Tradecraft in the Doha Panda Express
For this week's bonus, Riley, Milo, Hussein, and Alice discuss an offshore oil rig theme park that Saudi Arabia is building (it just sounds like an oil rig). We also discuss the recent ICJ proceedings, and examine the contradictions in what liberal democratic states say about international law when confronted with potentially having to apply it to their client states. In the words of Bryan Ferry, you can guess the rest.
Comments (25)
Riley don’t say “anywayanyway” in an episode challenge
One of the more jarring shift in tone episodes. It started off so fun, but by the end I was imagining the generation of children attending Meir Kahane Preparatory Academy.
I would KILL to get a guided tour of a recently decommissionned oil rig, derrick, refinery, or anything like that. I have visited - decommissioned blast foundry - decommissioned coal mine - ruins of 19th C. iron mine - container port - tried to fuck around various other industrial sites with various levels of success it is IMPOSSIBLE to get into oil infra. first because the new shit is too precious and will require you get a security clearance to even get past the gate, and second because the stuff in it is still pretty relevant so it usually gets bought and moved rather than left in place a real tourism installation in a late oil installation would work *gangbusters*
The Rig is the perfect day out for a wtyp / trash future crossover episode but please don't go on Piper Alpha simulation day.
The imagined future of Israeli students doing land acknowledgments & taking down statues was hilarious and haunting
I think we are playing suzerain while Netanyahu is playing Victoria 3.
Big brain take — end the war between Russia and Ukraine where everything stays frozen, but Russia has to give the part of Soviet Russia they tried to make Jewish in like the 1950s to Israel and Israel has to stop their ongoing genocide.
Itchy & Scratchy Land - the amusement park of the future where nothing can possiblie go wrong
O'Tacos in Châtelet mentionned!
they should build a theme park on the oil rig next to hinckley. god knows there's nothing else to do around here
MBS has watched Girls Und Panzer and thought The Rig was the closest thing he could get to school children having tank battles on repurposed aircraft carriers
Gaza is the bawdy 1970s hospital of genocide. You’re not supposed to *just do* genocide; you’re supposed to do a *double-entendre* of genocide.
An alternate explanation for the South Africa ICJ thing is that there’s a global Dutch conspiracy. The elders of Haarlem and Amsterdam, and such things. At this point the ICJ is eventually going to require the IDF to wear blackface, after replacing all the matza with stroopwafels. Let Gaza each brioche? No! Let Gaza eat dubbelzoute drop! Oh, Israel needs somewhere to put the Gazans? Have they considered replacing Hamas with a polder board?
Why not hire the Disney Imagineers to make an animatronic dark ride version of 9/11? Ooh, maybe they could include Robert Pattinson!
The message internalized by TERFs seems to be that David Irving wildly succeeded by suing Deborah Lipstadt.
I think you’re literally just describing the Paula Deen controversy, where in a court deposition she admitted that many years prior she had privately used the n-word to describe a man who had committed an armed bank robbery when she was a bank teller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Deen#Racial_slur_controversy The key difference, though, is that Paula Dean apparently used the n-word in reference to a specific individual, decades ago, and hadn’t since, whereas Lawrence Fox seems to imagine there being an appropriate context for someone to use the n-word more generally in the present day. Which is to say that Lawrence Fox is a great illustration of how Paula Deen is probably not that racist by comparison. Oh and Paula Deen has been married for twenty years, and was previously married for twenty-four years, which is to say she is rather less pathologically divorced.
I really, really don’t want to be, like, “Paula Deen Did Nothing Wrong”, but, like, it seems more like anything she did wrong was half a century ago, and she has the self-awareness to recognize that it was wrong, even considering the circumstances.
The "antisemitism delayed the zionist colonial ambitions" take is just really weird...doesn't match the historical contexts and also has nothing to do with why or how Israel tries to justify the genocide in Gaza.
There were seriously mooted plans for Zionist colonies in Australia, Africa and both Americas long before Palestine was a possibility. Michael Chabon’s alternate history novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is based on a real plan to house European Jews in Alaska. I agree that antisemitism is not the main reason these plans fell through (most countries are reluctant to give up large territories) but the 19th and early twentieth century Zionists were comfortable with colonialism and the thought of occupying land that was already being lived on by non-Europeans. As an Australian the one that wrinkles my brain is the planned Israel in Tasmania, itself the site of colonial genocide. History is pretty weird.
But it's my turn to do the imperialism! 😔
As someone whose family has been living on stolen land for about six generations, this was some of the best and bleakest Alice Analysis yet - should cut very close to the bone for anyone listening from a settler-colonial society. AoE jokes just the icing on top
One of my more unhinged IDF-supporting customers, this was a number of years ago, tried to get me to promise to watch all of Fauda on Netflix, bc he insisted it would show me the truth about the conflict in a way I would 'understand it'. Reader, I did not finish the first episode. You're not gonna believe this, but he hasnt come in while I'm working in a little while!
Disney adults for the oil and gas industries is just a significant percentage of Albertans.
I guess Alice is never gonna understand that her NAFO shit is 100% stupid and off topic.
My lunch break was ruined because I was all caught up on episodes :(