Das Criminal

When we last discussed Yemen, longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh had fled, and his vice president — Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi — had been put in charge of forming a new constitution. But things started to go quickly awry as Hadi appeared to consolidate power for himself, and a group of anti-government rebels popularly known as the Houthis began to fight back.

In this episode, we discuss Yemen's Civil War, Saudi Arabia's war crimes, and how the United States and the United Kingdom are no strangers to sowing trouble in the Middle East.

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On January 27th, 2011, Yemen's people followed the example set by Tunisia and Egypt and flooded the streets, demonstrating against the incumbent regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Much like the other countries experiencing revolutions, Yemenis were tired of endemic unemployment, mass immiseration, and no prospects of improvements.

After months of protests and, in some cases, armed encounters between revolutionaries and the government, the people finally felled Saleh on November 23, 2011. An election was organized for February 2012, and Vice President Abrabbuh Mansur Hadi took power as interim president. What appeared to be a spring was a false dawn, however, as the post-Saleh era deteriorated rapidly into a brutal civil war. But how did we get to the current crisis in Yemen?

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In this episode, we break down the Second Libyan Civil War and review how the havoc wreaked on the country by Western forces has enabled some of the most opportunistic characters to exploit the most desperate people.

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On September 11th and September 12th, 2012, members of an Islamic militant group in Libya known as Ansar al-Sharia attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi and a CIA annex approximately one mile away. The attack resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.

In the US-centric lexicon, ‘Benghazi’ has become synonymous with a series of investigations into then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And Clinton and the Obama administration are responsible for the chaos in Libya, but not in the manner peddled by conservatives. As in the rise of Islamist militias in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, the attack in Benghazi is an example of the United States reaping what it has sown by supporting reactionary rebels in a foreign country.

What really happened in Benghazi? And how is it tied to U.S. imperialism in Libya? Hopefully — by the end of this episode — the answers to those questions become more transparent for us.

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On the 14th of January, 2011, Tunisia — Libya’s neighbor to the northwest — toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and vowed to establish a democracy in the small country. Less than a month later — on the 11th of February, 2011, Egypt — Libya’s neighbor to the east — overthrew its authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak. A few days later, protests began in Benghazi, Libya, attempting to oust Libya’s longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.

But despite being sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt, Libya’s revolt and its consequences bear significant distinctions from the previous uprisings we’ve covered — most notably NATO’s intervention and the country’s descent into two civil wars as a direct result of these events. To this day, Libya remains in crisis; this past week, for instance, 43 men from West Africa drowned off the Libyan coast while trying to depart for Europe.

The case of Libya forces us to examine the ‘just war’ theory often purported by Western governments to justify foreign intervention. How did Libya go from one of the most prosperous African nations to a land of chaos in such a short time? How is it similar to and notably different from the uprisings we’ve already discussed — Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain? And how can we take a nuanced approach to international solidarity and critical support without enabling imperialist intervention?

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Bahrain is a land of contrasts: Arab and Persian, Sunni and Shi’a, indigenous and migrant, rich and poor. As the Arab Spring swept through the region in 2011, Bahrainis of all stripes saw the opportunity to express their discontent with the status quo in the country. However, unlike the other nations that experienced protests, Bahrain’s Spring was brutally crushed by the regime within a few weeks. Today, dissidents are either exiled, in jail, or dead, and the rule of the House of Khalifa is more iron-gripped than ever. But for a brief few weeks in 2011, Bahrainis dared to dream, and today we will revisit those dreams and the nightmare that followed.

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On January 25th, 2016 — exactly five years after the explosion of the Egyptian uprising that ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak — an Italian graduate student named Giulio Regeni went missing in Cairo. Nine days later — on February 3rd, 2016 — his body was discovered on the side of a highway with definite signs of torture. Regeni had been researching Egypt’s independent trade unions. To this day, his murder remains officially unsolved.

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In January and February of 2011, Egyptians led an uprising against the country’s authoritarian leader, Hosni Mubarak, shouting — among other slogans — “We are never going back.” Back to oppression, dictatorship, and cruelty at the hands of regimes subservient to Western interests.

But now — ten years after the events that took power back from Mubarak — that’s exactly Egypt’s situation. How did the country go from a fledgling democracy — and beacon of hope for other countries in the region — to a dictatorship under military General Abdel Fatah Al Sisi? In this week’s episode, we’re going to discuss the 2013 Egypt coup d'état and counter-revolution.

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Aamer and Erin review Pixar's Toy Story (1995) and discuss the hierarchy of toys, gender representation in films and video games, abandonment issues, and their proposal to recast Wallace Shawn as Cleopatra.

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“The people demand the downfall of the regime,” echoed the cry by tens of thousands of Egyptians as they occupied Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011. January 25th was celebrated annually as Police Day in Egypt. Unlike previous years, however, this January 25th saw the rage of a people brutalized by police for years explode onto the streets.

Perhaps the most famous of the Arab Spring uprisings, and certainly the one most covered at the time, Egypt saw its own uprising. Egyptians flooded Cairo's streets and marched onto Tahrir Square in the middle of the city, demanding bread, freedom, and social justice. And after roughly two weeks of struggle, they succeeded. Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11, 2011, ushering in what many optimists saw as a dawn of a new era in Egypt. Following the fall of Zein el Abedine Ben Ali of Tunisia, the dominoes were falling eastwards. Like a sleeping tiger, Egypt has awoken.

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On December 17th, 2010, at approximately 11:30 AM, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi approached the governor’s office in his town, Sidi Bouzid. Standing in the middle of traffic, he shouted, “How do you expect me to make a living?” before dousing himself in gasoline and lighting a match.

Bouazizi never recovered from a coma and died in a Tunisian hospital several weeks later. But his self-immolation would literally ignite protests across Tunisia against state corruption and a lack of opportunities for young people. These demonstrations then spread across the region — most famously to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria — in a series of uprisings now collectively known as the Arab Spring.

But while Bouazizi’s suicide may have been the immediate catalyst of the protests in Tunisia, we have to understand why he felt driven to such extreme measures if we are to discern the causes of the Arab Spring. In addition to exploring these reasons and the timeline of the protests themselves, we want to delve into the consequences of the demonstrations and the state of the region ten years later.

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On Monday, April 26th, 1999, at approximately 11:30 AM, BBC presenter Jill Dando approached the front door of her house in Fulham, London. As she was about to put her keys into the lock, someone grabbed her from behind. He forced Jill Dando to the ground, so her face was almost touching the front step. According to one of Britain’s leading pathologists, the assailant then used his left hand to fire a single shot into Dando’s left temple. She died instantly.

Jill Dando was beloved among the British public. Her murder brought shock and confusion; why would anyone want to kill a newsreader? But 21 years, plenty of theories, and one overturned conviction later, the case of Jill Dando’s murder remains unsolved.

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Chances are, most of your closet probably consists of ready-made garments — clothing manufactured en masse to fit most people. And, most of us probably know that the conditions in these factories are less than ideal. International corporations like Nike and Gap have repeatedly been caught exploiting workers  — having them work long hours with little pay in factories with few safety precautions.

On April 24th, 2013, a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring about 2,500 more. The incident is considered the deadliest structural failure accident in modern human history. But, it was more than a simple mistake on the part of the building’s architects or construction workers; it resulted from capitalist greed — valuing profits over workers’ safety. In this episode, we discuss the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse.

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If you had internet access in 2012, you likely remember a film and social media campaign dubbed ‘Kony 2012’ — a drive to apprehend Ugandan militia leader and war criminal Joseph Kony. The 30-minute viral video created and posted by an organization called Invisible Children, Inc. urged viewers to spread awareness of Kony, with the mission of apprehending him by the end of that year.

In this episode, we have two stories unfolding at the same time: the first is the calamity of the Kony 2012 campaign — its fervid rise, rapid fall, and immortalization as an internet meme. But a second story lurks beneath Invisible Children’s glossy PR campaign — one which includes the commodification of activism, laundering United States imperialism in central Africa, and mining trauma for profit.

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On May 13th, 2006, British mountaineer David Sharp set out on a solitary expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. Though an experienced hobbyist climber, David never made it back down the mountain and is thought to have died on the 15th of May, 2006, at age 34. Whether he reached the peak is unknown.

Ascending and descending Mount Everest is extraordinarily dangerous; people die nearly every year climbing the mountain, bringing the total recorded death count to over 300 people. But David Sharp’s death, in particular, stirred controversy as several climbing expeditions passed him and did not — or were unable to — help him.

In this episode, we discuss the industry that has risen around climbing Mount Everest, the ethical responsibility to help those in need, and how — even on the world’s tallest mountain — capitalism encourages us to leave our brothers and sisters behind.

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On August 6th and August 9th of 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Combined, these bombs killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people. The two bombs — named Little Boy and Fat Man — were the first and only nuclear weapons used in armed conflict, though the global nuclear arsenal has increased to an alarming size.

In this episode, we discuss the atomic bombings of Japan — the precipitating events, the explosions themselves, and the controversy that has surrounded this use of nuclear weapons ever since.

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Henry Kissinger. George Schultz. James Mattis. William Perry. David Boies. What do these men have in common — besides being war criminals or attorneys representing war criminals? They all invested millions of dollars in a Silicon Valley start-up called Theranos. Unfortunately for them, the company once worth $9 billion dissolved in 2018 amid fraud investigations. Founder Elizabeth Holmes is set to face trial in 2021 for her role in this fraud. But who is Elizabeth Holmes, and how did a 19-year-old Stanford dropout become the face of Silicon Valley grifts?

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On August 3rd, 2019, a gunman attacked the Walmart Supercenter near the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas. Armed with a Romanian WASR-10 rifle, the shooter killed 23 people and injured 23 others. As El Paso has a large population of reported Hispanic or Latino people, and that specific Walmart serves people from both the El Paso area and neighboring Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, the assault has been described by The New York Times as “the deadliest anti-Latino attack in modern American history.” In this episode, we discuss the El Paso shooting and the fascist manifesto allegedly published by the killer.

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In the first few weeks of South Korea's coronavirus onset, efforts to test, contact trace, quarantine, and treat kept recorded infections down to just 30 people in the entire country. Then came Korea’s very own Typhoid Mary — Patient 31. The 61-year-old's escapades around the city of Daegu led to a cluster of over 5,000 cases in the area. Even stranger are Patient 31's connections to Shincheonji, Church of Jesus — a new religious movement many consider to be a cult. In this episode, we break down South Korea's COVID-19 response, what makes a cult, and whether Shincheonji is really to blame for the spread of the virus.

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If you’ve been listening to our podcast for a while now, you’ll likely have noticed that we fall pretty firmly on the side of prison abolition, but one big question looms: What about the sexually-motivated criminals? In this episode, we tackle the case of Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger and discuss whether prison successfully rehabilitated this misogynist menace to society, and how we might create a world that is safer for everyone.

Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/DasCriminal

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw