Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Good morning, Welcome to Counterpoints.
How you doing, Emily, He's so excited to be back.
Excited.
I'm so excited to have him back. And Ryan's back, which means the giant Lenin book is back to just haunting every shot of Counterpoints. But really, it's great to have you back.
And you were in Vermont, which is is now underwater.
It's actually brutal conditions.
People can search they can't search threads yet, but they can search Twitter or search online or reach out to anybody in front. Brutal conditions. It's being compared to the flooding after Hurricane Irene in twenty eleven. Montpelier, the state capital underwater, just devastation, like top to bottom.
But really hitting the center in the south of the state.
Just a couple of days or a couple of months of rain in the matter.
Yeah, but it's what's scary is how fast it can happen, because it was already saturated and then you had basically a day of super heavy rain in upstate New York and Vermont and the next thing you know, the streets are turned into creeks.
Yeah.
Well, we'll be following that situation, will perhaps even be covering that situation in the days ahead. We're going to start by talking about the NATO summit, which has been going on for days now, and some interesting developments just yesterday. Then Ryan called this Tommy tuber Bill Store Tommy Turberville's story too, my attention. So we'll be talking a little bit about him in a back and forth about white nationalism. He's also in a back and forth with the Marines
over military confirmations and abortions. So we'll try to break down that story. What else we got today, Ryan, We've got the Hunter Biden informant, which is an incredibly weird story.
It's such a great story because the guy who was saying that he's a whistleblower that has evidence against Hunter Biden found out to be a Chinese spy, which actually might buttress his credibility.
I'm not sure that this is going how the media thinks it's going.
Funny.
People are like, Aha, this proves that this person couldn't be a credible source about the whistle blowing he's doing on Chinese influence on hind because he's a Chinese spy. No, I think actually not good for him. No, because now he's, as he says, he might be on the run for the rest of his life. But it's actually probably good for his case. We'll get it adprisingly, and then we
have the activision. If you see Call of Duty on the bottom of our prompter there active the active vision Microsoft merger has been challenged by the FTC, A Biden pointed, judge is allowing it to go through.
They're going to appeal.
We're going to talk about that and what it means for not just the world of video games and Call of Duty, but what it means for anti trust policy and also for union density in that sector, because there was just a big union win all Sega workers becoming CWA workers at big CWA election.
That we'll talk about.
Yes, there's a lot going on there. It's not going to be Ryan and Me playing Call of Duty, but hopefully it will be better. Andrew Tate sat for a two plus hour interview with Tucker Carlson. We're going to be breaking down some of the high highlights on that. I'm going to be talking about the meme of the summer, Barbie Oppenheimer and in a way that I'm actually curious
to get you a reaction to. You're going to be talking about the COVID hearing low lights, and then Turnoba will be on the show once again.
Yeah.
Sure.
If you guys remember Chernobo, he's the Sierra Leonian report who wrote a book on the Bola outbreak.
He is going to talk.
He's going to update us both on what he thought of the hearing yesterday, which had a mention of Sierra Leone and Bola, and also the deep regularities going on in the Sierra Leonian election. We had promised we'd have him on after that election and make them good.
Yeah, we're looking forward to that. Let's start though, with the NATO summit and developments out of Ukraine. You can go ahead and put the first element up on the screen. This is quite interesting. I'm reading from NBC News here for a President. Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned President Joe Biden's decision to send cluster munitions as part of a new US aid package to Ukraine, warning that it could lead to World War III. This is the Trump quote
you see up there. Joe Biden should not be dragging US further toward World War three by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine. He should be trying to end all caps of the war and stop the horrific death and destruction being caused by an incompetent administration. Now, Biden's argument, of course, is that cluster munition are going to be what does
ultimately stop the war. That if you don't use cluster munitions, it's not going to give Ukraine so the so called sort of fighting chance that it needs right now in the middle of this offensive. And this is Biden's quote. He said, the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. He told Freied Zakaria this earlier this week. This is a war relating to munitions, and they are running out of
that ammunition and we are low on it. So Trump says response to more directly to that point, It certainly means we should not be sending Ukraine our last stockpiles at a time on our own arsenals, according to Crooked Joe Biden, are so perilously diminished. Trump also criticized Biden for potentially revealing confidential or classified information when he said that we are low on munitions and that Ukrainians are running out of ammunitions. Quite an interesting little back and forth.
As Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. Zaalinski is in back and forth with everyone, seemingly right now with NATO. He's said just yesterday that the United States and NATO allies are present projecting weakness by not having a stronger approach to Ukraine joining NATO in during the war, as NATO signals that it's not wise to join in the middle of the war.
It doesn't seem like Trump is necessarily divulging classified information because you can learn Biden, yeah, oh oh, Biden releasing classified But either way, if anybody said that we're low on ammunition, you could get that just by watching this show or by reading reading the newspaper. Like it's also you can just get it by extrapolation, like it's rather clear. And you're having people on background make the argument that one of the reasons they need these cluster munitions because
they're running out of their regular munitions. So the gnarly your argument, the more disgusting argument that you're hearing being made, is that, look, Ukraine has already desiccated anyway, but all of this land is already covered with land mines that the Russians have used cluster munitions that are going to sit there and blow up kids for cas to come. So what's a few one hundred thousand extra cluster munitions tossed around the bread basket? That's really the argument that
it's being made. And if I would just say to people that if you're making that argument, like if you're working that through in your head, stop to think where you are and step back a second. That if something so bad that therefore your arguments we got to make, it's okay to make it worse, like you might you've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Probably what will be interesting to watch is whether or not.
Trump jumping on this.
Blunts the bipartisan momentum that was building against sending cluster munitions over to Ukraine. Just at the end of last week, Sarah Jacobs, represented from California, and Ilon Omar introduced an amendment to the NDAA to say there will be no cluster munitions transfers anywhere, not just Ukraine, but anywhere. If you had nineteen Democrats that on Friday, you set a letter of the administration makes been making basically the same point.
In order to get onto the floor, they need Republican support, and so that started to come first in the form of Representative Matt Gates.
Let's roll Gates here.
Democrat Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, who we've criticized a great deal on the show for some of the reviews. She's probably
criticized me a great deal for some of mine. But she has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that reads, notwithstanding any other provision of law, no military assistance shall be furnished for cluster munitions, No defense export license for cluster munitions may be issued, and no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred. And what I'm here to tell you is that I am going to be the Republican co sponsor of the
Jacob's amendment before the House Rules Committee. We have an opportunity with bipartisanship to stand against the war mongering bidence and these cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine. Let's look at the countries where cluster bombs have been used Laus Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria. Cluster bombs are features of the world's bloodiest and most inhumane wars, some.
Of the longest. It's hardly the cornerstone of a path to peace.
One side note on journalism Todays, I was working Monday all day on reporting out this story, and I'm hearing from Capitol Hill sources Matt Gates might be willing to co sponsor this, and so I'm looking for extra sources. He going to try to report this out. And then somebody's like, I think he's saying it on his podcast right now? What do you mean his podcast?
The world?
Is this?
What am I even here for? Yeah?
Just go away?
Yeah, Like my role here is done.
Yeah, He's just gonna grab his mic and just break the news right there on his little podcast, which is I was still able to sort of break the news, and like, I went and found his podcast and he quoted his podcast.
But it's different than you know.
When reporters are getting in the Hallway talking to people and getting news.
It's just it's uh, I don't know, man, what are we even doing anymore?
This is the best news ever for people in Capitol Hill, like members watching this, they're like Ryan Grimm gives up on journals.
Done. I can't anymore with this.
But so so with Gate supporting Jacob's amendment, that means that it has a better chance of getting through the Rules Committee, but it also needs Democrats on the Rules Committee. Good news for opponents here is that Jim McGovern is the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee. We talked about him recently and he was going a little bit wobbly on some sanctions positions, but here here he came through for them.
Let's let's roll McGovern.
Either of you have an opinion of whether or not the House should be able to debate the issue of cluster munitions or not. But if you have an opinion of love to.
Hear it with me, honest me too.
I mean I hope then, I hope it's made in order we'll be able to have that debate in that vote.
Oh.
Now, I do have a role as a reporter here. I can tell you that the people on the other side of the camera. There were Mike Rogers and Adam Smith, who are the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, And so for mc governor to get them on record say you know what, we're fine with having this vote means that it has a better
shot of being quote ruled in order. What they adjourned after about eleven o'clock last night, and they're going to allow all of the uncontroversial amendments to go through on an uncontroversial vote, and then for the rest of the week they're going to hash out these controversial amendments.
So it's unlikely that you're.
Going to have a majority in the House that's going to be able to block the munition's transfer. And also it would be difficult to get the two thirds you would need to override a Biden veto. But it is I think the biggest concentration of kind of opposition to any kind of Ukraine Ukraine arming policy that has threatened to develop since the beginning of the war.
Yeah, and we can go ahead and put the next element up. This is Jensaki responding to questions. Obviously a long time ago, because Trensaki has been gone for as it.
Was about a year ago.
Yeah, yeah, probably a little bit more than a year ago.
I guess like maybe spring early twenty twenty two, Yeah, early twenty twenty two.
Take a look, silence will be tolerated against civilians in this manner that's illegal and potentially a war crime.
It is, it would be, I don't have any confirmation of that. We have seen the reports. If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime. Obviously, there are a range of international fura that would assess that, so certainly we would look to that to be a part of that conversation.
Well, it's Jensaki being asked about and at the beginning of the question, wasn't there, But that's her being asked about Russia's use of cluster munitions, yes, in war, potential war crime.
February twenty eighth, twenty twenty two, February twenty eighth. And so will they still be looking to the range of criteria that she referenced just there to determine whether or not there was to determine whether or not there's a war crime should this go ahead.
And the funny thing about this is that there is a convention against cluster munitions that was signed in nineteen ninety seven.
More than one hundred countries have endorsed it, but I guess it.
Doesn't count as the international rules based order because we didn't sign on to it. China has not signed on to a RUSH, has not signed on to it. Turkey
has not signed on to it. Ironically, Turkey playing you know, every side in this war, has been sending cluster musitions to Ukraine, so they have some of these already, So those countries have not signed on to the treaty, which makes it international in the sense that more than one hundred countries have tried to ban cluster munitions because if people don't quite understand how they work, they launch exploding clusters and then hundreds and thousands of them in small
numbers spread spread across the field, and the ones we're talking about sending have like a six percent dud rate, which means that with the numbers that we're talking about setting, there could be about four hundred thousand unexploded munitions in the ground just as a relative a result of what we send, not counting what Turkey sent to Ukraine or what Russia is firing.
Well in Turkey. Is a great transition here back to the NATO summit, because Erdawan had quite a showing at the NATO summit, cleared the way basically for Sweden to join NATO. Had a very friendly relationship with Biden on display over the course of the NATO summit, and that has been the NATO summit over the last few days. I think it's obviously no coincidence that this conversation is transpiring at the same time because there are new commitments.
So this is Germany, France, Norway at the NATO summit announced new military aid to Ukraine. We can put the New York Times element up here. They promised tanks and longer range missiles. They so, I mean, that's obviously a pretty big deal, just from their point of view. NATO put out a statement saying that quote Ukraine's future is in NATO, and you know this is just an attempt as a show of force to say but without opening the way for Ukraine to be NATO. As you see
here on the screen, quote conditions are met. When conditions are met, that's when Ukraine gets its membership. This is not good enough for Zelensky. But at the same time, NATO over the last few days has been making a very big deal to show solidarity and their alliance with Ukraine stopping short of what Zelensky wants, which prompted him to kind of lash out.
Yeah, we can put his lashing out here.
He posted on Twitter on the way to the thing that the next element here and he says, you know, he says, basically, we're still going to go to the NATO summit. But then he says, but Ukraine also deserves respect, he says, Now on the way to Vilnius, we receive signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine, and I would like to emphasize that this wording is about the invitation to become NATO member, not about Ukraine's membership.
It's unprecedented and absurd when timeframe is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine's membership, while at the same time vague worrying about conditions is added even for inviting Ukraine. It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the alliance. This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine's membership in NATO. In negotiations with Russia, and for Russia this means motivation to
continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness, and I will openly discuss this at the summit. So Zelensky livid that there are conditions being put on even an invitation into NATO. But the problem here is that if you're in an active war with Russia and you become a NATO member, instantly, all of NATO is at war with Russia.
And Zelenski has to understand that.
Absolutely, he understands that, but he like again, this is one of the things criticizing Zelenski. I think we criticized Zlensky rightfully here a lot. The man, you know, whether or not we can criticize him from the Western perspective, is mired in war, and so from his perspective, it makes sense that you would push for Ukraine to have NATO membership, although I would argue it doesn't really make that much sense because it's basically inviting even more death
and destruction to Ukraine into the entire region. So, you know, and especially I think the amount of support that he's gotten, not just from NATO but particularly from the United States. Let's put let's roll this clip of Actually, Anthony Blincoln, who was on the Sunday Shows, made his rounds on the Sunday shows this weekend and had some comments about this too.
Well.
It sends two messages.
First of all, our alliance is stronger, gets bigger with two new members Finland and now Sweden, and it's more united than ever. And in terms of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, it's sending a very strong message to Putin that he's not going to outlast us. He's not going to outlast Ukraine. And the sooner he ends this war of aggression, the better.
Okay, So I was wrong. That wasn't the Sunday shows. That was CBS this morning after the new members admitted, Yeah, you sorry. I was thinking Biden was on Faried Zakaria on Sunday, but blink in there saying he's trying to do exactly that. He's trying to say, you know, we're sending a strong message against Putin. But Zelenski's version of a strong message against Putin is Ukraine admission into NATO full stop.
And I have sympathy here for Zelensky in this sense that and we reported on this recently on the show that if you go back to the March twenty two negotiations that were going on in Turkey between Russia Ukraine
and being broken by Airdawan. The basic outlines that we understand now or Russia would claim territory that it had had prior to February twenty first, so that includes a little bit of the donbas in Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would be allowed to have security guarantees from the West that would kind of lock in that status quo.
But the West said, no, we're.
Not giving you those security guarantees, and so without those, we want you to continue to fight and drain Russian. Russian power is the Western powers according to this reporting, like the way that this was going for Russia, which was not as well as Russia to hope. You know, that's seventy two hours Kiev had not fallen, et cetera. And so this question of security guarantees, had it been answered in March twenty twenty two, may have ended the
war at that point. Yeah, and so I can I can see why you know this this further, this much further into the war, after this much pain, misery, trauma and bloodshed that Zelensky would be throwing his hands.
Up, like, what are we going to do here?
Right?
When is this? When is this going to end? When are you going to get off the pot?
Right?
Yeah?
No, I think that's exactly exactly the way to look at it, because and again, that doesn't mean that Zelensky is completely correct on a strategic level to say X, Y and Z is best for us, But it does mean that that sort of line that they're trying to toe would be frustrated from his perspective. And also, I
think it's abundantly clear at this point. You know, there were a lot of arguments made a year into the war, six months into the war that Biden was you know, from a bipartisan perspective, he was doing all right, that is absurd to make that argument anymore. I think that becomes more clear every single day.
All Right, So we got some bizarre Tommy two Reville news this guy good lord. So I have a clip that I want to help that I think helps frame this conversation that we can get into in a second. But can you set up the fight that he's currently having with the military, because I think that that is also some type of playing into this somehow.
Yes, So Tommy Turberville has Establishment Republicans extremely upset. He has the Biden administration extremely upset because he's been blocking senior military promotions that are confirmed in the Senate over the Pentagon's abortion policy, which is they will pay for their employees to travel for abortions. And so Tarbraville has for a very long time said, we are blocking these promotions. I'm not going to allow them to go through as the Senate works, you can have one person sort of
coming up the works like that. And his argument is that the Biden administration could drop this policy, like they don't have to be funding abortion travel. So if they are clinging to this idea that they're going to be paying for abortion travel at the Department of Defense with tax payer money, why are you blaming me? Why are you not blaming the Biden administration. And the head of the Marines was forced into retirement this week. I saw
forced into retirement. I don't know what the circumstances are between going into I think we had something to do with like it was nothing like super interesting or nefarious, but retired this week and they needed to appoint someone to that position. And so that's where this is all coming to. A head this week because people are really frustrated that they can't name a new head of the Marines. While Taberville continues to block this, he says, it's not me,
it's the Biden administration. Conservative movement is rallying behind Mitch McConnell, John Thune are not. They are really really upset about it. And again this is all coming to a head. And now that sets up the Tuberville CNN drama.
And to me, it seems like if Tubberville or any other senator like wants to unilaterally kind of set policy, that kind of intricate policy for the military, they should run for president and become commander in chief. To me, it's like, come on, get out of here, like, this is not how we this is not how we run a military. But anyway, so to the white nationalism question that he has now gotten himself tangled up in, I wanted to play one clip of him.
This is from October of twenty twenty two.
This is at a Trump rally, which I think puts into context some of the comments that he made recently.
Democratic Party they have a majority, they could stop this crime today. Some people say, well, they're soft on crime. No, they're not soft on crime. They're pro crime. They won't crame. They won't crime because you want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.
They're not.
All right.
So here listen to that as context for a recent conversation he had on a podcast where he said, some people call them white nationalists, I call them Americans. So he then goes on CNN where Caitlyn Collins presses him. You said, this pretty crazy thing. Can you please kind of elaborate what did you mean by this?
And here he is on on CNN.
That's not identity politics. You said, a white nationalist is an American.
Identity politics, you said, a white.
Nationalist is an American.
But a white nationalist is someone who believes horrific things. You don't, do you really think that's someone who should be serving in the military.
Well, that's just a name that has been given.
I mean, it's not it's a real definition. There's real concern.
You're going to with most white people in this country out of the military. We got huge problems. We got huge problems, not people.
Who are white.
It's white nationalists that have.
A few probably different beliefs, right, they have that have different beliefs. Now, if racism is one of those beliefs, I'm totally against it. I am totally against racism.
But there's a lot of people that is racist.
Senator, Well, that's your opinion. That's your opinion. But if it's racism, if it's racism, I'm totally against it. I am totally against any type of race or any any type of racism. I don't care what it's in.
So he's okay with white nationalism as long as it doesn't involve racism.
So bad, so bad, So bad.
Mitch McConnell got pressed on it at his uh at the Sticks yesterday on Capitol Here.
Here's here's Mitch McConnell grappling with this question.
Do you any concerns that you're a member of your conference, Senator Tuberville's it seems to have a hard time denouncing white nationalism, especially as a past white nationalism in the military.
You know, white supremacy is simply unacceptable in the military and in our whole country. Mitch, Yeah, And so I saw Eric Erickson saying, you know, Tommy Tuberville is the hero we need talking about.
His fight with the military right now.
So, how is this.
Just horrifying moment of racism from Tulberville colliding and coinciding with this kind of stand he's taking with the kind of evangelical movement to support their kind of preferred abortion policy in the military.
Is it?
Is it causing consternation that oh boy like in order to like or these are these things mingling together?
What's going on on the right.
As as they as people have to grapple with this guy's refusal to say.
To just denounce white nationalism.
I think it's it's an attempt and I would imagine coordinated on Capitol Hill to undercut his credibility. And if you can undercut his sort of moral credibility, then do you have the conservative.
Moods like maybe somebody leaked that podcast.
Someone Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised by that.
It could have been brought him on the CNN and then he refused to just put it out by say apologizing it.
Yeah, And Mitch McConnell and John Thune have or McConnell at least you've seen that there have taken the opportunity to jump in but I would say this is actually kind of interesting. Some people might think this is a charitable read untopable, but I think it is. It is not charitable. I think it's the least charitable read on him. I genuinely think that he is trying to push back on this this definition inflation in a way that this is not defensible. And that's my point. He like genuinely
doesn't understand that white nationalism is inherently racist. He like actually thinks that it's just a label democrats are throwing around, because like, let's be real, that does happen. There are labels that are thrown around, you know, ridiculously willy nilly in a way that like cheapens it. But he genuinely
seems to not understand what white nationalism is. And I think obviously, for any publican senator right now, you should have a pretty clear understanding that white nationalism is absolutely racist. And I honestly like, I think that's what explains this bizarre clip of him saying, listen, if it's racism, I denounced that racism is terrible. He's like aggressively denouncing racism and then shrugging out of white nationalism. I think he is genuinely confused, and I think that's fairly shameful.
It is. It is interesting that if you get down into the fever swamps of the white nationalism and white supremacy world, you will find all sorts of people who self identify as white nationalists who say that they are not racist, yes, because they are not white supremacy, right exactly. And they will point and they will say, actually, we think Asians are like they literally like, this is a very common you'll they'll vouch for me that, right, He's a common.
Thing, well on the right so much as like super free right whatever you would want to call that.
And so I actually thought it was interesting.
I'm curious if McConnell was doing some weird code switching there when he was asked about white nationalism answered about white supremacy, right, because he whistling to people to say that I know the difference, and I'm willing to announce white supremacy, yeah, but not white nationalism there like as somebody like, did you notice that code switch to yeah?
I did, And I think it's exactly what Caitlin is getting at with Coverville. She's and he comes out and again it's this weird thing where he's saying if it's racist, no, it's it's bad. But and this is again like, this is not a charitable defense of him, because I think it's shameful that a Republican senator or any senator would be confused on that level about white nationalism. I just think it's insane. Ryan. Though you're correct, like white nationalists
will say, we're not racists, we're separatists. Essentially, would believe that homogeneous sort of like ethnically in like ethnic homogeneity. It's it's always, I would argue, as always pretty racist. Yeah, it's like baked into the cake of white nationalisms.
And I think it also exposes how victimized that that element of our politics is becoming, because what they'll often say is that, well, what about black nationalism. You often hear that from them, that's if we are a racist, isn't it isn't that racist?
Yes?
That well, black nationalism arises from hundreds of years of oppression and a way to try to reclaim an identity into the melting pot of the United.
States, when it is predicated on going into the melting pot as opposed to like separatism.
Yes, I agree, right, And it's right, but otherwise it could just be separatism. And so that means that these folks are claiming the same amount of oppression. And I think in their hearts like they feel it, but they look around and feel that amount.
Of pression and the rest of the world is like, you guys have lost your mind. You're not the oppressed class here.
What is it like? What is like?
How did you get to a place where you can justify that feeling despite like all of the abundance that is, like, you know, within within your reach.
But uh, so, I I think you're right.
That's and and I don't think Tommy Tellerville has equipped kind of disgusted he was he then he then did, uh, the incredible version of some of my best friends are black was he was asked if he's racist, and he said, I I used to be a football coach, and I
dealt with more minorities. It's like dealt with like you're It's like the contempt is seeping through when you say dealt with like you deal with like deal with and and in one of the interviews, he caught himself after he said dealt with right and and rephrase it too. Had the privilege to be around because he could hear like what had subconsciously, you know, crept into the into the conscious had how it sounded to people deal with.
I agree that he's like just fundamentally not equipped to have that conversation at.
All, but you know, maybe he is, and we're hearing his real thoughts as real feelings if you can't.
If you if you say that you're denouncing racism, and you don't seem to be convinced that white nationalism is racism. But not even with the like potential nuance of a white nationalist who claims that they're also not a racist, that you just describe it.
I'm a white nationalist and blah blah blah. It's like, okay, well that's terrible and awful. Yeah, but you're at least saying that he's he's I don't even say.
The last time I say is just It is a very serious problem on the left of inflating the definitions of terms like racism and white nationalism. And that is not an excuse for Tommy Tupperville here, but it is a point about how sometimes like it has allowed people to get confused like this, and I like, sincerely again, I think it is shameful for United States senator if he is confused and not you know, genuinely trying to do code switching or whatever, then you know, I think
it's shameful either way. But I do think that it has caused a lot of confusion in the country. I think it has been because it is sometimes so objectionable where you have decent people who are being smeared as white nationalists simply because they're conservative. That allows more of this to happen. And I do think it's a really serious problem. I don't think that's an excuse for Tuberville.
And I think a parallel to that, if the left ones help understanding, would be the way that some reflexively pro Israel forces have weaponized anti semitism to the point where they're going to the UN and trying to redefine anti Semitism as criticism of Israel, like not even doing it in like a kind of just subtle way anymore, but just saying like no, this, we are literally redefining that if you criticize Israel, that you are anti Semitic.
And so as a result, people on the left have started to take anti semitism less seriously than they ought to, and you'll see and you'll see people dipping into genuine anti Semitism because they feel like that there is no anti Semitism anymore, because it's been so kind of destroyed as a concept by people who've cynically weaponized it. When it's like, no, you got to be No, it's still a real, live, malign force in the world.
And there are people who can who criticize the definition inflation on behalf of the left from the right and do exactly what you're.
Talking about too.
Yeah, let's move on to Hunter Biden. I want to start by reading from the Daily Beast. Here we can put the tear sheet up on the screen because I actually think, to the point we mentioned as we were
opening the show, this framing is really amusing. So the Daily Base rates the quote missing witness, long touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption, was accused Monday of being an unregistered for an agent for China and international arms trafficker traffic Our while violating US sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges.
This is about Gal Luft. It's a name you may have heard who And this is a continuation of the Daily Bast article. Quote had already skipped out in his bailwell in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the US for a separate case in March. So he alleges that the sprawling case against him represents political persecution and retaliation by the
Biden administration against a potential witness. So these charges against Luft he's accused of, you know this twenty sixteen planned to quote, recruit and pay a White House advisor to support pro China stuff without registering under Farah. I mean, this is just like extremely convoluted. There's a million different countries that are in the mix of UAE, Kenya, Libya, China.
He's in Cyprus right now. But I do think the tone of the Daily Based article that is sort of smug, as though this is a real l for Republicans, when in fact, actually what we're learning more and more like this guy Gal Luft was working with the former CIA director James Woolsey. He was basically the head of Woolsey's think tank after he left the CIA. This is not some like crazy person. I mean he mayn't be crazy,
but he's not like some fringe Internet weirdo. He was working for the former CIA director and is now making these claims the.
Other way around. It seems like the former CIA director was working for him.
That was the Yeah, that's an allegation of the plan. So federal prosecutors I'm reading from the Washington Free Beacon now they say that CEFC China Energy. So this is a Hunter Biden connection. Hunter Biden was working with CEFC. They funded a scheme to quote recruit former CIA director James Woolsey. This is where Luff comes in. He was
the co director of Wolvesey think tank. And again, when you put all of that in perspective, not such an l for Republicans yet, because to the point you were making earlier in the show, it's really not a like tanking the credibility of Luft that he's that he's being alleged to be compromised by foreignate interest.
And the irony here is that what we're talking about is basically I think that something that everybody stipulates across the board, which is that Hunter Biden absolutely traded on his name in order to cash in with foreign governments.
There still remains questions and about whether or not Joe.
Biden knew anything about it, met with anybody, did any did anything you know that that was you know, furthering of this kind of business enterprise that was going on. And this is this is twenty seventeen, so this is when Biden is out of office. But CEFC is the is the company where the big guy quote comes from
ten percent for the big guy that everybody loves. And so the fact that Luft was involved with CEFC puts him at the center of all of this exactly, rather than kind of undermining his credibility.
The irony that.
Hundred defenders would say, well, this guy is now discredited because he's been indicted as a Chinese spy for working with CFC. They missed the fact that, well, okay, Hunter Biden was also working with CEFC as part of its influence operation. So why wouldn't Hunter Biden be indicted as
for failing to register? Because this is paperwork stuff, But like, this is paperwork that matters, Like if you're representing a foreign government when you're writing in the Washington Post or you're sending out emails to reporters or you or you're hosting events. We want to know, like, now these think tanks come in and this would become interesting if if it ever went to trial. It sounds like this guy is gonna have to be brought in by Jack Ryan
or something out there. So it doesn't there may never be a trial. But you know, funding think tanks to get around farah is you know foreign influence one oh one, which is and then there's a constant push and pull around disclosure versus versus you know, opacity there where with the think tanks constantly kind of muddying things and trying to not you know, say when they testify, you know, whether or not their think tank gets any funding, and
on and on. So to me, the fact that this guy is indicted for being involved with CEFC, the company at the center of this, yeah, actually makes me a lot more interested in what he has to say.
That final point he.
He says in a statement that he released that he he voluntarily reached out to the FBI in twenty nineteen to warn the FBI that there were that there was this influence operation that involved a presidential candidate, Joe Biden. And he says that after that, that's when they started coming after him. The FBI says that he made false statements at the time, said he was not involved in arms trafficking, et cetera, which I believe.
I'm ready to believe that.
Okay, you're sitting down with FBI agents and in cafe and Brussels, and they ask if you're an arms trafficker and you're an act and you actually are, and you're also a spy and you know in this nefarious world of of of brokering all of these different arms.
Chance that he lied about that?
Hi, So here's where.
But does that mean that, like he's not an interesting source on this now?
No, I mean he's a hugely interesting source because, as you say, this really puts him at the center of all of this. Prosecutors are also saying that. So Patrick Hull, that's a name that some people may have heard. He's you know, infamously when he was a wrested by the FBI,
his first call was to James Biden. James Biden tells The New York Times he thought that Hoe was It seems that Hoe was trying to contact Hunter because Hunter agreed to represent Hall, like actually signed an agreement with him. Who was this guy was involved with CEFS.
I'm halfway down the rabbit hole.
Well, and that's the thing is, like it's not even a rabbit hole in that this is all conspiratorial. It's just so convoluted and intentionally.
That's how this stuff works.
Yeah, like these these lobbying agreements and legal agreements are intentionally super convoluted. But Hoe also asked gal Luft to recruit Woolsey so that Wolsey would write, according to prosecutors, articles for Chinese state media promoting promoting belt and Road. And that's where Yeah, CFC ended up paying Woolsey six thousand dollars a month according to the indictment. So Wolsey left and the Bidens are looking really bad in all
of this. And the more we learn about Galt Luff, the more we're going to learn about both both the Wolzies, the Wolsey influence here and the Biden influence here. And none of it is good. But you can see I think sadly the media taking the bait from the White House and just being like super smug about Left getting
stuck in Cyprus. And I don't know whether his allegations that he's under you know, political he's being blocked for political reasons, that he's being kept overseas for political reasons. I don't know if those are true. They sound at this point plausible given the extent of what he knows. But you know, maybe he actually did genuinely engage in wrongdoing and they're suddenly super eager to crack down on everyone involved in Pharaoh, you know, violations, et cetera, et cetera.
The way that he could have gotten caught doing this with absent a kind of I'm a whistleblower being persecuted claim, would be that the China desk over at the CIA all of a sudden starts seeing Wolsey writing op heads Belton Road is like, what on earth is going on here? Like anybody who sees that happening knows that Wolsey is not like sitting at home in retirement just pondering like the beauty of the Belton Road initiative, And it's like, what friends do I have over in China that would
run my freelance pieces celebrating this stuff. So as soon as you see that in print, you're like, okay, this is an operation. Who's paying for it six thousand a month?
Right?
And so which is also peanuts.
Yeah, although they're just slapping in.
This elite world, that's true.
That's actually a good point. Woolsey, Come on, man, so you're worth more clean in for.
Six thousand bucks.
And so you know, the CIA is always looking to roll up these foreign intelligence operations. So they see that, then they're like, Okay, let's figure out who's Woolsey working for. It's like, oh, it's this think tank, who runs this think tank. Oh it's this guy who's this guy in communication with And so I think you could get yourself busted that way, absent everything else.
But it doesn't it.
But like I said, it doesn't actually bear on whether or not there's some credibility around the Hunter allegations, other than maybe actually making them more credible.
I was gonna say it.
Actually it does bear on it. It bears on it in that direction.
Moving on now to the call of duty block on our screen, which again doesn't mean that Ryan and I are going to use these giant screens.
Behind us to like, oh that would be kind of cool hours, right, isn't that what streamers do? They just do it just for hours or just I think that's what Mac.
And Griffin do when nobody's taping in here.
They just come in and play call of Well they should put that on Twitch.
Yeah, we'll look about the terror screen. Tear sheet up on the screen. This is from Politico. I'm reading from this article Microsoft's fortunes and it's hotly condested to take over a video game company, Activision. Blizzard dramatically improved Tuesday after a federal judge sided with the companies over the FTC's attempt to block the deal, and after a UK anti trust regulator signaled it's receptiveness to reversing its own
decision against the merger. That's a ruling from US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who you can imagine Matt Stoller has some harsh words for. We'll get to that in a second. Political caused this. A stinging rebuke for the FTC and a kind of a rebuke against Lena Kahn as well. I think that's probably fair. Now, the FTC is trying to determine whether Activision is going to give Microsoft, So say, Microsoft, you know, mergers with Activision an unfair
advantage in the world of video games games. You know the xboxes three behind PlayStation and Sony and so, according to Politico, the agency fts.
Sony PlayStation and Nintendo right now.
So the FTC is arguing Sony and other video game companies would be significantly disadvantaged if Microsoft made hit games like Call of Duty exclusive to its platforms. This is part of the ruling. Corley gets in to what Microsoft and Activision, or Microsoft in particular, says is going to happen in that situation, and enter Matt Stole.
I'll read from some of those. So for put up Stoller here, a friend of our show. He's probably I'm sure he's going to do a segment on this soon. He said, I'd guess it was gonna this was going to get appealed. It became very opposite trial that judge jaquill and Scott Corley is your standard boomer moron. Hard
to imagine she didn't make significant legal errors. So as always subtle analysis from our from from Staller, uh and uh So he then does actually go through and finds a lot of these errors that she that and she even in the ruling Stoller notice said, hey, I was rushed on this, so there's going to be citation errors in this.
As Stolar rightly points out, she wasn't rushed. You know, she could have delayed.
She decided to go on Microsoft schedule, so you know, the the errors are her own fault. But the favorite thing for me that he that he flagged in this ruling is this next element. If you can put this up, this is basically accepting as fact that don't worry. They promised that they're going to behave so right rite Fourth Microsoft witnesses, this is the judge writing. Microsoft witnesses consistently testified there are no plans to make Call of Duty
exclusive to the Xbox. Mister Nadella testified he would one hundred percent commit to continuing to ship Call of Duty on the Sony PlayStation. Mister Spencer testified, my commitment is and my testimony is to use that word that basically I'd be humiliated if I didn't do it. And they said seventh, Microsoft anticipates irreparable reputationable reputational harm if it forecloses Call of Duty from PlayStation. Spencer testified, us pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation, in my view, would create
irreparable harm to the Xbox brand. After me in so many public places, including here, talking about and committing to us not pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation. Activision CEO Bob Katich confirmed Microsoft concerns are not unfounded. If we were to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation, it would have, you know, cause problems.
So basically they're saying trust us.
And the judge took their trust us quote and put it in her in her ruling and said, look there, they're not going to make Call of Duty exclusive. They because they told us that they're not. Why would they Why would they ever do that?
Now?
Will they? Will they go to Nintendo?
Will they go to Sony and say, uh, you have to pay us extra for this in including whatever your profit margin is on it, or or we will do this uh. And separately, you can't make a legal argument based on I promise I won't do this this time because there will be other games now hopefully Now if they become too much of a monopoly, there might not
be the other games. Like this is you know, they'll they'll update present games and like continue to produce some, but like, uh, they would have they would have much less incentive to produce you know, more and better games because this is what you get. Yeah, like that, you know you're gonna get it here or you're not gonna get it anywhere else.
So Installer does have something up on this at the Big Newsletter dot com, and that's actually the name of the newsletter, The Big Newsletter dot Com, where he's talking about how Corley, Who's son, by the way, apparently works for Microsoft, which is a little bit of the conflict of interest to begin with, maybe she shouldn't have been hearing the case, but that she essentially had to rewrite the Clayton Act in order to narrow, he says, narrow the stakes for the merger.
And that's because I.
Think the law says may cause you know, competition problems, but they should change it too, will probably.
And you can see yeah, and so you can see actually in for example, the call of duty question exactly that like she's reading, she's sort of being credulous what Microsoft says.
Yeah, they're good.
This is what they're doing.
You can keep getting called duty, they say.
Right, whereas the FTC is saying, you know, there's plenty of evidence here the Microsoft is intentionally buying up competitors to be like a Netflix so that they can then exclude people that they don't want to and have more control of the market. I'm with Matt, I think this is a pretty obvious case. But even actually, and this is a this is an interesting find yesterday because part of this conversation we wanted to have was about the
fact that you have now a union at Sega. This is a new decision before Yeah, so Sega of America their workers voted to forming union. Ninety one employees voted yes out of two hundred and twelve. So the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega that's known as AGUS CWA is now the fifth video game union in the United States and the largest multi department video game union. That is all according to the Verge. At the same time, CWA the Communication Workers announced that this is the next element.
Claude Cummings from Houston won a runoff election over Mooney to become the first black president of CWA. CWA then interestingly actually supported the ft I'm sorry, supported Corley's decision against the FTC and cheered the merger essentially, which was an extremely I thought that was extremely interesting. Let me
see if I can find the quote here. They say, by accepting Judge Corley's decision and allowing this merger to move forward, the FTC has an opportunity to transform the video game and tech labor market by providing a clear path to collective bargaining for almost ten thousand workers.
Yeah, and I think what people need to understand is that a union exists to represent the interests of the workers in that union, and that's it. Now, when union density gets to a big enough place in our economy, often they exert positive influence, some times on deliberately, other times just by kind of driving up wages for the rest of the working class. And that's one of the
great things about kind of the union movement. But ultimately you have to remember like they're they're looking out for their union, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That's that's what that's what that's what a union is.
And so.
It is in their benefit to have bigger businesses business. And this goes back to the kind of economic orthodoxy that was that reigned supreme in the mid twentieth century,
led really by Cain's and John Kenneth Galbraith. That was about kind of the combination the working together of kind of big government, big business, and big labor, like a gigantic bargain to make sure that everybody is taken care of and nobody gets too powerful, and you'd have these countervailing forces that would be able to check each other.
Now, eventually big.
Business was able to kind of defeat in the nineteen eighties both big labor and government, and then that's what produced the kind of neoliberal area era. But that, but that this, this reminds us that unions are not just out here supporting every kind of progressive idea, Like they don't care if.
You can ship call of duty.
If they can get more high paying union jobs by you not getting shipped call of duty anymore, then.
They're going to be for that.
C w A is one of the most progressive unions in the kind of a f l c IO, but famously was a huge enemy of the of the left on net neutrality in that in that big fight over Internet freedom because they were with the telecoms, they wanted more power for the telecoms. More power for the telecoms meant kind of, uh, better wages for union workers. And people need to understand that there's a there are always
going to be those contradictions in there. Uh quick word on that election, it's really interesting, really interesting to see it unfold this way. Because this was a a two person race that Claude Cummings was not even part of. Like he was considered he's seventy one years old, he's considered to be retiring, Like this is cool.
He's going to run for president.
Everybody likes him, but he's not gonna be not gonna be president, Like he's just he's just running.
It was really between Sarah Stephens and this guy at Mooney.
Sarah Stephen's represented the the the Newspaper Guild, which has seen the most growth. Basically, the most growth of the CWA has come from the News Guild and from grad students and some other other kind of elements that are not you know, directly related to the core kind of uh, you know, work that you see people doing on the streets that you associate with with the c w A.
And so you saw that, you saw the rise of this element of c w A.
And these are also the most left wing elements, the news Guild, the grad students, others, and so they rally behind Stephens.
She apparently ran up awful campaign at Mooney.
Kind of the is kind of the right wing old school building trades type of candidate who I incidentally and strangely had actually, never mind, we don't really.
Need to get into that.
The amount of drama in this in this race would take like an hour to get into. Basically, what ended up happening, it seems like is people were like, you know what, Claude Commings is great and we're sick of both of these people, right, and he wanted He ended up winning in a landslide. You know, Stephans didn't even make the runoff, and then he crushed Mooney in a in a landslide, and he pledged only to serve four years.
And I don't see it as like a gigantic wind for say, a left wing union democracy movement, but it is definitely a rejection of the old guard, and it's an opportunity over the next four years for the CWA to figure out kind of what it wants to be and where it wants to go from from here.
Especially so many changes happening in their industry.
Right because these unions are all constantly figuring out, you know, how they're going to continue to grow members, Like the UAW organizes a ton of grad students too, Like it's not it's autoworkers, so it's not just you know, you don't stick to where you know what you're what you're into. You gotta gotta get a pivot in the parlants of Silicon Valley, right.
Gotta pivot to video.
Got a pivot?
Okay, So let's talk about Andrew Tate. Tucker Carlson dropped a very long interview we're talking more than two hours long with Andrew Tate from Romania. Tucker Carlson flew to Romania and dropped this for Tucker on Twitter because he was assured sounds like directly from Elon Musk, that it wouldn't be censored at all. I imagine if he had uploaded this full two plus hours YouTube, there would be some real problems.
He's been banned from YouTube, right, Tate?
Probably he has. I don't know if interviews with him have been though, So like, is it different if you're actually interviewing I don't know, but I would imagine that it would have been more.
That's an interesting question.
I don't know, Right, So let's just get straight to some clips here, because again we're talking about a two plus hour long interview and there's just a ton of breakdown. They talked about a lot of different stuff as you can imagine. So let's roll E one right off the bat.
Up until this point, never really commented too heavily on politics. Yes, but I understand very well. I like to believe what's happening with Ukraine and Russia. And what I will say to the people who are watching this at home is that if you are naive enough to believe that there are good guys and bad guys in wars and it's as simple as good and bad, and that the bad guys are crazy, the good guys want freedom, then you need to do a little bit more investigation into what's
really happening. And when you look at the vested interest of any country or any person, kind of.
Just ask you to pause and just comment, that's the truest thing what you just said. That is that and anyone who doesn't understand that should shut the fuck up.
And I mean, having seen war, looks like they're wearing matching the first Do you think they planned that?
I hope not. That would be a little too that'll be a little too weird.
That would be one fact check.
Though what he seems to be saying, what Tucker is saying is that the Ukrainians are not the good guys in this war. But hasn't Tucker said that the Russians are the good guys in this war? They was rooting for the Russians, like, you can't have it both ways. If there's no good guys, then it's Tucker finally acknowledging that the Russians are also not the good guys.
Yeah, he said at one point, I'm trying to find the exact quote. He says, like it almost makes me a root for Russia or root for Putin, something like that, And it was sort of a rhetorical thing where he was, you know, you know, back and forth.
I think there's an element of the that that calls itself anti war, that is legitimately straight up just rooting for Russia and calling Russia good guys this war. So now I guess you're crosswise with Tucker and Andrew Tate if that's your position and no good guys.
So not only did they talk about Russia versus Ukraine, they kept going that was actually even later in the interview, I think, but we can roll so number two here.
You too, So what is it about your message do you think that infuriates certain people?
Well, my message traditional, my message is traditional masculinity. My message is to stand up and say what you mean and mean what you say. And even going to the gym nowadays is an act of defiance because when you have a man who's built with any degree of principle, you say no to things. And I think, if I have to analyze my message and why I'm so disliked by the people who dislike me, it's not the things
I'm saying. It's the fact that if you adhere to my principles, and you adhere to the things I say, you end up being the kind of person who will resist certain ideas. You say no. What kind of man never says no? Name a man who never says no?
Men say no?
Right men, Men wake up and say no, I don't think that should be done this way. No, my children will not be taught that.
No.
Father's primary job.
Absolutely, So when you say to men, listen, you're allowed to have an opinion, You're allowed to have standards, You're allowed to have boundaries and barriers. Allowed to get up and become important and work hard and try hard and become the kind of man who can't be controlled. Then you're seen as an enemy. And I, especially with the massive influence I've gained. I think they look at me and go, ah, he's helping men resist the slave programming.
We don't need him around. We need to empty their brains so we can inject the slave programming and convince men to be eunix.
Because once you're uniqued, then you're not a threat.
Every time you say no, I'm going to think of it in a different context.
Now that's what men say, Well, what do you make of this guy?
There's so much to there's so much to say. Why don't we roll the next clip and then we can break it all down? This is E three.
It's one of those charges that kind of sells itself.
Oh absolutely, And it doesn't matter if you're found guilty or not right, you're a human trafficker forever. But I do think that public consciousness is changing.
I think with things like.
There's been some very large court cases recently involving some very famous people in which women were caught lying, trying to slander men's names for rape and these kinds of things, and I.
I don't think people believe it anymore.
But that scares me to a degree because I think that the typical weapon the standardized playbook is now failing, and I don't know what the new playbook's going to be. It's almost like better the devil. You know that you're too famous, you're too successful. We don't like you call him a rapist or a human draft or put them all over the news slander's name, try and wreck his life. Now that nobody believes it's what's the next move? What are they going to try next?
Wouldn't it just have been easier to commit like a massive financial crime and defraud people of billions, come up with like a fake cryptocurrency, call it like I don't know FTX, or just give a name to it, yeah something, yeah, random, you know, steal billions, Yeah, and get your parents involved and buy a bunch of real estate and the Bahamas and then like you'd be sort of a hero, right.
Oh, absolutely, And I would have certainly made a lot more money than TikTok, because I don't think TikTok even pays you for views, and it certainly does. I never got a single transaction from it, so it's a very interesting scenario. But if I was accused of a financial crime, my name would not be slandered.
Well, of course, not at first all he's talking about Sam Bangman freed. Yeah, and I keep hearing this from the right that it's it's so unfair the way he you know, he got treated guys under indictment and might spend the rest of his life in prison.
That.
I'm treated to freed.
Aren't Aren't they going to update that that talking point at some point based on the fact that he very likely might spend the rest of his life in jail.
I assumed what Tucker meant was he'd.
Be celebrated by the media.
Yeah, that he had you know, was being fitted and had you know, Bill Clinton and whomever else at the ft X conferences before, even though it was sort of transparently upon.
You've got that Bankman free quote where he told Wired you say, or you told maybe as a reporter at Vox that you say these shibboleus so that.
People will think so basically saying that.
But okay, So the last the last clip is on on the charges, and it just does not feel like a very hard hitting interview on when you have someone who is uh charged with rape and human trafficking in front of you, he just sort of is like, so, didn't do this stuff?
Right, and he's like, no, I didn't do this stuff.
And then oh, well, all, if you didn't do that stuff, then there must be a conspiracy about uh. And then let's unpack this conspiracy. What is it that has them coming after you rather than pressing like you?
According to the news.
Reports, there are there are women who say that you rate them beyond beyond the the foul, nasty kind of recruiting that he has openly said that he does, where he kind of uh would recruit women to come over like get the boyfriend, met the go, get him to fall in love, and then and then kind of turn them out into like porn stars, like he's said that
he does that. But beyond that, there are people accusing him of straight up rape, and he's that he's been charged with in Romania and so any everyone's innocent until proven guilty, but these are very serious charges that he that took. It just seems to kind of just wave away and then work to kind of explain as a conspiracy among a feminized world that doesn't like him standing up for traditional masculineus thing.
I think there might be a little bit more than that going on.
Tate reportedly tells Carlson that he is that the women who accuse him. I actually don't like that the government has trumped up the charges. I think it's it's possible that some of the charges against him are trumped up, and he's saying that the government can't find women who truly claim that this was non consensual, and the government is reading into it by using the human trafficking charge.
But I think the broader point is that the legal questions of Andrew Tate are different than the moral questions from Andrew Tate. I actually have zero problem with Tucker engaging with him. I think some of those questions should have been a lot tougher.
I don't have to think an interview.
I think Peter berg and interviewed Osama bin Laden right, maybe for NBC News or Wall Street Journal. I forget who it was celebrated for landing that interview, Like so Simon Lauden, one of the most evil people of the last fifty years.
Megan Kelly interviewed Putin right, you.
Should interview bad people, Yeah, Like the bad people are part of the world, and it's important to know and get insight into their mentality.
And I also don't have a problem with one person in the media taking Andrew Tits seriously and saying, this is a guy who has a ton of sincere followers, and we obviously have a masculinity crisis. There's a great Christine mbsay in the Washington Post actually about that very topic this week, what can I learn from a good faith engagement with him? And there were some interesting parts of it, but I do find it, you know, I
don't know if strange is the right word. I don't know what is the right word, but it's it's very obvious. I mean, this is a quote from Andrew Tate's website. I've been running a webcam studio for nearly a decade. I've had over seventy five girls work for me, and my business model is different than ninety nine percent of
webcam studio owners. Over fifty percent of my employees were actually my girlfriend at the time, and of all girlfriends, none were in the adult entertainment industry before they met me. My job was to meet a girl, go in a few dates, sleep with her, test if she's quality, get her to fall in love with me where she'd do anything I say, and then get her on a webcam so we could become rich together. The moral element of that is very clear, Like that's sort of all out
on the table. That's immoral, especially, I think from the perspective I say this as a fellow Tucker's fellow Christian conservative, like that's absurd, And if you want to engage seriously in a good faith conversation about that, I actually think that's constructive.
A whole lot of family values going on there.
But the masculinity question. We were actually talking about this earlier when we were talking oddly enough in the Tommy Turberville segment, when it's like why is Tommy Turwverville flirting with this question? Like why is he even taking white
nationalism seriously? While there are probably a lot of places in rural and Alabama to your point about you know, why are so many white men in America like suddenly seeing themselves as victims on par with people who were trapped into slavery and kept in bondage for hundreds of years. It's not comparable if you go to places in rural Alabama that have been hollowed out by NAFTA and wto that people are dying of fentanyl overdoses addicted to pornography,
numbing themselves with weed. Tucker actually prefaced his interview with Andrew Tate on with a sort of a monologue on that. I think you can understand why Tate is appealing. Why then ideologies like white nationalism are appealing, And the problem is that too few people in the media take any of that seriously. The problem then becomes that to balance it out, you end up getting Andrew Tate.
Yeah.
Well, the left has long had a critique of this quote unquote family values traditional conservatism as simply a mask for misogyny and racism, right, And I think both the Tubberville and the Tate clips here help helped pull the mask off off of that and say that there is a lot. There is a lot going on there, and I do think it's really important to try to understand Tate and and the and the tens of millions of
people behind them. But on the other hand, I think some of it is simple, and I think it's misogyny sells like we are we are still a very misogynistic world.
It's an easy pitch to men to say, like, the way to feel better about yourself is to do something that makes you feel really good.
Control women, women, women, are your problem. Girls are your problem. That's it.
Yeah, uh, control women, use them as sexual objects, et cetera.
Right, So I think that he gets a little.
I mean, obviously, there are a lot of people selling misogyny, and he's selling it better than anybody else in the world at the moment.
So in that sense, he's a talented misogynist.
But but I don't think there's any creative creativity in the idea of wow, I can get rich by, you know, telling men that women are awful.
Yeah, there's something I think interestingly reactionary about what he specifically gets into. Has turned to Islam. We talked about that on a previous edition of the show and had an interesting conversation about it.
So I think he's because he has he fully made that turn yet I'm not sure it's coming. I think he has though, if it hasn't come yet, it's coming. All these like all of these influencers are who root their stuff in traditional values and misogyny, I think are just They're just bound for their own twisted version of some weird sectarian Islam.
I mean the Tate direction. It's the Tate trajectory supports that. Although I do think you know, actually, Jordan Peterson, there are other people who were unfairly, so he'll wind up there. I think Dan Peter Jordan Peterson.
Some mystical version of it.
Yeah, I think he's he's been studying Christianity really closely.
But he.
People can watch his speech just commencement address that he'll still gets into some interesting.
Stuff on that.
But he is someone who was so unfairly I think torn down. He was sort of a center left like academic who is pushing him back against these things, and that I think nudged him in a direction where he does occasionally I think dip his toes and waters that are probably not great. But on the whole, I feel he actually has been good for so many men. And the fact that he gets attacked over and over and
over again in ways that are unfair. There's always fair criticisms of people who speak so much in the public domain, but he gets attacked on things that are so unfair so many times that this is how you end up with just enter Tate like. He becomes an influencer, not that we need, but the influencer we deserve because we can't have constructive conversations anymore since we're all doing it on Twitter and Instagram whenever else, which incentivizes the worst of human debate.
Well, either way, we can put this up here. It's getting an insane amount of traction on Twitter. As of
this morning, it's forty two point eight million views. I'm seeing now a ton of that is inflated that, but if it's ten percent of that, that's still four million more than that I'd want absorbing this what I consider to be just deeply kind of toxic way to think, and and a in an opiate, a soothing message to two men that there that they can find their problems outside of themselves by just identifying them and the women around them, and that that's if they if they just
understand that, then they're going to feel better about themselves.
I am the problem with this show.
That's right now, there you go. What's your point.
Today, Well, if you watch an old movie, especially one before the Second World War, you'll have a hard time spotting one particular thing plastic. Look around you now, don't even think about technology, think about things like clocks or cookwar furniture. We are drowning, drowning in plastics. Our suburbs are designed around the freeway system, and then without cars they wouldn't work. Those all of those things have one particular thing in common. We'll get to that in just
one minute. Cars and plastics help usher in a new era of convenience and prosperity. That much is clear when we look back United States history of the last one hundred years or so. But without access to vast quantities of that one thing, oil, none of that would have happened. That's why our politics now revolve around it. And unlike in previous eras where politics revolved around other commodities, this time there's another really big difference, and that would be
nuclear weapons. That's basically the latest chapter in human history. In a nutshell. The Cold War was hyper modern in the sense that it forced these desperate alliances between cultures and countries and peoples who had previously been separated by major journeys months, weeks, in some cases years around the world, and they were all then in the Cold War, tied together under the threat of instant destruction. That's very new
in human history. And this is why Barbie Oppenheimer is more than just a hilarious meme, and the meme is truly hilarious. Two of the biggest movies of the summer coming out on the same day, but with laughably different subjects. It's funny. I get it, and it's actually already on Wikipedia as Barbenheimer. We can put that up on the screen. And also, yeah, so you can see it there they did the little side by side we can also put up on the screen. My personal favorite of the Barbenheimer memes,
this is a really good one. If you're listening, I will do the very cool thing of describing a joke to you. It's a pink cloud, like a pink mushroom looking cloud, hovering over a freeway and it says the Barbie oppenhe Heimer crossover has beengun picture. I think it's a real picture. I don't know its a gender reveal. I don't know. I didn't do the due diligence.
I didn't do it.
I didn't do real I didn't do the journalism of verifying the picture and the joke. But maybe I should have because it is a good meme. But the punchline is again obviously about Barbie and Oppenheimer being completely different. You have this sort of like hot pink comedy and very dark biopic same day they're coming out on the twenty first. Totally different in tone and subject, but actually they're tied together in a really, really important way that
explains basically all of the last one hundred years. Our victory in World War Two paved the way for American consumer culture. Plastic makers who had been working on wartime supplies shifted to consumer goods. Plentiful oil supply secured by the post war American dominance in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia. The groundwork to that was laid by FDR in particular, even before the war had ended. That
kept the tap flowing, and flow it did. Soon we were so dependent that these military relationships became essential and nuclear threats loomed large. That's still where we are today, basically, even if it's not at the fever pitch of different points during the Cold War. I want to read an anecdote actually from PBS quote. A few days before the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, JW. McCoy, a DuPont vice president, addressed a manufacturer's workshop on converting factories from
military to consumer production. After the war, business would be good, he predicted, due to quote, a great backlog of unfulfilled wants. Satisfying American consumers desires for cars, washing machines, radios and other products would create quote an upward spiral of productivity, raising the standard of living, increasing the national income, and making more jobs. But McCoy warned a satisfied people is a stagnant people, and suggested manufacturers would have to ensure
that Americans were never satisfied. Well, that turned out to be incredibly prescient, and again it explains why when you have Cold War proxy battles in oil rich regions, you have both of these things inextricably tied together because we are now completely dependent. Circus University, which actually has a whole plastics center, I think it's funded by some people in the industry you'll be surprised to learn, but has some interesting research on the history of plastics, which is
fairly new as we're talking about. They go on to have a really interesting particular observation about the post war period of plastics. They say, quote, the development of durable and easily motable plastics and the metal shortage of the nineteen forties triggered the plastic toy revolution of the post World War two years when deprived of the military market,
producers shifted production to consumer goods. The baby boom then provided millions of children as potential customers, accessible through the new medium of television advertising and Syracuios goes on to name Barbie as one of the toys that benefits from huge trend. Barbie was not wooden. Barbie was debuted in nineteen fifty nine, made of plastics in nineteen ninety six.
This is another interesting observation. The La Times described Barbie's parapatetic multi country path from her raw material source in a Saudi Arabian oil field to Aisle twelve Sea of a southern California toy store. According to Mattel, the La Times article continues, all Barbie dolls are made in four Asian factories. This is of nineteen ninety six, two in China, and one each in Indonesia and Malaysia. Barbie has never
been made in the United States. The first doll was produced in Japan in nineteen fifty nine, when that country was still struggling with its post World War II economic recovery. The first Barbie again was made in Japan in nineteen ninety In nineteen fifty nine, in the years after atomic weapons and World War II changed that country forever. We could also talk about Barbie and the Barbie's Movie, Barbie Movie's connection to feminism and the women's movement that got
a boost from World War two. Absolutely that parallel could be drawn. But the Oppenheimer connection here is really really direct, and it's still undergirds basically every moment of our geopolitics. It all comes down to nukes and oil, in particular the combination of those two things every day economically, militarily,
and even culturally. And that's why I think that as funny as the Barbie Oppenheimer the Barbenheimer memes actually are, it's also to me sort of telling that we see these things as so completely different, when in fact they're really part in some very fundamental ways the same chapter
in human history. And again even today, our relationships with so many countries around the world are dominated actually with basically every country around the world because the nuclear threat and our utter dependence, I mean basically the complete and utter dependence on both oil and the plastics that are downstream of oil that completely controls our geopolitical our geopolitical relationships, and the nuclear threat that looms large over them changes
the way for example, even even if plastic was just a commodity think like gold and we were in years past, when you add nuclear technology to that sort of commodity dependency, that changes the way, for instance, that the United States sees.
Let's go back to the Cold War Iran, the Shaw of Iran, that changes all of these different calculations in ways that still today are They're not just sort of like these aren't stretches like gymnastics to get from point A to point B. They're direct connections that are driving our geopolitics right now. So it is somewhat interesting we see both Barbie and Oppenheimer as like these these two completely different things, so much so that it is funny and with you, it's funny when in fact they are
so closely tied together in the post war period. Ryan, what have you got for us.
Well, I'm looking at the COVID hearing.
Yesterday, this House Subcommittee on COVID Origins met and invited every author of the Proximal Origins paper. That's the influential paper that effectively discredited the idea of a lab league early in the pandemic, that stemmed from a conference call conversation with Anthony Anthony Faucini and a variety of international experts.
In the field, and so I wanted to play one clip that I thought.
Was fairly representative from that rather disappointing hearing, because every Democrat that got up basically just yelled about how this was a partisan witch hunt and support and gave evidence for the why they supported the zoonotic theory of the natural origin, while being clear that they believed that this is still an open question, which was not okay to
say a year and a half or so ago. Every Republican got up, you know, strongly argued on behalf of the kind of the lad League theory and the idea that like every person on their own just happened to arrive at this completely uh you know, separate partisan conclusion. It's just impossible to believe in it, and it and it highlighted once again how how absurdly partisan this has gotten.
Republicans Meanwhile, focused, you know, heavily on on China, which I thought kind of overlooked a lot of the the global and.
US problems that are that are interrelated with this.
But because of the way it works, everybody gets five minutes and then you get you know, there's there's very little time for questioning. A lot of the questions just went like this. This one from Representative Michael Cloud, a Republican in Texas. It was maybe one of the kind of cleanest back and forth that we're going to get. He's talking here to doctor Christian Anderson.
You said it was because of some new data that came available on the pack the penguin, and doctor Anderson you agreed with this. In a interview in The New York Times. You said, for example, we looked at data from COVID being found in other species, such as bass penglins, which demonstrated that other features first appeared unique to cod
were in fact in other related diseases. But during the peer review part you said that was not data that was included, that the pengelin information had no leaning into the conclusion you made.
Is that correct?
So the timeline keeps changing here. First it's two days, and it's three days, it's four days. It's actually forty five days when we were talking. It's forty five days before the draft was published. I think it's a peer review period.
And within two days the conclusion had changed from oh, this is not going to to, oh, it's impossible that this could have happened.
All right, So what he's talking about there is this movement from on February first, twenty twenty, you had Anderson, Gary and others saying that the way that this emerged seemed clearly to them to have come from a lab.
After this conference call, they do a one one.
Hundred and eighty degree pivot and wind up concluding the opposite and then writing their proximal origin paper. And you see a little deceptiveness on the part of doctor Anderson. They're saying it was no, it's forty He's saying, look, because what he wants to ask is how did you change your mind so quickly? What happened in just a couple of days that changed your mind. He's like, well, no, it was forty five days. But of course, as as representative Cloud says, it was not forty five days that
you changed your mind. Forty five days that when the paper was published. But in that time period there's there's peer review, there's revisions, there's writing it. So it's actually only a day or two during which you change your mind.
And the pangolent theory is the thing that these virologists had cited as a reason that they had changed their mind so quickly, But as the as they hear and got into later, it later emerged that this claim that there was a virus that was ninety nine percent similar to stars COVID two in panglins turned out to be untrue. And so if that's the case, the thing that got
them to change their mind was actually fake news. Now, the hearing also spent a lot of time around the question of whether or not there were financial incentives at play, and I want to dive deeper into this, but first here's here's Anderson kind of refuting the allegations that there was financial pressure from the niaidea that from the NIH on them to get in line with a natural origin theory.
Some have alleged that I have received a federal grant in exchange for the conclusions made in our approximal origent paper. There is no connection between the grant and the paper. Funding decisions on grant were made before the pandemic, months before the February one conference call, So.
That's a pretty clear assertion that he's making to Congress there. Funding decisions for the grant were made months before the conference call. What he turns out to be referring to are preliminary reviews of a funding application, not the final decision. And we know that because the NIH, to its credit, is fairly transparent about the way it issues these awards. So if we can put up this element, this is
the award he's talking about. Now, my glasses on, So Emily, can you read that May twenty verst of May twenty twenty here, okay, May twenty first, twenty twenty. You guys can pause this and take a close look at that if you want to. If you want to fact check my reading of this document, you can also go to you can search. You can easily find the website here to search this type in Anderson twenty twenty, and this will pop up the West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center.
This is the center that he was hoping to get. That he that they were hoping to get this millions in funding from the NIH four and so they had been preliminarily approved. This is true, but they were at a crucial junction. The staff had recommended that this money go through. It was now up to Fauci and Collins whether or not to actually deliver the money. And if you hear from Anderson in this hearing, he's saying, well, that's just a formality at that point.
No, it's it was. It was baked in.
But if you talk to scientists who are who have also applied for monies of this size, that's not at all the case. If this was a thirty thousand dollars grant for a grad student to do a project and the staff approved it, you know, NIH and I aid they're going to sign off on that, no problem, multi million dollar you know, multi country grant. They're going to take in other considerations so we can put up this
this other element. You can find these all over the NIH saying the main ANIAID Advisory Council must recommend an application for funding before we can award a grant, although the institute makes the final funding decision. They say that's clearly all over their website. And if you talk to scientists they will say that, you know, particularly in cases that involve kind of geopolitical sensitivities that involve and involve
funding priorities, like are what are the current priorities? It's not enough just this has scientific value, does it fit the current funding priorities? And that's as it should be. The leadership of these organizations ought to make the final call. So to be clear that Democrats made a lot of hay over the fact that Anderson said that the funding decisions were made before this conference call, when in fact,
the funding decision was made after this conference call. Are we going to be talking in this segment about the recent elections in Sierra Leone, But we wanted to start speaking of the COVID hearing that took place yesterday with a reference of Sierra Leone that came in the opening statement by virologist Bob Gary.
Here's role this.
For nearly twenty years, I've worked closely with scientists and clinicians at the Kenema Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. KGH is a major site for research on the virus that caused his last the fever. Ten years ago. Ebolavirus emerged just fifty miles from Kinema. Ultimately, this abola outbreak would claim the lives of thousands of people, including dozens of healthcare workers at the Kenema Government Hospital.
So we're going to be joining this segment by Sierra Leonian journalist churn Oba, who many of you may remember. We interviewed him several months ago about his book on the Abola outbreak in Sierra Leone, so I wanted to ask him about this first chourno.
Welcome to the program, Thanks much for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
So what did you think about hearing Gary bring up the lab in Sierra Leone? And particularly I noticed that he referenced the work that the lab does on the Lassa virus, which nobody asked him what kind of work was going on in that lab.
There's been an enormous.
Amount of reporting yours, most prominently that there was a lot of a Bowler research going on in that lab as well. Papers were written by scientists from that lab about that a Bowler research.
Did it strike you the same way it struck me that he got.
So specific about the Lassa virus work being done in that lab.
In my book, I had even mentioned the fact that the CDC had been present in the region since the nineteen seventies, doing lots of FIFA work and funding lots of FIVA resides. So in fact, that was what we got my interest in investigating the ebolar outbreak and arguing or pointing to the fact that we cannot understand the causes of the e boler outbreak without looking at what the viral Homlogic Fever consultant was doing in the region ten years preceding the outbreak.
So it did not surprise me that.
Any effort to understand COVID will have to first start with the same, you know, kind of work that was done in West Africa, because we're talking about the same individuals and the same groups of science organizations that were involved in So we have been calling for an investigation into the Ebola outbreak, and unfortunately since the outbreak, this is the first time we are have in some kind of hearings that appear to reference the outbreak in West Africa.
We're hoping that a similar kind of investigat at least I hear in that drills into the questions that we have been asking years ago might happen.
Yeah, and for people who missed it, will put the link to your previous interview in the in the notes to this one. But today we wanted to talk about the election, the presidential election in Sia Loan, which you mentioned in your in your last interview, So can you bring us up to speed. What what are the kind of political parties and political formations in Sieri early on that we're competing in the selection.
The politics empower and Salion has been dominated by two major factions as I call them, of the elite, divided into two parties known as this relion People's Party the SLPP that is currently in power and the major opposition party the All People's Congress that was previously empowered before.
This current party that's in power.
In fact, the a PC was in power when the Bulla outbreak that we just mentioned happened. So it peers that these two parties have been there for the modern sixty years now since the transition to what we call independence, and they have dominated. The elites of these parties have dominated and monopolized politics for the last sixty years. There has been no all independent effort to organize against these two factions of the middle class as I call them.
Over the years have not been you know, have not succeeded in this placing them. Part of the reasons that there seems to be some kind of arrangement. We are the rotate power after every you know, ten years, and this is the first time where individuals, groups of regular citizens mobilized to vote against a government that has openly become dictatorial and repressive.
Over the last five years.
Dozens of people have been killed and no you know, investigation or hearing has been done on that situay, and we have highlighted corruption and the dictatorial tendencies of the government. So the elections that happened, the current president declared himself or was declared the winner of the elections. When the elections we are incomplete, votes we are not fully counted.
They were not fully tabulated, and pretty much every organization that has been or that was present during the voting process, and this includes the Catch Center and the European Union and various other international organizations that supposedly when there to monitor the elections have classified them as non transparent elections. But we are pointing to the fact that it's not just a question of lack of transparency, but there is illegality surrounding the way the elections we are conducted.
So in a general sense, we had no proper elections.
They just decided to allow the president to continue because there appears to be a consensus among these parties, both the opposition party and the ruling party to allow the president to continue for two times because that appears to be the only time to shift power amongst themselves.
You report extensively on this corruption and your article, and we can put that up on the screen. That's the next element I want to ask her, not about what the hope is and what the next steps are for people outside of the ruling party and the opposition party, who you say they've reached a consensus allowing corruption to
continue festering and illegitimate elections to be rubber stamped. What does it look like for people who have hoped for democracy that looks less corrupt than this going forward.
Well, that is what we have been putting forward. If they agree that the only legitimate means of changing the government is through the ballot box, and groups of organizations, including the United States, governments around the world who are partners of the corrupt politicians in SRIL, you know, we'll not just call that kind of facade as an election, because where an election is where people are allowed to
really participate. We have a lot that was brought in in Parliament a year before the election that gave the Electoral Commission and the current president the power to determine how the elections would be conducted and the program the political environment in a way that we will have the current outcome that we have.
So we expect.
These individuals who claim that's the only way to compete for power to respect the rules that they have developed for them, you know, for these kinds of competitions. But they have openly allowed the subversion of that kind of situation. And as we speak right now, there has not been any significant efforts to call into question the current situation in Isralia. What we hear is just issues of transparency.
It goes way beyond that. We have to talk about the responsibility of these individuals, both the United States, Europe and the politicians in Surralians, you know, in holding each other responsible for denying cerel unions the right to decide the kind of government under which they want.
To leave Charnel.
Can you give us a couple examples of the kinds of irregularities that have been uncovered.
Well, they include virtually the failure of the Electoral Commission to count, to properly count the votes, to properly tablet the elections board open above that the law requires that an order for a presidential election to be for a for a winner of a presdential election to be announced, they have to account the ballot at the votes in the opoling stations, then at the district level, at the regional level before the results are collated and tabulated at the national office.
And that was not done.
In fact, individuals who supervised the the elections citizens, ordinary citizens and including political parties complained that in fact, district returning of a regional officers have not completed their own tabulation process, their own calculations when the presidential election results were announced. So that means that what the Electoral Commission announced was basically the result of the result of numbers.
They just came out with their own numbers that do not reflect the actual votes that the people who accounted, so up to now we have been asking for you know,
we're are the votes of the people. And even international organizations are so embarrassed to the point that they are now asking for disaggregated, for the numbers to be disaggregated, basically for the Electoral Commission to show how they came up with the figures from the pulling stations to the district, the district centers and the regional centers and that has not been done.
You mentioned this earlier, but what more can you tell us about how the West and the United States and other international organizations are reacting to the results. I should say that in air quotes out Australia.
Well, they are basically just classified elections as non transparent elections. But we are saying that it goes way beyond just the question of transparency, that the electual commission organizing the elections in a secret fashion or not allowing people access to monitor the elections. It deals with a range of irregularities and illegalities where the elections that you know, we
are not conducted following the public elections laws. So an election does not conform to the rules and regulations that we have in that country for the conduct of elections.
It's basically an illegal arrangement.
So any government that results from the illegal conduct of elections, it's an illegal regime. So it has to be called that way. But when you just describe the situation as non transparent, it is an ambiguous way of basically, you know, it opens the discussion to conceptual issues rather than the
actual crime that has been that has been committed. But it's so unfortunate because on June thirtieth, the US International Development Finance Corporation approved one fifty million dollars loan to the Suma Group, which is a private company that's in charge of running the national airport in Isralon. And that airport was built by that company through a contract awarded to them by the current government and the Parliament without proper scrutiny and without citizens being aware of the details
of that of that agreement. So such kinds of funding that goes to fund projects and programs undertaken by the Government of Australian by the United States and Europe, even as we speak of these kinds of illegalities and discrepancies in voting processes and the way the country has been run, emboldened dictators and leaders like the current President Australian who
is openly stealing vote. We have a year ago, we have in the African space, we've published the fact that the current government cannot win a free and fear election based on the objective conditions on the ground, the desperate economic situation, the economic crisis, coupled with the dictorial tendencies of the government, detroitarian nature of how the brand the government corruption that we've reported about so we knew that the only way the government is going to retain power
is by rigging the elections. And we have also pointed in advance that they cannot rig the elections without the complicity of the opposition parties on the ground, and which is why we have been calling for effective international monitoring of the elections. And it ended up in the situation where the politicians can not to steal the popular mandate of the people in front of the whole world. So
we believe such kinds of governments cannot be funded. The US and the European partners cannot continue to give taxpayers money to politicians who steal elections, because any individual who steals ational election cannot be trusted with the with the management of the national economy, let alone being awarded loans and grants more debts from international organization like the US
International Development Finance Corporation. So the US has to hold itself accountable to its own its own standards of governance that it claims to promote around the world, which is what we that's the message we want to call We we expect them to be able to impress upon their partners around the world, including the government Australia and the need to maintain human rights, they need to respect the freedoms of its own citizens, and not only that, to
impress upon them the minimum standards of good governors and accountability. So when they fund, when they give loans like the current credit that they've approved for the funding an expansion of the of the Salinar Airport, it emboldens leaders like Julius ma W who has hijacked demandate of the people and you know, the plants from the country in the colony of Gangstans.
And two final questions for you, uh, you know, as as socialist, you've been critical of of both of these parties. I remember you were hopeful that the elections might lead to some pathway toward the end of your exile. You're currently joining US, uh, you know, from Chicago rather than Sierra Leone because of the work that you've done uncovering corruptions serially. And so I'm curious one and what what do you think these elections results mean for you personally?
But then also too what do they mean for the long term future of Sierra Leone. If if people decide that democracy is just a facade, if there's no point in participating in it.
Are they going to seek channel channels outside of.
Electoralism that could that could lead toward h toward violence and other other ways of enacting policy change, or that they that they're clearly as demand for.
Yes, the entire West African region is prone to conflict. If you look around West Africa now you have crices andical conflict in Guinea conacred as a result of elections. We look at the unstable situation in Nigeria and we have elections coming up in.
Liberia.
So every course was recently faced with the same kind of political crisis. We have Mali and the entire region is in conflagration. We have the same kind of issues they were dealing with in arm Senegal, not to love in a few weeks ago, where masses of young people who are out on the street the money from an
accountab leadership and effective participation. So what these kinds of situations when you have regular citizens men and women who's who are living on trading foods and vegetables that you know, the tutality of which is not more than five dollars living that and then standing on queues for the rest of the day and trying to see if the battle boss can serve as an instrument to make their voices.
Had to deny that opportunity, then you open up the space for the kinds of possibilities people might think of other ways to actualize their own citizenship. And we most remember the fact that Sralian not too long ago, that entire region librarian.
So I don't we're in conflict.
We entered into civil war for ten years because we had a dictatorial one party state that was there from nineteen from nineteen seventies right up to the nineteen nineties. By nineteen ninety one, we had a conflict that ended in two thousand and one. And we're hoping that we cannot have the same groups of organizations that led the country to war programming the country and to add the part way to more conflict and the possibility of crisis.
So that's what we've been warning against.
Personally, I have been affected by that situation because I am currently unable to go back home for doing nothing other than just highlighting and advocating that governments must be transparent with the you know, leaders should be held accountable to the basic principles of governance and transparency, and we cannot have a handle full of people less than one percent of the population holding onto the state and using it as a basis of personal aggrandizement instead of providing
basic economic and social services for the rest of the population. As we speak now, major parts of Servilian lacky lift systm supply more than ninety percent of the country. Of all the country's population do not have the basic conditions of human existence absence of adequate housing facilities.
Healthcare is a problem, education is a challenge.
You know, some of the worst statistics when it comes to infant and maternal mortality rates. These conditions are the result of corruption of mismanagement that has been ongoing with
impunity by the politicians of the two dominant factions. And we were hoping that at this time the elections, these elections that just got rigged openly in front of the whole world, would have empowered citizens with the belief and the fit that at least the ballot box can answer to their own problems, can serve as a check to these kinds of politics of a bandit tree that we
have experienced for the last sixty years. But unfortunately, while these politicians are looting public funds, they openly ganged up to loot the votes of citizens people. You know, they just announced results without properly counting the votes. It cannot get worse than that.
Well, churn Obi, thank you so much for your reporting and thanks for joining us on our show Turno as an editor of Africanist Press, Thanks again for joining us, and then I'll do it for us today.
Thanks everybody for watching Counterpoints.
Absolutely, Ryan, it was great to have you back.
Good to be back and we'll see you next week
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