evidence to suggest that not ejaculating can give you prostate issues.

Yes. Um, yeah, there's, there's, there's, and this is like pretty debatable, like most things that people talk about in regards to coming and health, like you can find some studies like the studies on testosterone, some of them are kind of sketchy. Anyway, don't think oh, come or come either way. Um, you know, it's whatever, but if you do have a chance to fuck one of those Alibaba robots,

I recommend it. Keep that posite out. Let's talk about calm demons. Hell yeah. Wait. Okay. Okay. Hard pivot here.

So, okay, we are not going as far afield from the no fat people as you would think. Okay. But, all right, now the year is 2020. Everyone on Earth has collectively gone insane. This is the summer, this is the summer of 2020. So this is the part of 2020 where fun stuff is happening. This is like late July. Oh, Garrison, that's when we met. So yeah.

We were getting just incredibly poisoned. Yeah. But yeah, we sure were. That'll be fun in like 20 years. Well, well, well, well, life or death struggle for the sort of the life or death struggle for the fate of the United States and whether or not people are going to be using murder by the cops is being waged in the streets. Donald Trump and Donald J. Trump Trump. Donald J. Trump. Wow. Donald Trump Jr. That one. That's that's the Trump and a little Trump here. Yeah. Trump at we're.

you know looking for looking looking for their their their cure to covet nineteen on twitter and okay so as as as we probably all remember right that they found was that rocks ok so one of the first ones that they found before before i remember that this is this is before we found so much it was it inside of them all along there no this is this is this is a drug historically the thing that was probable i hope they weren't full of a record i thought it was semen no no we'll get to that we're there there's a

The road is long, but it ends with calm demons. We first must walk the road. So the road here is Donald Trump Jr. Post a tweet saying this is necessary watching about this video from this doctor named Dr. Stella Immanuel.

Now, okay, so who is this person? She is part of a, oh, okay, I say part of, she runs this thing called Firepower Ministries, which makes sense. Oh no. So you don't think we're doing great. She's also part of- Yeah, I know broadly, yeah, okay, cool.

I'm good. She's also part of America's frontline doctors who are good at this group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. These dipshits. Oh my God. Okay. So this is very, very, very much in the same vein as I'd, I'd architecture 9-11 truth. They found a bunch of people who technically have medical degrees or like nurses.

who were like, no, no, vaccines are bad. And hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine is, will chloroquine? Do you have COVID, that one? Yeah, it's been a long day. I've slept for eight hours, but in like several distinct parts of the day that were not continuous, it's been, things are going great in a healthy manner. And it'll be better if you'd taken some horse medicine first. Quite possibly. I mean, it's not like it could have gone worse. Yeah, I get some cash money.

Alright, so this person's from the very sketchy doctors who are trying to sell, like, a bunch of random shit to cure COVID. And... Okay, so who actually is this person? She is from Cameroon. And Dr. Stella in a minute was caught up in the unbelievably sort of...

I mean, right, like, yes, objectively right wing, also very, very weird wave of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity that's been sweeping across that part of Africa as part of sort of, you know, a very sort of long range of coordinated effort by right wing Christian missionaries. So, okay, so for people who don't know your Christianity very well,

The Pentecostals and the Charismatic Christians are like firmly in the very, very weird camp of Christians. Like these are, these are the people who do faith healing. One of the very common sort of Pentecostal things is this belief that like, like you just, you talk to God.

like gods in your head, and you just have conversation with them. Now, unfortunately for like all of us, and this is, you know, a thing that is a not insignificant contributing factor to why the last, I don't know, 10 years have been so batshit, is that like, this originally was kind of an isolated Pentecostal thing, and like, the broader Evangelicals were like, no, no, no, God only talks to me, like your pastor, like you're probably not, like, you're not like having a conversation in your head.

But that's changed. That's changed, yeah. This shit has fucking taken over everywhere. It's really bad. And these people believe a lot of very, very weird stuff. So...

I mean, okay, so like, you know, she has like some of the sort of standard like really, really hard line, like David Ike shit, like she believes that the world's being run by aliens and like reptiles and like the vaccine has like alien DNA in it to like take over your day. You know, this is like sort of Facebook moments. Alex Jones shit. Yeah, right. Okay, but.

Okay, I'm going to read this quote from Will Sumner. This is a quote from one of her sermons. They, which is demons, are responsible for serious gynecological problems, in many ways, said. We call them all kinds of names, entromecious, entromecious. We call them molar pregnancies. We call them fibroids. We call them cysts. But most of them were evil deposits from spirit husband, Emmanuel said of the medical insurance.

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A lot of this is drawn from a very, like a genuinely unbelievably dubious piece of theology. So when I was researching this, I saw someone, there was a religious scholar who was writing this. He was like, oh, I immediately recognized the theology of this. This is from Genesis 6.

So, okay, so I was like, okay, what the fuck are they talking about? So I went back and I read Genesis, and I'm going to read the two, this is from Genesis chapter six, verses one and two. And I am just going to read these two sentences, and I am going to see if you two can produce come demons from this. Okay.

Happy to do so. I mean, I could produce come demons from almost anything. That is the power. With the right machinery. You know what I think we know exactly what the right machinery is. Look, we know that we could produce come demons mechanically. Our challenge here is to produce them theologically. Okay. I will use all of my knowledge. We must find a way to evacuate the vast deference of the soul.

Okay, so I'm using the King James translation because that's the translation that all these psychos use. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply in the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of man that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.

Okay, so I do know what they are doing. So the sons of God, those would be what, like fallen angels that have been procreating with women. Yeah. So this ties into like the Book of Enoch stuff, which was made a little bit like after Genesis, but it kind of, it like retconned a lot of like the creation story. So I can see where they're pulling come demons from, but it is a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, they're kind of you could say come demons in the way that like God seed. Yeah, you could see it. Yeah, it's that's it is a stretch.

Okay, my my my analysis of this I think I think I think they're pulling this out of their ass and I think they're pulling this out of their ass come deep in so the other I have an immense and powerful disrespect for theology, but

What part of the sons of God? What part of that gets you to demons and not... Is it the whole point of Christianity that we are all God's children? Is this not a thing that they tell you in every single fucking search? How do you read that and not think they're talking about people and immediately jump to come, David?

Here's what's going on. I could explain this because this is the King's James version. So this was made in a post book of Enoch world around the around the alleged birth of Jesus. The book of Enoch got very popular and this this introduced the idea of a fallen angel. The fallen angel isn't really in the Bible at all. It's only it's only in like non biblical Abrahamic texts.

So this idea then kind of got planted into a lot of Catholic mythology as well. So when they have a distinction between the sons of God versus what was the thing they used to refer to the daughters?

The sons of the daughters of men. Exactly. So the daughters are human where the sons are like came from God. So that is some type of fallen angel that has been cast down to earth. They are doing a specific thing. But it's a result of a whole bunch of mistranslations and a whole bunch of various like Christian and Gnostic texts that have been misinterpreted for thousands of years by the Catholic Church. And it creates a really weird theology that is indistinguishable from like Castlevania.

So, I blame Martin Luther's fault. Like the, like the, the Catholics were doing this. Martin Luther, I specifically, because, okay, so this was already happened. The Catholic church was already doing this, right? But Martin Luther had a chance to fix this shit.

And she was like, do you know what I'm gonna do instead of that? I am going to turn against the peasant revolt and I'm going to bring about a level of anti-Semitism that is going to allow me to outflink the Inquisition on the right.

She could have been fixing this bullshit. No, anti-semitism. Whoa, I gotta keep my patron lords in power. He was German. Like, there's only so much you can ask. That's true. Yeah. Well, I'm happy that we can all go to sleep at night worrying about the sons of God in planting semen.

Oh, there's also a guy. That's come demon type one, right? Those are the demons that have sex with women, and they produce nephilim. There's a lot of conflicting theology. All that stuff comes from the Book of Enoch. All that stuff is non-canon to the modern Bible, but it's where it comes from. Fucking Council of Nicaea.

Okay, but there's also a second, there's also the second kind of come demon, right? Which is, these are, these are, well, okay, so suck you by an incubi art. Based, here we go. I knew it. I was counting down. I was counting down. You had failure. The other kind of demons, so you have your incubi, right, who are another type of sex demon, and the incubi fuck men so they can steal their semen.

And there's another thing that she talks about, which is that there are witches who have like astral spirit sex with men in their sleep. And if you're like having a sex dream, it's because you're having astral spirit sex. I mean, like Bill Murray, I've experienced that. Oh, we know that was Bill Murray. Sorry. My mistake. I get our lives mixed up often.

Oh, wait, that's understandable. Yes. Okay. Okay. The cloud, the fog is clearing. I've had, I've had sex with too many sex demons. It's, it's a real issue. Okay. So, so all right. So we have the sex demons who are like trying to impregnate you. We have the sex demons. You're trying to steal your cum. We also have the actual, we have the actual projecting projecting witches, right? And the actual projecting witches are trying to steal people's cum as part of an Illuminati plot to create like an even more powerful witch and the even more

powerful, which is going to use gay marriage and children's toys to like destroy the fabric of Western civilization and thus bring about sort of general new world order, et cetera. I have heard of this honestly. Honestly, it's in some of my which meetings, yeah. I'm supposed to win. That is not as far from the backstory to Warhammer 40,000 as it should be. That's very sadly true. I didn't want Warhammer 40,000 to come into our come episode, if I'm honest.

No, no, it's, I mean, look, there's a lot of people who are interested in both semen retention and Warhammer 40,000. Yeah. That's a tight vendor. Yeah. Yeah. They all play ultramarines. That was a pretty good Warhammer 40,000 joke for those of you who play. I also learned a couple of days ago that one of the many crimes of the Emperor of 40 K was passing off in a Miri Bakara quote as his own.

Oh yeah, that was a good bit. That was a really good bit. It's little pieces like that that let you know that Dan Abnett's pretty bass. Yeah. That was my favorite part of the book. So funny. That's literally canon.

I do have like three pages written on textual tanning, so we should still be little bit. That's the end of the page. Go off. Well, okay, the one thing I'll add on is that one of the more funny modern versions of these, if you go on the Bedadrill subreddit, the recreational Bedadrill subreddit, you can fight people who try to take enough Bedadrill to have sex with the hat man, which is another...

Another form of trying to summon shadow people. You have to explain your terms for people here. The Iron Man is a tall thin man wearing a hat who appears when you take hallucinogenic doses of Benadryl because you can't afford better drugs because you're 17.

Yes. We're younger. That's the hat man. Some people find the hat man extremely attractive or some of the female shadow people variants. I have read multiple reports of people explaining their sexual experiences with shadow people. Anyways, the President of the United States and his son were promoting this, so this is great. This website, by the way, absolute adventures on here. I'm just reading about how to use Christ's blood as a weapon.

Amazing. Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah. No problems here. Yeah. Do you know who won't steal your semen, everybody? We can't promise that. I can. I can promise. Any advertiser on this show, I've personally approved to make sure they will not come into your bedroom and steal your semen. Wow. How do you do? How does the approval process work? Is that of interest? I cannot divulge private. It sends Garrison $40.

We are going to close off by talking about sperm and testosterone, two of our favorite topics for this episode, for some reason. About a year ago, a trailer on Fox News dropped for a new batch of Tucker Carlson originals titled, The End of Men. It opens with the text that reads, in the current year, the cycle continues.

Once a society collapses then, during hard times, well, hard iron sharpens iron, as they say, and those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive. Then they go on to re-establish order, and so the cycle begins again.

Now, there's a few funny things about this video from the ripped shirtless dudes, milking cows, to wrestling each other, and shooting bottles of canola oil. There's, I had the gun range, they're just shooting, like, 10 bottles of canola oil for some reason. Maybe they're, like, the Mussolini's, like, they're into the Mussolini stuff, you know, he was a big fan of canola oil.

By far the most bizarre. I suspect they're shooting the canola because it's like a seed oil thing. They think that like seed oil is a light wing thing. Seed oils are like sucking out your testosterone anyway. It's something very silly. But by far the most bizarre thing in this trailer is a shot of a naked man with outstretched arms like Jesus on the Carrasa style standing in front of a lake at dusk with a white machine shining a glowing red light on his dick.

What? And again... It's a powerful image. At the climax of the music from 2001 to Space Odyssey, there's this man facing balls first in front of this large red light at the end of this trailer. It should never have been any cause on our podcast or on Fox News for anyone to say the line after the end of the climax of the music from 2001 to Space Odyssey.

Oh, that's the thing we're objecting to for this episode. That's the line. Yeah, yeah, because it shouldn't have climaxed. It lost its power in that moment. Considering both like the- No, no, one second. James, that was a very good joke. Thank you. Thank you for seeing me, buddy.

Yeah. So considering both like the text at the beginning and then some of the narration that we just heard in the trailer, they're kind of doing this weird like Kali Yuga thing, right? Yeah. That is a bit of a bit of what's going on here because Kali Yuga, again, you can listen to our episodes on Savitri Devi for a little more information about this, but it's like this weird right wing like quasi apocalyptic concept that evolved during an intermix between some of the early Nazis and

some of the people who are currently behind the present leader of India. It's way too esoteric and weird to get into, but it's one of the things that like the real- The real fucked up Nazis like it. We're not going to get into it too much, but I think the previous- It's unsettling that it wound up adjacent to a Tucker Carlson episode because it's some weird esoteric Nazi wizard shit.

Yes. And that previous November, Joe Rogan posted a Kali Yuga meme, which went viral. It's about how hard times create strong men, which create good times, which lead to weak men, which create hard times. It's a fucking silly. The accompanying text on the Instagram post that Rogan did said, civilizations move in predictable cycles. We are in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict. All of the chaos we're seeing right now is predicted in Hinduism. Thousands of years

Here's the code. Rogan was probably just like parroting something that he heard from one of his many Fashy or Luigi friends, which considering Rogan's social circle, that could very well just be the same person. Yes. Yeah. One of his fucking sparring buddies is either friends with the Nazi or just stumbled upon a fucking the wrong podcast and then told him that when they were smoking weed. And, you know, that's, I mean, that's honestly

It's problematic because of his platform, but that's how I learned everything about esoterica that I learned when I was in my 20s. I was smoking weed with some sketchy dude who was going places you shouldn't have been on the internet. A few months after Rogan posted this meme, we have Tucker Carlson making this whole mini series surrounding this hard times creates strong men kind of trend.

It's taken cues from the online manosphere, and Tucker posited that weak, unmanly men are leading to the collapse of civilization, and a hardening of men is necessary to save it. According to Tucker, one of the threats to manhood is a quote-unquote total collapse in testosterone levels amongst men in recent years. And the solution goes beyond just your typical anti-soy crusading that Tucker has done in the past,

Now, Tucker has turned to the cutting edge science of bromiopathic medicine as advocated for by a quote unquote fitness professional named Andrew McGovern, who touts that infrared light, uh, and testicle tanning is this Deus Ex Machina for plummeting T levels in men.

So, obviously, half the viewers are now like, what? That's grotesque containing? That's crazy. But my view is, OK, testosterone levels crash and nobody says anything about it. That's crazy. So why is it crazy to seek solutions? It's not crazy to seek solutions. And I think I was recently exposed to a term called bromiopathy. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now that don't trust the mainstream information.

This TV special is, is constantly referred to as a documentary. So surely you would expect Tucker to try and like interview scientists or like anyone with expertise on this topic. No, of course not. Actually, not, not, not the case. No one expects Tucker to talk to anyone serious.

Andrew McGovern, our bromiopathic hero, works as a personal trainer at Lifetime Fitness in Columbus, Ohio, and he hasn't even been a trainer for very long about a decade ago.

I'm not even a good one. About a decade ago, he was the manager of an Abercrombie and Fitch store in Miami. Oh, perfect. Yes. You know, I was okay. Now, that's where I get all of my prescriptions from. Isn't that he looks at the Abercrombie and Fitch store? Wait. And but in Miami.

Hey, if you want to get trim, that's where you get a trip. Yeah. That is that type of dude is emerging here. As of 2017, he was the director of operations for Petland retail stores. Don't. He's getting funnier. But this guy's resume is finally amusing.

But Tucker, being a competent journalist, did not just interview one person, however. Kid Rock was brought on to be the sole voice of reason. You know, Garrison, you laugh, but Kid Rock is the other person I've gotten prescription drugs from, so.

Real bastion in the platonic cave of men stands kid rocking a guy from Abercrombie and Fitch and we must only be their shadows. Dude stop testicle tanning. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard anything. Open your mind, Bobby.

I'm starting a punk rock band and it's called testicle tanning. That's the end of it. I mean, don't you think at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths they've told us to take have turned out to be dead ends that have really hurt people, why wouldn't open-minded people seek new solutions?

I don't know what the hell's going on in this world. I'm not even sure if I understood that question, but... Some days I just want to stop this planet and let me off, like... Kid Rock was not... Did not buy in to testicle tanning the same way Tucker seems to... I would... Oh, god, is Kid Rock gonna be the voice of reason? That's what I said! I said he was brought out to be the sole voice of reason! We thought you were joking, because it's Kid Rock! I thought you were joking! I didn't believe you! No! He's the only person that doesn't buy us!

kid rocket stands with sides it is indeed sweet home alabama all summer long

Tucker was not the first person to advocate for testicular tanning as the solution to an allegedly problematic dip in testosterone levels. Dating back to 2015, you can find articles online such as, quote, former MLB player Gabe Kappler says men who want to get stronger should tan their testicles from complex, and quote, I put a giant red light on my balls to triple white testosterone levels from men's health 2017.

Is that written by Ben Greenfield, Benny Jones? Because he normally pops up with these things. Which one? The Men's Health one. Let me, let me. It's a guy who injects his own dick to make it bigger. I have it in my show notes here. This was written by someone named Ben Greenfield.

So proud of you today, buddy Are you taking are you taking performance enhancing drugs for this podcast?

We have stepped into a gold mine of content with Ben Greenfield, the guy who injected his own dick with stem cells to make it bigger. That's so funny. I urge you, I compel you, if you have any free time in your day, just Google Ben Greenfield penis, there will be several articles that supposedly reputable outlets that will just fucking make you unwell.

Well, that is great to hear. But despite not being the first person to talk about testicular tanning, Tucker was certainly the most impactful. After the airing of The End of Men, testicular tanning showed a 7,000 increase in relative search interest on Google and a 30, 35,000 increase in tweets on the topic. Now, surely some of these things are stuff like what if I was making fun of it, right? Yeah, the tweets I'm sure is a lot. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of it is also

But a lot of it's also people who are just talking about it genuinely. To quote a study published in JMIR, a dermatology publication, quote, the promotion of testicular tanning generated significant public interest in an evidence lacking and potentially dangerous health trend. Dermatologists and other healthcare professionals should be aware of these new viral health trends to best consultations and combat health misinformation, unquote. So in terms of actual data,

But 2017 meta analysis of studies on sperm counts found that in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, men's sperm counts have declined by about 50% between 1973 and 2011. Now, these results have not been enough to really cause broad concern unless you're like a right wing influencer for men, because there doesn't really seem to be an equal drop into testosterone levels. The problems mankind has had on the whole, not enough semen for come shot.

Yes, and like compared to previous decades, there is this maybe like a 20% decrease in total testosterone levels amongst adolescent and young adult males, but that's highly fluctual and it's impacted heavily by diet. It's suspected that pollution environmental degradation are also suspected of being contributing factors with plastics like

Fylite being known to interfere with the production of hormones like testosterone. But this area of research is still heavily contested, but still, that has not stopped fitness youtubers and conservative influencers from tying this to the soy boy feminization of men and drumming up panic to grow their social media followings, sell their supplements, and advertise affiliate products. The creme de la creme of red lights for testicular tanning is the jouve light.