Hello everybody, thanks for coming. This is about Linux Tracing with BPF, PCC, and more. So my name is Albon. I'm a co-founder and director at InfoClubs, where we do consulting and engineering around open source projects, related to Linux and Kubernetes. We have a team dedicated to innovation on our own open source project, and we do consulting with other software companies on our same project as well. Hello, so I'm Mauricio. I work also as a software engineer together with Albon. And this is my social network data, just in case you want to reach out. Hi, I'm Mauricio. In fact, we have products on Linux distribution and Kubernetes distribution, but everything we will say today is not related to that. So you can try that on any Linux distribution or Kubernetes distribution. Okay, so this is the outline of the presentation we will give you today. We present you an introduction to Linux Tracing, then we will present you an introduction to BPF and PCC as well. We will also give you a quick demo about some VCC tools and we'll show you also how to customize a VCC tool. Finally, Albon will give you an introduction about tracing in the cloud. We'll show you what are the different tools available for that and we'll present you a quick demo about Inspector Gadget. So I think we are ready to go. So let's get started with the introduction to Linux Tracing. So before going into the details of the tracing in Linux, I want to give you a quick introduction about what tracing is. So tracing is a mechanism that allows to get information about the execution of a program. And we could say that there are two different use cases for tracing. One of them is for debugging and the other one is for troubleshooting. Debugging is the use case that usually programmers use. For instance, if you are developing an application and there is something that is not working with that application, you can use tracing to know what is going on. For instance, you can get some information about what are the functions that are being called, what are the arguments of those functions, and so on. On the other hand, an administrator can use tracing for troubleshooting. So in this case, there is something that is not going good with an application. For instance, there is a performance problem or something similar. The administrator could enable tracing in that application and get some details about what is going on again. The performance in tracing is very important because we want this to be as low, the overhead to be as low as possible. So it should be able to disable or enable tracing at compile or runtime. Okay, so let's go in some details about Linux tracing in particular. So we could say that for Linux tracing we can divide it into three different layers. So the first layer are the data sources. So those are the components that provide information about what is going on. Those are the components that are connected to the applications or to the kernel and get the information. And this can be divided into different kinds. So we have the probes and we have the trace points. So the probes are mechanisms are allowed to change the assembly code of an application at runtime. So basically there is an application that is running and these mechanisms change the code to introduce tracing at runtime. So there are two kinds of probes. One key probes are for kernel and user probes are for user space applications. The other kind of data sources that we have are the trace points. These are defined statically by the programmer. So the programmer says, okay, there is something important happening at this point of my application. So I want to infer the word that something is happening in this point. So there are two kinds of those trace points. One for the kernel and the other for the user space application. In this case there are called user statically defined traces. Okay, so the second layer is the layer that takes the information from the data sources and make this information available to the third layer. There are different options here here. Actually, there are many different options here, but I don't want to go into the details of those options. So those use different technologies, some of them are integrated into the Linux kernel, some of them are external modules, and so on. What I only want to be clear here is that there are different options that could be choose according to the needs of the user. Usually the data structure and the data sources layers run in kernel space, and we have the third layer that is the front ends that run the user space. So the front ends is the layer that presents the information that makes the tracing information available to the user. Once again, here, there are different options. There are different tools. Okay, so the compatibility between these three layers is not that straightforward. There are some tools that are only compatible, what I mean is that there are some front ends that are only compatible with some data selection layers, and so on. I don't want to plot all the compatibility arrows here, but just to show you that there are many different options and according to the front end that you choose, you should choose on that discussion component, and so on. In this talk we will concentrate particularly in VCC and BPF. I don't want to say that this is the only system option or that this is the best option but we want to present this one because we think it has some nice features and some nice advantages. Okay, so why are we talking specifically about BPF and VCC here. The first reason is that those are fully open source solutions for the BPF case, this is a very flexible and efficient technology, and this is included in the Linux kernel. It means that you don't have to install an external kernel module to make it work. For the VCC case, it has many and great already decent tools, so it's like it's ready to use, you don't have to modify that in most of the cases. And even if you want to modify that this is very flexible and easy to modify, I will show you a demo about that later on. VCC also have libraries of bindings available for some programming languages, so it has a lot of compatibility with different programming languages. An important factor for us is that there is a head to community around, so if you hit any issues, if you have any questions, there is always a community willing to help you. So now we introduce BPF. So BPF itself is something that I guess for quite a long time, it was initially designed for TCP dump, but recently it was extended into a BPF extended BPF. And one of the church from this initially this case for TCP dump for network capturing network packets is now it can do more things than that. You can trace it kind of who kind of program for tracing. It has a BPF system called that I will explain a bit later that was not there before, and it has something called BPF maps that I will explain after as well. And finally, it has BPF system, which can be interesting for managing the BPF objects. Okay, so here I want to present the workflow, the general workflow it works like a bit behind the scene what will happen when you write a BPF program when you load it. So first we look at the top. When you write a BPF program, you write some code in C on that program in C can be compiled with a C long LLVM into BPF by code. This BPF by code can be then used with a BPF system call to load it into the kernel. And once your BPF by code is loaded into the canal, the first thing that the canal will do is to verify. So there is this step called the verification from the verifier that will verify that your program is safe. So this is to ensure that it will not crush your canal and it will not do anything. Don't show us that should not happen. I will go back to that a bit later. If the verifier saying the program is safe to run, then it is in the canal and it can be attached later to one of the hook I will describe in a bit in a moment. And this BPF program can call the kernel functions with a BPF helper functions and interact with the BPF maps. That's the latest mechanism I will explain a bit. Okay, and then the BPF program when it is executing, it interacts with the application only through the BPF maps. So that's communication mechanism to retrieve information from the kernel into the tracing application. Okay, as I mentioned before, there are different kind of BPF programs now that we have a BPF is not only for TCP dump animal but is for more use case. So there are three categories about networking, about security, and about tracing, but in this story we have focused only on tracing. So it's about using BPF program of type K probe or trace brand or a probe on a few others that were shown before. So a BPF program can be attached to different hooks in the kernel in that way. BPF programs can use BPF maps. Map is kind of a global variable that is on the Linux system. And that's variable is accessible both by the programs are user space programs using the BPF system calls, or it can be available from different BPF programs using the BPF helper function. So if you're coming to go into this, the test of the API, I just want to show that it, it is a mechanism for many, it is used for BPF programs to transmit information to the user space program. Okay, there are many different kind of BPF maps. There was in development in the Linux kernel, so there was initially only a few maps about different data structures like array or html. But in the latest kernel, I checked there is 27 different types of maps now. So there are many different kind of data structure, including different kind of bring the first to transmit information from the kernel into user space. So there are many different types of maps that are specialized that are sexual, for example, logger space, logger space match, Q, and so on. How do we use the map. Yeah, there is this BPF system call that you can use to create a map. But when you're on the terminal, you can use this command line tool BPF tool to create a map and then you can make it visible on the BPF system. And then you can use the 12 band for that nice introduction about BPF. So, I will continue with the introduction to BCC. So BCC stands for BPF compiler collision so and BCC is a toolkit that for creating efficient kernel creation and manipulation programs. This means that the BCC makes it easier to write BPF programs. When you are writing a BPF program, usually you have to take care about some of the lower details of the kernel, and it makes it sometimes difficult to write. BCC tries to make it a bit easier by providing a wrapper so BCC provides a wrapper around lab and allows you to access the BPF maps to define the maps in an easier way. BCC also provides some libraries for Python, Lua and C++ also for goal and externally by a different project called Go BPF. So what it means is that you still have to write your BPF program using CID but you can control that program you can load and access the BPF maps using other languages like Python, Lua, and so on. So this is the first part about this BCC is about providing the user a framework, a library to create, to load out and to manipulate BPF programs. That's just only one part of the BCC toolkit. The other part that I will say that could be the most important one is that it has a lot of different tools and examples that are ready to use. This is like the BPF of BCC where we have here the different kernel subsistence and we have some maybe some of the BCC tools that are out of there. So we can see here how there are different tools and how they interact with different kernel subsistence. As you can see there are many different tools almost there is a different tool for each subsystem. In this talk I will present you a quick demo about some of these tools particularly about OpenSNOP, SXNOP, and TCP Connect. If you want to get more information about these tools you can go to the BCC repo and you can see the list of the different tools that are there. You can see a small summary, a small description about the tool. If you click the name then you can have the full documentation about that specific tool and there are also some examples about how to use those tools. So before going into the demo there are different options to install BCC. The first option is to install a package for your distro so if you are running a bone to Fedora or a popular distro there are packages available for that one. If you don't want to install anything on your system or you are running a different Linux distribution you could run BCC on Docker. In this case you want to provide some special flags so I just put in the comment here in case you want to run this. There is a small detail, there is not an official BCC Docker image so a key info will have some images that we maintain time to time with the BCC functionalities. The last one is if you want to develop BCC or you want to try a feature that has not been released yet you call install from source. In this case this is needed to make some attention about the dependencies, especially the kernel in order to compile BCC we will have to be running the latest kernel. Okay so this is time for a demo. So let me switch to my terminal. Okay so here I have the different BCC tools on my system. This is actually known as BCC installation by running, I have here a git clone of the BCC repo so as you can see here those are the different tools that BCC includes. Okay so let me show you OpenSnoop so we can, if we want to get more information about a tool we can run always with this option to get some help. So for instance we can see a small description about what the tool is about, we can get information about the arguments that can be used, and so on. So the OpenSnoop tool allows to get information about open files on the system so it shows when a process tries to open a file, right. So this is a way to execute a BCC tool is to execute as a root user without any comments. So just to introduce my password. It takes some time until it loads. Okay, so as you can see here there are a lot of different processes open a lot of different files on my system. If I want to trace only the files of a given process I can use this option so these options traces all only the files of a process that has cat in the name so let's try to run some cat commands here. So as you can see here we get information about this execution of the cat command so we get the PID of the process we get the name of the command. We get all this information about the number of the file descriptor inside that process. We get if there was an error or not and we also get information about the path that the process was opening so in summary OpenSnoop allows you to have information about what are the processes that are open in different files on the system. Okay, so let me show you. And there is another very simple tool that is called SxNob. So this tool allows us to get information about new processes that are being created on the host. So once again let's execute that we wrote permissions in this case without any parameter. So, okay, and let's run some comments. Let's do a cat. Let's go up in common. Okay, here we have the information about those comments. We have what is the name of the common we have what is the PID of that process. We have the information about the parent process ID. So an additional information about the arguments used in the common and so on. So this tool allows you to get information about what are the different processes that are being created in your host. Okay, so finally, I want to show you another tool. This is called TCP Connect. So this tool allows us to get information about the different TCP connections that are being created from the host. So in other words, when a process tries to call the connected call for the TCP protocol, it prints that information on the screen. So again, we can run the tool without any comments. Again, we can try to open some TCP connections. So let me try to KingFolk and let me try to open the Google. And, okay, so we have also some information here we have information about what was the PID performing that operation, what was the common, what is the source address in this case the address of my computer, what is the destination address, and what is the destination part of that request. So this tool is useful to understand what are the processes that are trying to open TCP connections to a remote host. Okay, so as, as you can see, there are many different tools available, you can go to the repot and get information about those tools. And finally, you will find a tool for all the tasks that you need to do, but it could happen in some cases that you want to do something special that is not implemented in some of those tools. Maybe you need to create a new tool and you need to customize an already system tool. So I will show you quickly how to customize an already system BCC tool. Before showing you the code, I want to present you how BCC tool is done. So the BCC tools are composed by two different teams. One is the BPR program and another one is the user space script. The BPR program is the piece of the solar runs in the kernel, it captures and filters events, so it's attached to a key program and so on, takes the events from the kernel, performs some filtering, and then sends those events to the user space script using a buffer. In this case, a parent buffer that is a kind of BPR map. So the user space script, what does is to parse the user options. It customized the BPR code according to the user options, we will see this in detail later on. Then it attaches the BPR program to the kernel, and finally it runs a loop, pulling this BPR map and printing these events in a human readable way. Here we have the two different components of the BCC tool, we have user space, we have kernel space. So this is the user space component of the BCC tool that uses the BCC Python bindings to create and to compile the BCC tool and then to attach that. So, use this bindings to attach the tool, when the tool is attached, a BPR program is created in the kernel and this is loaded to the trace point, key process, and so on. This program takes those events, saves those events in the map. And then the BCC tool uses the poll to get the information about those events. Let me show you a quick demo about how to modify an already existing tool. So I'm going to use the last tool I present to you, TCP Connect. So, as you can see here, for TCP Connect, we can filter the events based on the PID, based on the part, but we cannot filter the events based on the destination IP address. So let's suppose that for some reason you want to filter these events based on a destination IP address. So I will show you how to extend this tool to perform that operation. Okay, so this is the TCP Connect tool, this is a Python script with all the tool. I will show you quickly how this is done. So we have the imports here to import the different functionalities that we need, some of them are for VCC and some of them are for the generic Python libraries. Here we have the information about the different options that are exposed to the user. And here we have the BPF program. So, the BPF program defines some maps to send that information to the user space, application and so on. We have some definition of the structure. This is not important for you to understand all of these details here. I want to show it. I only want to show you a general overview of the program. Okay, so these are some of the functions that are called each time, and it will happen. For instance, each time there is a call to the connect, this call, this function is executed, and there is the logic to call it, the information for that. So, as you can see here, I'm here, there are something like filtering, something like a C macros.  So, these macros are then replaced by this tool in order to perform the filter if the user wants to enable the filter by that option. I will show you in a second how it works. Okay, and here we have some more information about some more code for getting the event, for getting the full information of the event from the kernel. And again, here we have more and more code. So basically what happens is that the code is divided in different pieces and then the VCC Python script and user space puts everything together, compiles the script and loads the BPF program into the kernel. Okay, so as you can see here, based on the, on the user options, there are some cops of situations. So, for instance, if the user only wants to count, so we would use this code or there was the use did one. And if the user wants to filter by PID, so we replace this macro by this implementation that performs a filter. So usually a filter in BPF is something like comparing a condition if the condition is not true, returning zero to avoid capturing the event. So we have a condition here, if the condition is not true, then we just return a return zero to avoid capturing the event, right? So let me show you how to modify this. What we want to do is to filter by destination IP address. So the first thing that we want that we have to do is to add an option for the user to specify the IP address to filter. So we can reuse the same port, we can copy and paste. Okay, I'm going to show the call A address, right? And okay, here we just have to put some documentation. Okay, so I have the option here. Then I need to look into the BPF program where the destination address is available. So if we go here, here we have the filter for the port and here we have some code for the IPv4 specific case. So if we go here, we have the destination IP address here. So what we can do is filter IPv4. So as you can see, I'm not implementing the filter here, I'm just adding this string that is going to be replaced by the BCC when loading the program. So, okay. Okay, so what I have to do now to do an S is define this filter. So what this filter is. So, again, we can just use the same logic that is for the port. So if I respond to address, okay, so we have the IP that is going to be equal to something, I'm going to show you this in a second. And then we are going to replace the test. So this case, this is called IP, if IP is different to something, we are going to do the same logic to avoid capturing the event. So this is going to be IP and this instead of being for this is called IPv4. So, what is the IP? So the IP address that we have here is an integer that is safe on network by ordering. So probably this is easier for the user to provide this destination IP using the decimal notation so we have to convert for from decimal notation to a network by ordering. So I'm just going to copy paste that to avoid losing some time on how to do that. Okay, so basically what we are doing here is that we are taking the argument from the user, we are converting that to IP address object using this library from Python, we are converting that to an integer. And finally, we are converting that to a host network by ordering representation. Here we have also to define this to replace the filter this is in case the user doesn't want to filter by destination IP address. So I think we are almost ready to go. The thing we are missing is to import some of the extra functions that we are using so we have a host to network loan. And we have also the one about IP address. Okay, so we modify the tool so we can try the tool again. Okay, so before trying anything I just want to run the tool without any common just to be sure that is still working. So we want to get the addresses of these domains just to do this. So we try to core to this address. We can see that we have even here we will try to core to this address. Okay, we also have the information there. So let's suppose that we only want to trace the this one. This is a small error. Let me check that. Okay, I know where we're wrong. So in the filter here and using IP, but this should be the destination IP address. So this destination IP address is safe on this variable. So instead of IP, we have to use this variable that is the one defined in the BPF code. Let's try it again. Okay, so if we try to core to this address we can see that there is no any event there. If we try to core to the this other we can see that the event is there. Even if we try to core to a different part, the event is also captured there. As you can see, this is not that difficult to modify the DCC tool. So if I show you the difference, you can see that this is very few lines of causing the change. So you can modify the tools very easily. As you can see, this is all from my side. I hope it was some more or less clear how to modify the DCC tool. I give the word to our band that will show you how to use BCC in an environment in a cloud environment. Thank you Mauricio. So what we have seen so far is using BCC on a single machine. And instead, what I want to talk about is when you want to use it on a plant, meaning when we have many machines to inspect. So in this case, it's a bit more complicated because in this kind of scenario, the user will not necessarily want to SSH on an individual machine to test that. So that's something we want to avoid on some time. We don't want to trace other kind of energy of one process or even one node. It can happen, for example, that your own engine X on different parts. So you have many replicas of the engine X application running on you might want to trace all of them. But if you have a lot of answer, you don't necessarily know which which node the traffic is going to target. So those are some kind of limitation. If you want to use directly BCC on the cloud. And we will see how we can overcome that. So I put on the left side different kind of Linux dressing tool, including BCC that are designed to run on one machine. On the right, I put some tools which are more on the Kubernetes level. So when you have much different machine many different machines that you want to trace using high level tools rather than connecting to a specific machine. For example, you have Qubectl trace to use the BPF trace tool. In the case of BCC, you can use Inspector Gadget and it has some support for some of the tools that Mauricio showed before. I will not make a big demo of that because there is actually another talk in this conference about it's a tutorial for Kubernetes and BPF. It's already gone on that date to stay October 27, but you can see a recording from the talk. Or if you want to see to do that by yourself, you can go to this repository. You can go to the article.com where you can reproduce the workshop and see how you can learn how to use Inspector Gadget on Qubectl trace and so on. But for today, I will just show you a short demo of Inspector Gadget, a very short one. Just one second. Here it is. So here you see my terminal I split in two. At the bottom, let's see I have a Kubernetes cluster. Actually, it's just one node I started with MiniCube which is a tool to start a machine on your laptop and have a Kubernetes cluster running there. Here I see with the Qubectl command that I don't have any power running. Only in the other terminal what I will do at the top is to run the Qubectl Gadget tool. With the exactSnoop command. So this exactSnoop command is directly taken from BCC. That's the exactSnoop tool that Amoricio demoed before. On top of that, the Qubectl Gadget command will allow you to specify which pod you want to trace. In this case, there are different ways to select the pod by the pod name and so on. In this case, I will select it by specifying the Kubernetes name space, the different one. I'm selecting the labels around equal cooking. So let's try that. See what happened. As mentioned before, I only have one node in my Qubectl disk cluster. It's called MiniCube in that case. And here it has started the exactSnoop command. So far it doesn't trace anything because there are no pod that matched this level. So let me this time try to start a new pod. This pod is called cooking. So it will have this all equal cooking level and it will run this script. So it uses this anti-pattern code by bash just for the purpose of this demo. Let's see what happened there. If I can use exactSnoop on this pod.  On the top of the screen, you see all the commands that this script is running. So you can see, for example, cat on all the commands that this script is running. Here I see it's installing something. I can see that it's using RPM to install that. So that's what you can do with this spectra gadget. You choose a BCC tools behind the scene on the different nodes of your Kubernetes cluster. Thank you. Okay, just let me share my screen again. Okay, so before finishing this presentation, in the slides we have some reference material just in case you want to know more information about that. Here you can find a lot of different information about how to use BCC, how to use BPF, how to use Inspector Gadget, and the different tools and technologies we show you in this presentation. So I think this is all. Thank you very much. I hope you have enjoyed this presentation.


First of all, good afternoon everyone and I'm very flattered to see so many of you here I I would like to the extent possible to treat this as a as a conversation and we will have an opportunity for exchange As we as we go along But I think if only to be visible from the back it's it's better that I stand up for for the this these launching remarks Well Joyce is already in fact said some of it present funder lion has decided In her political guidelines, which is the document that will actually mark the the policy of Of her whole five-year mandate to put an emphasis on two parallel economic and social transformations one of them is What has already been launched last month the European Green Deal with a focus on Transformation not only in the interest of the climate And of the environment but also a transformation in the interest of the European economy and society because she takes the view that it is only by as it were seizing the challenge preparing for it and investing in it and leading on it that in that area of Clean technologies of transformation of economic processes that we can continue to be prosperous and maintain our European social model and She takes the same view in the area of digital This is an area where Europe is I think perhaps sometimes excessively seen As being behind There are certainly areas where Europe has lost position and is less strong But it is ultimately an optimistic agenda because it is also a transformation which can leave us hopefully more efficient with more egalitarian societies contributing also to the to the green transformation and assuring European prosperity in the coming years Building upon assets that we still have in spades in Europe if we deploy them well She has identified a few of the areas that this of course won't exhaust the agenda in this respect because it's digital reaches into so many areas of of life one of them is that we must Ensure that we have Technological sovereignty Joyce already mentioned the term in respect of key technologies in the digital area now this is not Technological sovereignty defined against anyone or anything it is simply the ambition for Europe to have some of the key Factors of production of the future economy at its own disposal Of course in some respects for our security that we can call upon things like quantum computing and cryptography or Cyber security Competencies when they are needed, but in part it is about ensuring our general prosperity and and and economic Capacity in Europe So that will in part take the form of ensuring that the key infrastructures of a digital economy are in place Infrastructure is and and ensuring that the economy can can use good infrastructure is a key competence of any sovereign entity and there we move beyond Broadband both mobile and fixed but into slightly More arcane things for the citizens such as high performance computing that will allow massive data Processing by by European researchers and and businesses. We look at areas such as the capacity in Europe to to process huge amounts of data, which will be necessary for example for many products and services to be powered by artificial intelligence and we have Massive opportunities to to harness data data goes well beyond the the sensitive and and already well-worn debates on personal data, there are huge amounts of economic Industrial environmental data being generated and more and more all the time So this is an area where whatever may have been Missed opportunities in the past They're still huge opportunities to be seized ones in areas where In particular with industrial data the the manufacturing and industrial strength the amount of investment that is going on in digital By in particular larger European industrial players actually gives us some ground for for Optimism and a basis on which to build we see in areas like artificial intelligence that while The levels of investment in AI by by businesses and public research in Europe are not yet Anywhere at the level we would wish to see and in comparison to some key world players If you look at one of the basic benchmarks of intellectual excellence The number of peer-reviewed publications In in the AI field then Europe is actually the the intellectual powerhouse of this field This is an asset which of course we must be able to to seize we must be able to make sure that AI Practical expertise is available through our digital innovation policies to to SMEs and of course we need a As clear as possible a legal framework for this this new and powerful General purpose Economic tool to be to be used across our economy and society. It's one reason why present Wonder lion committed within the first 100 days of The of the mandate to bring forward Policy proposals in the area of AI and data policy because of course the two go together And I will not say that that keeps me awake at night, but it does keep me up late at night I will concede that much One of the other areas that we see as really critical to make sure that the economic framework for Digital flourishing in Europe is is firm Is there of digital services? It is often said that Europe is stronger on goods than on services. We have a Framework for digital services in the Commerce Directive that has given extremely good service over about 20 years But it is normal that in an economy where so much now passes across digital Intermediaries of one sort or another where some of them have acquired massive Market power or let us say Social or economic significance that we look at the the the moving parts of that regime and and see in particular as regards issues of of responsibility for what is happening on On digital platforms that we we are still Well served by those sound basic rules Another key aspect of assuring sovereignty is of course security Be it on our 5g networks where we have a very important cooperation ongoing now with national authorities to lay down Framework conditions for the security of those networks With a so-called toolbox coming out Hopefully within this month, but moving beyond that Clearly the trust that people have in an increasingly digitized economy and society and life Will be conditioned upon the security of the products be it the baby phone In in keeping an eye on the kids while you're downstairs The famous connected fridge or the Massive amounts of industrial data of which are the key to the to the innovation power of our companies Cyber security is In a way the other side of the coin to the increasing digitization the increasing connection Of everything that is going on in our lives. This is an area where we need Even stronger cooperation mechanisms between the cyber security authorities of the member states and with the EU It's why she speaks of a joint cyber unit that can react more more actively to To threats it's also why it's important to have a very vibrant cyber security Sector in terms of both research and delivery in our In In our ecosystem It's why it is important that we have strong norms in terms of certification of products and a whole gamut of other things What I have referred to is a relatively That's a Whistlestop tour of the many issues that need to be addressed any transformation across an economy and society Inevitably has a large number of moving parts But I will I will end with the the message that I began with it is a positive agenda There is an awful lot to be gained for Europe in this area. We have a lot of strengths and the European added value here above all else is in convening and Coordinating strengths that are present in in many of our member states and ensuring that we have a common and Coherent policy to exploit them to the full. Thanks very much, and I look forward to the discussion


Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to The Authority. I'm Joseph Pierce and this week we are going to be looking at one of the great metaphysical poets Richard Cresshaw. Let me say a few things about the metaphysical poets. As their name suggests, they work on the level of metaphysics, so it's usually religious poetry. The best-known metaphysical poets are probably George Herbert and John Dunn and Richard Cresshaw and some Robert Sutherl who we've already featured here amongst the greatest of the metaphysical poets. One thing about metaphysical poetry is the use of the conceit which is very similar to what we might call a Chestertonian paradox where you bring together two images that don't seem to belong together that appear to be an apparent contradiction or an apparent conflict that points to a deeper truth or a deeper resolution. So that's one of the devices in metaphysical poetry which we will look at when we come to look at Richard Cresshaw's poetry. So there's an unusual connection or perhaps unexpected connection between Shakespeare and Richard Cresshaw. I say unexpected because Richard Cresshaw was not born until 1613 which is about the time that Shakespeare definitively retired from writing his plays and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon where he would die three years later in 1616. So Richard Cresshaw was only three years old when Shakespeare died and so clearly there's no direct connection between the two men per se. However there is a connection between Richard Cresshaw and William Shakespeare in the form of William Cresshaw. William Cresshaw was Richard Cresshaw's father. Now as we can see there's an irony here a deep irony because Richard Cresshaw would actually become a convert to Catholicism and more about that in a moment but his father was a very vehement and even virulent and we might even say venomous Puritan preacher who even tempted to say he ranted against Catholicism and also against the theater. So and this was during the time of when Shakespeare was writing his plays and indeed it is due to Puritan preachers such as William Cresshaw and others that Shakespeare was probably prompted to actually retire early when things were getting he was being connected with the Jesuits and being attacked publicly as the Jesuit and his poet and so that Shakespeare probably thought that you know he wanted to get away from the heat and that's probably prompted his early retirement because he retired certainly very much still at the height of his powers when he retired and was apparently seemingly in reasonably good health. So this is what William Cresshaw said in a sermon delivered at St. Paul's Cross in London in 1608 again right at the time Shakespeare's writing his plays and quote the ungodly plays and interludes so rife in this nation what are they but a bastard of Babylon and we should say here that about Babylon is a Puritan euphemism for Rome. Puritanical Bible speak if you like that that the the church is the whore of Babylon so the ungodly plays and interludes so rife in this nation what are they but a bastard of Babylon a daughter of error and confusion a hellish device the devil's own recreation to mock at holy things buy him delivered to the heathen and buy them to the papus and from them to us. Wow. Apart from its relevance to Shakespeare this attack on papus plays by the Puritanical Cresshaw is noteworthy as being one of the pithiest put-downs of Western culture ever made in one terse bombastic sentence the entire legacy of the West is dismissed as being a being a contagious disease passed from the devil to the Greeks and then to the Romans and the Catholics until finally via Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights it had contaminated modern England. Two years later in February 1610 again Shakespeare still writing his plays at this time Cresshaw was again equating Shakespeare and his ilk to the devil and a sermon he preached to the Lord Governor of Virginia. On this occasion he formulated that the greatest threat to the newly founded colony was to be found in Catholicism culture and other satanic manifestations quote we confess this action have three great enemies but who be they even the devil papists and players so Satan Catholics and playwrights and those who go to the theater drama. Considering William Cresshaw's shrill attack on Catholic poets such as Shakespeare it is ironic that his own son Richard one of the greatest of the metaphysical poets would convert to Catholicism dying and lonely exiled in Italy in consequence so I want to say a little bit about Richard Cresshaw's life so I said he's born in 1613 his father was this Puritan preacher and yet he far from following his father's footsteps he would convert to Catholicism at around the time of the rise of the Puritans to power when during following the English Civil War from a 1642 to 1645 it's a bit messy as the time when it starts and ends but during the period of the 1640s the Puritans come to power by defeating the king in the Civil War so the royalists on one side King Charles the first and his allies and the Puritans Parliament the parliamentarians sometimes known as the roundheads led by Oliver Cromwell on the other Cromwell was a brilliant military strategist and it was largely due to his genius that the Parliamentary forces one and the King would eventually in 1648 be executed setting up a short-lived Republic in England sometimes called the Commonwealth but was in fact an actual fact a Puritanical totalitarian tyranny where the theaters were closed obviously Catholics were ruthlessly persecuted where Christmas itself was banned for a while and indeed the character of Father Christmas emerged in English culture from the earlier beginnings in medieval mystery plays as the figure of the resistance of Mary England of Catholic Christian England to this Puritanical tyranny so with great courage Richard Cresciard becomes a Catholic at this time and is forced into lonely exile living in poverty for a very short while ending up at Loretto the marine shrine in Italy where he dies tragically young at the age of 36 and 1649 probably as a direct consequence of his exile and the poverty it caused so I want to spend the remainder of of this looking at a book I compiled anthology of poems every Catholic should know for 10 books and there's a selection of Richard Cresciard's poetry in here I'd like to actually to read from and unfortunately I've got to find it for here we are and you'll see actually the thing about Richard Cresciard he is very much the spirit of the Catholic Reformation or the Catholic Baroque the spirit of Catholic what's sometimes called the count the Catholic counter reformation of the 17th century the 1600s he was hugely inspired by Saint Therese of Avila and Saint John of the Cross and John of the Cross is another great poet who we should probably at some point think about including in the authority another likes of Robert Southal and Saint John Newman a poet who's also a saint well the figure of Saint Therese of Avila in particular Saint John of the Cross as well these great saints who reformed the Carmelite movement in the 16th century were inspirational to Richard Cresciard in the 17th century and he wrote two wonderful poems about Saint Therese of Avila one is somewhat too long to to enjoy here but we'll read the shorter one or maybe we're parts of him to the name and honor of the admirable Saint Therese and what I would like to invite you to do because it seems to me that the Richard Cresciard's poetry is has a kinship of spirit with Benini's famous sculpture of Saint Therese of Avila which one of the most famous sculptures and not in the whole of Western civilization. So take a look at that and you'll see that Richard Cresciard is doing in words what Benini does in sculpting marble. So him to the name and honor of the admirable Saint Therese and this is a long poem one of the great poems I'm just going to read some extracts from it since there's not to be had at home she'll travel for a martyrdom no home for her confesses she but where she may a martyr be she'll to the moors and trade with them for this unrivaled diadem she offers them her dearest breath with Christ's name in it in change for death she'll bargain with them and will give them God and teach them how to live in him or if they this deny for him she'll teach them how to die so shall she leave amongst them sown her Lord's blood or at least her own farewell then all the world adieu Teresa is no more for you farewell all pleasures sports and joys never till now esteemed toys farewell whatever dear may be mother's arms or father's knee farewell house and farewell home she's for the moors and martyrdom sweet not so fast low thy fair spouse whom thou seekst with so swift vows cause thee back and bids thee come to embrace a milder martyrdom and this of course is her role in reforming the the carmelite order and a life of penance and prayer and austerity the slow martyrdom as he calls it and we'll read just the concluding lines of this wonderful poem one of the greatest uh in the canon of English verse thou shalt look around about and see thousands of crowned souls throng to be themselves thy crown sons of thy vows the virgin birth with which thy spouse made fruitful thy fair soul go now and with them all about the bow to him put on he'll say put on my rosy love thy rich zone sparkling with the sacred flames of thousand souls whose happy names heaven keeps upon thy score thy bright life brought them first to kiss the light that kindled them to stars and so thou with the lamb thy lord shalt go and where so he sets his white steps walk with him those ways of light which who in death would live to see must learn in life to die like thee this learning to live by dying is actually a recurring motif in which it creates you're almost to the point of it being overdone one might dare to say for instance his motto it's just the author's motto he this um it's an epigram we see i'm going to show some more of his epigrams later but live Jesus live and let it be my life to die for love of thee so this is richard crature's personal motto live Jesus live and let it be my life to die for love of thee this is a recurring theme we see how it he ends his poem on some trees in the same way uh walk with him whose ways of light which who in death would live to see must learn in life to die like thee do i like saint therese of avala and then his short poem was in therese which also love upon the book and picture of the seraphical saint therese oh thou undaunted daughter of desires by all that dower of lights and fires by all the eagle in thee all the dove by all thy lives and deaths of love by thy large drafts of intellectual day and by thy thirsts of love more large than they by all thy brimfield bowls of fierce desire by thy last morning's draft of liquid fire by the full kingdom of that final kiss that seizing thy part or soul and sealed thee his by all the heaven thou hast in him fair sister of the seraphim by all of him we have in thee leave nothing of myself in me let me so read thy life that i until all life of mine may die so the same recurrent motif but tell me uh if there are many more beautiful prayers because that as well as being a wonderful poem is a marvelous prayer um asking for the intercession of the seraphical saint therese of avala let's look at some of um some of uh his uh other poetry that i that i selected in this book obviously there's loads more that i did not select um all of them here so i've i've selected verses from the shepherds him so you watched longer poems which i've actually had to have excerpts from this from the so long but he's actually better known for very brief poems but uh just to to conclude well just one verse that i've plucked from the i don't know so that i selected from the verses from the uh the shepherds him to thee meek majesty soft king of simple graces and sweet loves each of us this lamb will bring each his pair of silver doves at last in fire of thy fair eyes ourselves become our own best sacrifice all right this time i'm going to read some of these epigrammatic short verses now only a few lines um all of which are just marvelous so on the water of our lord's baptism each blessed drop on each blessed limb is washed itself in washing him tis a gem while it stays here while it falls hence tis a tear short simple sweet sublime but let's look a little bit more closely because remember we talked about how metaphysical poetry is uh is marked by the use of a conceit which i like into a chest atonian paradox uh putting of two things together don't seem to fit that seem to conflict with each other or contradict each other in order to make us see something in a fresh light with with new eyes to see it as it really is perhaps to rekindle within our jaded worldly vision a childlike innocence that's necessary to see things as they truly are so here on the water of our lord's baptism what's he doing uh he's seeing it not through our eyes but from the perspective of the water itself um each blessed drop each blessed limb is washed itself in washing him that christ himself doesn't need baptism of course he's he's got himself um that uh that he's baptized us as as a mark of obedience um as a mark of uh symbolic um uh adherence to the law as a as a prefiguring of the sacrament of baptism itself but he did not need himself to be baptized as we do in order to remove the stain the mark of original sins so the water is not washing the sin away sacrament of the it's being washed by the sinless one each blessed drop is washed itself in washing him tis a gem what it stays here so while it's actually touching christ's skin it's like a gem a jewel a priceless jewel not mere water but something that's kissing the face of god so when it falls from that face uh it becomes a tear it's creation separated from the creator this is crecho's brilliance uh the use of conceits to take us deeper through inviting us to see with fresh eyes so again another four line epigrammatic uh verse but men love darkness rather than light you know this is all obviously scripture the world's light shines shine as it will the world will love its darkness still i doubt though when the world's in hell it will not love its darkness half so well so the light of the world being actually darkness destined for darkness itself the absence of the light of god which is hell on st peter casting away his nets at our saviour's call what a delightful way to be invited to relook at well-known gospel stories thou hast the art aunt peter and can't tell to cast our nets on all occasions well when christ calls and our nets would have these stay to cast them wells to cast them quite away so the fisherman needs to become a fisher of men he needs to cast away uh his nets not cast the nets to catch uh fish from the seer galley but to cast the nets themselves away then he may become a fisher of men the best way to cast the net is to cast them quite away and then dominate non-sumdinius i am not worthy that thou should come under my roof those now nine we say before communion of course but only say the word and my soul shall be healed thy god was making haste into thy roof thy humble faith and fear keeps him aloof he'll be thy guest because he may not be he'll come into thy house no into thee okay so obviously that when we say thou thou shall enter under my roof in the in in um the holy sacrifice of the mass we're not using it in the sense in which it's used in the gospel not enter into my house but enter into our very selves the roof is our own soul uh two went up into the temple to pray two went to pray oh rather say one went to brag the other to pray one stands up close and treads on high where the other dares not send his eye one nearer to god's altar trod the other to the altar's god the exhortation of the humble i'm going to pass over a few more here now and we'll finish with uh with one final poem but here there's others on the blind cured by the word of our saviour on christ crucified and upon our saviour's tomb where in never man was laid but i'm going to end with an epitaph upon husband and wife by the way the word turtles in here is i'm sure you know shakespeare wrote a wrote a poem called the phoenix and the turtle uh when elizabeth and the jackabee and writers um such as shakespeare and crecia use the word turtle they mean turtle dove and not uh not um uh an amphibious shelled creature an epitaph upon husband and wife to these whom death again did wed this graves the second marriage bed for though the hand of fate could force twix soul and body a divorce it could not serve a man and wife because they both lived but one life peace good reader do not weep peace the lovers are asleep they sweet turtles folded lie in the last knot that love could tie let them sleep let them sleep on till the stormy night begun and the eternal morrow dawn then the curtains will be drawn and they wake into a light whose day shall never die in night we've had plenty of good work poems epigrammatic poems about saints and about christ about the gospel but it's good i think to end on an epitaph upon husband and wife this glorious poem about the glory of of the holy sacrament of matrimony and of the way to heaven which is the way of marital love and the uh the destined home which is heaven for those who stay true to their marriage vows um so on that note we we will end this discussion of richard crature one of the great metaphysical poets a convert to the faith um who died in lonely exiling consequence um practicing what he preached so beautifully in his poetry thanks as always for joining me in the authority i'm joseph pierce do join me next time until then goodbye and god bless this has been an episode of the authority with joseph pierce brought to you by tan for updates on new episodes and to support the authority and other great free content visit the authority podcast dot com to subscribe and use coupon code authority 25 to get 25 percent off your next order including books audio books and video courses by joseph pierce on literary giants such as tolking chesterton louis shakespeare and bellach as well as tans extensive catalog of content from the saints and great spiritual masters to strengthen your faith and interior life to follow joseph and support his work check out his blog and sign up for email updates and exclusive content at jpearse.co and thanks for listening


And now, tonight's presentation of Radio's Outstanding Theatre of Thrill's Suspense. Tonight, we bring you a story of betrayal and retribution on Devil's Island. We call it The Stool Pigeon. So now, starring Mr. John Daener, here is tonight's suspense play, The Stool Pigeon. It was hot that afternoon, which in itself you understand should not have been surprising. On that Devil's Island, it was always hot, unless there were the rains, and then it was a different, more steaming heat. There were four of us racing cockroaches in Cano's hut. McKeel, Tebow, Cano and myself. We were what the authorities generously called Libre's. That is to say, we were free to roam within the confines of the island, but never to leave it. As I say, we were racing cockroaches, and Tebow had already won three races. This animal was a huge red beast, fully three and a half inches in length, and possessing a remarkable stamina. She was named Marie, made me think of a filly I used to bet on in Paris. It's hot. My friends, it is hot. You never get tired of saying that, do you, Tebow? Does he? Yesterday, you said the same thing last month and last year. You owe me five francs from the last race, please. Oh, I always lose here. Shall we have another? No, it's too hot. Oh, there. Now who says it's hot, who? Who said it?  You little maggot, I could break your shell with my nail if I felt like it. But I like you, McKeel, so I allow you to speak to me thus. I heard there's a ship coming next week. Where'd you hear that? I can't know here's everything and knows nothing. I heard from a guard. It's a lie, because I hear everything first. You call me a liar?  Stop, stop, stop it. Put away the knife, Cano. We'll all be put in solitary if you're seen. Yeah, a knife. Knife? Where did you get a knife, Cano? Never mind. Oh, but I do mind. That's interesting that you have a knife. Are you thinking of escape, perhaps? Never mind. I'd like to buy you a knife, Cano. Not for sale. 100 francs? I'm not selling. 150? No. Some other time. I've got half a bottle of wine. Let's go and drink it. I don't feel like quarreling. Oh, McKeel, you have a divine soul. Come, my little maggot. You too, Cano. McKeel, he of the divine soul, had been on Devil's Island for eight years. In Marseille, he had been, among other things, an habitual thief and arsonist. He stood five foot six and had long been befriended by Tebow. Tebow was by his very stature and passed the King of the Libres on the island, a huge and gross man towering over six feet. In Paris, he'd left behind him a series of syndicate murders for which he'd escaped the guillotine only by underground and political pressures. In spite of his terrible reputation and physical appearance, he was not an unfair man and on the whole well-liked by the rest of us. Cano was slim and dark, volatile as benzine. In a fit of jealous anger, he'd slit his wife's throat, a handyman with a knife, a moody, uncertain fellow, Cano.  I looked forward to six more years before release. Gone. Every last mortal drop. Half a bottle doesn't go far. Not for one with the mouth of a hippopotamus. I remember a wine in Paris. Much shade. Think of Emile. He might be tasting your wine soon. Wave in this pest hole. How long has it been now? Nine days. No, ten. He escaped on the 14th. I give odds he never reaches Maribor. Five to one. Why not? Why shouldn't he? Well, the sharks, Cano, the sharks. Very bad this year, I've heard. And his boat wasn't much good either. Any other reason? Well, let's wish him luck by not talking up. Why else shouldn't he reach Maribor? You know how many have tried in the past five years and been caught. We all know, don't be diva. Someone informed. Someone tells that swine of a governor. We only think that it's only a guess. Nobody's sure only a suspicion. Isn't that so, Exile? Someone who knows everything that's happening before anyone else. He's right. My friend, he's absolutely right. It's true. I've long suspected it myself. And it's wise that it should be brought out into the open. Someone on the island is an informer, making himself fat on the sufferings of others. I shouldn't want Emil to be caught. He was a friend, a good friend. Terrible thing if he were caught. The question is, who? Who not? It could be any one of a hundred, if it's true. That pig, Louis Dodin, possibly Grosjean. Well, no one could imagine anything from him. What about Grosjean? Or Barré, or Proust, Galliname and... Machille, Ruexile, Thibault. Any one of us, even yourself can do. Oh, no, that is a dreadful thing to contemplate, Thibault. No, not one of us. Over here. Oh, I've just seen Thibault. Oh, here you are.  We were speaking of you a minute ago. What's the matter? It's Emil. What about Emil? He's been caught.  They took him off Sackron. Now the question is, how did they know he was going to Meribault? I wonder. How did they know? Two days later, Emil was back on the island, in solitary. We heard that he was in bad shape. Thibault managed to smuggle in some cigarettes through a friendly guard, and that was the best he could do. Things were very bad, worse than usual. The governor, Monsieur Planche, was angry, and restrictions even for libraries became more intolerable. He seemed determined to make us all pay for Emil's attempted escape. There was a lot of grumbling. Even Thibault felt the pinch. Then Emil died. We heard from the meeting he received when he was captured. Thibault was very quiet for a week after. Too quiet. Then one day he said, I'm fed up. Why don't you take a petition to the governor? No, there's no joke.  Something must be done. Escape, Thibault? That, or what? Yes, what? A stand. A stand for better conditions. No more oppressions. We're prisoners, but there's still rights. Human rights. A stand against tyranny and inhumanity. Bravo. You've just been elected to the Chamber of Deputies. I'm losing patience with you.  We have no rights. Even animals. The governor's dog has more rights than we. And you know why? Shall I tell you why? Because the governor's dog is clever. We are not clever. The governor's dog sits up prettily and begs for a morsel. He has no other dogs to contend with. No competition while we. We fight and snarl among ourselves with a garbage in the streets. It's true. It's true what he says. What does he say? What do you mean, Thibault? We no longer fought among ourselves, but banded together. A unit of strength, a solid front. We could force the governor, the authorities, and France to butter our conditions. Then what do we do? Present a petition as canopo tit? No, perhaps not. Perhaps not. Something more forceful. No good would come of it. If there is to be action, I'd rather try and escape. How far would you get, Uxie? Are you forgetting the informer? We don't know. We don't know there's an informer. We suspect, but we suspect everything. There's nothing else to do. Suppose it's the natives who inform they have before. Suppose the governor is just too smart for us. How many choices do we have anyway? Brazil, they turn us back. Dutch Guiana, Emil tried it. They're always watching. The West Indies, Venezuela in an open boat. Not much chance there. Or do you want the jungle? An informer doesn't lessen our chances too much, it seems to me. But it does lessen them. I have been thinking. Thinking hard, my friends. If we'd done one thing, conditions could not be worse. If we could escape, we would do so and take our chances. Therefore, there are two choices, it seems. Better conditions on the island or escape. And both impossible.  He's right, you'll never be a success. I think that we may accept both choices. One dependent on the other. What do you mean? If we had better conditions, we might be able to escape. Can't you ever talk in a straight line? One of us has the greatest opportunity to see the governor. Well, you have. You have, Tebow. You do his garden work. Exactly. Come on, come on. Patience, my friend. Monsieur Planche scrolls in his garden. Tebow, he says. Tebow. The roses are not looking very well today. He stands next to me and he says this. And for the indignity this petty official heaps on my head and for what he allowed Dundoo Amiel, I could stretch out my hands and strangle him in five seconds. You understand in five seconds? But if I chose, I would not strangle. I would hold him. Hold him as a hostage. A hostage? You follow me. Now let us suppose that a revolt would begin. The guards overthrown. Oh, la, la, la. It's a thought nobody's ever tried. But the guards would shoot us down. They would have to shoot the governor if they tried. And if we succeed in what you say, then what? What happens? What do we do? What? That remains in my head. You must trust me there. I trust no one. Exil. If there were a chance I'd be with you. I don't look forward to six more years of this. Makil. I am at your side, my friend, as always. As always. At least you can know. All right. Excellent. Then we must start to make our plans carefully. Very carefully. Cano, stand by the door and warn us if anyone approaches. We don't want the informer to overhear us. Do we? You are listening to The Stool Pigeon, tonight's presentation in Radio's Outstanding Theatre of Thrill's Suspense. If you're interested in spreading the truth about America to others, CBS Radio suggests you contact Letters Abroad, 695 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York. Letters Abroad, once you've given them a few facts about yourself, job interests, hobbies, age, will furnish you with the name of a correspondent who lives overseas. Send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Letters Abroad at 695 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York. And now we bring back to our Hollywood soundstage Mr. John Daener, starring in tonight's production The Stool Pigeon, a tale well-calculated to keep you in suspense. We made our plans in Tebow's hut. Up to a point they were simple. Tebow on the next day was to await the governor's presence. If he appeared, Tebow would grab him and take him to the greenhouse. We three, Kano, Makille, and I would be in the vicinity. I, to stand guard over Mr. Plange with Tebow, Makille and Kano to spread word among the other libraries at the moment had come. If, on the other hand, the governor did not put in an appearance, we would wait for our chance on the next day or the next. As it happened, it wasn't until the fifth day that the thing happened, it was well timed, the island was stifling, the prison is restless, smarting under the still harsh restrictions which had followed Emile's escape and arrest. We were like a time bomb ready to explode and the explosion came. We joined Tebow in the greenhouse. He held the struggling governor in his massive arms. All right, Makille, Kano, get the others quietly, but hurry. Tell them to gather at the governor's house. Let me go. He fools. He'll suffer. Do not speak of suffering, Mr. Plange. It is dangerous talk for you.  Makille. And remember, the guards mustn't suspect you. Everything quietly. Yes, Tebow, come on. If you continue this struggle, Mr. Plange, I shall be forced to break open your hand. What can you gain by this, Tebow? It will mean a life sentence. You know it.  Do you know that, governor? What are you going to do? Hold you as a hostage. We demand our rights as men.  As men. You have no civil rights. Human rights. My friend Emil died. He took his chance in escaping, but he wasn't shot. He was beaten to death. An accident. He resisted. Things must change. I can change nothing. The regulations are set in Paris. I simply carry them out. You overdo your authority. You must apply for better conditions for the men. I can do nothing. We shall see. Stay quietly now. We'll wait until the others come back. We waited. It seemed a long time, and the silence was more terrible than the heat in that place. The governor's hobby was raising orchids, and the greenhouse was full of them. I've always hated the things. Then, suddenly, it was too quiet, as it might be on the summer's day a moment before a thunderstorm.  I don't know. Maybe the guards know what's happened. Maybe they've been caught. Listen. They're shooting them. Tebow, they're shooting them.  Someone gave you a lot of them. Where's my key? Coming. What happened? We got word to about a dozen. I forgot the guards about him. I told you. Now, before it's too late, release me. It'll be better for you if you do. What happened to the others? Last I saw, they were coming his way. Oh, Tebow! Tebow, it's horrible. I saw four of them, four. All right, come on. Where? To his office. It's your plunge. We are taking you to your office. If any guards try to stop us, you may have happened. You can do nothing, Tebow. Now, give yourself up now. All of you. Walk. Slowly. You in there!  The guards, Tebow. Tell them, Governor, tell them that we're coming out. With you, now tell them. This is the governor speaking. These men are holding me. They're coming out. Tell them not to shoot. Don't shoot! Now, calmly, nicely, we walk out. Stay very close to my friends. That way you'll be safe. As bees clustered around the honeypot, we sidled along the path. Past the guards who stood no more than twenty feet from us.  But the honeypot was the governor and our protection from bullets. Then we were in his office. There were no others to join us. The door closed. It was a strange thing. We, none of us, thought beyond the moment. And for that moment we were superior beings. Prisoners no longer because we were now the captors. But when I glanced into the courtyard and saw the ring of guards looking up, rifles cradled in their arms. It was then another moment. And one this time of fear. What now? First the siren must stop. It offends my ears. Governor, give me the order. Turn off the siren. Good. You're cooperative. It's better that way. I repeat, what now? Now, I think we go to the next part of my plan. Mucky, little maggot. Stay by the window and observe. Report if there is an attempt by the guards to move into the building. Yes. What do you think you can accomplish? Escape? Impossible? You know that. It's been done when there's been no informer. It's been done. I don't know what you're talking about. First things first. Now we come to the matter of conditions here. I have told you. I know what you've told me. And I say to you, it is within your power to ease the suffering of the men. Give them better food. Better medical care. Your concern for your fellow man touches me, Thibault. Did you have as much conscience over those you murdered? That is an entirely different matter. Enough of this, Thibault. What happens to us? My dear canoe, it is happening to us now. You'll see. Trust me. The devil with that talk! When do we get out of here? All in good time. Therefore, Governor, you will sign your pledge to do these things of which I have spoken. If I don't...  Slowly. I can. I've had practice. Let us suppose that I agree to this. What then?  Now, the second point. We have a chance to escape. No. A fair chance. Not the chance that Boremil had, but then he had no chance at all, did he? There will be no escape. In order to escape, there must be secrecy. And there can be no secrecy when you know beforehand of the plan. You will not have a chance to escape.  There will be no escape. My dear Governor, I said nothing about when we attempt to make this escape. What are you talking about? Escape now. Now, Tibu. Yes, of course. Now. Each to his own desire for me. It may be now or sometime later, but the opportunity, if it comes, must at least allow a reasonable margin of success. That is up to you, Monsieur Planche. What do you mean? Here now. The third point. I wish to know the name of your informer. The one who has for what must be at least five years supplied you with information concerning every thought and deed of the prisoner. I... there is no informer.  No, I have no need for any... You have a great need if you wish to go on living. What are you up to, Tibu? Don't interrupt his excellency, can you? He is about to tell us something.  I cannot speak for the others for myself? Yes. You pig. You sell us out. No, no, no, no, my dear Cano. You're free to do as you will. Who is the informer, Monsieur Planche? I'm getting impatient. Who? Him. Ah. That is what I wanted to know. Then I ask you one favor, Governor. Do not be hard on these two. All this was done to gain what you've just told me. Nothing more. I don't understand you. My friend Emile. I have other friends. I should not want to see them go as he went. You have better escape now, Maquille. No, no, Tibo. It's not true. He's lying to you. Run, Maquille, run. Or I'll throw you out of the window. My honor, Tibo. I'm your friend. You know me. I know you. Run. Exile. Cano, you don't believe it, do you? Run, little maggot. Outside. Quickly. No, Tibo. No. Please, please. Run. That's gross. That is murder, my friend. You wouldn't want that. I hope that your guards will shoot first and inquire later, Mr. Flan. We all went to solitary. It was expected. But somehow things were different, a little better on the island. How do you explain it? Perhaps the governor was ashamed. Perhaps he admired something about Tibo that none of us understood. How does one know these things? There's not much else to tell. A year after we were released from solitary, Tibo tried to escape.  It was the native from whom he bought the boat. How do you explain these things? Suspense. Which Mr. John Daner starred in tonight's presentation of the stool pigeon. Next week, the story of a man who returned home to find his people in the grip of a strange disease. We call it the frightened city. That's next week on Suspense. Suspense is produced and directed by Antonie Ellis, who wrote tonight's script. The music was composed by Rennie Gerrigan and conducted by Wilbur Hatch. Featured in the cast were Parley Bear, Joe Kearns, Tony Barrett, Jim Nusser and Edgar Barrier. Tomorrow night on the FBI in peace and war, a criminal comes up against a determined socialite who doesn't scare easy. And it isn't long before the G-men move in on the X-con's new racket. Remember, the FBI in peace and war tomorrow evening over most of these same stations. Stay tuned now for George Herman in the news, followed by Disc Derby. Thursday nights, The Whistler brings mystery on the CBS Radio Network.


I think what's going to be interesting here is to talk about what, in a sense, they don't say in the movie, right, they don't actually explicitly come out and say. But before we get to that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the movie. Actually is true, right, that is, that is actually educational for a lot of people. So what are some of the things that they bring out in the movie that is that's interesting and true? I mean, one way to frame this is there's this term green energy, you know, and the idea is we're going to get all of our energy from usually solar wind and batteries and then sometimes biofuels. So that's based on living plant matter like trees or corn crops or sugarcane. And I think there are two basic criticisms you can make of green energy. The one I'm focused on is it's not really energy. That is, it doesn't provide reliable energy at low cost in all the different forms on a scale of billions of people. That's for me the problem because energy is crucial for people's lives. But the other thing you can say in addition to the green energy isn't really energy. It isn't really green in the sense of having little impact on nature. No form of energy has little impact on nature in part because the whole purpose of energy is to impact nature. It's literally to do physical work to manipulate matter in nature. But then even to produce it is, you know, nature doesn't give us just electricity directly from the sun. So there's always an industrial process required to transform energy from its raw form into its usable form. And part of what's gone on with green energy is people just think, oh, the electricity just like the sun somehow beamed it to my house. And then it came out of the plug and it's clean and everything is dirty. So there was always this really big opportunity to take the halo off green energy, so to speak, by showing what is actually the process behind the scenes. And that's I think the most interesting relatively true part of this movie is that you see in visual form many of the industrial processes that go into producing so-called green energy. And then because of the philosophy of the movie, all the industrial processes are viewed as bad. So like you're melting metal, bad, taking up land, bad, mining, everything. But you then also do see certain things that one would regard as undesirable. As in like, you know, in particular, because green energy takes up a huge amount of space, they end up just bulldozing really, really scenic areas where for something like nuclear or natural gas, you wouldn't need to do that at all. So I think overall the one value of the movie, and it is a significant value, is to visualize the process by which green energy is produced and to view it as a process. And that's something the fossil fuel industry has really failed to do historically. One thing is they've had a reluctance to criticize green energy. And as part of that, they haven't been willing to say, well, our product is better than others and they're not willing to say, well, we're better at producing energy at a large scale. But they're also not willing to say, usually, hey, these are the processes that these guys are going through. Like, you know, if BP kills a handful of birds, you see birds in oil, like that gets national news, but then wind turbines by their nature chop up some of the most beautiful and rare form of birds and that doesn't get as much attention. So in a sense, part of the fossil fuel industry's job is being done for them by this movie. And that's why you're actually getting a lot of enthusiasm from them. But I think that enthusiasm is misplaced if we're really going to encourage people to watch this movie without severe qualifications. Yes. And so why is the energy industry so reluctant to bring up these points, which in this movie about kind of the cost of the so-called green energy and the even in their own terms, right, that this is so devastating. Why is the energy, this seems like a low-hanging food if you're going to criticize green energy. Why doesn't the industry do that at all? Well, the green, sometimes it goes by renewable, is viewed as a moral ideal. And the dominant narrative with energy is we need to transition from dirty, unsustainable fossil fuels to clean, sustainable green energy. And so the comfort zone for people not willing to challenge that narrative has been we are a necessary evil that is bridging us toward a future of green energy. So they have, I think a lot of reluctance to being seen as anti-green energy because they think that they have a coherent position of just saying, okay, leave us around for a couple of decades until green energy can take over and we're all four. And this is why you see on their brochures, you see wind turbines and solar panels and BP famously described themselves as beyond petroleum back before the oil spill. So I think that that's a big part of it is there's not a lot of moral clarity about what they do stand for positively because if I think if there was, they would talk about something like, you know, we want the best energy. We don't want the greenest energy. We want the best energy for human beings now and in the future. And we believe we produce that now and we're going to do our best to produce that in the indefinite future, but not we're getting off our evil energy. Just we need to do it slowly to be practical. And when you talk to energy executives out there, is anybody, are people receptive to the positive moral message? Yeah, I mean, certainly the easiest I think has been internally. So when talking to employees, I think there's probably a higher self-esteem in the fossil fuel industry. I mean, honestly, I think because of my work, then there was before that work. I mean, certainly anecdotally, have many people in surveys we've done, but just people saying, you know, I feel better about what I do. And for some of them, it's translated into the ability to articulate it. And I think that what's difficult, though, is on a on a corporate level or an association level to get that kind of buy in where people are willing to go out on a limb and say, hey, look, there are real problems with these alternatives. Like, yeah, it's not really energy and it's not really green. That takes a certain amount of that's a real commitment. And most of the communication in the fossil fuel industry is done by a very small the public communication is done by a very small, small handful of associations and companies. You're talking like the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, Shell, BP, and a lot of these are European. So they're even more enmeshed in the green. So, you know, some of them Exxon occasionally says in the good Chevrons, I think probably the best overall in terms of what they say. But it's been I think what what they'll do is they'll say pretty passively. But but but straightforwardly, hey, we're we are actually like we are going to be the lowest cost solution for decades to come. There is going to be demand for our product. But Exxon, for example, you see them with commercials glorifying algae based energy and other kinds of biofuels. Like that's they're more trying to say, yeah, we're innovators in this too. But I think what Michael Moore is not his movie, but Jeff Gibbs's movie that he is backing shows it's really powerful to demonize green energy. And I've been advocating for a little while that that you should demonize green energy in that all forms of energy should be viewed as competing processes. You can't have what some forms of energy are industrial processes. And then some are magic. Yeah, I mean, the first time I think it hit me, this idea of what green energy really is about is when you called and this is years and years ago, when you called the Tesla a coal car. And and that was just a brilliant integration. It kind of hit because it suddenly kind of hits you, right? Where does the electricity come from? And in the movie, they mentioned that they asked them. Well, and they do this over and over again. They keep asking, well, where does the electricity come from? Who is producing this electricity? So maybe let's do before we get into what the movie is really about. Let's do a you know, can you give us a few example of why green energy is not green that they present in the movie? Oh, yeah, they present a lot. And in my podcast, Power Hour, last week I show I have some clips from the movie, but, you know, one is just solar panels. So the insofar as people think solar panels are made of anything they think of it as just oh, it's just sand. So just like, oh, and people think, oh, there's a lot of sand, which is actually interesting because they're real sand shortages throughout the world, which is a whole fascinating industrial issue. And there's all there's a whole need for proper laws with sand because people are like dredging up beaches. It's like there's a I think it's called the world in a grain. They're using it for for beaches. So what's no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, it's it's called I believe the there's a book called the world in a grain. It's I've read only part of it. It's it's fascinating. You can tell this is just a I mean, because they're just talking about the amount this is the most used resource in the world. It's used for building all these cities and where but they need it's like the sand that you have in the desert. If I'm remembering correctly, like that doesn't have the right structure to be the good basis of buildings. And so a lot of times they're like they're dredging up different beaches and there are sand pirates. Like this is a real issue that needs law. Crete for concrete for making. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just a massive. If you look at how much sand China is using in these markets and it's going to be really interesting to see how it was. But that's why my beaches are being depleted from sand. I mean, that's it could be really not acceptable. That's right. It could be. But but but people's I think images while there's a desert and it's got a bunch of sand and then we just sort of run that sand and then it's solar panels and then OK, that's that's a little bit, but that's not so bad. And what Ozzie Zainer, who is the technical person in the movie, he wrote a book called Green. I think it's green illusions, not green illusions or green delusions, but it's green illusions. And he says, no, this is actually made from primarily quartz and coal.  So what they do is they're good at just showing you the visuals of OK, here's here's where this actually comes from. And then oh, it's also using coal. And then it's putting off these greenhouse gases. I think the most memorable sequence of the movie is there's about a two minute montage where it says how solar panels and wind turbines and batteries are made. And it's just it's got to be 150, like discrete clips. And it just shows like coal and melting metal.  But then they also will show, for example, in that montage, they'll show like children in the Congo picking up cobalt. And so that one would have real issues with particularly because it's not at all disclosed. And then they'll show with the, you know, so that's one kind of thing like the human rights issues of having child labor get cobalt so that green energy can be a little bit less expensive. Another thing is just the sheer size of the wind turbines.   It's just these these massive things. And then they have a couple of examples of what happens when these things are no longer useful because there's an idea of renewable. But nothing has really renewable, but certainly not these structures that might have a 10, 20, maybe a max 30 year lifetime. And so then what happens these massive amounts of metal and concrete? And are they really decommissioned? And so they have a couple of they show examples where the wind turbines are just sitting there and rusting.  Everyone is playing the same game of trying to combine finite materials in a cost effective way to generate the different kinds of reliable energy that we need. And so in that sense, I think it's a it's a positive. But the whole slant on it is, no, we shouldn't be using this either. Yeah. I mean, I thought some of the funniest parts were where, you know, people claiming, oh, we've got solar energy or we got wind. Everything is renewable here. And then they go backstage. And what they find is, yeah, solar panels are basically providing electricity to this one lamppost, but everything. But there's not enough electricity to provide for the whole event or whatever. And it's even like a concert, right? It's not it's not like they're making steel is like they're powering. But they even went to this one array of solar panels in Michigan. And the guy said, well, really, if you really tested this, it could this couldn't even set massive array of maybe could do a house or 10 houses. I can't. Yeah. Now, this this is where though, this is where it's getting some legitimate criticism. So it's worth talking about how the green energy movement is criticizing it. Again, I discussed this in some depth in my podcast. But one thing you'll notice about some of the footage is a lot of it is about 10 years old. So it has it has the feel of this guy's been making this movie for a long time and trying to get it. And so you look at like that example from the examples from Michigan, they have the debut of the Chevy Volt, which is not exactly the newest battery power car. I think it's not even made anymore. It's at least about to go extinct. And so one of the criticisms of the movie is, oh, well, this is just criticizing green energy 10 years ago, but it's all improved. But the thing is 10 years ago, I remember you and I went to a green energy conference together when I was at I worked at the Andrian Institute. And like they were making all these claims back then of, oh, yeah, we can power the whole world by it. And it's not like they were saying, yeah, this doesn't work. And it's it messes up a lot of stuff, but we're working on it. It was no, this is the future now. We should mandate it now. We have the technology now. And so what you see is some of these things, although mostly not that the impact and danger issues I don't think have been addressed very often and in fact are much worse because the scale is bigger. But yeah, these like solar panels are more efficient than they were 10 years ago and wind turbines are more efficient and they're a little bit and batteries are certainly better. But the question, so for the green part of it, the green part, the green problem with green energy, in a sense, they're more efficient at generating energy. So there may be a little more green, but there's a lot of them. But for the energy part of it, yeah, they're a little better at energy. But the question is, are they actually self sufficient sources of energy that can substitute for fossil fuels? The answer is definitely no. So that's that part of it is still true and that the critics of it do not really engage with that. Or they keep saying the same schematic kind of propaganda they've been using for 10 or 15 or 20 years. And they never mentioned, I mean, the whole movie, they never mentioned. There's one mention of nuclear kind of throwaway, but there's no mention of nuclear power in alternative, nothing, zero. Yeah. And that's that's interesting. That goes, I think, to part of the philosophy of the movie because part of what's wrong with the movie is they're looking what I criticize people on how they evaluate fossil fuels because they're always exaggerating or more with the side effects. And they're always ignoring the benefits. And what this movie does is that just applies that methodology to everything. And then if there's an outlier case that doesn't really apply, it just ignores it. So, for example, on nuclear, like, if you're worried about wildlife, nuclear is definitely the best thing. It doesn't take up much space. You can do it anywhere and, you know, I mean, mainly it doesn't take up much space. And so you wouldn't need to cut down any for us. If that's, you know, to the extent that's a priority. So they don't mention it. But even I was just reviewing the beginning of the movie. They'll talk about the history and they begin with like people have been warning about they have one guy warning about catastrophic climate change in the late fifties or something. But then they then they also we can talk about that that kind of warning. But they show with pollution. They're like, oh, people used to be able to light the lake on fire and these other things, but they don't make the connection. Hey, wait a second, there's a lot less pollution now. And yet we have more energy and more industry. So isn't it possible to get more of the benefits of industry with fewer side effects? And that's the kind of thing with nuclear that that you could possibly have, or you can generate low cost energy more cleanly and, you know, with less disruption of anything you want to disrupt, it's going to take no space. And so they just ignore that. So the whole focus is everything they're trying to show in the movie is how human industry is invariably self-destructive and unsustainable. So what is what would you make the philosophical theme of the movie? What what's what's the point they're trying to make? Well, so, you know, I think the kind of plot theme, if we're going to use objective thermologies is something like green energy destroys the planet, too. Like a green energy or you can say like green energy can't save the planet. But I mean, the broader idea is that saving the planet requires dehumanizing the planet, that's what I call like planet of the humans. And that's a bad notice. That's a bad is not like, oh, it's really good that we've humanized the planet. So now it's a human friendly place. And it begins with like, what if the species took over a planet? Like, well, that sounds pretty good to me. Yeah. I mean, if you mean by takeover, like if you take over something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it means that you're in control of it and and you're not being hurt by it and you get to enjoy it. So I think like, yeah, is it good that we can take over Fiji? Yeah, that's good. I mean, in terms of we can enjoy that natural beauty and we can master it versus being at the mercy of nature. But that's so that's how I think of the overall theme. I thought the final few scenes were really reflected that. So so if I think about if I was going to project what what an environmental or any kind of a virus or whatever catastrophe would be to the world, you would show decayed cities, children starving, you know, things like that, things that affect your fate.  They show forests destroyed. This standard of value is completely centered around, you know, what they call the environment, nature out there.  So it's so it's anti human and, you know, nature as an ended itself, nature as an intrinsic value and all human beings can do. And this is true is, in a sense, destroy that nature, change it, manipulate it. And the profit motive, of course, is is the thing that drives that your self interest in a broader sense drives all that. Well, but I mean, destroy what it put in the same category as as master. I mean, from their perspective, it's definitely in the same. But their yes, for their perspective, and that's why they that's why they use the term master because for them, mastering is destroyed. Right. Yeah. So the final scene of the movie, and it's really well done scene is with this orangtang. Yes.  And then ultimately all the trees are down and then it's on the ground. And you're like, yeah, you don't want to see this. I mean, that's not an enjoyable thing. It's a it's a painful thing. And it looks a lot like a human. But the idea is like this is what industrial civilization is as inflicting misery upon this orangutan. Whereas in reality, the more primitive we are, the more we do have to be at war with that orangutan because we are so hard for us to produce food and we're so vulnerable to all the different parts of nature, including the orangutan in terms of just like taking our food that we do need to have an adversarial relationship. Whereas the more industrialized we are, the more we can master nature, the more we can decide, hey, it would be cool to have an orangutan preserve so we can see these animals. And I really like it. I really like seeing different animals. And I'm very enthusiastic about that kind of thing. And it's I think of it as like artworks and there are these evolutionary artworks and I would not like to see those works of mastery destroyed. But that that's what you wouldn't stop us, you know, Africa as it becomes richer, which hopefully it will one day building cities and in habitat, there was orangutan habitats. Yeah, it's a shrinking time of orangutans, ultimately. Yeah, or you could just put or it could also be that as you become wealthier than you just and you, you know, your a lot of your industry takes up a smaller space, then you can have larger amounts of space for that. And much, much better versions of what we have in terms of zoos. But I mean, it's definitely, yeah, but but part of what you're bringing up is that the idea and this is one of the evasions of the movie, the idea that billions of people have been raised from poverty and misery by industry. And there are billions more who are still in that state that has zero that is not acknowledged once in the movie except except it's acknowledged. And this is the most revealing part of the movie where this guy's do you remember what he said was the most disturbing statistic? Pretty much he had ever come across. No, I can't remember. It was it was a combination of the number of humans on the planet and then the amount of consumption of the humans on the planet. Is that graph the graph? Yeah, so it's 10 times more humans consuming 10 times each. They said, this means we're having 100 times more impact on the planet. So this is the most disturbing thing I've ever seen. And you just think about what that means concretely means that oh, yeah, humans are not dying during childbirth. They're not dying when they're 15. They're living a long time, so the death rate is lower. And they also are able to have something resembling a modern life. They're able to have ample food and protection from the elements and medical care and time to they can actually choose what they want to do with their life. That's what this impact amounts to. And yet he views this as bad. So there's just zero acknowledgement that nature does not give us the resources that we need to flourish and, in fact, it gives us many threats and that we have to radically transform nature to have a chance at flourishing. There's just no recognition of that, not even one time in the movie. It's basically just nature is perfect. We got greedy and now we're going to ruin it. And so we'll probably go extinct in 10 or 20 or 30 years. So what we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, women or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Brought using the super chat. And I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity. Go to Iranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribe star.com Iranbrook show and and and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this to keep this going. I'm not showing the next.


I like hearing our leadership talk about the value that we all bring to the table and acknowledgement that all of us individually have our own biases, our own beliefs that make us view the world and view situations a little differently. If you can embrace those differences and see what they give to the whole team and what strength comes from pulling on all of what each individual has to offer there's no way we won't continue throughout my lifetime in generations to come to be the greatest Navy and to continue to be the greatest Navy in this world.