Pod Save the World - Bobi Wine’s fight against a military dictatorship

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism, and how people like Mike Pompeo lie and blur that line to shut down policy debates, a former Trump aide’s claims about the origin of Covid-19, Biden’s moves to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, US-Egypt policy, Australia’s attempts to regulate big tech, allegations that a Trump supporting mercenary-for-hire named Erik Prince violated an arms embargo on Libya, and more. Then Tommy interviews Uganda politician, former presidential candidate, and musician Bobi Wine about his brave fight against a military dictator and how US assistance can prop up anti-democratic leaders.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail].

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, new setting here. I'm in the office. How did that happen? So my cable's been going out intermittently. I didn't want to like, you know, be in the middle of a conversation with you or a Ugandan freedom fighter on an 11-hour time difference and cut out and then I have to dial back in and look like a total asshole. So here I am. Well, the miracle of modern technology. has allowed the world those to not see how much my internet is cut out while we've been doing this show the last few months. So I admire your your dedication to the... Thank you. Thank you. The office is like Chernobyl, man. It's like, you know, calendars turn to like March 2020. It's horribly depressing. But I did eat some really stale candy. All that said, we have a great, great show today. We cover a lot of ground. So we are going to talk about

U.S. policy towards Israel and charges of anti-Semitism that often get lobbed around those discussions and why Mike Pompeo is a horrible, disgusting liar. We are going to talk about what a former Trump national security staffer is saying about the origins of COVID-19 and why there was some interesting revelations there, how climate change is impacting the Arctic, some signs of progress between the U.S. and Iran when it comes to the Iran nuclear agreement, why Biden's approach to Egypt is frustrating some human rights advocates. We're going to get into why technology companies were fighting with the Australian government and why Eric Prince, the private mercenary slash huge Trump supporter, might be in some big, big trouble. So lots of

stuff there. And then Ben, our guest today is Bobby Wine. He's a musician turned activist turned opposition leader who just ran this incredibly brave presidential campaign in Uganda. And I just hope everyone will listen to that conversation because, you know, he's in the middle of a a dangerous and often lonely struggle against like a military dictatorship and needs a lot of international support and attention. So everybody should check that out. I'm excited for that, Tommy. I can't wait to hear that interview. You know, man, it's like we've had a lot of interesting people on the show, a lot of like powerful politicians and stuff. The only times I get nervous are people like Bobby Wine where I'm just like you have put so much more on the line than I ever

have. And like it's just, it's really inspiring and like humbling to be around people like that. I don't want to deify the guy, but like, still, it's incredible. No, no, no, nobody's perfect, right? But, I mean, it's important to be reminded every now and then. And actually, this kind of contextualizes the first subject we're going to talk about. Whatever sacrifices we make in American politics, as extreme as American politics has gotten the last few years, is nothing in comparison to what people like Bobby Wine or Alexei Navalny or Hong Kong protesters that we've talked to go through. But I hope that we can use our platform to at least express. solidarity, not just our solidarity with people like that, but our listeners too. So yeah,

great. I totally agree, man. And like, so we talked about his campaign and we talked about, you know, U.S. assistance to Uganda and how that has contributed to Moussevani staying in power. We talked about like, you know, social media activism and where it's kind of fucked up and where it's been useful and sort of what he'd like to see out of people who want to be supportive. So check that out. Also, there's a really cool podcast about his campaign on Spotify called the messenger that goes really deep into the history of Uganda. the history of like Museveni and other musicians in Africa and how they've been part of these social movements is definitely worth checking out. Two quick housekeeping items. Roxanne Gaye joins

the Keep It crew this week, so you will know that will be a fun, entertaining, and smart episodes. So check that out. And then our friend, Anna Marie Cox, is releasing the 200th episode with friends like these this Friday. She's an incredible journalist, podcaster, or human being. And the show is an amazing archive of thoughtful conversation. So check out with friends like these, wherever you get your pods. So, Ben, now let's just turn to a deeply shitty, shitty human being because, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we were having a conversation on the show about the definition of anti-Semitism and why parts of it are controversial. The short answer being, you know, some parts of this working definition touch on criticism of Israeli government policies. And there's

a concern that, you know, preemptively deciding that certain criticism of some policy ideas is anti-Semitic can be used to shut down legitimate policy debates and silence people who are critical of, you know, Israeli policies on whatever, right? In the middle of that conversation, I said to you, this is the only subject where I can sometimes like feel us sounding tentative, not just because the issues are complicated like they are. We talk about a lot of complicated issues on this show, but because there are people who love to take pieces of conversations about, you know, U.S. Israel policy or Israel in general out of context and distort them. But even in that sort of lucid moment, I was not ready for the bullshit that failed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

pulled on you last week. Ben, do you want to explain how a long, thoughtful conversation with Peter Beinart about U.S. Israel policy on his podcast was the wonkiest thing I've ever fucking heard in my life led to Mike Pompeo tweet one of the most absurd lies I've ever heard. heard that you accused all Jews, so I guess he's including you attacking yourself here, of being corrupt and cruel. And by the way, I say wonky conversation with great love and affection because I found the whole thing fascinating. Yeah, I mean, what happened is, you know, around the same week, actually, that we had that lengthy conversation. I went on Peter Beynard's podcast, and we spent almost an hour kind of talking about how does U.S. policy towards Israel

and the Palestinians get made? And that embodies. a walk through the minefield of the manifestation of, you know, pressure campaigns or the influence that is brought to bear by groups like APEC, the congressional dynamic around Israel policy, the media dynamic. And if you check out the conversation, you know, we were very careful in terms of caveating everything we said, trying to contextualize everything we said. But I realized I was walking in, you know, challenging terrain, nuanced terrain. And I was actually very pleased for about a week. I got a lot of positive feedback from people, you know, this honest conversation. Peter's obviously a Jewish guy who's written and thought a lot about these issues.

But then I noticed, you know, just on Twitter, the normal efforts to take things that I'd said in gin up controversy, you know, so take a snippet of something I said on podcasts and in try to create a controversy. But even that was pretty standard fair. And Mike Pompeo comes in with the sledgehammer in which he asserts that I said that Netanyahu and all Jews are corrupt and cruel. And the context for that is that I'd actually been describing kind of positively. I've been trying to say, why might Netanyahu have these policies towards the Palestinians, in which, you know, as we've talked about on this show, essentially they're denying the rights of self-determination of the Palestinians. They're de facto annexing what would

be a Palestinian state in the West Bank. And my point was that it's a corrupt and cruel world out there. And- Right. Even more specifically, you were talking about like, okay, why would Netanyahu work with someone like Victor Orban? Exactly. Exactly. Like you were being, you were trying to be so generous to him in this moment. I was. I was. I was trying to say like the reason that he may work with an anti-Semite like Victor Orban, who is corrupt and can be. be very cruel, notice the refugees and cages along Hungary's borders, that he may have determined that that's just the way the world is. And so that's how I, Netanyahu, have to be. Not all Jewish people. I mean, so on its face, it was an insane overstatement of a worldview that I projected

onto one person, Bebe Netanyahu, and suggested that I'd called all Jews corrupt and cruel. And obviously that is about as dangerous a charge of anti-Semitism that can be leveled, as failed and ridiculous to figure as Mike Pompeo was three weeks ago. He was the Secretary of State of the United States. He has millions of people who will consume what he says on Twitter, tens, if not hundreds of millions more by the time that tweet finishes its travels. And it's an effort to make me out to be an anti-Semite, which is absolutely disgusting. So the first point is it was completely a lie.

I mean, just an incredible lie that he said. There was no basis in anything that I'd said that could lead to his tweet. But again, more generally, this point is that the intent is twofold. It's to force people to self-censor their criticisms of certain Israeli policies or U.S. government policies, for that matter, vis-à-vis the Palestinians. It's intended to force you to self-censor, which is what we try very hard not to do on this show. And I think across crooked media generally. But also, and we can unpack this, Tommy, it's an effort to say that only some people get to be the arbiters of identity. You know, Mike Pompeo gets to decide who is pro-Israel, who is Jewish, who is American, right? And this is an even, you know, more grotesque, I think,

version of what's happening around the world today, where there's some self-appointed people. Mike Pompeo, a Christian gets to tell me, you know, what the discourse is on Israel or what it means to be Jewish. So, you know, painful, dispiriting, but also illuminating of a broader thing. And as you pointed out, that wasn't the only charge of any Semitism that has been hurled around in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, just a couple of thoughts. One, you know, if anyone is calling BB Netanyahu corrupt at the moment, it's, Israeli prosecutors.

Yeah, it's a jury justice system. It's not like an out of view. You know, so that's that's the actual problem that he needs to worry about here. I would note that Pompeo's accusation was so outrageous that I saw people who love to spend their time attacking you and criticizing you, like people like Glenn Greenwald, who's been, you know, sort of a longtime critic of Obama policies and, you know, you and I at times and individually saying that it was a grotesque lie. And, you know, the irony of it all is, you know, you said to Peter in this in this conversation that, you know, like people like Biden,

progressives, we need to be putting ideas forward when it comes to, you know, the two-state solution or, you know, Israeli-Palestinian statehood, because otherwise you allow the entire debate around Israel to be framed by BB Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo, and Tom Cotton. Yeah. That was the exact quote. And I noticed there were Tom Cottonstaffers distorting your words and attacking you. And then Mike Pompeo distorting your words and attacking you. And to be honest, it got shockingly little pickup, given how there is this cottage industry of people who like to pull this shit on you specifically and then just sort of pull this shit on anyone who dares to criticize Nanyahu. Yeah. No, and I guess a couple of things I'd add, you know, speaking very personally, right,

which I appreciate the opportunity to do that with the world those out there. And and with you, Tommy, is like, you know, some of the other things, like I talked about the fact that there's a pro-locud media in the United States, right? And obviously, the article's written about this and the free beacon might have proven the point, right? I mean, are they not pro-locud? But, but, and the fact that, you know, there's very influential lobbying groups like APEC. And people say, well, you know, those are tropes. They are tropes that I was very careful to contextualize, the difference between what is, by the way, normal. Like, there are all kinds of groups that lobby Congress, right?

I understand the tropes. The tropes are the reason why there's a portion of my family that is dead, okay? And not Mike Pompeo's. I understand that. The fact that I'm talking about the fact that there's right-wing media in this country that aligns with Netanyahu, and by the way, aligns with all manner of right-wing autocrats around the world. have to be able to have those conversations, right? The existence of certain tropes doesn't mean

that an entire realm of policy in the world today is somehow off limits. And that leads me to the second point, which is this is not just about Israel or Netanyahu. It's about all of these ethno-nationalists that we talk about on this show week after week. Again, who gets my identity growing up? And I write about this a lot in my book. You know, the two most important identities to me growing up were I'm an American and also my Jewish heritage. I'm not a practicing Jew. I'm not. My mother's Jewish. My father's Christian. We were not religious really at all growing up. If we were, occasionally I'd go with my dad to church. But the fact is my identity that I get to decide, right? I saw my cultural heritage, my historical heritage. I was very proud of being Jewish.

That's the intellectual and ethical tradition that I felt like I came out of. Those are the books I read. The Holocaust is the defining historic event that I was made aware of as a child. And here we are, you know, decades later. And you've got the MAGA crowd defining American identity in ways that suggests that the rest of us are somehow less American than they are, because we don't believe in their crazy conspiracy theories. And then we have this effort to say, if you're not fully on board with a certain set of policies that include the de facto annexation of the West Bank and the denial of rights to Palestinians, then you're an anti-Semite. And it's people trying to, and it's not just, again, Israel or the United States. What is the BJP party doing in India around Indian identity

and Hindu identity? What is the Chinese Communist Party doing in China, around Chinese identity and Confucian beliefs? What is Victor Orban doing in Hungary around Hungarian and Christian identity? these are people who are turning towards the oldest definitions of nationalism. And those definitions of nationalism have led to wars, have led to repression. They've got Uyghurs and concentration camps in China. And by the way, no people on earth has suffered more because of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish people. So we have to be able to have a space to have these debates. If that space is taken away from this kind of rote bullying and, frankly, cancel culture,

then we risk repeating the mistakes across the board. It's not just about Israel. It's about all of these brands of identity politics on the right, not the left. There's so much focused on identity politics. So that's my little speech. I'll stop there. But I didn't want to get that off my chest. It's always the people like Pompeo complain the most about cancel culture who lob like bombs like this.

One other way this conversation came up over the weekend. So on Saturday Night Live, Michael Che, during weekend update, told the following joke, quote, Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half their population. I'm going to guess it's the Jewish half, end quote. Now, let's unpack this one. Did I laugh at this joke? No. Is it worded accurately or well?

No, right? All Israeli citizens over 16 are eligible to get vaccinated, including the 2 million Arab Israelis. And actually, Israel has worked pretty aggressively to vaccinate its Arab-Israeli population. But citizen is the key word here, right? Like what Michael Che is clearly referencing is the fact that Israel's very successful, vessel vaccination effort has largely excluded Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza. Could he have phrased this better and avoided this controversy? Absolutely. But I don't think

sloppy phrasing means that Che should be called an anti-Semite or that it was reasonable for one organization to say that NBC must, quote, take action to undo this damage caused by propagating Jew hatred under the guise of comedy, end quote. Right. Like I just wish we could live in a world where someone offended by Chez-Joke would say, hey, I think I know what you meant. And I'm happy to have a complicated conversation about Israel's obligations to vaccinate the Palestinians in occupied territory under the Oslo Accords or the Geneva Conventions. But the way you phrase this, it was inaccurate. It was hurtful for the following reasons, right? Like, I think that would be a productive conversation. It never ends up there. This turns into a massive fight on social media. And, you know, in this case,

it was prominent Jewish organizations making these charges of anti-Semitism. But often, like you said earlier, it's evangelical Christians like fucking Mike Pompeo who decides, he gets to decide, you know, what real Jews believe and to speak on behalf of the Jewish people while ignoring like literal Nazis who are ascendant in the Republican Party and like, I don't know, storming the capital. I didn't see Mike speaking out then. So my sub box. And again, that's the bottom line here, which is like number one. Like, yeah, we can have conversations about Israel's obligations to vaccinate Palestinians under international law or just out of kind of the moral responsibility of being an occupying power. Michael Che could phrase his jokes better, but this is not constructive. And it happened again. I saw Merrick Garland's confirmation hearing. Mike Lee was like lecturing him about the, you know, Merrick Garland, who comes from a family that had to escape the Holocaust.

So like, let's please keep our eye on the ball here, which is, yes, the any sense. Semitism that is growing on the far right and the space it has to exist to have discussions about complicated issues that don't descend into this kind of just, you know, brutalization of terminologies and bullying of people like, okay, you know, like Michael Chey told the joke, let's all move on and watch the show next week here, guys. Yeah. It's just, it's just so many of these debates are in bad faith. We can all do a little better here. I will, I will. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure I can, yeah, I'm sure I can do better, you know, makes me think about that too. Like I, like the personalization of certain things, like, you know, I'm sure we could do better at

too. But I do think that what we try to do is at least have space for, for conversations about these things. Yeah. Mike Pompeo, cut the shit, man. No one's going to vote for you. Okay, let's turn to China for a bit because Trump's former deputy national security advisor, Matthew Pottinger, was on Face the Nation over the weekend. Some of that interview aired on CBS, there was a full interview that was like 45 minutes long that they put up on YouTube. That was fascinating, actually. He was he was really candid about mistakes the Trump administration made early on during the COVID response. And he also laid out some specific examples of how the Chinese government mishandled and lied about the outbreak and just did so in like a like a reasonable sounding way, right?

But the most interesting part was when he talked about the origin of COVID-19. Pottinger said that if you take a ledger of the circumstantial evidence that would lead you to conclude that COVID was the result of a human error in the lab versus a natural outbreak, that the balance of that ledger leans heavily towards that it was a human error. And he said he had strong reasons to believe that the Chinese military was doing secret animal experiments in that same lab in Wuhan going back to 2017. he said that he has good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers in that Wuhan Institute of Virology in the fall of 2019, so far earlier than has been reported. And he said that researchers at the facility were doing these gain of function experiments on a virus that was very similar to COVID. So I guess, Ben, as we were all distracted by Trump's effort to overturn the election, the State Department declassified and released a bunch of information about the origins of COVID. Pottinger described it as, quote, leads that the Trump administration released

in the hope that journalists in the WHO would like pick them up and try to report them out. Now, it's worth noting that like one man's lead is another man's baseless allegation, right? But Pottinger was in a position to see all of the U.S. government's information about what happened. Obviously, I don't trust the Chinese government to tell us the truth as a general matter, especially when it just embarrasses them. So that I don't know what to make of this, right? I mean, you and I were texting about this the other day. Like, if Trump had evidence that COVID had been released into the world as the result of some classified Chinese military experiment gone wrong, you know he would have said it every day of the campaign trail, right?

Like, I don't know that you could stop him from disclosing that. So the fact that it didn't come out makes me wonder, like, how circumstantial this evidence is. You know, like, I don't know. What did you make of these comments from Pottinger? I had a couple of thoughts. I mean, one was that, right? Which is if this was that clear, you know, Donald Trump, who wanted to call this thing the China virus every day, the idea that nobody would really talk forthrightly about this

publicly until Matt Pottinger after the administration seems like a stretch to me, you know, especially given that they weren't exactly, let's just say, restrained about putting out even classified information if they thought it suited them. And this is a crowd that tweeted a picture of Trump's PDB one time to make a point about Iran. I do think it's an important question. And the Biden people clearly have access to all this same information. And so I would hope that if they felt like there was something people needed to know about the origins of COVID, that they could do that. And I think they'd have more credibility than the Trump people, because it does highlight, we talked a lot in the Trump years about the fact that U.S. assessments were losing credibility because they were so grossly politicized.

in the Trump era. These are people, you know, who would deny facts that the world could see to suit their purposes. Matt Podinger is a somewhat more serious guy than some of the worst Trumpkins. But, you know, so let's see what the Biden people say about this. In the long run, I think, you know, having more cooperation on global health issues, having the WHO have more credibility, if the U.S. had the kind of global health team that was on the ground in Wuhan before Trump pulled it down. We might have had better eyes into the situation. You'll recall this is the pandemic preparedness architecture that the Obama administration that's set up around the world that Trump basically got rid of. So it's an important question in large part so that we can understand

future pandemics. I do wonder about sometimes you get so fixated on assigning, and it's not unconnected to what we're just talking about, the worst possible motivations to an adversary, you know, a foreign government that you don't like. And there's plenty of things not to like about the Chinese Communist Party that you might look at a set of facts and want to conclude a certain thing about them. But the reality is, you know, we don't know. What we do know, though, is that in part because of climate change, these types of diseases, these types of coronaviruses are more likely in the natural world than any case. So this did not have to be manmade just because it was so bad. But by all means, we should understand it. But I'd like to say,

have more sources on this than just one former Trump official before making any judgments on it. Yeah, I mean, Jake Sullivan was on that same episode of Face the Nation. And, you know, he said that he did necessarily, he couldn't confirm, you know, the WHO's reporting about the origins of the coronavirus. You know, you and I, I think, have talked about the fact that Tom Cotton has kind of speculated aloud that this could have been some sort of, you know, military experiment or a bio weapon or a lab accident. It does make me wonder if, you know, Cotton was talking to Pottinger about these theories early on and just decided to go public with them, like, weeks into the crisis without any actual information. I would love to know the answer. I don't,

clearly, we don't have the evidence. And even Pottinger doesn't seem to suggest that they have hard evidence that they know what happened. It does make me a little worried about, you know, U.S. intelligence capabilities. Maybe we need to, you know, get it together when it comes to getting information. in China. Well, you know, I think, you know, if you look at the Trump team, there were some kind of comical China Hawks, right, like Trump himself, you know, who didn't really think about it or know much about it, but just adopted this persona. Then Pottinger was among the like, you know, more serious China Hawks, who I don't agree with about a bunch of stuff, but he's a serious guy. And even Cotton, you know, I have all my criticisms. He has deep-seated concerns about China that I think are legitimate.

So you're right. I think that the, the last. likelihood that the two of them probably were in some agreement about this is there. But again, the reality is, you know, the U.S. intelligence community has been spending so many resources on terrorism that maybe we should be putting more resources and understanding the oceans of pandemics. And again, maybe we should be more invested in the global architecture, including the W.HO and understanding these things. I find it hard to believe, if not find it impossible to believe that the Chinese, like, somehow deliberately released COVID on the world. And I don't think I don't think, yeah, the question of the origins is important. It's particularly important,

mainly to protect against things going forward, not just to get into some kind of blame game. I want to understand how to prevent the next coronavirus, you know? Yeah, yeah. And maybe it'll turn out that the best way to prevent the next coronavirus is to stop doing research on coronaviruses that could lead them to escape these, you know, labs. But we, again, we don't know. Or to have more better protocols in place, you know. But also, I think there's been a lot of research about climate change nexus to pandemics and the need to understand how the changing ecology around the world, you know, that's forcing the human beings into closer proximity to animals that they're not normally in proximity to, you know, there's all kinds of things

unpack here, but it's going to take resources and global cooperation because guess what doesn't recognize borders as, you know, pandemics. Yeah, yeah. Well, so I'm glad you mentioned climate change because that's the next topic. So for the first time ever in the month of February, A commercial tanker was able to sail from China to Russia through the northern sea route in the Arctic. So normally that route is unpassable in the winter because it's just frozen solid. But global warming has melted the ice to the point where an icebreaker could get through in the dead of winter. So this is troubling news. And it's going to have major environmental ramifications from sea level rise to just like more boat traffic in the Arctic where there hasn't been.

It's also going to ramp up the geopolitical competition for control of the region, and that includes access to oil and gas deposits to shipping lanes. And so, Ben, I remember right after I left the White House in 2013, then Secretary of State John Kerry took a trip to Sweden for a meeting of the Arctic Council, which brought together these the eight nations that have territory above the Arctic Circle to try to sort out some of these policies. I mean, like, the best case scenario here, right, is we reverse some of these trends. We stop global warming. The ice freezes again. but if not, like, what's the mechanism for like sorting out access to essentially an entirely new ocean and, you know, maybe up to a fifth of the world's oil and gas in the Arctic? Well, you know, this was a growing issue in the Obama administration, particularly in the second term. And, you know, what you saw is like the Russians and increasingly the Chinese seeking to stake their claims, sometimes just doing it de facto by, you know, the Russians sending military resources up there.

where the U.S., what we are trying to do, and I think what the answer is, is you try to set up an international mechanism where all the nations that have some border along this area find cooperative ways to adjudicate disputes, to try to set norms and laws around how to approach this territory. Ironically, as you're trying to fight climate change, what you also don't want to do is to have a ton of additional oil and gas exploration either. Yeah, it seems like a bad idea. So you would think that you could marry a kind of traditional effort to try to get a multilateral process in place where different nations can stake their claims but work through them. But also factor in that what you don't want in particular is a new gold rush on oil and gas in the Arctic. because one of the ways to prevent global warming is to not do that, right? But given the fact that the Russians are probably going to ignore that and are going to try to flux up there and the Chinese as well,

part of what you need is the U.S. working very closely with Canada and northern European countries to kind of as a counterweight to that, to prevent the kind of militarization of the Arctic, and again, turning the Arctic into the new frontier of oil and gas drilling. I look forward to the Chinese building, like ice-based ice. islands and runways from them. That kind of thing. Yeah. Let's turn to Iran because there's been some important positive developments when it comes to Iran. Last week, the Biden administration agreed to join talks with Iran hosted by

some of our European allies. The Biden team has also abandoned this like last minute stupid effort by the Trump administration to snap back United Nations sanctions on Iran in part because, you know, it pissed off the rest of the signatories to the Iran deal. So if a Iran agrees to meet and both sides agree to reenter the Iran deal. The question becomes a sequencing of actions by each side. So, you know, the Iranians want the U.S. to drop sanctions on them first. The U.S. wants Iran to stop conducting nuclear activities that were prohibited by the 2015 Iran deal. So the question becomes, you know, does somebody blink or do you negotiate a process that has both sides offering concessions at the same time? You know, I've noticed that in Washington, you're starting

to hear many of these same old arguments against the Iran deal. The same people are trying to to create these same impediments to even starting negotiations. For example, they'll say, Biden can't negotiate with Iran until Iranian proxies stop attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. But those same people told us that when Trump assassinated an Iranian general named Qasem Soleimani, that was going to deter them. And they would stop attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. So it's like, we can't talk. Killing them doesn't work. So I'm not sure what they're recommending here. Ben, these talks are further complicated by the fact that Iran is about to hold a presidential election in I think four months. So what did you make of this announcement

from the Biden team? And like, what do you think the sequencing is going to look like in the next few months? Well, I think it's positive, obviously, that they're back into diplomacy. But I'm a little concerned by this kind of growing sense that there has to be like a lengthy negotiation here. You know, we've talked in the past about whether or not the Biden team may want to extract concessions from Iran to go beyond what's in the nuclear deal or to have some agreement that they're going to be following agreements before they get back in the deal. look, right now there's a default, I think, assumption that the U.S. is going to come back into the JCPOA. Just do it now.

Because the more the time drags on, the more you're allowing for brinksmanship by Iran, the more you're allowing for political variables to enter into it, the more you're allowing for spoilers to emerge. And that could be not even the U.S. or Iran. That could be Saudi Arabia, for instance, or something like that. So I think the job one is to get back in the deal and then try to negotiate other elements from the foundation of the JCPOA, which would significantly roll back Iran's program, which is advanced from the baseline of the JCPO, get back to where we had a much more comfortable

inspections regime and much more comfortable and extreme restrictions on the Iranian program than we have right now. I would, you know, Chris Murphy, the senator Chris Murphy, in front of the pod, talked about this today. I'll just say it. The U.S. should go first, you know, for a couple of reasons. One, we left the deal first. But two, if we go back into compliance and the Iranians don't comply, we can put all the sanctions right back in place, you know? We can test them on this. You know, I think obviously you want to negotiate people jumping in the pool together.

So that's the goal here. But the U.S. should be willing to do that. In other words, we should be willing to do it simultaneous to Iran rather than saying that Iran has to do it and we have to watch it and then do sanctions relief. No, we'll do it together. The U.S. violated this deal first and then the Iranians violated second. Let's jump back into the deal together. If Iran doesn't do it, all the sanctions are easy. You just reimpose them right away, you know. So that's what I hope to see. I'm not sure that's what the Biden team is going to do. And I just worry that time is not your friend in that part of the world and on these types of issues, you know, because if this drags out three months, six months, nine months, is an Iranian election. things can happen in the region and then you're in much more difficult circumstance. Can I just say, like, maybe I've been out of government too long and I'm just some fucking unhinged L.A. guy now. But like, I have so little concern about the politics of the U.S.

going first to get back into the JCPOA. The country supports diplomacy. They don't want war with Iran or anybody else. I don't think a lot of Americans who are like desperate to end the pandemic are going to think real hard about whether who like how the the JCPOA reentry was sequenced. Like I feel like sometimes we just think about this shit too hard and you and you wait and you allow the opposition to like reconstitute itself and like gain political strength. And like you said, like, you know, there's exigent events, right? If there is a really bad Iranian-backed militia attack on U.S. forces in Iraq, if it kills a U.S. service member again, like that will create real political pressure.

agree with you. I think they should try to move quickly here. No, and the politics get harder, not easier. Because again, right now, the expectation is we're going to do this. If the Biden team stretches this out, then the expectation is that they're going to get something else, you know, for stretching this out. And they've not defined what they're trying to get here. And so I think it's, you know, get back into that deal as fast as you can. And by the way, if the Iranians won't do it, then don't. We're not saying, like, the U.S. should comply for some long period of time. If the Iranians don't go back to the JCPOA restrictions. But again, if they don't, you can reimpose all those sanctions. You can put all that pressure back in place. To the argument that you can't have a deal in place

while Iran is doing other things you don't like, you, like, Ronald Reagan, right, called the Soviet Union the evil empire at the same time that the Soviet Union was fighting proxy wars with the United States around the world and negotiated arms control agreements, right? You negotiate nuclear agreements with your adversaries precisely because you don't want your adversaries who do other bad things to have nuclear weapons. We had this whole debate in 2015. I get that some people just don't agree. But you know what? As you said, the American people voted for Joe Biden, knowing that he favored diplomacy. There's not a lot of evidence that Iran is top of mind to people. I mean, one other reason to do this, Tommy, is that the Biden team has to deal with COVID.

They have to deal with the economy. They have to deal with China. They have to deal with climate change. Do they really want to spend the next year or two with their Secretary of State and all their senior people focused on the painstaking details of squeezing an extra concession out of the Iranians on some advanced centrifuge? Just put this in a box. Make sure Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon. And you can verify that so that you can do other things. There's also the pandemic is raging, right? And you can make a humanitarian case that, like, you know, taking off some of these sanctions now is in part to help the Iranian people actually get. things they, like healthcare, things they need to fight the pandemic, which, you know, like,

we try to pretend that are carved out of U.S. sanctions, but I think in practice, like, it can really hurt their ability to respond and to take care of their own people. Yeah. No, and the Biden team took a step today, I think, to allow for at least the provision, there's a carve out to provide for humanitarian medical supplies. And why wouldn't we do that? I mean, like, let's just have some basic humanity here. Yeah, agreed. Let's talk about another place where there is a little bit of frustration with the Biden team. So last week we talked about how the Egyptian government raided the homes of the relatives of a man named Muhammad Sultan.

Muhammad Sultan is a U.S. citizen. He now lives in northern Virginia, but he used to live in Egypt and he was imprisoned and tortured by the Egyptian government for nearly two years between 2013 and 2015. Now the Egyptian government, they're harassing his relatives back in Egypt because they want to silence him even though he lives in the U.S. now. During the campaign, then candidate Biden tweeted about Muhammad Sultan's case and said, quote, no more blank checks for Trump's favorite dictator. Trump infamously referred to President LCC as his favorite dictator, which is disgusting. But, you know, human rights groups noticed last week and they were disappointed when the State Department approved a $197 million sale of surface terror missiles to the Egyptian government. you know, U.S. assistance to these oppressive regimes is really a theme of today's show Ben, because the U.S. gives $1.3 billion a year to Egypt, and we give roughly a billion a year to

Uganda, which I talk about with Bobby Wine, but a lot of that goes to prop up President Moussevani. So the State Department, Ned Price, who's a friend of ours, really great guy, but, you know, defended disapproval by saying it was a routine replenishment of defensive weapons. I suspect that this, you know, arm sale was part of like a year-long process. right. But I guess here's a question, right? Like knowing how long some of this bureaucracy takes, knowing how bad this looks optically, how do you adjust this policy so it doesn't look like LCC can, you know, fuck with the family of dissidents one week and get a $200 million arm sale the next, right? Like obviously there's something broken there. Yeah. And, you know,

we talked about this a bit on a previous podcast. But like the bottom line is at some point, you have to not move forward with one of these, right? And look, I'm sympathetic, right? We, we in the Obama administration kept providing military assistance. I think we shouldn't have. It becomes routinized. You come in, there's a lot going on. I get it. Like, at the same time, if you really care about human rights, you know, I saw Tony Blinken did a call with his Egyptian counterpart day, put out on the readout, you know, I said that human rights would be at the center of our relationship. That's a welcome change from Trump who never would reference it. But at some point, unless the Egyptian government changes its approach to these things, you're just

going to have to put the pause button on some of this assistance. And it wasn't this sale, then it should be the next one. Unless this changes, the status quo is unsustainable. Because not only are they repressing any manner of dissent in Egypt, but they're literally harassing Americans. I mean, this is out of control, given the amount of assistance they get. So I really hope that the Biden team, you know, between this tranche of a military aid and the next one, kind of determines, you know, what would lead them to not provide that assistance? Because right now, if I'm Egypt, I think there's really nothing I could do that would lead the U.S. to cut me off or even to suspend something.

Just suspend it. Just say, you know what? Until our concerns are addressed, we're just not making these deliveries, you know? And then see what they say in response. Because at a certain point, the rubber's got to hit the road. Yeah. Bobby Wine, I thought, had a really thoughtful and interesting perspective on U.S. assistance to Uganda that folks should check out. So a couple more quick things.

So let's talk to about Australia for a minute because a while back, we talked about this effort by the Australian government to create laws that would force technology companies like Google and Facebook to pay publishers for news that they put on their platforms. And for Google, this would also entail giving publishers advanced notice about change. to their search algorithm, which are obviously like the crown jewels of the business. So the dispute was sort of a stalemate for a while until last week, Google decided to cut a deal with some Australian publishers to pay them for their content while Facebook just started to block all news content on Facebook pages in Australia.

And interestingly, Ben, I didn't realize this until I dug deep into it today. The Facebook block on news content swept up all kinds of other things like government agencies, nonprofits, political candidates, like it was broad. And it's unclear whether that was accidental or by design by Facebook to show just how draconian they could be. But the people who were affected and left like looking at newsless Facebook pages say that the void was filled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. So that's great. After about a week, Facebook kept negotiating. They got some more concessions that they found very important from the Australian government, and they cut a similar deal. So, unfortunately, a lot of this money that's going to get paid out to these publishers is going to

go to Rupert Murdoch because he has a huge publishing business in Australia. That sucks. I don't totally know how to feel about this one, right? Like, I want Google and Facebook to stop strangling local news outlets. I don't want Rupert Murdoch to be making a bunch of cash. On balance, I think this was a good outcome, but it does seem like regardless, like this Australian approach could become the model for how governments start to pressure technology platforms going forward. It seems like a pretty important moment. It's a complicated issue. There are two things, the two comments I make about this. The first one is, this is a real problem. I mean, just think about it. I don't get my news on Facebook, but more than half of my fellow Americans do. Right. And if you read a story on Facebook

in your Facebook feed, the advertising revenue for that journalism is going to to Facebook. And that's kind of bullshit, you know, and at a time when local papers and investigative journalism is getting strangled, part of the reason why is because the ad revenue for their work is going to Facebook because people are reading this stuff on Facebook instead of the websites of the news outlets. So it's a real problem and wrap it into all the other problems that Facebook has. And by the way, like, that leads my second point, which is we've talked in the past about, it reminded me we've talked about how China is so big and powerful that when individual nations stand up to China, China can smack them down. Facebook was kind of acting like China here.

I know. They're so big and powerful, they're more powerful than Australia, you know, and they could smack them down. And so that leads me to kind of the solution here, which is that I actually think that as I've counseled with Chinese human rights, a bunch of governments should get together, you know, and decide what they think about this, right? If the U.S. and Europe and Australia and any other, you know, Japan and any other, anybody wants to join the team, you know, wants to get together and decide what should be the norms or standards here, then Facebook couldn't kind of do this game of chicken, you know. And so I think in the long run, you know, having each national government figure out their own approaches here, you know, may yield a little bit of progress. But I think the best thing would be if there's kind of a set of like-minded governments that kind of negotiate. this stuff out with the tech companies. And that way, it's, it's a fair fight. It's weird to see that

that somehow Facebook is more powerful than a big country like, or at least a medium-sized country like Australia, but that is the case here, you know? Yeah, man. It is wild to see this company that started, you know, with Mark Zuckerberg ranking women in his dorm room. Like, you know, ex-girlfriend or something. Like in his dorm room is now like, you know, holding Australia hostage, you know, shaking down a country. Also, a lot of activists. who have complained about, you know, incitement on Facebook, I think we're a little pissed at how easy it was for them to remove all news content and how much they dragged their feet when it came to, you know, content that was inciting genocide. But that's a whole other basket of issues.

Ben, let's talk about maybe the wildest story of the week. And I don't even know how to process this one. Because last week, the United Nations investigators to release a report that accused Eric Prince, who you guys might know as the founder of Blackwater, this private security, contractors slash militia force that was an absolute disaster at Iraq, murdered innocent people. They accused Prince of violating an arms embargo on Libya by helping funnel aircraft, drones, and weapons to a Libyan leader named Khalifa Hiftar back in 2019. Eric Prince is also Betsy DeBos's brother and a huge Trump supporter. So Prince and his lawyer deny these allegations, but they haven't seen the details of the report yet.

It's not public. But if he's guilty, Prince could be punished by having his. assets frozen and he could be subjected to a travel ban. And so what the report says is that Prince pitched Hiftar on buying $80 million worth of weapons during a meeting in Cairo in 2019. He says this didn't happen. He says, I never spoke to Hiftar and wasn't in Egypt then. But it also notes that, you know, at the time of Prince's alleged meeting, Trump also called this same Libyan warlord. And then a couple of days later, completely changed. the U.S.'s position on supporting Hifter's military campaign on the Libyan capital.

So in the same week, we have allegations that Eric Prince met with this Libyan warlord. Trump called him, and then the U.S. policy totally changed. We became, the U.S. started supporting this guy. So I don't know what to make of this. A lot of different countries have taken sides in this ongoing civil war in Libya, right? Like the U.A.E., Turkey, Russia, Egypt, maybe the U.S., a lot of money washing around here. what the fuck did you make of this, Ben? I just don't know where to start. So I think it's important for people understand that Blackwater, the military contract in Iraq

didn't go away. It evolved. It's name changed. It's had, it's incorporated in different places. But there's still a military contracting business that's very lucrative. There's kind of a private protection business, right, where you know, you're the security for the Emirati World family or something. There are these mercenary groups that have fought in places like Yemen on behalf of the Gulf Arab governments. And yes, there's kind of training and arms dealing all over the place, right? That, you know, it's long been rumored Eric Prince is right in the middle of. And, you know, we've talked on this show, too, about how I was spied on by Black Cube, right, which is a different outfit. Obviously, it's a good performer Assad guys. But there's this whole murky world of military

contracting and private espionage and private security details that Eric Prince has been kind of of the godfather of for a very long time. The Russians have their own version of it. If you want to go down a rabbit hole online, Tommy, like Google the Wagner Group, they basically fight the war in Syria and eastern Ukraine, but they're in Libya too. And so the first thing I took away is, like, I'm glad that someone is finally just looking into this, you know, because it's this kind of amorphous space of private actors who, you know, are involved in war, which you usually think of as between nation states. Also, it didn't say who was paying for the armed sales, but like there's a lot of smoke

around the Emirates, right, who backed Heftar, right? And so maybe because they didn't want to do it directly, they do it through a guy like Prince, right? And so that's something else that needs to be looked into. And then your last point is like, there's a giant circumstantial case here. You know, the U.S. government policy was to not support Heftar, right? And we knew that the Emirates and the Egyptians were trying to pressure Trump to change his mind to support Heftar. Now we've learned that Eric Prince may have been involved in very lucrative arms business with Heftar.

And we learned that Trump himself was changing his mind right around the same time, right? Gee whiz. Hey, the Democrats control Congress. They should look into this. They should subpoena documents. They should subpoena witnesses try to figure out what the hell was going on here. Who was making policy? Because the last thing I want to say here is Eric Prince, who was also Betsy DeVos's brother, right?

Remember that spate of pardons included, pardons for the Blackwater guys who committed atrocities in Iraq. So we just don't know what the extent of the influence was of a guy like Prince during the Trump years. It's something that's really worth investigating, not for political retribution or anything, but just to understand how this ecosystem is working. Because it seems like it's corrupted aspects of national security, and it's kind of fueled the conflict in place like Libya or Yemen. instead of trying to de-escalate it. Yeah, and it's just worth noting that there's, like, former colleagues of Eric Prince who have blown the whistle on him that have, you know, talked about him doing inappropriate things with weapons systems in South Sudan, where he was also with his private militia force.

So, yeah, there's a lot of smoke here. Two more quick things than we're done. So we dinged the Biden folks on Egypt policy. Here's some great updates. The Biden administration has, you know, suggested to advocacy organizations that they, will add an ex-gender demarcation on federal documents to allow non-binary intersects people to accurately describe themselves on like, say, passports or other federal documents. So that is great news.

Also today, right before we started recording, Linda Thomas Greenfield, President Biden's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 78 to 20. So that is great news. She has this incredible, inspiring story of, like, growing up in Louisiana, attending segregated schools and then rising to this enormously important position. So really great to see. I'm glad that Biden's starting to get his cabinet and I'm excited about the work that she's going to do. Yeah, no, she's phenomenal. I got to know her just a little bit. But she's also just like a, she's a real career foreign service diplomat, right? So not only is Linda, Linda herself,

an extraordinary asset, it sends a message about the foreign service and the value of the foreign service and the Biden team. And yeah, look, we're critical in some areas in part because we agree with so much of what they're doing that it's only interesting sometimes to point out where you know you want to nudge them but across the board on some of these issues too issues LGBT issues refugee issues climate change they're picking up and going beyond where Obama was they're being more progressive on a whole range of things and so there's a lot to feel optimistic about and and the fact that that someone like Linda's in place means that the right people will be,

will be carrying that out. Ned Price, too, by the way. You should give a shout out. You know, Net is a spokesperson for the United States. Net is gay. What a powerful message, too, given how much the U.S. has to stand up for LGBT rights around the world, that the voice is doing that, right, you know, is such a remarkable, you know, brilliant, patriotic guy, deeply qualified and out.

and proud of it. You know, so that's another milestone for the U.S. in that regard. Yeah, absolutely. Last story, Ben, this one just made me laugh. So Matthew Pottinger, who we talked about earlier, the former Deputy National Security Advisor, told the BBC this amazing detail about Trump's second meeting with Kim Jong-un. So this was the meeting that was in Hanoi. The talks blew up quickly because Trump doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, and he announced that he was going to walk away, basically. But before he did, apparently he offered Kim Jong-un a ride home on Air Force One. Kim had taken this multi-day train ride through China from North Korea to Vietnam. I guess Trump told him, quote, I can get you home in two hours

if you want. So, Ben, my question for you to bring everybody behind the scenes, there's a whole bunch of different cabins on Air Force One, right? There's the president's cabin up front. It's got a bed, got his office. There's a senior staff cabin. Where do you put Kim? Do you put him in the conference room with some of his goons around that big table so they can watch TV. Do you have them like with the slubs like me where I used to put them in the press with the press corps, have him do a little briefing? Like where does Kim Jong-un ride on the way home and how many drinks you think he has before they land? So this is hilarious to think about it. I love this. And first of all, it's totally fucking insane. I mean, we took David Cameron and

Francois Alon, I think on Air Force One, you know, two closest allies or two of the closest allies in the world. Not a common to give a ride to just an area dictator. Also kind of hilarious because I think notoriously the Kim family distrust air travel. That's why they had these trains, right? I didn't know that. And the trains are rumored. There's some great stories about what goes on on these trains, right? Like the wines and food that are imported, the decadence.

But yeah, like, so I think that, you know, the thing is if people want to envision the plane, you got the press in the back. There's like a hierarchy, right? and then you've got like staff in kind of order of seniority. Like little tables, right? Yeah, so like the senior staff cabin. Yeah, senior staff cabin is four, right? And the senior staff cabin seats four people and it's like the most senior before

the presence quarters. And I guess Trump might have just given Kim the presence quarters because Trump himself would have been subordinate to Kim in his worldview maybe. But the interesting thing is if Kim was in the senior staff cabin, he would have had to share that with three other people. And you can only pick one movie, you know. And there's only, by the way, one meal serve too. And so it would have been very interesting to see how Kim would have negotiated with those other people, presumably Jared Navanka, I guess, about what movie to watch, what the meal is.

You know, this would make a good movie. This could be a sequel to the interview. I don't know if we can get James Franco and Seth Rogen involved, but, like, think of the sequel, you could make an entire movie about Kim Jong-un flying on Air Force One with. Trump. Yeah. See, I kind of figured you would put him in the big conference room. You would YouTube some like Dennis Rodman highlights from the 90s, throw that up on the TV and just like tell them it's live and it's current. Well, the worst thing is you'll remember is like you do what's called the gaggle on Air Force One. I had to do it a million times where you go back and whoever the official is stands there and all the reporters stand up, they hold their microphones at. But if you're

the press guy who has to stand behind the person, it's a hard of. the world because you can't hear what your boss is saying. Can't hear anything. So I'd follow Obama back there and he'd be making all this news and I couldn't hear. So, you know, if Kim was briefing, like maybe you put him in the back and you've got Kim briefing the press. But then the question is, you know, who gets to hear what he's saying? Like, how do you like to be the press, the press aide who's staffing the Kim Jong-un Air Force One gaggle, you know? Probably probably be a little weird. Yeah, just a little bit. Look, maybe we can have Pottingeran, we can talk about these Wuhan theories, and we can talk about this fantastic little

detail that he leaked to BBC. So thanks to him for doing that. Okay, when we come back, we'll have my interview with Ugandan opposition leader Bobby Wine. So stick around for that. You will not want to miss it. My guest today is Bobby Wine. He's a member of the Ugandan Parliament. He's the leader of the National Unity Platform Political Party, a former presidential candidate and an incredible musician. Bobby, thank you so much for making the time. We are humbled and honored to have you on the show. Thank you very much for having me. I'm really glad to be here. So just to start off to give listeners a little context. You just ran in Uganda's presidential election against President Museveni, who has been in

August since 1986. That is a very long time ago. Why did you decide to take him on now? Well, no just now. Uganda has been wanting change for the longest time, like you rightly put it. General Moseveni has been. ruling Uganda since 1986 when he and a group of rebels took over our country violently by force of arms and that has been the status of our country for the last 35 years. I decided to run for president because Uganda was desperate for change. But again, even before I ran for president, I came into politics because I wanted to represent the common people, the ghetto people, the poor people.

But most importantly, the young people, because young people in Uganda were largely excluded from the politics of their country. And yet, young people are over 80% of our population. For example, I am 39, but over 80% of our population are under the age of 35. So young people were largely disconnected, and I did not want to just inspire them through the music. I wanted to demonstrate by getting actively involved in the politics of our country, and thereby many young people would get involved. And I'm thankful that many people from my generation have joined politics, and yes, many of them have run for office,

and we hope to have a full representation of our generation, not just me, but people that think like me and people from the 21st century with 21st century ideas. So I think, you know, no one who watched the election closely would say that it was free and fair. Thousands of your supporters were detained around the election. You have been put under house arrest. You've been repeatedly harassed by Musevani's security forces. Members of the media were beaten by military police just for trying to cover your campaign.

What is the security situation like now? Are you able to move around at all? Like, what is the status for the opposition? Yeah, first of all, it's true that the election was not. Neither free, no fair. As we speak, all of my campaign team is in prison. They were all rounded up on an island with me as we campaigned. Apart from me, everybody else was detained, and they are in prison up to now.

The state arrested them on the 30th of November 2020. But then, according to the court records, they are charged with a crime that they allegedly committed on the 3rd of January 2021, that is when they are in prison. But the state alleges that they committed a crime when they were in prison, but they apparently committed it in the middle of town. Many other of our supporters and leaders are on the run. Many are missing. More than 3,000 of our supporters are in jails across the country.

And over 240 are actually missing. those ones were abducted. So that is the status of our team, but the entire country is in fear abductions and kidnaps, state-inspired abductions and kidnaps, are ongoing. Just the other day, General Maseveni, the current president of Uganda,

came on national TV and confessed that he indeed was the one that ordered for the murder of Uganda's. Remember, on the 18th and 19th of November, more than 100 Ugandas were shot and killed by police and the military. Although General Masevany admitted that it was only 54 people that was killed. And, you know, it's a general sense of hopelessness in Uganda. That being the way it is we have continuously encouraged our supporters to be nonviolent, to be peaceful, but to be assertive.

So the situation in Uganda today is tense. The military and the police are on rampage, but the people of Uganda are holding on strong because hope is one thing that they refused to lose. The behavior you just described from Museveni and the military is horrifying. And if we're being honest, I mean, his autocratic tendencies have been clear for a long time, but that has not stopped the United States government from providing Uganda with billions of dollars of aid, lots of which goes directly to the military. The State Department recently said that the conduct of Ugandan authorities in the recent election will be a factor when they consider

future U.S. assistance levels. Do you think that that kind of threat to cut off or condition aid by Western countries is helpful? Is there fear it could play into Moussevani's narrative that, you know, anyone who opposes him must be an agent of a foreign interest? For starters, on behalf of the people of Uganda, we are thankful to the development partners, but most importantly, the United States, because the United States has not only stood with Uganda in terms of security, but even in other sectors of development. It is true that General Seventh regime survives largely on the military support from the United States. It's very unfortunate that General Seveny has successfully would winked the way.

and in particular the United States made them believe that he is the anchor of stability in the Great Lakes region, and indeed has gone ahead to blackmail the United States every time they call him out on human rights abuses or on the utter disrespect of the rule of law and democratic principles. We believe that it is only the development partners, and most importantly, the United States that can hold General Seveni to account because the military, which is the backbone of Mosevenous oppressive regime, is largely funded by the United States. We have, on behalf of the people of Uganda, reached out to the United States, requesting numerously that the United States evokes its own laws like the Global Magnitsky and other laws in order to hold to account the human rights. abusers who are largely general seven years henchmen and we are thankful that the global magnetism has been evoked on such human rights abuses but again that is not enough we

appreciate the strongly worded statements that have come from the United States but we believe that the United States can follow the strongly worded statements with strong actions because the people of Uganda are, for lack of a better word, in a state of hopelessness. Right now, as we speak, people are being abducted and the other day we were with the parents, old men and women and children of the abducted citizens of Uganda, seeking redress, having petitioned the Uganda Human Rights Commission, but of course got to. and no redress from there. We decided to petition the United Nations Human Rights Office, but it was so shocking that the military showed up and beat the families of the abducted people

and indeed beat up journalists as well on the entrance of the United Nations Human Rights Office, as if to communicate that, you know, General Mesafe, he has no one. We strongly believe that if the United States reviews his cooperation with Uganda, but most importantly, makes the respect for human rights observing the rule of law and respect for democracy, if that is made, if those are made preconditions of cooperation with Uganda, then we strongly believe that General Saving will be reminded that he is also accountable to all the statutes that we are signatory to. For example, the international observation of human rights.

So, yes, we are hopeful that if the United States holds back its military and other kinds of cooperation and assistance to Uganda and makes preconditions for human rights and the rule of law, we strongly believe that would be, you know, a positive step in the right direction. Well, I personally hope that, you know, the Biden administration listens to your words here and takes action to back up those words. You know, relatedly, there's a lot of well-meaning people in the United States who hear about injustices in other countries and want to do something to help, right? In recent years, you've seen major social media campaigns around Joseph Coney, for example, or the effort to rescue young girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria. and sometimes those efforts have unintended consequences, which can be negative. Is there a role in your mind for average citizens to play who are not from Uganda to help resistance movements like yours, or is that inappropriate?

Of course, it's absolutely appropriate for the world citizens to stand in solidarity with the people of Uganda. I must also take this opportunity to thank the world citizens. There are many people from the United States and from all over the world that have raised their voices in very desperate times. When I was personally illegally arrested and kept in military detention under grave torture, it took the voices from friends of Uganda from across the world to get me out of the torture chamber that I was in. And yes, even recently in November, when very many people were shot and murdered, it took the voices of the people of the world to raise awareness about our flight.

Many times the internet is cut off here in Uganda. Whenever there are great human rights abuses, the general seven, he doesn't want the world to see. The internet is cut off. But because we have friends of Uganda that are always following up, They always raise an alarm, and it is the international attention that has kept some of us alive. So we know that it's a very, very important lifeline for us, and we encourage all friends of Uganda in the United States and all over the world to continuously raise their voices. It reminds us that we are also citizens of the global village. It reminds us that we're part of the international community.

And it also, you know, gives us a responsibility to look out for other citizens of the world that are being oppressed that are suffering in the doubt. Last question for you. So, you know, this week you announced that you're withdrawing your court case to challenge the presidential election results because the courts just aren't independent. These are judges who work for Musevani. You know, given all the ways that he has rigged the system, to stay in power, what's the path forward for the opposition in Uganda?

Thank you. I'm glad that you are aware that we are withdrawing from the Supreme Court of Uganda because it is clearly biased. I want to reiterate the reasons why we withdrew from the Supreme Court of Uganda. Number one is that the Chief Justice of Uganda is Moseveni's previous lawyer, he was Moseveni's lawyer, in the previous presidential election petition, and he was defending Moseveni. Now he is the head of the Supreme Court, he is the Chief Justice. And not only that, but just days after we handed in our petition in the Supreme Court of Uganda, the Chief Justice invited General Moseveni for a function,

and he, in his own words, asserted that General Moseveni would still be president next year, which we believe was a sign of double standards. And since then, the Chief Justice and many other justices from the Supreme Court have met Moseveni three times publicly and numerous times secretly. And indeed, on one of the meetings, General Moseveni promised that he would meet the justices of the Supreme Court privately. We don't know what transpired in their secretly. secret meeting, but we know that in one of the public meetings, the Chief Justice presented

a budget of some of the things that he wanted done by General Assembly. Now, while all this is going, there is a petition against General Seven's purported winning of the presidency on the table of the Chief Justice. But right after those meetings, the Chief Justice blocked an amendment to our electoral petition, even when he was aware that I was kept under house arrest for 11 days, and yet the law gives me 15 days to file a petition. In the previous election petitions, an amendment was accepted, but in my case, the Supreme Court rejected an amendment. In the previous presidential election petitions, evidence was accepted all through the hearing. But we have not even started.

the hearing, but my evidence was rejected by the Supreme Court. In the just recent election petition of 2016, against General Mo 7, filed in by Honorable Amama Mabazi, the submissions of the case went way over a week, but the Chief Justice said, my team can only submit our case for 30 minutes. So all these signs of bias, that's why we opted to. to ask the Chief Justice to recuse himself because he had clear conflict of interest. Unfortunately, he refused, and we had no option but to opt out of their court because they were clearly not independent.

We decided to take this case back to the court of public opinion, to the court of the people of Uganda. And I must say that now, like we've been saying in the past, the people of Uganda are going to have the last word in the destiny of the Afghanistan. country. We are going to call upon the people and the people of Uganda are going to have to take it upon themselves. Of course, I have been categorical calling upon the people of Uganda to be law-abiding and to be non-violent. We don't believe in violence whatsoever. I've reminded

the people of Uganda that in 1980, when the Supreme Court was behaving in a similar way like the court is behaving when the former president, Apollo Milton, who got the rigged the election, General Mosev and went to the courts, but he abandoned the case and went and waged a war that consumed over half a million people. We don't believe in violence, and we are not going to use violence. We are not going to go to war. We are going to call upon the people of Uganda, and it is within our law for the people to protest for a right.

So we are going to call upon the people of Uganda because we believe, that the people of Uganda will raise their voices non-violently. We really hope that the world will stand with us, because Genomew is a kind of person that believes so strongly in violence, and we know that he has always responded to everything with violence, even if we are to protest from our bedrooms. Genoma Savani is expected to mount tanks and a lethal force against the people of Uganda.

So we hope the world will not close. world will not close its eyes on the people of Uganda because we are on a road to achieving our democracy non-violently. And we look forward to see the world standing with us. Well, you know, we are humbled and inspired by your fight for justice and free and fair elections in Uganda. I promise we'll keep watching this story. And I'm incredibly grateful to you for giving us the time today. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks again to Bobby Wine for joining the show. Thanks, you know, to you, Ben. I don't know. I always run out of things to say there, and I oddly thank you. Thanks to

this office. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you, Tommy. I think you, Tommy. I think we don't think you enough. And I say, I can't wait to be, my God, you have no idea how much I want to be in that studio. I miss. I miss. I just, it's so weird to think that one year ago, every morning, five days a week, I woke up, and I went to a place filled with people that I really enjoyed spending time with. And then we had fun, casual interactions, work wasn't all work. It was some fun. And then we went went home. And we did it again. It's like so foreign to me. So fun. I mean, I, you know, I go back to Neen. After the show for a few hours and talk, I remember the last time I was there, like, we thought, you know, we were so responsible with our social distancing and that the big

disruption to us was going to be having to sit like 10 feet apart while we did a podcast. And here we are. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah, here we are. Well, depressing. All right. Well, talk to you guys next week. See ya. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yelfried, Nar Malkonian and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.