Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Josh vs the News: Blockade Games, Orban Ousted, & Elon Notices Australia

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Josh vs the News: Blockade Games, Orban Ousted, & Elon Notices Australia · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, here we are.
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Talking about Iran again, I thought we'd won this, I thought Trump, I thought Taco had
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done it.
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Last time I spoke last week, Trump was always chickening out again, and we were so relieved,
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we named the live stream, Trump always chickens out, thank F, word.
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And we were feeling like, you know, he didn't know what he was doing necessarily.
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And then he said that he's going to raise a great civilization and raise them to the
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ground, and the civilization will end tonight.
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And he said, I'm going to take on all their, I'm going to take out their bridges, and
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I take out their power plants, and I'm going to take out every last man, woman and child,
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and they're all going to die.
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It's going to be horrendous.
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And then it seemed like the Iranian sort of blinked, and I was saying thank goodness for
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the Pakistanis, for bringing the Iranians together and going, okay, let's just have a
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two week ceasefire, we're going to open the straits, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief,
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we're going to get our, get a oil out again, get the oil flowing, get some relief at the
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pump.
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And then after two weeks, what I thought, what many people thought was, well, Taco, Trump,
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he's going to take the opportunity to just declare war, declare victory and walk away.
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He's not going to want the war to go on for any longer, because he knows that there's
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no strategic endgame here, and he's sort of, he's deployed all of his tactical wins up
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at the very start.
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See what you want to do, if you're, let me give you a little, a little lesson in military,
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in military strategy here.
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And the difference between strategy and tactic is a tactic is, we're going to take out
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the leadership, we're going to blow up their new clear sides, we're going to take out their
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ballistic missiles, we're going to kill, you know, the, all the senior military guys,
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that's all great tactically, we're going to own the skies over Iran.
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And they did that very quickly, and then they go, so what's the strategic goal?
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What are we actually doing?
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What's the purpose of this?
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What do we get out of it?
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And then it was a little bit more ambiguous, because if Iran is saying that they're going
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to put in a toll booth on the, the Strait of Hormuz, and to come wield us to appreciate
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for a moment, ladies and general persons, how, how pleasant it is that we live in an
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era where everyone gets to say the word, Hormuz, so frequently, Hormuz.
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And so they go, well, you know, so if the Iranians are going to still have the capacity
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to put a toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz, and interrupt free shipping in that international
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laneway, and if they still have the capacity to send drones over to blow up oil refineries
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in golf states, and if they still have the capacity to fire a missile, it goes through
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the window of a five-star resort into buy, then what exactly do we get out of it strategically
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that we couldn't have gotten through diplomacy?
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But I thought the good thing is, you know, Trump likes superficial wins.
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He likes, you know, no one's ever accused him of being a deep strategic thinker.
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He likes putting his name in gold on top of things.
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So maybe if he can put his name in gold metaphorically on top of an Iranian war win, and he can
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just say, well, at the end of the two weeks, the Straits are open, and, you know, we had
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the best war ever in the history of wars, and now we can go home, then maybe that would
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be enough.
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But he just can't help himself.
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Now there's a blockade, and so yes, Elamita is some military strategic lessons for us.
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This is put on your thinking caps, put on your class is now in session, the class of
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Dr. Zeps.
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When you're running a strategically wise campaign, you want to start with incremental
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threats, and you want to keep some gum powder in the back of your arrow quither.
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Is that the analogy?
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I think that's the analogy.
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You want to keep some gum powder dry in your bow and arrow thing.
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And so you start with the blockade, you start with the blockade.
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You go, okay, we don't want you to have any of that nuclear material.
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I want you to hand it over, or we want you to so dilute it, and then give it handed
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over to us.
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I'm international body.
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We want you to, you know, give us X number of your missiles.
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We want verification of this or that and you're going, well, let me say, if you don't
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do this, then we're going to, we're going to ratchet up this blockade, and you're not
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going to get anything going in or going out and you're going to pay the price.
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And then if they don't do it, you say, uh, we still got a lot of bombs.
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We can start bombing things.
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And then you do that.
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And you say, well, Mr. Muller, Mr., you know, a leader of, a religious leader of the
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Iranian Revolutionary Government, we're now, we can target you and we can take you out.
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And then you always have some, have a bargaining chip.
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But if you use up all your bargaining chips, they're on the first day of the war, and then
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you're a few weeks in and you go, now we've basically done everything that we could threaten
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them that we're going to do, short of genocide.
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So we're going to set up a blockade.
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Well now the other side has time on their hands.
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Now the Iranians just have to wait you out, and they have to guess, and they have more
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reason.
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They've invested in this because it's an existential threat for them.
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The way it's not for us, they just have to guess the way they get sick and tired of
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increasing fuel prices before they get sick and tired of increasing prices of everything
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because they can't import stuff.
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So we're in a little bit of a, what foreign policy analysts call a pickle, a pickle, ladies
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and gentlemen, I'm going to open the sub stack here just in case people want to comment
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here.
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You can leave some questions, you can ask some things.
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So here's the, here's, let me, I've got the stats here about how much goes in and out
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of the straighter hall moves, so we can get some context about the, about the, let me turn
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off the sound there, so we don't get a, you know, we go, so we don't, so when I'm talking
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about vague things, so we understand what the stakes are for Iran and what the stakes
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are for the rest of us.
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So Iran can endure, is according to the economist, fine publication, take it to the bank, Iran
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can endure maybe six months of pressure, six months of pressure with a blockade by a printing
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money, always a good trick, be selling 100 million or so barrels of oil in floating storage
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off Malaysia and China, who knew they had floating oil in some storage floating off the
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Malaysia, they're wily, they're wily, these Iranians and who knew, certainly Trump didn't
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know clearly and see securing informal credit from suppliers of imports, so they could
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import stuff and they, well, we can't pay you now, but we'll pay you later.
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So that buys them six months, six months takes you up to the midterm elections and six
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months without oil coming out of the Gulf States is very bad, you can't have fertilizer
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without oil, you can't have petrol without oil, certainly can't have diesel without oil
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and Europe relies on natural gas imports and countries like Australia rely on diesel.
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So now, what's the, what's the pressure on Iran, their seaborne imports, is their sea
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borne imports, so one fifth of its wheat, which is the staple crop that they used to arrive
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from the United Arab Emirates, but that was already gone before the blockade because
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of the war, they're not, they're not going to pay any money here, those sneaky Emirates.
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Most of their maize comes from Brazil and Ukraine via ports in or near the Gulf, but some
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of the grain could be replaced by Russian and Kazakh suppliers through Caspian ports or
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overland via Turkey or Central Asia, it would cost a bit more, but they could still get
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their grain. So they've got 80% of their wheat, but they don't need coming in through the
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on ships. They can replace most of the maize that they get from Brazil and Ukraine from
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Russian and Kazakh suppliers either overland or through the Caspian sea.
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The bigger vulnerability is agricultural feed for the Iranians, because the animals eat
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soybean oil, and that's imported, and so they could get it, they could feed them other
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things, but it would turbo charge food prices. So food prices in Iran were already 110% higher
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in March than they were in March, you know, last month than they were 13 months ago.
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So the only real stressor for the Iranians is that food costs a lot. Now that's terrible
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if you're an Iranian person, it's not that terrible if you're an Iranian rich shit-poke
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dictator, theocrat, unless people get so upset that they topple you, but if people weren't
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going to topple you when they had the opportunity six weeks ago, then maybe they're not going
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to topple you just because they're having to eat what wheat instead of meat.
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So then what's the, what are the downsides on the other side of the blockade? We talked
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about the downsides for Iran of the Trump blockade. It can't get things in, so food prices
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are going to get higher. It's going to have to rearrange where it gets, I love the word
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maze. There's not only enough maze, I actually had a, I had corn on the cob just yesterday.
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So pardon my misspeaking about not consuming maze, that is, that is maze, right? Is,
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is a corn on the cob maze? I think it's maze. So there are two, so two big questions about
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the impact of the blockade on the rest of the world. One is the impact on energy markets.
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We all know Trump is super unpopular. The polls are declining for him and all the republicans.
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He's got midterm elections in seven months time. And although he keeps saying, we got plenty
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of oil. We got heaps of oil. We don't get our oil from the Gulf anyway. You know, that's
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not how economics works. You have to pay the global price for a thing. And if there's
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much less of the thing in the world than you're competing with all of the people who do
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by Gulf oil for the remaining oil that does exist, so you still have to pay a lot for
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economics 101. Trump did very well in economics. What did he go to? What did his daddy get
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him into again? Whatever. Great. Excellent. Best school, best mark, smartest guy at the best school.
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And then, so, were they talking about Brent crude futures will go towards $150 a barrel by the end
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of this month. That's the expectation. It's currently what is it 100 and previously was 50-ish.
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And then you got a factor in the risk of Iranian strikes on Saudi oil production facilities,
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on Emirati oil production facilities, on other Gulf oil production facilities, on pipelines,
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on ports. The Iranians still have the capacity to unleash havoc on these things. Not to mention
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just the threat of the risk of this happening is going to deter ship traffic even if the American
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blockade ended without an Iranian agreement to open the straits. And Iran has already threatened
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to do that, to blow up oil and gas production plants in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and elsewhere.
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Saudi Arabia, of course. And here's another thing about this blockade, this new blockade.
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It might not bother Donald Trump terribly to be imposing this blockade, but here's the thing.
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Here's the thing. Here's the thing that Mr. Trump hasn't thought of. He hasn't thought of the fact
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that he is not the only person in the world who exists, or matters, or who has interests.
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There are other people in the world and the spoiler alert for all the Americans listening,
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this is even more of a shocker. Some of those people are not even American.
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So some of those people are Chinese, some of those people are Indians, and far be it from me to
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think that Donald Trump needs to give a shit about Indians or Chinese people. He clearly doesn't
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and needn't. But they're going to give a shit about him and about the situation. And they're
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going to start getting angry and they're going to start deploying whatever levels of power they have
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to change the situation if it becomes too bad. So oil that's bound for China, Pakistan, and
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Thailand, in the immediate days after the ceasefire and before the blockade, it was passing through.
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So there was a period where India, Pakistan, China, and Thailand were getting tankers out
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before a big, a big orange taco imposed the blockade.
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France and Turkey, both American allies, had sent ships through even before the ceasefire.
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So if those things can't come through, then what happens to the oil that
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Southeast Asia and East Asia and South Asia and Europe rely on? Now here's another wrinkle
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that I'll bet you haven't thought of. But old Zepsi has, I'll tell you that for nothing.
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China, in their war game plans about what happens in the case of a war with America over Taiwan,
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for example, their big weak point that all of their war gaming encourages them to avoid
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is a blockade of the Straits of Malacca. Now the Straits of Malacca and the one upside of a
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war with China, such as the war with Iran, is that just as the war with Iran has given us all the
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opportunity to say the word Hormuz more. A war with China would give us the opportunity to say the
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word Malacca. A lot more. So start practicing it now, folks. Malacca. So the Straits of Malacca,
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where a lot of the ship traffic in Southeast Asia comes around the bottom of Singapore,
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Malaysia, the Malaysian Peninsula, and then up towards China. If you blockade that,
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that's a, yeah, it's your chokehold right there on Chinese on ships going in between China
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and the Middle East or, you know, Europe. And so you blockade the Straits of Malacca and you're in
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sheep, sheep dip. So China is going to be watching this blockade of the Straits of Hormuz,
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Hormuz, Malacca, Malacca, Hormuz with great interest. And thinking to itself, we certainly don't
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want to make it seem like we're endorsing a status quo in which all of a sudden it's okay for
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the United States to impose naval blockades on other countries as part of their military strategy.
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So if they're super worried about a blockade of the Straits of Malacca and the event of a war
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in the Pacific, do the Chinese at some point start trying to get around the blockade, especially if
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it's painful enough for them and all of their neighbors and allies. So the economist after
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outlining all of this says, here's how it could all work out for Donald Trump. So don't worry yet.
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Don't you worry your pretty little heads. He's got this all planned out. If, if Mr. Trump can choke
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off Iran's hard currency and generate an economic crisis, all while curbing the impact on oil
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prices and curbing the impact on commodity flows, while limiting the military escalation that follows
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and managing the fraught diplomacy of a blockade against multinational shipping, he might return
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to the negotiating table on better terms. So that shouldn't be too big an ask for taco.
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Unfortunately, the economist then goes on to say, but Iran's regime believes it won the first
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contest of wills with America having survived the war hung onto its nuclear material and kept a
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tight grip on hormones. It has reason to believe it can outlast Mr. Trump again. So I really hope
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he knows what he's doing. And oh, and the sub-cycle life chat, Errol says, could it be
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explained why Iranian oil has such an effect on America when they produce whale oil themselves?
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I'm a little bit confused why it matters at such a high level. It's not the Iranian oil.
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It's that all of the oil that comes out of the oily other golf states can't get out because it's
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too expensive to ensure oil tankers when you think that Iran might send drones to blow them up
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or send a stray missile. So until you know that oil tankers from the part of the world that
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produces more oil than any other Saudi Arabia and the other golf states can pass through that little
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bottleneck, that little chokehold, which is so narrow that you can just see Iran from one side of it.
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It's just a little stretch of water. So it's pretty easy to make traffic hazardous and they've
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put mines in it's in all this sort of nonsense. But so it's not that, you know, it's not the problem.
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There's not that there's no Iranian oil. It's that all of it's that the world's largest
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supply of oil has to pass right next to Iranian territory and the Iranians can make it impossible
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for any company to want to take that risk. And you can't really apparently put a, you know,
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US aircraft carrier to chaperone every single oil tanker and just dare the Iranians to send out a
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fleet of drones and take out your hundred billion dollar piece of military hardware at almost no
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cost to themselves. You know, the reason they haven't done that in the past is because well,
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you don't want to piss off the United States. They might go to war with you. They're already at war
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with you. They were already killed. You know, you're top people. I've already bummed the shit out
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of everything. Well, you know, what do they got left? This is the thing. Once you once you blow
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your load, pardon the French at the very beginning, then there's nothing left to do. You know,
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they've already done it. So the Iranians have no disincentive to escalate and to keep this
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going on. And why does it not help that America produces a lot of oil for itself? Well, because
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it's a global market. If the whole rest of America's only, you know, 5% of the world's population,
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if the other 95% of the world is all scrambling for oil and willing to pay higher prices,
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then on what basis are oil companies going to charge Americans uniquely low prices? It doesn't
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matter where the oil comes from. You can slosh oil around to wherever you want to. So obviously,
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so unless there was, you know, unless the government imposed price caps or something or subsidized
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the oil itself, it's still coming out of a finite supply. If there was for every 100 gallons
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that existed prior to the war, if there are now 60 gallons in the world, then those, then 100%
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of the people who were previously, you know, haggling for that bargaining for those 60,
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those 100 gallons and now bargaining over 60 gallons and the price goes up. That's just the way
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that it would work with any commodity. So another person on the substaxis, if Iran has all the
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leverage they need from blocking the state of hormones, why do they still want nukes for if not
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for bad offensive reasons? Do you believe if they gave up nukemaking capacity or this stops?
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Yes, yes, I do believe that if the Iranians agreed to hand over to literally hand over the
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nuclear material that they've got and to cease their nuclear program, then all this does stop.
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I think that would stop things. I mean, that is the number one thing that JD Vance went to
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Islamabad to present the Iranians with as a demand and they came back and said, we'll pause it
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for five years, you know, we'll dilute the nuclear material so that it takes so that it's a hassle
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for us to undilute it, but you know, even people who are who are dovish on Iran don't deny that
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it's behaving in ways that are consistent with a country that's trying to get a nuclear weapon
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and has been for a very long time. It's taken them longer to get a nuclear weapon than any other
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country in the history of the world that's ever tried to build a nuclear weapon because the Israelis
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and the Americans keep intervening starting with remember the centrifuges that went spinning wildly
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out of control in like 2009 or something turned out to be a Mossad operation like a computer virus
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that they put into it was on a it was so cool it put out that some a spy presumably in Israeli
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spy left a thumb drive one of those little USB sticks lying around one of the nuclear facilities
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where they were the centrifuges were enriching uranium and on the expectation that what ended
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up happening would happen which is that a curious local Iranian scientist would plug the thumb drive
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into the system because obviously it's sealed off from the internet it's not like you can send a
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computer virus over it's all self contained it's quarantined it's firewalled so they literally
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have to put put the virus on a physical drive they put it in the centrifuges start spinning
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wildly out of control and they all crash and burn which is rather clever so because of things
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like that's taken them a very very long time to get a nuke and it was slowed down a bit by the
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Obama deal unfortunately you know attacking their nuclear problem the program also causes another
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problem which is that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that of course that would want a nuke
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because I mean wouldn't you wouldn't you want a nuke in this in this economy I mean who doesn't
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want a nuke am I right if you know that is well in the United States or hell bent on taking you out
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and you look at how feckless the United States is against nuclear powers like North Korea for
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example you know they're not bomb in North Korea and there's a reason for that and it's a four-letter
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word that's not poop it's nuke and so the Iranian is thinking well yeah sure why wouldn't we get a
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nuke if we at all can so I think the yes the leverage question is simply a way for them to
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you know flex their muscles but they can weight this out longer than we can weight this out so
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I don't quite understand what the the logic of the blockade is and keep the questions coming on
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on the sub stack and I'll continue getting to them as much as I possibly can in the limited time
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that we unfortunately have today and the other thing that I wanted to talk about was was hungry
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because this was this just delighted me it delighted me a little bit to see the the fall of
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Orban and the limits of American of the power of MAGA in other domains you know Orban is this
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I wouldn't say you know he's not a dictator he's running elections he got elected out when he was
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voted out he graciously conceded he didn't do what Donald Trump did after the last time he lost
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the election and tried to screw it all up by claiming that it was a hoax and you know
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uh sending fake electors into try to disrupt the transition of power no Orban to his credit
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conceded but in the meantime he had turned hungry you know a member of the European Union and the
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EU has very strict rules about how liberal you have to be you know countries that are applying
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for membership of the European Union have to go through this insanely stringent set of jumping
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through hoops and so on about ensuring uh you know their compliance with every single arcane
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bit of Brussels bureaucracy uh and hungry was able to do that in the pre-Orban era it was a
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fully free democratic uh you know post-communist uh uh polity and then Orban comes in and he just
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made it so that his party controlled the supreme court and the constitutional courts he made it so
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that his allies owned all of the broadcast media uh all of the online media all of the print media
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um he he planted apparatus into the civil service the public service uh you know into state owned
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companies into the education system he undermined the freedom of universities um and um so it is
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still the case that even though he's lost power all of those people are still there and his party
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could still make life very difficult for the incoming uh uh prime minister it's also worth saying
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the incoming prime minister was a member of Orban's party until a couple of years ago so it's not
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like he came in saying like uh we need to have a completely different policy on everything he was
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like let's keep the same anti-immigrant policies let's keep the same populism but let's care more
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about uh inflation and people's hip-pocket issues and let's not be Orban um so it's a modest win
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but an important win nonetheless it also has important implications for us in the rest of the world
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in the sense that if you care at all about the ability of medium-sized countries to exist uh without
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being invaded and steamrolled by larger powers um then the fate of Ukraine matters somewhat uh if you
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want Europe to be cohesive uh and free from Russian aggression in the Baltic States or Poland or
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elsewhere uh then you know the end of the Ukraine crisis and Ukraine war is uh something you should
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be still paying attention to as it drags on and on and Hungary had been the country that was vetoing
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the European Union's uh military aid to Ukraine so there's a 105 billion US dollars 90 billion
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euros in military aid which the European Union is sitting on which it sort of owes to Ukraine or
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wants to give to Ukraine and because it's such a conciliatory process in the European Union a single
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country can veto it and Hungary and Orban had been like Putin great Ukraine terrible Nazis coming
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to hunt us all down and uh now that his uh now that he's out of office hopefully that aid gets freed
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up and uh that's good for Ukraine and bad for Putin so uh yay for Ukraine uh and uh yay for democracy
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and Europe and boo for Putin also boo for JD events who went to uh Budapest and was uh was uh
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was joint and it was joining Orban in a rally to try to show American support for this uh
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tin pot pipsqueak quasi uh dictator want to be uh a far rightist should we say maybe not quasi
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dictator but certainly a uh an illiberal I mean a proud illiberal he even talked about Hungary's
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way as being a new illiberal democracy a form of illiberal democracy he owned that term and
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become became faded by the far right all across Europe and uh the UK and the United States as a result
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because he was showing that you don't have to put up with all this woke nonsense and he was very
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good at playing on Western fears and Western culture wars you know he would talk about you know
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transgender ideology contaminating children and stuff like that there's no transgender ideology
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contaminating children in Hungary this is not he would cherry pick culture war issues that matter
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a lot to the likes of JD events and he would talk they would bang on about them the war on the
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west the you know the problem of migrants flooding into the country and contaminating and polluting
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your society and causing crime and you know they're not sending their best not sending their best
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people they're sending rapists and murderers it was all echoing the kinds of stuff that Donald
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Trump had been talking about in the United States and he was tailoring it for an international
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audience not for a domestic audience and eventually I guess the Hungarian voters got tired
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of that of that posturing and cared more about the fact that he wasn't doing anything that was
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important for them in fact one of the ads that I was reading about that the uh the new
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prime minister the then the opposition candidate ran against Orban was uh appealing to voters
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and saying like why are you struggling while Orban has exotic pets on his ranch and it turns out
28:17
to be uh if not true then plausible I think this is true that Orban has a has a like a hussy ender
28:25
he has like uh he has a he has a buccolic retreat what did the Soviet leaders used to have like
28:31
not uh what do they call them there's someone someone text me on on on on the sub stack and tell me
28:35
what did they it starts with a D and the Soviet leaders when they go to their little retreats
28:39
and they go and they you know they decompress over there and so Orban has one of these in hungry
28:45
and on the grounds of his retreat the mayor has zebras he has zebras you know how indigenous zebras are
28:55
to hung that to the Hungarian wilderness uh they're not they're not you go wandering around the
29:02
Hungarian countryside you know how many zebras you're supposed to see zero zilch nada my friends uh
29:10
and so he had zebras going out and so the so very wisely the new prime minister as opposition
29:16
candidate was was like you know uh why does he have zebras which is a very good point it's a very
29:21
good point it's not a substantive policy point but it's a very good point uh dashes that's what
29:27
I was with dashes yes uh shama says on sub stack thank you for chiming in the last thing I'll
29:33
say about Orban uh which is worth noting is has anyone seen the memes going around on social media
29:41
about uh how much how much he sounds like grew uh from minions he so there's he let me play I'm
29:52
going to play you something now this is uh this was this is one of those clips and the beginning of
29:57
the clip is actually Orban talking okay at a rally and at the very end of the clip they go from
30:06
Orban to grew a voice by Steve Carell from the minions movies okay here's here's Orban progressive
30:13
liberals didn't want me to be here because they knew what I would tell you because I'm here to tell
30:20
you that we should still get more so okay steal the moon there that is that's not that's not him
30:31
let me show let me listen to it again listen to it again okay this is the beginning is Orban
30:35
and then it's it's the minions villain okay here's uh here's Orban progressive liberals didn't want
30:42
me to be here because they knew what I would tell you because I'm here to tell you that we should still
30:55
same person same person incredible I love it uh same person so good on everybody on the internet
31:02
who noticed that Orban is basically uh Steve Carell doing a bad voice impression of someone
31:08
vaguely foreign um it is interesting though that the villain in minions is clearly hungarian
31:13
in terms of the accent I thought it was just generic eastern european but it's he's nailing
31:17
his nailing is Orban impression oh uh the other thing there is um that I wanted to say about
31:22
to Orban and JD Vance going over there and while JD was at the Orban rally by the way he got on his
31:28
phone and he called Trump and Trump was uh Trump so he put Trump on speakerphone for the sea of
31:36
adoring Orban or Orban fans at this Orban rally and Trump was going on about how great it is
31:42
that Hungarians have decided that Hungary is for Hungarians and not for foreigners and that Orban
31:47
is just demand to keep Hungary strong for Hungarians and to make Hungary great again for Hungarian people
31:52
and not for all of the interlopers who are coming in and bringing their smelly sausages and their
31:57
Muslim religion in and uh made no impact obviously uh I don't think it was a good thing for local
32:03
politics to uh to see that the the fingerprint of the US administration was on Orban I don't think
32:10
it was very helpful before Brexit for President Obama to go to the UK and encourage British voters
32:16
to vote uh to stay in the European Union in general little tip JD little tip uh you know not
32:25
everything you do actually wins people over to your side simply being at a place doesn't make
32:30
people think wow you're an incredible person who I would want to emulate and have leading me
32:35
sometimes it just makes people feel that other countries shouldn't interfere into fear in their
32:38
in their business and certainly in the case of what normally happens is that if there is an
32:43
anti elite historic anti government sentiment then proving that the candidate or in the case of
32:49
Brexit the issue is closely aligned with the most elite powers in the world aka the US government
32:57
only reinforces the perception of people who want a larger protest vote against such powers that
33:02
there's something they should vote against you know Obama may have made encouraged more people to
33:06
vote for Brexit by thinking well the world is just stitched up between all of these bureaucrats in
33:11
Brussels and Washington DC and Westminster who are you know betraying our interests and you can
33:16
see it here because even the US president comes over and tells us what to vote for well if I want
33:19
to lodge an FU vote then this just reinforces that perception uh so uh uh there we go I'm just
33:26
keeping an eye on uh on the time and also on uh uh uh comments uh lord lord case writes on
33:33
substack proud and happy Hungarian here glad to be back in the free world with a little love heart
33:40
or an image of a fat lady I'm not sure what the uh what that image means but congratulations
33:45
I'm celebrating for Hungarians today it's a day to be proud of um the last thing I just want to touch
33:50
on there's a story here in Australia uh which is a big big deal and it's so big a deal that all of
33:57
us it's one of those stories that has made headlines outside of Australia there's a very hard thing
34:05
to do there's a very hard thing for an Australian story you know what Australian stories get traction
34:10
overseas uh shark attacks and bushfires and shark attacks and bushfires and shark attacks
34:21
and bushfires anything else then yeah you know there's a change of government in Australia it's like
34:27
the fifth story on the on the BBC world news there's 15 seconds of images of like people uh
34:35
waving around little flags of the new party and uh they treated almost like one of those cute
34:40
stories like the stories that they have towards the end of the news about pandabes uh having sex
34:46
in a zoo or something like that and now I have got a cute little story of the day the nation of
34:51
Australia has a new leader look at that little cutie it's like that you know it's like when a
34:57
when a baby cheetah is born at the San Diego Zoo and so they have Australians have their cute little
35:02
new leader but this story is a serious one it's big news you can tell it's big news because I'm
35:08
ruffling my papers like this I'm shaking them up and I got them right here in my hot all-hand
35:14
it's broken through on the uh mega web on the Elon uh uh uh uh uh uh transom Elon Musk tweeting
35:25
to was this this post has 25.7 million views as of the time that this piece of paper was printed out
35:32
which was long enough ago that it's probably more saying simply this is insane
35:39
hmm what is insane I hear you ask what has the lord of x
35:46
adeemed to be worthy of his attention that's taking place in the land down under
35:51
it's not shark attacks and it's not bushfires and it doesn't even have anything to do with
35:55
Robert Irwin it's an article entitled um it's not an article it's just a comment
36:04
breaking court documents reveal that Australian government war crimes investigators
36:09
whoa war crimes do not even have the names of two individuals
36:17
Ben Roberts Smith is alleged to have killed in Afghanistan almost 20 years ago nobody has
36:22
managed to identify these alleged victims even after this person writes who is just a person
36:29
so this is not me saying that this is a person I can't verify that whether or not they do or
36:35
don't have the names but this is a a reference to a huge story here in Australia which is that
36:42
this gentleman named Ben Roberts Smith came home from a tour of Afghanistan in 2013
36:48
needless to say Australian service men and women for valiantly in Afghanistan and in Iraq
36:56
after you know the attacks of 9-11 and the international campaign to topple the Taliban how did
37:01
that go by the way how we doing on the how we doing on the Taliban and get the Taliban out of
37:07
Afghanistan is that did we did we achieve it are we good so any who Ben Roberts Smith came home from
37:16
Afghanistan in 2013 and he was a national hero he had he had he was awarded the highest military
37:24
honor in Australia because he had single-handedly overpowered Taliban fighters who came in and attacked
37:31
his platoon his SAS platoon and he got a bunch of speaking engagements he got you know he was
37:39
appointed to boards and got lots of money he got it was on the cover of magazines or a huge
37:45
portraits and accolades and awards he got the father of the year not only did he get the highest
37:51
military honor he got father of the year um fortunately at that stage I was not a father yet
37:57
so it was a shoe in for him obviously if I'd had a kid would have been a little bit more tricky
38:03
for mr. Robert Smith but what happened five years later which was in 2018 is that
38:11
one of the big newspaper chains in Australia an independent newspaper company night it was called
38:17
now nine newspapers used to be called Fairfax they started publishing a series of articles
38:22
that alleged misconduct during uh Ben Roberts Smith's time in Afghanistan
38:30
there had been some of his colleagues who had broken the emirter that normally exists you know
38:35
there's sort of mafia style code of silence that exists amongst uh military folks and um
38:42
they've come out and they've leaked to the Fairfax press that actually their claim was their claim
38:51
was that actually this is the newspapers claim now the uh the in the platoon that he was leading
39:00
there were unlawful beatings and killings of prisoners as well as bullying of colleagues
39:05
and they threw in for good measure domestic violence against a mistress and Ben Roberts Smith said
39:10
it's all untrue and again we don't know if this is true these were allegations made in the newspaper
39:15
um and he launched a huge legal battle he launched a defamation suit against them uh some
39:21
people called it the trial of the century uh and he basically lost this court case where he was
39:27
trying to so he was suing the newspapers and saying they're defaming me with all of this nonsense
39:31
it's not true it doesn't uh you know and uh unfortunately the the the civil court the judgment
39:38
of the court in 2023 was it wasn't defamation because the reports that he committed
39:45
for murders the court found to be substantially true now that's not a criminal case and it doesn't
39:54
mean that they are true what it means is that a court a defamation court found that the newspapers
40:01
had not you know uh been guilty of defaming Ben Roberts Smith by claiming that he did these things
40:09
now that's a much lower bar and a very different thing from saying that someone actually did it
40:14
or than from a court of criminal law saying that it means the standards of reason you know
40:19
beyond reasonable doubt so this is the first person the first recipient of a victoria cross
40:26
uh I believe anywhere in the world because this is an honor that is accorded amongst all common
40:32
wealth nations so anywhere that used to be or still is uh you know a country that had the queen
40:38
of uh of England as it's head of state uh you had awards these these this highest military honor
40:45
and it seems like this is the first time that anyone who's received that is being charged with a
40:50
war crime because what happened this week is that he was arrested uh and charged he was it's
40:57
one of the most significant moments in Australian military history that happened this week at Sydney
41:02
Airport he was getting off a plane it was he was flying in from I think it was from Brisbane
41:07
and uh he presumably knew nothing of it and uh when the plane landed uh before it pulled up to
41:15
the gate uh they had federal police board the plane and uh escort him into a waiting police car
41:23
so he's the most decorated living soldier and the most famous soldier of his generation
41:28
and he was charged on Tuesday yesterday uh with five counts of the war crime of murder he
41:37
denies all the wrongdoing he says the allegations are egregious he says it's driven by spiteful and
41:41
jealous peers which is entirely possible it's entirely possible that the people who are going to
41:46
presumably take the stand against him are lying um and that Ben Robert Smith is
41:51
blameless I don't have a position on that I wasn't there and he hasn't been convicted so he's
41:55
innocent until proven guilty but an incredible moment and an incredible moment in the eyes of many
42:00
people who are jingoistic pro military knee jerk uh you know nationalist because this is being
42:07
understood in mother world and by you know the Elon Musk's of the world as a true crime against
42:14
all that is decent when you take an individual and you cherry pick that person and you make an
42:20
example of them when all they were trying to do was their job and trying to serve their country
42:26
honorably and I got to say it's not entirely um I don't have no sympathy for the argument that
42:33
you know civilian governments launch wars and send people into impossible situations and then
42:39
those governments are able to wipe their hands of any culpability for it while the people who are
42:44
enforcing those policies on the ground are the ones who get thrown under a bus like if he'd done
42:50
the same things if he'd killed the same people by dropping a bomb from a fighter jet would it have been
42:55
okay I don't know and again I'm not implying that he did any of this some just sort of speculating
43:00
about the different ways that we think about accusations of wrongdoing so that's what we're all
43:05
paying attention to I hope you are well I hope you are happy I hope we get out of this block eight
43:11
alive there's a fascinating episode coming up on uncomfortable conversations with a an expert on
43:16
Iran who actually ran counter terrorism and Middle Eastern North Africa policy in the Clinton
43:22
administration under Madeleine Albright uh and has some very interesting thoughts about the situation
43:27
of things so keep uh keep an eye out in your podcast feed for that which will drop uh tomorrow
43:32
morning or the next until then take care love you see ya