Das Criminal

On May 28th, 2014, a group of five adults and one child attempted to proselytize people in a McDonald's in Zhaoyuan, China. When a woman name Wu Shuoyan refused to give them her contact information, they beat her to death inside the restaurant.

Join us for a deep dive into cults and new religious movements in China, Mao's stance on religion, the so-called Eastern Lightning sect and its female Jesus, and a family whose collective delusion eventually drove it to murder.

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

Between February 13 and February 15, 1945, RAF and USAAF bombers flew over the German city of Dresden, dropping hundreds of tons of incendiary and high explosive bombs over the densely populated city. Incendiary bombs caused a widespread fire that ravaged the city. All in all, the attack resulted in around 25,000 Germans killed and many more injured.

In the weeks and years that followed, the attack on Dresden would occupy a central role in the debates over Allied war crimes and whether such an operation was militarily necessary at that point in World War II. Dresden had served as a haven for refugees coming in from elsewhere in Germany, and so its destruction seemed doubly horrible. Worse, Dresden has become a rallying cry among elements of the far-right, who use it as a symbol of Allied brutality and thus the need for vengeance. Even now, 75 years later, the debate rages on over Dresden.

Patreon: www.patreon.com/dascriminal

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

This episode is upcycled from our Patreon page; it was originally published in April for our Connolly Collective. We will be back next week with a brand new episode!

It is April 15th, 1989. Your club, Liverpool FC, have reached the semi-finals of the oldest club competition in the world - the FA Cup. They are due to face Nottingham Forest in the neutral venue of Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.

Somehow, you manage to snag a couple of tickets. You go in. You are in the Leppings Lane terrace behind one of the goals. You begin to feel dizzy as bodies crush around you. Some people are yelling. Others are being pulled up from the lower tier into the upper tier by fellow fans. A few try to climb the fences that separate the stands from the football pitch but are stopped by police.

Eventually, you manage to escape the crush. Ninety-four people have lost their lives that day. Another dies a few days later, and a 96th dies in 1993 after having been kept in a vegetative state since that day. You are alive, fortunately. The day after, you turn over the newspaper to find the press accusing you and your fellow fans of causing the crush. You are called hooligans and thugs. You are accused of pissing on paramedics and fighting with police. It is your fault, you are told.

This is what happened on April 15th, 1989. What began as a bright Saturday with football to enjoy ended in tragedy. And it was no mere accident. At every moment of the disaster, local authorities failed to act. Moreover, they then conspired to cover-up their many failures. This cover-up ran from the Yorkshire police up to the very highest pinnacle of power: the British government.

Patreon: www.patreon.com/dascriminal

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

If you search for biographies of Marie Antoinette, most of them focus on her fashion sense, her romantic relationships, and even how some of the French tabloids published misleading stories about her, such as the infamous "Let them eat cake" line and the Diamond Necklace Affair. It's almost as though — nearly 230 years after her execution — we're meant to believe that Marie Antoinette was a victim of the French Revolution rather than a symbol of its grievances in the first place.

So, why has Marie Antoinette's image been sanitized in recent years? Was she simply a misunderstood aristocrat — born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or have we, perhaps, been buying into some counter-revolutionary revisionism?

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

In this episode, we continue our discussion on the death of Frank Olson ― the U.S. Army biochemist who mysteriously fell out a New York City hotel window in 1953.

Content warning: This episode includes discussions of drug use and possible suicide. If you feel suicidal and need to talk, Wikipedia has a list of crisis lines around the world.

Please check out decolonizepalestine.com to learn more about things like greenwashing!

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

In the early hours of November 28th, 1953, U.S. Army biochemist Frank Olson plummeted out the window of room 1018A at the Statler Hotel in New York City. Though his colleagues first reported this as a jump or fall, details about Frank Olson's opposition to the use of bioweapons in the Korean War, his connections to the CIA's Project MKUltra, and a recent unwitting LSD trip would eventually come to light.

What happened to Frank Olson? Did he fall out the window in the middle of the night? Did he have some sort of nervous breakdown and leap to his death? Or, is it possible that Frank Olson was pushed?

Content warning: This episode includes discussions of drug use and possible suicide. If you feel suicidal and need to talk, Wikipedia has a list of crisis lines around the world.

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

On Thursday, former reality TV star and right-wing lobbyist Josh Duggar was arrested by U.S. Marshals; Friday, news broke that Duggar is charged with receiving and possessing child sexual abuse images.

These aren't the first allegations of sex crimes against children for Josh Duggar; in 2015, In Touch Weekly reported that between 2002 and 2003 — when he was 14 and 15 years old — Duggar molested five girls — four of whom are his sisters.

Cable channel TLC canceled the Duggar family's reality show, 19 Kids and Counting, after these allegations surfaced. But the series continued in the form of a spin-off, Counting On. What appears on its face to be an upbeat reality show about a large family is also a window into the all-embracing conservatism of some Christian fundamentalists in the United States.

Content warning: This episode contains mentions of child sexual abuse. If you are a survivor of sexual violence and need to talk, RAINN has a 24/7 hotline at +1 800 656 4673 and a live chat at RAINN.org.

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

On February 17th, 2015, three teenage girls from Bethnal Green, London, boarded a flight at Gatwick Airport for Istanbul, Turkey. The schoolgirls — Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana — weren't headed for a Mediterranean holiday; they were en route to Syria to join the Islamic State — otherwise known as ISIS or Daesh.

The news shocked the British public. Though thousands of men — and at least dozens of women — had already traveled from Europe to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist organizations, the idea that three straight-A students would run away from home to join a terrorist syndicate seemed incomprehensible.

So, why did Amira, Shamima, and Kadiza leave their relatively guarded lives in East London to join the Islamic State? What has happened to them in the meantime? And — most important to our discussion of the Syrian Civil War — what is to be done with the ISIS members who remain?

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

This week, we're going to break down who is involved in Syria's Civil War, which groups are allied with which, and clear up some common misconceptions or repetitive misinformation about the conflict. We're mostly going to focus on the major players — namely the government forces, opposition forces, autonomous administration (sometimes erroneously called 'the Kurds'), and the Islamic State.

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw

On June 6th, Syrian-American blogger Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari — known for her web page about being a lesbian in Syria titled, A Gay Girl in Damascus — was reported to have been abducted by men who appeared to be Syrian government forces. International media outlets like The Guardian picked up the story, and well-meaning LGBT activists worldwide began to organize to support her release.

But as with so many threads that make up the complex web of the Syrian Civil War, Amina's arrest and the spotlight it put on her blog began to demand more explanation. Who is Amina? What happened? And why is this story so important to our understanding of the Syrian Civil War?

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

Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw