Latest / John’s Newsletter / Foreign Affairs Fifteen: Episode 20

Transcript

Foreign Affairs Fifteen: Episode 20 · John’s Newsletter

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the foreign affairs 15,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: a quick taste of this week's foreign news and what it means for Americans.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast is free for Substack subscribers to John's newsletter
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: for based perspectives and later released on Apple, Spotify and other platforms.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning, John.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Simon.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And welcome to this,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: what I hope will be an exciting episode 20 of the foreign affairs 15,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: starting with our irrelevant minute.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: John, why should you fly to buy?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Why should I fly Dubai?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think right now only if you want to get better at wrestling would I fly Dubai.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to improve your wrestling skills, I think that would be a great idea.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: An incredible story that the people...
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: The pilot,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: being attacked by an axe,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: manages to open the door,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: letting in people who wrestle the guy away,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: and then someone knows how to land the plan,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: evidently partly by watching disaster movies.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is a story after my own heart.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: On one level, it's really heartwarming these folks manage to do it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: On another level, it's a sign of the times.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Whether this is Iran directly or Islamic radicalism generally,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a sign that we live in a very, very dangerous world.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: And God bless the people for doing it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted, it seems, a 9-11 event on the line.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe the Burj Khalifa, maybe a tower in Tel Aviv was the other option.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: But people took matters into their own hands.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: But this is a significant problem with security going ahead.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: We live in a time of terror.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: We really do.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And my takeaway is,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: man for man,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: the Israelis are a skilled people,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: you're likely to find on a plane full of Israelis,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: people who can fight, fly planes, fix your toilet if you need it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if that could be said of every other nation on Earth, probably not.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think not.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: And let me just add,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: someone asked me once,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: if I were in a dark alley,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: who I would pick to protect me, an Israeli noncommissioned officer is the answer.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Antarctica, our first continent of the seven that we will try to do in 14 minutes.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I just noted that the cruise season is upon us.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's 116 passenger boat called the Planckias based out of the Netherlands,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: which is on its way to Argentina, which is where they base these seas.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Cruises,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: they're going to go for 20 nights to the Falkland Islands,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Probably won't call it the Falklands on the actual calendar on that ship
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: since it's leaving from Argentina.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And guests are going to be able to spot, john,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: six different kinds of penguins, as well as an array of whales, dolphins and more.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ask your question.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I had to get on a cruise, this would be the one I do because it sounds cool.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you otherwise could not pay me to go on a cruise ship from all the ads I see.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: How about you ever been on a cruise?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, and I really don't want to.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like a glorified form of house arrest with a buffet for me.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't seem great.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd rather sit around with you in New Hampshire and pontificate on the world.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's sort of heaven.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe an ice cream thrown in and a bit of drinkable wine.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that sounds rather nice.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: But being under house arrest, it's like Haley Selassie after the Derg.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm totally with you.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: My cruise ideal is on my 12-foot,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, aluminum skiff, and then I can get off and swim if I have to.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Moving on to Africa,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: where a lady called Dafroza Mukarumongi Gautier Who's a Rwandan who married
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: a French person, a French man.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: She died last week at the age of 72 and is most famous with her husband for bringing
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: at least 30 Hutu extremists to justice after the Rwandan genocide,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: which as a reminder to our sophisticated listeners between April and July 1994,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: over 500,000 up to 800,000,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: it was basically 75% of the population.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: The population of Tutsis in Rwanda by Hutu extremists,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: the military,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: militias like the Nteruhamwe,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: and some ordinary citizens who got caught up in the crazy until the Patriotic Front,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: under a I think still current president Paul Kagame captured Kigali in July 1994,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: put an end to it,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: and frankly set up one of the most prosperous and well-run states in Africa.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I say this, John, all to point out what a genocide is.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Genus, people, side, murder.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is the attempted murder of a people.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when we attempt to say this about Palestine,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: John, would you say that's an accurate definition?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, Wilsonians have so messed this up.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Genocide means to Wilsonians you're being mean or brutal to a large group of people.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Genocide specifically,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: and again,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: words matter, otherwise Orwell wouldn't exist and you see the danger without him.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: The reality is this is a planned effort to get rid of an entire group of people,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: eradicating them from the planet.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Rwanda counts.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: The Hutu wanted to eradicate the world of the Tutsi tribe and also moderate Hutu, as you say.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember the Clinton people saying at the time they didn't believe the numbers.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was so low wave.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was done over radio, the call to do this.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody could believe the numbers because 800,000 people dying in a matter
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: of weeks seemed insane, impossible, but indeed it was true.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Frankly,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: most of them have great regrets from this,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: but we have to be very careful that words matter.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Genocide means I have to take action.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it means.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you say genocide, I have to do something.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: So everybody in
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: the world is being treated badly means we've been invading everywhere all
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: the time all at once and would destroy our country.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: We have to be very, very careful.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Rwanda was a genocide.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: We actually should have.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm, as you know, very, very non interventionist.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a good Jeffersonian realist.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think we should have done Rwanda when we didn't.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: But many,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: many other times,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: people being treated badly does not rise to the level the United States needs
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: to do something.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: This was the effort to eradicate an entire group of people by planning.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what 99% of the people use the word mean.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It means being mean or cruel to a certain group.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: We have to be really careful about this.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't even need to specify any particular parts of the world where
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: that word is being bandied about without cause.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Asia, our second continent, Third, I guess, Japan.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: The city of Fujisawa,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been to Japan other than the airport for about an hour,
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: is about to get its,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I believe,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: first mosque,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: which will be larger than nearby Shinto shrine,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: which is The traditional Japanese religion.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: we always think of Japan,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: like Hungary and Europe as being a zero immigration country,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: but that's not in fact true.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: They do have about 5 million, no,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: 4 million, sorry,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: foreign residents,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: mostly from Asia,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: China, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, which is about 3.2% of the population.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they have about 420,000 Muslims as of the end of 2024,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: which is double the number from 2019,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: kind of a staggering number, even though it's still only 0.3%.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you compare that to Germany,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: 25% of people in Germany are what they call of a migrant background,
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: meaning non-ethnic Germans, at least.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: In Hungary, it's under 5%, and almost all of them are from Europe.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess what I'm asking is,
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is Japan really turning a corner where they're going to become one of
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: the mass migration from the global south,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: slowly Islamizing countries, or is this an aberration?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's an aberration.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things I love about the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: which is neither liberal nor democratic nor a party,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: by the way, it's a fascinating country.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: But the LDP are hardcore about societal cohesion.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's sort of what they stand for.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why they keep being returned to government.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: They'll tolerate Immigration at the edges, but only that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you an example.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Today reading the RealClearWorld site,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: there's a comment that Japan is forcing people who live there who are not
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: of Japanese background to pay 10 times what they did in order to as a fee
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: to stay there.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you can stay, but we're going to make it pay.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And this is very much LDP territory.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Also, they've said, no, you don't get any of your holidays here.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: You're in Japan.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can deal with our Shinto holidays or you can leave.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they say this directly.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think they have a better cultural chance because that societal cohesion,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: which is woven into their history, is just too strong.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: This is the edges kind of thing,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: but they'll be watching this like a hawk and nobody's going to stop the LDP being
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: in power.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Takechi is firmly ensconced as a nationalist cohesionist.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: So frankly,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: this is one of the few places I'm not actually worried about in the same way I am,
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: say, all the West.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of all the West,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: let's move on to Europe and France,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: where we saw last Friday riots all over the country.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I actually saw a teacher doused with gasoline and a school destroyed
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: that I'd visited in a town called La Ciotat on the Mediterranean coast.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I remember going to that school.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was what we would call an inner city school,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of kids from immigrant backgrounds,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: but it seemed, you know, well run and the kids were learning stuff.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, compared to an American school where,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: the teacher's getting assaulted every day,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: there's fights everywhere and no one actually learns anything.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed an oasis of calm.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: You see these riots on the street.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: there's a core of legitimate protests where,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: we want more teachers, although who the hell would want to teach there now?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want chairs for everybody.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's some legitimate demands, but then it gets swallowed up.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you see students who are obviously not indigenous
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: or ethnic French holding up flags of Palestine and about 10 other countries
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: that are not France.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I read into this, John,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: it's the slow collapse of French society due to unassimilated mass migration,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: plus the usual three suspects.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Low economic growth, welfare, energy, non-independence, and so on.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: What do you make of it?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the first thing I'd say is I'm not very sympathetic to people
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: who say they have educational concerns burning down school buildings.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: In the realm of logic, I find that idiotic.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And anybody believing that in France is a French sociologist,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: meaning a turkey voting for Thanksgiving.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm absolutely appalled by this.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: As Hemingway said in Fiesta, one of my favorite novels, how do you go bankrupt?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Slowly, then all at once.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: How does France fall apart?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Slowly, then all at once.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: We saw the beginning of all at once last week.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is a hugely important story.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: France has a bond market crisis.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: At the same time, they can't pass a budget.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: At the same time, they're having elections, likely won by Le Pen in the national rally.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: All of this hitting at once, plus now these riots that are led by second and third generation.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's the problem.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: French citizens who are not of French ethnicity.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: You can't get rid of them.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: They're there.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Their parents have been there.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: You've spent billions of dollars on them.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Multiculturalism has been an abject failure.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And where is...
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: The man who you can't tear away from a camera, President Macron, hiding under a desk somewhere.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's more gone than Jimmy Hoffa.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: This is the opposite of the Charles de Gaulle myth that he has on his desk.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: De Gaulle would be out in the streets, rightly or wrongly, engaging in this discussion.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: He's hiding under a desk waiting for his job at the World Economic Forum.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is outrageous behavior.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is the sad death of a once proud country,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: but it needs to be a warning to the rest of Europe of where they're heading.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: France is ahead of the game,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: but not by a whole lot, and you don't want to win that race to the bottom.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, where the hell is Jupiter when you need him?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And like you say, he's absolutely out of the leave.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's swing on to another country in a different stage of decline,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: North America, the United States.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking at our justice system because,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I see case after case where Twitter and Facebook all of a sudden become judge
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: and jury in cases where people know absolutely nothing.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: I always listen to the whole Megyn Kelly episode where in an hour and
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: a half she breaks it down by the facts.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: But just recently we had the Carmelo Anthony Trial that we talked about
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: where they wanted a retrial based on nothing.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have the Lindsay Clancy trial where she apparently,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: allegedly,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: reportedly murdered her three children and you had half of America saying she ought
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: to be not allowed out but basically put into a mental institution
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: until they let her out because she was temporarily insane.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And now you have the Cornell case where a case of,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: let's just say,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: a bunch of bad decisions by young people,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: which does happen in college,
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: blame enough to go around that the university,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: which is ultra left-wing and progressive and would not have cut any breaks
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: to fraternity boys by any means,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: they punished those boys,
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: expelled a couple,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: gave the others a range of punishments that was way beyond writing an essay.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have Letitia James and Kathy Hochul saying...
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Believe all women, believe all victims.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have a victim without a crime, John.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, on that last one, I mean, terrible judgment by everyone.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: She basically wanted a boyfriend,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: but the only time she reported it or changed her story is when they disinvited her
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: to the next party because they were all laughing at her because of
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: the sexual shenanigans they were all getting up to.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And this is sad.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: The boys are jerks.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want them dating anybody I know.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that's not a crime.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: This was absolutely consensual.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the weird thing is that modern day,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: quasi, whatever they call themselves, feminists are not being feminists.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: They're saying women don't have the right to the object of their actions.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: And this ties in with the Clancy story.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: She's admitted she killed them.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: She just said she was depressed.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And people are saying, to me, that's mitigation.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you don't give her the death penalty for that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe postpartum depression is real and we should mitigate the sentence from The death penalty.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: But she certainly admitted to killing them, then jumped out a window admitting guilt.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: She told her husband to stay away.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: So there was cognizance of what she was doing.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: It meets all the definition of a not and right and wrong.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: What's insane isn't her, it's the people who say she's insane.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: They should spend time with her.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: We are losing the ability to say people are responsible for their actions in all these cases.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if we lose that, we're utterly lost.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's the basis to Western civilization.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: We need to take a deep breath and stop behaving like lunatics.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And children.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: when you have me agreeing with Camille Poglia about the feminist revolution,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: we've got issues.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we do.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you're free to act, then you're also free to be judged by your actions.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get out of here and move over to Oceania.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Fiji, I was talking about them just recently in the drug problem.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, Bluetooth thing.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: They had some drugs in a warehouse at the court in Fiji, where it actually been.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: It disappeared and was replaced with flour.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, really Keystone cop type of activity there in Fiji.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: We've all seen the cop shows where they go to the evidence warehouse
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: and do some shenanigans, but like lifting 32 kilos, actually 37 kilos.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Kilograms of cocaine and replacing it with flour indicates some inside complicity,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think, in this.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was looking over at Bolivia,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: where the prosecutor was arrested recently now that the government is conservative
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: and cracking down because he allegedly had an ambulance show up at his house
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: and drive away with about $300,000 worth of cash.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So also an indicator of corruption and an inside job.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my question for you, John, is simply this.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a way to win the war on drugs?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Has any poor country ever done it?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think not.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think you mitigate, which is true of a lot of policy stuff we do.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: As long as there's demand, there'll be supply.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a good, I understand how capitalism works, which it can be amoral.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: the morality is saying that's not okay,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: making the deterrent factor higher,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: getting corruption out of the government, I think is a good start.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then just dealing with narcos around the world on their own.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's something we should strive for.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you take little bites at the apple.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: But as long as there's demand, there's going to be some supply.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't mean you don't crack down, you certainly do and change the calculation of folks.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: We're particularly cracking down on political involvement in drugs.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: But beyond that,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: we're human beings and we have to put up with a certain amount to use our word of
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: the day of shenanigans.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we need more good guys.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in Latin America, we've got them, which brings me to South America.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to talk about a country with an 80-year-old president people are kind
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: of tired of,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of allegations of corruption in the The family of the president and
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: the guy running against him.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about socialist incompetence up against sort of populist conservatism.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Brazil is the country, of course, that we're talking about.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: They just had elections.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Results are starting to come in.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks like Flavio Bolsonaro,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: who was actually not favored to win by a few points,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: appears to almost have gotten a majority.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there'll be a runoff.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: The issues here are, like in so many other countries, high crime.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: High spending and Bolsonaro for all his alleged faults or at least faults attributed
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: to his family is pretty well known as anti-crime and when he says he's going
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: to cut ministries and cut spending.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think voters probably believe it the way they believed it when Malay said it.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he will win in the second round?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is a hugely important story.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: The polls again were wrong,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: just like the shy Trump voter here that people don't talk to mainstream media
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: who might be Trump supporters.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing with Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: The polls were off by five or six points.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: What looked like a thin victory for Lula.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so on the left ends up being a victory where Bolsonaro's at 47% now with 99% of
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: the vote counted.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: The other key fact is that the among the other people who don't make the runoff,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: because if you don't get 50, there's a second round, which will be on October 25th.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: In this case, most of them are on the right populist right.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: So another 4.5 to 5% of the vote are natural Bolsonaro supporters.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: So he is overwhelmingly likely to win.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Also for the Senate,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: two thirds of the Senate seats went to the conservatives and not the socialists.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's for the same reasons we've talked about in the hemisphere, crime, crime, crime.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: People don't want their grandmother beaten up in a favela.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want corruption of the Supreme Court or good old friend Marais,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: who wants to ban Elon Musk in any form of free speech.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: He's in trouble for corruption.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Lula's doing a very good Joe Biden impersonation after,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm making this up, two operations for brain surgery.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: He's 80 years old and is not the vigorous figure he used to be.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people are willing to turn the page.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: But this is another example that since USAID stopped funneling money
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: to America's left-wing enemies in our hemisphere, not one time have they won.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's an extraordinary story.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: That really is.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, correlation is not causation,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: as they always say,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: but you got to kind of wonder,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: we're not,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: we're not beating them over the head telling them who they should elect,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: they elect who they want to.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: We are a little over time.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: But hey, we don't, it's not the Foreign Affairs 15.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's less than 20 is kind of our bag.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: But the title is less
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: than 20 is not a nice title.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: So No, it's not.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: My red herring is the arch,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: a 250-foot arch planned for Memorial Circle here in D.C.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just a real quick question, leaving aside all the politics.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think it'll get built?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Done.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: None.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, the judges will slow it down.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, I just wanted to know your opinion.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And our landmine, john, I actually had one about mortgage rates.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: We'll save that for another time.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Spain is the landmine.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: John, can you just set it up for another episode?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Sanchez called a snap election today because he's incredibly corrupt,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: inept, economically unpopular, and of course, immigration.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about Ceuta.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: His wife is up for embezzlement charges.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Her brother was just convicted of malfeasance.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he's trying to write a wave of disagreements over housing.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: He hasn't passed a budget again since 2023.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: This is the last throw of a very agile political operator,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: but a political disaster for his country.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait to talk about it on the next episode of Foreign Affairs 15.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: John, have a great week.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: You too, man.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the foreign affairs 15.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast is a joint production of john C. Holzman enterprises and base perspectives LLC.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: We receive production support from the Ben Franklin fellowship and
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: the conservative partnership center.