Today, we barely scratch the surface of one of the most violent dictators in history - “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hajj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” - Idi Amin. During his eight years in power, he likely killed 300,000 people in Uganda, in a wildly violent way. Buckle up and join us on this week's Doomed to Fail.
Today, we barely scratch the surface of one of the most violent dictators in history - “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hajj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” - Idi Amin. During his eight years in power, he likely killed 300,000 people in Uganda, in a wildly violent way. Buckle up and join us on this week's Doomed to Fail.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your [Music]
country and we are live active talking and vibing right Taylor man yeah I'm
trying my best it's I mean it's early and we daylight saved so it's very early
um but I'm fine hold on what wait was Daylight savings yeah but like you don't
even notice because all of your stuff happens automatically like maybe check your oven but other than that it just
wait so is so is is it supposed to be like noon my time right now yes no 11:
we we we went up an hour 10 it is 11 my time supposed to be 10 so my Oh weird my my phone phone says
9919 but my like wall clock says 819 oh I didn't even realize it I know
you don't notice unless you have a wall clock or check your out in yesterday was also just kind of wild so um glad it's
finally chill but anyways welcome to doomed to fail um I'm fars joined here
by Taylor we're going to be bringing you two topics um wait no we're going to bring you one topic twice a week about
things that are doomed to fail I'm pretty sure I go first this time right uhhuh okay I have a pretty fun one I
think for you today um I think yeah wait show me should I should we do the
guessing game yeah yeah okay I am going to talk about the most famous Ugandan
person in world history do we know who that is oh my God no I I wish I did I don't you'll recognize his name it is Ed
I mean I mean oo okay this is the big one yep uh there was an I think an
academy award-winning movie based on this guy it was called The Last King of Scotland Force Whitaker play ID I mean
that's exactly what I was thinking um but I didn't know the name but yes and for those who saw the movie um so what
they depicted in that movie is like mostly accurate what's not accurate is that guy never existed this the the guy
the Scottish guy who was his position that wasn't a real person like he actually had a real phys it was Ugandan born and raised Ugandan like that was
his personal position but it wasn't some like it wasn't like a white savior thing
really so um I I'm going to start this in like several levels so the first
level is as I started my research on this I realized that it is almost impossible
for us to Fathom what the political life in Uganda has been like
throughout its like like mostly post Colonial history I started researching
this um by going back through the historical record and realized that it was like really really complicated there
were like a ton of tribes and factions and interests and all of it was weirdly
intertwined with other countries that were dealing with similar issues themselves and so it just got like
really really complicated I realized that if I went down this path of trying to figure out how a guy like idin came to power completely then this would turn
into like a Dan Carlin level podcast yeah I mean you could write a book I feel like so dude it is so complicated
it was so like I I have like so many different notes of like this tribe was
aligned with this political party and like this ethnic group it's weird it was
did have you seen Hotel Rwanda no do do you remember you know
the Rwanda genine genocide right yeah yeah like it was like largely based on
the fact that like Rwanda for example was like a Belgian Colony I think it was
and they identified the lighter skinned black people as being like the ones who deserve privilege and the darker skinned
ones the ones that didn't it was like the hutus and the tosis I forgot which one was which but what happened was like
once Belgium Belgium left the country the darker ones were going to take like
their revenge on the lighter ones and that's where the genocide start like it's it's weird weird it's like it's like weird racial like interplay racial
stuff always is that's sucks yeah sucks
well so pivoting back to Uganda I went as far back as when it was a British
territory and what happened when it's stopp being a British territory because that seems to be like the Genesis of like all the chaos that happened with
the rise of ID mean so basically Uganda was a British territory and it was part
of the Commonwealth from 1894 until 1962 from then 1962 until
1966 there was kind of a piece like there was the establishment of a government within
Uganda and this is something that I I don't even understand so there's a
kingdom within Uganda called hunda and it's within the territorial
borders the country itself but it has complete autonomy on its own like it
just operates on its own and so when the Brits were there they were like just leave these people alone do your own
thing like yes you are within our boundaries but you can just do whatever you want and when they when ug when they
left Uganda to establish his own government they also similarly were like just leave these people mostly alone
it's going to be fine it was a problem for the PE the government of Uganda to
figure this out because that Kingdom bagunda it represents 14% of the population within the borders of Uganda
itself which doesn't sound like it's that huge but it is huge if you factor
in that it is a single tribe so all these other factions within Uganda are
like various different tribes and so they don't have a population density and they're always fighting with each other
whereas bagunda is just like one giant conglomerate of people that all are lined behind the same ethnic background
and background so okay in 1966 tension
started Rising between the government and the kingdom to the point where Uganda actually attacked the kingdom and
tried to take over their palace that led to what I would argue is the downfall of
basic democracy within Uganda that ultimately gave rise to a guy like edin uh at that time Uganda had a prime
minister a guy named Apollo Milton abuto and he was the one who basically was
like attack the kingdom take over the palace and let's just get rid of this
whole separate autonomous Kingdom within the territorial boundaries of Uganda so
as part of that he essentially did away with several government cabinet positions that were a part of his
government and uh suspended the constitution of Uganda to basically say like hey I'm just going to go Rogue and
try to figure out what to do with this Kingdom so that's what he essentially did and he took over this Kingdom and
abolished it and established complete control over the entire country again this was the guy named Milton abuti um
the people of Uganda really had issues with this guy Outi he was essentially the first Prime Minister first ruler
governor of Uganda um and I'm going to try and parse exactly what this guy did that pissed people off but again it's so
nuanced it's so textured and detailed rough rough Strokes was that ITI was
trying to present the Optics of nationalism as though hey we're all you
know ugandans like forget about the tribal stuff um but he did it under the guise of socialism in a way that was not
well-received so he would often talk about how a
strong democracy was imperative and the will of the majority was imperative for the Ugandan people and the government
itself um but at the same time he also mandated the government control of the largest corporations in the
country what was problematic with that was that again when the Brits left like
four years ago like everything there was like largely British oriented like
Barclays for example was a prominent Bank of the time all that stuff when AB bouti came into Power he he said that
any foreign corporations that are operating in Uganda had to reincorporate as a Ugandan company to operate there so
what that means means is that now the government of Uganda was able to take over corporations that were owned by
other countries or operated outside of those boundaries like Barclay was a really good example they they referenced
a few times um that was the primary Bank of Uganda but now they're like we're not going to deal with this [ __ ] like no you
can't own our company like what are you talking about um and so all that essentially spal into corruption food
shortages crazy inflation everything comes along with with it
so this is what led to the civil unrest um within Uganda under this guy's
government and eventually on January 25th 1971 Ed Amin who was a general that was
working for abouy he decided that he was going to lead a coup using the military
to remove him from power and he was going to take control of the government by all accounts there was a
riff between them um Amin was actually the the general who led the attack on the palace in the Kingdom to take over
and abolish the kingdom within Uganda so they he was very very high up and very tied into things that were going on
there so that's what ends up happening on in 1971 is Amin uh establishes this
coup and it was relatively bloodless mostly because Outi was attending a conference or Summit in Singapore so
during the time Amin um who had complete control the police and military just basically told them take the capital and
shut shut down the airport so this guy can't come back to his home country so that's basically it like it wasn't like
a bloody like when you hear about like the civil unrest usually it's usually pretty out there but that wasn't the case here I mean there was still murders
but they were murders of opportunity which was like hey um we're going to take over the palace and someone's like
you can't do it I'm going to stand up for my president and it was like n we'll just tell this guy to get over with so it was I've heard that before we like
you do it when if you do it when someone's out of town it's which is like hilarious like it's like
when your parents go out of town and you invite your friends over so am ran Uganda as a military
dictatorship His official and formal title during his rule was it's going to take a little bit okay okay this is his
title his Excellency president for Life Field Marshall alhaji Dr Ed Amin daada
VC DSO MC CBE Lord of all the beasts on
the earth and fishes of the sea in conquer of the British Empire in Africa in general and Uganda in
particular that's very long he was obviously a crazy person I
did a lot of digging because I was like everybody had at least has at least like one redeeming
quality uhhuh almost everybody has one and I could not find a single quality
that this guy had that was actually redeemable so that's that was his formal title unofficially his nicknames were
Butcher of Uganda Butcher of Africa the machete and my personal favorite black
Hitler oh my God I'm I'm I I'm excited that we're talking about this because I definitely want to learn more because I
even I know now there's plenty of very very bad things happening in Africa that are not in the mainstream news so it's
good to get a background and I will talk about that if you want to talk about that
because nothing has changed like yeah like almost nothing has changed and and
we'll there's a topic I'll bring up at the very end of this just to highlight that point so going back to a mean his
only real experience in life was that of running military operations he literally had no experience um on how to handle
the economy humanitarian e efforts diplomacy function basically nothing
civil government related he had any experience in you add to the fact that he was also completely beholden to the
Army like he was their figurehead and he's the reason why he was able to take power add to that the fact that he had
crashed the economy into the wall so hard that he had difficult he was
struggling to compensate them and make keep them happy so they don't try and overrule him he was naturally very very
incredibly paranoid and violent and by the way he also happened to be illiterate so add to that the fact that
every directive that he issued had to be done over like a speech or over the phone with a violent temperament and you
have nothing in writing so if he calls you and you're minister of something and he just says yeah I think we should do
this thing you do that thing like you have no written record of him saying that he would just come back to you and say what I didn't say that then just
kill you like it was a night yeah oh my God so when you end what you essentially
end up with with that combination was a country that was in complete upheaval the sense I got from reading about him
and his government is that the patients were basically running the Asylum he had
the love and respect of his military but he also knew that that was only going to
last for as long as he was able to control them and as long as they saw him as like strong and not weak
essentially I view some of the things that he did as the flailings of a leader
who is too incompetent to know where he's his struggles are and he's like trying to figure out what to do so as an
example of that I highlighted a few things that he did during his rule um the first being the purging uh the
government in military all of the former prime minister abuti supporters and also
like again it gets into weird racial stuff like just like tribal minorities
that he didn't like or thought that would be more aligned with somebody else than him roughly 300,000 people fit this
bill of people who just were like kind of undesirable that he had executed primarily using machetes which is why he
got the um the nickname machete um and most of those bodies they would just end
up dumping in the river and Nile um so 300,000 some estimates say
500,000 whatever it's a lot of people to kill basically yeah uh Uganda was and is a
predominantly Christian country I think the latest stat that I found was that 40% of the country identifies as
Christian and it was kind of the same back done as well uh which posed a problem for a mean because a lot of
people listen to their spiritual leaders and most of the time despite what we
both probably think and assume is true spiritual leaders aren't crazy sociopaths who want to use machetes on
people like they're they're they're like somewhat better than that and that was a problem for me because he was like my
populace is going to listen to these leaders and possibly they're gonna possibly turn them against me and so he
made a point to go out killing Bishops pastors priests you name it basically anybody who was kind of in a position of
of power against him since y the yeah since the economy
was in the tank he implemented a to like a brilliant idea this was so smart and
and it was totally repeatable policy because he was trying to figure out how to increase like the coffers of the the
government and so this was this was great brilliant brilliant idea so about
880,000 or so people who are the population of Uganda uh they're Indians
they come you know they come from India because again this was a British colony
we know the story of Mahatma Gandhi uh a lot of folks were brought over as dentur
servants and then once they left they were released and all that stuff what Amin did was again looking at
the SP minority aspect of his rule he decided that the way that he was going
to bolster the conference of the government was give these people about 60,000 of them who have dual passports
UH 60 60,000 of them 90 days to evacuate the country or face death or prison
camps the point being that he could then take their properties and repatriate them to the Ugandan
government there was a fact I read that I almost don't believe and I can't really get too further into I try
digging this up more The Economist reported in an article they wrote on August 18th of
2022 it was called um 50 years on from the arrival of the Ugandan Asians
they're calling them Asians because India isn't on the Asian continent but that's it was that's what I mean by that
yeah yeah um I don't understand this what they said was that this 60,000
population of Indians was somehow responsible for 90% of tax revenues
received by the government H I don't understand it because why would yeah
because in in 1974 the population the entire population of Uganda was 11.4
million which means that 005 per of the
population was responsible for 90% of tax revenue I don't get how that's even
possible I were they just the only ones who are taxed how do you run a country though I
mean I don't know how do you fix roads like how do you I guess you don't I guess that's how you end up in this
situation right yeah I mean I I you know I enjoy paying taxes because I have nice roads in a great school you
know I mean yeah I again we'll get to this we'll talk about this in a little
bit because I looked up I looked up visiting Uganda now and I got a story to tell about that too so
um some other fun facts about Amin and his rule so in 1976 the PLO the
Palestinian Liberation are what is they o I forgot what the O is whatever it's
Palestinians um they hijacked a commercial plane going from Tel Aviv to Paris to compel the release of various
Palestinians who were imprisoned in Israel Amin again showing his incredible
eptitude at State craft he allowed the plane to land in Uganda kind of to show
himself as like a world leader that he was going to help negotiate the release and do whatever like he was just he was
way out of his death like Israel who as we know historically has given
absolutely zero [ __ ] about solving their problems on their own uh they ended up working with Kenya
to cross into their airspace into Uganda the Israeli forces were planning on just
we're not doing diplomacy we don't care what a mean says we don't give a [ __ ] what the Ugandan Armed Forces want we're
going to handle this ourselves which is like really badass I actually like really love reading this story it was really really cool
so the Israeli forces uh decided about a week after a week after planning this
that they were going to land at the air base where the hostes were being kept um at that point the H has been moved from
the plane on into the terminal uh so they get there and they had also brought
with them the exact same car color and model that Amin had because like again
nobody is driving like a brand new S-Class like right you an S-Class in Uganda you're like that's a mean like
there's literally nobody else there's only one in the in in the country you think you're going to say something I do have a question um so the hostages are
they just regular folks happen to be on the plane or are they like political people no they're just regular people
yeah they're they're flying from Tel Aviv to Paris for trips vacations business stuff like that um so they
bring the same car that Aman has just to full the Ugandan Security Forces basically they knew what I read about
this was that they knew they were going to have to get into a firefight with the Ugandan Armed Forces they were basically
going to start like a mini War but they're like we're going to try and get as far into the airport as before the
before the gunfire starts uh they end up making it to the terminal after having
killed one of the security you got into Security Forces uh and once they get to the terminal they basically go fully
guns blazing um ultimately they grab the hostages they get them onto the Israeli
plane to head back there um in all uh seven of the hijackers were killed 45 or
so Ugandan soldiers were killed and three of the hostages were killed um in the middle of all this Israel also
destroyed 11 Ugandan M fighter jets that were at the air base that they would have a better chance of making it back
across borders um and they did so wow yeah my take on like dude that is
badass like that is so like good on you Israel um for for going in and doing
that because like yeah why would you trust this guy to negotiate on your behalf I def that's fair so in response
to this um amim was really really pissed because he was trying to show himself as like a negotiator and like a leader and
all that and like part of the world stage I imagine exactly exactly and add
to that the fact that Israel killed a bunch of ugan soldiers destroyed a bunch of ugan military equipment and all that
stuff in total Amin uh shot and killed 12 of his own soldiers who were there
and he said let the raid happen um be
between the time that the hostage takeover happened and the raid happened there's one woman who was 74 years old
and she fell ill and they negotiated with with the hijackers to release her
to a Ugandan hospital to become to you know to get Aid so there was one hostage
who wasn't at the terminal when the raid took place she was at the hospital um a mean ended up going to the hospital and
having her killed out of anger towards Israel and killing a bunch of his her
doctors and nurses who were trying to get in the way of his Security Forces not killing this poor 74 yearold hostage
oh my God just because he was mad oh my God I mean terrible add to that that he
also killed about 245 kenyons living in Uganda due to the fact that Uganda
allowed Israel to cross into their airspace like they negotiated with with Israel and that pissed him off as well
so again like no redeeming qualities total sociopath like awful awful awful
human being um another fun fact about him he is like kind of singlehandedly
responsible for the population decline of elephants rhinos crocodiles and lions within Uganda because he allowed his
forces because he was having a hard time keeping with how to pay them and keep them happy he was like go poach them so
by all accounts the population of elephants Uganda declined 75% rhinos
98% 80% for quod and 80% for Lions just because he would let his soldiers Go and
Kill and poach these things it's crazy oh my God So eventually his control over
his military grew very very tenuous um and some members of his military decided to flee across the border to Tanzania
and in the process Ugandan forces followed them and engag them in Tanzania which again is a sovereign country
bordering Uganda not great so really at
the time what was happening was he had lost control of his military and they were kind of acting on their own valtion
like I mean can you imagine like some soldiers in texus just like going into
Mexico and starting a firefight like be you're starting a war with well sort of yeah but still you're starting a war
with another country it's like it's like a crazy level of like disregard for your leadership um what Amin did and this was
mostly assumed that he did this to save base was that he decided after he found out this happened he decided to declare
war on Tanzania he had no reason to declare war on Tanzania but he was like oh [ __ ] my military's acting Rogue he
they're starting a firefight in another country I better just say this and it was done to save face and pretend like
he still had military under control so uh the president of Tanzania much to
his credit was like great you got a deal he begins assembling his forces on the border for fullon invasion of Uganda am
me realizes oh [ __ ] this is like really bad for me and he again defers back to
his State craftsmanship and decides that he's gonna challenge the president of Tanzania to a boxing match whoever wins
that conflict is wins wins it all basically that was his idea uh obviously obviously the
president of Tanzania did not reply to this and decided that he's just going to attack Uganda and go after the capital
the capital city is called campala that's where Amin is that's where the presidential Palace was and that's where
the Tanzanian forces were now advancing because there was nobody in charge of
the Ed military um Ami decides to flee at that time
so he initially flees to Libya because he was also very close to mormar
um and eventually he moves to Saudi Arabia where the royal family basically
offered him like a stien in housing and Safety and Security in exchange for
never going into politics Again by this time about that's very Napoleon a very
Napoleon thing to do to be like get out of here you can't have a job anymore yeah exactly exactly so this time we're
looking about eight and a half nine years from when he started to when we're at this stage of um of what's going on
uh this lasts for about nine years this Exile and then I can only assume he just
grew Restless because he um he he knew that Uganda was
in turmoil in 1989 and so what he ended up doing was he had a following of
supporters that were in zier he decides he's gonna fly out of Saudi Arabia into zier to try and mobilize his supporters
and figure out how to take back control in 1989 um he was immediately arrested upon
laning and zier by the government because he's he was incredibly welln I mean he he had the title The Butcher of
Africa and black Hitler like he wasn't going to just like go into another country and not be recognized I mean I
imagine he's still wearing his ofit yeah yeah these people obviously they go to
bed in their military uniform yeah it's a lot I have um I Googled it and there's a a a egregious number of medals
he's a beast owner master of fishes yeah
a lot of medal for that so zier the government contacts Saudi
Arabia saying hey we don't want this guy here we're gonna send him back the royal family said no we're good do not send
this guy to Saudi Arabia uh eventually they put him on a plane to senagal and
literally upon arriving the government of Sagal put him on a plane and flew him back to Zahir so So eventually the king of
Morocco calls and begs the royal family of Saudi Arabia to let him back in and eventually they relent and say fine
we'll let you back in on August 16th of 2003 he died of kidney failure in jeda
and in Saudi Arabia where he is now buried um but that's that was his life that was basically what happened he
eventually had I believe 60 children with five
wives and I think I think a couple of those are now like again it's I would
love if anybody's like a historian of like African countries like let us like
it is so complicated like you have to have you have to study this stuff for your entire life to even start to
comprehended because I read about his son how his son is now aligned with another faction that was like originally
aligned with the faction that his dad took over like it's crazy like I do have
I do I mean obviously like this is barely you know touching the surface
just like of this story but um yeah I'd love to know more it's crazy it's like
just wild that all that I mean it's wild that I don't I mean it's not wild but like when am I supposed to learn all of
that I wish I I don't think you I really don't think you can I think you have to like rely on people who are able to
distill it for us like again the last king of Scotland's a really good portrayal of what it would have been
like to live in a mean um country at that time but but I looked up um Uganda
today and apparently you can actually still go there and visit the torture chambers where around 200,000 people
were um starved or beaten to death um the state department the United States
state department has a level three travel advisory up for Uganda which literally means quote unquote reconsider
travel part of the reason for that is that in this man you will go down some deep rapbit holes with this so in the
guy who's president now has essentially been president since
shortly after a mean sto being president um he he's one of those presidents where
he passes like Constitutional Amendments saying that you can you never have to stop running for president there's no
term limits he changed the age limit for president like he's one of those like
he's very much in line with like an a mean type which is really gross because there's pictures of him with like Obama shaking his hand and smiling I'm like
what are we doing what are we doing so in 2014 his government was the one that passed the um the anti-homosexuality
bill um and and and when I researched I was like oh okay cool like they they
Struck it down the Supreme Court of ugana struck this down so there is some like checks and Balan on this so great
um when I went on the state Department's website and they put the reconsider traveling advisor on there they
specifically go back and refer to it's it's called the anti-homosexuality act
of 2023 this just got this just happened like it literally just happened a year ago like less than a year ago so they
tried again to pass another bill that was similar to the one that I mentioned in 2014 this one did get through and has
not been struck down in essentially what this does is it institutes a mandatory
life imprisonment for consensual homosexual behavior and for anybody
caught promoting anything considered homosexual so think of like advocacy
organizations that want to fight against a law like this like that's kind of what that is um that is a 20-year prison
sentence and if you were caught having multiple of these acts um against you
that's a death sentence so wow so it's one thing one thing that came up
researching this was that that mentality of like strength in Military and
machismo and all that that Aman kind of exemplified and perpetuated during his rule that's
now baked in the Consciousness which is how you end up having laws like this written is because
like that's who's left everybody else was killed yeah no
totally so very very scary apparently like it's not a it's not a safe place to
visit um and uh who knows if it ever will be because it sounds like this
guy's probably not going to go away for a while when he does go away it'll be another strong man that's going to come in and lead them and yeah we're kind of
just in a Perpetual cycle there that's awful and in the meantime
people I'm sure are just not living pretty rough
lives I would assume so yeah it's it's again like the history and the culture
so rich I started looking into the um Rwandan Genocide it all just seems like it's very
very tenuous piece punctuated by moments of like insane violence yeah I
mean killing that many people with machetes I don't I don't even know what
that I mean I can't imagine what that entails yeah you know so so violent and
so personally violent like there's some things that I've read like about like
other military history things where like you know like a bayonet like a gun with
like the knife on the front of it like yeah people very rarely actually stab
someone with it you know because once you get that close to someone it's really hard you know like it's harder
than you imagine it will be and when you get there you're like [ __ ] I'm in front of this person with this knife you know
but I think I think it can only happen in this tribal kind of environment because you can look at somebody and say
the person that looks like you killed someone that looked like me or my family
so I'm just doing an eye for an eye and it I that's what kept coming up with
this stuff was like the tribal element of it of like and that's why I mentioned like that one kingdom was like everybody
else was nobody was aligned it was just this one function within this Kingdom that was aligned or this one faction but
um anyways yeah so uh please tell us if you know more about
this stuff um there was another one that to research and I haven't got around to it but um I might do like warlord Series
yeah it's interesting and it's I mean it's not something that I see on my usual like news day you
know yeah like we're too in like again like we talked about this before about like how we're so us Centric and US
focused and we want the US to be better or people to be better or whatever then you look at like what happens outside of
our borders and like we're so insulated from things that everything here looks
existential and then you look outside like holy [ __ ] like like it could be infinitely worse than this absolutely
yeah but anyways that's my story today Taylor hopefully you enjoyed it hopefully the people listening enjoyed
it um and again if you know about this stuff or even if you just have recommendations on where to go for
Content about this stuff I'd be so curious like I'm sure there's other movies or better movies about this than
the last king of Scotland but um so yeah so let us know if you if you have any again our email is zoom topot gmail.com
we're on the socials I do all pod so yeah that's it I have I have
something hold on I'm sorry I'm listening I'm just going to my my phone uh our friend nen I'm so sorry I'm just reading this comment that she sent me um
she's from Canada and she was saying in Canada um public service this is in reference to your Postal Service uh
story that the um public service is unionized but there's always like
drama around what constitutes an essential service and whether they can or cannot go on strike so they get a
little bit creative of using other labor actions instead of a full-on strike to advocate so just interesting that over
there they they have they have a little bit more um I think ability to kind of fight for what they're hope for a safe workplace and
all of that well it's unionized here too there there's a post postal workers
union in the United States so they could go on strike
they can now but at the time in 1970 yeah 1970 they were a agency of the
federal government they were Administrative Office of the federal government um on yeah yeah they were on strike I think
that was um eight days they were on strike and that's when Nicks ended up saying fine no no I mean but since then
oh I don't know that I don't know um cool I don't know interesting
how other countries do it um oh the last one was 1972 you're right
you're right oh 72 sorry I said 70 whatever oh no there's one in 70 the
last one was in 72 okay the 71 then is the one that established they can unionize and they can be a separate
office than a federal agency so right um sweet well Taylor thank you for that um
we'll go ahead and cut this off and rejoin youall on Wednesday that's
all