Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio, Robert I.
She had mentioned I have a friend in Ukraine named Nadya Vesina. She has popped on a couple of times. And she was, you know, kind of a mid level maybe a higher media star in Ukraine, but gotten kind of like MTV, you know. She was kind of a fun person who she'd won beauty pageants, and she was a gymnast and spent a lot of time in Chicago. Her English was pretty good, and so she would send me these photos and she was doing what you were doing about following up and going to the front lines
and bringing supplies. And at one point I was given I was speaking on a board or something like that, and they wanted to give me five hundred dollars. I said, I don't need it, so give it to her, and I'd signed it over to her, and and that little bit went a long way to buy bandages and other stuff. But I remember the I was trying to see the last photo she sent me, which was I mean, she looked like Rick moranis and spaceballs with this helmet, just
the helmet on her. But that was my impression was like everybody was pitching in and people that had no business doing that, you know. And as soon as the bombs dropped in Kiev and part of the building next to her got hit, she was out there taking video and sending it to me the next day. And it's very interesting. So, I what's that like is there? Is it the same thing that in your experience for the countries you've been in in the Middle East.
No, Well, first of all, Ukraine is a massively huge place, right right when you see the bombs exploding in the artillery. Yes, they happened in certain places, but it's a very very large country and life goes on. You know, if you go to the main cities, the restaurants are open, you can have a coffee, hotels are open. So Ukrainians don't pretend like it's the end of the world. They're getting on with their lives. In Middle East is a different story.
And you know, when we say Middle East, we have a it's been twenty years doing history stories about why this guy doesn't like that guy who took over this place and etc. Etc. But what's critical about the Middle East is the connection to the US. We have two things about the current conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is
that it affects the global market. You know, you have the Arab nations, which many of them are petro dictatorships, pushing back and they're going to jack up fuel prices, you know, if they don't see things happening their way. We have a huge group of people in the States that are split. You know, typically older Republicans support Israel and younger so the left wing Democrats support Gaza. And you have this dynamics that's got nothing to do with
what's happening in the States. It's happening, you know, thousands of miles away. So that's what makes the Middle East of interesting, is that it echoes around the world.
But tell me, like then, to your point about the land mass, these are fairly compacted countries. They're not. I mean, Ukraine is mostly like right, wheat fields and farms and whatever. But this is this is different and so everybody's kind of on top of each other and that that rarely works out.
Well well, okay, so so Ukraine doesn't do a lot of lobbying, you know, when something happens. Israel has a very sophisticated pr arm that immediately launches things into social media and then gods that will launch thousands of pictures of dead children and explosions and screaming people. So we see it in our living rooms, we see it on our phones. It's when you look at Ukraine looks a little bit more professionally. You see people, and you know,
tanks and plans and helicopters or whatever. Doesn't have the same sense of whole that the war in the Middle East does. So it's a lot more impactful emotionally, and also because it's cyclicult, it's also very depressing, you know, because we kind of know that it will calm down and happen again, calm down, happen again, as it has for many years. So it traumatic traumatized.
This one seemed spontaneous, or I mean, it wasn't. There doesn't seem to be a cause that I can find a trigger for why Hamash did that, when they did it, where they did it, and to the degree that they did it. You know, I think we're used to them throwing missiles at each other or whatever, but this wasn't that.
Well let me let me tell you them. First of all, you got to go to gods and understand, this is a terrible place to live in. I mean it's not someplace you would choose to be in. Everything's compress, everything is you can't get out. I mean, it's a terrible place to live. Secondly, I told you about the cyclical nature of this. When they had the Abraham Accords, they literally ignored the Palestinians. You know, that was supposed to be a peace deal. It didn't shape Palestine or New
Country or anything. Nothing happened. And you know, it doesn't matter who you blame. But the point is that we've had a series of peace deals and then failures and then flareups. So it's expected. I mean, if you put people under pressure for that long and you have that many young people that are unemployed, and you have people stirring them up with rhetoric, they're going to do something.
The thing that was shocking was the intelligence failure and the number of casualties caused by Hamas, who then broke out into the southern part of Israel. And I think Israel so traumatized by that.
Yeah, I think I keep coming back to that rock concert, that peace concert, sort of a little many Woodstockers on or a burning man who ray. Yeah, but that raid on that group, that there was a brutality to that. That yeah, but that that seemed pretty and then all of the people and the families, and I know that that goes both ways, but there was something about it was very personal. It seemed like on the let's.
Zoom back, because nine to eleven was about as brutal as you can get. You know, the water of three thousand people, right, and to be very cold and clinical. If someone is killed by having their head cut off, or shrapnel cuts their head off when the bomb is dropped on them, you know, is that the same? In
other words, this terrorism created at different levels. And all I can see is that we get dragged into these things as having to choose a side or to And I can say, you can condemn both sides, you can support both sides, you can agore both sides, because what Hamas did was a deliberate terrorist attack to get attention and to create that same cycle of violence and then peace talks and then money flows and they steal the money and then they settle down, and then they stir
it up again. And if you look at your history, it's just like this constant cycle of violence and negotiation and violence, et cetera, et cetera. It's a terrible situation. It's not going to end anytime.
So as you look at the map, as you know, going back to dangerous places, what's the next big place that you're worried about having traveled.
I'm worried about the UAE, which is Abu Dhabi, a very small, little oil rich country, has a very methodical plan of slicing up African countries. And you know, they they started with Yema and they went on to Libya. They're operational in Sudan by supporting the you used to call them the janjued in the south, splitting that kind and have They're active in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and essentially they're trying to create chaotic situations that favor their sort of
peace and stability. And it even reaches out to this country. You know, we are a very divided nation and we must ask ourselves why are we so eager to argue with somebody who doesn't believe in what we believe in? And this is the trend we have to watch out for, is the deliberate manipulation of ideas, opinions, you know, sort of into right or wrong, left or right, and this is something that is fairly new, you know, what happened in the last fifteen twenty years, and also social media
has exacerbated it. We are being manipulated to be weaker, to be divisive, as opposed to being unified. And this is the danger that I see, and this is you know, I'm working on a new edition of Dangerous Places. And I don't think people realize how often during the day they're assaulted by ideas, images, things designed specifically to manipulate them.
It's very interesting because I don't I wouldn't have I wouldn't have thought of the UAE of all the places you would have mentioned, because they've got it, you know, pretty good. I mean, the people that live in the UAE live very well.
I know.
There's a citizenship thing where you have to have a job in the Emirates in order to be able to to stay and as soon as you don't, you got to go and all that. You know, there's there's citizenship has obviously is done in tears and all of that. But at the same time, why why are they rocking the boat? What's in it for them?
Let's be fair, everybody does this you know, we do it, Russia does it, China does it. Everybody jumps in there and tries to manipulate people. But this particular organization, which you know, it's a family, the bunny Fatima and six brothers one die, is terrified. Remember Air of Spring, that these were one demonstration away from being kicked out of their own country. So a lot of these including out Arabia, has sort of said, okay, we have to be proactive.
We have to go get people that don't like dictatorships. And they call it the Muslim Brotherhood, which is essentially politicized Islam. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't believe that one family should woo a nation, just like we didn't think that city station royalty should run countries. And vari Spring scared the hell out of these people, so they came up with this, you know, a plan to basically destabilize and control potential threats.
But so this is all about then going on offense is a good defense.
Yeah, well, here's something for you. Putin spends almost five hundred million dollars a day to prosecute the war against Ukraine. If you could elect someone that would simply stop funding Ukraine, work to you, right exactly, And it's on the dollar. Right if if someone is angry at Saudi Arabia because of their human rights violations and their sort of archaic view of things, what is the cost to change the government in this country? Or you're to find someone who said, oh,
that's okay with me. You know, we're friends now. So there's a huge danger in this soft corrosive invasion into countries that are sort of you know, moralistic and high and mighty by groups that have a lot more money and a lot more time on their hands to degrade what we call the you know, the the liberal democracy theory that we created after World.
War Two, right, you know, uh, when you're traveling in these countries. And by the way, I really like your website photo. A lot of people they make they make their own website and they picked the weirdest photos of themselves, like but you like you like you look like the guy who we'd be making a film. Who are the soldiers who were behind you on the boat?
Top of the fold on your webs you get up to We were tipped off that there's going to be an attack by reak Mshar who was the vice president hiding in the bush and we had to get up the river to get to this battle. And they you know, they hand soldiers with you because people will rob you or whatever. But it's really just an employment scheme, right, So I say, yeah, come on, let's all get some if you watch savingselves to them, you know, the whole
I could explain the whole story there. But the funny thing is is that I rarely take pictures of myself, you know, so that that was taken by Tim Preshett, who was the photographer had with me. But some of them are rather incongruous because why is this guy in the boat and you know, who are these people, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I have a collection of a few crazy photos.
But that's not crazy that semiotically as we would say, that's a great photo. It tells a story. I don't I don't know what the story is about. What's going on behind you?
What's that that somebody's going to get into trouble?
Yeah, that's what it looks like. But the funny thing, I mean, it's perfect. You know, you've got your your eye line as a tron to the center, which actually draws you right to your mustache. And then you go, you go, and you look at the faces of the guys behind you, and they're perfect, like they were posing for this, and you look pensive and you look like a guy who's who's on a mission. And that's kind of the whole story. Then I think of your of your website.
Well, that that's the cruel at fiction of resting bitch face.
You know, I don't know, I don't know.
You know that the premise was I was bringing back a child's soldier to fix South Sudan. And what he didn't tell me is that reactor sure of the warlord that we were hunting down to the bush and actually killed his father. Oh no, And it was a very for him. It was a very traumatic experience to see all these people chopped up and burned and raped with spears. And I was just but he he was just happy to get back to managing a costco.
Yeah, Robert, how how have you survived? Why are you still here?
So I'm either like mister magoo you know you ever watched the old mister McGoo, right, or people in my theory is that people want to get me to where I'm going, and they want to get me back alive so I can tell the story. And I have been in some horrendous situations, you know. I've been kidnapped and marched at gunpoint to the Jungles of Columbia. I've been you know, shape Michelle's and whatever plane crashes. I truly believe that if you develop a relationship with people, they'll
do their best to get you somewhere. They'll say don't go there, or go there. You know. For example, I was hounding a mola who's a friend of Molla Omar's and a friend of and we're in the coast the border area of Afghanistan, and I kept bugging him that I wanted to interview this guy who had shelled his convoy and tried to kill him. And he said, okay, I'll set it up. So he set it up, and then at the last minute he calls me, I can't
do it. I can't do it. So he paid me money so we can kidnap you because his son was arrested the day before and he wants to trade yous. I can't do it. So just stuff like that, you know. Yeah, again, you know, I don't know why I'm alive, but I never imagined I would live past, you know, thirty five or forty. But here right am.
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot com for more