Latest / John’s Newsletter / Foreign Affairs Fifteen: Episode 23

Transcript

Foreign Affairs Fifteen: Episode 23 · 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.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining me on episode 23 of the Foreign Affairs 15,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: brought to you this week by our new corporate sponsor,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Patriot Gold Bar Erectile Dysfunction Coffee.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: That is not yet true, but we are open to sponsorship.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: We're open to offer, and that one sounds, you know, compelling.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the irrelevant minute is about the NFL,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: the National Football League,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: which is playing or played its historic debut in France with
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: the Pittsburgh Steelers defeating the New Orleans Saints 16 to 10 at
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: the Stade de France,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: which is actually in Saint-Denis, which is not the most salubrious suburb of France.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: They improved 5-2 amid a festive stadium atmosphere, it said.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that was the day after we had the latest round of French riots.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: John, why is the NFL playing in France?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do any French people care about American football?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Not at all.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a desperate effort to follow the NBA,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: which has done better at global marketing,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: where the Chinese care fanatically about the NBA.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: No one cares about the NFL, and yet they say we're the number one sport in terms of outlook.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: that's why it's my relevant minute because I just don't think there's an appetite
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: in Europe for, you know, American football.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Seven continents, 14 minutes.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm cheating a little bit with Antarctica because I'm going to talk about
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: a Netflix horror series called Below.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just listening to Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire give a review of it,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: which was really amusing.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wanted to share that with you guys.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: The plot of this thing is,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: and here's how I work Antarctica into it,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: that a massive iceberg has floated somehow off Canada and...
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Newfoundland, and it contains a giant squid that eats people.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And also, get this, the iceberg has a mind control property if you eat part of the iceberg.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sounding a little bizarre to begin with,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: but then also went completely woke with just the most absurd plotline,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: ending with some evil corporate,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: white middle-aged guy trying to monetize the squid in some way,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: and then they try to save the squid.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Free Willy for Octopi.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: John, are you going to watch this show?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, I'm just when you said it went woke, I thought the squid might be trans.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that was fascinating to me to think through.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up terrified and fascinated by squid and equal measures is going after whale,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: the whole Captain Ahab thing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: But a trans squid.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if that's happening,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Simon, we'll get a bottle of wine and watch just for the mocking value.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: But no, I will not be watching.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to Africa,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: a country we have not talked about before,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Gabon, which banned social media for eight months.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is the high communication authority of the country.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Banned social media back in February because they said it was stoking division.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the background for this is that the country has basically been run
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: for almost 60 years by the Bongo family.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It started off with Ali Bongo and then his son,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: took over,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: and then there was a coup in 2023,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: and the new president,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Bryce Oluguema,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: who's actually the cousin of the original,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: or the son, Bongo,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a small country in a small family,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I just found this story interesting because other,
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Brazil, we'll talk about that a little bit.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: The United States, we've had a lot of accusations of Russian bots, interference in elections.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: In this country, they just stopped the social media altogether.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And here's an amusing statistic.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Proton, whose mail services I use and has a VPN,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: reported a 60,000% increase in downloads of its VPN after the ban.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: So my My conclusion from this is you really can't ban social media.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's like banning the ocean at this point.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I agree.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it can be banned.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And like the ocean,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: maybe the edges,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: you can push it in a direction, but that's the best it's going to be.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so the only thing it's back to Jefferson,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: if given we have all this speech,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: the best thing is more speech to make the bad speech better,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: because you can't stop the ocean from running.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a great example, people will go right around it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the people who are best at getting around it,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: and you know, my Luddite qualities, Simon, personally, are kids.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: If I need anything to my stepkids,
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: if anything goes wrong with my computer, I call for them in a shaky voice.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's true of many older people.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea that kids can be stopped, Yeah, exactly.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess the government is probably run by people our age, if that.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Gabon shares with Togo the non-distinction of having been ruled since 1967 by
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: a father-son dynasty,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: except that they added a cousin at the end,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: but still not exactly a thriving democracy.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, it sounds a bit like the Corleone family,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: given a small African country, kind of is where we're at here.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Only the Corleone's probably would have run it a little better and made
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: a lot more money out of all that oil that they sit on.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: But in fact, 25% of the country lives in poverty.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Asia.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Israel, I believe, is in Asia.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say it is.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Benjamin Netanyahu is up yet again for the prime ministership of that country.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's had it, I think, six times.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's ruled the country,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: as long as most people can remember, is almost synonymous with the state of Israel.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: if you like him,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: you like Israel and vice versa,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people outside of Israel aren't aware that there's
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: an extremely competitive political market in Israel and
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: that not everybody likes Benjamin Netanyahu and that they argue about You know,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: settlers in the West Bank and Judea and Samaria, whatever.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: They have a thriving democracy in Israel, is my point.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not a dictatorship.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: But Netanyahu seems to win elections based on stuff that he actually does.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just looking through a list.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: There was an article in the Spectator about it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: They are the fastest group.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Growing developed economy at 4.5% a year, which puts France at 0.4% a year in the shadows.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And even the United States, we're only about 2.3%.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Their GDP, this blew me away, is 68, almost 73%.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: 20,000 per head, which is above Germany, Britain, and France.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is Israel we're talking about,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: a place that has only been around since 1948 and started with basically a bunch
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: of sand and a few olive trees.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Their stock market has grown.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Nine times since the outbreak of the war.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2023, which is absolutely stunning to me.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at Netanyahu's political accomplishments,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: we could talk about how the United States fared, but as far as Israel is concerned.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: They have secured the immediate vicinity.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not having rockets lobbed at them.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Iran is on the back foot.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's got ties with India, Argentina, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Greece.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uganda is now such a close ally that they put a statue at Entebbe Airport
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: to his daughter, Jonathan, who died there in the 1976 rescue.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: John, you're much more of an expert on Israeli politics than I am,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I know you've talked about him a lot on your podcast,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Shameless Plug, Around the world in 20 minutes.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Nanyahu is the Harry Houdini of Israeli politics.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: He's always about to lose, and somehow he escapes the chains and being dumped in the water, etc.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Quite extraordinary.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Even when he doesn't win outright,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: and nobody wins outright in Israel because of proportional representation,
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: he cobbles together coalitions better than anybody who's ever existed
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: in Israeli politics.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Saying that, I think this one is it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's done.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's divided people over corruption.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Where he's been accused of corruption.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, it's incredibly low level corruption.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: When I hear about the corruption in Israel, I'm like, I'll write a check for them.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's ridiculously small beer, but he's involved in that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: He's involved with, of course, the war starting.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And was he responsible when Hamas came over the border
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: for not guarding Israel's security further?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people think he is.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: He's been in a long time and made a lot of enemies.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: When he's been around 30 years, that's sort of inevitable.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: In politics,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: and for all these reasons,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Gabby Eisencott,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: who is a former general,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: is our most Israeli politicians,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: former head of the IDF,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: or as many of them,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: is the head of a group of left,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: right, and center people who have very little in common except to get him out.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so at the moment, it's too close to call.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: With the Israeli Arabs probably being the kingmaker de facto in this,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: but I would guess gun to my head that he loses this time.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, whether he's done for or not is another matter and another foreign affairs 15 to discuss.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not ready to say that, but I think he might lose at least in the short run.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to leave you with the last word on that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But he is what he's 77.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if he was out of power and came back,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: he'd be well,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: like everybody else, you know, Lula, Trump, they're all they're all 80 plus.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah they're sitting they're sitting where we were last time yelling at
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: the waitress in our in our famous scene in
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: a bar somewhere yeah
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: they're very old all right speaking of very old let's talk
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: about europe john um I have spent the last two weeks uh talking to any media
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: who would have me about the french situation which is really tragic you talk
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: about it all the time but let's talk a little bit about the other countries italy
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: and In Spain,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: where there are the similar sorts of demonstrations slash riots going on.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: You had riots last week in Milan, in Turin, in Bologna.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: There were 3000 rioters around the Duomo in Milan, I think, last weekend.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell me about this weekend.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: A bunch of thugs enter the Colosseum in Rome,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: and I just thought, you know, where's Cornelius Sulla when you need him?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think he would have dealt with them pretty swiftly.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in Milan,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: it said of 200 writers arrested in Milan,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I got this off the Spectator,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Italian citizens of the second generation that they call di seconda generazione,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: around 60 of them were foreign nationals and most of them were of
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: that second generation of migrants.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: 80% were teenagers under 18.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some as young as 12.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the far left indigenous Italian communists,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: of whom there are plenty, were actually a very small minority.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds a little bit like what's going on in France,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: except in France there were actually quite a few students of longer term,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: say, French nationality.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So John,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: can you give us any kind of clue about what's going on in Italy
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: and how Georgia Maloney is handling it?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she's doing better because she has a backbone,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: unlike Macron who's hiding under a desk somewhere,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: as we said last time, or going to a Celine Dion concert.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's not a joke.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's real.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Maloney gave a press conference where she said, you have every right to protest.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: You have no right to destroy things.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So she already set this bright line right away after the first outbreak.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Second, she said to the left,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: I demand that you agree with me that they have no right to violate
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: and destroy people's property, etc.,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: and put the left,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: the far left, the PD,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: the social democratic establishment left on the back foot,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: and then all the communists said,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: no, of course we won't say that, making her look ever better.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Maloney's party is still the most popular party in Italy.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: They're at about 30% Fratelli d'Italia, the brothers of Italy.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then she called out the paratroopers this weekend in Milan.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: 500 elite paratroopers from the Italian Mountain Division, the Fulgaris, came out.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: There were no riots because these people don't want to run into paratroopers.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Surprise, surprise, surprise.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they don't want to be arrested.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And she also said,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: if you're kids and you do something, we're going to hold the parents accountable.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: That seems to have worked very well.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: She moved the fighting from the Duomo to the kitchen, and that worked very, very well.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: So this is an example of how to do it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: The problems remain, but how to tactically handle this stuff, full marks to Maloney.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a big fan.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, but just compared to Macron, which one has the balls?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's no doubt.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Moving on to North America,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Ilhan Omar is a congressperson from Minnesota, well,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: from Somalia originally,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: but representing a district in Minnesota, in the press a lot lately.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've actually been covering this quite a bit,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm very much of the view that while the timing may look Well,
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: not suspicious,
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: but obviously it's not a perfect time to be doing this right before an election.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: The cases against her are just mounting up to the point where I really do believe
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: that there was fraud in the entire immigration case that brought her here,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: which means I will wait for all the evidence to come out.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: But what I've heard and seen and my experience eight years in Africa as a diplomat
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: and processing thousands of
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Immigrant visa cases,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I really do believe she is either the family relationships claimed are probably not
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: as claimed and that she probably is a direct biological sibling of
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: the man she married in 2009 and then allegedly divorced john what do you think.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is a Greek tragedy, except it's a conniving one, yes.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, first of all,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: her father was a colonel back in Somalia who did some very,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: very bad things, which would explain why she might want to hide all this stuff.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: That is for certain.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Two, she may have lied about her age to,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: as you know better than me, Simon, to get herself certain advantages.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Three, the brother thing,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: beyond being creepy in a Greek tragedy,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: seems to be a way to move him from the UK over to the United States.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: If any of these things are true, That would it seemed to me.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: To violate citizenship,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: in which case she cannot serve and she becomes the poster child as she already is
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: for the corruption there.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: The idea that she's in Minnesota and run and is the Somali representative there
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: and didn't know about massive billion dollar Somali corruption beggars description.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my eyes work fine.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: And there's all kinds of evidence.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: And to the point she's even being quiet about it, laying low.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is not the behavior normally of squad members.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: They scream to high heaven.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yet she was asked, did you marry your brother?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: And she said something to the effect of, well, not to my knowledge.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very strange thing to say.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of those yes or no issues, like Boris Johnson not knowing how many children he had.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the number you've got to get right, yes or no and the number.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I think this has a long way to run.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, the timing's unfortunate, but who cares?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: She's the poster child for what's wrong here.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: A woman who hates the United States says she hates the United States.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm quoting her.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it is using that as a way to in a corrupt manner,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: help people who are not loyal to the country that they happen to live in or biting
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: the hand that feeds them.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: And no, I'm not for that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think she's symbolic of a lot of rot on the left,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: and the way they're circling wagons around her just pretty much underlines that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to Australia.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: but it's a tragic case of a member of parliament named Helen Haynes.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Who was rammed by a guy,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I forget his first name,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: allegedly named Nugent,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: whose social media accounts reveal that he's fanatically pro-Palestinian
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: and anti-Israel.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Haynes actually supported a ceasefire in Gaza.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: She was by no means a harlot.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy has caused her to have both of her legs amputated.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going to happen to her in the future.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But this seems to be the latest in a series of escalations
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: in Australia's political climate,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: a country that used to be considered a calm kind of throwback to a calmer time,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: has now entered the arena along with the rest of us of highly polarized politics.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the guy then backed up and hit her again.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: He hit her twice.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not like he didn't have cognizance.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: He turned around and then rammed her again.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: This is what happens when we don't think through the consequences of unassimilated,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: unfettered immigration.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: We come back to one of the big three that we talk about and you get people here.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: Who are looking for things other than the unity of the Australian state.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: As you say, she's no hardliner by any means.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: But the fact that this has happened in what used to be the Canada of the South Pacific.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: I've been to Australia.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: I love going there.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit like Simon being in the UK in 1950.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's really charming, cohesive, wealthy, hardworking.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: I love going.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love going.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have clients there.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: But bottom line, it isn't what it used to be.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what happens.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: When you don't think through your immigration policy,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: it's a coarsening of society,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: it takes time,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: but of course these things are going to rise and rise and rise
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: and sadly this tragic incident is just the latest.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: On to South America, and a really interesting story.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Haiti is run by, well,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: it has a government of sorts,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: but basically gangs have control of large chunks of it.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to read you a couple names or some names of these gangs.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Village de Dieu, Bas-Galil, Grand Ravine, and Cinq Secondes.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: The Bel Air gang,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: the Nan Brooklyn,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: which is headed,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: centered in Cité Soleil,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Grand Grief,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: 400 Mawozo,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: GPEP, the revolutionary forces of the G9 family and allies, and last, Vive Ensemble.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Which is Haitian Creole for Live Together,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is a unified criminal coalition led by Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier that merges
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: the G9 and GPEP factions designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in this mess,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: you have a small UN presence that's trying to establish some kind
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: of order Keep people fed.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And for Salvadorans,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: the president says they were aircraft maintenance technicians,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: were kidnapped by one of these gangs.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Bukele sent 100 special forces in there with a very serious looking armored car
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: and said, you better give us our guys back.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I got to say, I like it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: I love Bukele.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is behaving in a normal way in the midst of chaos and we forget.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a Jeffersonian.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm almost quasi libertarian.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: I want a small government to do less and do it better.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: But we need order.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And Haiti is an example of why we need order.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if I had to pick a gang, I think, Simon, we should join the Bel Air gang.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds slightly better.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: We might get a better hotel room.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: But other than that, you see the need for it.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: And Bukele is just straightforward.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: You hurt my people.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I go in and I get them.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: The people who take them understand this,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: and surprise,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: surprise, surprise, I bet they won't be taking any Salvadorans hostage again.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: His directness,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: his understanding of realism in the world is why Bukele is wildly popular
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: in his own country and is being emulated around the hemisphere.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: I love the story.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I didn't mention this,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: but the Baz Galil gang is largely composed of deportees from the United States.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, excellent.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so when people say, oh, how can we possibly send Haitians back to Haiti?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one, they're Haitian.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's where they're from.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And two,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: would we rather have these gangsters here in the United States preying on us or
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: in Haiti Preying on Haitians,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: which they shouldn't be doing and we don't want them to do,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: but it's not our country.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's not our problem.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Red Herring, John, you actually gave me this one.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Who is the next James Bond?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's River from Slow Horses.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Jack Loudon is his name, I believe.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he's been done enough theater.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's very Bondy.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's famous enough in his own little world,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: but not so famous that Bond is going to be overshadowed by it.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Up and coming.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is what they do all the time.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: And he seems the logical choice for the next Bond.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you want to put money down there, that's my that's my hot tip.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's River.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I wish it would be because I just watched the season finale of Slow Horses last night.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite all time show.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Gary Oldman is my personal hero as Jackson Lamb.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I feel about government everywhere on every given Monday morning before coffee.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's an antihero.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: My landmine, John,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: is Robert Reich, I saw on Twitter yesterday, talking about nationalizing Starlink.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I said,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: the thin line between the DSA and the Democratic Party seems to be getting
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: a lot thinner.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to come back to haunt us in the future.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, I read, I actually read her comment on X and, you know, food for thought there.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I saw that and said, too, right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: The mask is off now increasingly between
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: a failing establishmentarian elite That's drifting ever leftward.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's now straight out socialism, appropriation, and they're jealous of heck of him.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: They can't stand that Leonardo da Vinci is on the right.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: They can't stand that he makes and does stuff that's beyond their comprehension.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: All they want to do is expropriate his genius.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: There are two kinds of people,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: those who make and create things and those who want to expropriate things.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: We should always be on the side of those who want to create things,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: but this is the thing to attack them on.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: The veneer of capitalism, even managed capitalism, is well and truly gone.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: When Robert Reich,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: troll for the Guardian,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: comes upon his latest great idea,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: which is let's take away from our Leonardo da Vinci so he can't do amazing things
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: and move us forward.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm jealous beyond belief of him from my tenured position wherever.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you and I are creators.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we're up here.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: We are chops every week.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And writing and talking and trying to spread the word that capitalism
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: for all its laws ultimately makes us richer and happier and socialism fails every
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: and freer
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: to make choices ourselves and not have Macron make them,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: which in retrospect is probably a pretty good idea.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'll leave it there, john.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'll see you next week in Washington, DC, I believe.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Foreign Affairs 15.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast is a joint production of John C. Hulsman Enterprises and Base Perspectives LLC.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: We receive production support from the Ben Franklin Fellowship and
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: the Conservative Partnership Center.