Pod Save the World - Let Sanna Marin dance!

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Ben and Tommy cover the latest on the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, the dumb controversy over Sanna Marin - the PM of Finland - dancing, Colombia considers decriminalizing cocaine, forced labor in China, Brazil’s upcoming election, Imran Khan in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia gives the west the finger, Dennis Rodman goes to Russia and more. Then Max Seddon from the Financial Times joins to discuss a recent car bomb attack near Moscow that killed a far-right propagandist and daughter of a right-wing Russian philosopher. 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 POTS of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, did you see that Jerry Kushner got a New York Times book review for his book? Did you pick up a copy? Yes. I did not pick up a copy of the book. But I definitely picked up that review more than once.

Was that the best review you've ever read? It was tied for first with a notoriously savage takedown of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant. I don't know if you remember that. I remember that. Although in hindsight, I think Guy Fierry's. Fieri is like a very nice guy. Yeah, it was so mean. It was so mean. He had to go on like the today show. I remember the next day to do cleanup. The author did? No, Guy. And I will say that he, do you remember we had guest chefs at the mess in the White House? Oh, yeah. The carryout window. So at the carryout window, you'd get these, you know, guests kind of be-less celebrity chefs. Sure. And you would never see them. They cook, but it was not. Hard shot at Sam Cass. Guy worked the, like the window. Oh, you went to flavor country in the White House. I went to flavor country in the White House. I went to flavor country in the White House. us with Guy, very nice guy, very nice guy. Yeah, frosted tips.

I mean, basically just makes a big burger and he loves it. The food is very large. Yeah, it's a lot of food. We got a great show today in top of our culinary takes. We're going to cover the latest news on the raid at Marlago. These idiotic attacks against our queen, Sonoma Rhin, the prime minister of Finland. Some reports that Colombia is considering decriminalizing cocaine. A UN report says that forced labor is taking place in China.

the presidential election in Brazil, political unrest in Pakistan, Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, makes news in maybe the worst way possible. Yeah, yeah, in the worst place, too. Harder to explain why. Wait for it. Saudi Arabia gives the United States and the entire west the middle finger. Dennis Rodman, French go-carts, dumb Starbucks, and mountain Wi-Fi. What a week.

What a week, Ben. And then I talk with Max Seddon from the Financial Times about this mysterious bombing outside Moscow over the weekend that killed an ultra-nationalist Russian TV pundit who was the daughter of an influential and very, very frightening Russian philosopher slash like kind of resputin cult leader. Yeah, he's really kind of like a genocidal lunatic. And his daughter was, you know, the apple didn't fall far from the tree on that one. Yeah. And she was on, you know, like the Russian propaganda network. Yeah. So, I go 12 hours a day. This is not a nice person. It's very interesting. There's lots of theories

about who did it, why it happened. But Max really points us at the response in Russia and the way Vladimir Putin is lifting up this event. I mean, none of us support the assassination of anybody, let alone someone's kid. But it does seem like Putin wants to use this for as another pretext to do more awful things to Ukraine. You know what I'd say, Tommy? If you want to listen to premium quality content

about Russian assassinations. Yeah, where could I find that? I've been actually on the lookout. Yeah, you could find that. Episode 6 of Another Russia is coming up on Monday, and that is the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, which was, you'll hear us. walk through in the next episode the theory of who is responsible for the actual killing of

borse-nemsoff ultimately Putin we think but uh let's just say ramsan kadyrov the chethen ally of putin makes an appearance and the one that's out now is great it does the back story on the annexation of crimea borsenemsov opposing that going to israel debating leaving russia and obviously making the fateful choice to come back so check out another russia yeah very Very important. Also, you know, there was another incident in Russia where Putin was essentially accused of a false flag bombing terrorist attack on the residential building. So this isn't the first time. Yeah, it's not, yeah, it sounds like crazy conspiracy theory. But if you if you look at the origins of Putin's rise to power, you'll find some false flag operations along the way. Not a good guy. Not a good guy. There are, we'll get to the news one second, but there's less than 100 days on the midterms Ben. Mitterman Magnus. We're, we're rocking. We're getting excited here. So you can find all kinds of new. Vote Save America merch in the Cricket store. Portion of it goes to VoteRiders, which is the leading organization focused on informing

citizens of their state's voter ID requirements and helping them secure the documents they need to vote.cure.com slash merch if you want to look at the new merch or just go to Votesaveamerica.com and you can find out how to get involved to do your part leading up to this year's midterms. So if you want merch, great, but just check out Votesaveamerica.com. We'd love it if you could knock some doors and make some calls because it is important. All right, Ben, we're going to give the people what they want. and give them their raid alago update. So the story's been evolving like minute by minute.

The New York Times says the government has recovered more than 700 pages of classified documents from Trump's country club basement. Last night it said 300 pages. So that keeps ticking up somehow. The Times says the volume helps explain DOJ's sense of urgency and why they did the raid. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so.

700 pages. That's a lot. Yeah. It's not an accident. It's like war in peace right there. Yeah, that's not Sandy Burger's sock. That's a, that's not fitting in socks. It's a fin in a sock.

The Times says DOJ was also worried that Trump and his aides were cavalier with the documents lying about them. They said that Trump himself went through these documents in 2021, sensibly to get classified information out. DOJ is also asking for more security camera footage from the area where they were stored. Apparently, some of the footage they already got shows people moving boxes in and out of the storage room. Some documents being moved into different containers. I don't know why you'd be doing that. courts are also deciding whether or not to release portions of the underlying affidavit used to justify the search warrant and Trump's lawyers filed a motion asking for something called a special master to be named to essentially weed out documents in the cash that was taken by the FBI that are supposedly covered by attorney client privilege. Lastly, Ben, we talked last week about this suggestion by Cash Patel and other Trump lackeys that he had a standing order to declassified documents when he took them home at night.

it was self-evidently ludicrous. No surprise that 18 former Trump officials said as much to CNN. So, I don't know, Ben, the more we learn, the more this raid kind of makes sense and seems less extraordinary, especially people who are like moving the documents around in shady ways. I don't know. It's weird. Yeah. I mean, a couple of things jump out that are different than what we've talked about in the past with this volume of documents. And I think, I guess, I don't know if it's 300 documents that are 700 pages.

It's like a bit complicated, but it's a moving target. Look, 700 pages is a lot of pages. I mean, I had eight years of access to classified documents. I had a safe in my office. You were in there. It was a skiff. And I don't think I ever had like 700 pages at the same time, you know? It's a long memo.

You just don't need all that. And so that's one point. The second point is the nature of the documents. I think you can kind of surmise something from the fact that there are 700 pages. if it was less, like the most benign explanation I could think of is, you know, these are a few classified transcripts of foreign leader calls. Right. These are, you know, a few memos he had.

The love letters to Kim Jong-un. You love letters Kim Jong-un, a few memos he had. No, no, if you're having 700 pages, like, these are reports, you know, like these are like multi-page intelligence products that, as we've talked about, come from really sensitive sources of collection. And that's the other thing, the handling, what we've learned about the handling and the rumors that the reports really that there are security cameras that show like these are an area of Maralago where dudes are kind of wandering around and stuff.

Digging through. You know, one thing we haven't talked about, we've talked a bunch about classified material. You'll remember, Tommy, like even to just take a document out of the White House, let's say, and you're not supposed to take it home. I was not allowed to take classified documents home. because my home is not a skiff. It's not secure. Someone could break in and take the documents. But when you would travel, right? So say we're on a foreign trip and we have to go on Air Force One. Just to take a report out of the White House on a van to a plane where after you get to where you're going, you're going to put it in a secure room in the hotel, you'd have to carry those lock bags.

So these are these big, heavy, like, I don't know what these bags are made out of, but like the thickest possible. material and then like a lock on the top of the bag on this like intense zipper you couldn't like cut this thing with like a you know a knife you know and so let's just say they spent four years under those protocols like even though Trump is a mess and you know maybe he's taking stuff back to the residence he's in you follow what they're seeing the rules like they're seeing we had burn bags in our office so at the end of the day you'd take all the classified documents you print out that you don't need anymore. That's what you call your toilet. Yeah. Exactly. You put it in a bag and some dude in a uniform would come by your

office in the middle of night and pick up this bag and literally burn the shit. Literally burn it. Literally burn it. So like it can't be said just how extraordinary it is to just walk out with 700 pages, not have them in any kind of secure portable bag, have them line around Marlago. Like this is just, it's not getting better for Trump. It's getting, I just want to push back on this idea that these guys were cavalier with security because Eric Trump posted a photo of himself doing a TV hit that included the Wi-Fi network name and password for the studio he was in. So I would suggest that the documents are in good hands.

He thought it was cool to like, I mean, first of all, just the fact that that guy still think. The password was like 1-1-2-3-3. Yeah. I mean, it's not much that guy can remember if the numbers get over like four. Yeah, no, no. He also was taking, I think, like a self or like some picture of himself doing a TV hit. Like a Tucker hit or something.

Come on, man. Like, what a loser. Yeah, it's like, we get it. You can get booked on television because you're a dad. But yeah, like, let's just say that the dudes that are literally posting their Wi-Fi password or not the people I'd want to entrust with the security of sensitive information. Yeah. I think if you've ever watched a movie in your life, you know that there are people that can pick locks.

You know, I mean, come on, guys. Yeah, come on, guys. Okay. Next story. Many of you have probably seen the video circulating. of Sana' Marin, the Finnish Prime Minister, dancing and singing with her friends. She is 36 years old.

She likes going to a music festival. She likes dance with her friends. She likes other activities that, like, sentient human beings all seem to enjoy. Marin was pushed into taking a drug test after this video somehow came out, showing her dancing being a fun, cool person because her critics suggested she was on drugs,

which she obviously wasn't. Some thoughts on this, Ben. One, obviously this is like just an exponentially bigger story because Sonamarin is a young, attracted woman. Yes. I doubt that he video of Olaf Schultz, the Chancellor of Germany, doing this, would get as much coverage. It would get some coverage, though.

Olaf Schultz and Justin Trudeau posted on social media picture of themselves having beers in a bar. Okay. And it didn't do, you know, they're not taking drug test. Didn't do numbies. It didn't do numbies. It didn't get, not a lot of likes on that. There was a story that just came through one of the crooked slacks about the new prime

minister of Australia, like slam in a beer at a music festival, and he was cheered. So I, you know, there's clearly some, some unfair, unequal treatment here. Two, look, if I was her, I would lock down my social media presence and just not be in videos ever in the future. There's a lot of downside, no upside. But three, I actually think, most importantly to me, it's genuinely harmful if we penalize politicians for being normal and fun and social. Like, there's nothing wrong with going to music festival or dancing with your friends or having a drink on a Friday night. But on the flip side, I think it's actually really bad when the only people who get elected are the people who spend their whole lives, like buttoned up, checking the boxes you need

to check to get elected, asking everyone to delete photos of them from college, blah, blah, blah. Or like when normal people like Sondamarin get driven out of politics because, you know, you can get destroyed for living your life. This is a really good point. I mean, this really pisses me off. I just say I'm very angry on behalf of Sondon Marin. Like, because you're right. Like, if a 16-year-old girl sees this and she's interesting going in politics,

she's not going to want to go into politics anymore if she's a normal person, right? I mean, when I was 36, I think I was going to like your group house, you know, that you lived in. Yeah, 13-09. Let's just say some things happen at 13-09. Whoa, what are we suggesting here? Fun things. No classified documents at 13-09. Lots of, some beers.

A lot of beers. I mean, but like, and again, it's not like she was. like, you know, ripping lines of cocaine, you know, like, she was just hanging out, like, dancing and, like, having a, like, a drink. Like, this is normal behavior, people, like, chill the fuck out and stop creating, like, it's beyond a double standard. This is, like, a quadruple standard. And, yeah, like, what do we want from our leaders? Like, we could have Putin who, like, stages, like, hockey games where he's allowed to score 80 goals. He's sober, though, so great. What do you think he does, by the way, in his, like, billion-dollar house

which had like a stripper pull in it, you know? Right. It did. Like, we know that there are actual leaders that behave in far worst ways. They just don't do it in public. The fact that she is comfortable having some of this on social media shows that she knows she's not doing anything that's like, you know, illegal. Like, this is, I hate this kind of things. You know what it doesn't drink, Donald Trump?

How'd that go for all of us? Well, like, the last. Did it impact our lives? You know, George Bush didn't drink. I used to, but gave it up. I mean, yeah, like, would we rather be, she'd be sitting there eating a bunch of Big Macs? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't like it.

I just don't like it. I don't like anything about it. I hate the story. The story sucks. She seems young and cool and fun, and it sucks that her approval rating is going to take a beating because you dance with your friends in like an apartment. Who gives a shit? And we've talked about this. Like, one of the things that is missing in politics these days, and I'd say in this country, too, is just like it should be fun.

Not grim, not buttoned up, not angry. Some cool leaders. Just some cool fun leaders. Obama was cool. You wanted to follow him. He was inspiring. It was fun to work on the O8 campaign because it was fun and he was cool and he was normal. And like if you disqualify those people from politics, you're going to end up with some pretty uptight people.

And uptight people tend to do bad. Right. No, people they target. Because are so repressed. AOC seems fun and young and cool and people think she's attractive. And what a surprise that she gets targeted and attack and became like the number one. boogie person for the right well yeah like let's be honest about this like you know the well yeah it's entirely because of her identity and that's that sucks i wish that uh she had told the people demanding

she take a drug test to fuck off like i guess what is that about when you know you like we are going to pass it i guess who cares why not do it but i just i hate the precedent i really do it's it's also really stupid because i mean like i don't know fins you can at me if you want but like i've been up there, like, seems like people are drinking a lot up there. Like, like, was she just not allowed to drink like everybody else is? Like, I don't know, I had a lot of beers when I was in Finland. I had a good time. I've never been. I'm going to check it out. Helsinki, nice city. I was there at the white nights that was really weird. It was like, like, I woke up and I'd had a few too many drinks more than Santa Marin had. And I woke up like four in the morning. It was like bright light

in my room. Nice. How's this for a transition? Speaking of white nights, Columbia is considering decriminalizing cocaine. As we've discussed, Ben, Columbia recently elected its first leftist government, and President Gustavo Petro says, it is time to accept that the war on drug has failed and that Columbia should move from prohibition to a government-regulated cocaine market. Columbia is the largest producer of cocaine in the world, and according to the Washington Post, the source of more than 90 percent of cocaine seized in the U.S. The White House is not thrilled about this idea.

There could be a big impact for Colombia in terms of drug trafficking, coordination, and cooperation with the U.S., aid from the U.S. to stop the drug. cartels. So I don't know how this would really work in practice. I don't know if the cartels would fight it, right? Because they don't want their money and their power taken away from them. But it's hard to think of a more objectively true statement than the war on drugs has failed. Of course it has. That's true in the U.S. But you know what's really true? Colombia. Where people get shot. They literally get killed. Thousands of thousands of it is that people are killed. Because down there, the war on drugs is fought with guns. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, so this

Reagan ads. Well, and this came up. Nancy Reagan. Remember those ads? Do you remember that? When that guy walks in and he finds his kid with drugs and he's like, what is this? And he's like, you dad, I learned it from watching you. That is the best one.

I learned it from watching you. Like what? That's on for years. Marijuana? Yeah, this used to come up at the Summit of the Americas and in Latin America in the Obama years where other left-leaning leaders down there would kind of try to put legalization on the table and the U.S. would always oppose it. and we'd leverage. And I didn't like that. I was actually like interested, at least in this idea.

It's at least worth. It's worth talking about because if you look, think about the experience of Columbia and the war on drugs. So we basically impose on them their drug laws, right? So we used to make them spray the cocoa fields, which would then piss off the farmers who would then become potential recruits for the left wing insurgency, the FARC. Because we make it illegal, these drug cartels grow and they become totally corrupt force in climate. Colombian politics, so you get like Pablo Escobar, like owning the government. Meanwhile, all the demand for the drugs is from the U.S., right? So we like... And all the guns come from the U.S., right? So we impose these laws on them, and then all this money that flows into Columbia illegally,

so it can't be taxed by the government, goes to the cartels who then corrupt the politics and then kill people with the guns that they bought from the United States. Yeah, great system. If I was the Colombian president, of course I would want to look at legalization. And we should try to engage them in a conversation about what that would look like instead of just kind of, you know, reflexively reaching for our war on drugs frame that is kind of ravaged, you know, huge swaths of Latin America. By the way, I mean, we did the old tablecloth getting yanked out from under the dishes thing to all these countries on marijuana policy. Yeah.

Right. And now we're just growing it in California. Yeah. Taxing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Look, I'm obviously a big fan of Joe Biden in his administration. I think his views on drugs are very draconian. Yeah, it doesn't get, I mean, like just side note that the lack of marijuana legalization and decriminalization. It's crazy. It's kind of crazy. I mean, that's- Why would we want to reach a lot of young voters who are leaving the Democratic Party? Why do we want to do something that would be immensely popular with young voters in the midterm madness 100 days?

And self-evidently a good idea, in my opinion. Also, in the process, maybe we could regulate some of these edibles. Yeah. So, you know, Maureen Dau doesn't get, like, dropped on her ass by taking too much in Aspen or whatever. Yeah, we can fix all these problems. Staying in the region, Ben, talking about the neighbor here. Let's talk about Brazil. So we're about six weeks away from the presidential election in Brazil.

That will pit President Jair Bolsonaroo against the former leftist president, Lula de Silva. Lula's been leading in the polls, and many people are worried that Bolsonaro sees this and won't accept the results. Bernie Sanders has been sounding the alarm about this for a while and is a reportedly circulating resolution that says, if Bolsonaro loses but tries to stay in power, the U.S. shouldn't even recognize the government or provide any military aid. Very interesting. The reports the other day about some Brazilian business leaders like on a group chat or something talking about calling for a coup if Lula wins, Bolsonaro's idiot son is saying things like, boy, we can't help it if there's violence, just like Trump couldn't help it.

There was violence after their rigged election in the U.S., like hate to see anything happen to you. And they're also saying like voting machines can't be trusted, et cetera. So the stakes here could not be bigger. Bolsonaro, he's a right-wing authoritarian. He openly pines for the days of a military dictatorship in Brazil. It's a huge economy. It's a huge trade partner. Like the climate change implications are massive.

So I don't know. Obviously, it's an election we should watch. The first vote is on October 2nd. No one wins a majority. The next one will be a runoff on October 30th. I read about this Bernie Sanders idea coming in. I don't know if you'd heard about it or have any thoughts. Well, I think, first of all, this is really worrying for the reasons you cite.

just in the same way that stuff feels to be like going back in time in other parts of the world, right? Like we got a war in Ukraine. We got we got stuff that feels like we know we'd put it behind us happening in lots of places, you know, fascism in Europe and Hungary. A right-wing military dictatorship in Latin America is something we thought we'd left behind. And if that happened in the biggest country over 200 million people, as you said, with massive Amazon climate implications among many other things, that would be very bad. I think we're seeing that. that the Trump example does travel, right? And so there's this question of like,

are we, you know, just this kind of eccentric, weird, dysfunctional place right now? Or are we kind of connected and stuff that happens here can leap to other places? We've talked a lot on this podcast about how it does. Bolsonaro's language is like literally, it sounds like Donald Trump. And he's always been the guy of these kind of, you know, blowhard nationalists, who was kind of the most like Trump, like modeled himself the most on Trump. his last campaign, his first campaign, drew a lot of messaging and strategy and social media strategy from the example of the 2016 Trump campaign.

And now you hear him talking about like rigged elections and bad voting machines and fake fraud. Remember Jason Miller and Trump goons went down to Brazil to meet with them? I'm sure Trump has probably got an endorsement coming for the guy, you know. So this is bad and this is like Trump and stop the steel stuff traveling to another place, which is embarrassing to see as an American. And yeah, I think that the stakes are so high that we should make clear. Because what you don't want to get into a situation is Bolsonaro basically tries to steal this election. And the question will be, does the military go with him?

Because the other thing I'd say is like, why wouldn't he do this? He keeps saying he's going to do it. I know, I know. He's been saying for like since the beginning of this campaign, he's never been even close in the polls. You know, that's clear. Lula's lead is not close that it's rigged. You should expect him to try to do this. Yeah, the questions if the institutions follow, right?

Do the institutions follow? Does it not for the military follow? And the U.S. should not fall into a situation where we're like, well, we don't think, you know, there was fraud, but, you know, there should be investing. No, like, if it's obvious that this guy's running a player to just steal an election, we should make clear that our relationship with Brazil is entirely on the table and try to get as many other countries in the hemisphere to follow suit. The fact, by the way, as we talked about a lot, that the hemisphere has gone left means it's going to be harder for some right-wing guide. to get any support in Latin America. That's absolutely right. I do like that Bernie and Matt D.S.

And that team is mixing it up and kind of pressuring Boltonaro from D.C. Yeah. And I think. Hopefully he won't be able to use it and twist it and push back. But I don't know that anybody knows who Bernie is down there. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, well, the Lula people do and they like them. Yeah, they love.

Yeah, they do. Lula and Bernie probably, like, you know, been hanging out for two decades reading like angles or something. I bet, right, I bet they were picketing some farm worker event in the 60s or something. Yeah, exactly. Which is why we like them both. Yeah. All right. We're deep in the dark section of the show right now, Ben, so get ready.

So the UN special report tour on slavery released reports saying that reports of forced labor in Xinjiang province of China, the Western China, are credible. Xinjiang is where the Uyghur Muslim minority has been brutally suppressed and millions have been thrown into concentration camps for quote-unquote re-education. This report found that Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups are likely have been forced to work in agriculture or manufacturing jobs. The Chinese government denies a report. No one should believe them.

But Congress recently passed a bill, the weaker forced labor prevention act that bans the importation of goods from Xinjiang, unless companies can prove it wasn't made with forced labor. So, I don't know, I just want to flag this one, truly evil stuff happening in Xinjiang. And it really just, we've been talking about this for years now. And it seems like the international community has not found any real leverage to pressure China to stop it. No. I mean, it's a good thing they do these reports. I mean, I know people can say rightly that the UN is fairly toothless. but I mean, who else is going to do like a credible report?

I mean, you have human rights organizations, and that's really important. But it does, I think, matter that something with the kind of implementer of the rapporteur. The rapporteur, the impritor of the rapporteur. I like that a lot. puts this report out. The other thing that I think that the Chinese, from what I hear, and I have to look a bit more into this, are doing a bit of is they're starting to kind of strategically manufacture things that they know the world needs. Oh, good. like solar panels. Oh, right. That's sort of why the Biden folks opposed it for a little while. That's right. And the, you know, the Biden folks had this problem because, like, there's some material that comes from out of Xinjiang province that is, like, fundamental to the global, like, renewables industry. So that's something to watch too. That's the cynicism of this. But, I mean, I think continuing to spotlight it, try to try to isolate and sanction and target, obviously, you know, any capacity to profit off of this force labor. But, yeah,

Yeah, it's bad stuff. Bad stuff. This question, you know, the shift to renewables is going to make getting sorts of like rare earth minerals and all sorts of, the cobalt lithium, all these things for batteries, even more important than ever before. Yeah. And like the Chinese will know how to exploit that. There was a report out of Sierra Leone recently about people passing a law that would require essentially local okay from citizens there before any sort of mining or manufacturing activity

like that happens. It's going to be a big readjustment to see how. how the US or the world really can get access to these rare earths without exploiting the populations and just destroying, you know, local environmental, destroying the communities or like, you know, making them unlivable, basically. Yeah, no, it's, I'm really glad to me at this point. The Russians and the Wagner group go down to Africa and try to control some of these types of resources. The Chinese do. And then also there have been some reports recently in places like Congo where, you know, you get all these kind of individual

miners because you can kind of go up by yourself and find coal bought. But then they get totally screwed because they're like they have to sell this to a middleman who sells it up to some corrupt conglomerate. And these people are making like two or three dollars a day, even though what they're mining is worth a lot more than that. Like there does need to be some part of the climate transition has got to be putting some regulation around this. For sure, for sure. Let's turn to Pakistan because former Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan was charged with terrorism over the weekend, raising fears of political violence in Pakistan. Khan was pushed out of power in April, reportedly because he basically pissed off the Pakistani

military, which is very powerful. But he's also blamed his ouster on like a secret American CIA plot to push him out, which is, no evidence of that. So these terrorism charges happened after Khan threatened police officers in a judge during a speech. Khan is a former playboy cricket star who is now. a populist politician, he's holed up in his hometown. A bunch of his allies have been arrested or basically silenced.

But Khan's popularity, as these attacks have come from the government, seem to be growing. His supporters are blocking access to his house, like, physically with their bodies, so the government can't arrest him. He seems, you know, maybe he seems like a couple screws are loose. Yeah, a bit of a megalomaniacal context. Yeah, but also the current government is clearly targeting him and his supporters in an extrajudicial way.

meanwhile, Khan's party is doing better in local elections. So again, like these efforts to silence ever backfiring. Pakistan has a long history of this kind of thing happening and the military and the police getting pulled into political fights in totally inappropriate ways. But it does feel dicey. You never once in a while your mind like, oh, yeah, they have like what, 200 nuclear weapons or something? Yeah. I mean, first of all, there's a few countries where I always wonder like, we talked about Santa Marin, but in an even more extreme case, like, why would you want to be? the prime minister of Pakistan like you you basically seem to end up in

prison you know everybody kind of ends up getting charged or something in the same way like in South Korea the same thing happens like every president seems to go to jail um but i mean basically this is a case where you know imron khan for a while he was in favor with the military fall out of favor with the military in Pakistan and this kind of thing ends up happening to you get the boot uh they they try to keep the lid on you and you become more popular because people hate the corrupt military establishment, right? So this same cycle plays out. He is like, like, you know, obviously you don't want this to be happening.

He's not the most sympathetic character either. You know, he, like there's a lot of, I mean, even the plots of, you know, CIA plot charges and stuff. Like it speaks to kind of like a bit of a narcissism, you know, like, you know, like everything is about him, like everybody's thinking about him. But yeah, to me, this just shows that, unfortunately, politics in Pakistan is not. you know evolved in a positive way in the last 10 20 years it's the same as it's ever been I had Octar's book was so great yeah in terms of talking describing just how

conspiratorially minded the Pakistani media and culture can be too yes how you can imagine folding in this kind of narrative into a simple story of the military saying hey stop messing with us well I mean and we feed it because like when when you have like you know drones yep it's easy is to say that the U.S. is behind a bunch of stuff when the U.S. does a bunch of stuff secretly in your country, you know. Yeah. So different story here about the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

He made news in the worst possible way last week during a speech in Berlin. Abbas expressed no regret for the attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes in Munich, Germany in 1972. And he said that Israel had committed, quote, 50 holocausts against Palestinians. over the years. Again, this was, I think, a press conference with Olaf Schultz, the prime minister of Germany in Germany, where you're not condemning a horrific terrorist attack and talking glibly about the Holocaust. We have been very critical of a lot of Israeli government policies or actions over the years. And people like Bibi Netanyahu, we've criticized the occupation. But I do think these comments from Abbas are worth highlighting because they are despicable. And it's worth saying that.

And they also just speak to the horrible predicament that the Palestinian people have been stuck in where their ostensible leader is like at best, powerless, at worst, someone who would say insane shit like this, which damages his standing, damages the country, like, makes everybody worse. Yeah, I mean, it's a disgusting comment given in the worst place. If he believes that, then he is just like a rabid, any semi. if he thinks he's like somehow appealing to some audience, he's appealing to like the worst audience in the world. The worst people in the world. You know, like far right people in Europe because he's in Europe or whatever. So that, you know, first and foremost, it's just gross. But then your point is so important, which is it like,

this also is like terrible for the Palestinians. Terrible. Like because, you know, you're going to Europe ostensibly. This is a place where Palestinians get a little more support than the U.S. And these are the people that you're probably last remaining sources of, or some of your last remaining sources of diplomatic or development support. And this is what you do. I mean, this guy has to go. Like, he's like 150 years old.

Yes. He doesn't do anything. He sits in Ramallah and, you know, does nothing to help his people around him. Is he straight correct? Because he like hung out with Arafat in Tunisia back in the day. Yeah, he's still hanging on to like the Arafat Mystique. and look, it's just, you know, like, whatever you think about the circumstances for the Palestinians, I think everybody should agree.

The Palestinians, anybody like who actually wants to see things get better should want new leadership in the Palestinian. Even progressive Israeli leaders who want someone they can actually negotiate with. Well, yeah. Yeah, like the far right Israeli leaders are more than happy to have some like useless old guy. Yep. You know, so it's like it just plays into the worst of the status quo. Yeah. Staying into the Gulf here, Ben, just want to quickly check in on the impact of President Biden's

visit to Saudi Arabia, how things are going, how they're being as a player on the world stage. Three quick updates. One, the Saudi energy minister said OPEC is preparing to cut oil production. Yeah. Because oil prices are dropping too much. So they did not increase production. They're going to cut it. Two, a Saudi dental hygienist and mother of two was sentenced.

to 34 years in prison for sending what appear to be like pretty benign tweets about Saudi Arabia's human rights record. Yeah. Three, Saudi Arabia has executed 120 people in the first six months of 2022, double the total number of executions from last year, despite promises to reduce capital punishment. I will say, we need to look in the mirror here when it comes to horrific executions and capital punishment because the U.S. is bad, but that is a god-awful number. Ben, seems like that fist bump solves a lot of problems.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the people that, like, were most annoying in the run-up to the visit, the fist-bump visit, were all the people who wrote, like, the op-ed pieces about, like, well, if you understood real politique, you know. This is where the real men get serious. Okay, like idealists, you know, like you think you live in this world where you can not deal with the dictator like Maham bin Salman, but we understand that in the real world, you have to go deal with him because he's going to do things like lower the price of oil, increased production, blah, blah, blah.

Machine gun the ceiling while yelling at his mom. Yeah, well, that was all bullshit. Like, these arguments about realpolitik are absolute bullshit to cover up people that just kind of like to be on the take from the Saudis, right? I mean, they're literally working against the coal of lowering oil prices, which are down, as we've talked about, because demand in China's way down because they have a crazy COVID-Zero policy, not because anything Saudi Arabia did. That's the first thing to just put a pen in the real politic crowd. And then the real polity crowd, there's some overlap to the people who like to say that, oh, he's actually done some good things on women's rights, right?

So part of what you've heard is like, well, you know, he may kill a bunch of people and, you know, shoot up the room with his mom and kill journalists, but he let some women drive. Well, he also just locked a woman up for 34 years for tweeting. So maybe hold the hot modernizer takes while you're at it, too. I mean, it is what it is. It is what it looks like, which is like a brutal dictatorship run by a trillionaire megalomaniac. Yeah, absolutely. A few more quicker ones before we get the interview.

So we've talked many times about WNBA star Brittany Griner, her detention in Russia and efforts to get her home. Now, former NBA player Dennis Rodman says he is going to Russia to convince Putin to release her. Some listeners might remember that Rodman had a friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He visited North Korea a bunch of times. NBC News had a story about Rodman and the... going to Russia, and it said, Rodman called Putin cool after a 2014 trip to Russia. So I guess that's your credential.

You will be shocked to learn, Ben, that Biden's team thinks that this trip is a bad idea and is more likely to hurt than help. It seems like there's a non-zero chance that Rodman could get himself into trouble. Yeah, yeah. If you ask me. Also, just, Ben, like, I just want to say, Dennis,

if you're listening, buddy, you're not Michael Jordan. No. You are not the guy who we pass the Rock to at the end of the game and you put it on your back and you win you're a rebounder yeah you hit the boards man right

maybe the best ever like play some team ball here yeah well this is you know you and I usually are like try whatever it takes throw whatever against the wall

and see if it sticks to get people out this I would not put in that category it's one thing if like Bill Richardson goes over there I mean in Robben because like I don't see any scenario where Dennis Robben

goes to Russia and then Vladimir Putin lets Brittany Griner leave on a plane with him. With nothing, because Robin can't offer anything. Yeah, he's not like he's taking, he's going to negotiate a spy swap over there, right? Or a prisoner swap. And then you can also see a scenario where, okay, he could go and just kind of nothing happens. But you could see some weird scenario where like there's some photo op with Putin.

And he's kind of making fun of us. You know what I mean? Because like Robbins is this kind of weird dude. I could see Putin using this in some, you know, it's not like it's an important way, but just like trolly way. Oh, the most cynical way possible. The most cynical troll-like way possible. Yeah, Robin would probably get her out and we'll look stupid.

But you know what? You know what? I'd love to eat my words on this one now. I will eat the shit out of those words. Ben, have you ever seen Sting in Russia? Have you ever seen the Nathan for you episode where he opens dumb Starbucks? No. Highly recommend that show.

I saw the real life version there. Okay. The real version happening in Moscow. There was an old Starbucks. It was shut down because Starbucks got out of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The Russians reopened it with a new owner, a Russian owner. apparently another rapper with nearly identical branding

but it's just called Stars Coffee and on the Stars Coffee website they said bucks left stars have stayed so you showed us do you think it's like the full gamut though

can they get like those like bottled Frappuccinos and stuff I mean apparently they're selling coffee apparently they're selling booze so they might have might be a real upgrade yeah maybe that's actually not a bad idea it is a good test of how much that logo

has been responsible for the Starbucks success because it's quite a, you know, it's a logo that makes you want to go in and get a cup of coffee. Yeah, a way to sanction the shit out of like all coffee beans for the movies or something. This is a fun one out of France. The French Justice Ministry is taking some heat

after inmates at the country's second largest prison were allowed to participate in like a festival of games that included go-karting and other games modeled after a French reality show. There's a video of this event, a competition, whatever you want to call it. It was hosted in the prison yard and it wound up

on YouTube. The Justice minister whose name, I believe, is Eric DuPont Moretti, called the video shocking. I watched the clip Ben and it looked fun as hell. This guy was just tearing ass around the prison yard. La Figueroe reported that this event was approved at the highest levels of the justice ministry, but not the go-karting specifically. Prisoners raised 1,700 euros for charity. And the French official said no prisoners involved in the games had been convicted of violent crimes, like no rapist, no murderers. And there was no cost to taxpayers. So, I don't know, man.

What's the problem? I think it's a dumbest scandal I've ever heard. Well, do you notice just like in some of these European countries, you know, their scandals are so quaint compared to ours? You know, like we've got like a former president with like 700 pages of classified documents who tried to overthrow democracy in a violent insurrection. And they're like, you know, reading the figaro about go card racing and some nonviolent offenders prison.

It sounds fine to me. Look, admittedly, if someone like beat the shit out of me and took my mind. and then I saw him like go-karting around prison. I might be annoyed. But it's not like... He's raised money for charity, right? Well, also, it's not like every other day is a good time in prison. Yeah, yeah.

Also, God forbid that, like, I don't know, in the U.S., I think prisons abroad are generally better, at least in Europe. We throw people into prison. We treat them like animals for years, usually for drug charges. We radicalize them. Yeah, and we expect them to come out and, like, reemerged, reformed, or with some humanity. No, like, let them cart. Just to merge streams here, too, like,

there are not as many people in those prisons in France because they don't lock you up for life for like small petty drug offenses. Yeah, three strikes your out of defense. So again, decriminalize marijuana for a start. There we go. Last story. I wanted to mock this one. But halfway through, I decided I was wrong. Mount Kilimanjaro, Tallest Mountain in Africa is installing Wi-Fi. So you can post stuff when you get to the top. You can get service right now at 12,200 feet. And it will be available at the 19,300 foot summit by the end of the year. Some of these reports were framed as like, hey, now you can post your selfie from the summit. You like vapid, Instagram obsessed narcissist. Yeah. And that's true. There's obviously like a safety component. Probably be good to be able to communicate if you got like really sick.

I did not know that there's also Wi-Fi and broadband at Mount Everest. It has been for a while. I think it's more like 3G, 4G kind of stuff. The valid criticism is that Tanzania is installing internet on Kilimanjaro for tourists. But half the country doesn't have cell phone reception. Yeah. But Ben, guess who is helping build out Tanzania's fiber optic network? I was going to guess like Elon Musk.

The Chinese. The Chinese, okay. It was Elon Musk or the Chinese. Yeah, the Starlink thing would be helpful. Yeah. I think they would quite possible that Chinese, like, there's some strings attached to that in terms of their access to data. That's my guest, too. But did you ever read the snows of Kilmajara?

No. The Hemingway story? Well, like, that's what happens. They get sick on the mountain and they can't, you know. So, like, actually, the Wi-Fi would have been good for Hemingway, you know. But, yeah, like, it does speak to a big, bigger issue, which is that in sub-Southern Africa, in part because there's not a lot of, in some of these places, there's not a lot of kind of physical infrastructure, like, you know, phone lines, computers, towers. Everything, like, has shifted to phones, right? So there's, like, mobile pay, mobile everything, right?

Right, you kind of leap that step, yeah. And that's a reason to try to expand as much as. possible and it's not that expensive. It would be an interesting development, finance, priority for the U.S. We've worked a bit on like increasing access to power and electricity in Africa. Like maybe we can help wire Kilmajara. Or you know, the places where people actually live and not just, you know, tourist hiking and yeah. Hemingway would have been good on Twitter, those short pithy sentences. Short and clear, but also they might have been. He would be canceled like that. He would be canceled. And they also, like, you know, like, you

You know how you kind of leave things out? Some of them might have been kind of interestingly opaque. Like, today I'm feeling quite fine in the cool air and like nobody knows why. Yeah. You're just like a lame Twitter. Yeah, it'd be a good. Someone should have like a Hemingway account, you know. Was he a cocaine guy?

No, I think just booze. Just a lot of booze. Just hanging out in like Cuba pounded booze? One of the coolest things I got to do is I got to go to the house when I, after I did the Cuban negotiations. How big was it? The Cubans knew I was like a big Hemingway. fan. So this is like what they can do.

Like I got a private tour of Hemingway's house. It's like the coolest house but it's like a house like designed for like drinking. Okay. There's like How so? Tell me more. No stairs. There's like you know like the place where he works is next to the place where his books are and then it opens in this huge veranda where you can kind of just tell and there's like

like animal heads on the wall. It's like a lodgey kind of feel. and they preserved it exactly when he was there. There's a swimming pool where they used to have like wild parties and like Hollywood actresses would come down and swim in this pool and then his boat is there that he used to take out for like benders on the water. It's very cool. Like check out the Hemingway House if you ever go to Savannah.

God, can we just fix the stupid Cuba Pawsi? Unfortunately, you're not allowed to travel to Cuba unless you have some like educational purpose. Well, that sounds like one. Sounds like it'd be good to go down to Hemingway House and check it out. Come on. We did it, Joe. Just to fix that part. We did it, Joe. Legalized drugs and let people travel to Cuba. And stop talking to Mom and Salman. Three solid recommendations to emerge from this podcast. That's great. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We come back. You will hear from the Moscow editor of the Financial Times, Max Seddon.

We're going to talk about this car bomb in Russia that exploded over the weekend, killed a woman named Darya Degina, the daughter of a propagandist, propagandist herself. We'll also talk about sort of the general state of play six months into the world. war efforts, so stick around for that. I am so excited to welcome back to the show, the Moscow editor for the Financial Times. Max said, and Max, it's so great to see you. How you doing? Never a moment. Are you in Latvia at the moment? Is that my understanding? I'm in Latvia right now, yes. I have been mostly here these days. Excellent, excellent. Well, let's start with the story that you've been reporting on from Russia, which was over the weekend there was this car bombing near Moscow, I believe, that killed a woman named

Darya Dugina. A lot of people believe this assassination attempt was actually targeting her father, Alexander Dugin. Can you just sort of give us a quick overview of who these two are? Well, so Alexander Dugan is a name that may be familiar to some of you. He's a philosopher and a redentist nationalist ideologue who is believed to have influenced some of the thinking, underpinning Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He started out in the Soviet period in this in this behemian dissident scene of writers. He became a big Heidegger fan, was this self-taught philosopher and then wound up developing these, you know, both links with the European new right. those of you who heard to that stuff will have heard of, you know,

fingers on the French writer, you know, Alan de Bonnwast, you know, he was corresponding with them. And then gradually he started winning some fans in the Russian Army and security services. So he wrote this book in 1997 that was on the syllabus of the Russian Army General Staff, the officers training course. he appears to have to have had sub-degree influence over the thinking of, you know, Putin and the other ex-KGB officers around him who, you know, have been planning and carrying out the invasion. So basically, it's a sort of postmodern take on imperialism where, you know, he argues that Russia needs, needs to be,

this geopolitical counterpoint to the U.S. and reclaim control over its historic lands, you know, particularly Ukraine and that Ukraine is, you know, some sort of dangerous threat. So if you look at, you know, the way that he's written about in the press, there's an indication that he was as close advisor to Putin. There's no indication that they've ever met. He was always extremely coy about this, including when I interviewed him once and would never give an answer either way. I was suspected that the reasonable answer was because the truthful answer would be no to

You've met Putin. But what was definitely true was you would see officials, you know, senior officials like Nikolai Potrishu, who's, you know, one of Putin's maybe closest ally, the head of the Security Council, they would repeat a lot of ideas that came from fairly obscure points in Dugan's philosophy, like the notion of the World Island, which is a big part of Eurasianism, which is, you know, the sort of umbrella that Dugan groups a lot of his. his thinking under. And so what changed in Russia, you know, even if he wasn't, you know, necessarily hanging out with with Putin, you know, all day or indeed at all, what changed was he

was saying the sort of things that, you know, by and large, you know, became more and more political mainstream in Russia. And it was remarkable when you read the 5,000-word essay that Putin wrote last summer, that was basically manifesto for invading Ukraine based off of his own historical research and, you know, some, some weird books that he'd been reading that are well outside the Russian historical mainstream. You know, it, it almost read like Dugan could have written it. And, you know, Dugan would have taken that as a huge compliment. Yeah. Max, this is an aside that is not the most astute point. I was a philosophy major in college. And I think that anyone who gets into Heidegger on their own is a sociopath. And you probably

shouldn't do that because that shit is dense and very, very impenetrable of difficult. I mean, I would describe, like jokes aside, I would describe a lot of Dugin and Dugina's comments, his daughter's comments as genocidal when it comes to Ukraine. I mean, didn't he get fired from the university job for talking about the need to kill Ukrainians? I mean, we'll talk in a minute about sort of his response to this assassination of the things he's calling for. But, I mean, it doesn't sound like he thinks that Ukraine should exist in any way, shape, or form, no?

I think it's, you know, maybe difficult to picture. that, you know, this constituency exists in Russia. But really it always has. You know, there's some parts of the Russian elite who very much like, even though they might support the war at the beginning, they thought they would have an easier time of it than they are. And they'd very much like it to be over and to get on with their lives. And there are other parts of the elite.

And this is the sort of circles that Dugin and Dugin, his daughter, were in, that actually want him to go further. And if you think about it, it actually does make a difference because, you know, Of course, very much so. Do you destroy Ukraine? Do you destroy part of it? You know, do you kill, you know, 100,000 people or do you kill a million people? Do you annex some of it or do you annex all of it?

Do you allow some sort of rump Western Ukrainian states to exist once you've captured everything east of the Nippro River? Or do you just basically completely wipe it off the map? And so Dugan, the way you have to understand these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, they're used by the Kremlin, you know, when, when there is, you know, the most, you know, the most used for them. It's not like, you know, the, the Putin necessarily read, you know, he may have read something that Duggan wrote, uh, and, and decided to invade Ukraine. But these things are useful, justifications. And, uh, so there was a point where, um, you know, in 2014, uh, Russia annexed Crimea. And then they started the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. the slow-burning war in the Dombas in eastern Ukraine. And there was a while where it looked like they might annex it as well. There were a lot of Dugian buddies who were very heavily involved in that, you know, chief among them, Consentine Malafev, the orthodox Christian oligarch.

And at some point, they evidently decided they weren't going to do that. And you saw some of these people like Dugin or Alexander Pekhanov, who will be familiar to readers of David Remnick's Lennon's tomb. they've been on state TV a lot and then they suddenly vanished. Dugan had this teaching position at Moscow State University and he lost that after he said that Russia needed to kill, kill, kill, kill Ukrainians. Yeah, that was the quote I was thinking about. But now it's very much, you know, back closer in the mainstream.

And you should ask me a question first, but we, if you look at, you know, Darya, you know, the reaction to Dorea's death, you know, she, you know, compared to her father, her father was still a fairly marginal figure in Russia, you know, certainly not a household name, even if he did have, you know, some influence and a pretty, pretty big reputation outside Russia. You know, she, she was much less known than him and only, really, the beginning of her career. She was only 29 years old. And they very much could have, you know, let this one go under the rug. And the fact that they haven't done that, they effectively gave her a state funeral today. We're speaking on Tuesday in the TV tower in Moscow,

the Astankan Tower, where most of state TV is broadcast from. And Putin gave her, there's no evidence that, you know, Putin had ever communicated with a dug against any way before Monday when Putin sent her parents a telegram, and he gave her the order of courage, which is one of the highest Russian state awards posthumously. So, Russia, the fact that Russia has, you know, started doing this, it certainly does indicate that, you know, there isn't really appetite for backing down against Ukraine. If anything, this is given a lot of fuel to the constituency in Russia to want to ram things up even more against Ukraine. Yeah, I mean, listen, to Dugan statement said, our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or retribution. It's too small, not the Russian style. We only need our victory. My daughter laid her maiden life on its altar. So win, please. He also blamed the attack on the not. to Ukrainian regime. I mean, just as a technical matter, it is true to say that, you know, Dugan's also calling for to put the whole country in war footing. Thus far, Putin is still clung to this idea. This is a special military operation. He has not called up all the troops or whatever

this or the technical thing he would need to do to have even more troops at his disposal. So, I mean, if you're going to sort of argue this is a pretext, okay, maybe it's a pretext to take that step. I don't know. I'm obviously speculating here. I don't want to speculate too much because, I mean, Unless you're the sort of person who really trust what you hear from the FSB, we are unlikely to know any time soon. You can make fairly compelling arguments in either directions. You know, Ukraine has shown recently that does have capacity to do attacks behind enemy lines. There's been in places like Militopal and then Harrison and other bits of southern Ukraine currently occupied by Russia. There have been, you know, bombings and attacks and poisonings of some collaborationist officials,

you know, Ukrainians who are now working with the Russian occupation authorities in the Dombas and eastern Ukraine, you know, the part that's controlled by Russia, a number of bombings over the years of the separatist leaders. And there's always been various finger-pointing about whether the Russians or the Ukrainians could have done it. But, you know, what, you could equally make the argument that this might have been some sort of, you know, Russian false flag for whatever reason. Right. I don't need to remind listeners of, you know, Russia's history with the assassination.

The issue is, is that, you know, some students in history may be familiar with the murder of Sergei Kirith, who was one of Stalin's closest allies in the Bolshevik party. it was obviously decades and decades before there was anything like evidence as to who killed them. This is still a matter debated by historians. But what was really significant was how the Soviet Union used the murder. And this is generally accepted as the event that set into motion the start of the great terror when millions of people were killed and millions more sent sent to the Gulag. And I think that's what's significant here.

because they could have, you know, swept this under the rug. The FSB claimed to assault this one within 24 hours. And their version is just completely ridiculous because it follows that, you know, the woman they're accusing of carrying out the attack, you know, is someone who is, you know, according to the FSB, serving in the Ukrainian National Guard. Her info is already all over the Internet, you know, on various, you know, Russian hacker databases.

that you don't even need the dark web to access, and that she drove, drove into Russia, was interrogated. They followed her on, you know, the video cameras that are all over, over Russia. And they released, you know, footage of this, you know, her supposedly entering the same apartment building where we're doing to live. No footage of her, you know, actually connected to the crime. And then after having supposedly committed it, she drove back to the border, which I,

done it takes 12 hours just to get there. It's pretty far with Estonia, was interrogated again, and they let her through, you know, in her mini-Cooper. And, you know, the idea that, you know, they could have, you know, they could have, you know, let this happen and then, you know, solved it so easily. Ah, oh, we missed it. You know, why would we think of that? Yeah. It just beggar, but what's really important, again, as if you, if you look at the funeral, I think it was really indicative of a process that has been happening generally with regards to the war is that, you know, this is the first time there's really been, you know, blowback against anyone in the elite from the war. You know, there were people, you know, you could go to, you know, Dumbas or itself and get shot at or killed.

There's obviously been a lot of economic blowback over the sanctions. But in Moscow, life has largely gone along as normal for these people. And the idea that you can be blown up, you know, in one of the toniest suburbs, west west of Moscow is really shocking to a lot of these people. And they all know each other. You know, it's a small town. Darya Dugano is on state TV, a fair bit. You know, they all run into each other in the green room. These shows go on for 12 hours a day these days.

So they need the speakers. And what you're seeing is that a lot of people in the rationally, you know, the sort of ultra-nationalist constituency, they're really losing their shame and people who for years denied that Russia had anything to do with various nefarious acts they were accused of. Now they're just kind of casually admitting it. So I look at it. You know, Yugini Pergoshan was there, a man who had, you know, is in charge of, you know, the Wagner mercenary group that denied its own existence.

And now is, you know, advertising pretty openly. He's got billboards in Russia. advertising, you know, recruiting people on the internet. Rigozian has, there been some Russian media reports that even went to prisons himself to try to recruit prisoners to go fight in the war in Ukraine. There he is, posing for the cameras at the funeral with a hero of Russia medal on his chest. You know, Russia's highest state award of them all. You have Margarita Simañan, the editor of R.T., where Daria Dugina would sometimes appear.

And she's saying, oh, you know, the supposed killers have gone to Estonia. If Estonia doesn't extradite them, then, then, you know, she made a lot of them. this joke about, you know, her own famous interview with the Salisbury poisoning suspects, we should send some professionals to go and admire the spires and just kind of, you know, casually drops to like, oh, yeah, yeah, we did poison, you know, the script house with a nerve agent. And, yeah, it's like there's no point pretending anymore because, you know, almost no one bats in eyelid because it's like, oh, yeah, of course, yeah, we have a shadowy mercenary group that commits war crimes.

of course we we poison these people. And, you know, the masks are off, as it were. I mean, there's no point pretending anymore at this stage when you're this deep into the war. And when Russia, you know, there's been a lot of casualties, a lot of military losses and a lot of economic damage. For a lot of people, the natural reaction, it's not to say uncool, so double down. Yeah. I mean, so just to sort of button this one up, I mean, the Russians blamed Ukrainian for this attack on Dugina. The Ukrainian said, no, this was staged as a pretext for an assault on Independence Day, which is coming up on Wednesday.

And then we have this former Russian member of parliament who got kicked out of parliament for opposing Putin that he now lives in Ukraine. He says a group of Russians that we're calling the National Republican Army were behind the attack. They're sort of, I guess, a dissident group. Is there any way to vet or understand this final claim that there's a new group that does I mean, Russians who are anti-Putin within Russia? Is that sort of the gist? Well, for a start to vet it, we'd have to have some sort of evidence that this group exists. And so far the only evidence has come from this manifesto that we have Pamario offered out on YouTube. And he showed about a three-second clip of some guy in, you know, camo and with some, you know, bandana over his face and shades.

You know, you can, you know, make out a single feature, you know, speaking through some sort of voice-altering device. And, you know, it is true that there have been, you know, some people have firebombed recruitment offices. There have been some, there's been sabotage of railway supply lines and other things like that in Russia. But this particular group, there's no real reason, you know, at the moment to believe it exists. Because, yeah, Pan Mario is not exactly. a trustworthy, he's not really thought of as a trustworthy figure by, you know, even other members of the Russian opposition. He, he was, you know, in, in, in parliament for years, you know, voting, voting for laws such as, you know, the Russian anti-Magnisky law, which have banned Americans from

adopting Russian orphans. He had close-tized to Vodos officer, Kov, who was Putin's politics and presario for so many years. And then he, he voted against the annexation of Crimea, you know, you went to opposition and eventually left the country after he was accused of various financial crimes. And no, I thought it was really telling seeing the reaction on Twitter, just from other members of the Russian opposition when he said this, which was, you know, you could sort of boil it down to thinking, you know, if I was going to start some sort of partisan group and, you know, this would not be the guy that I would choose to tell people about it. it only damages your credibility further. So, you know, you can spend all day doing this.

You know, it was, you know, Colonel Mustard in the drawing room, you know, with a candelabra. While we don't have any real evidence and, you know, the FSB is in charge of this investigation, it's only going to get you so far. I think what's much more important is the reaction. And the reaction is very much showing that Putin and the Russian state are only going to, if anything, step up what they're doing to Ukraine. And use this that way. Yeah. You know, we've sort of talked about how this attack was one of the first times that the war has been felt in Moscow, certainly.

There have been a bunch of mysterious explosions, drone attacks, whatever, in Russian-occupied Crimea in the Crimean Peninsula, including places, you know, near where Russians were literally hanging out on the beach, on vacation, with their kids, with their families. Do you have a sense of whether those attacks and what I imagine was considered a relatively safe area have brought the war home in a different way for Russians or impacted that broader narrative about the war? I mean, I guess it would be in terms of like media coverage, discussions you're seeing on telegram, et cetera. Oh, absolutely. I think, I think, you know, there were certainly feeling at Russia, especially with Crimea, you know, they completely got away

with it. They'd have to fire a single shot, you know, when they were taking over the peninsula and that, you know, Western countries didn't really do anything. The sanctions were really mild, just a few sanctions against personal sanctions against members of the Russian elite compared to, you know, the much, much more significant ones that Russia is under now. And, you know, they were able to, you know, heavily, you know, Crimea was internationally isolated, but they were able to link it to Russia, you know, with flights by building this extremely complex feat of engineering, this bridge that goes over the treacherous waters of the of the Kerch Strait, you know, built, of course, by one of Putin's childhood buddies at a great expense. And, there was a sort of feeling that, you know, they, you know, they won that, you know, people were going. They were having a nice time on the beach. You know, Putin, the friends were buying up all all the vineyards on Crimea. And this, this, you know, very, you know, very much shattered that, that illusion. So you, this same bridge, you know, the traffic going out of it has been at record levels since these things,

military targets in Crimea started blowing up. And, you know, tourism of Crimea this year is down by, I think, half off top of my head, which is partly because of the war, it makes more difficult to fly there. You know, you have to, you know, but, you know, this is not exactly a great advertisement for your Crimean beach holiday of things are blowing up at the airbase in your pie.

And also, you know, it seems to have shown us that, Ukraine, wherever these capabilities are, it's not entirely clear. You know, it could be missiles, drones, behind the line sabotage, some combination of it. But they have some pretty good capacities because, you know, some of these explosions in the places like Belbeck Air Base near Sevastopol, that's about 300 kilometers south of the closest Ukrainian position. So it's certainly been impressive. And you get the impression that the Ukrainian government also really enjoy the reaction to, because as best as I can tell, it's their version of what Russia did when Russia sees Crimea

and pretended for the first month or so that the little green men weren't really Russian soldiers, which was just intensely irritating to everyone else because, you know. Yeah, trolling. Yeah, you could see it with your own eyes. And so the Ukrainians, you know, whenever there's one of these explosions, you'll see a bunch of senior officials in Slensky's administration go on Twitter. And, you know, the joke is, oh, because because I'm, the, thing for Russia, it's very embarrassing to admit that Ukraine has been, you know, striking these

targets. And there's also the risk of, you know, provoking panic among the local population. You get things like, you know, people leaving, leaving Crimea on mass after, you know, these attacks ruined their beach vacation. And so, so Russia for a long time, they wouldn't use the word explosion in instant media reports. They just say some bangs or some collapse. And the explanation would be, oh, there were some sort of fire safety violation. You know, the munitions just blew up by themselves. And so the Ukrainians would say, ah, the Russians say, but smoking again.

The ammunition depot shouldn't do that, you know, smoking. And there's been a certain, you know, Chadenfreude built up over eight years of occupation that the Ukrainians appear to be enjoying there. Yeah, some dark dry humor, but I agree with you. Sell your stock in ClubNet, Crimea. So last question here.

This war has been going on for about six months. Winter is rapidly approaching. Lots of European countries, notably Germany, are extremely dependent on Russian natural gas, which Russia is slowly ramping down, cutting off. There's all these maintenance efforts that suddenly have to happen where the Nord Stream 1 pipeline shuts down for several days, comes back up. It's at lower capacity level. Do you have a sense of, this is a big, sort of big picture question, what European resolve is

looking like in terms of support for Ukraine as the cost begins to literally be felt by ordinary people who might have to, you know, heat their house at a lower level or industries that you could imagine might actually have to fully shut down if there really is insufficient natural gas supplies. I think I was actually in Kiev, you know, when the Davos Forum happened, which was in the end of May. And I remember when there was a moment where the mood suddenly took took a turn for the darker because in Ukraine, they'd been very successful in March and April, the driving Russia out of central Ukraine. They were getting more support from the West. There was this feeling that they'd be able to do that. Life was going back to normal in cities like

Kiev, which itself, you know, after what happened in February, March, felt to a lot of people like an act of defiance. And then a lot of Ukrainians in the elite, they came back from Davos having met all these, you know, European politicians, a businessman, you know, saying, and you'd see a few of them say these things publicly. that Heather Volkswagen was one of them saying, oh, you know, we really want, you know, business as usual. And, you know, that's something the Ukrainians are very much worried about. And that's something that Putin pretty much appears to be, to be counting on. So yeah, yeah, it's like a game of chicken because, you know, there's something that they're, you know, Putin and, and the Kremlin

that have been saying a lot is that, you know, sanctions, they are a two-way street because, you know, in Europe, especially in Germany, you, you had this policy of, you know, energy interdependence that a lot of people in the West, they thought that this would somehow better Russia and, you know, draw it closer together with Europe. In fact, with it, that it made Europe extremely vulnerable to Russia, you know, something that the Russians very much know. And the calculation in Russia, it appears to be, you know, that, you know, we, you know, we can take more. These Europeans are weak because they're, you know, these are democratic societies. They have to explain to their voters every couple of years, you know, why the energy bill has,

has gone up so much, you know, especially, you know, summer, you know, like, you know, in Lampia, where I am, you have 20% inflation right now in the UK is one of the few countries that isn't subsidizing these huge energy bills. They're seeing a lot of small businesses, even, you know, in the summer, we're already going out of business when they get hit with the bills in the country that is relatively not very dependent on Russian gals. And I think that is very much what Putin is hoping for is that, you know, if you look at everything that Putin has has said and done, you know, you don't do this,

you know, for, you know, for a joke. Like you don't do this unless you're extremely committed to the bit. The same with Dugan. You know, Dugan started out as this postmodernist, you know, everything that he would say would also contain its own denial, you know, half of it appeared to be a joke. so much of it was just, you know, gibberish and trolling, uh, that, uh, he's, you know, he's really become, you know, committed to, to the bit. Like you, you know, yeah, he's a homicide. And, and I think Putin is, uh, not unreasonably thinking that, you know, he has, um, stronger,

stronger as all of all these people. He, he, uh, doesn't, doesn't really seem to respect, uh, most, most, uh, European leaders. And, uh, he thinks that he can, he can outlast them. You know, he's already been there for 20 years. Why should he stop now? Yeah, understandable. Max, great to see you. Thank you, as always. Everyone should read your stuff at the Financial Times. Everyone should follow you on Twitter.

You're a great follow. I just want everyone to know that. And I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks again, Max, for joining the show. Always a great. The guy knows a lot about Russia, the ultra-nationalists.

Yes. His head lives in dark spaces. He really helped us, like, at the outset of the war, like, and just, he was right. Everything he said about, like, Putin's, mindset in the run-up to the war and, you know, I think Max has got his finger on the pulse. I do, too, in part because it seems like he was reading a lot of like Alexander Dugan philosophy and, you know, that he knew who these thinkers were. Yeah, he goes into it.

It's pretty, there's some, it's interesting to like look at the intellectual underpinnings of Putin, such as they are. Yeah. Interesting as one word. Terrifying is another. Thanks to Santa Marin. And thanks to the guy who wrote the review of the Jared Khrush. book.

You're the best. Maybe you should Google that. I think his name is Dwight Garner. Yeah, you should check it out. Check it out. I was disappointed to see Jared at number one on Amazon. If you've made it this far, you can pick up my book and, you know, make a little rock.

Knock him off. Don't we think that Jared paid somebody to buy a bunch of bulk ones on Amazon? I am 100% certain that Jared had people buying, like, thousands and copies of his book. Yeah, me too. Because who else is, I mean, that review made the point. Like, who's this book for? Like, who are the Jared stands? He's not like the MAGA people really like Jared.

Trump ain't reading this thing. Yeah. I don't think Ivanka's reading this thing. Don and Eric can barely read. Probably nobody is reading this who doesn't have to read it for their job. No, absolutely. All right. That's it for this week.

Talk to soon. See it. Pots Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth to upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.