Pod Save the World - Rihanna replaces the Queen

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Tommy and Ben cover the Omicron variant, a history making Prime Minister in Sweden, the Nordstream 2 pipeline and tensions in Ukraine, corruption and spies in international soccer, Jared Kushner goes hunting for gulf oil kickbacks, a historic election in Honduras, the Iran deal talks on life support, maple syrup cartels and Oasis. Then Tommy talks with Pashtana Durrani about her work educating women and girls in Afghanistan.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Back in studio. Back in studio. How was the parade? The Macy's Day Thanksgiving parade? It was pretty awesome. I mean, we had to sit out and wait for like two hours to get to our seats.

But then, yeah, watching floats come down in Central Park West, kind of iconic American scene. Yeah. Was there a favorite float with the ladies? I mean, I think Chase from Paw Patrol kind of crushed. Nice. You know, like, I mean, there's like a... a star power, like when Chase is coming down, you know, Chase is on the case, as you will. And then they're, like, what's sad is there's, like, these other ones that, like, they don't

know who it is. Like Ronald McDonald, they were, like, thought it was kind of scary. Oh. Like, like, take that marketing. And I'm like, because we don't take it to McDonald's, you know. But so there are these, like, iconic images from my childhood that are like, who's that boring float? Oh, there's Chase.

There's this new Netflix character that I don't even know the name of, you know. Oh, that's cool, though. So it makes you feel old, but it's cool. That's fun. That's very fun. Can I actually say? Yeah. I get almost like emotional being in a crowd of people watching a parade.

You know what? COVID, you know, like seeing like a, like the Hampton band or something. Like I was just like, this is awesome, you know. I felt the same way just kind of being on an airplane. Yeah. I was really happy to just be. I don't know. I flew from here to D.C.

I went to the Hertz guy, rented a car, sat and got awful D.C. traffic for a couple hours and I was like you know what this feels normal I'm content yeah I'm I'm here for this you know and then what was really cool Ben was uh I think I went to bed on Thanksgiving night feeling as full and bad about myself as I ever have in my life yeah I mean hot take coming uh huh turkey's not that great you know turkey's fine I'm a stopping guy it's like uh it's not necessarily like the meal that I would choose is like the one big meal that I would choose is like the one big meal a year. No, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't either. I'm more of a ham fan. Yeah. My mom makes a grave that. Mom, if you're listening, it's not a critique of your

tricky. Sure, of course. Yeah, like it's just a general statement. No, no. Your mom's clearly top two moms on the planet. I'm very excited to see mine over Christmas and we're going to eat a lot of stuff. But before that, Ben, a lot to cover today. I'm excited to talk with you about the Omicron variant. New variant just dropped. We have a history making weird in Sweden. Naturally, gas pipelines, tensions in Ukraine, corruption and spying at FIFA. Jared Kushner goes hunting for some kickbacks in the Gulf. We've got a historic election in Honduras, why things are looking bad for the Iran deal. Drones, Barbados, maple syrup, and Oasis are making news. Then I talk with Pashtana Durrani, who is the founder of an amazing organization called Learn Afghanistan. This is helping women and girls in Afghanistan

get educated. They are still doing that work even after the Taliban takeover. So, Stick around for that, a very, very brave person. For those Ben, who want to pour one out for 2021, Cricket Media is presenting What a Year. It's a live stream on Tuesday, December 7th at 5 p.m. Pacific. We'll be doing all kinds of stupid, entertaining nonsense to raise money for the no-off years fund, which is helping organizations, you know, registering voters knocking on doors today in Key States. So check it out at Cricket.com slash what a year.

Also, check out Pod Save the World on Snapchat last week. We uploaded a funny cut down of our segment on Justin Bieber, Saudi Arabia, and Formula One Racing. So give yourself the gift of subscribing to Pazave the World on Snapchat Discover. Also, Ben, give your friends the gift of Ben's book after the fall for Hanukkah or Christmas. Where do you come down on the correct spelling of Hanukkah? I mean, I use the H spelling. No, C? No, but I mean, you know, I'm only half Jewish.

I don't know if that factors in. So I always say it on my head is Chinooka. Yeah, I mean, that's the non-Jewish pronunciation. It's the Goy way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hannah's mother's side is Jewish, and they let the Goy get on the candlelighting. How do they spell it? I don't know. I'll ask them. Yeah. I mean, it is a great Hanukkah stuffer after the fall.

So if you read it, if you like it, get it for that loved one in your family. I actually occurred to me. I have a piece dropping on the New York Times tomorrow. They had me review a book, a great book. Which one? Called Looking for the Good War. this extraordinary professor at West Point, this woman named Elizabeth Samet, it's about how our nostalgia

and mythologizing of World War II has gotten us into trouble. That's super interesting. Super interesting book. And she gets into culture. She gets into like the, you know, she gets into like the greatest generation and the kind of Tom Brokazation of World War II.

But basically, you know, how the kind of xenophobia and war can be this good thing. And if the U.S. goes to war, it's always inexorably for the best, how that's gotten us into some trouble. So that's dropping tomorrow. And my one other plug is David Limey, friend of the pod, elevated yesterday to Shadow Foreign Secretary.

That's so hot. So, I mean, if you listen to this podcast, you are early. You were ahead of the Lamey curve. You had Limey stock early if you're a whirlbow. That's very cool. And I'm excited to read that book review. I do think about, you know, the way we talk about World War II and veterans and the sort of gauze that gets put over it.

Yeah. But, you know, I think black veterans of World War II in the South were treated like horribly and were subjected to violence and lynchings and in numbers that were shockingly high. Yeah. And she has this amazing segue in the book about how she gets into the segregation in the armed forces and but also how the mythologizing of the Civil War. was kind of the act one of what happened in World War II and how some of the rehabilitation of the Confederacy kind of was part of the buildup to the war because it was like bringing in the South like, hey, we'll celebrate your war heroes, you know. Yeah, it's interesting.

Do we blame that one famous documentary. Ken Burns is he at fault? He doesn't, you know, he escapes judgment. I'm just trying to find it. I'm just kidding. Well, I felt bad like dingin Tom Brokaw in this review, but like there was a, a, quote that she has of his where he's like, this is the greatest generation that any society has ever produced in human history. And it's kind of like, it's funny to think back on how

widely like just that kind of jingoism was like, yeah, like, we're all for that, you know. Yeah, American exceptionalism, uh, crescendoed. Yes, it crescendoed right around that time. All right. Well, that's a lot of good stuff. Let's start with a much more depressing topic. The Omicron variant. Amicron. Omicron. I don't care. A big thank you to all the media organizations out there that decided to issue breaking news alerts during Thanksgiving dinner about this new variance of COVID-19. Right, but everybody's about to fly home. Yeah, exactly. It's just the worst.

It's too early to know what exactly the impact of the Omicron variant will be, but there are concerns that mutations to the virus could make it spread more easily. So that's why this has gotten a lot of news. It was first detected in Botswana, South Africa, then detected a bunch of cases followed by news of the variant spread into Europe. The U.S., the UK, the European Union quickly announced travel bans from South Africa and neighboring countries. Israel said they wouldn't allow any travelers into the country for two weeks after Israeli health officials identified a case. So that's how seriously people are taking it. The travel bans have led to enormous frustration from South Africa and other countries in the region that felt like they did the right thing by identifying and speaking out about this Omicron variant and now being punished by travel restrictions. A lot of countries in Southern Africa are dependent on tourism.

and this is a huge economic hit at the worst possible time. So, Ben, hard to know what to make of this yet. Just a couple of thoughts I had just from reading the coverage. Like one, it is a reminder that vaccine equity is a huge problem. 10% of Africans have received one dose of a vaccine as compared to 64% of North Americans. That is disgraceful. But I also do think that there's a little bit of sloppiness in the coverage. We need to be mindful that finding this variant in South Africa or Southern Africa

doesn't mean it emerged there from an unvaccinated person. I mean, that's a reasonable thing to think might have happened. We don't know that yet. I also understand the frustration about the economic impact of the travel bans. And I really do sincerely worry about the message it sends to other countries about transparency and they could be punished. This travel ban also seems to be a bit flawed because Americans, again, can travel back to the U.S., but foreign people can't. So there's some holes into it. But also does seem reasonable to me to put in place some sort of travel restrictions for like two weeks.

until we know more information about the variant to maybe slow its spread. I mean, I would bet money that the Omicron variant is already in the U.S. But, you know, this isn't binary, right? We're not like stopping it or allowing it in. It's a matter of degree. So I don't know. Any thoughts or early takeaways or anxieties from you based on all this flood of coverage? I mean, I share everyone's anxieties.

So I don't have to name them. The couple things, first of all, in the vaccine equity issue, I think this got a little sideways too because it weirdly got tied up in this country in like the booster discussion, which is the wrong way of looking at it. Like the scale of vaccines necessary to deal with vaccine inequity are not going to be filled by like you not getting a booster CVS. Yeah, I think there's a micro and a macro policy making decision. And the macro matters. Yeah, and the macro issue that that really bothers me is clearly, you know, the more we talked about this, the more the disease is allowed to kind of spread unchecked and unvaccinated populations around the world, the more likelihood

that you're going to have the development of new variants. And inevitably, people travel and it spreads. And right now, what I worry about is, where's the next big tranche of funding for significant distribution of additional vaccines? Because you saw the announcement last year at the G7 of a substantial, you know, one billion vaccines. We said at the time, that's great, but that's actually nowhere near what's required. And you haven't really heard anything about where the next U.S. tranche of funding is going to come. And we know how hard it is to get things out of Congress these days, where the next big international push is going to come. So I think this should be a reminder that now is a time for countries to lean in to creating new funding sources and dissemining more

vaccine. And again, I don't think that comes at the expense of boosting your own population. It's just about producing more vaccine and getting into more people and getting more arms. I mean, look, I think the booster decision, it's complicated, right? Because at a macro level, if every American gets boosted a third, a third shot, and then we all get boosted again in six months or a couple months for this new variant, like that will, I think, constrain supply in a way that will advantage us in the U.S. and other other countries. But at the same time, I mean, Moderna still won't share the recipe for their MRNA vaccine with other suppliers, including ones in South Africa who could be producing it. So those I think are the most important

macro decision. And that's my point. I mean, yes, in some ideal worlds, like you would have every dose going to the widest possible population. In a world in which it's inevitable that countries are going to boost their populations, what you need to be doing is doing everything you can to significantly ramp up supply. And whether that's sharing the recipe or whether that's just spending money to buy more vaccines and get them more arms. I think on the travel piece, I totally share the frustration expressed by South Africa that they feel like they're being punched for doing the right thing. And the thing is there are steps that are in between like a travel ban and not doing anything. Yeah. So like during Ebola, I remember there were

additional restrictions or requirements, you know, testing. quarantine requirements. Quarantine seems like good. So you could find solutions and hopefully the Biden team can pivot quickly to this to mitigate those economic impacts where, yes, if you're coming from a place where you just discovered a variant that's potentially problematic, you may have more layers of screening or more quarantine requirements without having to just shut down travel. Because the reality is, too, as we've seen within India and the Delta variant, like these variants

are going to end up everywhere. I mean, it's just the logic of how the world works. No doubt. And, you know, and frustratingly, tragically, supply shortages of vaccines aren't the only problem. There's now vaccine hesitants globally. Globally, yeah. There are last mile problems of, you know, distribution to get vaccines into arms. So it's a very, very complicated problem.

Andy Slavitt from, who it was one of the, you know, for the first six months or 10 months or something that he worked at the White House for Joe Biden doing, you know, vaccine distribution. work essentially, and he recommended immediately surging several hundred million vaccine doses to southern Africa. Seems like a very good idea. I wonder how feasible it is to get that done quickly, what infrastructure would be needed to set it up. But it seems like, you know, that's a good idea.

Yeah, it's a good idea. And like, it's what's going to be necessary because we've also talked about how spotty the whole approach international travel is, too. Like everybody has different requirements. None of this stuff is harmonized. And I don't know how long that is tenable, you know. And by the way, it's increasing inequity in other ways. This is a small issue relative to the bigger issues we've been talking about.

But the one thing I noticed and heard at Glasgow, for instance, is, hey, a lot easier for all these vaccinated government officials and diplomats and civil society people from the global north to turn up at an international summit. a lot harder for people who are unvaccinated and have a harder time traveling because of travel restrictions. So there was an underrepresentation at that climate summit from the global south. And that's just one thing. But I'm sure you're going to hear that across the board at any kind of international event or thing. And again, it may seem like a small thing in terms of the number of people of effects, but it kind of speaks to this kind of tiered system where like we're emerging from this and we have our vaccines and we have. our vaccine, you know, passports on our phones and things like that. And, and there's just

going to be a huge lag. And that's just not fair. And it's not good for our own public health either. Yeah, it's one of the billions of ripple effects of this virus. I mean, I bet six months ago, none of us would have cared much about a shortage of shipping containers. And now it's like the only thing Biden is worried about. Yeah. Okay, Ben, this next story, I would say this has some good news, some bad news, and then a lot of twists and turns. So good news. Sweden appointed its first ever female prime minister last week. Bad news. She resigned just seven hours later.

Now, here's the back story. That's like makes scaramucci look like a lifer. Yeah, a mooch. Magdalena Anderson from the center left Social Democrat Party, she pulled together a coalition government that included members of the socialist left party and the Green Party, and she became prime minister by a single vote. Interesting system under Swedish law, Ben.

You only need a majority of MPs to not vote against you. So 174 MPs voted against. her. 117 voted for her. 57 abstained. So it was 174 to 174 a tie. You become prime minister. Weird system. Anyway, Anderson's appointment is historic. She has spent the past seven years as the finance minister and is highly qualified. Sweden is the only Nordic state to never have a woman's service PM. But here was the bummer shortly after she became prime minister. The budget that her party put forward was rejected in favor of one from the opposition. that included the right-wing Sweden Democrats Party who literally have neo-Nazi roots. Bad. That caused the Green Party

to leave the government coalition that had just formed and Anderson resigned. But another twist on Monday. Anderson was reappointed as prime minister. She's not going to try to leave the government until the next set of elections of September. So, Ben, I realize that our two-party system

has some real flaws, but maybe we're learning. So does Sweden's eight-party parliamentary system. I don't know. That was my dick. Yeah, I mean, look, positive breakthrough here that's part of this trend, right? We've seen some of the better up-and-coming politicians in the democratic world tend to be women, often younger women. And we've run into this in a few European countries where the old models of how you build coalitions have been somewhat scrambled by the rise of these new parties. Yeah, yeah.

whether it's like these far-right neo-Nazi parties, not good, or whether it's the rising strength of Greens relative to social Democrats. And so what that means, we saw this in the kind of laborious government formation in Germany, the traffic-like coalition of libertarians, greens, and social Democrats. Like, it used to be plug and play. We have our natural coalition partners, and we just put this thing together. And I think what we're seeing in more and more European countries is you have to kind of reinvent the wheel each time that you're putting the other coalition, which makes it more fragile.

I think the basic rule of thumb that is a good one is to try to avoid any reliance on the votes of Nazis. My recommendation to our European friends here. I know the woman, I met the woman who became prime minister of Estonia named Kyakhalis, who's remarkable. She's, you know, I think she's younger than about our age. And she actually, even though she got the most votes the first time around, she didn't become prime minister because she wouldn't get into a coalition with some of these. like far-right creeps. Good for her. Better to not rely on those votes.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned this. The Germans did finally form a government. As expected, Olaf Schultz from the Social Democrat Party will be chancellor. He will step into Anglo Merkel's very big shoes. So good luck to him. The Social Democrats narrowly won the election back in September. Schultz formed a coalition with the Greens, the pro-business free Democrats.

And then Annalina Baierbach, who's one of the leaders of the Greens, will become Germany's first female foreign minister, which is very exciting. candidate. Doesn't seem like there's going to be very drastic changes out of this coalition from the Merkel era, but it was exciting to read that the coalition agreed to get Germany off of coal and expand renewable energy to 80% of their power by 2030. So that's pretty ambitious. Look, like they will have a female Green Party leader in Byrobach as their face of the world. Yeah. Like that is a big deal for Greens everywhere, I think. I mean, this is, you know, You've had a green farm minister before in Yashka Fisher, but still, I think, you know, having the kind of generational shift like this.

But also the climate thing is important. You know, like, like that because people, you know, Louisa Newbauer, who we had on the pod a couple weeks ago in Glasgow, you know, because of what she and others did in Germany, driving up the vote share for Greens and raising the profile climate because of that, you have Germany moving more decisively off coal. And this is the thing that activists have to understand climate activists who are so pissed. You know, something very pissed about Glasgow. Hey, look, you know, two more Senate seats in the U.S. And we're shutting down coal here and Joe mentioned doesn't get a veto. It's just kind of a reminder that ultimately you're going to have to win these things at the ballot box and democracies. And Germany is going to be a better climate partner because of this.

Yeah, agreed. And speaking of Germany, there's a lot of churn and talk right now about the Nord Stream 2. pipeline. Lately, the reports have been in the Biden administration is reportedly lobbying Congress to remove sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that got tucked into this major defense spending bill that is currently moving through Congress. So North Stream 2 stretches from Russia to Germany. This pipeline would double Russia's capacity to deliver natural gas to Germany. That is good news for Germany, but bad news for Ukraine because they make money when gas flows through the pipelines

that are in their territory. In 2020, Ukraine made $2.1 billion in what are called transit fees. In theory, now Russia could basically reroute all the gas it sends through Ukraine through Nord Stream 2, so screw them. Ukraine also views control of these gas pipelines as a deterrent against Russian attacks

because Russia is probably not going to start a war in a place if it needs that infrastructure to sell billions and billions of dollars of gas to Europe. Probably. That's not a definite. with the Russians. Unfortunately, it's not definite. But, you know, it's a good hedge. There's also concern that Russia could cut off gas to these countries if they get mad at them, they'll leave people freezing, etc. So all this comes as Russia is reportedly massing troops on the border of Ukraine. And last week,

President Zelensky of Ukraine said that he uncovered a coup attempt against him planned by a group of Russians and Ukrainians. So a very confusing story here. So then, you know, given all the context and anxiety about this potential Russian invasion of Ukraine that we've talked about for the last several weeks on the show, how worried are you about Nord Stream 2 becoming operational? And do you think Biden should risk pissing off this new German government to sanction German entities to try to stop it? I mean, the thing's 95% done. I think it was 95% done the pipeline when Biden took office. Now they're basically just waiting for German regulator to say, okay, turn it on. But that's sort of, that's how close it is to done. I mean, look, in an ideal world, this pipeline would not exist.

You know, it looks like if I was, you know, president of the world, like, sweet gig. It's a week gig. Instead of just having a podcast, like, yeah, you would not want this to be a revenue stream for the Russians that undercuts the Ukrainians and makes Germany and Europe more energy dependent on Russia. The problem is like we have allies. And Germany is as important allies we have in the whole world.

And sometimes allies don't do what you want. And by the way, a lot of the sanctions we have on Russia, we have in coordination with Germany, in coordination with the EU, which we couldn't have without German cooperation. So it's one of these things that sounds really good in Washington to say, we should sanction this pipeline. You're talking about one of your biggest allies who's also the linchpin of Europe. Merkel and her party obviously move forward with this pipeline. the social democrats who are now moving in the chancellery have supported this pipeline uh in fact have some you know not so savory uh ties to it uh george schroder oh yeah um who is

real sketchy real sketchy is on the board of like gas prom or something i mean it's not a good situation yeah but i i just i i i come down against sanctioning germany you know like i just crazy well because we're going to be asking them to do other things against russia look i do think we need a conversation with the Germans about this potential invasion of Ukraine that we keep hearing warnings about, are there tripwires that would make them rethink or revise their energy plans? I think if there's a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, you know, that's the kind of thing where you would say to them, like, I'm sorry, like, we all have to take some sacrifices here. But I mean, oftentimes, when we talk about sanctions on Russia, we're talking about

the U.S. largely asking Europeans to take a larger economic hit than us. And, you know, even though I think they should, like, I think we have to accept if you want to have allies on other things, you can't sanction them. Yeah, and it's worth pointing out that I think the Biden team is concerned because this type of sanction that got written into the NDAA of the National Defense Authorization Bill would leave them without any way to issue a waiver or it could fundamentally change to way sanctions work going forward and their ability to impact them. It's also worth noting that Ted fucking Cruz is holding up the nomination of tons of Biden's foreign policy nominees in an effort to force him to impose more sanctions on Northridge. Where was his outrage when Donald Trump was president and Rick Grinnell was ambassador to

Germany and this whole thing was moving forward? Yeah. I mean, it just shows you what a bunch of bullshit this is from people like Ted Cruz. 95% of the pipeline was done before Biden arrived. Also, just, you know, it's, this whole thing is complicated because Germany is pretty reliant on natural gas and they're trying to move towards more renewables. But that's in part because they shut down all their nuclear plans after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. So there's just like a lot of background. There's a lot of stuff going on here.

Yeah. Anyway, well, Ted Cruz, you suck. Yeah. And by the way, the two things can be true once. The pipeline sucks and so does Ted Cruz. Yeah, there you go. But, but like sanctioning the Germans, I don't think is going to win their cooperation on our rights. Russia policy.

No, I don't either. I don't either. Let's turn to international corruption in soccer because the Associated Press had a major report that said that for several years, Qatar, the country, has employed a former CIA officer to help them spy on rival bidders for the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament. They also spied on key decision makers at FIFA. This former CIA officer's name is Kevin Chalker. The AP report said that the surveillance Chalker's firm provided, including having someone

poses a photojournalist to keep tabs on a rival. nation's bid, having someone poses a honeypot on Facebook to try to get close to officials and keeping tabs on Cutter's critics in the soccer world. One document the AP reviewed put the budget for the spying at $387 million over nine years. No word if that was all spent. A little bit more than a CIA salary. Yeah, that's right. Chalker also promised to help Cutter, quote, maintain dominance of its foreign-born workers, which is disgusting as they're often exploited and forced to work in totally unsafe positions. It's worth noting that. It's worth noting that that this asshole was working against an American bid for the World Cup with that you and I both

worked on at the time. That was like, relive that story. That was like a, just to pause for a second. That was a great slap in the face. It was that in the Olympics bid process. Yeah. Where a bunch of naive ass Obama people went in thinking this thing was on the level and just got punched in the face by corruption and like bags of cash getting handed out.

Yeah, it's when we were flying back from Obama making the final sale on the Olympic bid for Chicago. and we had champagne on the plane and then we were eliminated in the first round because everybody else fucking was bribing the I-Sate. We didn't get like fourth, right? Yeah, no, we were last place. Dead last. And they had the best bid.

Like, it didn't matter, you know. Unbelievable. So, Cudder's also been accused to bribing FIFA officials to get their votes for the games in the first place. So, Ben, two pieces of this. One, FIFA, hopelessly corrupt organization needs reforms. Two, there's this problem

of these former intelligence officials using skills they learned from the U.S. government to protect our national security to instead help corrupt authoritarian regimes. I know Adam Schiff was working on a bill to make this kind of, you know, spy for hire stuff harder to do. But I don't know if you've seen any updates there of thoughts on like ways to make that move a little faster. So, I mean, first of all, we have to track this competition between FIFA and the ISC to see who is the most corrupt and odious and awful sports entity. The guy who was running the bribery scheme for the Rio Olympics I saw, like, just got put away at the same time that we

learn about this. And as we talked about here, like, in addition to making no sense as a World Cup venue, like you've had workers dying building these foreign workers dying building facilities. I think that this, we keep coming back to this private intelligence saying it really is one of the most underappreciated stories in the world. You've got insane Russian mercenary outfits, the Wagner group, like at war in multiple countries, you've got spyware, harassing dissidents, harassing journalists around the world. You've got former CIA guys, like establishing dominance over foreign workers who are probably having their passports removed when they get to Qatar and being thrown into work. There needs to be regulation of this industry.

It's like the Wild West out there. Anybody with a bunch of money can, you know, hire whoever they want to have their own personal CIA. That is an insane way to have, like, power allocated in this world. And it's no surprise that often the Gulf countries that have all this cash, because they have endless oil and gas reserves, like, are the ones taking the most advantage of this other than, like, countries like Russia? Can I read you one example? Retired General Keith Alexander, who was a four-star general who ran U.S. Cyber Command under President Obama before he retired in 2013. He has a contract with the Prince Mohammed bin Salman. College of Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Advanced Technologies.

What do you think those guys are up to? You think they're doing good stuff? Metaverse. I mean, what did you do in college? Like, not whatever these guys are doing. Not what they did. I mean, like, what do you, what's the career track? What are the majors there?

Like, you can major in, like, harassing dissidents. You can major in establishing dominance over, you know, foreign enslaved labor, you know, like. Yeah, droning Yemen. what else do they do? Yeah, I mean, this is like, so there needs to be like a real regulatory structure put up around this. There needs to be much more international discussion of this. By the way, like, there's a big hub in London of this kind of stuff. We've probably invited all manner of, but just by talking about this show.

I know. I've got black cube up my ass, a bunch of former Mossad guys. Like, it's not, it's, but it's really ugly out there. I mean, this is something that needs to be rained in and rained in fast. And to your point on the IOC versus FIFA who is worst competition, just wanted to point out that a IOC official named Dick Pound said that criticism of the punctuation video that we talked about last week was silly. So critics like us were silly, says Dick Pound. Okay. Okay, Dick Pound.

I mean, like, what a fucking joke that guy is. I mean, not, you know, for a lot of reasons, particularly. Names the least of his problems. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, like for him to kind of come out and lecture people, because what did they accomplish? Where's Pong? Like, has she been able to leave China? Has she been able to tell her story?

Like, do we know what happened to her yet? Nope. Have the allegations she may have been investigated. None of that has happened. These guys wanted to have a Zoom and put out a press release and then have Dick Pound come out and tell us all to shut up. Well, fuck you, man. We're not going to shut up. Where is Pong?

Like, what, come on, man. He's the worst. What a name. Ben, speaking of corrupt assholes, Jared Kushner, is back in the news. So, as predicted a thousand times on this show, Jared Kushner has converted his job, formerly cosplaying his Secretary of State, into an investment fund where he can deposit kickbacks for all the favors he did for his favorite golf autocrat buddies. So far, the results are mixed.

This gave me a little bit of hope then. The New York Times reported that Cutter told him just to piss off. They're not going to invest. The Emirati sovereign wealth fund. After he organized the blockade of Qatar, like, you know, then he goes to ask for money. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty ballsy. The Emirati Sovereign Wealth Fund reportedly loved the special favors that Jared did for them in government, but they think he's bad at business. So they said no.

Of course, Jared's Bonesaw buddies in Saudi Arabia jumped at the opportunity and were reportedly negotiating a, quote, sizable investment in his new firm. But this has got to hurt Jared. Former Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, has gotten checks from the Saudis, Emirates, and Qatar. So I'm making them look bad here. So, Ben, here's my question. since the insurrection, there has been some reporting that has tried to put some distance between Trump and Jared and Ivanka. I'm sure that was all part of a PR plan.

A person close to Ivanka and Jared said that they didn't like the coup and the people that got killed in it. Yeah. You know, like they did a little campaign to sort of get them back into the little social clubs. How long do you think it will be until we read some credulous article about how Jared will again be a kingmaker if Trump runs again, becomes elected, again as just a little something that he can forward along to prime the pump. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is all so obvious and has been so obvious for so many years. And the fact that Jared Kushner is not as good a business person as Kendall Roy, right?

This is a guy who ran like a newspaper that his dad bought him and then inherited some buildings. Like not a lot of work you have to do to do that. And so like even the Amarades, right? who have like endless amount of money to shovel people are like well like we'll give a little bit more to mnookin at least a guy you know other than that weird movie he made starring his wife like least that guy's like made some money in his life he's done things like Jared just but like I was talking to somebody about this like when they were talking about Jared getting a fund capitalized around what two billion or something you know Jared stands to walk away from that you know with a few hundred million dollars even if he does basically nothing

it's probably like a two and twenty structure which means they take two percent of the money you invest as a management fee, and then they take 20% of the profits. So you can basically fail your way through it and still make a sizable amount of money. So just think about this. Like these are foreign governments, autocratic foreign governments with their own sets of interest that are different than America's interest in a lot of cases, basically paying somebody, you know, what will become a few hundred million dollars in his pocket for a job well done in protecting all of their interests when he was in government and as a down payment on what he might be able to do for them as concierge, son-in-law, whatever the fuck his role will be in the next Trump

2.0 if that like God forbid happens, right? This is how corrupt this whole system is. And like it's worse than it's, you know, it's funny. Like our media is designed to including us, right? We talk about like Mike Pompeo got like an expensive bottle scotch or something, and that's corrupt. Or, you know, somebody got a free ride on a private jet. This is of a scale of corruption, both in terms of the money he's getting and the services he rendered to get that money. Covered up a murder. It is so much worse than corruption skin. Tom Dashel, if you recall, like had to bow out as our HHS secretary because, like, he didn't report, what, like taxes on a driver or something?

And then this guy's like, Tom Dashel, very skilled, you know, like a guy who'd earned the job. Senate Majority Leader, yeah. Like, what is, it's so stupid how, like, what is, what is the scale of corruption? If it's so big, if it's too big for us to even get our minds around it, we just don't really pay much tension. I know, I know. Well, speaking of Trump 2.0, there was an article, I think, in Politico about who he might pick as his vice presidential nominee when he inevitably runs again in 2024 since, you know, the base wants to. hang Mike Prince. That's a bit of a problem,

a hang up. Yeah. So this piece was, you know, like it was written like it was designed in a lab to troll specifically

because some of the names floated included Mike Pompeo, failed former Secretary of State Mr. Chrysma who's lost like 200 pounds. You see how skinny he is? It's like terrifying looking.

And Rick Rennell, Twitter troll turned what, acting director of national intelligence. One person quoted in the piece said, don't sleep on Rick. Trump loves him.

And unlike Pompey or anyone else, he has no interest in running for president. That's a big issue for Trump. Because what? As if like if he had interest he was going to win? Like what's completely unqualified. Yeah. Like I saw that quote and I was like,

is there somebody who was trying to draft Grenel? And he's like, no, I don't have any interest. I'm just going to go troll some people on Twitter for a while, you know? It's unbelievable. I mean, he did deliver the historic,

remember when he went out and gave that press briefing about the historic service. be in Kosovo, yes, deal that he negotiated, that turned out that the parties didn't even know

what was in the deal, and then he screamed at reporters for not like making a bigger deal out of it. Yes, yes. And then he was named,

as we discussed, presidential envoy or something. Yes, he's the worst. Yeah, it reminds me of, I think it was a famous quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, which was,

he's a modest man who was a great deal to be modest about, Rick Rennell. Rick Rennell. The only time he'll be compared to Churchill in his life.

Okay. It is amazing. I mean, like, it's the reason to do these investigations because, like, these people are going to reemerge. They are. All of them. All of them, all of them. And they're all getting paid. Let's go down to the Western Hemisphere.

We're not getting paid. Well, I mean, just for reading underwear. I mean, we are. But, like, the scale. I mean, people need to buy more merch or something, you know. In the Emirates. We're going to get the bulk purchase of our merch. You need a golf spinoff.

Yeah. Sort of an oil spinoff. Yeah. Pod save. the spigot the dinosaur bones I don't know we'll workshop that one

okay Honduras Honduras on track to elect the first woman president in the country's history This is awesome This is exciting Yeah there's a cool theme today of like

You know Women is sending the highest offices in several countries She would also be the first leader In Honduras elected on a socialist platform So 62 year old Ziamara Castro

Holds a 20 point lead With more than half the votes counted The results aren't final yet But that would be a thorough dropping of the 12-year incumbent right-wing national party and a rebuke of outgoing president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of accepting bribes from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting them. Castro says she will form a unity government, bring back corruption investigators that her predecessor pushed out and consider legalizing some abortion rights. Her husband, Mel Zelaya, is the former president of Honduras who was deposed in a military coup in 2000. and nine. He's been kind of hanging out in Costa Rica and Nicaragua ever since. Some questions

about what exactly he would or has been doing, you know, playing a role in the background. This is Castro's third campaigns in 2013. There was a frightening amount of political violence leading up to this election, including lots of candidates killed and lots of horrifying things. So fingers crossed that that won't continue and that there will be sort of, you know, accepted results and, you know, you'll get to the outcome. But notable, uh, historic for Honduras, Ben, also notable in the way that this vote stands in contrast to the increase in authoritarianism we've seen from neighbors like Danny Ortega, Nicaragua, Naeu Buckele in El Salvador, et cetera. Yeah.

No, that's what jumped out to me is like, this is finally good news in Central America. You've got the Bitcoin bro in El Salvador. You've got like Ortega. What I've seen before, though, is sometimes you get an election like this, people get optimistic. and then like all the structural problems of running one of these countries just kind of converge on somebody. And two years later, it's like you forget that you ever were once optimistic about this. So I think that for the U.S., like getting in there right away and trying to help an administration succeed, you know, with whatever assistance we can provide, whether it's support we can provide.

because whether it's for the selfish reason of trying to address migration flows, you know, Kamala Harris's portfolio down there, or just simply our interest in democracy in a region that is seeing a lot of backsliding, I think you can't wait because all, you know, there's quicksand that's going to start pulling at any new administration there. I do think also like, you know, there's this left-right divide that the Biden team's got to not tie themselves and knots around, you know, I saw today, you know, they're tripling down on their Cuba policy, like slapping more sanctions on Cuba. It's just, it's going to make it harder for them to build coalitions and deal with left-wing governments in Latin America if they're putting meaningless, pointless, you know, sanction on the Cubans. We are hosting the summit of the summit of the United States in this country next year. And, you know, one of the great things about going to that summit that happens every three years. It's the only summit of all the countries in America's after the Q opening was, every was psyched. He was like, let's get back to work.

Let's do some stuff together. I worry that we're going to be back in the soup of, like, fighting about left-right politics again. It's totally pointless and outdated. But this is good. This is good. Let's turn to Iran because there are a couple updates on efforts to get back in the Iran nuclear deal. So just a bit of technical background here. A key step towards creating a nuclear weapon involves enriching uranium to get it to a very high level of purity.

That makes it usable. It's a weapon. We know that Iran is already enriching uranium to 60% purity. That's pretty far along the path to a bomb and is concerning. But on Monday, Axios reported that Israel has intelligence that they've passed to the U.S. that says Iran is taking technical steps that will allow them to go further, enrich uranium to 90% purity, which is weapons grade. Doesn't mean Iran would instantly have a bomb.

Most experts think that full process would take a year or two, but it's still very bad. At the same time, the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA says that they have been unable to convince Iran to let them replace special equipment that is used to monitor their nuclear program. So negotiations between the U.S., the U, Iran, other parties are happening today, I believe in Vienna. The Iranian negotiator, the new one for the new government, is arguing that the U.S. should have to pay a price for Trump's withdrawal from the deal and guarantee that a future president can't withdraw from it, which is a non-starter for the U.S. is also that same fight about sequencing, which side goes first. So, Ben, this is looking pretty dire. You know,

It's not just these negotiations are seen to be going poorly. It's that experts are increasingly concerned that despite all the sanctions and covert efforts to blow up Iranian infrastructure, that they are gaining knowledge that can't be rolled back. You did this great interview with Rob Malley last week, who is Biden's Iran negotiator. How concerned did that interview make you about the future of these talks and, like, I guess, whatever else we've learned in that last week? I mean, you should listen to the interview. You know, Rob was not optimistic. Not at all. It's kind of pretty straight.

He told it. I mean, it was great an interview because I think he was very honest, right? I do have to say it was amazing seeing all these vice presidential candidates and waiting, like dunking on Biden because Iran is advancing its nuclear program when it's entirely their fault. Like 100 percent, like very, very few times in the world has there been something so clearly the fault of a collection of people. Pulling out of nuclear deal that was working got us here. With that throat clearing, look, I just people have to recognize. recognize that at the pace that they're going, if they move up to weapons-grade uranium, they're

using advanced centrifuges, they're gaining knowledge, the breakout time is shrinking. Like next year, we are going to be talking about like a real potential nuclear proliferation crisis with Iran. Again, unnecessary crisis, but it will be upon us. And the insanity of the discourse around it in this country that's like, do you need to get a better deal than the JCP? That is not going to There is a 0.0% chance of getting a better deal than the JCPy. That is insane. After we screwed them in the last deal. And there's no chance that we can give them a guarantee about the next president because we just can't in our system.

I think we just have just to be rooting for anything that can slow this clock down and just try to steer the ship back in the direction of negotiation and back in the direction of a deal. And there have been precious few signs out of these talks that that's the case yet. Yeah. And also there was a big piece. a couple days ago in Haretz about former Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's team coming out and saying that his arguments against the Iran nuclear agreement and his argument to pull out of it was all a big lie. It quotes his former defense minister saying Trump's decision to withdraw was quote, the main mistake of the last decade in Iran policy. Yeah, no shit. The IDF chief of staff.

Why don't you say it at the time? I mean, this is the point. This is the point. There's a lot of like right-wing hawkish groups. One is called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. They are wrong, were wrong. They've been full of shit the whole time. It's all a lie. So here's my, here's my plea. David Sanger, Bill Broad, reporters, very smart reporters who cover this in depth in major publications, stop quoting those people. Who know that these people are full of shit? They're totally discredited. They're discredited. They're discredited. They are paid to oppose an Iran nuclear deal. Whatever that deal is. that is never how they're presented they're presented as as analysts you talk to any of these reporters privately they know these guys are just out there hammering an agenda but they're quote machines

you know and that shapes the the perception of these things propped up by gulf autocrat money yeah i mean absolutely and and look they've been wrong about everything and everything that was predicted has happened in terms of what would happen if you tore up this deal and and there's no sanction left that is going to cause this Iranian regime to come out and say, oh, you're finally hit the nerve. We're going to give over our nuclear program. It's one of the most insane issues that we've had to deal with. And at the core of it, yes, like, BB was at the center of making this argument. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which Trump and the Republican Party does what they did

without BB pushing them to do it. And it was all built on a mountain of bullshit. A lot of falsehoods about the deal. certain falsehoods about the possibility of getting some better deal with more sanctions. Really bullshit specious claims about, like, you still see Mike Pompeo

out saying that, like, it's been proven that Iran violated the deal. He's talking about something that BB talked about that Iran did in 2003. We're not even talking about. Like, this is, like, if you really let yourself like immerse yourself in this, it's one of the great cell phones.

And what I want to know, Tommy is like, what was it all about? Right? Because I truly believe that Israel will be, you know, have a lot of reasons to be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon. Yeah. They will be responsible. Bibi Nanyahu will be responsible for the Iranian nuclear weapon. And the people around him know it. That's why they're talking about it now.

Was it worth it to score some points on Barack Obama and then. I don't think it was his politics. His political future was predicated on keeping everyone terrified of an Iranian threat, right? Well, guess, that's right. That's right. That's right. It's a say, it's like a politics to the border here. Like, they don't want to fix the border. They want more people coming so they can scare people about it. It's so shameful, though, where it's brought us. They're real world consequences to these things.

They're not just like parlor games that FDD analysts play. Just stop quoting these people. Please. Netanyahu is not credible on these issues. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is paid for by autocracies is not credible on these issues. Stop it. Well, maybe if you're a foundation. for the Defense of Democracy subsidized by autocracies,

that that raises some credibility of questions to begin with? You'd think. Two quick, serious things before we get the dumb things. Ben, the Department of Defense announced an investigation into the airstrike in Syria that reportedly killed up to 70 civilians was covered up, and then the New York Times broke that story. We talked about this a couple weeks back. Long overdosed step, but good.

But also, interestingly, there's some new data out of airwors.org, which is a site that tracks military operations overseas, that suggests that President Biden has almost completely stopped at drones. strikes in Iraq and Syria and drastically reduced air strikes in Somalia and Yemen. So look, I can't tell if it's a policy change or what, but that in conjunction with the withdrawal from Afghanistan does speak to a sea change in how Biden is when it comes to ending the Forever Wars as compared to Trump. So I don't know. I think you and I saw this data today. We're kind of shocked by it. And like this is great, like very welcome data, very welcome change. It does,

It's suggesting ending the Forever War is not just about pulling troops out of Afghanistan. It's about beginning to wind down these other activities. And credit to them, I would, I'd love to hear more about it. At some point, I'd love to hear them lay out if they really are doing policy changes. And it's not just tactical reasons, you know. Yeah. It'd be great for them to take credit for it. Yeah.

Can make a speech, Jake Sullivan. Other news, Barbados, now a republic. They will no longer recognize the Queen of England as their head of state. Dom, Dame, I don't know. Dame. Dame Sandra Mason was sworn in as the first president in the island's history. Oh, sorry. I don't know.

55 years after gaining independence from Britain. I think you say Dom Helen Mirren? Dame Helen Mirren. Yeah, yeah. Leave all this in. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm not British.

If it's a British, yeah, it's Dame, right? Yeah. Anyway, Dame Sandra Mason, sworn in as the first president of island's history, 55 years after gaining independence from Britain at the ceremony, at the ceremony, Rihanna was named a national hero. So this is a good ceremony. She is. So, Ben, the queen is still ahead of state in a number of places in the Bahamas, including Jamaica, but maybe not for long.

As our official royal watcher, how do you feel about this? Do you think there's a bunch of other dominoes that are about to fall? I mean, I do think there'll probably be dominoes falling in the Caribbean. And it's kind of weird. I've only been to Barbados once for a friend of the pod to Adam Frankl's wedding. And it's kind of weird when you walk in. There's like a British flag and a picture of like the queen. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it was great to see how joyful the thing was, the ceremony was, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I do think you'll probably see some Domino's falling there. Maybe Rihanna becomes queen. She already is, man. Okay, you're right. Two final things. Last week, we talked about President Biden's decision to tap the strategic petroleum reserve

in an effort to reduce gas prices. But gasoline isn't the only resource getting squeezed by pandemic shortages and weather events. Canada just released. least 50 million pounds of maple syrup from its emergency reserves to keep your breakfast sweet and delicious. Quebec, Quebec, Quebec, produces about three quarters of the world's maple syrup, but they had what the Washington Post described as a shorter and warmer spring sugaring season, which hurt supply right as demand popped.

So the Federation of Quebec maple syrup producers often called the OPEC of Maple Syrup. There's a really good Netflix episode, I think of like dirty jobs or one of those. one of those series on this. They hit the panic button and they tapped their strategic reserves. You know, don't need another reason to worry about climate change. But here we are. Ben, are you a pancake or a waffle guy? I'm a French toast guy. Oh, okay.

That's okay. I shouldn't have made that binary. I love French toast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, my kids are pancake girls. I, but like as purely as a maple syrup delivery vehicle. So they'll welcome the tapping of the Petroleum Reserve. here, or the serve reserve.

I do wonder, does this mean Vermont, though, might get into trade war? Like, do they have to issue tariffs on, you know, does Vermont have to release? Do we have a reserve? And if we don't, why don't we? Like, does Vermont have a reserve? It's a good question. Yeah, we should ask Bernie. Yeah, yeah.

I wonder if he's going to invade. Get Matt Duss on this. Duss, if you're listening. I hope you are. Fill us in on this one. I just want to put my cards on the table and say, all in on Pankewarm. pancakes. Pancakes, French toast, you're right. I don't know. We'd ever had a waffle iron.

Not a waffle guy. I just don't like that good. Yeah, Lego my Ego, you know. Those I would do. In college, I used to eat there. Well, you know what the key was with the Egos was if you had a toaster oven, you put the butter on in advance, sort of in little spots, and then you put it in and sort of toasts around the butter. Oh, that's good. That's really good. Final story. This is one of my favorite stories I've read in a very long time. Last Friday, about 60 people traveled to the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, England to hear

an oasis cover band called, of course, noasis. But noasis is set turned out to be a little longer than folks bargained for when guests woke up the next morning to find five-foot snowdrifts and impassable roads. Further complicating matters is the fact that the inn is at over 1,700 feet above sea level. So the roads were particularly treacherous. According to the BBC news, most guests spent the weekend and left Monday after snow plows kind of did their thing. The final couple left on Tuesday because they were driving a new camper van. wanted a little more time. So far, no one has looked back in anger, Ben, at their impromptu vacation and guests were singing the praises of the hotel staff who kept them fed and presumably drunk

all week. Here's my question for you. How many times do you think Wonderwall was played? I was going to say, like, this probably pivots hard into, like, champagne supernova the first night, you know? Yeah. I'm all for this noasis circumstance. I mean, I actually can't think of something I'd rather do than basically go on a 72-hour bender listening to Oasis music. With 60 hilarious Brits. Yeah, with 60 hilarious Brits and

like fighting about whether you're like Noel Gallagher or Liam Gallagher, karaoke. I mean, like, Wonderwall is an epic karaoke song. But then if you get into the bat, if you get into like, you know, rock and roll star and live forever, the first OASIS album is the one

people sometimes sleep on because you know, the second one was so massive. Yeah, I don't know that I know that first point about. Super Sonic. You know, feeling supersonic, drinking gin and tonics. I bet a lot of gin. I mean, one question, what do you think was, you know, was this a gin situation or a beer situation? Like my, when I imagined it in my mind's eye, it was sort of tapping a keg and, you know, like hitting the Boddington or something. And just just doing it. These people were in the best mood. They were like singing the praises of

these people. I mean, like, do you think relationships are consummated? Like, I feel like, like, you know, children were probably created at this thing. You know, like a lot of good came out of this. The quotes I read didn't mention any procreation, but they did talk about how it was like 60 people there and everybody just became best friends because you're stuck. What else are you going to do? And what about the noasis guys?

Yeah. I hope they knew a lot of songs. I mean, brought some sheet music. Yeah, because the, I love Oasis. The Oasis catalog gets a little thin. Yeah. The stupid brothers couldn't get along. Yeah, they couldn't get along, right?

I mean, you know, I watched the Get Back documentary. Oh, I can't wait to watch that. Which blew me away and I loved it and made me realize that the Beatles are the greatest band of all time. I do think that a similar documentary about Oasis would probably not have been quite as endearing. Just like screaming fights. Yeah, just screaming fights. Does Paul just write Get Back before your eyes? Is that kind of happened?

Yeah, there's this kind of weird genius thing that happens where he's just kind of like jamming or a guitar and you're like, he's almost like he's shaking. like he's thinking and then suddenly he's just going like sweet Loretta Monde and you're like oh my god I'm watching some genius like birth something from scratch in front of me you know it was pretty awesome that's really cool I can't wait to watch I'm a John guy though I just say I and like I came away you come away from the movie liking each one of the four of them more which is amazing to me you know like because there are and and you see warts and all of them you know you see ego and But you still, you just love these guys. You know, the fucking Beatles, man.

I can't wait to watch that. Yeah. I'm behind on secession. Also, the Hulu has a show called The Great, which is about Catherine the Great and sort of Zaris Russia. Yeah. That is on Hulu and season two just came up. And that is fantastic.

I cannot recommend it enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very bawdy. Body. Don't watch it with your parents or your kids. Kind of what happens if you're locked away like noasis, you know, like it's. There's a lot of that. Like I turned it on.

thought it was going to be the crown and there was like an orgy or something you know like exact same thing happened to me and Anna we're like what the hell feel like if you turn on the crown and then suddenly Philip is like 17 women and it's there's a lot going on I think but by the way the women you know it's back Catherine the Great so she runs she's running yeah fucking show you know uh is philip will have is he the one who's he the one who's no yeah poor one out who's the one still life the queen no the the her hobby he was in barbadoes I think uh who had who's hubby uh you know one of the Brits who's in Barbados

Charles was in Charles? Charles was in Braves. I'm not the Royal Watch. I don't know this stuff. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I'll check that one out. All right. I'm excited to watch that.

Okay. We're going to go to break real quick because we've been babbling for a while. But then my conversation with Pashtana Durrani will be after the break. She's the founder of this amazing organization that is helping women and girls in Afghanistan get educated. So stick around for that. I would like to welcome Pestana, Durrani to the show. She is a teacher and the founder of Learn Afghanistan an organization that is working to make education available to girls all across Afghanistan. Pashdana,

thank you so much for talking with me today. Thank you for having me. Thank you. So first, just sort of a basic question. I think, you know, listeners probably saw tons of news about Afghanistan in August. There's been considerably less coverage since. Can you help them just understand how life has changed for people in Afghanistan since the Taliban take over in the U.S. thrall in the end of the summer. Political institutions that the last two decades, the U.S. and all these allies, NATO allies, built, today none of them are existent. Today our central bank is frozen.

We don't have a constitution. We don't have political parties. We don't have representatives. And the country is not only in chaos politically. It's chaos. It's in chaos and humanitarian crisis, educational crisis, women rights crisis in 21st century. The Taliban are banning girls from going to school. This is how the country is right.

now. And here's the thing. Three months ago, none of these things were banned. We had a normal system. Right. I mean, you mentioned this. You alluded to this. I want to talk a lot about the political situation, the humanitarian crisis, the, you know, the sort of lack of banking services, all these greater challenges. But, you know, historically, the Taliban, I think had been incredibly repressive when it comes to the treatment of women and girls. Has that, is it the status quo with them since they came back to power? They continued to be incredibly repressive. I think, here's the thing, you always judge people by the way they have, what they have done in the past, right? When Taliban say we have changed, I'm like, okay, you control the ruler areas, you control my district.

I don't know a single girl who has graduated from your schools, who had a single household who has got your electricity. I haven't seen a single woman who would even go to the spring to collect the water, right? I don't have a single hospital in that area. So how are you better than the last government? That's the first question. The second is, now that they are in power, they continue to be the same people. I wouldn't call them people, but of course, now that the world is recognizing them and they have that status, they still have that grudge towards women.

I don't know what is up with them when it comes to gender. It's funny for me that they don't want the 50% of the country to exist because they don't feel comfortable around them. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the organization that you run, Lern? Afghanistan and the work you were doing to educate women and girls. How does that work? How have you been able to function throughout all of this? Learn is very grassroots level. We are not a big NGO. We don't even have that sort of like, you know, what do we call it, like that formal position in place. We are a very collective community-based NGO and we started because our ruler area from the district

where my people left the district because it was a border region Taliban control. People, 400 families came to spin bullback and that was an IDP. Kemp. And when I went back to Afghanistan, the first thing I saw was we didn't have a school in IDP Kemp. And my cousin was the first one who couldn't go to school and she was self-schooling and learning from home. And that's where we started with learn. The reason, because I had to like, you know, push her to go to school and then post her. It was a problem for the whole Klandat. And I was like, okay, we have this solution here. There is an app that is offline. It doesn't need a lot of electricity. Let's do it. Right. So that's how we started. It was all community approach. It was all basically. community-led and still is community-led.

And it was remarkable to me to read that. I mean, you have continued that work since the Taliban take over. I mean, has there been intimidation or pressure to you to stop? So here's the thing, right? And when August 15 happened, of course, there were people who were scared about me. There were my tribesmen who were scared about me. There are good people, and I understand, who respect and protect women rights. And most of them were tribal leaders, and they wanted me to get out as soon as possible.

But at the same time, it's like more of the Afghan honor and pride that you just can't leave the battleground. And for me, that's where the battle started. And yes, we have continued our work because of that community support. Because there are people who are still giving us their homes, lending us their homes, so we can teach in those homes. There are people who are donating their mobile phones so we can teach girls through those phones. There are people who are actually paying for girls' internet right now so we can recharge and pop up their phones. So it's all a collective effort, to be honest. but yeah, the war on where the parliament continues.

Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who have left Afghanistan for good over the last several years, including a lot of, you know, highly educated people, a lot of professional folks. Is there a role that you think the Afghan diaspora can or should play to help people back home, even if they have to do so from, you know, another country? Yeah, yeah, here's the thing. When it comes to upland diaspora, so there are a lot of Twitter spaces that are entertained right now. I don't go to most of them, but I do see a lot of. of them it's about ethnic politics ethnic divisions and all that and i feel like it's very important

to have those conversations right now i don't care who's talking as long as they're talking as long as they're taking that platform as long as they're representing the afghan voices back home but it's very important that they are connected to their own people they represent it represent the true voices of Afghanistan rather than their own agendas you know and this is the first thing that abganda is for has to make sure that they do and the second thing apart from that the best thing i've gone diaspora right now can do is feed families back home because they're starving nobody wants to take up arms in daishe or including the taliban for their government because they don't have the money right and the second thing that they could do is if you cannot do a lot

the least you could do is like you know send ten dollars to a girl for her uh internet charr uh top up right but i i most of the time it's just so disappointing not that they don't do a lot of work they have been doing amazing work with refugee settlements but i think that We have a lot of capacity and they could do so much better than what we are doing right now. You alluded to this couple of times to me. The UN World Food Program has repeatedly warned about the risk of famine in Afghanistan. You recently wrote a really thoughtful article where you said, quote, Afghanistan doesn't need a lot of money.

It just needs the right kind of money. It also needs its assets unfrozen to meet the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe. Is your message to the U.S. government, to the international community, that it's time to get rid of sanctions and just, get back to trying to support Afghanistan and sending aid, even if that aid might get stolen or siphoned off by the Taliban. Here's the fun thing. So when you're giving money to UN and World Food Program, don't you think that the Taliban are taking it?

Yes. And the food is actually the food packages that the World Food Program is sponsoring these ads these days and they come up on my Facebook, right? And the guy is like, oh, we are going in snow and we are delivering to Afghan people and all that. don't you think they are at checkpoints where the Taliban are like to bring down the food packages because we want to feed our own fighters? And that happens in an INGO, which is literally like a global organization. It's not even an organization.

It's very political. UN is political. So when that is happening and the U.S. has given it a green signal, then why a normal ordinary Afghan who has their account and has money but has no access to it just because the world doesn't feel like it. Taliban don't have bank accounts. Taliban were people who are fighting in ruler and very mountainous regions. They had no time to go to a bank, fill out the forms and have that. Afghan people who actually worked, who actually had something, put it in their savings in those banks. Those are Afghan people's money. That's the first thing. There are good people,

respectable people, who didn't want to beg for just a packet of flour right now on the streets because they don't know how to feed their families, because the organizations have rolled out their carpets and they are no more there. So when I say and freeze the assets, send it in cryptocurrency, the Taliban will never understand it, send it through a private bank, they will never be able to access it. If America, if Joe Biden can talk to the Taliban through Qatar to like, you know, because so that they don't attack the US or give safe havens to any other extremist group, why can't they talk about humanitarian crisis? Why can't we talk about strings when that comes with that assets.

Yeah. I mean, so it sounds like what you're saying is the sanctions that are in place, the restrictions on banking, they're hurting all the wrong people. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. See, on sanctions, the countries right now, the sanction is only hurting the people who had savings in the bank accounts.

It's hurting the teachers. It's hurting the students. It's hurting all those people who actually work in the past two decades. It's never going to hurt Taliban. Taliban already has China support, Pakistan support. They get money to run that one. small palace. They will have money for the oil generators. They will have money for bullets and their guns. You'll always have all that sort of stuff. What happens is the whole country that had their

money in savings and now cannot access it. Right. And I've also read reports that, you know, there are hospitals that can't access the banking system to pay doctors. There are teachers that can't get paid because of sanctions. It just sounds like this effort to put pressure on the Taliban, even if the stated goals are good, right? They want to pressure the Taliban to be more inclusive of women to stop repressing people, et cetera. Like those are good goals, but it just sounds like they're failing in all of those goals and, in fact, just hurting all the people that desperately need help. I think, I think that's where, like, you know, we have to understand that's exactly my point.

Right now, this is big money. If you send all this money to Afghanistan or if you unfreeze it, if the Taliban take it, you are a superpower. America is a superpower. And I'm just talking about America. And the allies, they don't have that sort of power. and they can see, they can track that money. It's impossible to not track that money.

I understand can be put into those gray lists of FATF and all that. It could be one of those countries where you just start using cryptocurrency, you know, legitimize it, whatever. But at the end of the day, you're hurting the wrong kind of people to punish the people who are in power. And that's, they are literally enjoying it. They are forcing big companies to feed them all the time. They're doing that with Alacosei.

I know this. They are forcing all these doctors to give free checkups. to their fighters. What happens to normal or an area of guns? There are displaced people yesterday in Jalzjan in Daikun B. Their, my own relative died, was murdered day before yesterday because the Taliban thought that his Facebook post was too provocative for their, for their, for their fighting the wrong people. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm sorry to like belabor this point. I just do think like people in Washington need to hear this message from someone like you because there's all these political forces that are, that are telling them, we got to be tough on the Taliban and, you know,

squeeze them politically and it just, it seems like it's so wrongheaded. And, you know, the UN World Food Program is warning about this massive famine coming down the pike. I mean, half the country could be at risk. I mean, like, World Food Program for them, it's another career move, to be honest. When you talk about Afghanistan, when you talk about all that stuff, two-third of all that aid that the U.S. is right now going and going to give to feed Afghanistan, which is basically not their duty or responsibility. I mean, like, why should the U.S. taxpayers money go to Afghanistan in the first place, right? But now that it has come to that, World Food Program and all that, two-third of it is going to all their staff. Only one-third of it makes it to Afghanistan,

and even in one-third, a small percentage goes to the people where they can afford one packet of flour. So is it worth it? Is it really good? Right, right. Yeah. So there's a lot of missed opportunities there. And as you point out, I think a lot of poorly spent resources that go through some of the biggest NGOs, which is why I think, you know, organizations like yours are so interesting and so important. Your organization's website is learnafghan.org. You're doing this incredible work to keep educating women and girls across the country in creative ways on their phones, via the internet. What can listeners right now do if they go to learnafghan.org? Can they help you out? Can they donate money? How can they support you? So there are three ways that they can support us.

The first one is by amplifying our work. That is the most important thing, because we're what we are doing right now. Right now, as we speak of, girls are not able to go to school in any part of the Afghanistan. Even if you see this news, that is fake. They're not opening schools for anyone. The teachers are not being paid from three months.

There are children who are starving and malnourished. The whole southern Afghanistan has a paralyzed public health care system, and we are helping in all those things. So, A, amplify our work, so more people should know about it and actually donate, because donating through proper channels will actually get money to those people and there are no overhead costs about.

So the reason I brag about our NGO is because we don't have our overhead costs. And the third most important thing is volunteer with us. If you know you can teach, if you know there is some sort of knowledge that you have that might help Afghans and Afghan girls. And you think that is a skill that they wouldn't volunteer with us. We always create these lists. And then we reach out to those people to teach in our classes. Okay.

That's really good advice. So amplify your work, donate, teach people if you can. Peshana Gerani. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The organization is Learn Afghanistan. Again, it is learnafghan.org. You're doing incredible work. Thank you for talking with me today

and for everything you're doing back home. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thanks again to Pashtana for joining the show. All right, so we got the Beatles doc, we've got the great. We got session. Thanks to Noasis. Thanks to Noasis.

I wonder if we can stream their music. They should become big after this. They should be like the Ted Lassau cover bands. That's a good call. Apparently the Inns, website crashed because they had so much traffic in the story. Yeah, this is huge.

Fantastic. Is this a movie or is this like a 10-part Netflix series? It would be a movie if they kind of ate each other at the end. But I think it, well, I don't know. Maybe you could have some breakups, some get-togethers. Yeah. Kind of like a four weddings and a funeral vibe. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's good. We need like a Hugh Grant. You need a Hugh Grant. Some sort of like foppish. Charming. We'll get to that. All right. Well, that's all we got for this week.

My phone goes off. It's never happened before. It's like 90 minutes of the show. If you're still around, thanks for that. Thanks for that. Thanks for Ben's phone, right? Yeah. See you. Potsave the World is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.