Pod Save the World - Assault on the press and democracy in the Philippines

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

An attack on press freedom in the Philippines and what it could mean for the future of their democracy. The two year anniversary of the US-North Korea Singapore summit. Right-wing zealots take over the Voice of America. Fighting between China and India and updates out of Russia. The US threatens to sanction the International Criminal Court (huh?), how right-wing news outlets are being used by foreign intelligence, and Bob Gates and John Bolton sell books. Then Ben talks to Rokhaya Diallo, a French journalist and activist, about the protests against systemic racism and police brutality in France and what's next for President Emmanuel Macron. 

Welcome back to Pot Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, I had a one-up you today. I'm wearing my Wisconsin Adopt-A-State shirt. I can't really hold it up without also getting away from the mic. So I chose that over the Scorpions T-shirt. Yeah. But Mike O'Neill bought me after having a few cocktails and going on eBay, but I just wanted to let you know. The Scorpion's T-shirt's killer, but I got to get my Adopt-Estate merch. I'm on it. Well, you know, listen, Michigan is certainly, it's a good second choice. But if you someone truly committed, please come to Wisconsin. We have a great show today, Ben. I'm really excited about this one because we're going to get to talk about some things that we don't always raise on

this show, but are personally, I think, very important to you and I. And that starts with an attack on press freedom in the Philippines and what it could mean for the future of democracy and what it means on the ongoing road we're seeing in a lot of places to autocracy and authoritarianism, but something you've written about a lot. I'm excited to dig into that. We'll pause and reflect on the two-year anniversary of the Singapore summit between the U.S. and North Korea and all the problems that were solved by that momentous occasion. We'll talk about the Voice of America, some updates out of Russia and China that could have huge implications, the international criminal court, how U.S. news outlets are being used by foreign intelligence services potentially. And then just two guys

trying to hawks and books, Bob Gates and John Bolton back on the scene, so we'll check in with them. And then, Ben, you did the interview today. You want to tell a listener. or what they get to hear? Yeah, it's really fascinating. We had Rekiah Diallo, who's been on before once, a French activist, writer, very outspoken on racial issues.

She's black herself. And we talk about the recent protests in France and how they're rooted, not just in solidarity with what's going on here, but focused on France's own racial issues, its own instances of police violence, and where that energy on the left in France might be going.

She had a lot of interesting things to say. So people should definitely stick around. for that. Yeah, she is awesome. She's really smart, but also the accent is like the greatest thing I've ever heard. So stick around for that reason alone. Before we get to the news, Ben, I just want to plug for everybody listening, our new podcast on Holier Than Thou. It is an awesome show. It's an award-winning journalist and editor named Philip Picardy, and he is on a quest to understand his relationship with faith and spirituality. And the first two episodes are out. I listen to them both this morning. it is like it's like a kind, thoughtful, like heartwarming, like look at like love and death in the time of COVID

and how, you know, our relationship with faith can get us through these times or not. It's an incredibly interesting angle into the subject. I highly recommend it. So check out unholyer than thou, wherever you get your podcasts. And now let's go to the news. Ben, you want to start in the Philippines? Let's do it. So this is a very important story, I think, about the future of democracy itself.

in the Philippines. On Monday, a Filipino journalist named Maria Ressa and another former writer for her news site, which is called Rappler, were found guilty of libel. This verdict could get them up to six years in jail, and it is widely seen as a crushing blow for press freedom in the Philippines. The most important thing to know about the charges themselves is that they are just bogus. They're totally absurd. The article that was deemed libelists by the courts is an eight-year-old report about a Supreme Court justice who has seen riding in a car with a businessman with alleged links to criminal activity. This businessman brought the suit forward. He's alleged to have ties with the government.

It might have been rewarded for doing so. And then the law used to prosecute them is called the cyber libel law. It came into force four months after the article in question had been published. So to get around the space-time continuum, these prosecutors, had to say, okay, well, Rappler fixed a typo in the story, you know, years after it had initially been published, which meant that it was actually being continuously republished, right? So that restarted the statute of limitation. So if that sounds confusing, it's because the charges are absurd.

And here's the context, though, that makes it all make sense, which is that Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, he hates Rappler, he hates this news outlet because they have questioned his anti-drug policies. and he has waged a sustained war on the press in democracy during his tenure. Rappler is one of the only sites brave enough to publicly criticize Duterte in return. There have been about a dozen court cases filed against them in 2018 alone by various entities linked to the state. So it's blatant harassment, it's intimidation, it can just bleed them dry in terms of legal fees

and things. Maria Ressa is an experience, accomplished journalists. She worked at CNN for decades. She broke major stories after 9-11. This is not about her. It's about an attack on journalism itself. in the Philippines. Last month, the largest broadcaster in the Philippines was forced off the air for criticizing Duterte. So, Ben, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the death of

the free press in the Philippines could lead to the end of democracy itself there. And it doesn't help that the U.S. is historically taking the lead in defending these values and standing up in these situations, but we are now absent. It took the State Department 48 hours to issue a one-sentence statement expressing concern about the charges. So let's just start there. How worried are you been about these charges? And do you have any hope that, you know, the UK, Australia, maybe Canada can fill the leadership void left by the U.S. and push back maybe? Yeah, I'm very worried about this. You know, Duterte has been engaged in other undemocratic behaviors, extraditional killings come to mind. But, you know, I think the reason this is so glaring, right,

is, you know, the more extreme version of attacks in the press, obviously where the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi But Maria Ressa is a really high-profile journalist, right? So, and this is not to minimize what happens to bloggers and, you know, more intrepid journalists, but he's making an example of somebody precisely because she's high-profile. This is someone who was included in Times Person of the Year. Yeah. This is someone, as you mentioned, who worked for CNN for many, many years, has a big international profile. And everybody knows that the real reason she's being prosecuted is because she's a critic of Duterte.

And so the reason that matters is he's making an example out of someone with a lot of international support, a lot of high profile advocates to send a message that if she can be targeted, then anybody can. So that's why this is really about the death of the free press. And what's so frustrating is the U.S. has a lot of influence in the Philippines. We have a very deep and close military relationship. U.S. troops have access to bases in the Philippines. we provide them with a lot of security support and assistance. And frankly, if Donald Trump or the American president really were to prioritize this kind of case in their relationship with the Philippines, I have to think that she would not be in prison.

You know, there's a kind of, we're going to look the other way because this is one of our, you know, right-wing nationalist guys that's in our club. And that's obvious when you have 48 hours to come out with a one-sentence statement. I do hope that the rest of the world does make noise and this is raised at the United Nations because, yeah, if Duterte is allowed to, on top of all his aggressive actions and extraditional killings, if he's allowed to essentially send a message to every journalist in the Philippines that if you criticize me, you could end up getting arbitrarily thrown in prison, that really is the collapse of one of the principal forms of accountability in a democracy.

And unfortunately, that's where this is headed. I think it's incumbent on all of us to continue to raise this case and awareness around it, because as long as she's in prison, this is a country that is dramatically backslotting in terms of its democracy. And that's a shame, given how many Filipinos for so many years sacrificed and struggled so that they could not just be free from U.S. influence, but have a democracy in these post-Colval years. Yeah. So let's also talk about one other element, which is Facebook's role in a Duterte's rise and, you know, his ability to attack the press. So Duterte ran for president and won in

2016. And as they did in the U.S., Facebook sent staffers to the Philippines for like a week to train campaign staff on how to use the platform. Pretty standard stuff. But Duterte's team, you know, was good at it. And they made Facebook the centerpiece of their strategy. And so soon after there was a proliferation of like fake pages, threats and fake news. And like stuff like, you know, the Pope endorsed Duterte, right, was the thing that was going around, was seen by millions of people, was not true. A Facebook report later called Duterte, the quote, undisputed king of Facebook conversations. So they actually credited him for the use. Blueberg News reported that, you know, his partnership with Facebook deepened after he was elected, even as he started to freeze out the

media. And I think what folks have to understand is that Facebook usage in the Philippines is not like the U.S. It's not like a thing you periodically check when you're bored like you might with Twitter or like going to ESPN.com or whatever. In the Philippines, like if you're on your phone, you go to a normal website. It's just going to eat up all your mobile data, but subsidies make using Facebook on your phone basically free. So it becomes the only access point to the internet for a lot of people. So like almost literally everyone is on it. Many get all their news there. And Duterte has weaponized Facebook to punish his opponents. So we talked about Rappler, the news site, but he's also used it to push around like really vile stuff about political opponents. He sent around fake pornography of someone who was trying to investigate

him. He later threw that woman in jail. A 2018 BuzzFeed report described his approach as quote, a never-ending meme-driven propaganda campaign. BuzzFeed did a great long report on this whole issue. And it gives Duterte enormous power to shape public opinion and go after opponents, but he's also systematically dismantling the press, which could be the check on him. And because this content is so inflammatory, it gets shared more and like the algorithm pushes it around. So, you know, look, I have friends who work at Facebook, you do too. They're all good people. They have progressive values, like good intentions. But there's just no way, like when you have a company of that size, that you can have a handle on how the service is growing around the world or the cultural impact

from that growth. And that just again to me makes this sort of like laissez-faire. We take no editorial stance on facts approach so risky because people can and will weaponize any tool they are given we're human beings and like suggesting otherwise is just naive. And it's just like we're seeing this happen over and over again in Burma, in the Philippines, in the U.S. And there's no obvious fix. But the damage is like undeniable and before our eyes. Yeah. I think people have to understand understand that in Southeast Asia, like there's almost nowhere that Facebook is bigger. If you go to Indonesia, if you go to the Philippines, you mentioned Myanmar. Facebook is like your entire experience of the internet and social networks in these countries. People live on Facebook in these countries.

And I'd say, Tommy, I've lost patience. You know, they know this. You know, a few, you know, five years ago, three years ago, maybe these were new problems that they were dealing with. But the reality is that in each of these countries, the worst kinds of actors have weaponized Facebook to corrode, if not destroy democracy, to target marginalized peoples and populations. Facebook knows this now. They've known it for years. They give so little a shit about these places that they don't even really have employees there. They parachute in and out, right? Number one, how much money is enough for Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, if he just pulled out of Philippines because of the way in which his platform is being used to brutalize people and kill democracy, would it really destroy Facebook's

model to not have that revenue? Secondly, there is a fix to this, like regulate this algorithm, pull down hate speech. They say that they're for freedom of speech. That is complete and utter bullshit. This is not freedom of speech. Like the capacity. of state-sponsored disinformation to stir up hatred and punish your political opponents has nothing to do with free speech. It's a joke. They're hiding behind this language to justify their profiteering at the expense of these people and their democracies. Facebook should be liable for the content on their platform if they're not going to give a shit about what it's doing to people and to societies. And their algorithm makes these memes travel faster and farther. Because

They prioritize sensationalist information that's going to get clicks. That's what travels, right? And so we talk about this a lot because it really, really matters. It's frankly as important, if not more important, to Duterte's consolidation of political control in the Philippines as Donald Trump's embrace. I mean, they're the junior partner for authoritarianism around the world. And yes, there's some good people who work there, but you know what? At a certain point, you've got to stand up, you know.

And it's kind of getting increasingly awkward and uncomfortable that there's a a probably pretty progressive workforce working for a company that is literally fueling the antithesis of progressive values all over the world. Yeah, it's a huge problem. Last question in this area. You have this fantastic piece in the Atlantic this week about what we can learn from the example of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban about what a second Trump term might look like for our democracy, might do to our democracy. Where do you think the Philippines is on the U.S. hungry democracy to autocracy continuum. And like, what are the pit stops on that road that you think we should watch out for? I imagine one of them is curtailing freedom of the press like we've

been talking about. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that part of the point I want to make in the piece is that when people think about things like autocracy and the end of democracy, you know, they think about, you know, we got that going. We got that going. Yeah, well, unfortunately, we were proven there. But like, it happens quieter, right? So what Orban does. And we think about did when he took power is he just rewired the whole Hungarian system. He redistricted all the parliamentary districts to ensure that even though he gets less than 50% of the vote, he has like a two-thirds majority in the parliament. He messed with the voting franchise to give the right to vote to Hungarians outside the country because they would vote for him because he appeals to this kind

of blood and surreal nationalism. Then he took aim at the media. What he did that was very clever is he got some right-wing allies that he was enriching through basically corruption to buy up a lot of Hungarian media and either close it down or turn it into Victor Orban-friendly outlets. And then he used licensing and harassment to essentially intimidate independent journalists. He packed the courts to change the judiciary to support his agenda and on and on, and corruption was at the core of this, again, enriching cronies who then finance essentially his politics. Part of what I want to say is that the U.S. is further down this spectrum than we like to acknowledge. Republicans have been running the Victor Orban playbook for a decade, right, in the way in which they've redistricted to give themselves a leg up.

They've messed with voting laws to make it harder for some people to vote and easier for other people to vote. They've packed the courts to try to have right-wing judges who will uphold their vision. They've enriched political cronies who finance their politics. You know, I think the Philippines, it's interesting. Duterte is operating in more of like the brute force model where he's literally just shooting people and killing people. But he's also focused on the same institutions. The press, the rule of law, and who is in control of those things are essential to whether there are any checks on a dictatorial leader.

And so what I see in Duterte, as with Orban, as with Trump, is this focus on how can I intimidate silence the press while creating a propaganda machine for myself? Facebook is a key part of that in all these countries. And how can I make sure that the rule of law is utilized to punish my political opponents rather than to be kind of a neutral arbiter of justice. And so Duterte is very much in this club of people that we spend a bunch of time talking about. And he's using some of the same tactics. He just kind of layers on top of it this kind of strong man, aggressive use of violence. Yeah, for sure. It's a great piece. Everyone should read it. And Applebaum had a similar piece.

That was fantastic. That's worth reading too. Let's start with the Voice of America for a minute, Ben, because the voice of America just got a little dumber. Two veteran journalists leading the organization quit on Monday as a right-wing filmmaker named Michael Pack was confirmed to run it. Pack is close buddies with Steve Bannon and is not a great pick to lead an organization that gets government money, but it's supposed to be editorially independent from the White House. Trump has been very angry at VOA or Voice of America. We call it VOA lately. The other day he said, quote, if you hear what's coming out of the voice of America, it's disgusting. The things they say are disgusting toward our

country and Michael Pack would get in and do a great job. The idiots of the White House social media team accused VOA of advancing Chinese propaganda, which was very confusing. There are also reports that former White House aid and current fish oil pain pill spokesman Seb Gorka might get a senior job over at VOA, so that's wonderful. Can you get folks a quick primer? Just like what is Voice of America? What does it do? And what's your level of concern about this wholly politicized leadership change? So this is actually really important. In my job, at the White House, I actually had the White House responsibility for liaisoning with the Broadcasting Board of Governors, it was called at the time. And just so people understand,

this encompasses Voice of America, which reports as a news organization around the world, and what you may remember, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, a lot of international broadcasting. Importantly, in normal administrations, there's a firewall in terms of the editorial content of these institutions. The White House cannot tell them what to report. and what not to report. The most we can do is we can set priorities. So, for instance, in the late Obama years, we made some efforts to ramp up kind of Russian language broadcasting because the Russians were using so much disinformation. So I could say to that, hey, you know, you guys might want to think about doing more Russian language stuff. But I don't tell them what to run or anything.

And that's what they do. Tommy, I remember that at the very end of the administration, I haven't said this publicly because I didn't want to tip anything off. But like, I was meeting with some of the leaders of those institutions at the time. And one of them said to me, I hope Steve Bannon doesn't figure out that there's like a billion dollar U.S. broadcasting apparatus. And it seems like it took them a few years to figure it out. But there is. It's almost a billion dollar media organization or enterprise that encompasses all the different U.S. international broadcasting. And if this is basically turned into one American news, like Donald Trump is literally, you talk about state media being Foxy news. Well, there actually is state media. It's just been set up by Congress to have a

firewall between the White House and what they report on. There are a lot of reasons why that's important. I mean, I think just constitutionally, we don't like the idea of kind of hacks dictating what's reported on by taxpayer-funded media. Also, though, really importantly, Tommy, in places like the Philippines, in places like Myanmar, Voice of America is a very important resource in Southeast Asia. it's a place that it's basically like a wire service where you can get straight independent news. And if you talk to people in some countries where there is a lot of state media and a lot of hypercharged kind of partisan media, it's a neutral source of news. And in the Cold War, it was a huge asset that people behind the Iron Curtain could just hear

it straight from some of these platforms. If Trump is turning these into propaganda machines for himself, that's lost to all these people. And it compounds what we were just talking about with Duterte. Yeah, for sure. You know, if Seb Gorka's going to get in there, you can only imagine what kind of things were going to be. They'll probably, you know, promoting Duterte. Yes.

The kinds of media outlets that were set up to prevent that from happening. I hope Congress reigns this in because this basically blows right through the firewall that's supposed to exist in editorial content. But Trump doesn't care about those firewalls. Yeah. Just a quick aside on terrible people getting jobs because I do think, you know, sometimes we lose the threat on these things as so much else is going on. She wanted to point out the Trump's pick for the number three job at the Pentagon. It's a retired army general named Anthony Tata.

It has been reported that he called Obama a terrorist leader. He said he did more to harm the U.S. and help Islamic countries than any president in history. He spread the conspiracy theory that Obama is Muslim and that he wanted to help Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran crush Israel. Interesting. This is all thanks to the K-File investigative team at CNN. This guy also had really vile things to say about African-American lawmakers and media figures. He accused our friend and former CIA director John Brennan of treason and sedition and told him to pick his poison. Ben, this is a quote from a tweet,

firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as a prison bitch or just suck your pistol, end quote. Actually tweeted that. So look, I'm sure these kinds of comments are why Trump picked this asshole. But like it's unhinged, it's sick, it's racist, it's Islamophobic, it's conspiracy theory, insanity. And this guy will soon be leading the defense department or the number three job. And it's like, I just, I don't, I'll never get over how mad I am at Senate Republicans for routinely

confirming people like this to leadership positions that they have no business having. End of speech. Yeah. I mean, sounds like a really nice guy, first of all. I think, again, people should understand this is the most important policy job at the Defense Department, right? So like when we would have meetings at the situation room, you know, because you have the secretary defense and then the deputy secretary, they're not just responsible for like our

policies. they're also responsible for the health of the military force and defense budgeting and acquisitions, which is like, you know, several hundred billion dollar enterprise. So when there were meetings at the White House about what's our policy towards ex-Middle Eastern country or what's our policy towards China, like this person is the voice of the defense, this is an incredibly important job. And this is an out-and-out, complete, unhinged extremist in this position, unimaginable. You know, I mean, like if we, if any normal administration to point a guy, like this, it'd be a huge, huge story. I mean, I know you say that time and again, but what it tells

me also, Tommy, is that not only Senate Republicans routinely roll over for extremists like this and cannot be counted on as a check, right, which is why we're talking about Trump as in the same company's Orban, because if the Senate Republicans checked him, he couldn't do these things, but also, like, if he's reelected, if this is where we've gotten by year four, like, where the hell are we going to be in year five, six, seven, eight? Every year that goes by, the people these jobs get crazier and crazier and crazier. You know, three years ago, you probably couldn't have believed that a guy like this would be in this job.

But, you know, by year seven, we could have like just, you know, what are they called the bungalow boys? I always forget. Yeah, we have bugaboo or crazy racist, right-wing militia psychos. We have like bugaboo guys running the Pentagon in year seven. I mean, this is scary stuff. So you mentioned OAN or One American News Network. It is a truly insane fringe right-wing conspiracy website.

Trump occasionally tweets about them when he feels like Fox News is being too mean to him. According to a report the other day in the Atlantic, there are concerns within the Biden campaign that OAN is basically being used as a carve-out for Russian intelligence info operations. And here's why. So there's a woman named Chanel Ryan or Rione. She's like OAN's Looney Tunes White House reporter. She went to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani as part of his like smear. campaign about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. She now claims to have recordings of then VP Biden's

meetings with former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Presumably, she will say that these recordings prove these now completely discredited allegations that Biden tried to help his son do business in Ukraine. The details even matter less in the process, because what we're seeing is this coordination. It's Putin-aline lawmakers in Ukraine releasing like really banal audio from some Biden meeting. It makes you think, oh, these tapes exist. And then you see Sputnik, which is the Russian propaganda channel, doing pieces about these tapes and saying, oh, this guy did them, this person created them not Russian intelligence in an effort to make them seem credible. And then OAN sweeps in. And this reporter, in quotes, Giddley, you know, promotes these debunked narratives and acts like his journalism.

When at best, she is just regurgitating like right-wing apo from Rudy Giuliani's like drunken fever dreams. But at worst, it could be manipulated audio. It could be Russian propaganda. It could be God knows what. So Trump has enabled this whole thing by promoting OAN repeatedly. They recently ran a segment saying that that that 75-year-old man who got shoved to the ground by cops in Buffalo, New York, was actually a member of Antifa. And Trump retweeted that. But it also like dovetails with a recent New York Times piece that showed how an account that was likely Russian state spread propaganda pushed around this absurd conspiracy theory on the night of the Iowa caucuses that like exploded into our press. So, Ben, I guess I raised this because forever we've been talking about how Russia is likely

to interfere again in the 2020 campaign, right? It's like almost, it's either happening or undoubtedly going to happen. But we don't know how exactly. And I'm not sure what the, you know, antibody is when it comes to dealing with an entity like OAN is the carve out. I'm just curious, like, what you think the Biden campaign or people like us should be doing to prepare or combat this kind of stuff. Well, you know, in 2015, 2016, during the war in Ukraine, what became apparent, right, is that the Russians who had tremendous influence and reach in Ukraine for so many years, they have deep intel reach in Ukraine.

And periodically, like an intercepted conversation, phone call or something, would make its way in the public domain. And the way in which the Russians would do it back then is this would pop up on like a YouTube channel, right? And so suddenly there'd be like some intercepted conversation, say, between U.S. diplomats on a YouTube channel. And then Sputnik or R.T. would report on this thing that appeared on YouTube channel, which obviously is Russian intelligence. First of all, it's kind of extraordinary that in 2020, four years later, they don't need to post on some of the screen. Cut out the middleman. That's what this tells me. It's like the middleman's out.

And Russian intelligence can just give this to American network. that is promoted by the president of the United States regularly on Twitter and is granted questions at White House press briefings all the time, right? So the first thing is that just how insane that is. The second thing is it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to think that Trump has been going out of his way to pump up OAN the last few months. It's conspicuous. Like he'll go on Twitter and be like, Fox News, getting, you know, losing its game,

has too many Dems on, watch OAS. I mean, he's literally like promoting this news network. I would theorize, and I would imagine the Biden people are thinking, too, and I have not talking about this, but I would theorize that Trump is trying to legitimize OAN, knowing that in the coming months it is going to be the repository of whatever dumps Russia or whomever foreign government wants to make into our election. So you got Trump, you know, shining a spotlight on OAN, telling all of his people. essentially watch this space. It's not unlike Roger Stone tweeting in 2016, like watch

WikiLeaks. Like, that's what's happening here. And OAN is, if you see something on OAN, assume that that's coming from Russian intelligence. How else does some former Sputnik reporter who traveled around Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani end up getting recorded tapes of the vice president of the United States? Right. That can, that's Russian intelligence. That is a state sponsored activity. And so that's the problem in terms of what we could do about it. I mean, not much other than, I think, condition people. Like, if you see it on OAN, like default is this is Russian disinformation utilizing intelligence resources.

Again, in a normal functioning democracy, both political parties would be up in arms about this. There'd be congressional hearings, hauling OAN executives and, you know, asking them what the hell is going on here. Frankly, the U.S. intelligence community would be trying to figure out whether literally a propaganda network in the United States is a tool of the Russian government, because that's what we're getting at. In the absence of our political leadership doing that, I think the rest of us just have to be

attuned to this stuff and not follow the breadcrumbs of Russian disinformation on behalf of Donald Trump. And again, it raises questions about why is Trump going out of his way to promote this? How much does he know about what OAN is going to be broadcasting between now and the election? Yeah, I think for listeners, it's just worth remembering that this reporter we're talking about Chanel Ryan previously tweeted that the coronavirus was created in a lab in North Carolina, citing a source that ended up just being some random dude who tweeted at her. So that's the level of journalism we're talking about here. Okay, bigger news. So last week was the two-year anniversary of the Singapore summit, the made-for-TV meeting between President Trump and North Korean dictator

Kim Jong-un. And that meeting itself was like unquestionably historic, but we just want to check in on where we are in terms of the nuclear risk in the diplomacy between our two countries since, you know, that's what was supposed to be the whole point. And so after that meeting, remember that Trump tweeted there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. According to a New York Times report last week, experts in and outside the government believe that North Korea has stockpiled enough material for 20 additional nuclear weapons since just that meeting. So that's on top of the dozens of nukes they already have. And while Kim hasn't tested a nuclear weapon or an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the U.S. since that summit, he has continued to launch short-reach

missiles and developed new missile technology. They also noted in the Timespeas that these friendly letters that used to get sent all the time have stopped. The North Korean foreign minister publicly questioned the value of that leader-to-leader relationship, so that's ominous. And then this is very notable, Ben. The North has cut off communications with South Korea. And then this week, I think today, North Korea literally blew up an office just north of the border, north of the DMZ, that was created in 2018 and designed to facilitate communication between the North and the South. So, do you think the Nobel Peace Prize is, you know, still in the offing? I mean, Kim Jong-un just completely played Donald Trump, you know. And by the way, completely

played 90% of the American news media that rabidly covered that summit like it was the greatest thing in the world. I mean, people need to go back and just consider just how much they were played at that event where because it was, you know what, it was pretty obvious at the time. Like North Korea made no concessions at that summit and were lavished with praise and legitimized by Donald Trump. And the reality is they're in a much stronger position today because they have been legitimized. The attention of the world is not on their nuclear program. It's going to move on because Donald Trump told everybody the problem was solved.

They're building new nuclear weapons. And now what concerns me is the potential for increased provocation towards the South. Because if you're the North Koreans, what do you see? You see that you have a president in Donald Trump who really could care less about South Korea has gone out of his way to say that why do we have all these troops here? We should get these troops out. It costs us too much money. You've got a president of the United States who's no problem with them having all these nuclear weapons.

So relative to South Korea, the North today is not just that they have 20 more nuclear weapons. They must feel much, much stronger relative to South Korea than they did two years ago. because they can kind of get away with it or they want. So what I worry about is increased not just nuclear weapons, but provocations towards the South. You know, potential efforts to bully, intimidate even acts of violence directed against the South, which would be tragic, obviously, for South Korea,

but also a potential flashboard for conflict. Yeah, not good. Okay, a few more things. I'll try to tick through these a little quicker because some of these are just updates. So on Monday, a Russian court convicted an American corporate security executive and former Marine named Paul Whalen of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Whelan says he's innocent of these charges. The U.S.

says the conviction is just like a mockery of justice. Whelan was arrested in Russia after a Russian friend of his handed him a thumb drive that Whelan says he thought contained pictures from like a tourist visit they took together. Russian officials claim it contained classified information. Whelan's lawyer says that information is fake. It was planted there. It's all just a setup. There's speculation that the Russians may have arrested. and convicted Whalen in the hopes of trading him for one or more Russians being held in U.S. prisons. He has appealed directly to Trump for help. You know, Ben, in the past, Trump has taken an interest in these like hostage negotiations. But analysts point out that, you know,

the Russians are pissed that Trump has been pulling out of arms control treaties. He might want people like Victor Bout, who is this notorious arms dealer. So I feel very badly for Whalen here, because it feels like he's about to be a pawn in a scary geopolitical game. Yeah, and doesn't feel like, you know, Trump is getting much. from his, I mean, it's actually a point, like, what is he getting out of this relationship with Putin? You know, like, what positive, well, let me roll back the tape. We know what he's getting out of it. It's what we just talked about with O-A-N. So, like, Trump is getting things out of his relationship with Putin, but America is not getting things out of this relationship

with Putin. And, you know, I do think you're right. My history of these things with the Russians is they grab people and they want to trade. And if that happens, you know, you've got to predict that will probably not make a very good trade. Yeah. This caught my eye too. So according to a report in Bloomberg news, nine current and former Chinese officials say that the Chinese leadership wants Trump to win re-election because they think that the erosion of America's

post-war alliances will outweigh any damage done to them by like the trade war or Trump just sort of generally like bumbling around in the world. It sounds like they were listening to Ponce of the world. A former Chinese trade negotiator said, quote, if Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances, end quote. So, Ben, that is unsettling. It is a potential political gift to the Biden campaign if they decide to boost that article to every human being on Facebook. But it's more unsettling as you read this story that

these Chinese officials believe that the U.S.-China relations are going to get worse and worse and worse no matter who wins. There's this fatalism. And I guess that shouldn't surprise me because, you know, you and I were both reading this interview that Steve Bannon did where he says what's happening with China and Hong Kong right now is the same as the Nazis in 1938 when they rolled into Austria and Czechoslovakia and occupied them. And he said, you know, if we blink, we're headed on a path to war, like a kinetic war. That's a quote, by the way. And so I can't tell if it's just because he's now backed by this fugitive Chinese billionaire who's bankrolling everything he does. Like that's the thing you need to know about Bannon is he's only powerful when he has a billionaire

benefactor and the press interviews him. But that combination together, he's been pretty effective. But the escalation risk here seems enormous. So like two questions. One, who do I have to call to get this Bloomberg story in a super PAC spot, ASAP? And two, like, do you have thoughts on how we can walk people back on both sides and sort of break out of this escalatory mindset that war is inevitable, this Thucydides trap mindset? Well, yeah, I think that the, it's been pretty clear for some time that the Chinese prefer Trump victory. And I've heard this a lot myself from people. who are very close to Chinese leaders travel there frequently,

not just Americans, other people. Always saying the Chinese want Trump to win again because Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them. He's single-handedly discrediting the United States, discrediting the model of democracy and unraveling all the alliances that are used to put pressure on China to meet certain international standards

or to abide by human rights. If you look at Xi Jinping, he's like acting like a bank robber who's been led into the, the vault and is trying to stuff as much money into the bag as he can before the vault is closed. And if he has five more years, he'll be able to make off with a lot more money than, and what do I mean by that? You know, the acceleration of China's belt road initiative around the world. It's flexing of its muscles around Taiwan in the South China Sea and border disputes with India.

This massive quick move to crack down in Hong Kong feels like, let's get this done now while we know that this is not something that the Americans are really going to care about or mobilize the world about. And I could go on and on, but the Chinese are acting like people who recognize that they have this window of time with Trump in office to do whatever they want because the rest of the world no longer looks to the United States for any kind of leadership and the U.S. is discrediting the world order and the system of democracy that the Chinese had some problems with, right? That's plainly obvious to me. I think what do we do to get off of that, you know, even if Biden wins, even if he is rightly kind of tougher on China on a whole bunch of things, putting these disputes that

we have with China back into a framework where we and our allies together, so we'll be much stronger. This is what China understands and Trump doesn't. We will be much stronger if we work with Europe and our Asian allies to confront China on certain things. But if we're doing it in a way that is about trying to set international standards, you know, trying to uphold sets of international norms, And yeah, having your confrontations where you have them on things like Hong Kong, certainly would be important. But there's a way to do this without having the whole relationship spiral into a war. There's a way to disagree about a lot of stuff and even be confrontational about a lot of stuff while still having working relationships on things like climate change where it's in our interest to work together.

And that to me, Tommy, is the important way that you can weather these very intense disagreements that we should have, which is there are always going to be areas where we can work together, you know. So as long as, you know, we can find, okay, like, we can do something on climate change over here, but we're going to duke it out on this stuff over here. This need not lead to another war, which nobody would win. Yeah, I'm cool with looking at history to guide us, but let's chill out with the 1938 Hitler comparisons. Here's another China story that we should really keep an eye on. So depending on which report you read, anywhere from three to 20 Indian soldiers,

are dead after a clash in late May between Indian and Chinese troops on their shared border in the Himalayan mountains. There's not a ton of detail here on what actually happened and the reports are all over the place in part because I think the Indian government just refuses to talk about it. But the Associated Press reported that there was a big brawl, maybe up to 100 people were fighting, like fist fighting and throwing rocks. And that led to casualties, even though no one was actually shooting. I have a feeling that sort of might change over time. Here's the context. there are thousands of soldiers from both India and China stationed like hundreds of yards apart near Tibet. Indian China fought a border war in the region in 1962.

They've been trying to negotiate some sort of resolution and failing since I think the early 90s, according to the AP. That same AP report quotes a former top Indian military officials saying that this incident was the most serious confrontation between the two sides since 1975. So, Ben, I didn't have war between India and China on my like 2020 hellscape fucking bingo car. How worried are you about tensions rising between these two countries? And I'll be honest, this is not something I thought a ton about before this week, but it is also easy to imagine how it could break that. Yeah, well, I think this is a reflection of the personalities of Narendra Modi in India and Jijing Ping and China. I remember in our first meeting with Modi in subsequent meetings, he would raise these border disputes all the time. He was very focused on them.

In Jig Jinping, as I was just saying, whenever it's been a territorial issue, He's been much harder line than his predecessors in pushing the envelope in the South China Sea and clearly in these disputes. You know, I think apparently what happened is that the Indians, this is a line of control. This is a disputed border between India and China. For the Chinese, you know, part of what comes into it is Tibet, obviously, and the Dalai Lama's in India. And for the Indians, you know, they fought and suffered losses and wars passed with China over this. and the Indians were seeking to kind of re-fortify their positions in these mountains and the Chinese are messing with them and these brawls kind of break out.

I think the concern is can they de-escalate? I mean, you know, I don't think either Xi Jinping or Modi have on their card that they want to have a real war about this. But the problem is, like, their own propaganda machines are rooted in nationalism, and they stir people up. And, you know, if you get the population increasingly stirred up, If they're going down some nationalist path, then one leader thinks he has to flex in response to the other. And you can have more and more of this back and forth here. And it's just not a good thing to have

two nations of over a billion people fighting, you know, even a low-grade border war because of the risk of escalation and the other kinds of instability can lead to. And the Indian Ocean, you know, there's a lot of real estate that China and India both are kind of moving around in proximity to each other. And so this is definitely one to watch because Modi and G are not the kinds of people that de-escalation, you know, is the first word you associate with them. No, not at all. Let's hope there's some talking going on behind the scenes. And I think they'll try. I mean, more likely than not, they will de-escalate.

But the risk, the risk is there. Yeah, the risk is there. Yeah, the best part about the story is that it happened in May. So at least it's been a little while. And they were like hitting each other with clubs with nails on it. I mean, just imagine being like a soldier in the Himalien. is too. I can't even get my mind around what that must be like. You're fighting at like 12,000 feet? It sounds crazy. Okay, Ben, last week I saw this tweet, it confused the hell on me. It was a statement

from the White House when they were threatening to put economic or diplomatic sanctions on international criminal court officials and their families if those officials seek to investigate or prosecute U.S. personnel without the consent of the United States. This threat is in response to the ICC potentially investigating U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, alleged U.S. war crimes. The U.S. is not a member of the ICC for exactly this reason. Past presidents have always worried about the court being used to investigate U.S. service members. The Washington Post report on this issue noted that Afghanistan is a member of the ICC,

which could put the U.S. in its jurisdiction, so it's notable here. I guess John Bolton has threatened to do this before back in 2018, but he didn't follow through. So, you know, Ben, like, obviously I want U.S. service members to be protected. I want potential crimes or offenses to be adjudicated in U.S. courts or the military justice system. But this response reminded me of, like, China punishing a country for mentioning the Dalai Lama or Hong Kong or something. Like, how unusual was that threat to you to sanction ICC officials and their families in the way the U.S. would say, you know, an al-Qaeda member? I mean, it's totally insane.

And totally, you know, if we blow up the ICC and there's and everything else that we're burning down around the world, you know, we've, I think, talked on the last podcast about them bringing to justice one of the perpetrators that wanted genocide. This is an incredibly important institution that, again, it's not just about justice for crimes in the past, but is a deterrent for future war crimes. And if the ICC goes away, you know, there's a green light blinking in front of every future war criminal that there's not a mechanism. for international justice to be worried about. The Obama administration kind of took the same, you know, the line that we, we recognize the ICC as an important part of international justice. We even made referrals to the ICC, but we did take this position about wanting to have U.S. service members protected from prosecution, given the fact that the U.S., you kind of

unique among nations, has these troop deployments in many places. I will say this, though, Tommy. It's harder to make that argument. So first of all, the sanctions are insane. We shouldn't do that. It's getting harder to make this argument when Trump is pardoning war criminals in this country. So in other words, if our argument was, hey, look, we, because we have these unique responsibilities among nations that lead to troops and bases around the world and we're in Afghanistan at the invitation of that government and you don't want the ICC just, you know, prosecuting our guys. But we have military justice at home.

and if we get credible reports of, you know, war crimes, we'll deal with it. Well, Trump literally pardoned a Navy SEAL who was convicted of war crimes, essentially. So we're losing the leg to stand on with that argument. It may be time to, you know, reconsider. I mean, I'm more open, frankly, to the idea that we need to more fully embrace the ICC here. I would like to think that we have a military justice system, and I do think that the uniformed military deeply believes in codes of conduct here. But there's got to be justice somewhere. And so, again, I would prefer that being our own system. But Trump is both taken dead aim at the ICC and he's

taken dead aim at real accountability in our military justice system. So it's a double loss in that regard. Yes, that is a very good point. Okay, we're only got two things left. So I'm just going to be real petty for a little bit. And I hope that's okay with you. I was watching, I was watching an interview over the weekend with former Obama and Bush Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. He was talking about his new book. Gates was asked about Trump's use of the military. I was going to meet the press. He was asked about Trump's use of the military and putting down protests and his relationship with the military. And, you know, Chuck threw up a quote from Gates in 2016 where he said Trump was unqualified and unfit to be commander in chief and basically was like, do you stand by it? And Gates's response was,

well, at least Trump hasn't started any new wars. He's robustly funded the military. I supported his outreach to North Korea, and I like that he pushed back on China. And then Chuck basically tried to get him to, you know, make an endorsement one way or the other for Biden or for Trump, and Gates wouldn't do it. And I have to be honest, like, the answer pissed me off. Like, look, he can dislike Joe Biden, and it's clear that he does because they went head to head on a bunch of policies. But let's just talk about his backhanded praise of Trump. Yes, Bush started the war in Iraq, and he started the war in Afghanistan. Iraq in particular was a historic disaster. Fair enough. Obama started a war in Libya. That did not

go well. It turned out incredibly badly. He resisted launching strikes in Syria. That also turned out badly. But I think what pissed me off is that Bob Gates's Pentagon pushed harder than any other entity to escalate the war in Afghanistan. They also resisted all efforts to end the war in Iraq. And Gates knows damn well that the Pentagon budget was bloated. He used to talk about it. and then it could be trimmed. He also knows damn well that North Korea diplomacy has put us in a worse situation because he could have picked up and read the paper that morning. So like, I'm just sort of sick of this like wise man Yoda routine, both sidesing it as you

hawk a book with the sanctimonious title, you know, in front of a roaring fireplace. By the way, it was June. And that's the end of me being petty for this little section. So my favorite Bob Gates story was when his last book came out. Duty. Duty. And first of all, if you title your book, Duty, you have some self-regard. He had an anecdote in the book. And the book was about how great Bob Gates was, how terrible Barack Obama was, and how slightly less terrible George Bush was. And he had this quote in there where he's describing a meeting with Obama, where Obama is telling everybody in the room to stop taking notes because he

didn't want to read about this in any of their books. And then Gates writes how horribly he offended he was that Obama would think that he Gates would betray his trust like that and proceeded to describe the meeting. Which is exactly everything you need to know about Bob Gates. He anoints himself the referee of everybody else's conduct, except he himself is immune from any of the rebukes that he is doling out to everybody else all the time from Mount bipartisanship, you know, that he lives on, and he summoned down to appear on a Sunday show every now and then to tell us how the world really is. How the world really is is people like Bob Gates give fucking $100,000 paid speeches funded by the United Arab Emirates to organizations with cynical names like the foundation of, for the defense of democracies funded by autocracies to promote a war between the United States

and Iran, right? There is another war that Bob Gates. I forgot about that. Trump did launch a war. He assassinated the fucking guy. And to your point, Tommy, like, even if you think the war in Libya was a complete and unmitigated disaster, and I'm happy for people to have that view and to hold us accountable for it.

To compare that to Iraq as if they're the same thing. You know, to compare an invasion and occupation of a country. that cost trillions of dollars to the Libya intervention is disingenuous. And as you point out, Bob Gates as Pentagon, completely boxed Barack Obama into a massive surge in Afghanistan that Obama had to fight tooth and nail to apply a timeline to so that Afghanistan didn't become something on the scale completely of Iraq and to get a curve of those troops coming home within a year and a half that Bob Gates then trashed Obama for in his book. He trashed Obama for having a timeline on that surge.

There were far more U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan because of Bob Gates than anybody was deployed to Libya. We didn't have any troops on the ground there. So he wants to have it every way. He wants to be this guy who is apparently, was against all the wrong wars, but was for the right surges. You know, he's for bipartisanship, the bipartisanship where everybody's equal. George Bush and Barack Obama are equal. And Joe Biden and Donald Trump apparently are equal to. And he puts his country first so much that he won't let his personal animus to Joe Biden get overridden by his concern for health of American democracy with Donald Trump.

That's what I take away from that show. On a week when troops are in the streets, like beating up protesters. In a week when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is apologizing on national television for what he did. And that guy has a lot more guts than Bob Gates, you know, so I'll stop there. No, no, no. Also, Bob Gates is the one who recommended Rex Tillerson for the Secretary of State Trump. Yeah, that worked out. Great.

Connie Rice and Bob Gates, you know, the two heroes of whatever, you know. Of the early 2000s. Yeah, Bob Gates, Kanye Rice and Lindsay Graham can have a presidential primary to become president of the Sunday show. We're going to end on one other arrogant book. So last week we talked about John Bolton, the former. National Security Advisor. He's been fighting to release his memoir. It's been caught up in this classification review that the White House is basically just sitting on it. On Monday, Trump escalated this whole fight by saying that Bolton Wood would have, quote, criminal problems

if he released the book. And like, I just wanted to float this because we sometimes do this. We have done it in a while. I was just thinking aloud to you guys on our group chat. Imagine if Obama's first national security advisor, General Jim Jones, announced he was going to publish a damning book about Barack Obama and his time at the White House. It was right before the election. And then the Obama White House bottled it up with some phony classification review and then threatened him with criminal charges. The political world would have rightly exploded. There would be daily hearings. There would be roadblock cable covenorrhage. Like, release the book would be trending for six months. And it's just, you know, it's a reminder of how normalized that the politicization of national security and, you know, defense materials have become.

Yeah. I mean, look, this is not Solzhen Eastern here. This is John Bolton. And so when the book does come out, like just read. read the accounts of the book online. You don't have to buy it to help them out. But look, the one piece I take off what you said is all these Republicans who love John Bolton. You know, clearly they love Donald Trump more. You know, where's Lindsey Graham, you know, who agrees with all of John Bolton's foreign policy? It's interesting. It's a message to everybody, like in the dear leader political party of the Republicans today, like, you know, even, you know, like champions of the far right like John Bolton will get tossed overboard. Listen, dear listener, that was a Trump-heavy show. We had some things to get off our chest.

I had a good time doing it. But when we come back, Ben has a fantastic interview with a woman named Rekiah Diallo. She's a French activist. She's been on the show before to talk about the yellow vest protests. She's going to talk about policing, race relations in France. And like, it's just a fascinating look into how other countries have similar problems. And maybe we can learn something about how to solve them from that perspective. We're living in an unprecedented time, and like many people, I've been looking for helping guidance in places that I might not have looked to before. Hi, I'm Phil Picardy, journalist and host of the New Crick Media podcast Unholyer Than Now, a weekly podcast where I'll reevaluate my on-and-off relationship with God and guide listeners to the ethereal and worldly problems of the day. I'll be exploring everything from sex to climate change, and we'll talk to a wide variety of guests, from gay-friendly priests to feminist astrologers.

New episodes of Unholyer Than Now drop every Friday. out and subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. We are very happy to be joined by Rekiah Diallo, a French journalist, writer, and filmmaker, who's widely recognized for her work in favor of racial, gender, and religious equality. She's a B.T. France host and is produced and directed documentaries, TV, and radio programs. Rekiah, thanks so much for coming back on Pazave the World. Thank you so much for inviting me. So, Rekiah, you know, we've had obviously this really inspiring movement here with the protest

since the brutal murder of George Floyd. And I know many Americans have watched protests taking place against systemic racism and police violence around the world, including in France. But I also know that in France, these are not just protests where people are showing solidarity with Americans, that there's actually, you know, of course, deep-rooted structural issues in France as well.

And so I was wondering if you could just explain to our audience kind of how this French movement began and what the protesters are demanding in the streets of Paris and so many other cities in France? Thank you for asking me. So first, as all the countries in the world, people in France were very shocked by the very brutal murder of George Floyd. But the thing was that the coverage of the news that was concerning the U.S. then implied that systemic racism was something very American. From that point, activists in France decided to protest and to shed a light on local police brutality.

Because even if it's not the same level of violence, because we don't have the same gun culture in France, we still have people of color, mostly men from black or Arab backgrounds who are over police, and who are 20 times more likely to be checked in the streets by the police, and who die much more than other people when they have an encounter with the police. So there is a collective that is named Comite Adama in memory of Adamatraure who died in the hands of the police four years ago. His family has been struggling just to demand the indictment of the three police officers who were involved in his death and they didn't get any justice.

So they decided to start a protest. And it was like one of the most attended rally protesting against police brutality for it hasn't been that much credit for these issues for a long time. So it was very, it was a shock to politicians and to the media because they tended to think that we didn't have the same issues in France. Well, you and I talked about this, I think when I last saw you, this idea of French identity. the idea that France has this conception that everybody's French and that there's not really any other labels or identities to people. You've said that, I'm quoting you here, that the French are, you know, fed a story of a country that is blind to color and impermeable to racism, but this is merely a mystification. And I was wondering if you could just describe and unpack

for us how this idea of equality and colorblindness is built into the French national narrative. and why that's false and how the conversation could change about about French identity and race. So we have that very beautiful idea of universalism that may make French people all the same. So officially, you don't have categories in the census. You don't cross any box to say that you're black, you're Arab or whatever. Everyone is French or not French, but you don't have race. that is documented. And it's a very beautiful ideal, but in reality,

people are not treated the same, whether they are white, blacks, or belong to any other minorities. And the fact that the country officially wants to remain colorblind makes very uncomfortable people who are the victims of racism, because they don't really have the leverage just to shed the light on what they are experiencing. So what we are witnessing now is a new generation who says,

we are tired of that color blindness because if you are color blind, you are blind to racism that we are experiencing every day. And there is a very, very tough debate here because many people, politicians, intellectuals say that we are trying to Americanize the debate. And to them, speaking about race, it's something that belongs to the US and that shouldn't be happening in France. And it's very difficult to just be realistic on something that is happening because France used to be a slave power, used to be a colonial power,

and we have our own history of racism. But as we don't really have open conversation on race, it's very difficult. Even for me as a journalist, it's very difficult to tackle race publicly. And in terms of the conversations happening now and the protests happening now, I did notice that there was this announcement that chokeholds would be banned by police. But are there specific reforms that people are calling for in terms of police conduct or in terms of how race is addressed in France? How would you sum up the demands of the protesters? You know, you may not know that, but France has been sentenced several times by the European Court of Human Rights for a, racism and police brutality. So there have been many judicial decisions that have been made

just to point out the fact that France was really having misconduct toward minorities, especially for you know when it comes to policing. And the government hasn't really acts in a way that would prevent those behaviors. So shock holes may be banned, but there are some other techniques. that help people being still, that are still authorized. And what we've seen, so the minister said that shock holes would be banned and that racism in the police shouldn't be tolerated anymore. And what we've seen the days after is police officers protesting,

saying that they couldn't do their work because they couldn't use shockhold and they didn't want to be accused of tolerating racism. So knowing that, I think that we really need a deep reform. We need to have figures. We need to have a government, you know, making the country accountable and recognizing institutional racism because today saying that there is institutional racism in France is not even possible. None of the members of the government would accept that matter of fact.

And how do you think the government has responded? France, obviously, like the U.S., has a very strong presidential office, in its system. When you look at Emmanuel Macron and his government, how do you assess their response to those demands and to what people are protesting in the streets? So yeah, on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron gave an address to the people, and in his speech, he said nothing about police brutality. The only thing he said about police is that we needed to respect the police force. So that was the only mention of the police. And the other thing he said, because there is also here a debate about the symbols that are erected in the streets or the names of the

streets that are named after colonizers or slave owners. And he said that nothing in the French history should be erased and no symbol should be removed, you know, even if it's a social demand. So to me, he just said that he didn't intend to do anything new because to him there was no reason for questioning the fact that we have a slave trader in front of the Congress, the French Congress, his statute, or the fact that there is an issue with the police that is for now not really addressed. So I think it's trying to balance between because the police unions are very, very destroying. And I think he's trying to balance between the social demand and the fact that police has been protesting all last week longer. One of the things that's interesting about Macron is,

you know, he kind of charted this different political course, right, where he wasn't with one of the traditional parties. But he did kind of court, you know, elements of the French establishment, as you mentioned, you know, police unions. And it seems like he's always had kind of an uncomfortable relationship with progressives in France. You know, he was better than Marine Le Pen, obviously. And in some ways, he talks about progressive issues, climate change and other things. How is he, you know, he's tried into these town halls. I mean, do you feel like he just doesn't listen, doesn't understand?

Like, what, how would you like to see the government, I know, demonstrate that it is hearing people and open to these conversations? or do you just think he's kind of incapable of that? I think he really has trouble understanding people because what happened with the yellow vests is something that never happens before in history. And he's perceived as someone very arrogant. And, you know, once he was just,

he was in the middle of a crowd in the street was like a couple of years ago and someone who was unemployed said, I don't have a job. Could you help me to the president? And then he said, you know what? What's your job? You just have to cross the street and you will get a job.

It was very insensitive. And I think that he doesn't really fear the French population. And the other thing is that he was elected, saying that he was known from the right, neither from the left. And what we've seen is a very, very right, a right-week agenda. very, like not really, it isn't, it isn't really take into account the demands that came from the left. So there is a part of his voters who are disappointed because they were expecting him to be more, maybe more sensitive to what they needed. And it to me was a little different before being elected,

because I remember him having very frank words about colonization, for example, that he doesn't have any, more today. So the feeling I have is that the right wing of the political landscape has much more influence on him than the rest of the parties. Well, it's interesting, you know, because from the bench, one of the U.S. under Donald Trump, you know, you see Macron is, at least a competent leader. There is this kind of dilemma in French politics where you have, you know, an organized far right with the national front. You've got Macron, kind of, of straddling this, trying to straddle this center, but as you say, you know, oftentimes that can lead to more establishment solutions. And then, you know, the last time you're on,

we were just talking about the Yellow Vest protests, which were rooted, I think, in concerns about inequality, people being left behind, probably some common overlap, but different areas of focus, obviously, with this movement. Where do you see the progressive left and France going politically. I mean, when you look at the yellowist movement, you look at what protests that have taken place in recent days. What do you think the future of the left end of French politics is? There is a very, very wide room for the left today, like especially the party that is led by Jean-Luc Melanchon and named La France Insomis, but I have the feeling that they are not really organized and not really able to take the opportunity that they have. So the strong

party of opposition is the far right and the national rally of Marine Le Pen. She's doing very well and she's using every fair of Emmanuel Macron. And the thing is that people have tried the left, have tried the right, have tried Macron. And I'm afraid that now they have the feeling that, okay, the only one we haven't tried is the far right. So it's a real danger that we should really consider because they were first during the last European election. They were the ones who came first. It was last year. So we are in Europe, the country that sent the largest number of MEPs from the far right. So that should really question us because it's a very, very strong opposition and they may succeed in taking the power.

And is that so, you know, you, you know, you, you, as you mentioned, you know, the members of the European Parliament from the far right, you've got Macron kind of trying to occupy this ground in the middle. You know, traditionally on the left, the socialist party was, you know, the kind of institutional party. Do you feel like the people who've taken to the streets in France in the last several years, do they feel like they have a home in the Socialist Party, or is there this effort to try to find a new form of political participation, you know, potentially, you know, new political party, new movements.

I mean, where does this energy go then? I think that the socialist party is totally dead. Like, they have no voice anymore. I think that they had like 6% of the votes during the last presidential election. They, I'm not sure if they made it like for the European election. They had to partner with someone else. And they are not like, we don't hear them. anymore. And I think that what's missing, what we're missing in France today is to have a strong

party from the, from the, from the left. And because the, the socialist party isn't strong anymore. And even the like the regular right, the party that is named the Republican, the Republicans, is not, is, they're doing better than the socialist party, but not that good. They're not like the people that we want to hear anymore. And I think that nobody, if you go in a street in France, and you ask two people, what is the name of the head of the socialist party, nobody would know because its head is not really visible. And it's not someone that, you know, you want to hear the views on politics. So there is something that needs to be taught on the left in order to really constitute a real opposition to the national front.

And so, you know, one of the thing I wanted to ask you is it's interesting hearing you talk about these issues of structural racism, of police violence and even of symbols and statues from France's colonial past, racist past. It sounds very familiar to Americans, and we're seeing similar debates and movements in the UK and other places. Do you feel like there's a space for this kind of movement that we've seen in these different countries to show solidarity, to be connected, to have a sense of kind of an international movement against racism and against some of these structural challenges. You know, because what we've seen in recent years is the far right tends to be pretty well coordinated across these different countries.

Do you think there's room for, you know, Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements in the U.S. to find solidarity in France, the U.K., and other countries? I think that would be really welcome. I don't see links being. constructed, but I think that would be very, very powerful. Because what people are fighting is something very global and structural. Like the slave trade, like the colonialism is something that occurred on a very global level. So it's not something that you can only address,

you know, nationwide. You really need to have a global lens to understand and to fight it. But for now, I don't really see the connections. I see some connections between several collectives, but not really a reflection that would take that issue into account on a global level. But I think that, yes, the far rights are really, really powerful to link each other and even to get fans on an international level. And there is some work to do in order to have the same. kind of connection of the movement, not only the movement against racism, but also the

movement against patriarchy, like for example the Mitu movement, but also the movement to save, like to fight the climate change. It's something that is very global and maybe those connections should be think about because they are led by very young people and it's there, you know, if you go to a feminist rally, if you go to a rally against police brutality, you see the same kind of crowds. So that means that there is a new generation who's really aware of the challenges,

the current challenges, and may be able to think above the borders. Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point to make and to end on in the sense that the one thing progressives have is a lot of energy among younger people. And having your voice for Kaya here reaching a lot of Americans, I think is a great start at least for, bringing a French perspective to these issues. So thanks so much for joining us and hope you

stay safe and well out there. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Pottae the world is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmelkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.