Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Brest to Grozny: History, Music, and the Unfinished Divorce of the Post-Soviet World Across Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, and Russia

Transcript

Brest to Grozny: History, Music, and the Unfinished Divorce of the Post-Soviet World Across Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, and Russia · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, how's the family?
• 0:01
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:02
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:04
  We're coming to you live from damradio.com
• 0:07
  forward slash live.
• 0:08
  You can listen to all the past shows
• 0:10
  by going to internationalflavor.com or should you
• 0:15
  feel the urge, you can go out to
• 0:16
  damradio.com forward slash podcast and listen to
• 0:21
  not only my wonderful international flavor show that
• 0:25
  comes to you every morning from 7 30
• 0:27
  to 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday, but
• 0:30
  you can also listen to the additional show
• 0:34
  offerings like on Fridays, I do civic outlaws
• 0:37
  and that is a more of a civil
• 0:45
  and civic actions and interesting legal themes that
• 0:49
  need to take place.
• 0:51
  I run a, I run a an organization
• 0:53
  called the modern law ecosystem.
• 0:58
  And it is, uh, it's progressing quite well.
• 1:02
  I'm, I'm feeling pretty good about it.
• 1:04
  I like it a lot.
• 1:05
  And so we do research for law firms.
• 1:07
  We do stuff like that.
• 1:08
  And then I'm also, uh, one of the,
• 1:11
  uh, uh, uh, founding members of civic outlaws
• 1:14
  and MOLAG Missouri licensing, um, advocacy group where
• 1:21
  we talk about Missouri licensing and, uh, it's
• 1:25
  a, uh, that's a five Oh one C
• 1:27
  six.
• 1:28
  Civic outlaws five Oh one C three.
• 1:30
  And so we're growing and we're looking for,
• 1:32
  uh, people to join in the effort, uh,
• 1:35
  and in all of those things, sorry to
• 1:37
  do some personal advertising, but it's my damn
• 1:39
  show.
• 1:40
  So there you have it.
• 1:41
  I wanted to talk a little bit about
• 1:43
  his story and history and memory and stuff
• 1:47
  like that because, um, and I, and it's
• 1:50
  kind of, I travel a lot and I
• 1:54
  was, I was, I tried to get a
• 1:56
  new Russian visa and, uh, I sent off
• 1:59
  my passport, uh, which you have to do.
• 2:02
  And it goes to the Russian consulate.
• 2:04
  I've gone twice to the Russian consulate one
• 2:06
  in Washington, DC.
• 2:08
  Now, I was there years and years ago.
• 2:10
  I used to drop off all the Russians
• 2:11
  over there.
• 2:12
  That's where they would get their support.
• 2:13
  So when I worked at, uh, uh, onsite
• 2:16
  inspection agency, pretty funny.
• 2:19
  I'd have like a 15 passenger van full
• 2:22
  of Russians and I'd drive them all over
• 2:23
  the place, wherever they wanted to go.
• 2:25
  And all I was was a glorified chauffeur.
• 2:28
  You're a chauffeur.
• 2:29
  Now show is chauffeur noun.
• 2:32
  We wonder anyway.
• 2:33
  Um, the fact is, is that, uh, I've
• 2:36
  been to the Russian, uh, consulate, uh, years
• 2:39
  ago and it hasn't changed a whole lot.
• 2:42
  And, uh, I went there, uh, 2021.
• 2:46
  Oh, you know what?
• 2:46
  It was during COVID.
• 2:47
  I went there in 2020 and I went
• 2:49
  to the Russian consulate and the frigging capital
• 2:52
  building in, in the Supreme court, we're all
• 2:56
  chained off with a razor wire fence on
• 3:00
  the top with military guards standing there, frigging
• 3:03
  nonsense.
• 3:04
  And the whole mall area where I had
• 3:06
  lived, basically, I like to run around there.
• 3:10
  Um, you know, if you watch, uh, captain
• 3:13
  America, they show him running around that, that
• 3:16
  space.
• 3:16
  That was a popular space to go.
• 3:18
  If you were stationed at, um, uh, Fort
• 3:22
  Belvoir, I think it is, is where all
• 3:24
  the generals houses are in the, in the
• 3:26
  Arlington national cemetery.
• 3:28
  And I worked on Fort Belvoir for a
• 3:31
  period, about six, eight months.
• 3:32
  And, um, it was a pretty cool little
• 3:34
  program.
• 3:34
  And I would go there in the morning
• 3:36
  at, and at six o'clock, I would
• 3:38
  do a run around the mall, just like
• 3:41
  those other people.
• 3:41
  I don't know why I'm telling these stories
• 3:43
  kind of a history story today.
• 3:44
  And you would run around there.
• 3:46
  And, uh, that was, that was, uh, uh,
• 3:48
  um, a beautiful way to start the day
• 3:52
  is running on the mall and you go
• 3:54
  down there and the, and the, the mall
• 3:56
  is in 2020.
• 3:57
  Anyway, it was covered with razor wire and
• 4:00
  nobody was there and it was frigging empty,
• 4:02
  you know, and you remember that place like
• 4:05
  from when a Forrest Gump was standing in
• 4:07
  front of the, uh, the Lincoln Memorial on
• 4:10
  the, on the one end, or was it
• 4:12
  to Washington Memorial?
• 4:13
  He was, no, he was standing in front
• 4:14
  of the Lincoln Memorial and, uh, uh, you
• 4:17
  know, where they had that big stage where
• 4:19
  a Forrest, Forrest Gump was, uh, given his,
• 4:22
  uh, speech.
• 4:23
  And that's all I have to say about
• 4:25
  the war in Vietnam, you know, and then
• 4:28
  he met his little girlfriend.
• 4:29
  Anyway, I don't know why I'm quoting movies
• 4:30
  and crap like that, but I wanted to
• 4:32
  talk about history and I wanted to talk
• 4:34
  about travel.
• 4:35
  And I wanted to talk about all of
• 4:37
  the things when you go to the consulate
• 4:39
  and, uh, the consulate has not changed.
• 4:41
  And it was, uh, um, you drop off
• 4:43
  your passport there.
• 4:45
  You get an interview by a Russian guy
• 4:48
  down there.
• 4:48
  That was kind of cool.
• 4:49
  And, um, you go through that entire process
• 4:52
  and they give you a visa.
• 4:53
  They mail it back to you a couple
• 4:56
  of weeks later.
• 4:57
  And then another time I went to the
• 4:59
  Houston consulate to get a Russian, um, uh,
• 5:04
  visa as well.
• 5:05
  And then the last time I, which was
• 5:09
  several years ago, 2023 it had to be
• 5:13
  because I had a three year visa.
• 5:14
  I went through a process where you do
• 5:18
  the interview, you do the paperwork and you
• 5:20
  give it to a facilitator and you pay
• 5:24
  that facilitator to take your passport through the
• 5:28
  process and they mail it off.
• 5:30
  Well, I did that.
• 5:31
  My passport or my visa, I mean expired
• 5:33
  in February.
• 5:35
  And so my visa to Russia expired in
• 5:38
  February and I still have plenty to go
• 5:41
  see and do in Russia.
• 5:42
  So I want another three year visa because
• 5:45
  every other one had only been granted to
• 5:47
  me for one year.
• 5:48
  So you got to get all the paperwork
• 5:49
  right.
• 5:50
  You got to have everything just so, or
• 5:52
  you won't get the visa that you want
• 5:54
  to get.
• 5:54
  And anybody who's been through this process, going
• 5:56
  to a country that isn't on, uh, uh,
• 6:00
  when it's not, uh, a friendly country, when
• 6:07
  you're not friendly, you know, these, uh, friends
• 6:10
  of Russia, well, you got a problem and
• 6:13
  the same is in reverse for them.
• 6:15
  This is what they go through to try
• 6:16
  to get to the United States and it's
• 6:18
  difficult for them.
• 6:20
  And so it's not as difficult anymore because
• 6:24
  I've had one, but before I had a
• 6:25
  diplomatic passport and my diplomatic passport, I had
• 6:28
  a diplomatic visa and they, they cocked that
• 6:31
  up one time for me and I went
• 6:33
  to Russia without a visa.
• 6:34
  That's a story in and of itself, which
• 6:36
  I won't share again here.
• 6:37
  But, uh, I could tell some stories about
• 6:40
  that.
• 6:41
  Anyway, the, the process of getting your visa.
• 6:46
  I sent my, my passport away several weeks
• 6:50
  ago, a month or two ago, two months
• 6:52
  ago, I sent it away in March because
• 6:55
  I have some travel plans for, uh, uh,
• 6:58
  this summer to go to Russia.
• 6:59
  And I certainly want to be there for
• 7:01
  new years in, um, St. Petersburg is where
• 7:06
  I want to go to spend Christmas.
• 7:07
  I want to go see the new year
• 7:10
  in St. Petersburg, something I've always wanted to
• 7:13
  do.
• 7:14
  And, uh, at any rate, the process of
• 7:19
  getting a visa, I mailed it away.
• 7:21
  They mailed it back and my passport had
• 7:24
  no empty pages to, to stamp the Russians.
• 7:29
  They put a full page sticker in your
• 7:31
  passport every time you get a visa.
• 7:33
  And I've got three of those, however many
• 7:35
  pages your passport has.
• 7:36
  It's like 30 pages or whatever.
• 7:38
  And I never thought about it, but you
• 7:40
  know, you just go through and people stamp
• 7:42
  it in.
• 7:42
  Mine is completely full.
• 7:44
  And so I sent it in.
• 7:46
  I just figured they'd cover it up.
• 7:47
  And now somebody told me you could add
• 7:49
  more pages or whatever, but I I've never
• 7:51
  done that.
• 7:52
  And I thought I still had a couple
• 7:53
  of pages left.
• 7:54
  It's not something you really pay attention to
• 7:56
  when you travel and get stamps as much
• 7:57
  as I have.
• 7:58
  And so, uh, I sent it off and
• 8:02
  it came back.
• 8:04
  The lady had to send it back.
• 8:06
  She sent it in to the Russian consulate
• 8:08
  and the consulate sent it back.
• 8:10
  I still have three years left on my,
• 8:11
  on my passport.
• 8:13
  Right.
• 8:13
  And they say, you can, you know, here's
• 8:15
  your passport, you know, here, she mailed the
• 8:17
  passport back and said, you know, everything is
• 8:20
  correct in here.
• 8:20
  Everything looks good, but there's no space to
• 8:23
  put your sticker, your visa without, uh, now
• 8:27
  sometimes you go to countries and they give
• 8:28
  you a paper visa and they put it
• 8:30
  in there and you got to carry it
• 8:31
  with your passport at the same time.
• 8:34
  If you go to, you know, another country,
• 8:36
  that's not totally friendly with you that has
• 8:39
  visa requirements for the U S and most
• 8:42
  countries, you don't have to do that, but
• 8:44
  there are some like you have to, I
• 8:46
  hear that in China, uh, now I had,
• 8:48
  you have to get one in Turkey on
• 8:50
  and off.
• 8:50
  And so I had to get one in
• 8:51
  Turkey, but in Turkey they give you a
• 8:53
  paper, you fold it up and you take
• 8:54
  it with you and you apply online two
• 8:56
  weeks before and you get a, you pay
• 8:58
  75 bucks and you get a visa.
• 9:00
  Right.
• 9:01
  And, uh, uh, so a lot of countries
• 9:03
  were like that, but Turkey is on again,
• 9:06
  off again.
• 9:07
  Sometimes you need a visa.
• 9:08
  Sometimes you don't.
• 9:09
  The last several times I've gone to Turkey,
• 9:11
  you don't need a visa.
• 9:12
  You just get a stamp when you come
• 9:13
  in.
• 9:13
  If you go to Qatar or somewhere, they
• 9:16
  just stamp your visa, read your eyeballs, you
• 9:18
  know, and check you out and keep you
• 9:20
  in the database and move on down the
• 9:23
  line.
• 9:23
  It's pretty smooth and decent process.
• 9:25
  Some places are not.
• 9:26
  When I went to Sri Lanka, uh, many
• 9:28
  years ago, had not many, 10 years ago,
• 9:30
  I had to get, uh, you know, something
• 9:32
  there.
• 9:32
  Anyway, um, getting the visa, they sent my
• 9:36
  passport back and I was like, well, crap.
• 9:38
  Now what?
• 9:39
  Get a new passport.
• 9:41
  So I signed up and, uh, uh, went
• 9:45
  to get a new passport.
• 9:49
  And so now, and you can order a
• 9:51
  big fat passport.
• 9:52
  No, you know, and so I ordered a
• 9:54
  big fat passport.
• 9:55
  So now I have a new passport.
• 9:57
  I got to send it away again to
• 9:58
  get some of this stuff.
• 9:59
  And then, so some of the troubles that
• 10:01
  you get and what I really wanted to
• 10:03
  get to was, uh, some history today and
• 10:06
  why history is so important.
• 10:08
  And I started out from the point of
• 10:10
  view of, uh, so I started my international
• 10:13
  flavor show in Russian in, um, uh, it
• 10:18
  had to be 2024.
• 10:20
  Four.
• 10:22
  When did, uh, maybe it might've been 2023.
• 10:26
  Um, we're going to find out for sure
• 10:30
  by asking a question to the computer.
• 10:39
  And I am asking when, what, when it
• 10:43
  was, it was a February and, uh, Tucker
• 10:47
  Carlson.
• 10:48
  Yep.
• 10:48
  I was right.
• 10:49
  It was February the 6th of 2024, two
• 10:54
  years after the start of the war in
• 10:56
  Ukraine.
• 10:57
  Now we're going to get to the meat
• 10:58
  of what I wanted to talk about without
• 11:01
  Sam stupid stories in the beginning and cocking
• 11:04
  up the entrance into his show.
• 11:06
  So when we're, and I got some music
• 11:07
  for you and I'm going to play some
• 11:09
  music just because I have a lot of
• 11:10
  songs that I liked that I wanted to
• 11:12
  play.
• 11:12
  And I can't find Lubitschka and I got
• 11:15
  to find Lubitschka, uh, because that's a good
• 11:17
  song.
• 11:17
  And, uh, anyway, Tucker Carlson interviewed, uh, president
• 11:21
  Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in Moscow on February 6th
• 11:25
  of 2024.
• 11:25
  And it was released on February 8th of
• 11:28
  2024.
• 11:28
  Well after that interview took place is when
• 11:31
  I started my international flavor show in Russian,
• 11:35
  not a Ruscom yes he kept and I
• 11:37
  did it in Russian.
• 11:38
  And I talked about how Tucker Carlson interviewed
• 11:42
  Vladimir Putin and what I believed he missed
• 11:45
  and opportunities and, and, and, and I, you
• 11:49
  know, I understand, I get it.
• 11:50
  It's a, you know, I don't know what
• 11:52
  I would do in the same situation.
• 11:53
  And Tucker's a professional journalist.
• 11:55
  I'm just some hack with a, with a
• 11:58
  radio show.
• 11:58
  Right.
• 11:59
  And Tucker's a good guy.
• 12:02
  Quick coffee sip there.
• 12:04
  And, uh, uh, at any rate, I, I
• 12:08
  didn't criticize, I think, but I thought he
• 12:10
  missed something.
• 12:10
  It was an awesome interview and he did
• 12:12
  very, very well, but he missed some things
• 12:13
  cause he doesn't speak Russian and he missed
• 12:16
  a couple of points and somebody is whispering
• 12:18
  in his ear and translating it for him
• 12:21
  on the fly.
• 12:22
  And that's the trouble with doing things in
• 12:24
  different languages.
• 12:25
  You don't get the absolute translation or you're
• 12:28
  so busy worrying about the translation.
• 12:30
  You don't necessarily get what the person is
• 12:33
  saying.
• 12:34
  And Vladimir Putin spent a lot of time
• 12:37
  in the first 20, 30 minutes of this
• 12:39
  hour plus hour and a half plus, I
• 12:41
  think interview and he spent a good 15
• 12:45
  to 20 minutes talking about history.
• 12:48
  And he was talking about the two years
• 12:50
  into the, to the war in Ukraine and
• 12:53
  well, many, it's actually 10 years into the
• 12:56
  war in Ukraine cause it really started in
• 12:58
  2014 when the Ukrainians were slaughtering Russians on
• 13:02
  the other side in the Donbass and nobody
• 13:04
  in the West paid any attention to that.
• 13:06
  And they didn't pay any pay any attention
• 13:08
  to the farce of the Minsk Accords and
• 13:11
  the, the, uh, the, uh, uh, what do
• 13:15
  you, what do you call it?
• 13:16
  Budapest agreements and all of that.
• 13:19
  All was wiped out by, by us funding
• 13:22
  and supporting Ukraine in an effort to take
• 13:26
  Russia.
• 13:26
  Okay.
• 13:27
  Now my point is that these things have
• 13:30
  gone along forever before there was Russia, before
• 13:35
  there was a Ukraine, before there was Poland,
• 13:39
  Lithuania, Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, uh, Armenia, all
• 13:46
  of these places that I talk about it.
• 13:49
  The fact is the human struggle for land,
• 13:55
  food, shelter, water, survival goes back and back
• 14:00
  in bath.
• 14:00
  And, and, and I am a, I don't
• 14:04
  know how to say it.
• 14:06
  A citizen of world history.
• 14:08
  I suppose you would say before I am
• 14:11
  a politic, uh, a political, uh, hack or,
• 14:16
  or reviewer of what's going on politically because
• 14:20
  history is what bases it all and makes
• 14:23
  it all so damned interesting of where we
• 14:28
  go.
• 14:28
  And so when we talk about this region
• 14:31
  as if it began with NATO or with
• 14:35
  Putin or with the Green Goblin or with
• 14:38
  Khrushchev or with Lukashenko or with anybody else
• 14:42
  in the area, we're already committing intellectual malpractice
• 14:47
  because it's not correct to attack it in
• 14:52
  that way.
• 14:53
  And so sometimes you feel like the Lone
• 14:55
  Ranger when you're talking about this stuff and
• 14:58
  people don't get it.
• 14:59
  People only care about what's happening today.
• 15:02
  But deep back in time we have the
• 15:04
  history of the Bashkortostan and the human memory
• 15:08
  of the step.
• 15:09
  That place was called the step, the vast
• 15:12
  plains.
• 15:12
  These areas were overrun by the Turkish hordes,
• 15:17
  by the Mongols, by, by, by Russian, uh,
• 15:20
  from the North, by, by Polish and Lithuanian
• 15:23
  forces from the Northwest.
• 15:25
  And it's been overrun for forever.
• 15:31
  From the earliest days of humanity, these places
• 15:35
  have been run over and you feel like
• 15:38
  the Lone Ranger when you say that.
• 15:40
  So I have some music choices for you
• 15:42
  and I hope you enjoy at the beginning
• 15:44
  of this, I'm going to play for you.
• 15:47
  Um, this is called, uh, and I have
• 15:50
  a couple of songs like these and they're
• 15:52
  great songs, but they're just, they're foolish and
• 15:55
  they're a foolish look into how Sam thinks,
• 15:58
  which could be a problem in and of
• 16:00
  itself.
• 16:00
  But we're going to play Mr. Lonely by
• 16:04
  a guy named Frankie B when we get
• 16:09
  into it.
• 16:10
  And this is a, it's a somewhat, Oh,
• 16:13
  it's a pretty long song, but we're going
• 16:14
  to go ahead and play it.
• 16:16
  And then we'll get to the meat and
• 16:18
  we're going to talk about the history and
• 16:19
  breast and where Vladimir Putin was going and
• 16:22
  why it was important and why people have
• 16:24
  ignored it all the way back then and
• 16:27
  are still ignoring the culture of it all
• 16:30
  right now, all over Europe, all over the
• 16:33
  West.
• 16:34
  I mean you could put this same function
• 16:36
  into Iran because Iran is the same connection
• 16:40
  that is connected to Azerbaijan, Armenia, uh, you
• 16:44
  know, on the, on into the Turkish areas,
• 16:47
  into Syria, all of those places over there.
• 16:50
  This is massively important and people don't understand
• 16:53
  it.
• 16:53
  And I feel very lonely when I talk
• 16:55
  about it.
• 16:56
  So I'm going to play Mr. Lonely for
• 16:58
  you.
• 20:40
  Oh yes.
• 20:42
  That's Mr. Lonely.
• 20:44
  And uh, well that sometimes is, sometimes it's
• 20:47
  about me.
• 20:48
  I feel like the lone freaking ranger.
• 20:50
  sometimes and talking about some of this stuff
• 20:54
  because people don't understand how important history is
• 20:58
  to you and we're gonna tie in another
• 21:01
  kind of techno-ish song as well later
• 21:04
  on and that'll be a little bit of
• 21:06
  fun too I just like sometimes and then
• 21:08
  I got a couple of Ruski as well
• 21:10
  you heard the German in there the guy
• 21:12
  talking about you know you're you're you're you're
• 21:15
  not the only lonely I'm also lonely and
• 21:18
  he started talking about is lonely and how
• 21:21
  he has no body for my own and
• 21:24
  so mental madness is what what we're talking
• 21:28
  about here but the working theme of my
• 21:30
  show is from you know talking about all
• 21:34
  the way from breast to the Caucasus all
• 21:36
  the southern the southern border of Russia where
• 21:39
  all the stands are where Georgia is I've
• 21:42
  told you some of these I don't want
• 21:45
  to just make it a travel diary because
• 21:48
  you know for some of the places that
• 21:49
  I went but I but I want to
• 21:51
  connect what I have discovered and what people
• 21:55
  need to discover in order to understand what's
• 21:58
  going on about connecting Eastern Europe Belarus Russia
• 22:04
  Georgia northern Ossetia Chechnya think about this Latvia
• 22:11
  Lithuania Estonia all of those can go in
• 22:16
  there as well and it you need to
• 22:23
  understand it when you can get there I'm
• 22:26
  gonna talk about breast first which is in
• 22:33
  Belarus no no think about this breast is
• 22:37
  one of the oldest cities in Belarus and
• 22:41
  it was first mentioned in a thousand nineteen
• 22:44
  as better Estia and its geography explains everything
• 22:50
  about its history it sits in the southwestern
• 22:53
  Belarus near the Polish border at the meeting
• 22:56
  of the Western boog and the Mukha Viet's
• 22:58
  rivers that location made it a trading point
• 23:02
  a military point a religious point and very
• 23:04
  political it was never just a city it
• 23:08
  is a hinge between different worlds Britannica summarizes
• 23:13
  this core history breast passed to Lithuania in
• 23:17
  1319 later to Poland then to Russia in
• 23:22
  1795 returned to Poland from 1919 to 1939
• 23:27
  and became part of Soviet Belarus after World
• 23:31
  War two the deeper point is that breast
• 23:35
  shows how artificial modern national borders and territories
• 23:41
  become when you're studying actual history of specially
• 23:46
  of Eastern Europe and anywhere connected to the
• 23:51
  complicated history a history of Russia this city
• 23:55
  breast has been connected to Kievan Rus the
• 23:59
  Poles the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the Polish
• 24:03
  Lithuanian Commonwealth the Russian Empire interwar Poland the
• 24:08
  Soviet Union and now Belarus you know Poland
• 24:12
  in Lithuania influence is huge in that area
• 24:15
  and you know you can't say it was
• 24:18
  Polish the Polish of course want to claim
• 24:20
  it's theirs it's been there's because they had
• 24:23
  it when 1919 to 1939 and the Soviets
• 24:27
  took it after that it became part of
• 24:29
  part of Soviet Belarus after World War two
• 24:32
  and so and then became part of stayed
• 24:34
  part of Belarus when the collapses Soviet Union
• 24:37
  these are just borders these are just political
• 24:41
  influences but the place has never changed it's
• 24:44
  the same people living there just different people
• 24:47
  controlling it and I'm telling you the that
• 24:50
  place you felt the history I didn't want
• 24:53
  to leave that place I swear to God
• 24:55
  it took it took three hours to get
• 24:58
  there two and a half to get there
• 25:01
  on a on a bus a great big
• 25:02
  bus from where was I oh I was
• 25:06
  in breast not breast Minsk I was in
• 25:09
  Minsk and we took the bus to to
• 25:12
  breast and spent the entire day on this
• 25:16
  little fortress island in between there talking about
• 25:18
  the history going back over some of the
• 25:20
  cool fortress that is built around there some
• 25:23
  of the best Soviet monuments that I have
• 25:26
  ever seen are inside that crepus the the
• 25:32
  fort they were inside of it and it
• 25:35
  was friggin awesome who toured that place in
• 25:38
  every room where they had the cells underneath
• 25:41
  and this was I mean it went back
• 25:43
  there's a huge church crepus crepus naya I
• 25:49
  don't know what you would call it the
• 25:50
  the the place where it's all walled in
• 25:53
  like a compound I guess it would be
• 25:55
  and and that in the compound they had
• 25:58
  all of these places for people to stay
• 26:00
  and the main protectorate was like the Lord
• 26:03
  of the land same as they did in
• 26:05
  England and so the Lord of the land
• 26:07
  had this big beautiful house church with all
• 26:12
  the cupolas on it like the top of
• 26:14
  the Russian churches you see those upside down
• 26:16
  onions is what I always call them that
• 26:18
  are on top of their coated with gold
• 26:20
  or coated with other fine materials or jewels
• 26:23
  or whatever to show the power of the
• 26:25
  guy in the region and that place passed
• 26:27
  back and forth between the Poles Lithuanians to
• 26:30
  Belarus the Ruskies the Kievan Rus because Ukraine
• 26:35
  took that place over a couple of times
• 26:37
  came or people from Ukraine came up and
• 26:40
  took that place so you can talk about
• 26:42
  all of these influences and pretend that it
• 26:44
  was Polish or pretend that it was Russian
• 26:46
  and Soviet Empire you know pretending that all
• 26:49
  the earlier history disappeared and this is what
• 26:52
  makes this place in particular interesting it's layered
• 26:56
  it's not simple the simple history is to
• 26:59
  say wow Soviet Union on that and then
• 27:01
  and then then the Belarus they're they're fans
• 27:04
  of Russia so they took it over and
• 27:06
  it's part of that well who knows if
• 27:08
  they're gonna remain fans of Russia when Lukashenko
• 27:11
  has gone who knows what's gonna happen and
• 27:14
  I mean same thing could happen there that's
• 27:18
  happening in Ukraine and it's nonsense you know
• 27:21
  even in Ukraine and in the history of
• 27:23
  Ukraine is even worse because the only time
• 27:26
  Ukraine existed is anything separate other than the
• 27:29
  crepus naya an exterior fortress part of Kievan
• 27:35
  Rus which started in Kiev and then moved
• 27:39
  to Moscow is before that history but it
• 27:42
  was all part of the Russian Empire and
• 27:45
  those guys were not on the edges Ukraine
• 27:48
  means edge means frontier you I mean it
• 27:51
  doesn't really but but that's not cry cry
• 27:54
  who cry is a cry is the edge
• 27:56
  is the the in and who means next
• 27:59
  to who cry it is is it's in
• 28:02
  their freaking word and they were part of
• 28:04
  the borders the borderlands which stretched all the
• 28:07
  way through Poland it sometimes and when it
• 28:09
  was part of the Lithuanian Polish Empire which
• 28:12
  which was based in Lithuania up in what
• 28:17
  was the name of that city hell I
• 28:19
  can't remember but it but it was it
• 28:21
  was when I went last year to that
• 28:23
  place I liked I was checking out the
• 28:25
  history okay and so well think about this
• 28:29
  breast matters from the religion of the area
• 28:33
  as well because of the Union of breast
• 28:36
  which came about in 1596 that agreement United
• 28:41
  several million Russian Ukrainian Kiev Bruce Bella Russian
• 28:48
  Orthodox Christians that lived under Polish rule in
• 28:54
  Lithuania with the Roman Catholic Church and preserved
• 28:58
  elements of Eastern rights practice with people further
• 29:02
  east the the people from the religion the
• 29:06
  more more more Greek and Eastern Russian Orthodox
• 29:09
  and all of that was tied together in
• 29:12
  this one big Union of breast in a
• 29:15
  religious pact that agreement united all of these
• 29:19
  people to the Orthodox Christians under Polish and
• 29:23
  Lithuanian rule with the Roman Catholic Church while
• 29:27
  preserving elements of all the other religions and
• 29:30
  so this is because the struggle in this
• 29:33
  region has never been about language or about
• 29:35
  the army it's about churches it's about loyalty
• 29:38
  it's about bishops it's about Rome it's about
• 29:41
  who's which religion is correct among them all
• 29:44
  the way ordinary people get pulled into grand
• 29:47
  political religious projects historically it happens everywhere and
• 29:53
  that area in particular so then comes the
• 29:56
  breast Litovsk that that name still rings but
• 30:01
  you know in 1918 the Treaty of Brest
• 30:04
  Litovsk was signed in breast and the Central
• 30:07
  Powers signed one treaty with the Ukrainian Republic
• 30:11
  well Russian Ukrainian Republic on February 9 of
• 30:14
  1918 and another with Soviet Russia on March
• 30:17
  the 3rd of 1918 ending the hostilities in
• 30:21
  the Eastern Front in World War one same
• 30:25
  old crap going on in World War one
• 30:27
  the Russian side accepted the harsh terms because
• 30:31
  of the new Bolshevik government that went into
• 30:33
  place in 2017 that they needed to get
• 30:38
  out of the war so breast wasn't just
• 30:40
  a city where history happened it was a
• 30:42
  city where empires clashed historically forever and you
• 30:47
  know the breast fortress the crepus is that's
• 30:51
  the emotional center of all of it that
• 30:55
  place was unassailable would be the best word
• 31:00
  because it's basically on an island it's surrounded
• 31:04
  by river right and not not a big
• 31:06
  island but you got to get a bridge
• 31:08
  to come across you can't just wander across
• 31:10
  a low-lying patch of water you got
• 31:13
  to get there and that's where all the
• 31:15
  power was housed and so it was very
• 31:17
  hard to to get in there and so
• 31:20
  the fortress was built in the 1830s and
• 31:25
  1840s and it was the meeting point of
• 31:29
  the of the Boog and the Mukhavets rivers
• 31:32
  and during construction the town was relocated to
• 31:35
  about two kilometers away the fortress occupied more
• 31:39
  than four square kilometers in a central citadel
• 31:42
  multiple artificial island fortifications and that's what matters
• 31:47
  because when you walk through and you see
• 31:49
  the barracks the walls the gates and the
• 31:51
  ruins you're not just looking at a monument
• 31:54
  you're looking at an imperial an empire military
• 31:58
  machine turned into historic memory of the entire
• 32:03
  area and in 1941 the defense is what
• 32:07
  made the Brest Fortress a sacred element of
• 32:11
  Soviet and Belarus memory in June 1941 when
• 32:17
  Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa Brest was immediately
• 32:22
  hit Belarus talks about the Brest Fortress as
• 32:26
  a key symbol of Soviet resistance in World
• 32:29
  War two and it was the town of
• 32:31
  Brest was devastated you know outside of it
• 32:34
  soldiers inside the fortress resisted and the fortress
• 32:38
  later received the title of the hero fortress
• 32:41
  the equivalent symbolic category to this you know
• 32:45
  Soviet hero city ideas so the barracks the
• 32:49
  sculptures and the memorial scale is it's just
• 32:53
  enormous and there's a guy laying on a
• 32:57
  stone dude that is laying on his side
• 33:01
  crawling while laying on his belly basically crawling
• 33:05
  through and he's a you know tatters his
• 33:10
  rags he's aware you know as he's going
• 33:12
  through and that structure if you can I
• 33:17
  mean get on get on the internet and
• 33:19
  look at the Brest monuments and it is
• 33:21
  freaking amazing and it goes all the way
• 33:23
  back to the to the you know the
• 33:25
  1400s and they have a history in that
• 33:29
  area and so Brest isn't just I don't
• 33:36
  know a history point it's a cultural point
• 33:39
  right it didn't so it this memorial wasn't
• 33:43
  rebuilt as a normal historic restoration it was
• 33:46
  a shrine and the entrance is this huge
• 33:49
  star cut into concrete right there's a thirst
• 33:53
  monument that's the one I'm telling you about
• 33:56
  that talks about this injured soldier reaching for
• 34:00
  water trying to get to water and the
• 34:02
  bayonet obelisk is huge it's a hundred meters
• 34:06
  high and there's a courage monument that stands
• 34:09
  33 meters high Belarus dot BY Belarus notes
• 34:15
  that only 216 of 850 defenders buried there
• 34:21
  are known by their names they I mean
• 34:25
  they defended that place in in that crepus
• 34:29
  that fortress by in 1941 against the so
• 34:35
  the Nazi aggression on that spot so you
• 34:39
  know the they don't even know who that
• 34:44
  is and there's a famous war song that
• 34:47
  I have to look up that I'm gonna
• 34:49
  play for you and I think I think
• 34:58
  it is it's a very good song anyway
• 35:01
  but even if you watch satirical comedies like
• 35:06
  the show Patriot in Russian which I think
• 35:08
  is friggin hilarious that is funny and I
• 35:13
  watch it all the time even in there
• 35:15
  the Patriot this kid this kid who is
• 35:17
  good well he's a young man who's gonna
• 35:19
  be part of the KGB and or the
• 35:22
  Security Service it's you know whatever remains of
• 35:25
  the FSB that he's gonna be a part
• 35:28
  of he he he sings it and I
• 35:33
  think the version I'm gonna play I'm gonna
• 35:36
  put the Red Army Orchestra is one of
• 35:39
  my favorites is one I'm gonna play for
• 35:42
  you that tells you the one it is
• 35:46
  and this song is something that in wartime
• 35:49
  is this is the true Russian version of
• 35:55
  this and it's the shorter version that'll that'll
• 35:58
  play for you but it's called Katyusha and
• 36:01
  so these have been around for decades certainly
• 36:05
  since World War two then that they have
• 36:08
  been playing this and this is the one
• 36:10
  paid by the red played by the Red
• 36:11
  Army Orchestra and it's a historic it truly
• 36:15
  is a historic song and if you ever
• 36:17
  hear Russian things you know on the radio
• 36:20
  or in anything they always play stuff like
• 36:23
  this it's almost as big as Vysotsky over
• 36:26
  there and this song is a is a
• 36:28
  basically a war song it's a song of
• 36:32
  a of a soldier and his love who's
• 36:36
  Katyusha Katya and Katerina that would be for
• 36:41
  for real and it's a Katya and then
• 36:43
  Katyushka it would be what it is and
• 36:46
  this is a song about Katyusha and she's
• 36:48
  a young girl and her love is going
• 36:50
  off to war and blah blah blah but
• 36:52
  it's a I shouldn't say blah blah blah
• 36:54
  it's a good song but we're gonna play
• 36:56
  it for you and you may have heard
• 36:57
  it before it might sound familiar to you
• 37:32
  Oh
• 38:05
  It's a song for the girls You're flying
• 38:11
  behind the bright sun And you're a soldier,
• 38:15
  let's go to the bar Say hello to
• 38:18
  Katyusha And you're a soldier, let's go to
• 38:24
  the bar Say hello to Katyusha Let her
• 38:30
  remember a girl as simple as she used
• 38:32
  to and hear how she sings.
• 38:37
  Let the sun protect you, and love will
• 38:42
  save Katyusha.
• 38:44
  Let the sun protect you, and love will
• 38:50
  save Katyusha.
• 38:58
  Let the sun protect you, and love will
• 39:06
  save
• 39:06
  Katyusha.
• 39:25
  Oh yeah, Katyusha.
• 39:27
  And that was one of the oldest versions.
• 39:31
  There's a little girl in there.
• 39:32
  She's got to be, what, 12, 13?
• 39:34
  That did the singing in there.
• 39:36
  Her name was on the screen.
• 39:41
  Valeria Kornushkina and the Red Army Orchestra.
• 39:45
  And that was, geez, ages ago that they
• 39:48
  have done that because the Red Army Orchestra
• 39:50
  obviously hasn't been around for years.
• 39:54
  The Red Army doesn't exist anymore.
• 39:57
  Well, it does, but it's now the Russian
• 39:58
  Army.
• 39:59
  And at any rate, that is a historic
• 40:02
  song.
• 40:03
  And it talks about a girl who's on
• 40:05
  the banks of the river singing and her
• 40:08
  soldier goes off to war and he fights
• 40:12
  for everybody's right to survive in this country.
• 40:17
  Now, this is a cultural song.
• 40:19
  But that song, even today, is extremely important.
• 40:25
  And there's some more that have jumped in
• 40:26
  there.
• 40:26
  But that, when you talk about it, and
• 40:29
  culturally, you know what you're talking about.
• 40:32
  You're talking about defending your homeland and those
• 40:37
  that you love.
• 40:38
  And your loved ones are being strong about
• 40:41
  it.
• 40:41
  Katyusha keeps her songs to herself.
• 40:43
  And she holds the love of her soldier
• 40:45
  who is taking care of the fighting in
• 40:48
  the war.
• 40:49
  So when you talk about war, and you
• 40:51
  talk about especially that area of the world,
• 40:54
  you can't talk about it without bringing in
• 40:57
  all of the enormous cultural influence.
• 41:01
  My culture influence, of course, is slanted because
• 41:03
  I had a Russian Studies degree from the
• 41:06
  University of Illinois.
• 41:07
  I went to the Russian Language School in
• 41:10
  Monterey, California.
• 41:11
  And so I learned the history from a
• 41:14
  Russian perspective.
• 41:16
  And all of the history that goes back
• 41:18
  into it.
• 41:19
  So, of course, I'm slanted toward that bit.
• 41:22
  But I also understand history from a much
• 41:25
  larger point anyway.
• 41:28
  Just because I'm a macro kind of guy
• 41:31
  and not these little micro battles that are
• 41:34
  going on between Ukraine and Russia.
• 41:36
  I see something that is like, Jesus, here
• 41:39
  we go again.
• 41:41
  And 100 years from now, here we go
• 41:43
  again.
• 41:44
  100 years ago, here we go again.
• 41:47
  Kiev, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
• 41:52
  Polish Empire giving up its space because it
• 41:56
  had been overrun by the Nazis anyway.
• 42:01
  Russia defending against those Nazis.
• 42:03
  The Polish people have been through hell since
• 42:07
  their Polish-Lithuanian Empire, which I reviewed in
• 42:10
  Lithuania last year.
• 42:12
  And it's all of these historic things, depending
• 42:15
  on what period of history you're looking at,
• 42:18
  you're looking at who's in charge.
• 42:20
  And when you talk about those things, you
• 42:22
  talk about what is going on now in
• 42:24
  Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russian borders along the north
• 42:31
  of there, Turkey off to the west, Syria
• 42:33
  off to the southwest, or maybe straight west.
• 42:37
  And Turkey is a little bit more northwest.
• 42:39
  But either way, you can talk about this
• 42:44
  from when I took a trip over to
• 42:45
  Georgia, went over to Tbilisi.
• 42:48
  And Tbilisi, I traveled through Vladikavkaz and into
• 42:52
  Chechnya, okay?
• 42:54
  And Chechnya, there's a city called Grozny.
• 42:56
  The same thing happened after the collapse of
• 42:59
  the Soviet Union.
• 43:01
  The western influence, and it's still going on
• 43:05
  today.
• 43:06
  Armenia, I talk about.
• 43:07
  I talk about Georgia and all of the
• 43:10
  influences of trying to turn these people into
• 43:12
  NATO as if they're part of Europe.
• 43:15
  They're not part of Europe.
• 43:17
  And NATO is the North Atlantic.
• 43:20
  And these places do not touch the North
• 43:23
  Atlantic.
• 43:24
  So why are they part of the North
• 43:26
  Atlantic Treaty Organization?
• 43:28
  This is nonsense.
• 43:30
  Oh, here now, Venezuela.
• 43:32
  Trump is floating Venezuela now as the 51st
• 43:36
  state.
• 43:36
  Ah, that's pretty comical.
• 43:39
  Anyway, I gotta get back to my point.
• 43:41
  And there's a mountain town that I'm telling
• 43:44
  you about that is Stepansminda.
• 43:52
  Stepansminda.
• 43:53
  And it's the town, it used to be
• 43:56
  known as Kazbegi.
• 43:57
  And it's near the Russian border on the
• 43:59
  Georgian military highway, okay?
• 44:01
  And it's a mountainous town.
• 44:03
  Freaking beautiful.
• 44:04
  And I stayed in a little A-frame
• 44:06
  loft.
• 44:09
  The only bedroom was in a loft up
• 44:11
  there.
• 44:12
  And it was a tiny A-frame.
• 44:14
  Like, think of your tiny home stuff.
• 44:16
  And there's a kitchen and bath down below
• 44:18
  with a small sitting area.
• 44:20
  And up above, there's a loft with a
• 44:22
  king-size bed.
• 44:23
  I mean, it was a good-size loft
• 44:25
  up there.
• 44:26
  But very small structure.
• 44:30
  And there were three or four of these
• 44:31
  built on a back street in this town
• 44:35
  called Kazbegi, which is now Stepansminda.
• 44:38
  And you can stay there.
• 44:40
  And you have to cross through Abkhazia, okay?
• 44:46
  And so it's, you know, I told you
• 44:48
  about Brest and why Brest was important on
• 44:51
  the Western Front.
• 44:52
  When you talk about the Georgian borders to
• 44:56
  Vladikavkaz and Karmaden, the mountain town is, it's
• 45:01
  very mountainous.
• 45:01
  It's very beautiful.
• 45:03
  And I took some tours to see these.
• 45:06
  The green and the depth of it all
• 45:09
  is just unbelievable.
• 45:11
  And talk about this Caucasus scenery.
• 45:14
  Tell you what, Georgia's official tourism materials places
• 45:19
  Stepansminda in the province.
• 45:22
  There's a Gergeti Trinity Church, which is on
• 45:25
  top of a hill.
• 45:26
  And it's a 14th-century church above the
• 45:30
  town.
• 45:30
  2,200 meters above the town.
• 45:34
  That's 3,000, 4,000 feet, if I
• 45:38
  remember correctly, somewhere in there.
• 45:40
  And so I crossed from Georgia into Russia.
• 45:45
  And this, you know, people there were so
• 45:49
  kind and so nice.
• 45:50
  But those two areas, there's an area in
• 45:54
  between.
• 45:55
  I believe it's Abkhazia.
• 45:57
  And that area is part of a neutral
• 46:02
  zone between Georgia and Russia.
• 46:05
  And you have to cross the border twice.
• 46:07
  I've told that story of crossing the border
• 46:09
  there.
• 46:10
  Started this show with telling you a little
• 46:12
  bit about the passport and visa issues.
• 46:17
  And I had, now Georgia, with an American
• 46:20
  passport, you can fly, or U.S. passport,
• 46:23
  you can fly into Grozny.
• 46:24
  I think we, I'm sorry, not Grozny, Tbilisi.
• 46:29
  And I think the flight went from Miami
• 46:32
  to Istanbul to Tbilisi.
• 46:35
  And then by car up through Vladikavkaz into,
• 46:41
  which is across the Georgian border, stayed a
• 46:43
  few days, four or five days, in this
• 46:47
  northern Georgia town of Stepansminda, took some tours
• 46:52
  up in the mountains and saw some really
• 46:53
  cool stuff, and then crossed the border into
• 46:55
  Russia and to Vladikavkaz.
• 46:58
  And that place, historically, is the same, and
• 47:02
  it's been overrun too, that entire area.
• 47:05
  Think Mongolian horde.
• 47:08
  Think China.
• 47:10
  You know, all of that stuff.
• 47:12
  This area is very close to Russia and
• 47:18
  Georgia.
• 47:19
  Grozny, I think Stalin was from Georgia.
• 47:23
  Grozny, from Tbilisi, I believe.
• 47:27
  And that was an interesting, people in these
• 47:31
  places don't think like a political think tank
• 47:36
  group would from Washington, D.C. or New
• 47:39
  York.
• 47:39
  They experienced it through roads, through the weather,
• 47:42
  through family, food, water, religion.
• 47:45
  There were some fantastic churches with little fortresses
• 47:49
  around them up on top of hills.
• 47:51
  And remember, the church was a symbol back
• 47:53
  then that would save these people in the
• 47:56
  event of confrontation.
• 47:58
  They would come into the church walls, which
• 48:01
  were walled off, you know, huge places for
• 48:03
  them where they could stay for several weeks
• 48:06
  while the town was ravaged outside.
• 48:09
  So when you cross into Russia, and the
• 48:11
  horror story of crossing the border took me
• 48:15
  forever, and all the people that I was
• 48:16
  with actually got a little grumpy about it
• 48:18
  because they had to wait for me for
• 48:21
  like an hour and a half because I
• 48:23
  was being really checked out when I crossed
• 48:26
  the border by car into Russia from Georgia
• 48:31
  through, I forget the name of the place,
• 48:34
  and I want to say Abkhazia, but I
• 48:36
  don't think that's it.
• 48:37
  I think Abkhazia is a little bit further
• 48:39
  west.
• 48:40
  But it doesn't matter.
• 48:41
  I crossed two borders to get there, and
• 48:45
  there's a neutral zone in between them, and
• 48:47
  a cool tunnel.
• 48:48
  I mean, it's really neat to go into
• 48:50
  that area, and the history just takes you
• 48:53
  over.
• 48:54
  So these are very cultural points.
• 48:59
  When you get into the Vladikavkaz area, that
• 49:02
  place too, even though it's inside of Russia,
• 49:05
  has also been part of influences and different
• 49:08
  border changes for centuries.
• 49:11
  And the same all the way through Kazakhstan,
• 49:16
  Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and all of those places
• 49:21
  along the Chinese border.
• 49:22
  I think it was Kazakhstan that came up
• 49:25
  right next to the Chinese border, and it
• 49:27
  was very, very interesting to hear the history
• 49:34
  from those perspectives and who came across.
• 49:38
  There's still border disputes between China and India
• 49:41
  on some of their borders.
• 49:42
  Well, imagine some of the...
• 49:43
  And that's been going on for decades and
• 49:46
  centuries.
• 49:46
  And the same thing goes with these others.
• 49:48
  And in the Soviet Union times, they just
• 49:50
  said, no, you know what?
• 49:52
  Doesn't matter anymore.
• 49:53
  These will be the borders.
• 49:54
  And we're enforcing them.
• 49:56
  Poland didn't like it on the Brest side.
• 49:58
  Ukraine never liked it, you know.
• 50:00
  But Ukraine was part of Soviet Rus'.
• 50:03
  And so anyway, when you come through that
• 50:06
  area, all of the history...
• 50:08
  I'm a cultural fan too, and so I
• 50:10
  tell you about Brat and Brat 2, which
• 50:13
  is Brat as brother, Brother and Brother 2,
• 50:17
  the series I've told you about.
• 50:19
  There's a young man in there whose name
• 50:23
  is Daniel...
• 50:26
  His brother, they call him the Tatar, because
• 50:29
  he's a Tatar.
• 50:31
  And he's...
• 50:34
  They lump them all together as culturally.
• 50:37
  When you talk about people from Georgia, you
• 50:41
  know what they're talking about, you know.
• 50:43
  And it's the same thing when they talked
• 50:47
  about, you know, Bodrov and...
• 50:51
  Sergei Bodrov was the young man who was
• 50:53
  a film person.
• 50:55
  And I went to...
• 50:56
  He was young.
• 50:57
  He's direct.
• 50:58
  He was searching for morality after the collapse
• 51:02
  of the Soviet Union when he was involved
• 51:04
  in those movies, Brother and Brother 2, which
• 51:07
  are cultural changes in the history, even from
• 51:10
  back then.
• 51:11
  He's skeptical of the approach to the West,
• 51:15
  of Europe, of all of that.
• 51:17
  And all of them were, including Ukrainians, Polish,
• 51:21
  Lithuanians.
• 51:22
  Now they've bought completely in and have decided
• 51:26
  to hate their prior culture.
• 51:28
  And that is a sad reality.
• 51:32
  Very sad.
• 51:33
  And they have taken on more of the...
• 51:37
  What is that guy's name?
• 51:42
  Bandera, Stepan Bandera, and taken more of this
• 51:45
  nationalist, these harsh nationalist position as if Ukraine
• 51:50
  was always Ukraine and as if Poland was
• 51:54
  always Poland.
• 51:56
  Never the twain shall meet.
• 51:58
  That's not true.
• 51:59
  There was such a mix of all of
• 52:02
  these places that it's ridiculous for today to
• 52:06
  fight a war over stuff that occurred because
• 52:10
  your language is different or your religion is
• 52:12
  marginally different and you're destroying your own culture.
• 52:16
  I don't like that in America and I
• 52:18
  don't like it anywhere else.
• 52:20
  And this Bodrov guy, the themes of his
• 52:23
  shows, Brother, Brother 2, the first one that
• 52:28
  he did, which was Sisters, the first three,
• 52:29
  the Sisters, that's his first effort at being
• 52:34
  a director of his own and that was
• 52:36
  some cultural...
• 52:38
  And it wasn't cynical in the dead corporate
• 52:41
  Western sense.
• 52:44
  He was...
• 52:45
  They were searching and he was doing it
• 52:47
  through art, right?
• 52:49
  And through movies and through stuff like that.
• 52:51
  All through the fake 1990s, especially in post
• 52:55
  -Soviet Russia and Georgia and Armenia and all
• 53:00
  of those areas.
• 53:02
  And he died in an avalanche in the
• 53:05
  mountains in Southwest outside of Vladikavkaz, less than
• 53:11
  an hour.
• 53:12
  And his entire film crew was buried through
• 53:16
  a huge avalanche that came and took them
• 53:19
  all out.
• 53:20
  So his death, talk about the fate of
• 53:23
  the entire Caucasus and this relationship with the
• 53:29
  tragedy of this young man, this young artist,
• 53:33
  and trying to portray some of the things
• 53:36
  of that area, the history of it all
• 53:39
  through harsh, real stories.
• 53:42
  And real in the point of view that
• 53:47
  they display the time period of the 90s
• 53:49
  in unbelievable format.
• 53:52
  And it's really pretty cool.
• 53:55
  And I want to get into, where am
• 53:58
  I with...
• 54:02
  I think I want to, if I could
• 54:04
  find it, I want to find, because then
• 54:08
  I want to switch into Grozny and Chechnya.
• 54:12
  And, but I have to, I haven't found
• 54:15
  a good version of this song.
• 54:20
  And I hope it's the right one because
• 54:23
  I have a fairly good search on it.
• 54:28
  And I want to take this same sort
• 54:32
  of more artistic, and it's Lyuba Lyubonka.
• 54:38
  And this one is performed, who is this
• 54:42
  lady?
• 54:44
  This is Tatyana Kurtukova.
• 54:48
  And Matushka's, no, no, that's the next song.
• 54:51
  Damn it.
• 54:52
  I knew that wasn't her.
• 54:53
  This is the prior song on that, but
• 54:55
  we'll get to it.
• 54:56
  This one is Lyuba, Lyubov Uspenskaya, Lyubov Lyubochka.
• 55:03
  And you may have heard this one too,
• 55:05
  just like the one that I played for
• 55:07
  you previously.
• 55:09
  But we're going to jump right into this
• 55:12
  and hope that it is correct.
• 55:14
  I'm 90%, 99% sure that I got
• 55:18
  it right.
• 55:19
  Oops.
• 55:20
  Of course, I can't run my own damn
• 55:22
  board here.
• 55:25
  Dear friends!
• 55:55
  Lyuba
• 56:22
  Lyubonka
• 56:25
  Lyubov
• 56:55
  Uspenskaya My dear, dear Russians And my foreign,
• 57:02
  cheerful friends For so many years you have
• 57:06
  not become strangers to me You also need
• 57:10
  my song, my ringing song And I will
• 57:14
  pamper and delight you with songs Without a
• 57:18
  song, you can't live without water Without a
• 57:20
  song, you can't live without water Until my
• 57:23
  heart stops beating in my chest And I
• 57:27
  will sing for you, my friends Lyuba Lyubonka
• 57:32
  I kiss you on the lips Because you
• 57:36
  sing like a nightingale Today you shine like
• 57:42
  a paradise Today you shine like a paradise
• 57:43
  And tomorrow you can go to Broadway Today
• 57:50
  you shine like a paradise And tomorrow you
• 57:55
  can go to Broadway And
• 58:13
  that is Lyubochka.
• 58:17
  Lyuba Lyubochka.
• 58:18
  And that is...
• 58:20
  Who is this lady?
• 58:22
  Next is one that I'm gonna play for
• 58:26
  you toward the end.
• 58:28
  That is...
• 58:30
  This one's very, very famous.
• 58:32
  And this is today's song.
• 58:34
  This one came about like three, four years
• 58:36
  ago.
• 58:36
  And this one took over the entire eastern...
• 58:43
  everywhere in Russia.
• 58:44
  You would hear this song everywhere you went.
• 58:47
  Imagine a song here in America.
• 58:49
  You know, pick a...
• 58:52
  There were a couple that went, especially after
• 58:54
  the start of the war, and all of
• 58:56
  this cultural stuff.
• 58:58
  And it's like, hey, man, they're taking the
• 59:00
  entire Russian culture and destroying it everywhere around
• 59:05
  the world.
• 59:05
  And they're destroying this culture.
• 59:08
  And we can't...
• 59:10
  There's the...
• 59:11
  What do they call it?
• 59:12
  Eurovision.
• 59:13
  Eurovision.
• 59:14
  In fact, it's going on right now, the
• 59:15
  final 15 countries in Eurovision.
• 59:18
  And this has been a European song thing
• 59:20
  forever.
• 59:22
  And one of the ones they put out
• 59:24
  in Eurovision was...
• 59:27
  Think about the clogging dancer.
• 59:29
  I forget his name from...
• 59:33
  Was it Ireland?
• 59:34
  Ireland, Scotland?
• 59:35
  Can't remember which.
• 59:36
  But they had the dancers, the clogging, that
• 59:39
  took it over by storm.
• 59:42
  And they won Eurovision way back when.
• 59:44
  And there's a Swedish...
• 59:46
  There's always very famous songs that come out
• 59:49
  of Eurovision.
• 59:50
  And they cut Russia off.
• 59:53
  You know, Russia can't participate.
• 59:55
  Russia can't participate in sports.
• 59:57
  Russia...
• 59:58
  I mean, it's all foolish idiocy that they
• 1:00:01
  can't participate in these things as if their
• 1:00:04
  culture is guilty of all of this.
• 1:00:07
  Nuts!
• 1:00:08
  Just friggin' crazy that your culture has to
• 1:00:10
  be destroyed.
• 1:00:11
  You know, in America, we've taken to cancelling
• 1:00:14
  things.
• 1:00:16
  We cancel our history.
• 1:00:18
  We cancel any president who owned a slave.
• 1:00:21
  We burn their homes down.
• 1:00:24
  We push over all of their statues as
• 1:00:27
  if the world wasn't very, very different at
• 1:00:31
  that time.
• 1:00:32
  This is what's going on.
• 1:00:33
  This is why Ukraine and Russia are in
• 1:00:36
  a war and America was trying to take
• 1:00:38
  over and got involved in something that we
• 1:00:41
  never should have gotten involved in.
• 1:00:44
  And so, I tell you what.
• 1:00:47
  It's...
• 1:00:47
  When you ease out of there...
• 1:00:50
  I don't mean to be morbid about talking
• 1:00:52
  about this kid, Bodrov, who represented the post
• 1:00:55
  -Soviet culture.
• 1:00:57
  But it's important to understand where they came
• 1:01:00
  from to understand why we are where we
• 1:01:03
  are right now.
• 1:01:05
  And these type of places that you see,
• 1:01:09
  history, it kills.
• 1:01:14
  I mean, the death that surrounds all of
• 1:01:17
  this for the foolish present visions.
• 1:01:21
  Fortresses.
• 1:01:22
  Invasions.
• 1:01:23
  Religion.
• 1:01:24
  Artillery.
• 1:01:26
  And then, you think about history and a
• 1:01:30
  kid like Bodrov dying in an avalanche.
• 1:01:35
  Killed quietly by everybody.
• 1:01:38
  I mean, they never found any of them.
• 1:01:39
  They were buried by a mountain.
• 1:01:41
  The whole mountain slid down upon them.
• 1:01:43
  You know, a mountain, a glacier, a valley,
• 1:01:46
  a film crew that never came home.
• 1:01:48
  That's part of a serious history.
• 1:01:51
  And there's a shrine over there that you
• 1:01:53
  wouldn't believe.
• 1:01:54
  I was very lucky to know that.
• 1:01:55
  I knew that he had died that way.
• 1:01:58
  And I knew about his history.
• 1:02:00
  And it was depressing because the movies that
• 1:02:02
  he was part of and, you know, Brat
• 1:02:05
  and Brat 2 and he was a young,
• 1:02:07
  just coming out.
• 1:02:08
  And he was gonna be a massive movie
• 1:02:13
  director star.
• 1:02:15
  His first ever effort was that movie Siostri,
• 1:02:19
  which is a real look at the harsh
• 1:02:23
  life that was, for some, a reality in
• 1:02:28
  the post-Soviet world.
• 1:02:31
  And the critique of the West in Brat
• 1:02:33
  2 when you come in and all of
• 1:02:36
  this history tied together.
• 1:02:38
  This is a kid who knew where he
• 1:02:39
  was from.
• 1:02:40
  You know, he knew that.
• 1:02:42
  And when you talk about, you know, slide
• 1:02:44
  into a little bit east of Vladikavkaz and
• 1:02:47
  east of Georgia, where I was and the
• 1:02:49
  very real interference that we put both in
• 1:02:58
  Grozny, that we put into Chechnya, that we
• 1:03:01
  wanted to take the post-Soviet world.
• 1:03:05
  And that we, when I say we, I
• 1:03:06
  mean the West, the way that we think,
• 1:03:09
  this global empire, we need to dominate the
• 1:03:12
  rest of the world.
• 1:03:13
  And so what do we do?
• 1:03:14
  We insert our thoughts, our beliefs, our democracy,
• 1:03:19
  and our success story.
• 1:03:22
  All of the stuff that they want about
• 1:03:25
  the West is the dream of living in
• 1:03:28
  a free place that isn't going to be
• 1:03:32
  overrun by war.
• 1:03:35
  That's what they're looking for.
• 1:03:37
  They're looking for what we have.
• 1:03:39
  When's the last time we worried about war
• 1:03:41
  coming to the United States?
• 1:03:43
  Coming to your homeland?
• 1:03:45
  I mean, I imagine your life would be
• 1:03:48
  different or your thought process would be very
• 1:03:52
  different if you had to worry about a
• 1:03:55
  drone flying over and destroying your home or
• 1:03:58
  attacking you and your personal things because you
• 1:04:04
  maintain a certain religion.
• 1:04:06
  Think about Iran.
• 1:04:08
  What are those people thinking of?
• 1:04:10
  The same crap that's been going on for
• 1:04:13
  3,000 years.
• 1:04:16
  And we're getting involved in it.
• 1:04:18
  Think about Grozny, Chechnya.
• 1:04:19
  I went there on this same trip when
• 1:04:21
  I went up through, so I spent maybe
• 1:04:24
  five, six days, four or five days.
• 1:04:29
  So Tbilisi, I was only there for a
• 1:04:31
  day.
• 1:04:31
  Then I went up, which is a really
• 1:04:33
  cool city in Georgia.
• 1:04:34
  And then I went up to these Stepna,
• 1:04:37
  Stepan, I can't remember the name of it,
• 1:04:40
  but northern Grozny in the mountainous village stayed
• 1:04:42
  there three, four days.
• 1:04:43
  It was really cool.
• 1:04:44
  And then crossed into Russia across the border
• 1:04:49
  and went into Vladikavkaz.
• 1:04:53
  Saw the mountainous regions.
• 1:04:55
  Saw where Sergei Bodrov died.
• 1:04:58
  Spent the day and went across to Chechnya
• 1:05:01
  and Grozny.
• 1:05:02
  And this is important as well because Grozny
• 1:05:06
  was a Russian fortress in 1818 on the
• 1:05:11
  Sunja River Leo Tolstoy, Lev Tolstoy and Mikhail
• 1:05:17
  Lermontov served in both of those places.
• 1:05:20
  And when I was in school in Russia,
• 1:05:22
  Lermontov is famous for writing some of the
• 1:05:27
  stories about the Kavkazi and the mountainous steppe
• 1:05:32
  and the wars.
• 1:05:33
  And Tolstoy, of course, everybody knows about Tolstoy.
• 1:05:36
  And going through, and they served in Grozny
• 1:05:39
  at this Russian fortress that was built in
• 1:05:43
  1818.
• 1:05:45
  And so I think Lermontov, who was the
• 1:05:48
  one that died?
• 1:05:49
  A couple of them died in duels.
• 1:05:52
  Very young.
• 1:05:54
  Very young.
• 1:05:55
  And they would go to Moscow and the
• 1:05:58
  politics of it all.
• 1:05:59
  People were dying in duels back then.
• 1:06:03
  There are oil deposits in Grozny that were
• 1:06:06
  commercially very decisive.
• 1:06:08
  Large-scale production of that began in 1893
• 1:06:12
  when the railways reached that town.
• 1:06:14
  And by the time of the Russian Revolution
• 1:06:16
  in 1917, Grozny was one of Russia's major
• 1:06:22
  oil centers, second only to Baku.
• 1:06:25
  And this matters because Grozny's history isn't just
• 1:06:28
  about Chechnya and the war and, you know,
• 1:06:32
  Ramazan Kadyrov or whatever his name is, that
• 1:06:35
  has built a great country.
• 1:06:38
  In Chechnya.
• 1:06:40
  And this is a lazy Western headline version
• 1:06:44
  when you talk about Chechnya just equaling war.
• 1:06:48
  It's not.
• 1:06:49
  Grozny was a military, imperial, literary, industrial, Islamic,
• 1:06:55
  and Soviet oil-rich, destroyed country rebuilt, politically
• 1:06:59
  transformed over and over in Chechnya.
• 1:07:03
  The wars of the 1990s and early 2000s
• 1:07:07
  are central now.
• 1:07:08
  But they don't equal the whole identity of
• 1:07:11
  that historic place.
• 1:07:12
  It just doesn't.
• 1:07:14
  The Russian invasion of Chechnya in December of
• 1:07:17
  1994 and the taking of Grozny in March
• 1:07:20
  of 1995 and continued guerrilla resistance by the
• 1:07:24
  Muslim Chechnyans and their resistance and the unresolved
• 1:07:28
  peace of 1997 and the return of Russian
• 1:07:32
  forces in 1999 and then there's a guy
• 1:07:35
  named Ahmad Kadyrov who was killed in 2004
• 1:07:39
  and now, I believe it's his son, Ramzan
• 1:07:43
  Kadyrov, who is the Chechen president who's very
• 1:07:46
  loyal to Vladimir Putin and he came to
• 1:07:53
  power in 2007.
• 1:07:55
  They've been solid for 20 years in their
• 1:07:58
  support and their anti-war and the growth.
• 1:08:01
  And there's, think about these guys who, Chechen
• 1:08:05
  generals, Chechen forces are helping the Russians in
• 1:08:09
  Ukraine right now.
• 1:08:11
  There's a guy named Opti Aloudinov who is
• 1:08:13
  a general appointed by Ramzan Kadyrov to be
• 1:08:17
  a general, to lead the forces in there.
• 1:08:20
  They're the people that defended Kursk and sent
• 1:08:24
  them back.
• 1:08:26
  Sent the Ukrainians back, destroyed them all.
• 1:08:29
  And they're harsh.
• 1:08:30
  These are some tough dudes.
• 1:08:33
  You think about some, I mean, this is
• 1:08:36
  a tough army force that comes from Chechnya,
• 1:08:38
  let me tell you.
• 1:08:40
  And under Ramzan Kadyrov, they're very loyal to
• 1:08:45
  Russia right now.
• 1:08:46
  And all of this, and I'm trying to
• 1:08:48
  talk about stuff that isn't necessarily Sam's political
• 1:08:51
  talk about how BS the entire Ukraine deal
• 1:08:55
  is and I hope if you get anything
• 1:08:57
  out of today's show, you get the fact
• 1:08:59
  that we shouldn't be there.
• 1:09:02
  And it's nothing to do with America and
• 1:09:05
  nothing we do is gonna change what goes
• 1:09:09
  on there.
• 1:09:10
  And in 50 and 100 years, you're gonna
• 1:09:12
  have the same old crap come up again
• 1:09:15
  because people are people.
• 1:09:17
  This has gone on for centuries.
• 1:09:20
  I mean, think about this.
• 1:09:21
  This is crap.
• 1:09:23
  This is crap.
• 1:09:24
  I mean, when you go to the heart
• 1:09:25
  of Chechnya, there's a mosque and it's Ahmad
• 1:09:29
  Kadyrov in his mosque.
• 1:09:31
  It's called the Heart of Chechnya and it
• 1:09:33
  opened in Grozny in 2008 and it can
• 1:09:36
  hold 10,000 worshippers.
• 1:09:39
  It is one of the visible symbols of
• 1:09:42
  post-war Grozny, not just religious, but reconstructionist,
• 1:09:47
  authoritarian.
• 1:09:48
  It's the identity and the declaration that that
• 1:09:51
  city is not rubble.
• 1:09:54
  It isn't gone.
• 1:09:55
  That city is a historic place and the
• 1:09:59
  mosques, there's a woman's mosque that was built
• 1:10:02
  for Aiman Kadyrov, which is the wife of,
• 1:10:11
  what's his name?
• 1:10:13
  The other, Ramzan Kadyrov's mother, right?
• 1:10:17
  And so it talks about it all and
• 1:10:20
  it's the mother's heart.
• 1:10:21
  It's a female, a woman's, and I couldn't
• 1:10:24
  go in it.
• 1:10:26
  I couldn't actually, I could go through the
• 1:10:28
  main portion of it, but you couldn't get
• 1:10:29
  into the part where only women can go
• 1:10:31
  and worship.
• 1:10:32
  You can't get in there.
• 1:10:33
  Lana went in there.
• 1:10:35
  She's a Muslim and she's very formal about
• 1:10:38
  it.
• 1:10:38
  You have to put a shawl on every
• 1:10:41
  time you have to cover your hair and
• 1:10:42
  I got in trouble at one in, where
• 1:10:45
  was that one?
• 1:10:47
  I went into one of the huge mosques.
• 1:10:49
  I believe that one was in, geez, Kazakhstan
• 1:10:54
  maybe, but it was on the bank of
• 1:10:55
  a huge river and it was freaking amazing.
• 1:10:58
  I wish I could remember the name of
• 1:10:59
  that place, but I went in there and
• 1:11:02
  I was taking pictures and the prayer symbols
• 1:11:05
  went off and I was escorted out of
• 1:11:09
  there quick.
• 1:11:11
  They grabbed me and took me out and
• 1:11:14
  some Western idiot in there taking pictures while
• 1:11:18
  the men are worshiping and that was, I
• 1:11:21
  didn't understand.
• 1:11:22
  I thought it was individual.
• 1:11:25
  It wasn't part of a tour or anything,
• 1:11:26
  but you have to understand these things and
• 1:11:28
  when you go into the place, the Aiman
• 1:11:30
  Kadirova Mosque in Argun, it's called the Mother's
• 1:11:33
  Heart and it's named for Miss Aiman Kadirova,
• 1:11:36
  the widow of Ahmad Kadirova, the mother of
• 1:11:39
  Ramzan Kadirova and it opened in 2014 and
• 1:11:42
  it's very modern and cool architecture and its
• 1:11:46
  capacity can hold around 15,000 worshipers and
• 1:11:51
  I tell you what, the Chechen religion, the
• 1:11:55
  maternal symbolism, the public architecture, you ought to
• 1:11:58
  see all the brand new apartment buildings going
• 1:12:01
  up in Grozny and everywhere modern, everywhere women
• 1:12:05
  pushing buggies, everywhere very modern cars and the
• 1:12:09
  money was a surprise to me.
• 1:12:13
  You think, and in America, it's always third
• 1:12:16
  world.
• 1:12:16
  We're supposed to go over and all it
• 1:12:17
  reads is these are third world countries.
• 1:12:19
  My ass.
• 1:12:20
  They're very modern and they're very cool and
• 1:12:24
  when you go through there, I mean everywhere
• 1:12:26
  they're building.
• 1:12:27
  There was a kind of a, and this
• 1:12:31
  was in Grozny and Grozny was destroyed basically
• 1:12:35
  during the wars of the 90s between Chechnya
• 1:12:38
  and Russia and there was another country involved
• 1:12:40
  as well that came, I forget which one,
• 1:12:44
  but it was a massively overrun place in
• 1:12:47
  the 90s, post-Soviet, you know, and we've
• 1:12:50
  always tried to influence and Ramzan Kadyrov, we
• 1:12:54
  ain't putting up with that.
• 1:12:56
  You know what I mean?
• 1:12:58
  He understands that NATO's not the answer.
• 1:13:01
  Georgia, I don't know, but you got these
• 1:13:03
  young kids and these young kids, they want
• 1:13:05
  all the crap that Westerners have.
• 1:13:07
  They want the, you know, where's my Obama
• 1:13:09
  phone?
• 1:13:09
  They want the same crap that everybody wants,
• 1:13:12
  you know, just to live a good life
• 1:13:14
  and this Apti Aloudinov, and it's A-P
• 1:13:18
  -T-I-O-P-T-I is his
• 1:13:20
  name, Aloudinov, he's currently a lieutenant general.
• 1:13:23
  He's the deputy head of the main military
• 1:13:25
  political directorate of the Russian armed forces and
• 1:13:28
  he's the commander of the Chechen volunteer formation
• 1:13:32
  which is called Akhmat and he's very visible
• 1:13:36
  as the public military commentator during the Ukraine
• 1:13:39
  conflict because especially around the Kursk region because
• 1:13:43
  they're the ones that drove back the Ukrainian
• 1:13:46
  attempt to take over Kursk and killed about
• 1:13:49
  70,000 Ukrainian soldiers trying to take over
• 1:13:53
  Kursk and Kursk was very important in World
• 1:13:57
  War II also, one of the major defense
• 1:14:01
  forces that pushed back Nazi Germany tank divisions
• 1:14:05
  in the Kursk region of Russia, massive victory
• 1:14:11
  and held off, the Russians held back the
• 1:14:16
  onslaught of the Third Reich tank forces.
• 1:14:20
  So, you know, all of these, it's crazy
• 1:14:26
  because all of these mix into where we
• 1:14:30
  go today.
• 1:14:30
  On this show, I always talk quite a
• 1:14:33
  bit about the realities of today and the
• 1:14:37
  focus on the wrong thinking of politics and
• 1:14:42
  political people of today that ignore history or
• 1:14:47
  just act like all that counts is today.
• 1:14:51
  50 years from now, nobody's going to give
• 1:14:53
  a crap about the fact that Ukraine either
• 1:14:57
  wanted or didn't want to be part of
• 1:14:59
  NATO, part of the EU, part of anything.
• 1:15:02
  They're going to care that a million young
• 1:15:05
  men and women died in Ukraine, far more
• 1:15:10
  than that when you include the Russian side
• 1:15:12
  too and tell you what, by the time
• 1:15:16
  this is done, does it really matter?
• 1:15:20
  Do the wars that I talked about that
• 1:15:22
  the overrunning of Brest or the wars that
• 1:15:25
  took place in Grozny take, matter?
• 1:15:29
  What matters, and this is selfish, what matters
• 1:15:32
  is me being able to go over and
• 1:15:35
  see, just like I did in the southern
• 1:15:39
  parts of Tatarstan, that place has been overrun
• 1:15:43
  since the Mongol hordes and the Turkish Empire,
• 1:15:48
  the Ottoman Empire.
• 1:15:49
  I mean, think about all of this.
• 1:15:51
  When you go there and you get to
• 1:15:53
  see the history, it kind of levels the
• 1:15:58
  playing field and you sit there and you
• 1:16:00
  go, all right, what do any one of
• 1:16:03
  us, Donald Trump included, you know, Opti Aloudinov
• 1:16:07
  included, Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, all of that,
• 1:16:14
  does it matter?
• 1:16:15
  And I think that with that, I'm going
• 1:16:18
  to take, you know, it's pretty sad, and
• 1:16:22
  this is a tie-in, I'm trying to
• 1:16:23
  get into this song because I love this
• 1:16:25
  one too, is to, and it'll be the
• 1:16:28
  final song for today, and then we'll wrap
• 1:16:30
  it up, but, you know, life is sad
• 1:16:32
  because you talk about all these history and,
• 1:16:36
  you know, it's, I mean, frankly, I want
• 1:16:39
  to play, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Two Tribes
• 1:16:42
  Go to War, would have fit in here
• 1:16:44
  somewhere because this is all we're doing.
• 1:16:46
  It's the same old crap all the way
• 1:16:48
  around the line.
• 1:16:50
  And so I think people need to understand
• 1:16:52
  the history of all of this entire area
• 1:16:55
  in the post-Soviet world.
• 1:16:57
  And I've taken you from northern Brest and
• 1:17:01
  Belarus on the sides down through Ukraine into
• 1:17:04
  Tatarstan in the Bashkir down there in that
• 1:17:08
  area.
• 1:17:08
  And I also went over to the eastern
• 1:17:10
  half over by Ufa and went through Ufa
• 1:17:13
  and through, you know, stayed over there for
• 1:17:16
  10, 15 days.
• 1:17:17
  That was pretty cool.
• 1:17:18
  But on the Grozny side was this war,
• 1:17:20
  and all of this has been post-collapse
• 1:17:24
  Soviet Union, horror story of reality for these
• 1:17:29
  people who all they want to do is
• 1:17:32
  have what we have.
• 1:17:34
  A place to live, what we generally have,
• 1:17:37
  I think, where you don't have to worry
• 1:17:39
  about war coming to your home.
• 1:17:45
  And I'm not saying we don't have to
• 1:17:47
  worry, but that worry is a pretty far
• 1:17:49
  -fetched reality here in America.
• 1:17:52
  The rest of the world, especially post-Soviet,
• 1:17:56
  has that worry constantly.
• 1:17:59
  And so I want to play for you
• 1:18:02
  a very fitting song, in my humble opinion,
• 1:18:05
  called, and I like techno music anyway, rave
• 1:18:08
  music, and this one is called Life Is
• 1:18:11
  So Sad.
• 1:18:12
  And life sometimes is sad, and so I'm
• 1:18:15
  going to play this for you.
• 1:18:16
  And this one's the single edit, so it's
• 1:18:19
  only three, four minutes long.
• 1:18:26
  Life is so sad I have no one
• 1:18:35
  to kiss Love is not easy
• 1:18:45
  But I don't want to miss Life
• 1:18:54
  is so sad I have no one to
• 1:19:03
  kiss Love is not easy
• 1:19:12
  But I don't want to miss But
• 1:19:57
  I don't want to miss Love
• 1:20:36
  is not easy I have no one to
• 1:20:46
  kiss Love is not easy But
• 1:20:56
  I don't want to miss Here
• 1:21:28
  we go again Love
• 1:21:43
  is not easy But I don't want to
• 1:21:53
  miss Life is so sad Isn't it?
• 1:22:02
  Well, life is sad if you always got
• 1:22:04
  to worry about war coming after you.
• 1:22:07
  I like some techno.
• 1:22:10
  I like all kinds of music, and I
• 1:22:13
  tell you what, I went to, and I'm
• 1:22:16
  going to wrap up the show by telling
• 1:22:17
  you this little, little again, former Soviet Republic
• 1:22:26
  in Kyrgyzstan, and I went, two, three years
• 1:22:31
  ago, I went to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and
• 1:22:37
  spent like six weeks over there, and toured
• 1:22:40
  around in that place, all post-Soviet, you
• 1:22:44
  know, former Soviet republics, and there's, I spent
• 1:22:50
  ten days or so in a Russian, well,
• 1:22:57
  a Kyrgyzian, but everybody speaks Russian there, and
• 1:23:00
  you know, there's whatever the language is, the
• 1:23:04
  derivative of the Southeast, which a lot of
• 1:23:07
  the countries down there all speak, that each
• 1:23:11
  one of them is similar, but not the
• 1:23:13
  same, and so the common language, like English
• 1:23:15
  would be in the western half of the
• 1:23:17
  world over there, the common language is Russian,
• 1:23:19
  and so because they've been dominated by the
• 1:23:22
  Russian Empire for two, three hundred years, and
• 1:23:25
  whether it's Soviet, Russian, or whatever, and so
• 1:23:29
  when you go around there, they've gone through
• 1:23:31
  some of the same stuff.
• 1:23:32
  Kazakhstan has had troubles, and Kazakhstan, the U
• 1:23:35
  .S., and the West, and NATO are all
• 1:23:38
  trying to influence every country down there to
• 1:23:41
  separate from Russia.
• 1:23:43
  Why?
• 1:23:44
  The continual war for resources.
• 1:23:47
  Kazakhstan is where the nuclear power of the
• 1:23:51
  Soviet Union took place, and I forget the
• 1:23:54
  name of the test site, but their test
• 1:23:56
  site was over there, and like I talk
• 1:24:00
  about me touring around with Soviet and Russian
• 1:24:03
  nuclear scientists over here, and they had something
• 1:24:11
  similar in Kazakhstan, so Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, I went
• 1:24:15
  to a lake down there, and if you
• 1:24:17
  don't understand the history, that was a huge
• 1:24:19
  resort area for the Soviet Empire, and they
• 1:24:23
  had one of the, what do you call
• 1:24:26
  it, sanatorium that I went to for ten
• 1:24:28
  days, medical treatment, mud baths, salt baths, I
• 1:24:33
  don't know, swimming in mineral waters, it was
• 1:24:38
  freaking awesome, and if you can go and
• 1:24:40
  do something like that once in life, it
• 1:24:42
  would be fantastic for you to enjoy what
• 1:24:45
  I've enjoyed three times in three different areas
• 1:24:48
  of former, one inside of Russia, actually two
• 1:24:53
  inside of Russia, Ufa was still inside of
• 1:24:55
  Russia, and I went to Bakirov in Tatarstan,
• 1:24:59
  which is still part of, that republic is
• 1:25:01
  part of Russia, it's just a Russian region,
• 1:25:04
  and that place was fantastic, and Bakirov, but
• 1:25:07
  the one on Lake Issyk-Kul, which is
• 1:25:09
  now Kyrgyzstan, is being rebuilt, and so I
• 1:25:13
  hope that what my, I don't know what,
• 1:25:17
  my rambling roundabout way of talking about all
• 1:25:21
  of these cultural things and mixing music, movies,
• 1:25:25
  history, travel, reality, Vladimir Putin and being interviewed
• 1:25:30
  by Tucker Carlson talking about the history, it's
• 1:25:34
  similar to the, if you don't understand history,
• 1:25:36
  you're doomed to repeat it, well, it's gonna
• 1:25:38
  repeat all over, and so the thought process
• 1:25:42
  needs to be a little bit different, and
• 1:25:44
  that can be stretched all the way into
• 1:25:46
  the Middle East as well, and everywhere, you
• 1:25:50
  know, why should you, just because you don't
• 1:25:53
  live in America, why should you have to
• 1:25:55
  worry about bombs coming in over your head
• 1:25:57
  at any given time, because somebody wants to
• 1:26:00
  enforce their power over you, it's been going
• 1:26:03
  on for generations, and it's always the same,
• 1:26:07
  we're fighting over resources, and I think the
• 1:26:10
  better move is 99.9% of the
• 1:26:15
  time, diplomacy as, you know, if you want
• 1:26:20
  to take anything from this show, learn your
• 1:26:23
  culture, learn your history, value the cultures of
• 1:26:26
  others, value the opinions of others, and how
• 1:26:29
  other people think, and remember that they're all
• 1:26:32
  after the exact same thing at the level
• 1:26:36
  of us, middle class, or low class, if
• 1:26:41
  you want to call it that, in my
• 1:26:43
  case, that all we want is the same
• 1:26:46
  thing.
• 1:26:47
  We want to be able to travel, to
• 1:26:49
  see things, to live in a way that
• 1:26:53
  we like.
• 1:26:54
  You don't have to like my music, you
• 1:26:56
  don't have to like my words, you don't
• 1:26:57
  have to like anything, but you should appreciate
• 1:27:00
  them, and appreciate the fact that I'm willing
• 1:27:02
  to let you have your own.
• 1:27:04
  So if you take anything from today's program,
• 1:27:07
  take it as Sam's dissertation on history versus
• 1:27:12
  diplomacy and reality, and how both mix, regardless
• 1:27:17
  of whether you're a diplomat, or whether you're
• 1:27:20
  leaders, you're fearless leaders, believe it or not.
• 1:27:23
  I'm Samuel Trapp.
• 1:27:25
  This is International Flavor.
• 1:27:27
  Thanks for listening.
• 1:27:28
  You can join me every morning, 730-298
• 1:27:32
  -M on damradio.com forward slash live.
• 1:27:37
  Tomorrow's the biggest day in radio history.
• 1:27:41
  Tomorrow, here on damradio.com forward slash live
• 1:27:45
  starts with me, 730-A-M.
• 1:27:48
  I look forward to you hearing me then.
• 1:27:53
  Have a very nice day.