Speaker 1Hello, hello, and welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. I know it's been a few weeks since I last spoke to you. I'm really, really sorry about that. I did mention in a previous episode that there may be periods when I'm a little bit lax on the scheduling of getting these things out, which is because I juggle lots of different hats. I know that's like a lame excuse, but you know, as an independent artist, I have a lot of things that I have to do to stay afloat in terms of my main operation, which is that as a musician. And I'm also knee deep into my second book. Now, as anyone that follows me on social media will know, I did recently get offered a deal for the second book. That's been a long time coming. The book industry has suffered quite badly from the effects of COVID, an effect which we're only kind of really seeing now. So previous deals for the book kind of came and went and there were long winded conversations that dragged on and then came to nothing. And so it's been a bit of a long strangled route to get to this one. So I've been putting the right end of the book kind of on the back burner while I focus on other things. But now I'm full steam ahead with it. So it's a thing that's now definitely going to happen. And I need to get my skates on and actually get the thing finished to a deadline for the publisher. So there will be some disturbances in the broadcasting of these podcasts. I can't guarantee that they're always going to be Wednesday at seven o'clock. But hey, surprises are what makes life exciting. And if you subscribe to the damn thing, then you won't have to like worry about missing an episode because you'll just get a notification to say that it's out. So why don't you rush along and do that now? Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts is everywhere. And then you're not going to have to worry about whether it comes out on Wednesday or Sunday morning, right? And trust me behind the scenes, I've been doing a lot of work on the booking aspect of this. That takes a lot of time as well, you know, waiting for people to get back to you and stuff like that and have to deal with middlemen and all that shit. But there are some absolute bangers booked in. So do subscribe and stay tuned for those episodes. Now, if I have my time again, I would be an investigative journalist. I think it's the coolest job in the world. I just love that. I've got this very romantic idea of like traveling the world undercover and uncovering truths and exposing tyrants, probably wearing a cool hat like Greg Palast, you know, and getting paid handsomely to do it by some cool, edgy alternative media outlet. And then getting to release a book every year or two where I blow the lid on wrongdoing and injustice and get lauded for doing so. But I didn't. I chose to play the fucking guitar instead. And as a result, I'm now into forever fanboying over actual investigative journalists and nagging them relentlessly to come on my podcast so that I can live my romantic fantasy vicariously through them. Today's guest is a case in point. Every time I try and pin this guy down, he's in a different country. He hasn't got any Wi-Fi. He's in the middle of a desert or God knows where and constantly on the move. And it all seems so goddamn exciting, but not as exciting as the issues that he specializes in. Check this out. The official bio says that today's guest's research focuses on the relationship between organized crime syndicates and state government, the nexus between terrorism and organized crime, the drug war, illegal arms trade, and cyber slavery, amongst other things. Now, how cool is that? I finally managed to pin this guy down in Phnom Penh. Last time I spoke to him, he was in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and all sorts of other places. So he moves around a lot. But I finally managed to track him down in Phnom Penh and get him to give us an hour of his time. So make sure you do not miss a second of this. Now, whilst we're waiting for today's guest to log in and join us, I'm going to nag you one last time. Please do subscribe to the podcast. It really helps out the algorithm. And do leave a star rating and a review and let us know your thoughts. And on the YouTube version, you can, of course, leave some comments as well and get a conversation and a debate going of your own. And here he comes. So let's do the intro and get him on. Featured in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Huffington Post, among many other outlets around the world, Nathan Paul Southern is a security specialist, consultant, and investigative journalist who, as I mentioned, investigates global security, organized crime, trafficking networks, and terrorism. Now, anyone that knows me will know that that's one hell of a bio, and I'm already frotting at the mouth to get down to business and find out more. So let's welcome you onto the show. Joining us today, all the way from Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Nathan Paul Southern. How are you doing, my man?
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm pretty good, James. I'll apologize in advance if you hear some really loud sirens and helicopters everywhere. Cambodia is actually pretty peaceful. I'm not right now in a war zone. It's just the ASEAN summit. So I've got pretty much every world leader. We've got all of the head of Thailand, Laos, Philippines. We've got Bidens here, Trudeaus here. So I'm talking to you, and I'm just watching helicopters just fly by my face and huge motorcades of people who think they're very, very important. But they've probably just gotten a tuk-tuk from the airport.
Speaker 1Everything about your life sounds super, super exciting. It's the last time we spoke, you were in the Balkans, then Afghanistan, now you're in Cambodia. So I'm guessing you're not on some really long, bizarre holiday. So what are you up to at the moment, or are you allowed to say?
Speaker 2Yeah, no, I am. So there have been a few different issues. So in the Balkans, we were working on something that actually started. So I do most of my work with my partner, Lindsay Kennedy, as well. And we have been working on something in Southeast Asia for the past year, which is. What I would call cyberslavery. So there's this new issue where tens of thousands of people are being held in these compounds in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines by Chinese organized crime groups. And they're being forced to conduct online scams. So when you get someone messaging you on Facebook saying, hey, do you want to be friends? Or I think you're a very handsome 50-year-old accountant from Essex. It's a very good chance that's actually a slave sitting in Cambodia. So we've been kind of obsessively looking at this, writing about this a lot. And we're working on a piece for a publication called Fast Company. I'm trying to tie all this together as a kind of global trend rather than these isolated incidents. And that's actually took us from Southeast Asia over to the Balkans because we found that the same Chinese organized crime groups operating in Cambodia and Thailand, Laos, and these places, some of them are also operating in places like Montenegro. Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia. So we went over to try to link some of that up in a way, look at some of the casinos out there and some of the kind of dodgy and nefarious and horrific stuff that they seem to be involved in. Then with Afghanistan, that was something completely different. So we were looking at the drug trade, basically. We were trying to understand what Afghanistan is now under this new Taliban government, which is what. what they are, which is strange to think. But we wanted to look at, is this going to become a full narco state? Is the Taliban going to actually crack down on poppy production, on the growing meth trade in the country? How is it dealing with certain security threats? And how is it just trying to cope as a kind of new government trying to make its way in the world? So we were there for a while looking at that. And then we're back in Cambodia where, yeah, we're still looking a bit at the scams and the cyber slavery. But we're also working on a project for an international NGO that wants to understand arms trafficking through Southeast Asia. So we're looking at how weapons, like small arms, like your guns, your rifles, your RPGs, how these weapons get into the region, what they're being used for, the overlaps between organised crime groups and militancy, terrorist organisations, what role the government and the police have to play. So, yeah, we're working on all these projects together. And yeah, it's been a busy few months.
Speaker 1Jesus Christ, dude. I mean, you know, whilst I say that all sounds pretty damn exciting, I imagine it's pretty horrifying and pretty dangerous as well, I imagine.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, look, it can be. And there's always like, you know, fun stories about the things that sounded quite dangerous. You know, like I've mentioned this before, but me and Lindsay were looking at the trafficking side of things. We were looking at the situation of these scam compounds in Laos earlier in the year. And we actually, this is so brazen, it's so out in the open that when we were trying to get into this compound called the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, we realised we're actually in the queue for people being trafficked. And they were like trying to take our blood and put us into a trafficking centre until Lindsay realised much quicker than I did what was happening. And like, there are scary moments and there was, you know, we worked on this project last year, which was looking at the Cambodian military's involvement in illegal logging. And we, you know, we brought this huge report out into that and how the Cambodian military, they're not just like complicit, like they run the logging trade like an international mafia syndicate. And there'd be times that we'd be out in the jungle or Lindsay would be out in the jungle on her own. And yeah, you were very concerned that something could happen. That is something that the military tends to get quite trigger happy with. But like the key thing, I always try and stress about whenever we go and cover these issues is we will probably be fine. You know, there's always a risk and we're not chasing the adrenaline. Like it just so happens the things that we are able to cover, some of them are a little bit sketchy. We will probably be fine because having white journalists from the UK, you know, having their bodies on your hands isn't something that any militant group or government really want unless that is their entire MO. I stay away from chaps like Al-Qaeda, the real journalists that are always at risk are the local guys, you know, The Cambodian journalists, the Afghan journalists, the journalists in the Balkans, the journalists in Myanmar, these are the ones that are taking the real, real risks and these are the ones that end up in jail. These are the ones that end up dead or just missing a lot more. So in a strange way, you get people asking a lot more for the white-faced journalists and researchers. It sounds really dangerous and it can be, but the ones that make a big deal of that are being quite disingenuous as well because they should always be pointing to the fact that the real bravery comes from the really skin journalists that are putting them and their families in huge amounts of danger. And then we just have to come in and do a bit more sometimes to try and help push them forward so they can report in their local language and actually spread the message of what they're trying to say as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, I suppose they've got to live there, haven't they? So there's a much more constant and real threat to their families and their other ones and their children. And we hear about that all the time with journalists in places in Latin America, trade unionists getting disappeared and murdered and tortured and threatened. So it's a very real threat. But for yourselves, what's your situation? Are you freelancers or are you working on behalf of a media outlet that's giving you resources and some kind of protection?
Speaker 2Oh yeah, we're totally freelance. And I mean, it's terrible. I think people have an idea of the journalists, the researchers that go and do these jobs and assume that you're well backed up, that you have security, you have escape plans arranged by the big publications. But what really happens is you're somewhere or you're going somewhere, you say to one of the big name publications, we want to do this. And then they'll say, I'll go offer you a very small amount of money. I'm for for that story. And then you'll probably have to get maybe five or six stories from one country visit to look like you're starting to break even. So all the time you lose money on these trips and all the risks is completely on you. There is a great journalist, American called Danny Gold, who's spoken about this as well. And he works in conflict zones a lot and does a lot for publications. Like Vice. And you always assume that those guys on the on the video camera who are out there with the bulletproof vest, they've been backed up by Vice. They've got a whole team. But it's just not the case where we're, you know, those Kevlar vests are rented between different journalists. There's there's forums on Facebook where people are like, I'm going to be in London heading to Syria in three weeks. Does anyone have like a size large Kevlar vest? Yeah, man, you can come pick mine up for free. Just like here. Just make sure you don't, you know, be aware that the left side a little bit. Damaged or whatever. It's a whole, a whole network of journalists often risking their lives and for very little support or payback. So when we then do NGO projects, which which we also love because we get to do like big detailed investigations rather than try to write something, you know, six, seven hundred words and explain some ridiculously complex issue to people that will probably won't read beyond the headline anyway. This allows us to get into the weeds of it. And that's fun. But also. They pay for expenses and transport and accommodation. And it's only with doing those kind of investigations, you're actually able to make a living. So often you lose money, but you're hoping that that project that you're working on may give you a little bump to get the next thing that you may actually make money. So you're constantly investing and endangering yourself with the whole lead to something.
Speaker 1Jesus Christ, man. I had no idea. It sounds very much like the music industry in many ways. I'm joking, of course. Yeah. I mean, as I said in the intro, you know. I've always carried this kind of romantic notion of having my time again and being an investigative journalist and carried all these wild ideas of what that life entails. But I suppose it's from what you're saying, it sounds very different to how I've been imagining it.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, it is the lack of security, like financial security, job security. That's probably the main myth, the main thing that people don't realize about being any form of journalist. You still do have those jobs where you could be a correspondent for. Reuters or you could work for the BBC and you could actually be on a salary and everything's covered as like, you know, as the media is in this really weird situation where a lot of people distrust what they call the mainstream media. Um, people are less inclined to put money into buying newspapers, buy magazine subscriptions, and they're often more inclined to put money into other streams like, like, you know, podcasts. Um, like, you know, um, where people talk about these issues without really knowing very well what they are, but they see them as more accurate actions of it. So you have these people that come on like the Joe Rogan podcast and talk about the Ukraine war and they've never been, and then they won't support the independent journalists that actually go out on the front line and look at these issues. Um, but yeah, but I mean, like, it's, it's always, it's always been a tough gig, but it, but it's also, it's like the funnest job in the world is, um, it's, it's, it's not like in the movies where, uh, the journalists are like, oh, I'm going to do this. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's not like in the movies where, uh, the journalists are like, oh, I'm going to do this. Journalists are like cutting each other over, not getting, you know, a sniff of each other's story. Like when we're, I'm mostly based in Phnom Penh and we'll just sit with the journalists in our usual pubs and we'll talk about all the stories we're working on right now. And we'll share some ideas and we'll drink a bunch of beers and we'll have a nice chat about it all. So it's, it's quite a nice, um, like inclusive world in a way.
Speaker 1Yeah. And it must be so rewarding as well, knowing that you're doing such great and important work, you know, covering truths, exposing evil. And giving a voice to the victims of that evil as well. And sharing this story with the wider world who can then hopefully, you know, help to do something about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, for, for, for sure. And I mean, that, that happens rarely. Like you, you write the big piece that you found, this is going to, this is going to change something. It has, you know, no, no impact whatsoever, but hopefully it'll be put out to some kind of collective good. But then there are times that you do make an impact. Um, and, and so going back to that, um, that, that, uh, human trafficking. And, and cyber slavery issue that we've been looking at, um, as by a year and a half ago that this started and just started in Cambodia and there were, uh, a few, a few journalists that they've been looking at it consistently since then guys like Matt Bloomberg, who was with, uh, um, uh, Reuters and, um, make Dara and Daniel also in her local media here. And I mean, Lindsay, you've been looking at it and Cindy Lou and loads of other people, but it was just massive collective effort to get anyone to care. And I thought it was like the biggest story. The story that I can imagine, like we're talking tens of thousands of people being held and this use casinos that are empty because of COVID being forced to commit, you know, multi-million pound cyber scams around the world. And we just collectively, all of the journals were going to bet nuts and, uh, and, and, and from Penn and in Cambodia, just trying to get anyone to care, um, any of the international publications. Um, it was, you know, it was really, really difficult. And you would speak to, um, very big, well-known named outlets that I wouldn't mention, and they would come back and say, well, what's, what's the angle on that's what you're going to do. Then you would speak to international policing organizations, the embassies, and they just wouldn't seem particularly interested. And I think it's because, you know, maybe there's only so much empathy that goes for things like human trafficking, modern slavery, and I think maybe it's so unbelievable, but also I had a political context where, where so many of these trafficking operations in Cambodia are directly linked to, um, people senior and the government, uh, the prime minister's nephew, uh, a guy called, he, he, he runs some of these compounds where tens of thousands of people are held and on a wider scale, it's Chinese organized crime groups with huge links to the government back in Beijing that are operating these places. So I think a lot of international agencies, NGOs, media outlets, didn't really want to touch it because it seemed like too much to deal with. I'm not sure where the reality was and the blowback could be a lot, but after a year and a half, we finally got, um, Cambodia downgraded in this us counter trafficking and persons report, which meant that the government actually had to start taking some action. And now, now all the international publications are starting to cover it, which was, which is fantastic, but it took a year and a half of solid work from so many journalists based in this region for anyone outside of the region to, to start to care. But when you see that happen, then, then it's, then it's incredible.
Speaker 1I bet, man. I can't imagine. It's so cool. Um, well, I think we should just jump in there because I, I know very, very little about this cyber slavery stuff. I mean, I just assumed that, uh, you know, all those Russian models that be messaging me like they were legit, you
Speaker 2know, some of them might be buddy, right? Don't, don't get yourself down. So essentially this all, this all kicked off, um, uh, during COVID. So, all right. So the China's belt and roads initiative, the, the BRI. This was, which goes back a few years further, is an enormous infrastructure project of billions and billions and billions of pounds are being put around the world to build railways, uh, bridges, roads, and can, uh, deep sea ports as well, right? Loads of issues with it where countries that are very, very poor are able to get new infrastructure developed. Sometimes that infrastructure is really just a road leading from one, you know, jade mine and, uh, and, and, and Africa to straight to the airport with the. Chinese can just take it straight out, but also it is a way of of generating money and investment into some developing countries, what the BRI promises is that their aid or their development money is no strings attached. So unlike the United States or the European Union, which absolutely have their own problems, especially with all their history in developing countries, they will at least have some facade or say that you cannot get this funding if you are engaged in these human rights abuses. Like we said, that counter-trafficking persons report, that can lead to a drop in funding. So the Chinese are happy to put the money into these countries because they get political influence from it. Right. And it helps with their global infrastructure. Right. So part of that from, say, 2016, was there's a massive boom in Cambodia in casinos. So the country went from having like four or five casinos to about 170 in five years' time. Jesus. And there's a city called Tsenitville, which was, people always say it was a sleepy, kind of relaxed town. I mean, it was mostly filled with what we call sex bats, which are like old men from, you know, like Hull that come on their pension and just, you know, buy young women to sit on their lap in bars. But it was still like a chill, small kind of town and say, now this is an enormous metropolis and it's just absolutely packed full of casinos. Well, I think casinos that came from the BRI investment, then you had an enormous amount of organized crime that falls behind, which it always does. So Tsenitville became a very, very dangerous place. There were beheadings on the street. There were shooting gang workers. Wow. Chinese triads outfit. And then when you had COVID roll around, everything stopped. All of the tourism stopped. All of the flights didn't stop. And Cambodians aren't actually allowed to gamble in the casino themselves. It's only for foreigners. So the casinos are sitting there completely empty. And then about a year and a half ago, it was found that these gangsters need to find another way of making money. So they started packing these casinos full of thousands and thousands of people. First of all, people who oversee their visas, they really needed a job. They couldn't go back to their home country for whatever reason, and were there willingly and getting paid an okay amount. And then it just changed. Actually, it's a lot more profitable to offer fake job ads on Facebook of quite a well-paid job, you know, 900 bucks or $2,000, which is a lot of money, but not an unrealistic amount of money in somewhere like Cambodia. So people go along into the casino, and then the doors lock behind you. And then they are forced to try to get, say, five or six clients a day, just free. Through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, meshing away. And we've interviewed the people who have done this, who have been enslaved doing it. They pretend to be like some beautiful Singaporean women. They have really, really reliable data that's being supplied by these organized crime groups on the men that they want to target. So, you know, they know that the man will have a bit of money. You know, he's probably a bit lonely. You know, he's made a bit, you know, middle-aged, a bit down, but, you know, has those assets. They'll start to build those relationships. Actually, they don't make enough. They don't make enough contacts, and they get tased, and they get beaten. They're tortured. There's some reports that some people had when they couldn't make enough money. We just had their blood taken and were used as a blood slave. So the Chinese organized crime groups could send up blood around the world and make money from that. This was going on for quite a while. And when we noticed it and when the reporting started, we thought, right, surely that's it, right? Surely this got out of hand. You know, you got a few thousand people, surely that's not going to stop. But it didn't. It just grew. The Cambodian government completely refused to accept that this was happening. And they knew that the Chinese money from the BRI was going to continue to flow in. And then we realized that it was also happening in other BRI countries next door, like Laos and Myanmar. So we've just seen this pop up more and more and more. Tens of thousands of people across the entire region held in vicious casinos or purpose-built apartment blocks, or maybe 13, 14 stories high. Very, very basic, covering barbed wire. And you'd look and be like, oh, that's a slave compound. You drive out, that's a slave compound. And you would just see them everywhere. And yeah, and the links of it go back to members of the Cambodian government, people linked to the Chinese government, triad members who are sanctioned by the United States, but are still able to operate and run around the country on the back of this Belt and Road investment, opening up enormous slave compounds.
Speaker 1That is absolute. That is absolutely mental. So this is a huge and growing industry that is just completely out there in the open with kickbacks that go right up to the top of government.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When they were downgraded, and this was just Cambodia, and the counter-trafficking report, then they did a series of raids. And they've done a few hundred raids. So they shut down a bunch of these places. But no one senior owl has been arrested. Only very low-level people, who might even have been slaves themselves, have been arrested. Most people have just been deported. And it's pretty clear now that they're actually just moving them from the compounds that get raided to new compounds. So it's completely continuing. But on the surface, they can point to a raid that has happened. And then in places like Laos and Myanmar and the Philippines, it's only growing because the attention's not being put there yet.
Speaker 1Oh, man, fucking hell. And I'm seeing a similarity in some of what you were describing there with the trafficking situation, where often by the entrance into that world, it's similar. There's a promise of a well-paid job in a safer country elsewhere. And before you know it, you're trapped and locked into a world of slavery, whether it's sexual slavery or being a sweatshop worker somewhere or a drug mule, perhaps, or a cyber slave, such as you've mentioned. You said that you've done work. You've done work in the area of trafficking also. So I'd be keen to find out what your insight into that world has been through your travels and your investigative work.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So it's a super, super similar model in the way that they do it. The only thing that's new is the type of work. And with all human trafficking, it becomes difficult to, especially at the beginning of it emerging, where are people being forced to do this? And what's that line? Especially if there is some payment. So if the scam center and some people can make money, a lot of them can actually get a bit of money in their bank account. But they're usually operating off debt, much like sex workers who are brought in, whether it's London or whether it's Bangkok. They will pay, you know, five, ten thousand pounds. And then they have to pay off that debt by working in the brothel. Eventually, the idea is that that money will be paid off and then you can leave. But there's always more debts added on. So it's always quite a difficult one to know where the line is for trafficking and for. Poor labor conditions, right? Like if you can't leave what you're getting paid, does that count as human trafficking in the sense that we understand that? And that's part of the problem of trying to make people understand this. And I think with human trafficking is it does go around the world. And it's it's not just in places like like Southeast Asia. I mean, it's an enormous, enormous issue that we've looked at in the UK as well. And what the government always point to when they talk about this. It's county lines, right? That's this idea of kids selling drugs, being forced to sell drugs and, you know, counties through England, Scotland, Wales against their will. But they're young enough that they'll kind of avoid prosecution. So you've got kids sitting in a horrific trap house somewhere in Coventry and they're actually from London and they're selling crack and heroin all day. But the problem with that is that the government often uses it as a as a line for why they're fighting this war on drugs. Right. And you had Steve Rose on and, you know, he was talking about why we need to legalize drugs. And I couldn't agree with him more. And I think the human trafficking is a really good example of that, because when you have the government point to we've got county lines, human trafficking, that's why we need to crack down on drugs. You're like, well, no, actually, the reason that these drug dealers are doing this is because you are cracking down on drug dealers. So they're finding ways around the prosecution by getting more children involved. Right. That's quite widely covered. But the issue that I've been trying to place a story for a while on. And no one's picked up yet on the on the county lines. We all agree that it's terrible that children are being forced into drug dealing by by gangs in London, Manchester, for the country. But no one is some of the fact that they're also being forced into it by police forces as well. So when the police arrest someone who is underage, who is part of a county lines gang, you would assume that they would immediately be taken home. They'd be given all of the social support that would be required for them to readjust the society, get back into school. Not face prosecution and all the rest of it. In actual fact, many of these police forces are telling the kids, first of all, not giving them legal representation when they're when they're sitting in the question room, not allowing a person older than 18 to be present, which is, again, completely illegal. And then telling the kids, if you don't want to get arrested yourself, you go back and you work on these operations, the county lines gangs, and then you report back information to us. And this is happening on a really, really wide scale. So you're getting kids in the UK. We're being trafficked by both drug dealers and essentially by the police at the same time because of this ridiculous idea of the war on drugs. And I think so when we look at trafficking and say Cambodia or Myanmar and we think, oh, how could the government be complicit in that? That's this third world problem. We can't possibly imagine that back home. But it's happening back home.
Speaker 1Well, everything's connected now, isn't it? You know, we live in a globalized economy, a global village as such. And I mean, you know, what happens on the streets of, you know, Laos? or Columbia. You know, it's felt on the streets of Coventry or Cardiff, even, you know. And I'm fascinated by the overlap between the criminal underworld and the legit, you know, what we consider to be the good guys, you know, democratically elected governments and, you know, police forces and, you know, militaries and, you know, banks. And, you know, I mean, talking about the banks, I mean, the city of London is the biggest fucking laundrette in the world, isn't it, for laundering and rinsing dirty money? You know, so I'm very interested in how those worlds overlap. And I do think that essentially they're so symbiotic now, so intertwined that they essentially function as one entity. And hopefully we can get your thoughts on that in a bit. But I'd love to talk more about the drugs trade now. And you said that you've been to Afghanistan, you spent a bit of time involved in that world. Does that play a part in all of this as well?
Speaker 2Yeah, it definitely does. Like, I mean, I think there's a few things that play with this. Like the international overlapping, especially between states and organized crime groups and how it all connects around the world. And I think, again, one of the issues is if, you know, this enormously profitable commodity of illegal drugs, as long as they're illegal, they're only going to be the profits are only going to be controlled by a very small group of people. Right. And those profits are so absolutely enormous that it is just not conceivable to think that it would be contained within. criminal gangs and the government would not be involved. And I think it's important to note that it's not just there is some government corruption. And, you know, we hear about a corrupt police officer in Eastern Europe or a corrupt judge or maybe the odd corrupt police officer in our border or poor official in the UK. But it's not just that you have extremely senior officials and governments throughout the world who are involved in this because you simply can't fight against it when you're dealing with billions and billions of people. Billions and billions of pounds of product, then it's impossible to not to prevent the kind of entire global governance being corrupted by this. And you mentioned the Russian oligarchs in London. That's a great example where you just really can't fight back against the wealth that's been brought in and huge, enormous links between the Tory party specifically and Russian oligarchs, which meant that the UK government was never particularly interested in stopping. The flow of dirty money into the UK. Now, that's a little bit different with the Ukraine war, but they've kicked some of them out, but they still allow the Chinese money to flow through. I think a great example of that, when you talk about Afghanistan, when you talk about the drugs, is now that the Russians are struggling to move money, to make money, they still need cash for their operations. And the Russian state is, it sounds ridiculous, but they are. They are sanctioning. They are security services to become more involved in illicit activities. So the Russian state is massively involved in moving huge quantities of both heroin and counterfeit cigarettes through Europe. They get the heroin from from Afghanistan. They have great supply routes and great control over immigration ports and security within Central Asian states like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. So they can move the heroin from there. They can move it. Into Turkey and into Europe, and they can make enormous profits on that. Putin also sees this as beneficial because he is seeing this as a destabilizing activity where more heroin on the streets of Europe to him means more chance of economic and social problems that Europeans have to deal with while we're in this kind of strange Cold War. And that goes around the world. So the Chinese are very happy for the precursors for drugs like fentanyl to be produced. In China and then taken out and then given to places like Myanmar or sent over to Mexico for the drug cartels there to make the synthetic opioids as long as it doesn't stay in China. So you have state governments throughout the world who are happy to engage in organized crime as long as they can push it as far away from their borders as possible.
Speaker 1Wow, man. And what about the West then? Because my understanding of it has been that the West's relationship with organized crime has always been based upon being a convenient way to finance. And execute covert operations. So if you want to overthrow a government in the Middle East or in Latin America, you know, having access to these criminal networks so you can you can fund and execute these covert operations in the shadows is very useful. You know, the Iran-Contra debacle being a case in point, you know, which involved CIA knowingly importing cocaine into, you know, the poor streets of America in order to finance weapons. Weapons that were off the books go into Nicaragua. I mean, it's not even a conspiracy theory. That's that's that's proven fact now that that happened. So it's very convenient for the Western powers to maintain a relationship with the shadowy underworld and criminal networks because it helps them maintain their power when they have to do so through means that would not be seen as being particularly savory by the electorate. So so much criminal activity has a blind eye turned to it because those entities engaging. In those crimes are of use to Western power. I mean, it's not very much still the model as it's been for a long time or the lines a lot more blurry now.
Speaker 2No, I mean, it is. I mean, this isn't, you know, an official line that they put out, but it's always been going on. And the simplest way to look at that is through the through the 80s and 90s, there was an understanding that if you were an organized crime group and you could provide information on. The IRA, then you were given somewhat of a free pass to engage in criminal activity in the United Kingdom. So you had organized crime groups, you know, whether they were, you know, the Albanians or the Turks or just the old cockney gangsters in London or in Glasgow or Manchester or wherever. And if they would go and speak to speak to their local detective, they could give information on the IRA are going to get a shipment of guns this day, this time. We can give you information. We can give you information on that. Like, that's great. We're going to not go after your warehouses. We're not going to arrest your main people. We can arrest a few smaller people to make it look like we're doing something. And that is quite widely accepted from speaking to police sources that were involved in this. That definitely happened. Now that's shifted slightly, but it's still the same model. Now the model is, can you supply us with information on possible Islamic terror cells? So if you're able to point to some guns or chemicals that are going to. Anyone who may be linked to groups such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda in the UK, then you'll get a pass. And I think the actual Met has actual list of criminal organizations. It is actually written down somewhere that they allow to operate in the United Kingdom, bringing in not just drugs, but also guns. Also, there's gangs in Tottenham that are allowed to operate that are mostly involved in contract killings, but they get something back from that. But at the same time, you also have an enormous amount of. Corruption within the UK itself. So this is sanctioned at high level. This is a strategic decision to allow organized crime groups to flourish so that they can go after what they would consider a larger enemy, which is terrorist groups. But you have police officers who, in the past, who I have spoken to, who have tried to call up attention to corruption within, say, the Met, about police officers not just taking bribes to allow drug dealing to happen, but actually facilitating it. But you have police officers who, in the past, who have tried to call up attention to corruption within, say, the Met, about police officers not just taking bribes to allow drug dealing to happen, but actually facilitating it. dream smoking cigars with, you know, but, but I, think since the end of the Cold War, and there's a great researcher called Misha Glennie who wrote Mafia, which also turned into that BBC TV series, right? And the book is actually, the TV series is great, the book is fantastic because it goes into details of how after the fall of the Soviet Union you had all of these states just not knowing what the hell was going on. They had no income, they didn't know how to transition into a capitalist society and what happened was they started shifting things illegally very, very quickly and using guns and soldiers to basically be organised crime groups and then what happened was these turned into legitimate-ish companies also linked to states. So this has been a kind of growing new world order since the fall of the Soviet Union where it's very, very hard to decipher between what is an organised crime group, what is a state government and what's a so-called legitimate company. So when you have the ministers and the British government making deals for a Russian oligarch to come in and set up a business and be left alone, they probably have no idea where their illicit money even comes from. But they have an idea that they're there to wash money. So they'll allow it to happen to an extent and they don't actually need to be dirtied with the details of it because it is all quite interlinked and that's where again the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative comes in because you have these enormous infrastructure projects and they're not just in Asia, they're not just in Africa. It's spreading into Europe as well, through the Balkans, Italy, much of Europe now has become like a BRI country, which means that you have an enormous amount, billions of pounds coming in to build railroads and bridges and roads and ports. And then with that, the organised crime groups just fall behind and they say, oh, we're actually part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Can we set up what they often call a special economic zone, which is like a small city within a city with factories, sometimes casinos, different types of businesses which operate on a different kind of trading and tax rules than any other company inside the country. Now, that's all usually so many of them are based on organised crime, but the government allows it to happen because it's off the back of these Chinese State-backed infrastructure projects. So it all becomes so, so blurred. And if you want the cash, you don't want to ask too many questions. It's a great time to be in government.
Speaker 1Wow, man, you are blowing my mind. I'm fascinated by this stuff. I've always had a theory, like I'm a little bit of a recovering conspiracy theorist, as I've said before. So I might be going down a conspiracy rabbit hole here. But I've always had this sort of feeling that there's a vested interest in keeping many of these industries illegal. You know, I mean, like obviously the drug barons and the drug cartels have an interest in keeping these industries illegal because that's their business. That's how they make their billions, right? But I mean, governments also, I feel, have a vested interest in having a shadowy illegal off-the-books underworld in existence because then it gives them the ability to operate within that world in an under-the-radar, off-the-books, covert kind of a way when they need to in order to execute certain activities around the world. So power, both legal and illegal, both have a shared interest in keeping this criminal underworld very much alive. Regardless of the detrimental effect that that has on the rest of society. Is there something to that, in your opinion? Or am I tumbling down a David-like tunnel once again?
Speaker 2I think there is something to that. But it's not this grand conspiracy. If it was a grand conspiracy, it would have been leaked. We'd all know about it, right, to some extent. But there's different strands of it. Like the United States is really leading this war on drugs, right? And there is quite a clear public and open economy all based around it, whether that's like the prison industrial complex, whether it's the militarization of police forces, whether it's funding for the DEA. And, you know, it's also an excuse for the US to build up military and police power in other countries. There is a strategic reason why you would not want to legalize the drug trade, right? And yes, there will be police officers, there will be judges, and there will be the odds. And I will stress, it's not, you know, widespread for every government minister, say, in the UK. There will be the odd government minister, the odd police officer, the odd judge that is directly involved in it. And you actually see us a lot more in places like Belgium and the Netherlands, which are enormous port cities where a huge amount of these drugs come in. They won't want to legalize it because they are making enormous sums of money. I think the bigger reason that we don't see the legalization discussion move forward in the UK is really just down to the politics of it. Absolutely none of the science backs any of the claims that legalization, the criminalization is working in any sense. It's making drugs more dangerous, more people are dying because they don't know what's in their drugs and are overdosing. And it's given enormous profits to organized crime groups. But the conservative government in particular know that there's still a very large population that just hear drugs and go, ah, drugs are bad. And they can point to those Daily Mail and Telegraph readers whenever they want, whenever they're in a bit of trouble. So while conversations about, well, should we crack down on organized crime, they only talk about that in the sense of Albanians and county line gangs, because that fits our political narrative. Actually finding a way to reduce drug deaths and to reduce the power of organized crime, I'm not saying they're actively avoiding, it, but it politically having drugs there as a scourge that they can point to whenever they're in trouble, kind of make sense for them. Much like the immigration debate as well. They could set up overseas processing centers for Afghanis, for Albanians to actually apply to come to country, but they don't because they want the small boats coming. So they can point there and say, you know, it's the European core of human rights, or this is liberal lefties are forcing us and organized crime is now pushing these people across the war and we'll go against organized crime. So they care about combating organized crime when it suits them, but drugs are simply too much political capital comes from them.
Speaker 1So what are your thoughts then on the shifting power dynamic around the world? This is another thing that fascinates me because I've had such a difference of opinion on this so far on the podcast. Someone such as Greg Palast said to me that he doesn't think that China, the rise of China necessarily poses a threat to Western dominance in the world because what they're doing is essentially becoming Westernized. You know, they're becoming capitalistic and they're ultimately just joining the club. Whereas Mark Curtis said that he does feel that Russia and China pose a threat and we are very much in a form of cold war right now, which has the potential to escalate into a hot war. So what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I think we definitely are in a form of cold war with both China and Russia. I mean, you know, Russia is more clear with what's happening and Russia, I think Russia's being forced further into being more and more of a pariah state kind of operating in the peripherals and realizing as well that a lot of the allies that had when it started the war in Ukraine, you know, like countries in Central Asia and even some of the Balkans have been a little bit quieter in support than they thought they would. So they're kind of being pushed out in a way, but they still have a lot of sway to cause enormous problems, mostly to Europe right now. With China, I think it's a lot more complex. The Belt and Road Initiative means that China is able to go into countries where the United States and European Union are losing influence and they're losing quite a rapid rate. They maybe don't have the money or the interest to be involved in foreign states as much anymore. The problem with China going into these countries is, like I said before, is that no strings attached aspect. So as we see totalitarianism and authoritarianism growing around the world, China sees that as quite a benefit because they know they can work with those states as long as they're relatively stable. They can go into Burkina Faso and make deals with the new Junta government there. They can work with the Tatmadaw in Myanmar. They can work with the corrupt government of Cambodia a lot easier than states like America or the EU can because they don't have to get past these human rights violations. What that means on a grand scale is that China gets its position on things like the South China Sea. I think the main concern for the US government on China's growing presence on the world stage is its ability to gain deep sea ports. There's a great example in Sri Lanka where China came in with Belt and Road money. The problem with this as well is that these countries can never really pay back these loans. It's not really possible. But enough government ministers will get money. You don't really care if your country goes in debt. You've got paid quite well. Sri Lanka defaulted on its loans. As part of the agreement, China took one of their deep sea ports and now own it for 99 years. They're now able to turn that into military, naval, or whatever they want to do. America sees this, especially throughout Southeast Asia, where China's getting more and more influence. In the event of a hot conflict between China and the United States, China's put its grips in throughout the Asia Pacific in many ways that that America is losing influence to be able to So I think it's bad for the sense of empowering China's support base for, say, South China Sea is one political thing, but things like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the plight of the Uyghurs, it means that less and less countries around the world, even Muslim countries, are willing to go against China because they're getting so much funding on the back of that. So I think the problem with a growing China is that it does empower this authoritarianism and acceptance that human rights have very, very little value. I think America had massively its own problems and has done so much damage in the last few decades. But now, in terms of the greater threat, I think what China's doing is incredibly concerning.
Speaker 1Right. Okay, so you do think that there's a power shift happening? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, that's interesting, man. So sticking with the global picture, then, you travel a lot. You see a lot of the world. You're seeing a lot of these issues right there at the source. This isn't secondhand information read in The Guardian from the comfort of your sofa in Shoreditch. You're actually there on the streets seeing this stuff with your own eyes and talking to the very people affected by it. And then you're moving on to another country and dealing with a different part of the same puzzle and seeing how it connects. So having done this for a while now, what do you see as the main issues that we should be paying attention to right now? You know, it could be a conflict or it could be a power dynamic shift happening in a certain part of the world, or it could be the changing relationship between illicit and the legal world. What do you see as some of the main things that we should be paying attention to, in your opinion?
Speaker 2Well, I think there's quite a few. I mean, I think in terms of conflicts, there's ones that are very easily forgotten. The world's attention is shifted to what's happened in Ukraine, which is absolutely. horrific. But that has meant that eyes have came away from places like Myanmar that are still incredibly difficult for journalists and researchers to get into and make accurate accounts of horrific war crimes, crimes against humanity and active ongoing genocide on people like the Rohingya. That seems right now quite contained within Myanmar. So the world attention is limited. It is limited in what it gives. It does have the. it probably won't spill over. What could spill over is the flow of arms and the flow of drugs as well, if that is a concern. So as the conflict in Myanmar gets deeper, the ethnic armed organizations that are fighting the Tatmadaw, they need to make money somehow. So the way they make money to buy arms is by selling enormous quantities of methamphetamine that they then spread throughout Southeast Asia into Australia. And back through Europe as well. So that's always something to watch and how the instability creates problems that other countries could, you know, feel impacts from. I think the world can't really take its eye off Afghanistan, which it very much has. It's a very difficult situation where the international community has not accepted the Taliban as a legitimate government for obvious reasons. They're not letting girls go to school. They're horrific at LGBT. Individuals can't practice. They don't have their lifestyle whatsoever. And they're just horrific violations of human rights. Even people like, you know, people who take drugs are now rounded up and just openly tortured for a week before they're let out. I think the world needs to look there and possibly do need to consider making negotiations with the Taliban so that they legitimize them to some extent so that NGOs can get in. There's an enormous drought. Climate change has massively impacted Afghanistan. That's probably the greatest threat for most people in the country is the lack of water. They need huge water. Huge amounts of water, machinery and funding to be able to come in. Now the country is a lot safer than it has been for, you know, for the last 20 years because there's still war, but there's not huge amounts of airstrikes and kidnapping is limited. So you could actually get watery UN through the, you know, through the country and really, really make an impact on some of the world's poorest people. And then that has, you know, it's people from and from Afghanistan, as well as many other places that is creating this Europe wide debate on migration. Which is becoming a very politicized debate. But it's really just quite clear that there are a growing amount of incredibly vulnerable individuals, both because of conflict and also climate change that are going to increasingly need to be coming to places like Europe, also into the United Kingdom. And we need to have a conversation about how we can process these people fairly rather than just, you know, Bill and I. And making it out that this is a political issue that you can you can win or lose on. Basically, the shift of the globe is turning in a much worse way from conflict and climate change. More and more people need to move their homes. And I think we just need to start accepting that and finding ways that this can be sustainably achieved.
Speaker 1Yeah, man, that's a biggie as well. I mean, you know, all of the parts of this puzzle are connected, aren't they? That's the thing. I mean, we are living in an interconnected global community. Now, and everything affects everything else. And so with all the things then that you've seen and all the things that you've done and learned and investigated and processed and been exposed to around the world, has all of it solidified a kind of general understanding of how the world is actually run?
Speaker 2I don't know. I mean, I definitely see how specifically. Really, things like organized crime, the more and more I research and look into that, the more I realize that governments are completely complicit in it throughout the world. And that's probably something that a few years ago I would have thought sounded quite conspiratorial, maybe a bit exaggerated. But that's probably this recurring theme that I've noticed, like countries like China and they have these key individuals that the. Pop up everywhere with these strong connections to to the to the state in Beijing, and they're essentially able to operate enormous organized crime empires, whether that's drugs or terrifying levels of human trafficking or even weapons trafficking. See, it's becoming more and more apparent that the largest organized crime groups will never actually be brought down because they're. Too intertwined with key governments in all of the countries that they work in. And that problem only seems to be growing. And I guess so much of that, again, does come back to this war on drugs idea where there's just simply too much money floating around the ideas of anti-corruption democracy and, you know, fighting against the so-called bad guys afraid that, hey, just doesn't really make feasible sense.
Speaker 1Oh, man, well, I promise I was. I was only going to keep you for an hour, but I mean, it's just so much. I want to ask you questions all day. So I'm going to try and squeeze a few more out if I can before I let you get back to your important work. I think, you know, should we out some of these fuckers? I mean, it would be good to name some of these these crime lords by name so that people can one go and do, you know, some further research on these guys and their connections to to the legit world. And also to bring these guys out of the shadows so that people know their names. I think that's very important. And to start. To have a normalized understanding of their role in all of our lives. So what? So who are some of the main guys that we could name that people could go and look at who are who are playing a very important role in world events right now in the criminal world?
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's in Asia, there's a guy called One Cat Coy, also known as Broken Tooth, who used to be the head of the 14K triads. And he was actually arrested in Macau and Hong Kong. He was actually arrested in the in the 90s when he paid for a film about his life to be made so that he could watch it. He had so much clout in Macau that he was actually able to close down the bridge connecting to the mainland without the permission of the police. And the police couldn't stop him just to create an action scene that was about him being a badass. He was actually arrested during the screening. He was actually arrested during the screening of that film for the attempted murder of a police official. He's now out. He's now completely linked up to the Belt and Road Initiative. Not officially, but wherever there's Belt and Road infrastructure investments, he's usually there doing the CD stuff in the background, whether it be casinos. Cryptocurrency is a massive one that he's involved in. The human trafficking cyber scams have been talking about enormous amount there. He is sanctioned by the U.S. government under what? Called me. Nitsy sanctions, which are supposed to make it very, very difficult for him to travel abroad, spend money. But, you know, he's he's still able to move quite freely around Southeast Asia. Also, in this part of the world, behind the cyber scams, I've got a guy called Zao Wei, who is the essentially the owner of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. Again, Special Economic Zone linked to Belt and Road Initiative, what the Golden Triangle one is, has just been this. Organized crime emporium for the last 10 years where it's an absolutely mental place where if you want to look up ridiculous organized crime, look up the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. and king's romans which is also what it's called which is the main casino inside um and there they've got tens of thousands of victims of human trafficking they have um you know places you can openly eat tiger uh you can get the pelts of tiger or pangolins or bear paws they actually now have a tiger farm within the facility as well to to you know raise their own tigers so they can slaughter them and sell them apart around the facility and you can buy weapons it's just a kind of overall horrific place it's just about a five minute boat ride from um north of thailand around about chiang rai um so often people just go over for the day from thailand to to gamble and then and then come back but when they've got now thousands of people enslaved in there from thailand we spoke to the thai authorities who say that zhaowei with his connections to the chinese state as well is so annoying enormously powerful that they actually have to ask when they know that a thai citizen is being held against their will or hundreds of them are they now have to ask their contact on the other side in in laos which is where the um special economics zone technically is can you please ask the king's romans facility if we can have these people back and then they'll have the negotiations with them and zhaowei whether it goes up to him or not or his lower downs will make the decision sure send a dozen or so of them back but the lao authorities aren't even able to go inside the special economic zone without permission so it's a essentially a fiefdom for one organized crime figure um also in cambodia you've got a guy called honto who's the i mentioned earlier his nephew of the the prime minister um police officials i've spoken to here say that when they do an enormous seizure on heroin or meth they actually just take most of that back and then give it to him directly or to his people directly to then sell and distribute throughout the region and they'll do a burning ceremony of you know like some fake plant that's not drugs um and then over in europe you've got like a really really interesting development of organized crime so you've still got the main italian mafias like the drangheta and the gamora um the cousin austra you've still got these guys but increasingly these large organized crime groups are working together because there's a lot of people who are working together and they're there's more money in this collaborative nature so now you've got the the albanian um mafia groups that have created um really impressive kind of logistical uh routes to directly bring uh cocaine from south america right over to europe so they can kind of control the supply chain um but there is actual cooperation between them uh a group called the macro mafia which is like north african based but very very present in the netherlands they were actually behind it assassination of a dutch journalist um a year or two ago and then you've got um a man called daniel kinahan who is the head of the irish mafia who was recently sanctioned by the u.s government he's very much linked in with the macro mafia moving drugs around around the um the continent but what's interesting about him is he's also a boxing promoter so he put an enormous amount of his money over the last kind of 10 years into promoting young boxers and training them up ended up representing people as prominent as a as tyson funy based entirely off the back of these um like enormous organized crime profits there was actually a weigh-in in dublin a few years ago for a televised uh boxing fight and uh three or four guys dressed as cops ran in with ak 47s and started firing at the stage based on this we still have some of the most prominent boxers in the world connected so yeah you have all of these um all these figures and i think kinahan's a good example where they're not headed in the shadows like the mob boss of the old years where you would imagine you know they sit in some some dodgy restaurant and they're heading away these are people who are known these are people who have enormous so-called legitimate business enterprises and connections with government but they also just happen to run some of the biggest mafias in the
Speaker 1world fucking hell that is mental man i mean you should write a book man you should put all this into a book it's explosive stuff dude well if there's
Speaker 2publishers that want to come in and hit me and lindsey kennedy up we will absolutely take that
Speaker 1right hey dude i'll take that on as my personal project to help man i mean you know i i know a couple so i can i can easily try and help with that one because this has got to be put out there man thanks man well one last question then before i do let you go this time um what can we do i mean this just seems like power of such an insurmountable scale what can we
Speaker 2do i think the most valuable thing that normal people could do to try to fight against you know this whole intertwining world of global organized crime and and state governance would be to back drug law reform would be to push a world of legalized or highly regulated drugs so that you can take away the billions of pounds that are connecting governments and mafias together um also i i think that it's been great that european american and british governments have been a little bit more heavy on the russian oligarchs since the beginning of the war i think we need that same amount of focus put on to chinese outfits that are coming around the world and setting up shop in places like london and pushing billions of pounds through i think there's actually a story that came out recently about a so-called chinese police stations that are being um found in around the world so they had one in glasgow they've got them in london got them in in serbia where the real threat was that these were kind of clandestine offices where chinese officials would harass um activists and those who had left the country to come back or to threaten their family and to get them to stop being activists or journalists or kind of political dissidents but at the same time they've also been used for um really really embedded organized crime structures that go back to the levels of the chinese states so i think as the bell and road initiative grows we need to be very wary that that is not just an infrastructure project that organized crime also falls off the the back of that and in a massive way and i think that we also need to put pressure on governments to actually introduce money laundering legislation that actually makes sense that that doesn't mean that um multi-billion pound companies can be set up in london but are actually based out in you know the the caymans that's not just about tax avoidance to evasion that's also facilitating enormous organized crime groups the problem is this these aren't issues that people tend to vote on um so if you want to make a change on that then then people need to start talking about these specific issues and getting politicians to care and not just use organized crime as some helpful talking point when they're trying to you know incite some kind of culture war argument about immigration or about the scourge of drug use by going back i think the most important thing that the entire global community could do to make any bent on the growing empire and control of mafia groups today is is to back rapid um and and like enormous drug policy reform and we've already seen um you know uh states and uh leaders in columbia and throughout the world starting to say we need to legalize cocaine we need to do something to stop the power of these cartels just growing beyond the point where we can even contain them as well where they're so embedded in the state or they actually become the state which we've seen in places like um this is a hell which is a key trafficking point for for cocaine coming from south america and into europe so your concept burkina faso um niger mali uh mauritania um these countries have went under so many coups in the last few years and they're also completely infested with with militant groups and al-qaeda and isis cells all fighting but so much of the reason the coups are happening is because the military want to have control over the money that comes through from the drug groups so much of this is massively connected and and so much of it goes back to the enormous amount of cash that um is generated from the illegal drug business and and finally also um europe in particular um asia is already aware of this really need to look into their their gaming the type of individuals are setting up casinos um in places like montenegro you asked for names earlier there's another guy called paul who owns casinos in montenegro is linked to the the hong kong triads as well he says he's an international poker player but you just have enormous gangsters being able to set up huge casinos or or online gaming um empires within europe with very very little regulatory control or or restrictions
Speaker 1mind-blowing stuff i i just you know i could talk about this stuff all day honestly man but i'm aware that it's probably way more important than i now let you go and get on with this important work and and stop answering my stupid questions so nate thanks so much for giving us your time today man i really do appreciate it if this has been an absolutely explosive chat i really do hope that uh you get that book done and i'm more than happy to uh you know to be your assistant on that and start knocking some doors for you that'd be awesome thanks to everything that you and lindsey are doing i know it's really brave courageous and dangerous work so we all salute you for doing that and sharing this knowledge with us much for having us on man oh anytime no thank you man it's been really good talking to you man yeah no no you too honestly i've thoroughly enjoyed it you know i could pick your brains for like for hours so anyway if you're ever back in the uk if ever that such a thing happens you know and i'll treat you to some beers and probably irritate you all night let's do that man i'm
Speaker 2back in december let's get some beers and wheels let's do it oh you're gonna regret saying that
Speaker 1i'm gonna let you go so stay safe in the meantime thanks again catch you soon bro take care you too man bye nathan paul southern ladies and gentlemen let's have a round of applause for that um i forgot to give a shout out to nathan socials he's at nathan p southern on twitter definitely go and give him a follow because his tweets are awesome what did you think of that man i had no idea that he was going to drop that kind of knowledge in that conversation that's my stuff right there and i am fascinated by how all the moving parts work together especially if half of those moving parts work together and i'm fascinated by how all the moving parts work together are kind of in the shadows and we're not meant to know about it you know fascinating fascinating stuff and i really really hope that some publisher has got some fucking sense to actually put a book out by uh nathan and lindsey because you know that is such great and important work those guys are doing and putting themselves in a lot of danger as well to do it you know so if there's any publishers listening pull your thumb out of your ass and you know stop chasing the next fucking rom-com cash cow and actually put this book out because this needs to be the story needs to be told man how mental was some of that stuff i mean the place he mentioned was was called the golden triangle special economic zone it sounds like fucking hell on earth um and i've actually looked into that place and it's dead legit everything nathan described is is 100 real and happening right now the world is a fucked up place there's no doubt about it man and the reality that we're given about how things work is just so untrue that it's it's beggar's belief it's absolutely staggering how fucking mental the world really is and that's why investigative journalists are my favorite people because they've given us the truth and we need that now more than ever and i know most of the time the truth is fucking horrific but you know that gives us all the more reason to know about it so that we can change it so please do follow nathan on twitter at nathan p southern and also follow his partner in crime lindsey kennedy at lindsay kennedy so that's l-i-n-d-s-a kennedy spelt just like mine k-e-n-n-e-d-y knowledge is power man the power to set a fire under the ass of tyrants everywhere and in the age of such mass disinformation and corruption the investigative journalist is everyone's superhero so support those guys as nathan described they don't make a lot of money they make a loss a lot of the time but they do this stuff because it's such important work so i hope you enjoyed the conversation i did i'm going to go back and listen to it right now because there was so much stuff i missed in there because i was you know concentrating on uh you know being on my game as an interviewer please do subscribe to the podcast i've got so many awesome guests coming up um i really don't want you to miss any of these conversations so just click that one button which will give you a notification then when i drop these things because as i said it was every wednesday at seven o'clock but that's just not happening now it's gonna be it's gonna be when it when it's gonna be i'm gonna i'm gonna really try and make sure i can get one a week out to you but what day or what time i don't so subscribe so you don't miss any of these incredible chats from these incredible people thanks so much to everyone for all your amazing support so far you guys are awesome stay safe stay informed stay righteous and stay stubborn i'll see you guys next week have a great one love you loads
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