Transcript for:
Global Politics and Current Events Overview

welcome back to Pod Save the World I'm Tommy Vtor I'm Ben Rhodess I can look you directly in the eyes and this is this is kind of intense It's like it's like old school Charlie Rose or something Yeah we're we're missing a black curtain You know what we need is um one of those cameras in the round that just kind of spins around It just kind of follows us around If you're listening to this and you're like "What are these idiots talking about?" Uh subscribe to Pod World on YouTube We're trying some new setups in the studio here Looks cool Feels cool Different vibes What you can see is Tommy and I are sitting like three feet across the table from each other just staring at each other Ben we need to address something We do which is uh there is a lot of heat in like the comments on the YouTube on social media from our Canadian listeners who I think feel like we've been talking about the tariff war with Canada and some of the political minations happening in Canada in a way that is flippant And so I don't know exactly what we said I'm sorry if we uh offended anybody I I sort of am confused why we why would anyone would listen to this conversation and think we are not on your side versus the morons like trying to crush the Canadian economy I think that's stupid and ridiculous I I I look I I will apologize to the people of Canada Uh I feel your pain Uh and I mean that seriously genuinely Um what I take from it is when it feels like there's a lunatic who's trying to take over your country and destroy your economy like maybe you don't want the humorous banter about it which I get but bear in mind like we're living under this lunatic too And sometimes we turn to the dark humor of it all Yeah But but I'm feeling Mark Carney's hockey fighting energy like we dig it We love you guys We love our Canadian listeners and we hear you Yeah I want to apologize substantially less than Ben I reserve the right to make fun of anything I'm going to make fun of Mark for being low We're the We have Donald Trump as our president We're trying to survive guys Thank you Uh yeah No but the the the director and deputy director of the FBI actively hate both of us We are things are bad here Let's be clear about that Let's be clear We do not want to tear you They personally are aware of who we are We do not want to ter you We liked Justin Trudeau We had him on the show Uh we like like Mark Carney but we get it No one wants this terapore I know it's a very serious thing Trump is actively trying to destroy the Canadian economy and that is insane and stupid Let's all fight these lunatics together and not uh not not no uh turning on We're on the same team Also Pierre Palv Uh we got a great show for you today There's lots of things happening in the world One of those weeks where we could have done two hours Yes Unfortunately Um today we're going to explain why Israel has resumed bombing in Gaza and how Netanyahu has created yet another domestic political crisis in his efforts to evade accountability for October 7th We're going to talk about the Trump administration following uh President Biden's lead once again and bombing the Houthi rebels in Yemen We'll cover the impact of Doge gang gutting the Voice of America and some new reporting about the impact of USAD cuts And then Trump just got off the phone with Vladimir Putin We'll fill you in on how it went and tell you if there's any progress towards peace in Ukraine And then we're going to talk about why there is a massive protest movement in Serbia and why a restaurant chain in China is going to have to cut a big check to customers for an unfortunate reason Uh and then Ben you did our interview earlier today What did you talk about yeah I talked to Pankage Mishra who is a really extraordinary writer and thinker He has a book out now called The World After Gaza Um and so we talked about the resumption of the war in Gaza Uh we talked about um the different flavors of anti-semitism in the world today Um obviously the focus on Hamas and kind of campus anti-semitism but also the ethnationalism and far-right anti-semitism that seems to get less attention Um we talked about the kind of synergies between Netanyahu and the Israeli right and some of the other right-wing movements around the world like the Hindu nationalists in India A lot of that today's episode unfortunately a lot of ethnational in today's episode Uh we and we uh we talked also about like the global south perspective on not just Israel Gaza but everything that's happening in the world um whether or not there's ideas coming from within the global south that might help us find the next global order So pretty wide ranging conversation We we talked about the role of the writer in this world today So it was a you know put on your thinking caps and uh stick around for it It was really smart conversation Definitely excited to listen to that Must be weird to write a book called uh the world after Gaza and then have the war flare up on the day Yeah I mean I shouldn't be laughing but I mean essentially um that was my first question you know So we are not after Gaza Yeah No unfortunately So let's start with that I mean some terrible news overnight which is that Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire and launched this massive series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip that reportedly killed at least 400 people and wounded hundreds more I think I saw estimates of over 500 wounded Um Hamas said that at least five senior officials in the organization were killed as were many children and innocent people Uh Israel said the strikes were in response to Hamas's intrigence during the ceasefire extension talks Uh Ben it's it's hard not to notice that these strikes also come as Netanyahu is in the midst of a domestic political crisis thanks to him trying to fire the head of the Shinbet their domestic intelligence service But we'll get that get to that in a second Um with respect to the peace talks themselves though Israel wanted a 7-week extension of the ceasefire in exchange for Hamas releasing half of the living hostages and the remains of half of the dead hostages still in Gaza Uh the Hamas position was no let's work on phase two of the original agreement we all signed which would have led to a permanent end to the war Um but as we've discussed many times Netanyahu does not actually want to end the war because he will get attacked from the right-wing of his political coalition And the Israeli position is also basically that Hamas must not have any power going forward which is understandable after October 7th but also clearly kind of a hard pill for Hamas to swallow Um so you know that's leads us to this moment Um in the first phase of the ceasefire Hamas released 25 living prisoners and the remains of eight hostages while Israel released 1500 Palestinians they had in captivity Um so Ben this is were the really tough part of the talks right because of course you could understand each side's position Israel wants to permanently eradicate the threat of a a Hamas attack Uh Hamas wants to continue to exist as a political organization but also as a military wing and they want the IDF out of Gaza I guess where I lose my kind of empathy for the Israeli position is the idea that resuming the bombing campaign is going to do much besides lead to the deaths of innocent people and the remaining hostages But I don't know how are you analyzing uh Netanyahu's move over the weekend well you summed up what happened in terms of the breakdown of the talks well in the sense that technically Hamas was just sticking to the original agreement which is that there was this phase one and then you move to phase two and the additional hostage releases are tied to making agreements in phase two which is about kind of the end of the war Israel wanted to just extend phase one and you know make more exchanges uh within that framework and and those we've talked about this a lot I mean essentially the real rubber hits the road because Hamas wants the end of the war and Israel doesn't And you can't really move to the next phase unless you're willing to entertain the end of the war and Israel is not willing to do that Um obviously there's a inherent tension between Israel having a continued objective of essentially destroying Hamas and Hamas having to agree to this So I don't know how you ever cross you know that bridge unless you're willing to entertain Hamas continuing in some fashion inside of Gaza which they're going to probably do anyway because there's a lot of support for Hamas Um the a couple of things I'd add to it in terms of the Israeli political context You mentioned the kind of uproar over him firing the head of the Shimbet something that's not happened before um because of investigations in Israel history ever in Israel history So this is not normal but also um the Israeli government is supposed to pass a budget um by the end of the month and if they don't that's one of the things that can kind of trigger the collapse of the government There's a lot of reasons that BB needs to kind of return to his triedand-true card of like playing to his own far right and resuming bombing is a way to do that as ghoulish as that may be and you know the way in which this was broken you know in the middle of the night bombing campaigns literally violating the the ceasefire um you know just I obviously we are sympathetic to the idea that there is inside of Israel great degree of fear or opposition to Hamas um being in charge in Gaza At the same time there is no way shape or form in which there's any risk whatsoever of another October 7th happening tomorrow Like these these strikes did not end some threat that was facing Israelis This is punitive This is obviously causing huge civilian harm and and and there's no clear endgame other than just more war more suffering for the people of Gaza The last thing I want to say Tommy is that keep in mind this comes on top of weeks now where we've had a complete cut off of food and aid getting into Gaza and electricity So this is not happening even in a vacuum It's happening in terms of an already worsening humanitarian situation Yeah And which should just be clear that you know this is a decision made by the Israeli government that is not backed by the Israeli people I mean there's some recent polling that found 70% of Israelis want the ceasefire and hostage talks to continue even if it means Israel releasing terrorists and having to end the war permanently So Netanyahu is just way off sides with the people he's ostensibly governing including Yard and Bibbos We've talked about the BBOS family before This was an entire family that was kidnapped Uh Yardan Bbas's wife and two little children were murdered by Hamas or died in the Gaza Strip Uh I'm going to say they were murdered because if you take children hostage you are responsible for their life and if they die it's on you Um he put he posted on Facebook we must stop the fighting and bring everyone home So there's this ground swell of support for continuing these negotiations getting the rest of these hostages home I think less than less than half of the 59 hostages still in Gaza are alive But unfortunately you know once again the United States president President Trump has enabled the continuation of this war I think we've shipped over what like 8 or 12 billion dollars worth of weapons Yeah To the Israelis And interestingly Ben I mean there's a Trump official who had done some direct talks with Hamas This guy Adam Bowler who had been nominated for this you know Senate confirmed uh hostage negotiations or release job He seems to have been demoted or his position changed as some sort of special government employee um that is no longer a Senate Are you confusing him with uh Rubio no Oh the secretary the sort of secretary of state No Yeah So it's it's it's it's confusing I mean it just it's it seems like there's a critical mass of things showing uh diplomacy kind of petering out here Yeah it feels like there was this push by Trump and and and Steve Woodoff his envoy to get a ceasefire in place right around his inauguration because they wanted the on optic of him coming in and things getting better Obviously they wanted some hostage releases but they never really seemed that committed to actually ending the war and they certainly didn't seem committed to addressing the underlying question I mean Wickoff said something about two-state solution but nobody's talking about that right now I mean so I think the questions going forward are does this bombardment continue did the aid cut off continue that alone is enough to bring massive suffering on the Palestinians Do you see in the context of that bombardment Trump start to talk about you know ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip again trying to move them into Egypt or Jordan there's some noise about trying to find African countries to move the Palestinians to That was a little worrying There's a question of whether there's a ground invasion which Netanyahu I think would probably want Trump's sign off on He he didn't care what Joe Biden thought but with Trump he probably wants to make sure that Trump's on side with that But I think what this indicates is that Gaza is just this kind of open-ended I don't I don't want to call it a war because Hamas isn't really fighting Let's be clear they're not really fighting back I mean at some point I'm sure they'll fire some rockets but there there's this kind of ongoing bombardment of Gaza it's just going to be open-ended maybe stop and start and actually negotiating some kind of end to this It seems to have been dep prioritized Yeah and you mentioned it happened during Ramadan in like 2:30 in the morning So it's terrifying for civilians Um the the political crisis that I refer to was BB trying to fire Ronin Bar the head of the Shinbet So this announcement happened suddenly on Sunday It's the latest example of Netanyahu demanding accountability from everyone but himself for October 7th So you know they pushed out the defense minister they pushed out the IDF chief of staff Um the the Shinbet has launched also we should just point out the Shinbet has launched a bunch of investigations into Netanyahu's staff including allegations that the Qatari government paid money to some of Netanyahu's top aids Seems relevant here They're also looking into the leak of sensitive intelligence documents to a German newspaper which Netanyahu then used to uh as like a pretext to blow up the the hostage talks We talked about that at the time was to build this German outlet Um on top of all that though Ben the Shinbet has publicized a summary of its own failures in preventing October 7th which talked about like their internal mistakes uh that not taking seriously enough intelligence about Hamas planning to attack southern Israel But they also pointed the finger at political decisions by the Netanyahu government for letting Hamas getting funding from Qatar uh for failing to target Hamas's leadership and then just sort of like general chaos around the Netanyahu's political moves during the judicial coup that we talked about a bunch that just made Israel look weak and divided Basically you know they're talking about how the Netanyahu government's policy was contain Hamas kind of prop them up in some sense to keep the Palestinian movement divided and weaken the Palestinian Authority That obviously ended catastrophically for everyone involved Um but instead of accountability for Netanyahu what seems to be happening is he is consolidating power by pushing out other leaders in government Uh even though a recent poll found that 70% of the country wants him to resign Uh however instead we're talking going back to these same tactics um and you know kind of pushing out other people and and other power centers and consolidating So on Wednesday uh the day this episode comes out the cabinet will vote on Ronin Bar's dismissal Um the attorney general the Israeli attorney general said BB can't fire Ronin Bar unless it goes through a process to determine whether doing so is lawful We we'll see if you know Netanyahu goes along with that ruling from the AG or else we might have a constitutional crisis brewing But I mean Ben what did what did you make of this i mean it's for us now it's pretty familiar to see like uh unpopular right-wing kind of autocrats driving countries into a ditch but this feels um feels like a real escalation to me And memory holing their own crimes or uh with Nao's case there's a lot to look at There's literal crimes and then there's him doing everything he can to memoryhole his own massive and glaring failures around October 7th You know why was the IDF up in the West Bank chasing around settlers to commit violence against Palestinians instead of guarding that border you know why was all this money essentially used to prop up Hamas with Netanyahu himself telling members of Lrud party "We want Hamas It's a justification for there never being a Palestinian state It's a justification for keeping the Palestinian leadership separated." You know those are things that he wants to just kind of literally sweep under the rug And I think part of what is so concerning here is he has learned the lesson of the last you know year and a half that perpetuating this war is a way to constantly keep the political pressure off of himself and to kind of plate the far right that once kind of an open-ended brutalist Israeli policy Right now Tommy we are looking at the bombardment of Gaza resuming Uh Israel continues to be in southern Syria um where they've done all kinds of they've taken land they've bombed targets Um they are making threats about the Iranian nuclear program So there's a potential front there Obviously in Lebanon there's a tenuous ceasefire on that border We're talking like multiple countries where Netanyahu has this capacity to turn the dial up or down And every time he feels political pressure he seems to turn the dial up And that's not some conspiracy That's literally what's happened the last you know whenever he feels politically cornered Something is you know going to get hotter somewhere else Right now nobody's even fighting back right you know Hamas isn't fighting back The Syrians aren't fighting back There's a you know ceasefire in Lebanon Um the Iranians are trying to get into nuclear talks right um and and and it's only the Houthis which we'll talk about in a second Except the Houthies yeah which teeing this up for the transition But the reality is like there more places including Iran where this could escalate further The more the you know the political pressure builds on him the more you might expect to see him or or the West Bank for that matter the more you might expect to see him do dramatic things to kind of get the attention off of his own political fortunes And he's also I mean the man has fought an independent review of October 7th What has happened is independent components of the Israeli like security state have done their own investigations and reviews into their own conduct but he has just evaded any real accountability by you know a sort of 9/11 commission style look back at how October 7th It's it's I mean it's probably why he's at a 70% disapproval rating but it's just infuriating Yeah But not surprising Not at all surprising Um okay So Ben uh sort of in the neighborhood Let's check in on our own anti-war President Donald Trump So over the weekend Trump the Trump administration launched a major series of air strikes on Houthi rebel targets in Yemen which local authorities say killed 53 people and injured nearly a hundred more Those strikes included targets in the capital of SA Um this came after the Houthis threatened to resume attacks on ships in the Red Sea They did not actually resume attacks on ships in the Red Sea but you have to imagine there was some intelligence that the Trump people were preempting At least I think that's been reported Um the Houthies say these attacks on ships in the Red Sea are in response to Israel cutting off humanitarian support into Gaza And if you go back further which we will you know the whole pretext around these firing missiles at uh Red Sea ships was around the Gaza war This came after the Houthi threatened to resume attacks on ships in the Red Sea which they say are in response most recently to Israel cutting off humanitarian support into Gaza Listeners probably remember that back in November of 2023 the Houthis started attacking ships in the Red Sea including US warships calling this an act of solidarity with Gaza So at the time the Biden administration retaliated against the Houthis with strikes on Houthi targets most of which were designed to destroy military infrastructure in anti-ship missiles But Trump may have started something bigger here Uh here's a clip of Marco Rubio discussing their plans on CBS News over the weekend This is not a message This is not a one-off This is an effort to deny them the ability to continue to constrict and control shipping And it's just not going to happen We're not going to have these guys these people with weapons able to tell us where our ships can go where the ships of all the world can go By the way it's not just the US We're doing the world a favor We're doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping That's the mission here and it will continue until that's carried out That never happened before or the Biden administration didn't do that All the Biden administration would do is they would respond to an attack These guys would launch one rocket we'd hit the rocket launcher That's it This is an effort to take away their ability to control global shipping in that part of the world That's just not going to happen anymore So uh we're doing the world a favor by getting rid of these guys Sounded a little uh regime changy to me Ben But then I also noticed Pete Hexath Secretary of Defense said the bombing campaigning at the Houthis will end if the Houthies stop shooting at US ships So that is clearly more limited But Hegath also said quote "We don't care what happens uh in the Yemeni civil war," which is very nice of him So Ben what do you make of this uh old but new war from our anti-war president are we back in regime change mode or is this more limited i mean first of all Marco Rubio despite his very best efforts sounds like the least tough person on the face of the earth You know he you can tell he kind of rehearsed this in the mirror in the M and he wanted to sound like a tough guy and he wanted to say things like these guys a bunch of times and he literally just sounds like the kind of kid what he that voice doesn't sound like someone threatening Houthies It sounds like a kid who ran in from the schoolyard to tell the teacher on somebody else or something These guys are trying to mess up international shipping you know like so careless with his word choices I just don't get it But anyway put put uh General Rubio aside for a second here The thing that worries me about this is look the the Biden policy wasn't the clearest policy in the world There was every now and then we'd just go bomb a bunch of the Houthies and their infrastructure But part of what is like troubling to me is that the messaging from Trump on down to Rubio and you know because you know Rubio's on whatever messages he's been commanded to deliver So he has to take that shot at Biden You know it this just seems to be informed by like our strikes on the Houthies are going to be a little bit bigger than Joe Biden's So we can say that they're bigger you know and there's not really any logic if you if you unpack what he said because the Houthis have you know the they kind of stop shooting at ships and then they do This is not a new thing kind of stop and start from them They've tied it to the resumption of hostilities in Gaza Um there's no indication that one round of air strikes is going to like make the Houthies go away or change their fundamental calculus I was talking to an expert today who said he thinks that Trump was almost certainly told by like Sentcom or some of his military advisers that all we need to do sir is take the gloves off sir and stop caring about civilian casualties and get rid of these Biden restrictions sir and then we'll take these guys out and it is just Yeah Like they might be attacking leaders They might have found intel on leaders that seem like they're hitting warehouses or other targets in cities but they're I just don't think that they're going to make material difference here And I think I think what happened too Tommy you're right And like I in talking to some people it seems like there were some people at Sentcom that wanted the more maximalist option That did include for instance trying to hit individual Houthy leaders Um like you said and sometimes you actually don't have good intel on where those guys are Sometimes you might but like you might kill a whole bunch of civilians and doing that And they went "Mr Trump sir Joe Biden was afraid to take out these guys." But the reality is that the Houthis are are people that live in Yemen Like they're they're not even analogous to ISIS The last time Trump wanted to prove he was tougher than someone basically just took the same Obama plan and loosen some restrictions on civilian casualties which I think is not a good thing But the ISIS was foreign fighters right they're not going to go away in in Yemen unless you you know go commit a genocide or something Like they're they're people that live there And and so I don't really think if anything worries me about this it's Trump doing the opposite of what you know he said about getting a set of wars in a situation in which you have a war in Gaza Like I said you've got Syria like there's sectarian violence picking up there The Israelis are occupying southern Syria Um the there are people stirring the pot there and the government can't really get its legs under it because there's sanctions Yemen you got an active civil war in this Houthi thing You've got the Iranians like trying to avoid a war over their nuclear program but it's not clear whether there's a deal Like this whole region could still if Trump's impulse is to continue to show that he's tough by like saying yes to the most you know square jaw general that like calls him sir Like we you know this could go nickname Exactly Would they uh who's our new chairman i I forgot the nickname already Snail Bag I met him in Mosul Yeah Yeah Rasmataz or something That was our guy Nick Yeah I mean just to really like hammer home the point you're making about the Houthies living in Yemen I mean they they are they're a tribal group from northern Houthies is a tribe you know Yeah They practice a form of Mia Islam and like the the Houthi movement emerged in the '9s in part in opposition to like Saudi influence and hardline Saudi religious practices But then they came onto like the international community's radar in a big way in 2014 when they seized the capital of Yemen when they forced the Yemeni president uh at the time to run for his life By 2015 the Houthis controlled a big chunk of Yemen's territory And in 2015 the Saudis decided to launch this major military operation to dislodge them And that proved to be a catastrophic failure on a military and a humanitarian level It led to hundreds of thousands of Yemen Yemenes dying either in the fighting and or from the famine And by 2022 the Saudis were like "All right we're we're good on bombing We're going to try to cut a deal." And uh you know I think everything was reawakened by October 7th Now like everyone points out that the Houthis get a lot of support from Iran That is true Um it's also I think important to say Ben that like there are some quarters of the left that embrace the Houthi rebels because they were seen as doing something to end the war in Gaza But we should say these are not good guys uh they are authoritarian They have kidnapped and killed uh aid workers They've terrorized the population Like no one should cheer for them But back to the military campaign Ben I mean this expert I was talking to and other people who left the Biden administration have said the same thing to me which is that by the end of their Houthi military campaign they realized that like you can't deter these guys Yeah Like you can you can degrade them You can take away some of their capabilities Yes You can degrade them You can set up like defensive infrastructure in the Red Sea You can like create a missile defense wall around Israel but like really dismantling them is a yearslong project with way better intelligence some sort of ground campaign Like it's a disaster The Saudis and the Amiradis have fought a war for nearly a decade against these guys with plenty of US support and they were somehow stronger at the end of that process than they were at the beginning Right And also Trump and this is why the Iran part worries me in his like truth socialing which is I guess where we announce military operations now He was like this is a message for Iran all caps or something you know and the Iranians do not control the Houthis They is so important like this is actually not like Hezbollah or something They do give them some weapons and they have and maybe they could stop doing that I don't think that would impact the Houthi's behavior that much you know they they they do their own thing these guys you know and and what is Trump exactly saying in terms of the message to Iran the message that we're going to bomb you next I mean this whole thing could get could go sideways pretty fast and and and let's also point out whether we're talking about Gaza or Yemen or wherever uh we used to think about what we're doing to obviously civilians from a humanitarian perspective also from like a just multi-deade anti-American sentiment radicalization perspective like this kind of the casual nature of of these pretty large scale bombing I mean these aren't even these are not like drone strikes and the and people should give us plenty of about those too But this is like you know we're dropping huge ordinance on multiple countries or we're giving Israel to ordinance to do that And I just I don't know I don't like where this is probably headed for the Middle East you know Yeah And that that tweet from Trump blaming Iran saying you're responsible for anything the Houthies do They're not They're just not Yeah Apparently the Houthies the Pentagon says the Houthis have fired 174 projectiles at US Navy ships since 2023 and like 150 more at commercial ships So they've been firing off a lot of stuff and if we're holding Iran responsible for all of that uh that's a problem because to your point I mean they have a the Houthies have a high degree of autonomy And this person was this who the expert was telling me that after the Solommani assassination that kind of strategy of more distributed authority and autonomy to their kind of so-called proxy forces has seems to have been a policy because it allows them not to have to like have such close ties or create you know intelligence channels that can be intercepted etc But it has also allowed for a lot of proliferation of missile and drone technology Like there's some concern that the Houthis could be sharing this stuff with al-Qaeda or And that's what I mean about terrorism coming our way because if you start to really go after these guys um they're not going to surrender and and this this and imagine Trump after a terrorist attack I just this none of this makes me feel uh good Yeah And then just in terms of Yemen itself like there's not a lot of good options to deal with the Houthis right now But the current plan if we just sum it all up is Israel resuming the war in Gaza with you know eight or 12 billion dollars worth of additional US weapons Trump gutting USAD and cutting off parts of Yemen to humanitarian support and now we're bombing the out of Yemen again Uh and that just like that is catastrophic to the point where even the Saudis are like do not do this like we went down this path saying that you know and the USA ID point is really important because in the kind of you know pretty dark contradictory reality of American foreign policy USA ID was a huge donor to addressing humanitarian needs in Yemen and now that's gone Um so a lot more people are going to suffer than even suffered in past bombing campaigns Yeah And it won't be the Houthies who I think represent like 15% of the population It'll be women and kids and civilians who always get hurt Yeah Who will blame America who will blame America um Ben speaking of kind of the gutting of uh US power abroad including soft power let's talk about the Voice of America Um Voice of America or VA was founded in 1942 during World War II to be counterweight to Nazi propaganda The idea was you provide news and information and cultural programs to audiences literally around the world while also promoting American values like press freedom democracy etc After World War II ended VA's mission evolved into a tool to combat communism in the Soviet Union Uh more recently that mission evolved further They are you know doing programming in the Middle East Asia There's combating extremism China Iran etc Right so uh that was uh until Friday last week Trump released an executive order targeting VA's parent organization the US agency for global media which also funds other US-backed news outlets like Radio for Europe Radio Free Asia etc Combined these outlets are reach 420 million people in 100 countries and broadcast in 63 languages Um the impact of this EO is that nearly all of VA's 1300 staff members have been put on paid leave their programming is gone It's been replaced by like Musac or you know Dead Air or whatever Uh Trump has installed failed Arizona Senate and gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake to run VA basically with the mission to destroy it Um Ben do you want to talk about the mission of VA and the impact of these new services being eviscerated yeah So the numbers begin to tell a story Over 400 million people in over 60 languages Um and I think what people have to realize is think of VA something like a a wire service largely Like it's pretty straight news to the point that we actually used to get like why aren't you doing your own propaganda like RT is so much better at propagandizing But part of the idea behind it is a lot of the places we can focus on the places where you know we're trying to get information into like the Iranian people um or places where there's geopolitical tension A lot of these are places where there's no other access to straight news to just knowing what the is going on You know that's why you do in all these languages And and if you think that that seems like a luxury consider the fact that we're living in a world in which people are constantly bombarded on social media or through various propaganda channels with garbage you know and people trust Yeah I know people in Southeast Asia for instance who are living in pretty tough places what Myanmar Cambodia places where you you have civil conflict or you've got dictators who put out all kinds of disinformation all the time or misinformation and people could trust a VA product or a radio free Asia product right if you remove that not only is that just denying you know credible news source to people it is opening the door for people to be further radicalized or brainwashed essentially through disinformation you know it's just literally pulling the plug on on hundreds of millions of people that rely on this information and and I think what I find so kind of grotesque about this to take a step back um is to connect what we were just talking about America first right a lot of us had to be like well I can see some of the points Trump's making you know but this is he was talking about like the credible version of America first is the forever war We fought 20 years of dumb wars in the Middle East And we killed hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of our own people died and we spent all this money Let's not do that And and that's not what America First turned out to be We are still fighting the dumb wars We're still bombing people in Yemen We're still sending 8 to 12 billion dollars of assistance to Israel to bomb people We're upping the defense budget That's the only thing that went up in the recent thing that Schumer capitulated to What are we cutting we're cutting the the only good things America does in the world You know we're taking away USAD all soft power gone all of it Right We're cutting all of USAD all of PEP FARB which is you know obviously Life-Saving Systems for HIV AIDS all of Voice of America and its various cousins Um that is not the the the America and the world Sure people like grumble about foreign aid but I don't think that's what people were were upset about in terms of the excesses of the deep state or whatever you want to call it Um and and so that's what is so disgusting about what we're watching is like we're seeing the methodical destruction of anything good America might do in the world or anything that might improve people's lives around the world or anything that might combat autocracy around the world And we're not seeing any dimmunition in if anything we're seeing ratcheting up of geopol geopolitical tension with tariffs and military action and all the rest of it And before we started recording you and I were talking about how uh Deputy Assistant Secretary Rubio used to really care about a certain component of VA Yes Well this drives me nuts about Marco Rubio I used to get I had this argument with him cuz we one of the one of the bloated parts of uh of of this whole enterprise is something called Radio Marty which has been broadcasting from basically South Florida where it sports a bunch of jobs by the way um into Cuba right and and you know seemed like a lot of money to be spending on something that wasn't really working Cubans blocked it So So it's kind of like a radio station that hardliners and in Florida So so Rubio fights to the death if Barack Obama wants to cut $1 but then Rubio shuts it all down when he's Secretary of State Turn off the switch Turning off the switch like killing jobs in Florida And just to connect some dots with Marco Rubio right now you've got Venezuelans being flown into goologs in El Salvador Something that Marco Rubio would have once seemingly objected to I thought we wanted to help the Venezuelan people We've got you know Cubans are not allowed in this country anymore Something that Marco Rubio used to care about like all Marco Rubio used to complain about conditions in Cuban prisons that the the Al Salvadorian prisons and make that look like you know a country club I mean this is this is insane what what Marco Rubio is is single-handedly proving how full of he was in in just two months Py the world is brought to you by Helix We got a bunch of visitors in my house right now It's a full house We have uh in-laws my sister-in-law bunch of people here So we're rotating people sort of through coming out Well not really Oh I think you meant like to different rooms No like people are coming in staggered to staggered times and uh everyone who sleeps on our guest room on the Helix mattress says "Best sleep of my life Slept like a baby." Almost almost slept through breakfast It was so good So comfortable My mother-in-law was with us all week and she slept on a Helix mattress and also loved it There you go Look at all the in-laws How will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body you take the Helix sleep quiz and you find your perfect mattress in under two minutes I took this quiz a long time ago I'm pretty sure I was a Don Lux but I don't it doesn't matter what the what the quiz said You seem like a Don Lux I was you know it was a fantastic mattress It is super comfortable Everyone raves about it and it's just an easy way to figure out like the best fit for you The Helix lineup offers 20 unique mattresses including the award-winning Lux and Ultra Premium Elite collections Helix Plus a mattress designed for big and tall sleepers Helix Kids a mattress designed for growing bodies that's been endorsed by child sleep experts Helix knows there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home That's why they offer a 100 night trial and 10 to 15ear warranty to try out a new Helix mattress Plus your personalized mattress is shipped straight to your door free of charge Go to helixleep.com/world for 20% off sitewide That's helixleep.com/world for 20% off sitewide helixleep.com/world Let's talk about um this immigration piece and then get to some of the USAD parts too On the Salvadoran part Ben so on Positive America we spent a bunch of time digging into it to Trump's most recent immigration moves I do think like taken together they're horrifying and scary but I think the most relevant part of this for us is Trump using this law from 1798 All the best laws are written then called the Alien Enemies Act which they're using to deport Venezuelan men to El Salvador to be held in prison there Like literally any V Venezuelan male over 16 can be declared a part of a gang now shipped to El Salvador Um at the moment these deportations are being blocked by the courts Trump is furious about that He called the judge who halted the deportations a radical left lunatic uh and demanded that the guy be impeached That statement actually prompted a response from Chief Justice John Roberts who was like "Hey bud uh impeachment isn't how you deal with a ruling you don't like Uh you try the try the appeals process you know like let's be an adult here." But Ben I mean this this is so scary It's scary on its face but it's also a scary precedent that could be expanded to other groups that Donald Trump does not like And to your point I mean it's worth reminding everyone just how bad El Salvador's prison system is It there's a lot of components to this 2% of the population of the country is in prison because Na Boule has put in place a mass incarceration policy where he indiscriminately rounds people up and throws them in jail with no due process To your point I was talking to a a human rights expert in El Salvador a couple months ago who said that prisoners in Venezuela have more due process than prisoners in El Salvador under this current system because Boule declared this state of exception which is there sort of it's like a state of emergency where he suspended due process rights ostensibly to to deal with gang violence for like a month but then like every state of emergency it just gets extended over and over and over again And he's used it to sweep people up and indiscriminately throw men into prison And now the United States is going to help keep Ukilli in power by paying El Salvador money to house prisoners from the US with no due process And there was a point in time where conservatives like a Marco Rubio like a John McCain cared deeply about human rights or at least they talked about it a lot right and that is just I guess it's just gone I mean Rubio tweeted something about the Weaguers the other day and it made me think about when what credibility does he have to talk about that yeah Remember when Trump uh John Bolton Trump's former national security adviser said in his book that Trump not only did not care about millions of weaguers being thrown into concentration camps he told Xiinping that it was the right thing to do Yeah I mean we're literally subsidizing like one of the largest goologs if not the largest goolog in the world You know I have to check it So don't no liel suits bouquet but but it's a big prison where terrible things happen to people That's very clear I think one way to think about it too Tommy is because you guys had a very good conversation on PSA You know I think a lot about this you know kind of authoritarian playbook that we're living through and I obviously wrote like my last book was about this We are you were ahead of the curve on that book unfortunately Yeah Yeah The whole Orban food and Trump comparison Yeah I didn't like that That was kind of pressing I know and and and so as I think back on that um what's scary about living through it now is in some ways we are so far ahead of like Orban has never approached this right like these people that we think of as dictators in their wildest dreams they could never think of like randomly deporting lots of people to prisons in third countries because what we're seeing is yes Trump is implementing a playbook ignore judges do whatever you want install loyalists like we we all now unfortunately are familiar with that playbook But what's scary is when you're the president of the United States there's things that are available to you that are not available to the Bolsinaros and Orbans and even Dut territories of the world which are you can pressure countries in Latin America to take all these people and throw them into your prisons right and and and so we're seeing I I think Americans have to get their minds around like we are not you know at the beginning of this we're kind of pretty late in the in the spectrum which is like there's no constraint on him but we're also seeing how like Trump for all of his railing against the deep state he is using the awesome powers of the American national security state for his authoritarian impulses so he doesn't like he talks on the FBI he loves ICE he loves loves those military planes that are flying people down there and he's posting like fascist snuff videos you know with them like and we're starting to see what it's like to have that US national security apparatus wedded to the authoritarian playbook And that's what I find scary about it Yeah it's really scary that that point about his ability to force other countries to do things that no other dictator would be able to do And also the United States is usually the one calling out other countries in and trying to at least to deter these kinds of human rights violations Oh and we're going to see that We're going to see all kinds of copycat stuff happening around the world I mean you wait a few months to see the ripples of not only USA ID being gone and VA being gone but seeing other people saying "Well oh look what Trump's doing Like I'm going to do whatever the I want." In fact you're already seeing it right because once you know you have Trump and Elon Musk and others in the government saying that like USAD is a corrupt you know organization designed to for regime change that gives every authoritarian around the world the pretext to raid NOS's supported by USAD etc Right Yeah We'll get to that in a minute in Serbia So um one last thing on this Ben we've been trying to keep everybody updated on the impact of Trump gutting USAD Uh along those lines there was a really uh well done piece in the New York Times by Nick Kristoff over the weekend It had the headline Musk said "No one has died since aid was cut." That isn't true Highly recommend reading this He went to Sudan South Sudan uh met with people who are going to die or know of children who died because USAD is gone Uh the Times also worked with the Center for Global Development to estimate how many people at risk of dying within a year Uh here's the stats they came up with 1.65 65 million people could die without US help to fund HIV prevention and treatment Half a million could die without vaccine funding More than half a million could die without food from America Almost 300,000 could die without malaria prevention funding from the US 310,000 could die without US funding for tuberculosis prevention There's also this broader concern about uh us helping reignite drugresistant tuberculosis strains all around the world So that's great But um look read the Kristoff piece Yeah Share the impact uh on social media Like I don't think we have any hope of saving USAD at this point but I do think we need to make these monsters own the impact of what they are doing And the only thing I'll say about this is our ketamine adult white South African uh deputy dictator um you know tweeted out something about how like he gets all this hate when he's never harmed a person in his life He's going to be directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people millions of people Okay children Elon Musk is going to be responsible for the deaths of children of so many people that I can't get my mind around it and there's gonna be a relentless effort by him and all of his like you know I don't Doge douchebag wannabe Elons you know to say like oh all this irrational Elon derangement syndrome like I don't know maybe go talk to the people in places like Sudan who are dying right now because they're not getting nutrition the way these guys think they are the victims you know you you and I were talking Oh I got criticized online How dare you victim tweet me tweet at me on the platform I own where I can ban you Um people should be uh boycotting Tesla Yeah boycott Tesla I'm not saying like harm Teslas or just do not buy a Tesla Don't ever buy anything that Elon Musk makes I I honestly for a long time I like wanted a a one of those Tesla power walls at my house So did I Yeah Because I like I am actually worried about blackouts in LA But like there's absolutely no way that I would buy one from Tesla now No one should buy anything from Tesla like he's a terrible person Maybe some sort of economic impact will matter to him cuz these rapacious billionaires actually really care if they're the number one richest or the number three Like that's how awful they are He will care more about that than he will care about the assessment of how many people will die because he cut off USAD So please boycott And to all the people who say well you know the climate impact of creating Tesla's incalculable like he has already done more harm in his couple months in government than good than he has ever done buying your Tesla is there other EVs and you know guess what it's a drop in the bucket compared to the car cheaper and better made Uh okay let's move on to the Russia because earlier today Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone about the war in Ukraine It's interesting that they previewed this one Ben as like Trump has previously suggested in some news conferences that he's talked to Putin a few times since he's been in the White House but I guess who really knows because they're a bunch of liars So NBC News says the call was at least an hour and a half long Other outlets said it was up to three hours Um I was talking to some of our our team here Like I suspect that's a lot because of translation and also because Putin likes to give um long historical rants about his grievances Yeah I imagine Trump even gets a flavor of that But who knows so the biggest deliverable out of the call is Putin saying he's agreed not to bomb Ukraine's energy infrastructure for 30 days What a win Um Trump announced at the end of winter by the way So like this is not I haven't seen this point out in coverage but they bomb the energy infrastructure in like November December heading into the winter Guess what time of the year it is is March April Yeah Like Putin doesn't need to bomb the energy infrastructure anymore And it also it doesn't get unbombed like if it's not working Anyway so also Trump they announced they're going to begin talks about a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea It's worth noting that there have been these little partial ceasefires along the way uh between the Russians and the Ukrainians Friend of the pod Max Sedin tweeted an analysis of Putin's Russian language readout of the call with Trump Max's big takeaway is that Putin gave almost no ground Uh Putin wants a total end to foreign military support and intelligence to Ukraine The readout said that any deal must quote take into account the unconditional necessity to remove the initial reasons for the crisis and Russia's legal security interests Um you could drive a truck through kind of the implications of that language which we can unpack in a second Um the readout the readout also says that Trump and Putin talked about some non- Ukraine topics including mutually beneficial partnership in economics and security some sort of cooperation in the Middle East non-prololiferation and then some about hosting hockey games which I guess means it just effectively ends the kind of sports isolation of Russia which Trump's probably not even aware of He's so dumb right he's be great if we have hockey games He doesn't realize he's just like removed a huge source of pressure on it is a big carrot right because like the Russians were competing in the Olympics under like some non flag I can't remember what it looked like but anyway it sucked for them They were pissed about it The goon flag Yeah the goon flag And now it's uh now they're just back I guess So I guess like look my takeaway Ben was I I don't want to criticize diplomacy just cuz Trump is doing it but I think we should be honest that a one-mon energy ceasefire is not only not that much given the context you just talked about about you know the time of year but also Trump pushed the Ukrainians to sign a 30-day unconditional ceasefire and Putin was like "Nah I'm good." Uh and he also didn't signal any real willingness to give ground on other stuff So I don't know what was accomplished Maybe Putin agreed to buy a bunch of Trumpcoin with uh Russian oil and gas Half kidding about that But what were your takeaways from this well yeah First of all in the time I I hearing that brought back you know not great memories of I sat through probably I don't know after the invasion of Crimea up through the end of the Obama administration I probably sat through five or six of these like two-hour phone calls And it makes it sound like a really substantive robust conversation Each side probably spoke three or four times in those two hours because Putin sits there and reads like a 20 minute speech Yep about literally reads reads about all of his grievances and how hard what bunch of bastards the Ukrainians are and he he gives you a history lesson going all the way back to like you know the you know Bulgaria joining NATO and empire and then that has to be translated and and so you're sitting there and you're like so then we'd put out like they spoke for two hours and I'm like it's not as cool as you guys think it is you know but anyway put that aside Yeah I I think that what's amazing about this is he's just walking along this path where Putin is literally taking the things that he would usually have to negotiate at the end of the negotiation right ukraine can't rearm can't have foreign forces there can't get any intel you know can't join NATO Like his whole list he's even laundering in his version of history you know he congratulates Trump for not voting for the UN resolution the general assembly resolution calling him an aggressor like you know good job Donald you know voting with me in Bellarus on that And he's trying to pull all these issues forward into the negotiation about the 30-day ceasefire And Trump is such is so thirsty for either a combination of Putin's friendship and and some partial news cycle win that he's literally celebrating like a partial ceasefire around just hitting energy targets when he didn't get anything else Like Putin has not moved off of any other position Literally the only thing Putin can be said to have done that is any different tomorrow than today if he actually does it and I could see him just violating it anyway is this thing about not hitting energy targets And then you know meanwhile he's just adding to the list of demands on the Ukrainians And this is what happens when you humiliate the Ukrainian president the Oval Office cut him off from intelligence and military support which Putin grabbed You notice that like Putin said "Oh look see well like you better go back to cutting them off cuz I saw you did that once before You can do that again." Right so Putin is just like moving the goalpost further and further in his direction And and we're we're not negotiating peace We're negotiating literally like Russian demands on behalf of Putin Well Putin's moving the goalpost as are the Trump team I mean there was a there was a leak in Semaphore like today or yesterday about how uh Trump is considering recognizing Russian control of Crimea Now I I don't think there's any like peace deal that ends with the Ukrainian sides fully controlling Crimea But why are you considering this now i mean it's just this is like and anybody like and this is what like you made this point last week and it's true Anybody who's ever had any experience with Putin and this is exactly what he does He just tries to pocket every single thing at the table before even entertaining any concession by himself And none of these guys have ever Trump thinks that and Witco that like you know selling some golf courses in Florida is like akin to like dealing with issues that have been at the subject of war and peace and geopolitical tension for hundreds of years in Ukraine Like these guys have no idea what they're doing Putin is in no rush either No what what rush is he the broader context is you know we talked late last year I think in August about this surprising Ukrainian offensive into Kursk which is part of Russia and they occupied like 500 miles square miles worth of territory within Russia in the Kursk region Uh the Russians along with these North Korean troops have slowly but methodically battled back and pushed the Ukrainian forces out of Kursk except for like a sliver right along the border that the Ukrainian forces are now using to keep the high ground and prevent essentially the Russians from entering into another part of Ukraine So Putin knows that the the momentum is on his side You know he the the Americans are no longer supporting the Ukrainian side uh he's getting reinforcements from North Korea The weapons are flowing from Iran and others And so things are just he's looking good So if I'm Putin I'm thinking I'm in this job for life This dipshit's there for Yeah four years I'm going to play this negotiate negotiation out as long as I can get whatever I want from it wait this idiot out and then play the next guy who's in the job And by the way he also loved in the Russian readout they had this language about you know the US and sorry Russia and the US you know consistent with their international responsibilities talked about this and the Middle East and that he's making himself bigger and the United States smaller you know um like it's and and and Trump is not even aware that that's what he's doing you know like it's it's oh god it's Trump who ostensibly thinks that the the big fish are him and Xiinping Yeah you're right No no Now it's like Xiinping is the big fish and then like Trump is in the second class with Putin you know Great Great Uh okay Let's switch gears here Ben and talk about uh these massive protests in Serbia I don't know if we've talked about this on the show before No we should have but Yeah you're right We should have Well so this past weekend um hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Belgrade to protest against the government uh the government corruption and and President Alexander Buch There were reports of up to 300,000 people which in Serbia is a massive number So these are studentled protests They've been happening since last November There's this horrible incident where a concrete canopy that was part of the newly renovated train station collapsed and killed 15 people Um as often happens with protests like this though over time they evolved from being about you know outrage about this tragic incident at the Novvisad rail station to outrage about corruption generally the lack of transparency about construction of this train station the treatment of protesters uh which include you know mass arrests of individuals who are on the streets but also these government sponsored efforts to harass and violently assault protesters Some really bleak stuff There was a video that Ben and I you saw this weekend of like a reports of a sonic weapon being used on protesters So pretty awful So on Monday the protesters even blocked access to a Serbian public TV station called RTS because of the way it was reporting on them I guess a journalist referred to them the peaceful protesters as a mob So president the president of Serbia this guy named Alexander Vuch He's been in Serbian politics for decades In the late 90s he was Slobon Mallosvich's information minister How about that job that's a great thing on your CV Yeah So for those who don't know Melissovich was charged with war crimes and genocide and put on trial at the International Criminal Court Uh there was a massacre horrific massacre in 1995 where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by uh by Bosnian Serb forces And Vhuch said quote "You kill one Serb and we kill 100 Muslims." As a quote attributed to the current president So charming guy More recently uh Vhuch has been head of the Serbian Progressive Party since 2012 He was prime minister from 2014 to 2017 Has been and has been president of Serbia Not those kind of progressives No Yeah Don't let the name fool you The name of the party fool you Yeah He's far right He's authorit socialist We're not socialists Yes Something we unfortunately had to clarify in the show as well Um he's authoritarian He's far right He's also someone who he'll mouth like pro-EU pro- western sentiment I think he gets a lot of credit from the population or has gotten leeway for their economic growth recently But like you know every autocrat like corruption catches up to you Um so that gets us back to these protests Um Vhuch has blamed the protests on leftist radicals He's blaming the United States and USAD Um then it's always interesting to note which Americans are dumb enough to regurgitate those kinds of claims by authoritarian leaders which brings us to uh a clip from a recent episode of Donald Trump Jr.'s podcast triggered where he interviewed Vuic Here's a clip And we also talk about the protests you've been seeing in Belgrade I'm sure the media will cover them uh only one way There's seemingly evidence that they are all tied in some form to the same left-wing actors here in America There's even some reported links to USAD It feels to me as someone who's watched this play out in America and with my family a tragic incident of course but it was later weaponized perhaps like uh our you know January 6th I was saying the same to my people here It was huge amount of money that was invested from outside from different countries different foundations Well there's there's another planned protest in a couple of days H how much of that is is manufactured i I've read and I've seen and spoken to other people here Some of these protests they're offering kids a hundred euro to show up So a little super cut of Don Jr regurgitating kind of right-wing autocrat talking points I mean it's worth pointing a bench It's uh friend of the pod Rick Grenell was like a special envoy for Serbia He's become thick with Vhuch There's all those reports uh of the Serbian government giving approval to uh Jared Kushner or some developer in Dubai the Trump family to build like a Trump family hotel on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade that was bombed by NATO in 1999 I think there was a something part of the lease said that there had to be a memorial to those injured or killed by NATO Yeah By us Anyway Ben thoughts on this protest movement and why it is that there's always a nexus between the Trump family and like the shittiest autocrats in the world Oh god Well let's start with like the dumb part and then the good part I mean the I'm so sick I mean maybe one good thing that could come from USAD being shuttered is is maybe these guys can stop blaming everything on USCID or something Or what they're alluding to I'm sure is like George Shoros and the Open Society Foundations you know probably that too I mean in February the Serbian police raided four NOS's Um they said that it was because they had USAD ties but three of the four had gotten like a small amount of money from USAD One had gotten none None of them are the reason these people are protesting And this is that's right they they'll go and they'll find you know somebody got like $50,000 grant for like new computers from USCID or something and suddenly the reason that there's millions of people on the street I mean they assign or or even open societies which does great work but like if open society you know the Soros Foundation was as all powerful as these people you know we wouldn't be in the mess we're in right there'd be left governments like like this is not what is happening in the world you know so I'm just so tired the fact that people they've been on the same talking points about Soros and USAD and foreign funding for for 20 years now you know and the fact that people still swallow that is such like the amount of money that the Trump people are going to put in there in their various developments is far more than than they came in from USAD or some foundations I will say on hopeful note this is a entirely organic studentled movement that is able to get like I'm not that good at math but it's like something like 5% of the population if you're talking about 300,000 people on the street and they're wildly popular too wildly popular innovative they're they look like they're having fun to America like where are we like we need to get out in the streets like this this is the only thing that has a remote chance of arresting a democratic backsliding is to see this number of people out in streets 300,000 people in Serbia is like having millions and millions and millions of people out on the streets here And I and I think my hope is it is showing that there are people in parts Serbia is a tough place to protest too right you're taking some degree of risk You've got a creepy pretty autocratic president He's kind of kind of like Putin adjacent right um this is you know hopefully breaking the fear factor for people to stand up against these far-right movements or these kind of corrupt uh and it also shows you that the the argument the thing that got people in the streets at the end of the day was not just about like democracy It was more about corruption It was more about we know these people have patronage networks We know that their autocracy is directly screwing us It's leading to things like this thing collapsing and that's getting people killed And so I think it's a message that this this combination of like using corruption as a motivator and using protest as a vehicle is something that can be replicated in other places Yeah I mean right Exactly I mean Vuch calls the protesters He says it's a color revolution He says it's USAD It's total the the the government allowed a bunch of Chinese companies to renovate this railway like a year ago this rail station and then this giant piece of concrete collapsed and killed 15 people So that's why people took to the streets and this movement there was a great I think it's Al Jazer did a great piece on the protesters They've been organized in a really interesting way and that there's no leader Yes Like these students will get together like Hong Kong Yeah Exactly just like Hong Kong like they'll all get together in some big you know uh you know hall or something like a big lecture room and they'll put forward ideas and they'll all vote on them and they've been doing interesting things like walking on foot from for miles and miles from city to city and something like 80% of the population of the Serbian population supports their demands which are pretty focused around like transparency accountability not punishing the protesters supporting higher education So you're Right I mean I do think despite what Vuetta says despite what morons like Don Jr said like this is the way for anyone living under authoritarian rule Well and and one other thing I'd say is that like in addition to being specific in their demands being creative in their tactics having fun by the way it's a good thing to like it's a fun protest together It's a movement you want to be a part of They also they made an alliance of labor right and so they have labor unions who have like you know their own power bases And so that's an interesting way to like you start with students and then you bring in labor and then all a sudden you bring in other people right yep That's exactly right Yeah Not uh not Jared Kushner buying the old defense ministry building What's the corruption that's happening in Serbia is it like a few USCID grants and a few foreign foundations or is it like the massive amounts of Chinese money paying for shitty infrastructure projects lining the pockets of Vuch cronies while you know Jared and Rick Grenell are making real estate deals i think there's a little more money on one side of the alleged with the former information minister for the superv genocidal war criminal Uh let's just close out the section by listening to uh a clip of some protesters who spoke to the BBC And I'm protesting because they want to live in a safer country a country without corruption and a country with a much higher level of democracy This corruption has led to many lives being lost It's just awful living in this kind of climate in Serbia right now I was at every protest in every city It was magical to be in Novisad where it all happened It felt like a celebration of democracy The protest gave me back the pride ahead in my country because of the students who allowed me to hope that things can get better and that we can do better So uh not USA No Wink wink Americans uh you know what to do You know this show is really pointing us the right direction I think Okay Final thing Ben Uh did you know that one of China's biggest restaurants is offering refunds to an estimated 4,000 customers sounds exciting right sounds very exciting Unfortunately the reason is because a video went viral of a customer standing on a table in pissing into a vat of boiling broth at a hot pot restaurant No no no So these like I guess some 17y old guys were in a private room I'm sure they were hammered They posted to this thing it went super viral and I guess the restaurant chains like didn't respond forever and then finally like people were not thrilled with the uh food safety implications so they've offered to compensate anyone who was at the chain part of the chain's 4100 orders between February 24th and March 8th So uh I guess justice in the end Thank you CBS News for all this reporting by I these are the kind of stories we need I do have like a general weariness when you go to I mean the hot pot here or two is not that good Let's face it like like I haven't done a lot of hot pot I I've done it and and and I love anything involving like bowls with stuff in it and broth and meat and noodles and stuff but it just doesn't look appetizing Like there's this where's this liquid they bring you these liquids that they drop on your I don't know like this is confirming my worst fears about hot pot You know I I suppose anything could happen in the kitchen that I don't know about but I the communal space aspect I'm excited for the feedback on this commentary because I'm sure people are going to tort us but I am so pathetic about spice that like if something is like Anthony Bourdain wouldn't look me in the eye were you still alive and we talked about this because I remember early on in dating I went to this really cool like new Thai place in DC that did this progressive coursing Lil Syrup Yes Yeah I was like a I was a regular there right on like 14th right yeah They knew me by name there Okay And there was no reservations So I Your scalp starts sweating on the second course Yeah Yeah I love that place That place was so good By the end of the meal they were bringing me milk after milk after milk because I was like sweating bullets and I just couldn't do it I couldn't get through And I wanted to eat it so badly cuz it was so delicious but I just I just couldn't do it And like no amount of practice makes me better at that which is why I haven't been like a big hot pucker I like spice I it's like I like actually just to put in a plug nearby I went and got a I don't know if you guys any any of the crew back there has been to a land noodle on Labraa and San Monica Good I got the spicy land noodle and I was literally I like the spice but it doesn't mean you don't have natural reactions So I just had tears like coming out I was like if someone could have been looking at me and just thinking I was having like some kind of breakdown because I'm literally just crying but like crying with joy If I went on Hot Ones by the third wing my face would look like a firing Well yeah This is the problem with the and I'd be dripping and the snot and the tears and it would be I would never get through it I that at least you weren't you wouldn't be eating piss to bring this home And that's the problem with the like the hot pot that that And that's the problem with I don't I I I don't sure people may be triggered by this This is just one one man's opinion have an opinion on this But like I I also kind of don't want to cook my own food I mean like that's why you go out right like I don't need to like I like Korean barbecue for that reason That's fine Yeah Like I just you can bring it to me you know okay Well we'll uh we'll we'll we'll go out We'll get some hot pot We'll see what everyone says to us Okay We're going to take a quick break When we come back you're going to hear Ben's interview with Pankage Mishra uh about his book The World After Gaza So stick around for that Uh also we wanted to tell you about an amazing new podcast from Crooked Media We all need a little break from the news Ben Sometimes it feels good to dive into a story like a true crime story Like a true crime story We got a story a new podcast you guys are going to love The world are going to love You might already love it because we put it in your feed over the weekend It's called Shadow Kingdom God's banker Here's what it's about In the summer of 1982 the Vatican's top money man was found dead Roberto Khali known as God's banker I tried to do Italian accent Ki was embroiled in an infamous moneyaundering scandal that tied him to an ultra secretive far-right society the Sicilian mafia and the Catholic Church His death at the time was ruled a suicide but the evidence it told a different story For decades no one could say what really happened until now Journalist Nicola Manoni is following a new lead one that could finally answer the question who killed God's banker this is a fun wild story It's a little bit sinister too There masons involved There's some Masons Can Can I say something that was interesting about the last time we plugged this uh so uh this is like You ever like find out that you're communicating with like your parents through the podcast no Like like cuz they listen and they hear something and they my my grandfather was a Mason No way I I Yes Which I I I had once known and forgotten So when I was kind of you know throwing some shade at the Masons uh my dad was like "Oh remember your grandfather was a Mason?" I bet that there's a And by the way he was a Mason in smalltown Texas So he wasn't like running the world in some headquarters He was he was in like Baytown Texas Yeah And look I also I assume most Masons were just like part of any kind of fraternal organization like got people together in like a civic way and did things together I my my time in government has led me to believe that most conspiracies don't exist cuz no one can keep a secret or get anything done because the actual reality is kind of the ultimate conspiracy theory They're a bunch of rich powerful people controlling the world you know look at Elon Musk like you don't need a conspiracy theor cutting all the so shout God's banker you know shadow kingdom like that at least get a good story out of it this is a great story because we are living in this horrifying far-right world led by awful people uh and you can see the beginnings of this farright movement in Italy take form in this podcast in a way that provides a lot of context for what we're dealing with today so episode one is in the pod save the world feed you should check it out and if you love it you can hear episode two now by subscribing to the Shadow Kingdom feed wherever you get your podcast And if you don't want to wait you can binge the whole series today by joining the Friends of the Pod at crooked.com/friend or by subscribing on the Shadow Kingdom Apple podcast channel Pot World is brought to you by Haya Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise Filled with two teaspoons of sugar unhealthy chemicals and other gummy additives growing kids should never eat That's why Hya created a superpowered chewable vitamin Haya fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide a full body nourishment our kids need with yummy taste they love Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts Haya is pressed with a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and 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big on cost and on time Therapy should feel accessible not like a luxury With online therapy you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress Your mental health is worth it and now it's within reach You know who would benefit from therapy everyone running our government JD Vance is who I was thinking about You know if he wasn't just such like a a petulant insecure brittle condescending insufferable schmuck Yeah I think you'd be better off With over 30,000 therapists BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 5 million people globally It's convenient too You can join a session with a click of a button helping you fit therapy into your busy life plus switch therapists at any time Your well-being is worth it Visit betterhelp.com/crookedworld to get 10% off your first month That's betterhelp hp.com/crookedworld Okay I'm very pleased to be joined by Pankage Mishra He's the author of the new book The World After Gaza Also one of our leading thinkers writers essaist You can read his work in many different places Uh Pankage thanks so much for joining us Thanks Ben for having me So I really recommend everybody read this book It's uh it's it's tough but bracing and uh fearless and connects so many different threads to answer kind of a question that you pose in the book that I think kind of sums it up How did Israel a country built a house of persecuted and homeless people come to exercise such a terrible power of life and death over another population of refugees many of them refugees in their own land and how can the western political and journalistic mainstream ignore even justify its clearly systematic cruelties and injustice Uh which you know that I feel like the book uh sets out to answer that question through everything from intellectual history to political analysis to to wrestling with current events Uh before we dive into that though um it's interesting we're speaking the day after Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza Um and I I wonder what your reaction is to that event cuz it feels to me like as shocking as these images are and hundreds of people killed children killed um people are so worn down by experiencing this um how do you connect you know being out in the world talking about this book which is about the world after Gaza to the kind of resumption of what we're seeing in Gaza well but it's become more and more difficult you know um because in a way I was one of those people who did not believe the ceasefire would last Uh it was extremely fragile and of course it was being violated um all through these um previous weeks previous uh four 8 weeks Um but if in any case I mean I think you know the sudden violation of it this morning u and the you know number of casualties just in a single day I think it's the current figures are more than 150 children still it still it leaves you speechless um and you know again that question like what what strategic objectives uh what geopolitical goals are being met through this kind of indiscriminate bombing And it's very clear again the answer is that Netanyahu is doing this in order to preserve his um at this point weakening hold on power we know that uh he's you know few few steps away from prison and he keeps postponing that that that sort of moment uh somehow and there are people in his cabinet who help him do this and of course there is now the Trump administration willing to give him a green light um to to really whatever he wants to do at this point So I think in a way we are in a more kind of desperate stage where the culture and politics of cruelty is now you know truly global Um especially especially after the arrival of of President Trump in the White House and there is simply no really recourse to any ideas of you know sustainable peace or let let alone you know things like compassion or empathy Well I think what's so uh important about your book is you step back from this and and you you you look at the kind of narratives and um identity politics for lack of a better way of putting it that uh helped produce the moment we're in Um and and you know peop I should just say some people may find this a challenging read I I hope people read this book who might go into that being inclined to disagree with it I think that that's actually the most important reader for you So I'm going to go through some of those uh pieces of it and and one that you talk about a lot is is the interconnection between Israel and the Holocaust and how that has evolved over time And and I'll tell you Pangosh I I um I I was very challenged by this because I'm one of those people I'm a secular Jew who grew up in my identity was not religious but it was tied to the Holocaust right we had family in the Holocaust and and Israel was a part of the reckoning for the Holocaust and kind of my self-conception right that that it was an achievement um to have this kind of safe haven and and yet you kind of build I think a pretty compelling case that it wasn't immediately you know Zionism obviously predated the Holocaust and even when the state of Israel was declared independent the Holocaust did not play as central a role in its identity as it came to do later Um and and and you kind of talk about and to quote from the book this deepening fixation with the Showa and official Israeli rhetoric and a radical reinvisioning of Israel's identity and purpose as a country that would forever be on guard against another Showa which I think is a statement that nobody would really disagree with Talk about why that what to to kind of tee you up here you kind of make an argument that that kind of infinitely justifies anything Israel does visav security threats visav the Palestinians that that if you are imbued with that kind of moral uh mission uh to prevent another holocaust you you you kind of have a certain impunity Uh why did you decide to focus on this piece of of of the conflict and the Israeli identity you know because Ben like many many people out there um I tended to think that the memory of the Holocaust at least you know as as as commemorated in in Israel flowed very naturally out of this you know extraordinary uh traumatic experience of it And there were survivors who then you know transmitted their memories to their children and and and so within the culture at large that memory was slowly sort of institutionalized in a way But then much to my great shock I discovered that was certainly not the case um and that in fact the survivors were treated with great contempt when they first arrived in the state of Israel because they seemed to project an image of weakness that the leaders of the state of Israel at that point recoiled from because they were invested in a very different image of Israel altogether as this very strong country So it's only in the 1960s that politicians turned to invoking the Holocaust as a sort of shared narrative as a kind of nationbinding glue for the Israeli population You have to remember you know large part of the Israeli population at that point in fact more than 50% consisted of people who had come to Israel from Arab countries and so they had to be educated into this you know European experience and to this European narrative So I think you know unscrupulous far-right politicians started to deploy the showa you know precisely at the point again worth remembering when in the 1960s when Israel actually becomes the supreme military power in the Middle East So on one hand you have you know this this extraordinary military power which is you know capable of taking on simultaneously several uh Arab nation states several Arab armies and defeating them At the same time there is this emphasis on the idea that the showa happened once it could happen again and that you're living in a country that's surrounded by potential Nazis you know that that the Israel Israel's borders are as Mosha Dian put it the borders of Awitz Um so this kind of you know very deliberately cultivated paranoia is is is something that replaces really you know what what might have been for some people at least a memory flowing out of that particular experience So what I'm trying to say is in the book is that you know individual memory is one thing collective memories quite another Collective memories always constructed with very particular uh ideological ends and that is certainly the case here with with the memory of the Holocaust in in Israel Well and I want to apply this to a number of things that are happening around the world right now So um cuz basically you know part of what follows from that idea is that the the risk of uh a genocide of the Jewish people the risk of anti-semitism you you kind of show how it transferred from actual Nazis you know the German flavor to to kind of putting that on the Palestinians or the Arabs right that even though there was no evidence that they you know they never they weren't responsible for the Holocaust right um but what confuses me pankage I I you know what do you make of the fact that today um the discourse on anti-semitism particularly in this country tends to focus almost wholly on Hamas or the kind of left right so um Hamas which did horrific horrific poggram on October 7th but I I don't think anyone would think that Hamas is capable of destroying the state of Israel but even to go beyond that you college kids getting deported from you know Colombia because they they pose some violent threat to to Jews There's this kind of this zero tolerance for essentially criticism of Israel or solidarity with a certain kind of Palestinian politics At the same time that we see a rise of the very far-right ethnationalism in Europe and the United States that I think um actually was the political force that led to the actual Holocaust So what do you make of this redirection that at at precisely the time that we see these kind of echoes of the 30s in the rise of ethnationalism in in the in the west instead of focusing on that the entire anti-semitic compet conversation about anti-semitism seems to be focused on either the Palestinians or or the western left Well it's fascinating I mean I think it attests in in in in a in a very significant way to the success of the Israeli narrative We know that we are under sort of constant we live with this constant threat of being exterminated and this is a narrative that the state of Israel has very successfully persuaded many other people outside of Israel to believe and to subscribe to So this is why you have this sort of you know extraordinary disparity or discrepancy where you know Israel is a is a formidable military power You can see that right away basically you know cons is it's engaged in a war with Yemen with Syria with Lebanon and of course it's bombing Gaza as we speak and doing that without any serious military response whatsoever from any of these parties that it's engaged in in in this war with Um so you have you know Israel becoming stronger and stronger partly thanks to American support and at the same time becoming closer and closer to far-right formations across Europe and of course the United States the the Christian evangelicals So the object of anxieties for many people in the United States which is the state of Israel what they have really not noticed is how uh in in in a kind of really disturbing ways this state that they wish to be protective of or sympathetic to has gone down this very dangerous very sinister path of closer and closer alliances with not only far-right you know political groups or personalities or governments in Europe but actually actively explicitly anti-semitic movements There was a piece on Haritz only yesterday about this you know very very close links being developed between the state of Israel and you know various notoriously anti-semitic organizations in in Europe So this conversation in the United States seems to be completely detached from these developments You know the internal developments within the state of Israel the rise the emergence of a far right and the fact that the Israelis themselves the Israeli regime is today you know establishing intimate relations with some of the most powerful anti-semmites in the world Well you also talk about um the relationship between uh Narendra Modi and and BB Netanyahu Um and I want I want you to just describe for listeners who might not be familiar like what are the overlapping roots and um the overlapping project of the Hindu nationalism we see from Modi and the kind of ethnic nationalisms we see from Netanyahu Is and is this the future of politics i mean because it you know you it feels like that all around the world there's a different flavor of this you know you know I grew up in in in India uh in a Hindu nationalist family you know very sympathetic to Israel and partly because you know Israel we saw um as a country that was merciless in his treatment of you know potentially treacherous forces such as you know the Muslim population of of of Palestine So that was one major sort of source of admiration for us and I think today there are many more people in India who feel that way You know Netanyahu has his biggest fan base in in in India Um and and of course the Modi government is actually an exception within the global south within Asia and Africa and Latin America in in having such close relations And I think it's partly because again I think like other far-right formations or ethnationalist you know movements and and personalities they see Israel essentially as getting away uh doing a lot of things that they would like to pull off but can't So Israel really is is is a is a is a great sort of object of envy for them And I think there's a kind of you know ideological affinity of course with the majoritarian ethnationalist project but I think on a psychological level there is this great feeling of identification with a country that can be so indiscriminately brutal and and uncompromising and that is something they themselves aspire to So it's it it works at very many different levels you It's not just you know people point to arm sales or or increasing trade or India becoming part of some you know Middle Eastern kind of anti-China uh group or narrative But I think it's also really important to look at these ideological and psychological affinities between between between not only India and and Israel but also other farright groups and and Israel today Well if I were to play devil's advocate and and um and say from the perspective of a Modi uh or a Netanyahu or any any number of these figures Putin has his own version of this history Orban Hungary lost territory after war etc Um I think the way they wouldn't describe it but I think the way their their minds might work is this world is corrupt It's cruel It's a tough place And you know what uh if if we want to survive in this world we might just need to be cruel ourselves You know that that the Indians suffered under the yoke of the British and before that the Mughal Empire I guess and you know the Russians got humiliated at the end of the cold war Obviously the Jewish people have suffered um for centuries and you know what you might not you know guys like you and me might not like it but this is how the world works And if you don't have this kind of ethnationalist strong man type state you're going to end up being on the other end of that you know how do you uh how do you wrestle with that possibility that that maybe they're right i think you know I mean that's certainly the trend right now and it was of course a trend back in the back in the 19th century You know the scramble for Africa all the sort of clashes between imperialist powers and then we saw two world wars in the 20th century I think the whole point of countries like India or or or places where people fought devoted a large part of their lives to fighting imperialism and fighting for national sovereignty was that we create a new world order where this kind of social dharmist survivalist mentality uh which you know causes constant conflict causes forces nations to live in this atmosphere of fear and paranoia uh that we can get away from all that create you know society or international global order based on some shared norms some some norms of civilization So if you want to go back there you know to those dark days of of of you know racial imperialism in in the 19th century kind of naked exploitation naked expansion um well you know uh maybe these people have a point but if we don't want to go back there and and find ourselves in a third world war then I think we need to move away from these you know sort of fantasies of a purified national community a national community purified of its treacherous elements um all this you know is is really potentially extremely violent you know not just to the nations themselves but also to to to world peace at large Um so I think you know the these people may have persuaded um you know some parts of their population that this is the right way but I think you know you can see very clearly a future full of more and more conflict if not catastrophic world war Yeah No the the the history shows it it leads to bad places And I I want to ask you about this because the world order seems to have unraveled at least as you know the postw World War II US-led order Um you another core point of your book uh which I think again I I hope people in this country read because uh you make it very persuasively is that for most of the world's people right there's not the same narrative of the last hundred years where the central events were world war II and um the cold war and the Holocaust It's actually the story of decolonization Um which encompasses by the way many holocausts of of non-white peoples and many liberation struggles and and you're kind of reflecting the perspective uh you know to to use the the shorthand that can be problematic but the the global south view essentially the decolonized world um is probably looking at what's happening in the US now certainly looking at what's happening in Gaza now and and see it kind of confirming all of their worst um experiences and and perspectives on the West Is there a potential as someone who's you know written about this in other books too do you see any potential for some different kind of concept of order to generate not from within the west but from within the global south um what is the potential for something to emerge out of this wreckage of per of a period of history we're living through in which some of the countries that are you know generally seen as more marginal to world events but are rising in and power and influence could we see something emerge from that narrative that is um you know more durable than than the order that President Trump is currently deconstructing well it's interesting you asked that you know because um obviously India is not the the leader in the way it used to be of the you know non-west as it were Uh it was once you know it had this very morally prestigious position The leader right now is South Africa South Africa which is kind of insisting that certain norms be be observed uh and and for that reason we know it risked a great deal by going to the H by filing that case against the against the against the state of Israel But again it comes out of that long experience of of fighting against you know racist imperialism of of fighting against racial discrimination and saying look we can't have this anymore We we can't have you know a sort of a nation whose borders have never been clearly defined that keeps expanding all the time then periodically bombing people So I suppose the South African initiative in in in recent months a very risky initiative for which it is being severely punished as we speak by by by the Trump administration is probably one sign that within the global south some of those energies that went into the anti-aparttheide struggle or went into the struggle for decolonization the urge for a new world order those impulses those desires are probably still alive and can occasionally take surprising forms like you know the South African case against uh against Israel which again I say was a huge gamble you know and and a huge risk and obviously you know they are paying paying the price for it right now and one last question you know another one of your books that I really liked is from the ruins of empire where you detail some of the writers and thinkers from within uh these parts of the world whether it's China India the Islamic world who who kind of seeded what became liberation movements um What is the role of the writer today uh because it can probably feel so overwhelming You know people are on social media People are in this kind of pretty dumbed down discourse You you know are someone who've written for you know the New Yorker the New York Review Books London Review Books write these books How do you think about the role of a political writer in in this kind of very um both scary and sometimes stupid period we're living through you know that's um I think Ben I sometimes feel like all we can do is kind of keep opening up fresh perspectives keep exploring experiences that haven't been explored before persuade people to step out of their you know boxes their silos um their particular narratives and and make them see that there are other ways of understanding this you know uh other ways of perceiving the world and try and make them see how the other looks at it you know how how people on different in different parts of the world look at And again as I said there are so many histories and those are the histories that I've been engaging with that have not really been properly told because who will tell them you know uh you need a lot of institutions lot of institutional power a lot of cultural power to relate those histories and I think as you know responsible citizens uh whether as writers or just ordinary citizens it's our kind of responsibility to bring those experiences into play to make people think that there is not only just this one story Uh there are so many different stories out there and you know if if if as writers we can insist on the multiplicity of these stories and you know the multiple perspectives that that that go with those stories then perhaps we would have made you know a tiny contribution Obviously we don't have any kind of political power We can you know we watch as helplessly as anyone else uh the mayhem in the world today But at least you know we can make a small difference just by creating this little archive that you know people can can can can look to for some kind of intellectual and and even perhaps emotional support Yeah Well look I I really appreciate the conversation Uh the book is The World After Gaza People should read it If you have been critical of Israel you will learn much uh about the history of how we got here If you are supportive of Israel I I think you it's even more important again for you to kind of uh wrestle with some of the difficult questions that are raised in the book So Pankash thanks for writing the book and thanks for joining us Thanks so much Ben for having me Thanks again to Pankage Mishra for joining the show Um what else should we get we go get a little hot pot I do I love the Korean barbecue in this area Korean barbecue in LA is just off the charts Incredibly good Yeah Uh what else we eat we got good Vietnamese I mean like like there's pockets of amazing Vietnamese around you know the I mean LA's LA's got LA's got Yeah we got good team All right that's it for this week Talk to you soon