Pod Save the World - Is prosecuting presidents a good idea?

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

Tommy and Ben are joined by Crooked contributor Max Fisher for a segment to discuss a possible Trump indictment and how common presidential prosecutions are around the world. Then Ben and Tommy cover Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow, the retirement age in France, the global implications of the SVB collapse, new reporting on Ron DeSantis and his involvement in  Guantanamo Bay, and the latest coronavirus origin theory. Then Tommy is joined by Ethiopian journalist and activist Meaza Mohammed to discuss Ethiopia’s ongoing civil war and the lack of freedom of the press. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Did you do a bracket? Are you March Madness Day? No. Once the better players started playing zero to one years of college basketball, I lost a little bit of alert for me. Yeah, I love it. I don't watch a singular regular season game, so I don't care. So I can't really even board the listeners with a take. But the problem with this one is like a casual college basketball fan. The only college basketball content I've consumed before this tournament is about the number of Alabama basketball.

players were like president and like a horrible murder. Yeah, that was true. And some of them are playing in the, I mean, this is a fairly obvious take, but it is a kind of sign something's kind of wrong here. Yeah, it's not ideal. We're going to talk about the following on today's pod. First, is it a good idea to prosecute a president? We'll find out. Chinese president Xi Jinping is in Moscow. Why did he go there? What did they talk about? And we'll talk about the latest on the war in Ukraine. French president Emmanuel Macron has an intense passion to raise the retirement age. We'll try to understand why and how he's doing it. A judicial coup in Israel, U.S. Bank contagion spreads abroad, Ronda Sanchez and Gitmo and some quicker updates. And then you

are going to hear my interview with an Ethiopian independent journalist named Miyazah Mohamed. She was in L.A. last week. She won a big award from the State Department, was introduced at the White House. We talked about Ethiopia's Civil War and press freedom under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. You guys will be surprised to learn it's not great. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't start my, you know, independent blog there without, you know, a lot of security concerns. Yeah, she's arrested like three times in the last year. Yeah, what a turn that country has had. I mean, it seemed like such an optimistic case not that long ago. Yes, and I asked her about that. So, the voice you're hearing is our friend, our new colleague, Max Fisher.

Hey, guys. Excited to welcome him to the pod for the first time, but not the last time for this topic. We're going to lead with. Max comes to Crooked Media from the New York Times. He's been a columnist. He's been an international reporter. We are thrilled to have him as part of the Crooked Media team. You're going to hear him on lots of shows.

But we are particularly excited to have another foreign policy geek in this building. This is big for Ben and I. Don't sell the people out there short. They're more foreign policy geeks. There's geeks. You're right. Dozens of us. You're right.

They're just quiet about it. Yeah. But Max, welcome. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, guys. I've been listening for years. As you know, I just, there's a lot of reasons that we will talk about that I feel like this is the place to be for kind of where our country is and where people are in their media habits. Really excited to be on Pod Save the World now.

Hopefully more in the future. I'm going to be on offline with John Favro. And we are cooking up some other really cool stuff that we are very excited to unveil for everyone really soon, I think. Absolutely. And you guys have probably noticed we're trying to do more episodes than just one per week of Pod Save the World and are excited to work with Max on that. So, okay, first topic, the reason we wanted you here is Trump, everyone might have noticed, said he's about to be indicted for paying $130,000 hush payment to an adult film star named Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence during the 2016 campaign, the press corps, the cops in New York

are on the edge of their seats trying to find out. This would be the first such indictment in American history. Max, you have dug into this issue in the past and reported on it. What have other countries done and how do you think it's worked out for them? Well, so just to like give away the answer a little bit, the lessons that we can learn from other countries that are prosecuted presidents, which is actually America is really unusual in that it hasn't prosecuted past leaders. This is something that other countries do pretty routinely. But the lesson is that it is good to prosecute Trump. This is the right thing to do. But it tells us a lot about what we can expect, what the kind of risks are, what the things are to look out for. And generally, when you talk to people who study this and look at the record, they will say they're kind of like two categories of countries that prosecute. presidents that it works very differently in those two. There are the like healthy, consolidated democracies like France and South Korea love to throw their former leaders in jail for corruption. They just, they do a ton of it. South Korea, two of the last three former

presidents? And it was almost three of the last four, but one of them died while he was in the child. So it's just like the overwhelming. And these are legit cases to be clear. These are like, they really did the crimes and they were facing what looked like fair punishments for it. But in countries where this happens, it is seen as a kind of way to uphold the rule of law. You're sending a message to future leaders. And it generally works out fine. And it's not that people don't try. Like Sarkozy, who's the French president, who faced some corruption charges, and I think was convicted on them, he really tried to like pull a Trump and to like get people mad and say like, oh, the courts are coming after us and this is the deep state.

And people just didn't really buy it because they generally trust the justice system there. And then the other big category are the like weaker or younger democracies where it's really important to do this because you're trying to like establish rule of law and establish norms and try to like stamp corruption out of the system. But it can also be really risky. And there are like a few different things that can happen which are going to sound familiar to anyone following the news here in America. It can be perceived rightly or wrongly as politicized in a way that can undermine trust in the justice system. and that can lead to rejection of results, it can lead unrest, to protests. Sometimes leaders will get overzealous in pressing cases against their former rivals who are out of power, which is not a good habit to get into for lots of reasons.

And one is that something you see in countries like Peru or Bolivia and a lot of South America, as that leads to this, like, really destructive tit for tat cycle where, like, a new president comes in, and the first thing they do is open cases against their predecessors. Might be happening in Pakistan right now, or Imran Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistan is facing charges that range from terrorism to corruption. He had to appear in court last week and is taking a Trump-like approach to rallying these people. Right. And it's one of these things where if the charges are somewhat politicized, then like any reaction is politicized.

And you just see these like really vicious cycles like in Pakistan of more and more distrust, more and more institutional breakdown. And it's actually a reason. I was really surprised by this stat that 77% of new democracies that came out of a dictatorship never even try to prosecute. the leaders of the former authoritarian system, like in Mexico, for example, because it's just seen that, like, the risks of that are a little bit too high. So, Ben, Nixon, pardoned by Gerald Ford for his role in Watergate. George H.W. Bush pardoned his secretary of defense and six others for the Iran-Contra affair. We just read a report over the weekend about Reagan staff cutting maybe a secret deal with the Iranians

to keep the Iranian hostages in prison longer. He basically, the message was sent by John Connolly, who is a Reagan supporter to other leaders in the Middle East, to tell Iran, don't release the hostages before the election, don't help Carter. Reagan will cut you a better deal. Do you think people getting away with crimes like this, crimes like this has sort of gotten us to this moment? I mean, I think the thing that Americans don't fully, we make a lot of fun of the British on this

podcast about the monarchy at times, not the British generally. We like the British. But we have a kind of a quasi-monarchical system. I mean, we kind of elect a monarch for four or eight years. And so we don't, we treat our presidents, you know, they're literally faces carved on mountains. And we treat our presence a little differently than France or South Korea and certainly than a prime ministerial system. But I think it's worth kind of stepping back and asking like, has that worked out too well because if you look at Nixon and Nixon clearly committed crimes. Iran-Contra, clearly there were a lot of crimes there, and Reagan and Bush both had their hands on some of those crimes.

George H.W. Bush said he didn't know anything about it, pardoned all these individuals who committed the wrongdoing, but I think in his diaries said that he was fully briefed up on everything. Yeah. So, I mean, point being is like, would our democracy be healthier if we had held some of those presidents accountable for their crimes. I mean, maybe the way we got to where we are today is in part having a system in which there was this kind of, you know, presumption that a president can do whatever we want. As we even saw with when you and I were in government and we were being warned against all these norms and, you know, like, for instance, don't, nothing political on your

computer. And then Trump has the RNC on the South Lawn. And apparently that's fine. The Royal National Convention on your speech. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Point being is that I, I think the reason that we have not done it is less because we've had pristine presidents and more because we have this kind of quasi-monarchical system. And I don't think that's worked out. Max is the counterpoint Brazil, where former president, now current president, Lula de Silva, was sentenced to 12 years in jail. Now we're going to wait and see if Lula prosecutes Jaira who was the previous president. Right, right. Well, this, I mean, Brazil kind of shows the other side of this, that what if you defer more to prosecuting? Because it, it, it,

does have risks. And there's like still a really widespread perception in Brazil, which is not groundless. There's something to this that the left wing former presidents, Lula and Joma, were the, the charges are probably legitimate, but that the extent of the prosecution was probably political. And there's just like, there's almost not a way to do this, especially for the first time, that's going to be clean. And I think, I think, Ben, you're right that the kind of allowing the precedent to be set, that like, presidents and former presidents are not to be touched is partly why we're at this point of like, well, now it's too late. And now we really do have to test and we really do have to like try to prosecute a president. But there was also like a sense at the time, maybe not correct, but at least,

you know, we know where he was coming from that Ford was thinking that like the risks of prosecuting it were going to be high. And he did try to like state a little bit of a middle ground where he endorsed the charges and basically said like he is guilty. Yeah. implicitly. But we're just not going to go through with it because we think the cost of it are going to be too high. Yeah. You know, it's funny, though, the Ford pardon is one of those things that if you, like, come into Washington, it's, like, treated as this, like, act of massive courage by Ford and it kind of wins the Red Hen Civility Award for all time, you know? And nobody ever kind of test that assumption. Congressional Civility Medal of Honor, yeah. And there's probably something to that, right?

You've just been through a very divisive period, not just like Watergate, but Vietnam and assassinations and all the rest of it. And for, you know, the statesman argument as he was putting that behind us. But, I mean, at the same time, like, what message was sent? What, you know, and it is notable, and obviously it's hard to ignore the partisan piece of this, but I'm sure that there's some Republicans that would have some things to say about Clinton's on this issue, although that was a little different. The behavior in question was less criminal and more about appropriateness. But at the same time, look at the Republican president since Nixon was pardoned. There's been kind of a sense of impunity around certain kinds of things, you know, and why wouldn't there be given the track record?

So I called up a guy at the University of Washington named James Long, as a political scientist, who has studied cases abroad of former leaders being prosecuted. to ask like what is what makes the difference between a case where it's like if france or a south korea where it basically goes fine and you don't leave you don't see the kind of like backlash you don't see like what we're seeing now in israel with like benjamin net yahoo trying to like take power in a coup to avoid charges or the cases that work out really poorly like the israel's like arguably what's happening in brazil like pakistan and i expected him to say that it was going to be about the perceived independence of the justice system or Or it would be about levels of polarization.

It would be about how popular is the president or former leaders being prosecuted. But he actually said that those aren't the biggest factors. The biggest one that he had found was actually the number of charges that were brought and the severity of the charges. And he said if that number is really low. So not like a hushed money payment to a porn star? Right. Well, that was what I said. I was like, does that mean that this is like patent?

He said, no, because everybody knows that this is one of many things. And everybody knows that this is. And so the example that he cited, which I thought was really instructive with Jacob Zuma, who was, of course, the president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, super influential, super powerful within his party, within his base. Super corrupt. Incredibly corrupt, yeah. And when he was first charged, like, really tried to do, like, a full Trump and was like, the deep state is coming after us. And the courts are corrupt and take to the streets and, like, seize our government. And there was this fear because there were these riots that killed like 300 people that this might, I'm.

actually kind of be it for South African democracy. And James Long, the guy was talking to, said that what he saw was that that quieted down because the justice system in South Africa started piling on more and more charges. And they got up to like 15 charges over 800 different instances of corruption. And when that happened, everything just kind of fizzled out because people were kind of like, well, even if this is our guy and we like him and we don't trust the state, there's a lot here. And now that case is just kind of like plotting along. So I thought that was a like a good.

good sign of optimism that because we have so many charges against Trump that, and you see it now, like you see people are just like not mobilizing for him. It's funny when politicians get charged, or even go to jail and kind of use it sort of jiu-jitsu politically, like Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy. I think he went to jail for a little while and is now back and sort of, you know, a player in Italian politics. Travis? Yeah, another one. It's silver lining for Bibi Danyahu, who is facing multiple charges in Israel. Former Israeli prime minister, Ehudar Merit served 16 months in jail for corruption, and he wrote a book while he was there. So, you know, you can use your time well.

It take up watercolors. I don't think Trump's going to write a book. Yeah, do a push. A lot of people will consider Bush a war criminal and he's taken a painting already, so he's at the game. Maxing. Thank you very much. You brought great perspective and real reporting to this. Man, he's calling up political scientists.

We've got to get on a game. Phone calls. That's the move. That's the move. All right. Well, the first of many, and we were talking about branding this, we had Max Faxer, taking it to the max, uh, maximized minutes. I don't know. We'll work on some.

The max moment. Max moment. Your moment of max mentality. Okay. Thanks, man. Thank you. All right, Ben, let's turn to Ukraine because there's been some big updates. The first is that Chinese president Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow to visit Russian president Vladimir Putin. God knows what those. It's like a multi-day visit, right? Three days. What do you think they talk about? That's got to be a brutal, brutal conversation.

Well, we'll get to it. Who knows what there was discussed? The optics of two dictators for life sitting together in the same room where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1980s and declared an end to the Cold War says a lot. You better believe Putin's going to maximize the propaganda value in all of this, both at home and abroad. So Putin also wrote an article for Chinese state media. He criticized the U.S. for trying to deter Russia and China and said that NATO is, quote, seeking to penetrate the Asia Pacific. She's visit comes right after the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes. Stepping back, I think, I suspect the two leaders have slightly different goals from this visit.

I think both want to show up the United States and the West and make clear that the United States can't push them around. I think the Russians want to look less isolated by the war in Ukraine. I'm sure they want economic and military support, including weapons. The White House seems to believe or believes that China still hasn't decided whether or not to provide Russia with arms. So that's a good thing. President Xi is pushing this 12-point peace plan. Point one says each country should respect the other's territorial integrity. That would be great if it happened before the war.

But, you know, sort of taken in totality, this plan seems to be more like an attempt to freeze the conflict in a way that would help Russia and shut down Western sanctions. She didn't discuss the plan with the Ukrainians before he released it. But either way, he seems to you want to be a peacemaker. And this comes on the heels of China brokering the truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Ben, what did you make of this summit and the kind of on-edge feeling in Washington about it happening? I mean, I thought this is a huge deal, actually. I mean, first of all, they dialed the pomp and circumstance up, you know, three days. I think there are 100 Chinese officials that are.

You were saying this is the Cadillac plan. Yeah, this is the Cadillac plan. I mean, like, what did Obama get? We did not get this. We did not have like dinner and Ivan the Terribles chambers of the Kremlin. we did not bring 100 people over with us. And so I just, this is coming at, it could not be in a more critical time for Putin, right? Like he is entering into the second year of this war.

We've talked about how consequential the spring offensives are going to be. And he wants to show that he's not isolated. And what more could show that than the president of the biggest country in the world in the second largest economy decamping there for three days. And I actually think, you know, I see some people. say, well, you know, she failed to echo his support for the war. He doesn't need to. Like, by being there, the image kind of says. The image says everything. It's not like, you know, Xi has to go defend Putin's view of Ukraine. Just being there is a massive endorsement of Putin. I also think, like,

the peace plan coming at the same time, Putin's plan is, look, and we're going to get into this, but he's got a lot more land than he did a year ago. I mean, this is something we don't talk about because, you know, they didn't take Kiev, but he has his language. He has his language. And Brinbridge and southern Ukraine that connects Crimea at eastern Ukraine, he is going to want to be trying to freeze this conflict this year. Like, that's his plan. And so if she is framing a eye of this diplomacy and it's a peace plan and let's just stop it, ceasefire, like that is also, you know, to Putin's interests. So to me, this is the Chinese, you know, clearly taking aside. And look, I think we have to, you know, what's in it for them. I mean, look what's happening in this country now. And I'm not saying. there aren't reasons for it to be happening, but like we've got a special committee devoted to the destruction of the Chinese Communist Party. Oh, you're talking about the U.S. In the U.S., right?

We're shooting down balloons. Like, why, of course they're getting closer. I mean, this is kind of where. Yeah, this is where the world is headed, this decoupling. And China is shown time and again that faced with the choice between kind of bending the U.S. pressure on something or kind of taking a harder. line doing things we don't like, getting close to the Iranians, getting close to the Russians, they're going to do that, right? And so to me, this is a sign of kind of where the geopolitical,

you know, plates are underneath the surface of the earth and where they're going to be for a while. And we shouldn't be sanguine about that. And it reminds us that this is not the whole world supporting Ukraine. This is the West supporting Ukraine and the Chinese and Russians and their group supporting the Russians. Yeah, the economists had a really, interesting analysis of the visit. They pointed out that Xi and Putin have met 39 times over their duration of their career. So this is not a new relationship. They know what they're getting from the other. They also got into the interesting history about, you know, back in the 50s, there was a split between Chairman Mao and Russia under Khrushchev that kind of opened the door,

a crack for Nixon and his rapprochement with the Chinese. And then Russia and China got closer again after the West put in place in arms embargo, after Tiananmen Square in 19. 1989, and it sort of feels like this is a continuation of that trajectory. And they also got into the fact that, you know, in 2022, Russian exports of crude oil and gas to China rose in dollar terms by 44% and 100% respectively. So China's already been a huge lifeline for the Russians, whether or not they ultimately sell them these advanced drones. Yeah. I think we're like really focused on these drones, but between the purchases of energy, but also they're they're making whole the Russians. demand for chips and for parts and all the things that we're trying to restrict from getting in, they're backfilling some of that. They can't backfill all of it. And so they're already providing pretty enormous support. And I think we should check our, you know, there's some commentary in the U.S. like the Chinese are going to hate this invasion. You know, Xi must be regretting saying that he was best friends with Putin. I don't see any evidence. It's that the case. Like I sometimes we project

onto China, they're going to be embarrassed if Russia does war crimes. Like, they don't seem to be that concerned about that. And, and, you know, that speaks to how big this challenge is. Yeah, a quick aside, just before we get to the sort of broader Ukraine reality, U.S. News reported that back in 2021, you remember 2021 when the Indian and Chinese militaries were fighting this, like, high altitude battle in the Himalayas, literally like hitting each other with like bats with nails in them and shit. U.S. news reported that the U.S. India with intelligence about the Chinese military's troop movements in the area that helped India win some of those battles, but infuriated the Chinese.

I had not heard that before. Yeah. Like, again, I don't, it may be inevitable, but, you know, we are taking a very confrontational stance to China. And we can't then be surprised when the Chinese do things we really don't like, you know. And it starts under Trump if it's continued, it's kind of bipartisan. And look, there's good reasons to have serious issues with the Chinese Communist Party. I do worry about the need.

I'd rather be talking to the Chinese. And right now it just feels like we have very little diplomacy with them. Because they're not going anywhere. There's over a billion people. So I do think that we should be looking to try to see if turning down the dial might help our objectives in places like Ukraine a little bit more. So we should talk about the reality of the war for a minute on the Ukrainian side. Because at the end of last year in particular, Ukraine was on a role. There was this surprise offensive.

They took a huge amount of territory. And you saw a lot of commentators talking like the war was over or it was about to be over. And I think things look very different today. Some of the facts on the ground. So Ukraine has reportedly taken 100,000 casualties. The Ukrainian side denies that number, but clearly the fighting has been unbelievably brutal. And in war, some of the first to die are your best trained, most experienced men who, like any military commander will tell you, is your most valuable resource.

And Ukraine just does not have as many bodies to throw out the fight as Russia does. There has been this battle for months in Bakhmut. Initially, it was seen as advantageous for Ukraine because the Russians were taking more casualties. But again, those were Wagner group members. They were a mercenary group that wasn't trained. And my understanding is now that the ratio of Ukrainian to Russia, Russian dead has gotten far better for the Russian side, but Ukraine has not abandoned that fight. For months, you've been hearing Western countries sound the alarm about Ukraine's dwindling ammo

supplies in NATO and the U.S.'s inability to manufacture enough or even find enough in current stockpiles to fill the gap. Zelensky and the United States and other Western leaders have failed to convince countries in the global South, in particular in Africa, to get on board with sanctions or support for Ukraine, they have reservations about, I don't know, a lot of countries in Africa have reservations about sort of being seen as shoulder to shoulder with the U.S., UK, the French, you know, a lot of like colonial reasons there. Russia sells a lot of arms and puts Wagner forces in a lot of Russian countries. So the kind of list could go on and on bend. I think the basic point is things are getting worse for the Ukrainian side and we keep hearing

about this planned spring offensive that Ukraine will launch. And it gets more challenging by the day because they're losing good troops. And the stakes seem to be ratcheting up. You know what I mean? Because everyone's like, well, if they don't win this, it's time to cut a deal. Yeah. That's exactly the point. You know, everything has been channeling into this, you know, spring offensive that we feel like we've been talking about for a long time now. because in part, if Ukraine can't show like a lot of momentum in that, they're in a position where it's not clear that they can continue to mount offensives. Put aside the F-16 type question, just like the ammo question, like can they replenish their

stockpiles that they've been burning down in places like Bakhmud? That, you know, because the West didn't foresee the need to fight a major artillery war, it's not like we're flush with ammo here, you know? And it takes time to ramp up the industrial production of that kind of ammunition. So they might literally not be able to mount an offensive after this spring one for a while until they can kind of replenish stuff. At the same time, by the way, the same thing applies to the Russians. They're low in ammo too. But they can't hold this land and they have more.

Bigger military industrial complex. Yeah, more human beings. And they can turn that entire military industrial complex into this task. So the situation that I think is probably concerning the Ukrainians is if you get into the summer and, you know, you still have Russia occupying huge swaths of eastern southern Ukraine. And the momentum in the international community is like, yeah, let's, you know, the Chinese have a peace plan. And Putin says he wants to ceasefire. And a couple of European governments are starting to say, like, wait a second. Like, we need to stop and take a pause here.

I think what you'll see there is also a test for the Western, you know, alliance. as far as it's held together, do you start to see fractures? You know, the moment that Putin wanted to come earlier in the war does feel like it might be approaching. Now, the alternative is that the Ukrainians have a lot of battlefield success and they take a bunch of territory and it's like, let's just keep up the momentum and keep this going. But it does make it feel like a lot is riding on this offensive, probably more than anybody's comfortable with because the structural dynamics of the war right now kind of play into Putin's, let's just wait these people out. grinding out, hold onto our territory. And you could look at it from this perspective.

Ukraine has already won the sense that it's a viable country. They kept their government. They kept Kiev. They're drawn closer to Europe. What might they ask for in those negotiations, you know, NATO membership, et cetera. But we shouldn't ignore the fact that Russia has made these territorial gains. And they too might be very happy with a ceasefire this summer. Yeah. If there was a ceasefire this summer, it seems like Russia would have picked up a lot of territory. And they're probably happy with that. And it would be, you know, maybe phase one of a multi-phase war to take the rest. Yeah.

And that's Putin's long game. Okay. Well, obviously watching this one closely. But let's turn to France, where Ben, the most controversial topic in the country is the number 49.3. Seems exciting, right? So that is the article, the French constitution that lets the government push a bill through the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament without a vote, which is very weird that you could even do that. But here's the rub in this sort of high stakes game of a fair. French political poker. If you use Article 49.3, the opposition party then has 24 hours to respond

to its use with a no-confidence vote. And if that no-confidence vote passes through the parliament, if you've got to get an absolute majority of members to vote for it, then the government's proposed bill gets tossed out, as does the prime minister and the cabinet. So the whole government gets tossed out except for the president. So high-stake stuff. So why the hell are we talking about this, you ask? Because French president, Emmanuel Macron, has wanted to raise the retirement age in France since he first got elected in 2017. That plan sort of went on pause during the pandemic and everything else. And before his reelection. And before his reelection. Yeah, a little more cynical. But he spent the last couple months fighting to try to get parliament to pass this bill, fail to garner enough

political support. So last week he used Article 49.3 to jam it through. Opposition parties called a no confidence vote, which he narrowly survived on Monday. The no confidence vote got 278 votes, nine short of what was needed. There have been months and months of protests and periodic strikes against Macron's retirement increase plan. Those continued after the failed, no confidence vote. Opponents are now preparing legal challenges.

So, like, again, Ben. French really like their retirement. I get, yeah, it's wild. Like, I get the sort of actuarial argument for raising the retirement age, right? There used to be, I think, four to one sort of workers to retirees. Now it's like two and a half to one.

People are living longer, eventually a state-back pension system. won't be able to care for everyone. Yeah. But I don't get the urgency or the obvious passion for making people work longer. And now there's this added, like, rub of his opponents fairly, I think, arguing that he used this completely anti-democratic means to ram it through. Like, what am I missing here politically?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's like a profound neoliberal heart beating inside of Emmanuel Macron, right? Like that, like, and, you know, to be fair, like, he's not the only person who's looked at France's books and thought, hey, we can't maintain this generous welfare state if we don't raise retirement age. But to me, what is it? The real takeaway is like McCrone came in and he probably had a bunch of, he wanted to be a historic French president. He seems like he's constantly thinking about his place in this story. For sure. And so this is probably on his list of things that he wanted to get done to position himself as this historic French president, to be able to say, you know,

I was this transformative transitional president for a decade. 80's term limited out. I think what what it says to me, though, is when he came in, he built this new political party on Marsh, and he kind of broke the left and the right. They didn't really kind of know how to deal with this large centrist party that occupied all this real estate. And part of what's happened is that party is proven to be a useful vehicle to McCrone, but it's basically falling apart. It's just him now. And but the other parties are broken, too. And so what he's kind of doing is he's like just a. bowl in the china shop of French politics.

Like, and meanwhile, he's getting his shit done, right? And this thing may get done. What I worry about Tommy is, it's jitting up all this resentment and populism on the left and the right.

And so you start to worry, even though we've got a few more years of Macron, like, you know, number one, like what's next? You know, is he radicalizing,

you've got a far right that wants to come in for sure? And is he making that more likely by what he's doing, you know, by pissing everybody off and alienating younger voters and things like that.

That's concern one. And two, is he like, you know, he is governing in pretty undemocratic ways. And just because he seems like a non-autocrat, you know, he seems like, you know, doesn't mean that, you know, he's not testing some norms that if Marine Le Pen comes in. Oh, we'd all be screaming. And starts using the same tactics to ram through bills, you know, that deal with identity and immigration. we'd all be freaking out about this in the rest of the democratic world. So, yeah, I think that whatever you think about the mechanics of his retirement proposal, doing it like this carries huge risks for France, I think.

Article 49.3 has been used 100 times since 1958. So it happens, but not that often. Macron reportedly threatened to dissolve the parliament entirely if the no-confidence vote went through. So we would have forced all these kind of members who have been dealing with protests and everything else to face elections that probably helped him survive. There were actually two no confidence vote efforts, one from the far right, which like nobody wanted to touch, and then one from the sort of, you know, like never Trump Republican type party. But again, you know, the retirement age in Germany is 65 and seven months in Italy, it's 67. EU is mostly 65. So, you know, Macron is kicking this beehive of this

sort of like deeply held cultural feeling in France that you get to retirement. That's like the golden age of life. The average French person spends 25% of life in retirement. He's only 45, so he's going to have a long retirement. I'm just surprised he's trying to screw it up for money. They've always had shorter work weeks there. I mean, you know, it is, you know, I mean, it's a choice, right? I mean, if you would rather, you know, organized society that way, I think the challenge is, like, can you pay all your benefits? Yeah.

I think what the left would say is that they could tax rich people more. Right. They already tax them a hell of a lot more than here. But again, like, even if you think there's some common sense behind what Macron's doing, like, like, there's some political risk to the way he's doing it. Not for him. Like, he'll be fine. Like, he's going to be present for three more years. The risk is for where France is going. So speaking of that risk, the last financial crisis certainly helped the far-right movements across the globe. Currently, you know, we're dealing with all this turmoil in the U.S. banking system

is starting to be felt abroad. This mess started with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank or SVB on March 10th. The gist of what happened was in 2021. They were fat and happy. They got a got a ton of new customer deposit. Everything was great. They made all these bad investment decisions where they tied up big chunks of money and long-term bonds, right as depositors were trying to get their money back, had to sell at a loss that led a bunch of tech investor types to freak out, tell everyone to pull their money out of SVB, which started a bank run, and now the bank is no more. So since then, Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, they've taken a number of steps to help ensure that other small banks in the U.S. stay solvent. But in the meantime, Ben, the contagion

is spread overseas to Switzerland, where the Swiss government had to broker a deal for UBS to purchase its rival Credit Suisse for about $3 billion. The government backstopped that deal. Last week, Credit Suisse customers were withdrawing up to $10 billion per day. So this SVB collapse in the U.S. led everybody to sort of like scrub balance sheets for weaknesses. Credit Suisse had many because of scandals and screwups and losses over the years. In December of 2022, they raised, Credit Suisse did, four billion from investors. When that was all said and done, the Saudi National Bank had a 9.9% ownership stake. In the midst of this sort of tumult, the chairman of the Saudi bank was asked if they were planning to buy more shares in Credit Suisse. He said absolutely not, which he had said

before. But that triggered a panic. Shares went into a tailspin. And when Credit Suisse was no more, the Saudi National Bank lost a billion dollars on the deal, according to CNBC. So, ouch. Not a lot of money did Saudis. Don't do that interview. So like listeners might be saying, like, okay, who cares, right? In the near term, thousands of jobs will be lost in Switzerland. You know, that could have an impact there. But I do worry about, you know, this, what will the reaction be if we, through our mismanagement of banks in the U.S., precipitate under the global financial crisis? You talk about lack of, you know, loss of standing in the world. Yeah, well, especially like you guys have talked about SVB, the only thing I'll add to it is

it'd be kind of insane if it started with like some medium-sized bank like it's one thing when it's like Lehman Brothers and it's how all Wall Street was operating that was the financial crisis this is basically like a bunch of these fucking small medium-sized banks got out from under their regulatory imperatives

because of some Trump legislation in part I know that's not the whole story but if that's like part of what knocks over the first domino in a banking crisis I think that what this speaks to generally though that concerns me is that we're looking at a lot of instability. We've talked a lot about the risk of instability in Iran,

you know, in Ukraine, with Taiwan is obviously the biggest risk out there. But even in the way in which, you know, the U.S. and China are competing now, like that's going to be very disruptive to the global economy is that the two of us kind of untangle from one another. It just feels like if something comes along and it introduces like another layer of risk of this, Because you could argue that this is tied to the geopolitical events because it's the cost of living and the interest rate rises have contributed, right? Oh, inflation.

I mean, right, inflation was made worse by the cost of oil and gas going up, which was started by the war, right? Exactly, right? So it does tie together. And so I just kind of worry that we're sometimes we, I think we're acting like the economies are healthier than they are and that these external shocks are not going to stop. Because sometimes people are like, well, it was just a pandemic. Well, no, there's like wars happening now. And I just feels a little tenuous. Look, I think the big takeaway for me for SVB is you can't assume like we're fighting

the last war and that we're going to see the problem coming. It's going to be something no one expected, which is a bank in Silicon Valley buying too many long-term treasury bonds and that like undoing the banking system for a couple weeks. But yes, worrisome and I don't think the story is over. Speaking of kind of ongoing disasters, Ben, on Sunday. President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu about his plan to rip away power from the Israeli judiciary. I love that Ha Aretz calls it a judicial coup and just their straight news copy. Just a fantastic editorial decision.

So Biden's call came after Netanyahu rejected a compromise proposal from the Israeli president. The New York Times, by the way, reported on how the architects of this judicial coup plan are two American guys from Queens who started a think tank in the U.S. It's partly funded by a right-wing American billionaire. So again, it's good to know we're exporting our bullshit abroad. There was some good news out of Israel, Ben, which was that senior officials from the Israeli and Palestinian Authority side met in Egypt to discuss ways to de-escalate tensions. There were two sets of meetings, I believe, which were the highest-level discussions between the two sides in 10 years.

That fact alone kind of like jumped out of me that these guys just not really been talking. Yeah, since the John Kerry process, yeah. The other thing that I notice is views of the conflict have shifted dramatically among members of the Democratic Party in the U.S. In 2016, 53% of Democrats said they sympathized more with the Israelis, 23% with the Palestinians. When Gallup asked the question again this February, 38% of Democrats said they sympathized most with the Israelis. Well, 49% said they sympathized most with the Palestinians, so like completely flipped. I guess just stepping back, like, I wonder how much of this is facts on the ground. and reporting and wars in Gaza and, like, you know, images out of Sheikh Jara

versus Netanyahu's decision to fully embrace Trump. I mean, a majority of Democrats continue to view Israel favorably, but that, too, is down. I think it's more the latter. You know, I mean, you and I are most concerned with the direction that Nanyahu's been going and the treatment of Palestinians in places like Gaza and Sheikh Jara. And that's clearly impacting, I think, people who follow this issue closely, including people in the American Jewish community who, you know, particularly when you look at the judicial coup, are in almost an existential crisis about how to think about support for Israel with a government that is this extreme. But I also think, you know, we talked about that a lot. The other piece here, though, is the decision by Netanyahu and, by the way, by like APEC in this country to just completely embrace the,

Trumpian support for for for right wing Israeli politics, but not just Trump like Pompeo, the kind of evangelical, the right wing Christian evangelicals, the kind of right wing evangelical obsession with support for Israel, which as we've talked about is tied in part to the the idea that the rapture is going to come, right? But there's a cost to that. And I think that APEC and others in this country have thought they could just bank all this Republican support and then primary Democrats, you know, but everybody can see that happening. And, you know, we remember the Republican National Convention, Mike Pompeo appearing in a political speech

and he was in the Holy City. On the U.S. Embassy, he was in Jerusalem. Yeah, it's very weird. And it was just like that kind of stuff adds up. And look, at a certain point, like in solidifying this kind of hard right evangelical support, you may lose like the preponderance of the Democratic Party. And just because you can win a congressional primary in Michigan,

which APEC and others got involved in, you know, to support one candidate over the other. That doesn't mean that in the long run, this is a losing strategy for maintaining democratic support for Israel. Yeah, I forgot about that. Pompeo delivered his RNC speech while on a taxpayer-funded trip to Israel. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty crazy, you know.

That is out there. That is out there. But we're not just talking about Trump today. We got to talk about Ron DeSantis because a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay Prison claimed that Florida governor Ron DeSantis, watched him being tortured while DeSantis was stationed at the prison and this individual was being held. So DeSantis was a Navy JAG officer. He was stationed at Guantanamo Bay from March 2006 through 2007.

This account is from a report in the Independent. So this detainee's name is Mansour Adafi. He's a Yemeni citizen who was held at Gitmo for 14 years. Addafi went on a hunger strike in 2006 to protest the conditions at Gitmo. This was very common at the time. and the U.S. response was often brutal. They would strap detainees to a chair, force a tube up their nose and into their stomach so that a nurse or someone could pour a protein drink directly into this individual's stomach.

The UN Commission on Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross both said force feeding was torture. DeSantis refused to comment for this story, but here's a clip of him talking about his time at Gitmo from the campaign trail back in 2018. Were you interviewing terrorists? Were you a legal advisor? I was a legal advisor. For those that were doing?

The things that would happen is the thing you notice the day you get down there is for these detainees, the jihad was still ongoing. And they would wage jihad any way they can. Now, they're in a facility, so it's limited. But some of the things they would do, they would do hunger strikes. And you actually had three detainees that committed suicide with hunger strikes. So everything at that time was legal in nature one way or another. So the commander wants to know, well, how do I combat this? So one of the jobs of the legal advisory would be like, hey, you actually can force feed.

Here's what you can do. Here's kind of the rules of that. You also had a lot of detainees claiming abuse because this was in the way of Abu Ghraib, and that was used offensively against our guards. So our guards would have feces thrown at them, all this other stuff, and yet they would be charged with detainee abuse. So we had to evaluate all that. So what I learned from that and I took to Iraq when I was working with CL Team 1 is,

they are using things like Danny abuse offensively against us. It was a tactic, technique, and procedure. So obviously you can tell by that, you know, Desanthus is not denying this. Addafi said of DeSantis, he was watching and I was really screaming, crying. I was bleeding and throwing up. We were in the blockyard, so they were close to the fence. I think groups would watch this happen. He also said that DeSantis had told him previously that he was there to make sure detainees were treated humanely.

I think the bigger picture point here, Ben, is DeSantis emerged from his time at Gitmo as like an unrepentantant champion of the place. You know, he thinks it's good. And, you know, I should point out that our former boss, President Obama tried to close Gitmo. but couldn't because Congress blocked him. He ended up defending force-feeding detainees because he said he didn't want them to die, but the whole thing is just a stain on our country's history. So I don't know.

I feel like just when we thought we were stepping back from the worst excesses of the war on terror, like 20 years after war in Iraq, we're back with Ron DeSantis defending force-feeding of detainees in Gitmo. And just to be reminded that Gitmo is still open, just because Republicans didn't want Barack Obama to be able to close it, you know.

And enough Democrats went along with that, by the way, is insane because this is all the more reason to have closed that person. Yeah. Look, it doesn't surprise me about, you know, Descentist has a bit of a, you know, sadist quality to him, you know. Does give you that of pressure sometimes. Yeah, like I, and I'm not saying that lightly that, you know, like there's something kind of chilling about the guy.

It doesn't surprise me that this kind of thing wouldn't necessarily affect him on a human level. I do think that he's coming across as like a particularly, he takes the worst of all aspects of Republican foreign policy because, you know, we talked about his declaration of support for Russia's view of the war in Ukraine via Tucker Carlson. So he's not like your cookie cutter neocon who likes Gitmo and, you know, also wants to support the Ukrainians. Like he's, he's picking from the menu and he's like, I'm for the treatment at Gitmo. I'm for the like Tucker Carlson line on Russia. He's kind of a Frankenstein of the worst aspects of the Republican Party's view of American national security and exceptionalism. Yeah. So just it's worth pointing out.

The U.S. government eventually said it was. wasn't clear if this detainee Adafi was a member of Al Qaeda, but if he was, he was probably a low-level fighter. The independent asked Adafi about DeSantis, and he said, quote, he's a bad person, you know, I like America and such people when they come to power, they create a lot of problems. I have no hate against him, but at the same time as a lawyer, as someone who is a graduate of law and believes in the law, he should have known better. If you love your country, if you love your people, if you believe in American values, you should be the first one who called for the closure of Guantanamo. Well said. He said it better than we could. That's

100% true. It's 100% true. Okay, a couple quicker things before we get to the interview. So, Ben, some good news. An American aid worker abducted by militants in Niger more than six years ago was finally freed. Jeffrey Woodke was captured in Niger in October of 2016.

U.S. officials believed he was taken to Mali or Burkina Faso and held there. A French journalist who was taken hostage in 2021 was also released. I mean, sounds like this happened when you were in the White House. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this This is a part of the world where you've had, you know, a lot of this over the years.

And where European governments, you know, like had paid ransoms to. Yeah, it's something the French helped negotiate this. Yeah. So there's kind of these weird pipelines to have dialogue and communication. And we were constantly trying to get the Europeans to not pay ransoms. But there are kind of established channels for resolving this. What you don't want to see is obviously the incentivization. of taking people like this, but it's just whenever you can get somebody out of this situation

for the United States, in particular because we don't pay ransoms, it's a huge relief. Man, six years and kept to these. I can't imagine. Unimaginable. Can imagine those conditions, too? I mean, it's, I don't think of it. Horrific. Terrific.

Turning to India, thousands of police officers in Punjab, India, have spent several days now conducting a statewide manhunt searching for a Sikh separatist leader named Amprital Singh. authorities have even cut off internet access across the whole Punjab region and have detained hundreds of his supporters. The Indian government is worried about this guy basically calling for a separatist state for the Sikh religious majority in Punjab. There was a battle with a separatist insurgency back in the 80s. Thousands of people died. Singh and his supporters recently stormed a police station to demand the release of some of his guys. But, you know, as of this recording, Ben, the Indian authorities have not.

caught him despite seemingly having like cops, paramilitary forces, like everybody out on the street. I was trying to figure out kind of where Punjab is in the general ranking in terms of population compared to the U.S. and I figured a rough equivalent is the U.S. government shutting off communications in the state of Kentucky to do a man-on. Yeah. You know, the thing about this is, yes, you've had these kinds of tensions flare up. But when you have a government that is moving in a very religious nationalist direction, a Hindu nationalist government under Narendra Modi, you're going to end up having more sectarian

tension because, you know, whether it's a Muslim minority, a Sikh minority, you know, others in India that don't feel a part of what Modi's doing. I'm not, you know, this may be more complicated. This guy has, I'm sure, his own agendas. But I do think that one risk of taking a country in the direction that Modi has is that you stir the pots of all these potential sectarian conflicts that have been really violent at times in South Asia. Certainly make it a hell of a lot easier for them to recruit people in good favor. Lastly, so a new analysis of genetic samples from China now appear to link the pandemic's origin to raccoon dogs. We're, of course, talking about COVID-19.

The Atlantic reported, quote, it's some of the strongest support yet. Experts told me that the pandemic began when SARS COVID-2 hopped from animals into humans rather than an accident among scientists experimenting with the virus, end quote. We may never know for sure, but I saw a recent poll. There's a Quinnipiac poll that shows Americans believe the lab leak theory 6422 over natural transmission. Which is just a crazy stat. And again, I return to a point I've made, which is, I don't understand why it's somehow like if your goal is to say that the Chinese government didn't handle this properly. Like why having an illegal wet market where this could happen is somehow fine.

But if it's a lab leak, it's, you know, it just sounds nefarious. And it allows for a biological weapons conspiracy theory. It's just kind of strange to me how much investment there is in this lab leak theory among the lab leak, you know, devotees here, you know. I know. And look, we will probably never know for sure. I think the lesson here is just get a regular dog. I don't know what a raccoon dog is. Like breeding a raccoon and a dog is, you know, sounds like a good way of getting a pedinemic too. Absolutely. I mean, I also think Americans, we just kind of like conspiracy theories. How much of the country likes Q&A? I mean, I'm not calling the lab leak a conspiracy theory. I'm just saying like we're not a big fan of auction's razor. Well, some of it is like the biological weapons. Right, right. We're just, I think as a public, we would rather think that like Area 15. is where there's aliens than like some lame military base. Yeah.

And, you know, the lab leak thing played into in this country, I think, also the distrust of like Fauci and science, right? Because people didn't like scientists. So they didn't like labs. Or Fauci supported funding for labs like this. And so it got tied up in our own psychosis. But yeah, like we do like a good conspiracy theory. And maybe because, you know, um, uh, uh, Maybe because there are things in the past that, I don't know, the truth is out there.

That's very true. The truth is out there. I'm excited to keep talking about this until 2050. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear my conversation with Meizu Muhammad about her work as a reporter in Ethiopia. So stick around for that. My guest today is Maaza Muhammad. She is an Ethiopian journalist, advocate, and the founder of Roja TV, which is a independent, YouTube-based news channel.

Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Los Angeles. Thank you so much for having me. So let's just start with. your news channel. Why did you start an independent news channel? What kinds of stories do you focus on? Yeah, my new YouTube channel, actually. Previously, I was working as an employee in different news stations. I was a teacher, too. Meanwhile, in our country, all medias are under the broadcast authority. So you cannot have your own independent news, independent reporters,

so that you cannot do what you like to do. You are doing what you're supposed to do. The state-owned media. Yeah. So what I am planning is just to have our independent news center, news media, to make reporters, to put political opinions, and to advocate for human rights. So the platform that was either for me was a YouTube platform.

Actually, after we start our YouTube platform, Again, the government started to put in registration for the YouTube channel also. We have to be registered under the broadcast authority again. But still, it is a good platform in order to use what you want to do. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because I saw that in February, the Ethiopian government blocked access to a bunch of social media sites, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, I believe. Why do they do that?

And what does that meant for people's ability to get news? Actually, it's normally in Ethiopia, you know, to block internets whenever there is a conflict, whenever there is a kind of situations which the government think that's not comfortable for them if they have a kind of violence, things, they start to block everything, they start to arrest journalists, activists. The thing in February was there was a kind of disagreement with the Christian Orthodox Church. So people were, again, and then even the Orthodox Church called for demonstration, a huge demonstration all over the country. So what the government did is shut up the whole, the internet connections and then arresting

different journalists, closing medias even activists who were in prison. Still, there are many activists who are in prison due to that case. So whenever there's something happening in the country, we know that internet will be closed. So we try to look some other opportunities, like using VPNs and something like that. Right. We are almost adapting that. Yeah, you guys are nimble. I know that you, some of your colleagues, other journalists you just mentioned, have been arrested or detained by the police.

What was their reasoning behind harassing you? Yeah. The thing that we have been arrested, the reason is actually that, as I told Joe, if there's something happened in the country, they know that if we are not. not under our rest. We will work for the people. We will write independent news. We will advocate what's right for, we think that. So they just put, the thing, for the first time I was arrested by Abiyahm administration was under the common post. We had a kind of state of emergency during the worst. So at that time, they charged. Actually, there was no charging because it is under a state of emergency. They just put you in the jail and then they forget you. That's what happened to me. No court

no charges. They take me to the prison and then they put me for 40 days. 40 days? Yes. 40 days for theirs. Then they leave me alone. There is no going to court. There is no charge. There is nothing that happened to me. But they were accusing me

for working with TPL left, which won't happen. Working with TPL left and you know, working against the East. working with the enemies of the country and something like that. So I was imprisoned with a lot of Tigrayans who were under the coma and post prison. That was happened to be. At that time, there was also a conflict in Amhara Regional State. So we don't know what's the connection.

I live in the capital city, but the thing was happening in the Amhara Regional State. And then again, they put me in prison because they said she's working with Zos making the violence. Because what we are doing is we advocate what people are asking. We write reporters what people are trying to ask what the demonstration says. So they don't want to be this. And they think the government thinks that silencing journalists and silencing the people. That's how it works. Basically they're saying, so we'll get into the civil war.

I mean, there's been this civil war happening since I think November of 2020 until November of last year, there was a ceasefire between the Ethiopian government and the team. TPLF, who were this an organization in the northern Tigray region, right, of Ethiopia, sort of the former government, a lot of former government officials up there. And they're basically saying you're working for the other side of the Civil War because you're doing reporting. Yeah. Yeah.

For your information, the war is not only in Tigrisian state. Right. So it takes place in three regional states, the Afar Regional State, the Amhara Regional State, and the Tigray Regional State. We call it the Northern War or the Northern conflict. So there are so many, actually they were the federal government, high official officer federal government. And then after the change has come,

they moved to the Tigris Regional State. And then the fight is between the Tigrisian Regional States and with the federal government. Me, I always call it the waters, the politicians were not the people. That was why. what I am advocating for, I was telling for people, this war is not the issue of the people. This war is a conflict between the politicians for the sake of their power, for the sake of their power. That's the only thing that I can say. So this was the thing that the federal government

makes it against me. And they said it is the issue of national interest, it is the issue of the people so my azah is working again at the national interest of her country so this propaganda was really bad for me it hurts me you know even the people were advocating against me yeah they were asking the government for me to be in prison actually what we have spent it's not it's more than my my prison you know being in prison three times in a year as simple when you compare it that losing 500,000 in a year. Yeah. So it's normal for me because I am living under the worst scenario in my country.

So the thing that they were blaming me is that I am saying the war doesn't belong to all people. It belongs to the politicians and the politicians have a round table to discuss. Then that's what they are doing now. Right, right. So you mentioned the death toll of 500,000 people killed in this two-year war. I saw the African unions peace negotiators said it could have been up to 600,000 people killed in the fighting. On top of that, millions of people have been displaced and driven out of their homes.

Like, we're just a little podcast in L.A. We're trying to cover this war as much as we can. But as you know better than anybody, it's challenging for journalists to get into the region to cover the war. It's challenging to get information out. What do you think people should know about what's happening that hasn't been covered? Yeah. The thing that happening, as I told you, is the worst thing, because the number is, it's the reported number, 500,000 is the reported number. So you can imagine the unreported one. We can imagine. I saw with my eyes, you know, a lot of funerals. I saw everything as much as I can. You know, as a journalist, in order to report things from the place, it was very difficult for, especially, going to the Tigray area because it's already controlled by the regional government so we cannot go we were not able to go there and to cover the news but I tried to move to

Afar and Amhara which was under the control of the federal government so that I can have so many interviews with the victims I can have so many videos how things were missed how things were destroyed we lost so many lives I had an interview with women and children who were victim of the war, not only the war, but also they were sexually victims, they were raped by soldiers. And I interviewed them. They are in the serious of problem. You know, still they are under refugee centers.

They are living in refugee camps. So the thing for the report is, you can now go and see. So we get, especially the situation in Tigra, we get information from the international communities that they have possibilities. So we were not able to see what's happening. And still we are not able. Still, after the negotiation is going on, journalists, human rights activists, they cannot go there and see what's happening. There is no also external investigation in both Amhara and Tigra, regional states. We need an external investigation.

We need accountability for war crimes. But in order to do this, we need to have someone or some group to have external investigation on both original agencies. I'm glad you brought that up because Tony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, was in Ethiopia a couple days ago. We're filming this on Friday, March 17th. He called for accountability for atrocities committed during the war. I'm wondering, like, what do you think accountability for these war crimes would look like? What needs to happen? I appreciate that, but I don't think it works easily.

You know, what's happening there is under both governments, the federal and the regional governments are accountable for it. You know, whatever it takes. They are the one who is leading the war, the federal government, and again, the regional government into the cry. So both of them are responsible for what's happening there, for the crimes as a leader, as a participant of the war. And the negotiation, the peace negotiation is again between them in order to keep their power. You know what? The peace agreement, for me, it's because they cannot go more. They did it because they can't go more.

because we have been advocating this from the very beginning to sit down and to solve their problems. The issue is politics. The issue is power. So sit down and discuss before the war. They fought for two years. They kill everyone. They destroy everything.

They put back to 30 years. And then finally, they know that they cannot go beyond this. They cannot win each other. So they came and seed down. So they talk. I also noticed that Tony said, here's a quote, for our part, the United States acknowledges human rights violations and repression committed

during the past few decades, actions which sowed the seed to future conflict. We and others were insufficiently vocal about these abuses in the past. Is there a sense of frustration among the Ethiopian people that the United States or other Western countries were silent about previous abuses that maybe sort of led to the conflict that's been happening? Yeah, yeah, me and myself also have frustrated about it. You know, the thing is not only about the northern issue. In my country, there is also a serious problem, especially in the eastern part of Ethiopia, which is Oromia regional state. People are under the threat of ethnic cleansing.

People are under the threat of genocide. The Amhara people are under the threat of genocide. People are killed every day, a bunch of people are dying, are killed because of their ethnicity. because who they are. Right now, 1.2 million people are displaced from the Ottoman regional states. 1.2 Amharas

are displaced from original states. So I don't know why the people, the community, keep silent, especially the international community, the Westernists, the U.S. government, Evan Anthony Blinken, he doesn't mention anything in his state. I have a question.

About the treatment of the Amharas people. Yeah, yeah, because it's not only about the northern conflict that we are frustrated. The northern conflict, we appreciate that at least there is a ceasefire. At least people are not dying right now. At least people are not displaced right now. But in the eastern part,

there is a state-sponsored genocide. I can say this way. Because people are killed because of who they are. There's no reason back. And they officially said those rebeling groups, the OLA group, they said, they have to leave our people. place. If not, we will clean them. This is the sentence that already they put. So we need the

international community to interfere here. We need to speak out, you know, anywhere, anywhere in justice is everywhere. Right. The biggest action the United States has taken was to expel Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade agreement, I think in 2021 as a way to punish the government for human rights abuses. Do you think that had an impact on Abi's thinking, decision making? Yeah. If there is, you know, this is the 21st century. So we may, we need to work with the international community. We need to work with the globe, especially as a third world, as a poor country. We don't have a place to live alone. We don't, we cannot do that. We are looking for different help us.

We are looking for different budgets. So as a government of Ethiopia, it's a pressure. It's a big pressure. And I really appreciate that because we need to do this, again, a dictator government like Abiy Ahmed. You know, he, the one who is putting the people of Ethiopia and this situation.

After his leadership came in Ethiopia, we are losing so many people due to their ethnic. identity due to war conflict is due to even unknown reasons we are we have you know we have an issue of survival previously we had a question of democracy or something it becomes luxury for us asking for your democratic right and something like that it's a luxury for it is we are under the question of survival issue so the world need to put a pressure so it's one thing that makes a pressure and then that makes them to sit down and talk. Who else could help with that pressure?

It's like the African Union. I mean, I think the United States, I think a lot of European countries need to be very thoughtful and careful about telling countries in Africa what to do or how to act or pushing for democracy, right? So I'm just wondering where you think the appropriate pressure should come from. Yeah, the first one is the United States, obviously, and then they are doing their best,

but we need more in different perspectives, not only in the issue of the northern conflict at all level because all are our threats as a community. The other thing, the European Union, the United Nations, and also different human rights advocates, they have to be concerned about it. And we need their voice for our people

so that the world is dominated as they can hear because we are the only who are speaking and crying, and shouting again and again. genocide, war conflict, we're the ones. So we need those communities who work for people, just who works for human being. We need their voices so that we can be heard under those who are there to hear. Right. Just lift them up.

The Prime Minister Abbey was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his work to resolve the VOPPA's border dispute with Eritrea. he later partnered with air-trained forces to attack forces in the Tigray region kicking off this war. What did the Western world miss about Abi to get him so wrong that they could offer this man a Nobel Peace Prize a year before launching this war? Yeah, the thing that, you know, from the very beginning I had a question. Personally, I had a question and I face a lot of hates. I face a lot of insults because I was asking the people, I was asking the world, those who even give him a prize, what did you see? What did he do? What the thing that makes you

to believe in Abiyahmed? We believe him just because he's new. And or most of the people, because they hate TPL left, because they don't want to, we were fighting and, struggling again as the TPL left. It was one of the dictator government. So just because we were struggling and hitting the TPL left cannot make Abu Ahmed correct. We have to see him what is going to do. So the situation between Eritrea and Ethiopia also, my question, why were the peace

agreement? Why we were not signing? Why we were not together? And there was happening new. It was a kind of honeymoon between Abu Ahmed and Isaiah. It seems like that for me. I was asking that. I don't know how the international community puts the trusts or those who prize him.

I don't know how they see it. That was my question too. And the wallet, the one who gives the prize and seeing what's happening there. And you will see worse again. I assure you between these two countries and between these two leaders, there's something we will hear and see in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sounds like they needed more independent media reporting on the facts and the reality.

Yeah. So last question. I mean, I think a lot of people are listening to this. And I think, you know, they hear a lot about, I don't mean to compare the two, but they hear a lot about Ukraine and the fighting. And there are, I think, clear ways to help people that were displaced from Ukraine or refugees or the United States is giving weapons. What do you think, like, the average listener or sort of citizen in the U.S. can do to either raise awareness about what's happening in Ethiopia or actually help people on the ground? Yeah. I can see that a lot of Americans, including the State Department and everywhere, you see, they have a good knowledge, they have a good hurt for the situation in Ukraine. That's what I appreciate. That's what I appreciate. But, and I see a lot of people doesn't know anything about Ethiopians who are suffering there for both the political and the ethnic issues. You know, we have so many people displaced.

We are losing so many people due to the civil war. And again, the worst thing is happening now, right now. A lot of people are dying because of who they are, especially with the Oromya regional state and in which the government bodies are participating in it. I can say this boldly. The government, especially the Aramia Regional government is the one acting on Amharata genocide, which is continuous in Hormia Regional State.

So we need the American people, the human white advocators, the state department, the government officials to focus on it, and then to devils for them, at least, at the minimum cost. Well, thank you so much for being here and helping us understand this better and raising awareness. Where can people find your work? Yeah, thank you so much for having me again. People can find my work in my YouTube channel, Roja TV. And also, we have TikTok, we have websites there. And then we have also Facebook and Instagram pages that you can follow and share the news that we are.

Okay, great. Well, everyone will check it out. And thank you again for coming. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks again to Max and Miazahz Mohammed for joining the show. It's going to be very funny when this comes out. And then they don't arrest Trump ever.

And it was all just made up on true social. Yeah, like I still have like mixed feelings about the the porn star being the lead arrest of the slate. And not January 6th. And not like the violent insurrection, but you know, it'd still be, you know, high, high entertainment value. You know who's excited about this? Cable news. A lot of content. Yeah, cable news show.

This will create a lot of content. Nonstop. Here we go. All right. We'll talk to you guys next week. POTSave the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse.

Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seguin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, D.B. Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Pots Save the World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.