Latest / Gunther Fehlinger Podcast / Reporting from Tel Aviv: Adam Zivo on Israel–Iran, Canada, and Ukraine

Transcript

Reporting from Tel Aviv: Adam Zivo on Israel–Iran, Canada, and Ukraine · Gunther Fehlinger Podcast

• 0:02
  Dear friends, welcome at the Gunther failing a show.
• 0:04
  We are here developing very good because we have the right
• 0:08
  topics, the good topics, the defend of the free world.
• 0:11
  And of course, we have also very interesting guests.
• 0:15
  If you can follow us on X and also subscribers on YouTube and
• 0:19
  also on Instagram, on LinkedIn, beyond all channels.
• 0:23
  And we're doing what we can in the defence of the free world.
• 0:26
  And tonight we have a very special guest, famous Canadian,
• 0:30
  Canadian journalist with Serbian background.
• 0:32
  So a lot of interesting topics to cover with Adam.
• 0:36
  I'm very happy that you are here.
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  And we want to learn about Canada.
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  We want to learn about your background and about your
• 0:43
  relation with the United States. And we want to learn about you.
• 0:48
  Thanks a lot, Adam, for coming to the show.
• 0:50
  Please can you introduce yourself?
• 0:52
  Thank you for having me. So I am a Canadian political
• 0:55
  columnist. I write for the National Post,
• 0:57
  which is one of our two national newspapers.
• 1:00
  It's the largest conservative paper in Canada.
• 1:03
  I'm a center right writer, but in the American context, that
• 1:06
  basically means that I would be a corporate Democrat.
• 1:08
  So I'm the comic guide who votes conservative in the Canadian
• 1:11
  context, supports Kamala, you know, supported Kamala last year
• 1:16
  and would maybe you know, if our American vote for the
• 1:18
  Republicans in the future if they became a bit more normal,
• 1:21
  but very much kind of in the political center to center right
• 1:26
  now. I'm also.
• 1:28
  Very similar in many things. Yeah, actually very interesting
• 1:31
  to meet you, Adam. I'm happy for this conversation.
• 1:34
  Yeah. And there's a certain political
• 1:35
  homelessness that comes with this as well, at least in the
• 1:37
  international context. Now I'm.
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  I'm also a reporter for the News Forum, which is a smaller
• 1:42
  national TV channel in Canada. And so they have sent me to
• 1:47
  Israel to cover the, you know, potential war with Iran.
• 1:50
  So I'm currently in Tel Aviv, and outside of that, I'm also
• 1:54
  the de facto Ukraine correspondence for the National
• 1:57
  Post. I went to go report in Ukraine
• 2:00
  at the very beginning of the war, met this wonderful man who
• 2:03
  became my fiance, and now I spend half of my time in
• 2:07
  Ukraine, half of my time in Canada.
• 2:10
  I go to Israel. I'm always in all the fun
• 2:12
  places. That's amazing.
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  I don't really know which topic, which hot topic to start with
• 2:18
  when you are in Ukraine, in Israel at the moment.
• 2:21
  We maybe have to start with that one a bit.
• 2:24
  Yeah, because it's the most burning issue.
• 2:26
  Will their strike be tonight or what's going on?
• 2:29
  That's the thing. So no one knows for sure, and
• 2:33
  there's a great deal of uncertainty, which is totally
• 2:35
  normal. That being said, there is this
• 2:39
  sense that the strike will likely happen this weekend.
• 2:42
  But at the same time, making predictions is always dangerous
• 2:44
  because you could very easily end up with egg on your face.
• 2:47
  But I personally feel a sense of anxiety that I haven't felt, you
• 2:50
  know, over the past week because I arrived here about a week, you
• 2:54
  know, to ago just to ensure that I'm here before the air airspace
• 2:57
  closes. But at this point, I'm starting
• 2:59
  to feel like, OK, this weekend, there could be this war.
• 3:03
  Now, the mood in Tel Aviv, at least, is is fairly relaxed.
• 3:08
  You know, I've interviewed a large number of Israelis here.
• 3:11
  And for many of them, they say that years of war have
• 3:14
  inoculated them against panic. And it's almost like a video
• 3:18
  game in a sense, where you're going from from a boss to a
• 3:23
  harder boss to a harder boss, right.
• 3:24
  So in the beginning, there was them, and it was October 7th,
• 3:27
  there was Hamas. Hamas was, you know, did a
• 3:30
  terrible atrocity. But they were fairly easy to
• 3:33
  pacify, difficult to eradicate, but easy to pacify.
• 3:37
  Then came Hezbollah, which, you know, was a bit more of a
• 3:39
  formidable opponent. And then you had Iran last year.
• 3:42
  Now you have Iran again. And so the level of risk to,
• 3:45
  let's say, residents of Tel Aviv has been going up incrementally.
• 3:49
  But what that means that gives people the ability to slowly
• 3:52
  acclimate to to to larger risks. And so at this point, the
• 3:57
  Israelis, what I've spoken with said, hey, you know what?
• 3:59
  Maybe we'll have ballistic missiles landing in this city.
• 4:02
  But we had that last year and we went through that and it was
• 4:06
  fine. And they, they know what to
• 4:09
  expect. Now, one thing I want to
• 4:11
  emphasize to anyone listening is that Israel is fairly unique in
• 4:17
  that its infrastructure is built with war in mind.
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  Since the early 90s, every single building needs to have a
• 4:24
  shelter. Every apartment building needs
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  to have a reinforced room, which is called the Mahmud, which is
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  separate from the shelter. And with that, and it's illegal
• 4:32
  to deny anyone access to a shelter.
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  And So what that means is that you have a lot of agency over
• 4:38
  your own safety. If there are missiles landing in
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  the city, you go to your mamad or you go to a public shelter or
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  a basement shelter. And these things are heavily
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  reinforced. So they're borderline
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  impregnable. Now of course they're not going
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  to protect you if a ballistic missile lands directly on your
• 4:55
  shelter at a certain points, you know, there's just nothing you
• 4:59
  can do. But at that point, you're just
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  maybe a little bit unlucky, right?
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  Statistically speaking, you are more likely to dive from being
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  hit by a car, at least in recent wars.
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  Maybe that will change for this particular war.
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  And that gives people the sense of calmness.
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  Adam, I was in 98 in Israel when Saddam Hussein was throwing some
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  scat missiles. That's a historic times.
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  But then I was with one family, a friend of mine, Aaron Cohen,
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  and he simply said, going to relax, we have a bunker for you
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  and we you will survive and then some.
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  Luckily nothing happened, but the Israelis are really
• 5:38
  accustomed to that one, and the threat of the Iranian
• 5:42
  retaliation, I think, will not shy them away from supporting
• 5:47
  the American liberation of Iran, which I hope is happening now.
• 5:51
  Yeah. The thing is that they see this
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  as a necessity. And so no one wants to be in
• 5:55
  war. No one wants to have their
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  cities bond. But at the same time, they say
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  that if it doesn't happen now, that will have to have to happen
• 6:01
  in the future. And it's better to get it over
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  with at this point rather than risk having the Iranian regime
• 6:07
  further consolidate its power, right.
• 6:11
  And also, they know the protocols, right?
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  So as you said, when you were there, they said just go to the
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  bunker. So when I was in Israel last
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  summer for for the 12 day war, you know, I was, I was stunned
• 6:24
  by how well organized everything was.
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  So first you receive a pre warning on your phone and that
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  is a warning that comes to every phone.
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  It's mandatory. It's like an emergency or amber
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  alerts. And then that warning tells you
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  to go near a safe place to go near a shelter, but you don't
• 6:42
  necessarily have to be in the shelter.
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  Then you get a second warning and at that point you have about
• 6:47
  90 seconds to get inside the shelter because the missile has
• 6:50
  been launched. And so as long as you follow the
• 6:54
  pre warning, you're pretty much OK.
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  And compared to Ukraine, for example, I feel much safer.
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  Even if the ballistic missiles landing in this area are well,
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  that were landing in this area last summer and could land again
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  this this upcoming week, we're quite formidable.
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  Tell me about the public opinion in Canada.
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  What's will they support regime change in Iran now and the
• 7:17
  liberation or will it be like a rock style anti American moods
• 7:22
  which we have seen 20 years ago? So awareness of the Iranian
• 7:29
  cause was lacking until very recently, and it changed a lot
• 7:34
  since January because we have a large Iranian diaspora.
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  We have hundreds of thousands of Iranians.
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  And they began to protest in early January.
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  And initially, their protests were somewhat ignored by the
• 7:47
  mainstream media because, I mean, I'm going to be very
• 7:50
  blunt, Many journalists tend to be a bit more on the progressive
• 7:53
  side, and they can be biased here, and they're not always
• 7:57
  interested in international human rights when the oppressed
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  group here is protesting for secular democracy and against
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  radical Islamism, right when you have people who are protesting
• 8:09
  for American power. And Iranians were very angry in
• 8:14
  January because they thought that our national broadcaster
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  was ignoring them. Most of our newspapers were
• 8:19
  ignoring them. Same in Austria, by the way.
• 8:21
  Same in Austria really. It happens.
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  But what they did is rather than just complain about it, they
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  took things into their own hands and they organized these
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  enormous demonstrations that grew week after week.
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  And so on February 2nd, there was a demonstration that
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  attracted about I think 150,200 thousand people in Toronto,
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  which was huge. That was pretty much one of the
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  the largest demonstrations that we had seen in the city in
• 8:48
  history. And at that point, it was
• 8:51
  impossible for the media to ignore this.
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  And then two weeks afterwards, there was another demonstration
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  that brought about 350,000 people.
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  And that seems to be the largest political event, political
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  demonstration in the history of the city.
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  And whereas the media initially misrepresented what the Iranians
• 9:11
  wanted, they first just kind of said, oh, you know, they're
• 9:13
  protesting the regime and they whitewashed the fact that
• 9:16
  Iranians wants military intervention.
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  After the 350,000 person protest, they realized they
• 9:22
  couldn't do this anymore and media coverage began to mention
• 9:26
  the need or the desire for military intervention and regime
• 9:30
  change. So people are now on board.
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  And it also helps that the Iranians have been very smart
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  with their messaging. And and I don't mean that it's
• 9:41
  all strategic. They're just a lovely community.
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  And so whereas over the past two years we've had many of these
• 9:47
  pro Palestinian, pro Hamas protests that are very
• 9:50
  aggressive and often disrespectful towards Canadians.
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  These are the kind of protests where people say the West is
• 9:58
  evil, Canada is an illegitimate states.
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  You know, they burn Canadian flags.
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  They hate everyone else. The Persians have been totally
• 10:05
  different. So from the very beginning they
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  emphasized patriotism. So there were always Canadian
• 10:11
  flags everywhere at these events.
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  They would stop and sing the Canadian National anthem.
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  And rather than shouting at police officers and vilifying
• 10:19
  them, you would have Iranian protesters come and give them
• 10:22
  flowers. So at these protests, I would
• 10:25
  see police cars covered in flowers.
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  And so this charmed many Canadians.
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  And rather than just see this, oh, as oh, it's another diaspora
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  group that is complaining about their problems back home,
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  everyone loved the Iranians. They're the perfect example of
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  what an immigrant group should be.
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  And so there's a great deal of goodwill and desire for them to
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  be free. In Austria we even had the first
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  parliamentarian from the Conservative Party openly
• 10:55
  calling on the demonstration for regime change, Andreas Mini.
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  That was a real change because we Austrians, as a neutral
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  country, was always very reluctant for such military
• 11:06
  interventions. But now I think the public mood
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  has shifted towards regime change in Europe, especially
• 11:13
  because of the dramatic killings on the 8th of January, which was
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  so horrendous. What was your perception of that
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  killing? What's your information as a
• 11:21
  journalist? How, what you What news did you
• 11:23
  get out of Iran in the last six weeks since this disaster?
• 11:28
  Well, I, I haven't received any information that's special.
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  Anything that I've seen is stuff that's available to anyone else.
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  But what I can say is that it dramatically changed the
• 11:36
  perceptions of Iran. So whereas before everyone knew
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  at least abstractly that the Iranian regime, the Islamic
• 11:44
  regime was terrible, when they realized that 10s of thousands
• 11:47
  of protesters were murdered just like this in an event that, you
• 11:50
  know, was several, several times worse than Tiananmen Square, I
• 11:54
  think that there was an understanding that, wait a
• 11:56
  second, this situation is untenable and that there needs
• 12:00
  to be some kind of change. So the Iranian regime was able
• 12:04
  to suppress domestic dissents, but at the same time
• 12:06
  consolidated international opposition to their continued
• 12:09
  existence. There's also a big link between
• 12:12
  Iran and Russia, obviously. They are some basically part of
• 12:17
  the same axis of evil and they have supported the Russian war
• 12:21
  against Ukraine intensively with this infamous Shahid drones.
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  Do you see that regime change in Iran will also help the
• 12:29
  Ukrainians in their struggle for freedom?
• 12:31
  Partially, but not as much as you would think.
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  So, you know, and I want to say it's a funny story that you
• 12:37
  know, when I'm in Tel Aviv, when I was in during the 12 day war,
• 12:39
  I thought to myself, Oh my God, Iranian drones exploding over my
• 12:42
  head. Groundbreaking.
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  You know, we've all been there before, after Ukraine.
• 12:47
  But when the when, when Iran assisted Russia, it was a much
• 12:52
  larger player at the beginning of the war.
• 12:56
  So Iran began to supply Shahid drones, slash Shahid drones to
• 13:01
  Russia in late 2022 and was a major supplier up until mid,
• 13:08
  like early to mid 2023. But then Russia took this
• 13:11
  technology, improved it and started its own domestic
• 13:15
  production. And so at this point, Russian
• 13:18
  domestic production far outstrips anything that the
• 13:21
  Iranians are able to provide. We know, for example, that let's
• 13:24
  say in early 2024 or sorry, in 2024, you know, the, the
• 13:30
  Russians were sending what about 500 drones every month And then
• 13:34
  that increased by a factor of 10, right?
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  So now we have thousands of drones that are sent into
• 13:39
  Ukrainian cities every single month.
• 13:41
  And those are all well, the, the vast majority of those are, are
• 13:44
  Russian produced. So because of this, you know, if
• 13:48
  Iran does get knocked out, I don't think that that's going to
• 13:52
  make a huge dent to Russia's war efforts, but we'll see.
• 13:56
  I mean, I'm also not carefully tracking what other forms of
• 14:00
  support they do provide. Now, one thing I do want to
• 14:02
  emphasize is that people believe that, OK, if Iran, if the regime
• 14:06
  does fall, they they imagine that the successor government
• 14:10
  will be some big American cheerleader.
• 14:12
  But that's not necessarily going to be the case.
• 14:15
  I mean Reza Bathavi who is the exiled Iranian Crown Prince who
• 14:19
  wants to, you know, lead a transitional government who is
• 14:21
  very, very, very popular in diaspora and seemingly popular
• 14:24
  within Iran itself. He wrote a transition plan with
• 14:28
  the help of Iranian civil society actors over the course
• 14:31
  of the past two to three years. That transition plan is the
• 14:34
  reason why many Iranians were skeptical of him have come on
• 14:37
  side to support him. And I wrote an article about
• 14:39
  that transition plan and about his foreign policy.
• 14:41
  So he his vision for a post Islamic regime Iran is 1, where
• 14:48
  Iran focuses on non interference and maintaining its territorial
• 14:53
  integrity and sovereignty. Right now they want Pavi wants
• 14:58
  to normalize relations with Israel.
• 15:00
  He wants to build a close relationship with with the EU.
• 15:06
  He wants to stop any funding for terrorism in the region, which
• 15:09
  is great. That works really.
• 15:11
  That's really lovely for the West.
• 15:13
  But at the same time, he emphasizes that he wants to have
• 15:15
  respectful and mutually constructive relationships with
• 15:20
  with China and Russia. And there are some Westerners
• 15:23
  who say, oh, that's terrible. But that's the pragmatic thing
• 15:27
  to do here in this situation because the problem with Iran is
• 15:32
  that you don't want it to dissolve into sectarian
• 15:34
  violence. And Iran is not Iraq.
• 15:38
  You know, it has a long history of existing as a, you know, as a
• 15:43
  distinct territorial units, as a designation.
• 15:46
  But Iran is also not just composed of Persians.
• 15:49
  You have Kurds, you have Azerbaijanis, you have other
• 15:51
  ethnic groups. And so any, any collapse of the
• 15:56
  Islamic regime would lead to a period of instability, right?
• 16:00
  And so Paplavi would have to focus on, for example, removing
• 16:03
  any 5th columns from his governments of pacifying any
• 16:08
  potential rebels within the country.
• 16:10
  And during this transition period, stabilization period,
• 16:13
  which would last about one or two years according to Paplovi's
• 16:15
  plan. You know, obviously, you do not
• 16:17
  want China and Russia to destabilize the country.
• 16:22
  And so Iran or these Paplovi, he wants to play nice with everyone
• 16:26
  to make sure that Iran does not collapse and is not dismembered.
• 16:30
  So don't expect, you know, Iran to suddenly come to the West
• 16:33
  aid. They need to fix their own shit.
• 16:36
  And that I'm telling me your own plans.
• 16:38
  You will stay in Israel during the war when it's coming, or you
• 16:42
  will move closer to the arena if it's possible.
• 16:46
  It depends. So my I mean, I came here
• 16:49
  specifically to report on the war.
• 16:51
  And so should it begin, I will be in Tel Aviv.
• 16:54
  So I'm where the action is. And so I can get the stories of,
• 16:57
  you know, what happened and go to the places that have been
• 17:00
  bombed, assuming that, you know, you're allowed to report on all
• 17:02
  the places, some someplace you're not allowed to report on.
• 17:05
  But should the situation get too spicy, too dangerous, then I
• 17:10
  could relocate to, for example, a friend's place that is outside
• 17:14
  of the city. It all depends on how many on
• 17:18
  how effectively the United States is able to cripple the
• 17:21
  Iranian regime, how many missiles land in Tel Aviv, and
• 17:25
  how many interceptor missiles stay within the stockpile here,
• 17:29
  because once they begin to run out, then it gets much more
• 17:32
  dangerous. You're a courageous man to go to
• 17:35
  the arena and to the front lines of the confrontation with Iran
• 17:42
  at the moment. I want to ask you now about
• 17:45
  Ukraine. You have been several times in
• 17:47
  Ukraine and you're also covering the war in Ukraine.
• 17:50
  Our Canada is one of the key supporters for Ukraine.
• 17:53
  You have a huge Ukrainian diaspora.
• 17:56
  You famously had a lot of Canadians actually of Ukrainian
• 18:00
  descent in the last 100 years. How is strong is your support
• 18:04
  and your backing for Ukraine in Canada?
• 18:07
  And what's your take on the war of Russia against Ukraine?
• 18:12
  So I'm going to cover the Canadian angle first before
• 18:14
  going into the rest of Ukraine. So Canada is a stalwart
• 18:17
  supporter of Ukraine. Obviously, we do have some
• 18:20
  Ukraine skeptics, but that problem is much less severe than
• 18:23
  it is in the United States. And part of it comes from the
• 18:26
  fact that, you know, us existing beside the United States, our,
• 18:30
  our information spheres are very intermesh.
• 18:32
  So there's a lot of American media that makes its way to, to
• 18:36
  Canada and then poisons people's opinions against Ukraine.
• 18:39
  But for the most part, people are very pro Ukrainian.
• 18:43
  The Conservative Party here understands, at least I get the
• 18:46
  sense that they understand that being anti Ukrainian is
• 18:50
  political poison, especially because the main liability for
• 18:54
  the Conservative Party here is any association with Trumpism,
• 18:57
  right? Because Trump's annexationist
• 19:00
  talks are very unpopular for obvious reasons.
• 19:02
  And so the Liberals who are currently in government keep on
• 19:06
  saying the Conservatives are MAGA, the Conservatives are
• 19:08
  MAGA. So the Conservatives obviously
• 19:10
  don't want to reinforce that perception by being anti
• 19:12
  Ukraine. Plus also many of our
• 19:14
  Ukrainians, they, they live in West Canada, which is where the
• 19:18
  Conservatives are strongest. So Conservative parliamentarians
• 19:21
  have many Ukrainians as constituents, right?
• 19:24
  So we are partially inoculated from the anti Ukrainian right.
• 19:31
  And also, you know, in our media sphere, people are very pro
• 19:34
  Ukrainian. The National Post is very pro
• 19:36
  Ukrainian. We're the biggest conservative
• 19:38
  paper. I, I hope, I think that I
• 19:41
  contributed to that 'cause you know, I went to Ukraine.
• 19:43
  And so the editors, they all followed my Twitter, they could
• 19:47
  see that there were no Nazis and all this stuff and they read all
• 19:49
  my op eds. So that's great.
• 19:53
  But there is a there is a fatigue.
• 19:55
  There's a fatigue and the fatigue is because Canada is
• 19:59
  economically malaised right now. So we are we are in a period of
• 20:04
  prolonged stagnation. Our GDP per capita barely grew
• 20:07
  since 2015. There is a general sense of the
• 20:11
  quality of life in Canada is declining and that we are in too
• 20:15
  much debts. And in a situation like this,
• 20:17
  the big question is what's in it for us?
• 20:20
  Why does it matter? So on my end, you know, I tend
• 20:25
  to emphasize the fact that for Canada, our main security risk
• 20:29
  going forward in the medium term is our Arctic sovereignty.
• 20:33
  So with, you know, the Arctic now melting and becoming a, an
• 20:38
  arena, a political and military arena, our, our land up there is
• 20:43
  much more vulnerable. We've, we've never really
• 20:45
  exercised strong control there, but it never mattered because no
• 20:49
  one cared because there was nothing really valuable there.
• 20:50
  That's changing. And so I make the argument to
• 20:53
  people quite often that, look, this may not seem relevant to
• 20:58
  Canadian interest right now, but it would make sense for us to
• 21:03
  support Ukraine on top of the moral case.
• 21:05
  You know, the moral case is assumed, But from a strategic
• 21:07
  standpoint, it would make sense for us to support Ukraine to
• 21:10
  help cripple Russia, to give us more time to fortify our Arctic
• 21:14
  and to ensure that Russia is a weaker adversary in the Arctic
• 21:17
  going forward. That plays well.
• 21:20
  I've also argued that because the Canadian military has been
• 21:23
  chronically underfunded and, you know, we're very weak, a lot of
• 21:28
  our stuff doesn't work. It would make sense for us to
• 21:31
  partner with Ukraine to provide funding for their drones, but to
• 21:35
  in exchange have these drones, for example, partially
• 21:39
  manufactured in Canada so we can have a technology transfer, so
• 21:41
  we can know how to cheaply modernize our military
• 21:45
  capabilities. The problem with that, though,
• 21:47
  was that from my understanding, our defense companies want to
• 21:51
  monopolize procurements. So, you know, getting them to
• 21:55
  produce drones is difficult because they're inefficient and
• 21:58
  slow and it's hard to rely on smaller manufacturers like
• 22:02
  Ukraine does because they're locked out.
• 22:06
  Now, just to to finish the point, what we'll see here is
• 22:10
  that like these are strategic arguments that really point to
• 22:14
  Canadian self-interest, unfortunately.
• 22:18
  And I understand why Canada has often framed its support for
• 22:22
  Ukraine from a moral standpoint. And morality is great.
• 22:26
  I mean, morality gets people excited, but people are fickle
• 22:29
  and they get excited by the next thing.
• 22:32
  And if you just rely on the moral humanitarian case, people
• 22:35
  are going to lose interest over time.
• 22:37
  So I feel like for the Canadian federal, the Canadian
• 22:41
  governments, they're misplaying this a little bit because
• 22:45
  they're not making the case to Canadians about why it benefits
• 22:47
  us in terms of our self-interest to do that, to support Ukraine.
• 22:53
  In terms of military and financial support, there was
• 22:57
  some criticism that Canada is a very rich country and very
• 23:01
  strong country and it has supported, of course, Ukraine.
• 23:04
  But do you think it was enough? Do you think it was adequate?
• 23:08
  What's your take on the support levels of Canada for Ukraine in
• 23:13
  the last four years? We could have and should have
• 23:16
  done more, but I think the assistance that we could have
• 23:19
  provided would have been financial.
• 23:20
  We don't have a lot of material to send in terms of arms.
• 23:24
  And I'm going to use a very famous example.
• 23:27
  So in late 2022 or early 2023, there was this big push to
• 23:31
  provide Ukraine with tanks for its counter offensive, which
• 23:34
  ultimately failed. And Canada gave 4 tanks, just 4
• 23:39
  tanks, 4 Leopard, 2 tanks. Yeah.
• 23:43
  Yeah. Well, so then I looked into it
• 23:45
  and I thought, why did, why did we give so few tanks?
• 23:47
  Like, what's wrong here? So I found 2 military essays
• 23:52
  that had been like published as from some Military Academy was
• 23:56
  not classified, which was great. And so it turns out that, you
• 24:01
  know, Canada had a Leopard One fleet from I think the 70s or
• 24:04
  80s, you know, old stuff that's kind of useless.
• 24:08
  And then they purchased Leopard 2 tanks in the 2000s because
• 24:13
  they wanted to show the United States that they were serious
• 24:16
  about assisting with the war in Iraq.
• 24:20
  And so we bought 80 Leopard 2 tanks.
• 24:22
  And we, we essentially assumed that the amount of maintenance
• 24:26
  needed for a Leopard 2 tank would be roughly equivalent of
• 24:28
  what you would need for a Leopard One tank.
• 24:31
  That assumption was not correct. You need 6 times more hours to
• 24:34
  maintain a Leopard 2 than a Leopard 1.
• 24:36
  So we didn't have the maintenance capacity and so
• 24:40
  eventually we put those tanks in storage in the early 2000 tens
• 24:43
  and we couldn't maintain them. So over time, many of them
• 24:46
  became derelict and defunct. And so by the late 2000 tens,
• 24:51
  early twenty 20s, only about 1/4 of them were or like 20 to 30 of
• 24:58
  them, if I get my number, if I remember correctly, were
• 25:01
  operational and many of the tanks have been cannibalized to
• 25:04
  keep the other ones working. And we had our NATO commitments
• 25:08
  in Latvia, I think somewhere in the somewhere in the Baltics.
• 25:11
  So we couldn't provide more than 4 tanks while maintaining enough
• 25:15
  of the fleets to maintain our basic commitments to the
• 25:19
  Baltics. And the underlying point here is
• 25:22
  that our military is so dysfunctional, our kit is so
• 25:26
  broken and, and, and and disregarded and that and in such
• 25:31
  disrepair that we can barely aid Ukraine.
• 25:34
  So I think we did the best that we could in terms of weapons,
• 25:39
  but financially we could have done more.
• 25:41
  Yeah, I think we are now a little bit, you know, Cut
• 25:44
  America has stopped the support and we have our problems with
• 25:48
  Hungary, but we have at least put another €90 billion for
• 25:53
  Ukraine and anybody who can ship in.
• 25:56
  As far as I know, Canada is one of the richest countries in the
• 25:58
  world. So maybe to help us a bit,
• 26:01
  because we want to Ukraine to stay financially strong enough
• 26:05
  to liberate Crimea and to regain all the territory.
• 26:09
  And for this we need the resources to get it done.
• 26:12
  So nevertheless, thanks for Canada for the support.
• 26:16
  Let's discuss a little bit. Greenland.
• 26:17
  Yeah, you know, because you sort of talk about Arctic security.
• 26:22
  President Trump was a little bit ambitious, ambitious and tried
• 26:26
  to take us our Danish European island, Greenland.
• 26:30
  What is the Canadian perception of such bullying?
• 26:34
  It's exactly what you would imagine it to be.
• 26:36
  We're confused, we're shocked, we're angry, we feel anxious.
• 26:41
  There's a big question about whether or not Trump is serious.
• 26:44
  Some people thought that he was just joking and trolling us at
• 26:47
  the very beginning. And then over time, as you
• 26:51
  continue making these jokes, people began to wonder, well,
• 26:53
  what exactly is going on here? He doesn't seem mentally stable.
• 26:57
  And so overwhelmingly, you know, most Canadians despise Trump,
• 27:02
  despises Greenland push. There is a well of support for
• 27:08
  Trump amongst Canadian conservatives, but it's only
• 27:11
  about I think 45% of the party, which is a lot.
• 27:14
  But when you, you know, when the Conservative Party, you know,
• 27:19
  only has half of conservatives supporting Trump and that
• 27:21
  that's, that does that's good. I think on my end that, you
• 27:24
  know, it's still, it's still a tiny portion of society.
• 27:29
  The annexationist talks have caused a lot of economic
• 27:32
  anxiety. It's created some pain in our
• 27:35
  economy. So Canadians have very much
• 27:39
  soured on the United States. We thought that we were friends,
• 27:44
  but that ally ship is is it's in the garbage now.
• 27:49
  But the question is, how do we respond to this?
• 27:52
  And so obviously we need to diversify our trade relations.
• 27:57
  We need to be less dependent on the United States in, you know,
• 28:02
  I think. The Economist has published a
• 28:05
  wonderful theory that Canada might join the European Union.
• 28:09
  And by the way, you are very welcome.
• 28:12
  So is there a real debate about that or is this an option?
• 28:15
  Do you like us? I mean, look, I don't think that
• 28:19
  anyone's actually considering that here.
• 28:21
  It's a, it's a fantastical idea. It's very abstract.
• 28:27
  But what we are doing right now, and this is what I don't agree
• 28:30
  with, is that we are trying to manage our risk with the United
• 28:35
  States by pivoting to China. And yeah, it's on.
• 28:40
  So what Mark Carney, our Prime Minister, did is that he
• 28:43
  announced A comprehensive strategic partnership with China
• 28:46
  a few weeks ago. And so he went there and he
• 28:50
  basically said, you know, we're going to reset our relationship
• 28:52
  with China. We're going to have visa free
• 28:54
  travel to China. We're going to allow for media
• 28:57
  partnerships. So now China's state media can
• 28:59
  advertise in Canadian spaces, right.
• 29:03
  They started with some tariff reduction.
• 29:05
  But the idea is that this is going to be a comprehensive
• 29:07
  economic relationship. And while I understand that
• 29:12
  there is a need for us to decouple from the United States
• 29:14
  for to a certain degree, this is just replacing one bully with
• 29:18
  another. We know that China uses economic
• 29:20
  coercion very easily, very quickly to punish people who
• 29:24
  countries that perceived as being disobedience.
• 29:26
  We saw that with Australia in the early twenty 20s.
• 29:29
  We saw that. I think it was with Lithuania as
• 29:33
  well. One of the Baltic states
• 29:34
  recognized Taiwan. And then that was a whole fuck.
• 29:37
  Yeah. So I don't understand why Carney
• 29:41
  and the liberals have such a romantic view of China here.
• 29:44
  And, and this is where many conservatives are concerned
• 29:47
  because we, you know, we're wary of the United States, but
• 29:52
  Beijing is not a good alternative.
• 29:54
  We really in Europe, many people would love Canada to join the
• 29:58
  European Union. It would be like economic, a
• 30:01
  perfect match with your resources and your
• 30:05
  entrepreneurship spirit and it would really be a punch in the
• 30:08
  face of Trump. So you are very welcome at least
• 30:11
  to deepen our association. I think we are already, since
• 30:15
  the SETA agreement, very deeply integrated and there is many,
• 30:18
  many opportunities. Now Iceland wants to join the
• 30:21
  European Union and I hope Norway will come as well.
• 30:25
  One day maybe the UK will come back again and that would help a
• 30:28
  lot. If in Canada, maybe some op eds
• 30:31
  on your side. It's maybe a fantastic idea.
• 30:34
  You would be very famous because this article has really reached
• 30:38
  a lot of European opinion makers in the economies last year when
• 30:42
  they published this idea. And why not?
• 30:45
  It's not a geographic idea, Europe, it's a value union and
• 30:50
  it's at least an option to be taken serious.
• 30:54
  I mean, look, it would be a lovely idea.
• 30:56
  I would love to have visa free travel throughout Europe, for
• 31:00
  example, and to be able to work in Europe and live in Europe
• 31:03
  easily as an EU member. It's.
• 31:04
  Included in the deal. Yeah, but it just, it, it seems
• 31:08
  to many Canadians like this doesn't seem like a realistic
• 31:10
  proposal to us at least. It's better than working with
• 31:13
  China. I think we can speak English,
• 31:16
  not very well like me, but you know, it's still better than
• 31:19
  Chinese. So definitely.
• 31:22
  And we would love to have you. Let me ask.
• 31:25
  You about the US Canadian relation, Obviously this is now
• 31:29
  a big issue and it has also party political connotations as
• 31:33
  they understand because logically after Justin Trudeau
• 31:36
  there should have been a change towards the Conservatives in
• 31:39
  Canada. But it all didn't work out so
• 31:42
  well because Trump's in popularity and his constant
• 31:46
  Canada bashing. What's really going on in your
• 31:49
  bilateral natural friendship? Normally it should be the the
• 31:53
  best harmony between Canada and the US, at least from our
• 31:56
  European perspective. But unfortunately Trump is
• 32:01
  putting these crazy ideas like Canada joining the United States
• 32:06
  as a 51st state. Not even he gives you, not even
• 32:09
  the honour that all your states would join as separate states.
• 32:13
  But he wants to miniscule you as one small state.
• 32:16
  And you know, it's really very outrageous and I feel very sorry
• 32:19
  for that. But what exactly is the current
• 32:23
  status of affairs between Canada and the US?
• 32:27
  Quite bitter. To be honest, but I, I want to
• 32:30
  clarify that there has always been some tension between the
• 32:33
  United States and Canada. Canadians don't really have a
• 32:36
  strong sense of national identity.
• 32:38
  That's something that's been noted since the 1950s, nineteen
• 32:40
  60s. Once we separated ourselves from
• 32:42
  Britain, you know, we we weren't able to really identify who we
• 32:46
  are to define ourselves. And unlike in order for someone
• 32:50
  to have a a national identity, you need strong national myths.
• 32:53
  For example, the United States has the American Revolution,
• 32:56
  right? That helps anchor their sense of
• 32:58
  identity. But for us, we were given
• 33:01
  independence in a piece meal basis so bit by bits and we
• 33:05
  never really fought for this independence.
• 33:06
  So we don't have any dramatic myths from the past that we can
• 33:10
  use to anchor our sense of history and our sense of
• 33:13
  collective destiny. And we're also very culturally
• 33:16
  similar to the United States. So Canadian nationalism, you
• 33:20
  know, has always been very, very thin.
• 33:23
  You know, maybe hockey and Tim horton's, which is a restaurant
• 33:28
  trained. But we've often identified
• 33:31
  ourselves by not being American. And so we say we are Canadian
• 33:35
  because we are not them. And that's a negative sense of
• 33:37
  identity, which is not stable. But what that means is that for
• 33:41
  Canada, there's often been a sense of condescension towards
• 33:45
  the United States. We look down upon them, but it's
• 33:47
  a condescension which is also rooted in jealousy because they
• 33:50
  have more money than us. They have more opportunity.
• 33:52
  They have more clout. So there's that.
• 33:55
  But we also have a more stable political system, right?
• 33:57
  We don't have the insanity that we see there.
• 34:01
  In contrast, the United States doesn't really think about us
• 34:03
  that often. You know, we're like a little
• 34:05
  annoying brother to them. Who knows, maybe a cousin.
• 34:08
  But they do. You know, many American
• 34:11
  policymakers have felt a sense of resentment because we
• 34:13
  haven't, we haven't really met our commitments, right.
• 34:17
  So we mooched off the United States when it came to NATO for
• 34:23
  many, many years. And the American policymakers
• 34:27
  said, well, you have to spend more.
• 34:28
  You have to spend more, You have to spend more.
• 34:30
  And we said, sure, OK, maybe eventually.
• 34:34
  I'm busy. I'll see you next week.
• 34:35
  See you in a few years from now. But we didn't follow through and
• 34:40
  so now we don't really have a functional military and and the
• 34:45
  US was resentful. So some of these existing
• 34:48
  tensions are very important for understanding current relations
• 34:53
  because there is anger, but that anger is not something that came
• 34:56
  out of thin air. It's a it's a amplification of
• 35:00
  pre-existing concerns. Good.
• 35:03
  And what's your hope for the Conservatives to recover from
• 35:06
  this crisis and the lost elections?
• 35:09
  You know, I understand it was the Trump factor which cost the
• 35:12
  Conservatives the elections. What do you think is the option
• 35:16
  for recovery in the next elections?
• 35:18
  Or will you be permanently run by the Liberal Party?
• 35:23
  Right now, the situation is difficult for the Conservatives.
• 35:26
  So it's not just Trump that cost us the election, it's also the
• 35:30
  replacement of Trudeau with Mark Carney.
• 35:33
  Trudeau by the end of his term, was widely despised and and was
• 35:38
  not respected by many progressives as well.
• 35:41
  He was an unserious leader who prioritized political theater
• 35:47
  over substantive governance. He was.
• 35:50
  He's the kind of guy who liked getting selfies but didn't pay
• 35:53
  too much attention to the details of policy making.
• 35:56
  And Pierre Poliev, the leader of the Conservative Party, was very
• 36:00
  effective at positioning himself as Trudeau's antithesis, saying,
• 36:05
  you know, Trudeau, Trudeau bad, Trudeau bad, Trudeau bad,
• 36:08
  Trudeau frivolous Conservatives will not be like Trudeau.
• 36:12
  So then in January slash slash December, about a year ago, you
• 36:17
  know, Trudeau resigned and he prorogue Parliament.
• 36:20
  So Parliament was basically out of session while the Liberals
• 36:23
  could get their new leader. And he was replaced with Mark
• 36:27
  Carney. Mark Carney is a much more
• 36:30
  serious leader. You know, I'm not a Liberal.
• 36:33
  I still respect Carney. He's obviously intelligence.
• 36:36
  He is a serious man. He speaks like a real human
• 36:38
  being, and he's much more practical than Trudeau.
• 36:42
  And I know from my circles personally, and this is just
• 36:45
  anecdotal, I know people who say, yeah, Trudeau was an idiot,
• 36:48
  but I respect Carney and I will vote Liberal because I like
• 36:50
  Carney. Polyev didn't do enough to
• 36:55
  condemn Trump's messages at the very beginning.
• 36:59
  I think part of the reason was that they were concerned that
• 37:01
  this would distract from the law and order and affordability
• 37:04
  messaging that the that the Conservatives were so good on.
• 37:08
  They kind of saw this as a distraction and they under
• 37:10
  appreciated how much of a fact this would be.
• 37:13
  But they also didn't pivot to identifying, you know, Carney's
• 37:17
  weaknesses. And so during that election,
• 37:20
  Polyev was kind of still fixated on Trudeau, even though Trudeau
• 37:24
  very quickly became yesterday's man and that that also would
• 37:28
  amplified his problems here. Now another element which is not
• 37:32
  well understood by people outside of Canada is that we
• 37:35
  have, you know, we're a multi party system and we have 4 main
• 37:39
  parties, you know, the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP which
• 37:43
  is our far left party, and the Bloc Quebecois which is a
• 37:46
  regional party for Quebec. The NDP historically have gotten
• 37:50
  about 2019% of the votes and they split the votes for the
• 37:55
  progressives right, whereas the Conservatives and Liberals would
• 37:58
  get about 3332% of the votes. Now the NDP fared terribly in
• 38:03
  the last election for two main reasons.
• 38:06
  So their leader who has since resigned, Jagmeet Singh was
• 38:10
  basically, he was like a cringy millennial type progressive
• 38:16
  leader who did Tik Toks in the shower, who, you know,
• 38:19
  prioritized really woke politics that didn't speak to many
• 38:24
  Canadians, especially in a time of crisis and in a time of like
• 38:28
  economic crisis. And many working class voters
• 38:32
  were turned off. If you are a blue collar worker
• 38:37
  in let's say a small town in Ontario and the NDP, which
• 38:42
  you've historically supported, is now only talking about how we
• 38:46
  have to uplift women and non binary people and talking about,
• 38:51
  you know, race, like racial issues all the time without
• 38:54
  talking about class. And you see the leader, you
• 38:58
  know, wearing, oh, he loved like this Versace.
• 39:00
  He always dressed in designer clothing.
• 39:02
  You see someone like that making Tik Toks, you're not going to
• 39:05
  vote for him. So when people saw Carney come
• 39:08
  in, who was much more serious, there was a mass defection.
• 39:12
  And so the NDP vote collapsed to about, I think 6% or so, maybe
• 39:17
  7. And so about 12% of the voters
• 39:21
  migrated to the Liberals and helped them win the election.
• 39:27
  So the Conservatives actually got their highest vote share in
• 39:31
  recent history. They got about I think 40% of
• 39:34
  the votes, which is something that we haven't seen in
• 39:36
  generations, but they lost because the NDP collapsed and
• 39:40
  there was a consolidation of the left wing vote, which was
• 39:43
  normally split. Thanks for the explanation.
• 39:46
  Interesting. The point is with Kani, he's
• 39:49
  very, very received since his speech in Tavosia when he called
• 39:53
  that you we have to tear down the statutes of the past and he
• 39:59
  has quoted what's of Havel that all this.
• 40:03
  Beliefs from the past must be changed, but what he really has
• 40:07
  he changed for Canada and the world?
• 40:09
  He said that the old world world order is dead and he went
• 40:12
  immediately to China to make a deal with the Communist of
• 40:16
  China. So I cannot really see his
• 40:19
  beautiful new world order which he is somehow building with the
• 40:24
  Communist of China. So what is really his
• 40:27
  ideological core, what he can offer by signed nice beaches and
• 40:32
  the China these deals? Well, I mean, he, he is, you
• 40:36
  know, anti American and he does want to diversify Canada's trade
• 40:39
  relations. I just, I think that the way
• 40:42
  that he's handled it has not been overly not too wise because
• 40:47
  if you want to protect your country, you have to show a
• 40:50
  degree of cunning, right? And if you want to diversify
• 40:54
  from your largest trading partner, you shouldn't
• 40:56
  antagonize them so brazenly until you've decoupled a bit,
• 41:00
  right? The United States is still, by a
• 41:03
  huge margin, our biggest trading partner.
• 41:06
  So it's not wise for us to be making speeches in Davos
• 41:09
  basically insinuating that the United States is evil.
• 41:13
  We can, we can think these things.
• 41:14
  We can think that Trump is a destructive person.
• 41:17
  But it's better for us to be quieter and diplomatic and to
• 41:20
  maneuver behind the scenes and to to to shift our relations
• 41:26
  without drawing too much attention.
• 41:28
  We know, for example, that China did a very good job over the
• 41:31
  past few decades of manipulating its way into power and acting
• 41:37
  with subtlety, so I wish that Carney would show a bit more
• 41:42
  subtlety and acumen when it comes to navigating these
• 41:46
  difficult times. I think it's a big opening for
• 41:50
  your Conservative leader to come closer to the European Union, to
• 41:54
  visit Berlin and to visit Brussels and to really build a
• 41:57
  much stronger alliance with the Europeans.
• 42:00
  Because we see Trump's America exactly like you.
• 42:03
  We want to have good relations with the United States.
• 42:06
  We are dependent on the United States.
• 42:08
  We need them for defence, security, prosperity.
• 42:11
  But of course, Trump is a disaster.
• 42:13
  And so we could build a very good alliance with Canada and no
• 42:18
  need to run to Beijing to find new allies when you have us on
• 42:22
  the old continent. And we also have 20 trillion GDP
• 42:26
  as the economy and we are very friendly to Canada.
• 42:31
  I broadly agree with that, but I think that Europe has an image
• 42:34
  problem amongst conservative Canadians.
• 42:37
  It's so, I mean, Europe can be perceived as being overly
• 42:41
  bureaucratic, not sufficiently respectful of free speech, and
• 42:47
  there's skepticism about the migrant problem, right?
• 42:49
  I mean, we see all the news about the internal social unrest
• 42:53
  and racial strife within Western Europe.
• 42:56
  And so I think something. Is social strife in this Europe?
• 43:01
  This is Elon Musk portraying us like JD Wayne's.
• 43:05
  You know, I, I really, I know every country in Europe and I
• 43:08
  know Europe very well as you do as well.
• 43:10
  But, you know, this kind of misperception of Europe, as in
• 43:14
  chaos is also in Canada so strong.
• 43:16
  It's really sad. I mean that that is the
• 43:19
  perception, yeah. I mean, really, we are one of
• 43:23
  the richest and securus and nicest places in the world.
• 43:26
  I can testify in Vienna. Really you can find not, you
• 43:30
  cannot find a better place to live than Germany, Austria and
• 43:34
  there's certainly no chaos on the streets.
• 43:37
  And the last time I looked, we were one of the richest
• 43:40
  countries in the world. OK, Canada is also a good place.
• 43:43
  I don't want to talk negatively, but let's be very honest, you
• 43:46
  know, we are very far away from the picture Elon and JD is
• 43:50
  portraying us. It's a complete passive flash of
• 43:53
  the reality of Europe. I, I, you're, you're the
• 43:57
  European. So I, I don't want to, I mean,
• 44:00
  I'm just an outsider here, but I know, for example, in Ukraine,
• 44:04
  we do have Ukrainian refugees who do come back to Ukraine
• 44:06
  because they're concerned about the lack of public safety that
• 44:10
  they see in some European cities.
• 44:12
  So I've had European refugees who said, yeah, they came back
• 44:15
  to Lhasa, a city that's being bombed because they felt unsafe,
• 44:19
  for example, in northern France with all of the crime that they
• 44:22
  were witnessing. So I, I don't think it's this
• 44:26
  perception of there being social strife in Western Europe.
• 44:29
  It's not just like it's something that we see in Canada,
• 44:32
  but it's something we see in Eastern Europe as well.
• 44:34
  When I'm in Ukraine, when I'm in Serbia, we look at what's
• 44:38
  happening in Western Europe and we say there seems to be
• 44:41
  problems here, but at the same time you're the European, you're
• 44:44
  in Vienna. It's always good.
• 44:46
  It's always good to bash the French.
• 44:48
  It's always. Good.
• 44:50
  To nominate, Yeah. But nevertheless, you know,
• 44:53
  really Seriously, Yeah, Europe is just fine and we can do many
• 44:58
  things together with Canada and to first of all secure and help
• 45:02
  Ukraine and also help the Americans to regime change Iran
• 45:05
  and build a much better, richer ways together.
• 45:08
  I think there is wonderful opportunities here and we would
• 45:11
  like to see the Prime Minister and the opposition leader in
• 45:14
  Brussels very soon to intensify our agreement in trade, which we
• 45:20
  have successfully. It's actually very well working
• 45:23
  free trade agreement which we after a lot of acrimony have
• 45:26
  signed I think in 2016 or 17. Luckily, that was a very good
• 45:31
  thing to do. We are happy.
• 45:34
  I I also hope for the close relations between Europe and
• 45:36
  Canada, but we'll see what happens.
• 45:39
  Adam, you have also you told me in the pre discussion that you
• 45:42
  have Serbian roots and you are also very active in the Balkans
• 45:46
  as I understand or you were even in the protests last year in the
• 45:50
  Procada students. Tell me about your background.
• 45:53
  Yeah, So I'm ethnically Serbian. I was born and raised in Canada
• 45:56
  and I didn't really pay too much attention to my Serbian heritage
• 46:00
  when I was younger. But that began to change in the
• 46:03
  2000 tens because Canada became a post national states.
• 46:06
  That's what our, you know, our bureaucratic elites decided.
• 46:09
  And in a post national state, there is, it's hard to feel a
• 46:12
  sense of belongings. So I ended up gravitating to
• 46:15
  MyHeritage, seeing my family more often.
• 46:17
  And of course, being based in Ukraine made it easier for me to
• 46:20
  go to Serbia more often. So my relationship with the
• 46:24
  country is, I mean, it's been there for a while, but it's only
• 46:29
  recently been renewed. And so I was there last year in
• 46:33
  March to cover the anti government student protests.
• 46:37
  So to give just a summary of what happened, at the end of
• 46:40
  2024, there was a new train station that collapsed and
• 46:46
  killed about I think 151617 people.
• 46:49
  And actually going back just a bit further.
• 46:53
  So there is a high speed rail line that is being built across
• 46:58
  the Balkans. And eventually it's supposed to
• 47:00
  connect Budapest to Athens. And, and, and this is being
• 47:05
  built by the Chinese. It's their way of kind of, you
• 47:08
  know, building their influence in, in the Balkans.
• 47:12
  And the first line was between first part of the line was
• 47:15
  between Novisat, which is Serbia's second largest city of
• 47:18
  300,000 people and Bill got which is about 1.2 million
• 47:22
  people and construction began in late 2000 tens.
• 47:26
  There was of course some corruption there.
• 47:28
  That's just how Serbia is and eventually opened in the early
• 47:32
  twenty 20s and it was seen as a huge point of national pride
• 47:38
  that symbolized Serbia's economic and physical renewal.
• 47:43
  Seeing infrastructure like this open, knowing that you have, you
• 47:46
  can go to Novisad in 35 minutes instead of an hour and a half
• 47:50
  and people would just take the train for fun, right?
• 47:54
  So the line opened, but the Novisad station renovation took
• 47:59
  some time and it opened up in the summer of 2024.
• 48:05
  And then a few months later, a concrete canopy in front of the
• 48:08
  station collapsed, killing all of those people.
• 48:11
  And that raised questions about whether corruption had led to
• 48:15
  this, you know, to inadequate renovations and killed all these
• 48:18
  Serbs. And it was symbolic because
• 48:20
  everyone had passed through that station, right?
• 48:22
  So it could have been, it could have been you, right?
• 48:24
  It could have been anyone from the Serbian perspective.
• 48:27
  So some Serbian students began to protest.
• 48:31
  And the the regime in Serbia reacted as it always does.
• 48:37
  So suddenly masked men showed up and beat beat the student
• 48:41
  protesters, masked men who definitely had nothing to do
• 48:44
  with the government, right? It's just the things.
• 48:49
  Yeah, I mean, this is how which works.
• 48:51
  And this is how this, I mean, this, this is how the Balkans
• 48:54
  work. And then that of course, really
• 48:58
  offended many Serbians. And the protests only grew from
• 49:02
  there. You had all these student
• 49:04
  strikes and by December you had massive protests in, in Belgrad.
• 49:11
  Then January, February, things quiet down for a bit and the
• 49:15
  Serbians to students began to walk from city to city.
• 49:20
  So, and this essentially put them in close contact with
• 49:24
  everyday Serbians and many older Serbians, especially in rural
• 49:28
  areas, they don't have access to independent information because
• 49:32
  the cable networks, sorry, the broadcasters essentially that
• 49:35
  like hold all these channels. They don't, they're controlled
• 49:38
  by the governments and they don't offer opposition channels.
• 49:41
  So if you're an old woman in some random village, you don't
• 49:44
  have access to opposition channels.
• 49:45
  You only have access to state control channels.
• 49:47
  And they only show pro Putin propaganda, sorry, pro Wuji
• 49:50
  propaganda. You know, you're not going to be
• 49:54
  overly sympathetic to the students, but then the students
• 49:56
  walk through your village, right?
• 49:57
  And then you see them. So this built their support and
• 50:01
  bikers, like biker gangs began to provide security for the
• 50:06
  students to protect them against mass thugs, which was great.
• 50:09
  These were not like criminal bikers.
• 50:10
  These were just like big guys that like riding on motorcycles.
• 50:14
  So there was this mass support. And then in March the there were
• 50:19
  about 300,000 Serbian protesters in Beoghot, which is insane,
• 50:24
  right? This is this is a this is a
• 50:26
  country of what, 7 million people?
• 50:28
  So almost 4 or 5% of the population was there protesting.
• 50:33
  And then Vuchich used a sound cannon to cause chaos.
• 50:38
  I arrived shortly afterwards because I thought this was
• 50:40
  important and I got to see like my family, which was great.
• 50:44
  And so around this time there was this encampments of Pro
• 50:50
  which each students that showed up out of nowhere.
• 50:53
  They set up their encampments across from Parliament, and then
• 50:56
  all of a sudden, police began to protect them and keep anyone
• 50:59
  from going inside. And it was surrounded by
• 51:01
  fencing. So we all knew that right away
• 51:03
  that this is all fake. This is, you know, a government,
• 51:06
  a government organized psychological operation.
• 51:10
  So I decided to show up at the encampments, and I just played
• 51:15
  dumb. And I was like, la de da de da,
• 51:18
  I'm dumb Canadian. What do you speak?
• 51:20
  English? You know, I can understand
• 51:24
  Serbian. I can speak a little bit of it.
• 51:25
  So they didn't know I could understand them.
• 51:28
  And I just pretended to be really ignorant.
• 51:30
  And I went inside and then they were freaking out.
• 51:33
  So like, oh, an international journalist is here.
• 51:36
  And so I interviewed some of them and they gave me the most
• 51:39
  ridiculous thing. They were telling me, oh, the
• 51:41
  students are having gay orgies in their, their, in their
• 51:48
  protest. So I called my cousin who is in
• 51:51
  the protest and I said, cousin, why didn't you tell me that you
• 51:54
  were having all these gay orgies?
• 51:58
  And then by the end. You were Canadian journalists
• 52:01
  because they can be dangerous as well.
• 52:04
  They have beaten up one of the opposition leaders there last
• 52:08
  year, Sandolovich, just because he was not convenient, and then
• 52:12
  there was hospitalized. Well, that's what they do.
• 52:15
  So then I was recording like I took some photos around and most
• 52:20
  of the people in the encampment, first of all, the encampment was
• 52:22
  half empty. Then most of the people there
• 52:24
  were old, like they were, they were in their 30s forties.
• 52:28
  They looked like like bad people, like criminals.
• 52:31
  And then there were some youth who just kind of looked lost
• 52:34
  and, and like, like they were in a bad space, but mostly
• 52:38
  delinquents. And so then I took a shot at
• 52:40
  part of the camp and then one of the guys, like 1, I guess
• 52:44
  enforcer was in the background, way in the background.
• 52:46
  He freaked out. He ran up to me screaming how
• 52:50
  like what the fuck am I doing? Why did I take a photo of him,
• 52:54
  yada yada yada. It was all in Serbian.
• 52:55
  I almost responded in Serbian. And then I realized, wait, no,
• 52:58
  no, no, no, no taking care. So I just looked and it was
• 53:01
  like, do you speak English? She was so mad.
• 53:06
  And then the the leader of the encampment went there and they
• 53:10
  were arguing in Serbian and I had to pretend not to
• 53:12
  understand. But the enforcer basically said
• 53:14
  that he needs to delete his photos.
• 53:16
  So I'm going to break his camera.
• 53:18
  And like it looked like he was basically ready to kick my ass.
• 53:21
  And then one of the protests, like one of the student pro
• 53:24
  government student protesters escorted me out.
• 53:27
  And I was like, did I do something wrong?
• 53:29
  And he like was being a bit flighty about.
• 53:32
  And I said, you know, he said it's better for your safety for
• 53:38
  you not to be here. So that's probably.
• 53:41
  True, actually, Yeah. Tell me, you know, what's the
• 53:44
  perception of Serbia? Because Serbia recently the
• 53:47
  opinion polls put Serbia as the one country in Europe where
• 53:51
  Putin is the most popular politician.
• 53:54
  So they are really not ready for the European Union.
• 53:57
  And I'm always saying that it must be isolated, but maybe
• 54:00
  that's too much. But what's the perception of
• 54:04
  Serbia in Canada? No real perception at all,
• 54:08
  right? I mean, we do have a large
• 54:09
  Serbian community, one of the largest in the world.
• 54:13
  I mean, obviously not at Austria's levels, but I think
• 54:16
  they're about maybe 60 to 80,000 of us, something like that.
• 54:19
  And they're mostly in Toronto. So like, I grew up in the
• 54:21
  Serbian ghetto. I very naively as a child
• 54:23
  thought that 10% of Canada was Serbian, but a lot.
• 54:29
  For. Me, yeah, but but, you know,
• 54:31
  there, there really aren't that many of us, so people don't
• 54:33
  know. And the Serbian community is not
• 54:37
  very well organized. So when you look at, for
• 54:39
  example, the Jewish diaspora or the Armenian diaspora, they're,
• 54:45
  they're really good at organizing and advocating for
• 54:48
  their wants and for their needs. But Serbians were quite
• 54:53
  atomized. And to the degree that we're
• 54:54
  politically organized, it's usually small scale stuff like
• 54:57
  organizing something small to raise money for, you know, the
• 55:01
  student protesters. But we don't really lobby in a
• 55:03
  concerted way. And so we are not on the agenda.
• 55:08
  I want to say as well that Serbia is a fantastic country
• 55:11
  and there are many, many pro European Serbs.
• 55:14
  Unfortunately basically Putin loves Serbia so much that he has
• 55:17
  basically occupied the political and economic control levels of
• 55:21
  the society in 2003. And that's the tragedy of that
• 55:25
  country that unfortunately also in the mentality many people
• 55:29
  have some whatever traditional links with Russia.
• 55:33
  And that of course, now in the in the last four years has even
• 55:37
  intensified. And it's unfortunate.
• 55:40
  And I hope that Serbia finds also a way to the West.
• 55:44
  Yeah, well, the. Please.
• 55:47
  Well, the the problem here is, is that there is still a deep
• 55:50
  sense of resentment against the bombing of Serbia by NATO in the
• 55:54
  late 90s over the Kosovo thing. The underlying issue is that for
• 55:59
  many Serbian nationalists, they do not think that Serbia did
• 56:03
  anything wrong in Kosovo. I obviously disagree.
• 56:06
  I've been in Kosovo, you know, I've spoken with people who have
• 56:10
  cried when they remember the Serbian atrocities there on the
• 56:14
  Serbian end, what they'll often do is they'll say, well, you
• 56:16
  know, the Kosovar Albanians did horrible things to the Serbians
• 56:21
  living there, which is true, we can't deny that.
• 56:24
  But they use that as an excuse to absolve themselves of any
• 56:27
  responsibility for the atrocities that they committed.
• 56:30
  And so because they don't recognize that Serbians
• 56:34
  ethnically cleansed Kosovar Albanians, they think that NATO
• 56:38
  bombs Serbia for quote UN quote no reason.
• 56:41
  And so they still hate NATO with a passion.
• 56:44
  When you go through Serbia, you see anti NATO graffiti very
• 56:48
  often. And on the anniversary of the
• 56:51
  bombing, you will see, you know, Serbians go out on the streets,
• 56:55
  commemorate it, and you have youth, youth who are not even
• 56:58
  alive at the time of the bombing.
• 57:00
  And they, they protest against Serbia with such passion that
• 57:06
  you would imagine that this bombing happened last year.
• 57:09
  The Serbians have cultivated this historical memory and
• 57:15
  amplified it to such a degree that they seem stuck in that
• 57:18
  past. And that keeps them in Russia's
• 57:21
  arms. Adam, I was four years ago in
• 57:25
  2022, I was for the 24th of March 2002 in Belgrade.
• 57:30
  And I'm called for Belgrade and Serbia to support Ukraine and to
• 57:37
  stop the airspace towards Russia, which unfortunately they
• 57:40
  still have open to this day. And I also said, and I always do
• 57:44
  this in Vienna as well, I said thank you for the American bombs
• 57:48
  to have liberated Vienna in 1945 because we were not a part of a
• 57:53
  democratic regime change. We were part of a military
• 57:56
  intervention. It was called World War 2 and it
• 57:59
  was very necessary. And thanks for the older
• 58:01
  Canadians who have liberated Europe as well.
• 58:04
  And that's basically from time to time necessary if entrenched
• 58:08
  brutal tyrannies are there in Europe.
• 58:11
  It needs American and Canadian firepower to remove the Nazis
• 58:15
  and to remove Milosevic, ultimately, And that's what I
• 58:19
  always say in Belgrade, it doesn't make me very popular in
• 58:22
  the Serbian media, unfortunately.
• 58:25
  But ultimately, I hope that one day the Serbs will also say
• 58:29
  thank you like I say thank you, that America has liberated them
• 58:33
  from the tyranny of Milosevic. And until they say this, they
• 58:36
  will not be able to join the European Union, unfortunately,
• 58:41
  because without the repentance for a past genocide, you cannot
• 58:45
  join the Western value community.
• 58:48
  I think it might be asking a lot of them to express gratitude
• 58:52
  here. And I know that most of my
• 58:53
  family members would be deeply offended if I asked that because
• 58:56
  it's different. These are people who remember
• 58:59
  being bombed in living time, right?
• 59:00
  And so, Gunther, I mean, I understand where you're coming
• 59:03
  from, but when you say I say thank you to the bombing of
• 59:06
  1945, you know, the people who were bombed that time are pretty
• 59:12
  much all dead now that that memory is gone.
• 59:14
  But in Serbia, there are people who remember it.
• 59:16
  My aunt remembers the hunger that came with hyperinflation
• 59:19
  and sanctions. And so I think the most that we
• 59:23
  can ask for here is just for hopefully that Serbians will
• 59:26
  slowly forget about this and realize that the past is the
• 59:31
  past. And there are there's a
• 59:33
  different future forward where you know, by integrating with
• 59:37
  Europe, Serbia can become great and can become prosperous.
• 59:42
  But we need to be realistic about what we ask of Serbians
• 59:46
  when it comes to reckoning with historical memory.
• 59:48
  We are now this was in 99 when NATO did the liberation.
• 59:54
  The Serbs call it the bombing as a deliberation of Kosovo and
• 59:58
  deliberation ultimately of Serbia as well.
• 1:00:00
  We are now at the E for Face Other historic liberation
• 1:00:03
  campaign. So of course not decided.
• 1:00:06
  We will see what happens tonight or tomorrow, but with more
• 1:00:08
  likelihood, what I read on Twitter the whole day, It's now
• 1:00:12
  the whole mother of the American firepower is in positioning.
• 1:00:17
  The Cheryl Ford is also in Israel now, very close to where
• 1:00:21
  you are at the moment in the harbour of Tel Aviv.
• 1:00:23
  And so basically the decision for strike will fall this
• 1:00:27
  weekend or it will not come. So ultimately we are going to
• 1:00:30
  use military force again, ultimately for a humanitarian
• 1:00:35
  cause because, you know, we could also keep the, we could
• 1:00:39
  also wait 20 years and probably the Iranians will not attack us.
• 1:00:43
  So it's ultimately A regime change for humanitarian cause
• 1:00:47
  and this is now, of course, a big decision to make.
• 1:00:51
  And you see it in the case of Serbia.
• 1:00:53
  And that has lasting consequences.
• 1:00:55
  So what's your take? Not if it.
• 1:00:59
  Happens. But is it the right moral thing
• 1:01:02
  to intervene, to use American military power like in 45, Like
• 1:01:08
  in 99? Yeah, I think the moral case
• 1:01:11
  we're dislodging the Islamic regime is unambiguous, and I
• 1:01:14
  think that if there was any uncertainty around it, that
• 1:01:18
  uncertainty evaporated after the regime slaughtered 10s of
• 1:01:22
  thousands of its own citizens to stay in power.
• 1:01:25
  The Iranian diaspora is united in its support for regime change
• 1:01:30
  and military strikes. Of course, the diaspora is
• 1:01:33
  different from the people in Iran.
• 1:01:35
  It is one thing to advocate for strikes when you're outside the
• 1:01:38
  country versus when you're inside.
• 1:01:40
  But these diaspora voices have family members back home, and
• 1:01:45
  they talked to their family members.
• 1:01:46
  So they do have some sense of what life is like in Iran.
• 1:01:49
  And it seems as if many Iranians support this as well.
• 1:01:53
  In fact, just before I spoke with you, I was interviewing
• 1:01:56
  another Iranian who is based in Israel.
• 1:02:00
  So we were doing a video call and I asked about the 12 Day
• 1:02:02
  war. And he said, yeah, you know, his
• 1:02:04
  family back in Iran didn't blame the Israelis, didn't blame the
• 1:02:07
  Americans, blame the regime and want the regime gone.
• 1:02:10
  And that is what I'm hearing again and again when I speak
• 1:02:14
  with Iranians about their families back home.
• 1:02:17
  And so if you're running, people want it inside Iran, outside
• 1:02:21
  Iran, if it benefits United States, if it benefits, you
• 1:02:25
  know, the West more broadly, if the only loser really is the
• 1:02:29
  regime, then why not? And the Israelis themselves are
• 1:02:34
  also willing to pay the cost of this counter strike because they
• 1:02:38
  see this as being inevitable. But it is a bit of a scary time.
• 1:02:42
  I, you know, I found that the 12 day war was fine.
• 1:02:47
  I was relaxed about most of it because I went to the shelter.
• 1:02:50
  But we don't know what to expect right now.
• 1:02:52
  And, you know, I'm going to go to the shelter every single time
• 1:02:58
  because that's what you do and you are safe there.
• 1:03:02
  But I do, sometimes I worry about the prospect of being
• 1:03:05
  buried alive or dying. But you, that might be just me
• 1:03:10
  over thinking things. You know, there are 10 million
• 1:03:12
  people here who are going through the exact same thing,
• 1:03:15
  and you just try to live normally while also being
• 1:03:17
  realistic about the risks. On the other hand, Iran since 50
• 1:03:23
  years calls for the destruction of Israel every single day.
• 1:03:27
  The children in the Iranian schools are shouting death to
• 1:03:30
  Israel and death to America every day in the morning.
• 1:03:34
  And so ultimately with the Iranian regime is removed, it's
• 1:03:38
  possible and I think so worth the risk of the coming nights of
• 1:03:43
  fear in Tel Aviv because ultimately Israel will live in
• 1:03:48
  freedom and in prosperity and removed from this permanent
• 1:03:52
  danger of a nuclear armed Iran threatening Israel with
• 1:03:56
  destruction. I, I do want to emphasize
• 1:03:58
  something and I know we're getting, we're running out of
• 1:04:00
  time, but this is a very, very important point to emphasize
• 1:04:02
  about the Iranian community. Iranians themselves broadly do
• 1:04:06
  not, are not anti Semites. In fact they generally seem to
• 1:04:11
  feel very warm feelings towards the Israelis and towards Jews in
• 1:04:15
  general. So in the anti regime protests
• 1:04:19
  that you know, took over Toronto for, for January and February,
• 1:04:24
  one thing that I saw was that in every protest there were lots of
• 1:04:28
  Israeli flags and I interviewed the people holding these flags.
• 1:04:31
  Some of them were Jews or Israelis who would come to show
• 1:04:34
  support. Some of them were Iranians who,
• 1:04:37
  realizing that the Jewish community was an ally, had come
• 1:04:40
  to show support, Right? And no one harassed these people
• 1:04:45
  for carrying Israeli flags. And I was, I would tell my
• 1:04:47
  Jewish friends, I myself am not Jewish, but I would tell my
• 1:04:49
  Jewish friends, you should come to these protests because
• 1:04:52
  ironically, the safest space to hold a Israeli flag in public
• 1:04:59
  is, is in the Iranian community here, right?
• 1:05:02
  And after October 7th in Canada, the Jewish community had very
• 1:05:07
  few allies, but the one ally that it could always rely on to
• 1:05:11
  support it was the Iranian diaspora.
• 1:05:14
  Iranians were always at the Jewish events saying we stand
• 1:05:19
  with you because we together are Co victims of this Islamic
• 1:05:23
  regime. And from what I hear from the
• 1:05:26
  Iranian community, the Iranians back in Iran, not all of them,
• 1:05:30
  but like most of them, seem to have no problem with Israel.
• 1:05:34
  There is this great and underreported bromance between
• 1:05:37
  the two. And when I've interview
• 1:05:40
  Iranians, when I interview Israelis, they always talk about
• 1:05:44
  their shared ancient history. They talk about Cyrus the Great,
• 1:05:47
  who was a benevolent ancient king from, I think 550 BC, and
• 1:05:52
  how he, you know, in the process of conquering the ancient Near
• 1:05:56
  East, liberated the Jews from their captivity in Babylon and
• 1:06:01
  allow them to go to Judea to build their second temple.
• 1:06:05
  And so one of the greatest figures of Persian history
• 1:06:09
  liberated the Jews. The Jews are eternally grateful.
• 1:06:13
  And for Persians, they know that if they look to Cyrus the Great,
• 1:06:15
  they see that this is how they should react, how they should
• 1:06:18
  act towards the Jewish community.
• 1:06:21
  Now, last Tuesday, when it was the 24th of February, we had a
• 1:06:25
  big demonstration of Ukrainians in front of the Austrian
• 1:06:28
  parliament. And they invited as well the
• 1:06:31
  Iranians, the Iranian opposition.
• 1:06:33
  And there was a real kind of mutual enforcing support
• 1:06:38
  mechanism between the Ukrainians and the Iranians for freedom.
• 1:06:43
  And I think that's also a very important aspect.
• 1:06:45
  And there were a lot of Israeli flags at this demonstration as
• 1:06:48
  well. So this is the triangle of
• 1:06:50
  freedom and the kind of alliance of freedom which is now
• 1:06:54
  developing. I was unfortunately in the
• 1:06:57
  minority there because I had also the NATO flag wrapped
• 1:07:01
  around my body at this demonstration.
• 1:07:03
  And as you know, and this is also the last topic, then I'll
• 1:07:06
  leave you, but the situation is that Austria is still a neutral
• 1:07:09
  country. Canada is one of the biggest
• 1:07:12
  NATO powers. What's your opinion about
• 1:07:14
  Austrian immoral and anti solidarity neutrality which we
• 1:07:19
  somehow inherited and don't want to change?
• 1:07:21
  We don't deliver any weapons to Ukraine because of that.
• 1:07:24
  And what's your feeling towards Austrian neutrality?
• 1:07:27
  Are you in favor of ending that? And should Austria join NATO
• 1:07:31
  like Sweden and Finland I. Mean I'm obviously against it.
• 1:07:34
  I think that it's spoiled, right?
• 1:07:38
  The Austrians get to enjoy their sovereignty because the
• 1:07:40
  countries around them contribute to this shared effort to defend
• 1:07:43
  the continents. Well, they get to say that it's
• 1:07:45
  not their problem. And obviously it's their
• 1:07:47
  problem, right? They are.
• 1:07:49
  They are mooching off of the defense investments of their
• 1:07:53
  neighbors, right? And that's ridiculous.
• 1:07:56
  And then I'm also aware of the fact that, you know, the
• 1:07:58
  Austrian elite were partially Co opted by Russian money, but we
• 1:08:02
  know that that's a problem too. And I can't separate foreign
• 1:08:05
  policy from that scandal as well.
• 1:08:08
  So on my end, I would love to see Austria take a more mature
• 1:08:13
  and realistic approach when it comes to sovereignty and mutual
• 1:08:18
  defense. Because should Ukraine fall,
• 1:08:22
  should Russian troops, God forbid, take Kiev and go all the
• 1:08:25
  way to Levie, then Austrians will have no choice but to spend
• 1:08:29
  much more money on defense than they are right now, and they
• 1:08:33
  will rue the fact that they didn't do anything sooner.
• 1:08:37
  Thanks a lot for your support for Austrian NATO membership.
• 1:08:41
  That's absolutely what I support as well as you know me for mix.
• 1:08:45
  I think you have seen already my tweets and and I want to make
• 1:08:49
  sure that Ukraine will never fall.
• 1:08:51
  Ukraine will win this war and Ukraine will liberate Crimea and
• 1:08:56
  we will all be victorious and Canada and Europe will form a
• 1:09:00
  very strong alliance in the future for security, prosperity
• 1:09:03
  and Long live NATO. This is my last statement I want
• 1:09:07
  to give you. Adam, first of all, thank you
• 1:09:09
  very much for coming to the show.
• 1:09:10
  Maybe some last statements, what you hope for tonight.
• 1:09:14
  I wish you safety, first of all, and I wish of course, that the
• 1:09:18
  Americans liberate the Iranians. And I wish you a very exciting
• 1:09:25
  but of course secure weekend at this historic times in Tel Aviv.
• 1:09:30
  Thank you. I mean, my closing message is
• 1:09:32
  that I hope that I hope that civilian casualties are as low
• 1:09:37
  as possible both in Israel and in Iran.
• 1:09:40
  And I want us to think about the Israeli civilians who are scared
• 1:09:45
  even if they keep this fear hidden.
• 1:09:48
  And I also want us to think about the Iranian civilians
• 1:09:50
  because the IRGC has spent so much money waging war, but they
• 1:09:55
  couldn't even be bothered to build shelters for their own
• 1:09:58
  people. So whereas I can go to a
• 1:10:00
  shelter, the average Iranian cannot.
• 1:10:02
  So let us keep them in mind too. And then the final message as an
• 1:10:05
  act of self promotion. You can please find me on X
• 1:10:09
  TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. Adam Zivo ADAMZIV as in Victor O
• 1:10:16
  Adam Zevo on any of those platforms.
• 1:10:18
  Thanks a lot for coming to the show.
• 1:10:20
  I will share on all your platforms and we will also do
• 1:10:23
  Instagram clips together. Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:25
  It was very nice conversation. I wish you safety, security and
• 1:10:29
  all the best in your courageous effort to report from the front
• 1:10:32
  lines of freedom in Ukraine and in Israel.
• 1:10:35
  And thanks a lot, Adam, for coming to the show.
• 1:10:38
  Thank you for having me. I stopped the live streaming now
• 1:10:44
  and.