Pod Save the World - The case for invading Australia

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Ben and Tommy talk about reports of a potential war crime by the US military in Syria, tensions on the border of Belarus and Poland, increased concern that Russia might invade Ukraine, Biden’s (virtual) summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, how Trump sycophants are seeding election lies in Brazil, a hostage is freed in Myanmar, space debris, how Trump’s coup attempt spread to the Pentagon, and the case for invading Australia. Then CNN’s Nima Elbagir joins to discuss the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia and the coup in Sudan.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 POTSafe the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Welcome back. Back. How's it feeling? You know, it feels great. Do you feel like, did you reduce emissions while you're there? Did you plant any trees in Glasgow?

Yeah, my carbon offsets for my trip, which is probably net negative for the planet. But, you know, it was interesting. That's just, I hate when, like, Republicans or the press do that cheap shots. Like, how many flights were going to the climate? Yeah. Listen, guys. And the scheme of things, like that the people traveling to the climate change summit are not the ones causing it. We're going to need today's infrastructure to deal with tomorrow's planet.

That's just kind of how it works. Yeah, it's well said. Assholes. We have an amazing show for you guys today. Our guest is Nimma al-Baghir, who you've heard before on the show. She's CNN's senior international correspondent. She's done incredible reporting out of Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, all kinds of places. We talked about all those topics with a particular focus on the Civil War in Ethiopia.

It's been over a year now, Ben. It's getting worse and worse. It needs more attention. So we wanted to focus on that. We are going to cover a blockbuster New York Times report about a potential war crime in Syria, tensions on the border of Belarus and Poland and Russia and Ukraine, Biden's virtual meeting, virtual summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Three hour Zoom then?

Yeah, I mean. Three hours on a Zoom. It's tough. I wonder if they're hitting up the chat, you know. Yeah, it's just super bored. Just tweeting the whole time. Just tweeting links to each other. How Trump's sick events are helping seed election fraud lives in Brazil.

the release of a journalist held hostage in Myanmar, space debris, crazy Trump administration stories from the new books coming out, and then a call for a day of reckoning for a close U.S. ally that I wanted to run by you. But then first, don't miss the latest episode of offline with John Favreau. He talks with international badass Megan Rapino. You have heard of her, one of the best soccer players in the history of the world. No big deal. She talks about what it's like to be an elite athlete in the social media spotlight and much, much more. Very cool. also on this week's X-ray Vision with Jason Concepcion, check it out. They dive into the latest Marvel news, teasers from Disney Plus, and the new Wheel of Time adaptations. You can subscribe to X-ray Vision wherever you're your podcast. Also, if you're an NBA fan, which I know you are, Jason's YouTube show, All-Caps NBA, is absolutely hilarious. Yeah, must watch. And a little more blue than we get to here. Last Bend, do you know we're on Snapchat now? I'm very excited about this. Have you seen the latest episode? I saw the first one. Well, when we love, when we finish recording, I'll play the latest one for you. So each week we're cutting down one topic that we cover on the show into like a short, funny, animated, digestible bite on Snapchat Discover.

It's good. People need to watch it. Yeah. Last week we did a very high-minded fart segment of Biden and Miller Parker Bowls. You know, lofty stuff. That's how we, what we do here on Podse of the World. So check us out on Snapchat. It's the only place for two 40-year-old men to hang out. Okay. So let's do some serious stuff. So Ben, over the weekend, the New York Times published this absolutely chilling report on a 2019 U.S. military strike on an ISIS position in Syria that may have killed up to 70 civilians, mostly women and children. The Times report said this strike was conducted by a secret U.S. Special Operations Unit called Task Force 9. And despite the fact that this action was repeatedly flagged as a potential war crime by defense department lawyers, it was never acknowledged by the U.S. military until the Times report came out. The Times says that Task Force 9 routinely skirts rules designed to prevent civilian casualties

by claiming the strikes are in self-defense and that the unit so badly stretched the legal and practical definition of what self-defense is. And so routinely killed civilians that CIA officers, also working in Syria, reported their concerns about Task Force 9 to the Department of Defense's own inspector general. After the story posted Central Command, seems to release a new statement. They updated the story, and they now claimed that the strike killed 16 fighters, four civilians, and that the other 60 people, it's not clear who they were because sometimes women and children take up arms for ISIS. You know, we should note that this airstrike happened in the final days of a long military

operation against ISIS. These people were completely pinned down at a one square mile area that certainly included ISIS fighters, but also tens of thousands of women and children. So whether or not that that CENTCOM statement is accurate, seems pretty fucking tone deaf and wrong to argue that there was some military necessity to drop a 500-pound bomb into 2,000 pound bombs on this group. So, Ben, long story, everyone should read it in full. But like, I guess my takeaway on reading it was, I feel like DOD is a really big credibility problem on its hands here.

This report describes a completely broken process to protect civilians. and a broken accountability process to report incidents up the chain of command. And it comes after this high profile drone strike this summer in Kabul that killed 10 civilians. And so, you know, one of the arguments you hear that you and I have made about people like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden is that they shouldn't leak. They should go through proper channels because there's ways to hold, you know, people who do wrong things accountable. But if the proper channels are this broken, you're going to see a lot more leaks. I mean, what did you make of the story and just what it says about the military's ability of the police itself? I mean, I had kind of three takeaways about this.

The first is it was such an extraordinary level of detail. So if people haven't read this story, it literally had like communications from the time that the bomb was dropped. Yeah, like, chat. Someone literally saying in a chat, like, who dropped that bomb? You know, with horror because they were watching the video. of the women and children, and then the bomb dropping on them. And that tells me, to your last point, like, this was so egregious that multiple people must have decided to go to the press.

You know, like, you don't get the scale of information that was in the story unless there's a lot of cooperation from people that feel like they'd had no other recourse. The second thing is there is a policy dimension to this in the sense that they're always civilian casualties. It's a tragic part of American military operations and people are right to say that throughout the post-9-11 wars, not enough attention has been paid to this issue. It is also the case, though, that Trump at the beginning of his administration made a point of saying, we are relaxing the standards for civilian casualties on the military, kind of made a point rhetorically of backing up, you know, we're going to carpet bomb these people, we're going to drop the mother

of all bombs on Afghanistan. And if you don't think that that had an impact on something like this, like you're not living in the world as it actually operates. If the commander chief spends four years sending a signal that he doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties, he's pardoning war criminals over here, he's celebrating the size of the bombs we drop over here. That permeates through the military. It just does. And it just is a reality that, you know, you get, if you pay, if you don't really tighten the reins on this stuff, you get these circumstances. And then the last point is the accountability one. And, you know, I saw Chris Murphy making this point today. There's never any accountability for this stuff, you know, like the drone strike kind of methodically pieced together how seven children and a bunch of innocent people end up getting killed in the drone strike and then calculated that nobody did anything wrong, you know.

And same thing here where, you know, that statement felt tone deaf to the story that you read because the story that you read doesn't make it sound like they bombed a training. camp or something where women, you know, some of the worst civilian casualty events that I remember for the Obama years were, we're in this kind of, there's a training camp and there happened to be women and children there. This was like women and children in a distinct location, you know, set apart, it felt like. At least that's what the story said. And so if you can't find any accountability for this, you know, then you need new accountability measures. Yeah. Yeah. And look, There were horrifying tragic incidents that occurred during the bomb administration. There were weddings that were bombed.

Yeah. There was a time when the U.S. military accidentally shelled. The Pakistani military, like, as you said, fog of war, mistakes were made. This just seemed so egregious. And it seemed like there were two parallel actors fighting the same war on behalf of the U.S. coalition at the same time. There was like the standard group that were sort of watching this group through a drone feed. And then all of a sudden this task force nine, you know, plane F-15 or whatever was comes through and drops bombs.

and the one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. So, of course, there's just going to be horrific results there. And yeah, they got to figure this out. Yeah, and look, first principles here is that we should not be doing this in as many places as we are. Yeah. You know, like Somalia, Yemen, potentially Afghanistan, like, clearly the balance of risk of civilian casualty and harm and kind of militarization of U.S. foreign policy outweighs

the occasional terrorist target where we're able to take out. And so part of this is just dismantling. some of this infrastructure. But I think in this case, most people would argue that, like, the ISIS campaign was a campaign that needed to be waged. But if you're going to be doing that, like, it's in our interest as well as, you know, consistent with who we say we are in the world, to not be killing civilians like this. Yes. You know, to the military's credit, after they completely botched that drone strike in the final days of Kabul, they put out all the information they had available. They did so, of course, after the New York Times investigation

sort of unraveled. The initial story that this was a righteous strike, that they hit some, you know, ISIS infiltrator, whatever it was. They need to do the same thing here. And they need to do it real fast. Yeah. And we had this process at the end of the Obama administration

where there was a reporting about civilian casualties publicly that then NGOs usually didn't like, but you had this debate and you shared data. And it was the closest you could get, I think, to having transparency around this stuff. And there was a compensation policy related to civilian casualties. You know, Trump obviously got rid of all that. You know, I think it, you know, the Biden team needs to be looking at, you know,

they're talking about ending the Forever Wars. Like, you know, part of it is much less of this kind of military activity and also much greater transparency about it. Yeah. Okay. Let's turn to Belarus because there's an incredibly tense situation, a dangerous situation on the border of Poland and Belarus right now. So here's the quick backstory.

So Alexander Lukashenko, who is the illegitimate dictator in charge of Belarus. It's a horrible person. He stole a bunch of elections. He brutalized opposition leaders and protesters. His goons are the ones who forced down a plane a few months back that was flying through Belarusian airspace so that Lukashenko's intel guys could arrest a journalist on board. That's who this guy is.

In response to those actions, the U.S. and the European Union slapped a bunch of sanctions on Belarus. So the Belarusian government has been flying thousands of migrants from Iraq and Syria to Belarus, then busing them to the border and encouraging these migrants, mostly men, women, children, a lot of them pregnant to cross over the border into European Union countries like Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to seek asylum.

You can see data, the number of flights from the Middle East to Minsk has literally doubled in recent weeks. The response from Poland has been brutal, just to put it bluntly. They sent thousands of troops to the border to repel people. Last night, there were reports that these migrants were sprayed with water cannons and tear gas. There's reports that at least 11 migrants have died, mostly because they froze. to death because it's winter and it's freezing. The EU is fully backing Poland. They're calling Lukashenko's actions a hybrid attack on the European Union. The Russians are criticizing Poland

backing Belarus because they're a client state. It's hard to get great information on what's happening because Poland is now blocking journalists or aid groups or other officials from the border area. But I mean, Ben, this is horrific. What do you think that European Union can or should do about Belarus essentially using human beings as weapons? And then I guess, The flip side is, you know, how hard should they push back against the Polish government, brutalizing them, knowing that that response is politically popular within Poland, and it seemingly has the backing of the entire European Union so far. Yeah, this is not a story that makes you feel that great about the state of the world.

No, no. Because it's about the most dystopian thing you can imagine, like flying families who want to be refugees to a police state so that they then destabilize European politics. But I mean, I think people should recall that, first of all, Russia is clearly involved in this. They've been front and center throughout. They've basically turned Lukashenko into Klein State since he's been hanging on by a thread since he stole that election. And they are the ones who kind of created this playbook. And I think part of what a lot of us felt in 2015 and 2016 is the scale of their kind of indiscriminate use of force in Syria was in part done with the knowledge that it was going to drive.

masses of refugees into Europe in ways that would destabilize European politics. You thought that was like kind of part of the playbook? I mean, it was hard not to think that. You know, I mean, we don't know. I don't know that. I don't know that. I don't know for sure. But let's just say it was a, you know, a secondary effect that they were okay with.

And ironically, not only does it kind of destabilize European politics, but then it enables and empowers the more right-wing nationalist governments who then undermine support for democratic values, right? So in Poland, even though the law and justice party is, you know, fascist-adjacent, they actually don't love the Russians because of that history. But still, the general strengthening of anti-immigrant right-wing nationalist parties across Europe is in their interest. So it's just, it's gross across the board and just shows you there's no bottom with like the Lukashenko's and Putin's of the world period. And I mean, look, I think there's not all that much. What they need to do is take a step back and figure out a more effective humane migration policy. They have the same

problem we do. Because what they've kind of been doing since the refugee crisis is like paying off Turkey and other countries to just create a buffer. Right. And I think Belarus is part of that. And Belarus is part of that buffer because they're not in the EU proper. But so that's not the solution. So what they what they're realizing now is how much leverage they gave to those buffer states, you know. And what they need is a more orderly process for processing asylum claims determining how many people can be resettled and determining how you deal in a humane fashion with people that you can't let in. And so you're not giving them this leverage because they exploit the weak spots. Other than that, I mean, I think, you know,

all you can do is continue to keep Lukashenko on ice and try to strengthen the Belarusian opposition, which clearly represents a majority of the country. Yeah, and I guess maybe see if you can encourage the Iraqis to stop flights from Iraq to Belarus. But I mean, there's nothing you can do about flights from Damascus to Belarus. I'm sure the Russians can just say, nope, got to do that. Yeah, it's heart-wrenching reading the Iraqi voices in the story. Yeah, a lot of Kurds. Yeah, I don't care.

I'll stay here and freeze. I mean, this, like, unfortunately because of climate change, like, the migration issues are just going to get more acute. And I think what's ultimately going to be needed is some really kind of global new agreement about how to manage migration flows. But that's, if you think climate change is hard, you know, dealing with migration with national governments is going to be harder. Yes, agreed.

Staying in the same neighborhood, we mentioned this last week, but there is once again increasing concern about Russian troop buildups on the border of Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have been engaged in basically a low-grade, near-constant state of war since Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014. A lot of that happens via Russia's support for separatist groups in the area, but Ukraine's defense minister says that there are now currently 90,000 Russian troops on the border,

in the border region. So you could see how that would be a touch alarming. The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to be more transparent about their military activities. We talked last week about how the CIA director Bill Burns took a trip to Moscow to talk about this directly with Putin. The French and German foreign ministers put out a joint statement, you know, basically warning Russia not to take military action. So Ben, I feel like we have this conversation that we're having right now. Maybe once a year, maybe twice a year. There's always concern about this buildup on a Ukrainian border. What do you think Putin's play is here? Is he lulling us into complacency? Is he just an aggressive asshole at all times, like keeping everybody off balance, something worse? Like,

do you ever read on this? Yeah, I mean, part of this is just kind of periodically send the message that he has this capacity to just invade Ukraine whenever he feels like it. I think I was trying to think of a new way to talk about this. I mean, it's not unlike the dealing with the Republican party, right? Like Putin, very similar. And I don't mean in like the kind of Russia gate sense. I mean in the sense that Putin plays by no rules, and we still kind of play by some rules, you know, in this space. And so it's the same frustration you have where you think that the old playbook might moderate, you know, the extreme behavior of Republicans here, and it never does. In fact, it gets worse. And to that end, I think we have to just be putting on the table much more unconventional responses than like just. just you might face some more sanctions, you know. And, you know, one thing I've talked about is

whether the United States should put on the table just a radical amount of transparency about what we know about Putin, his wealth, his associates, their wealth, you know, just that's outside the normal rulebook. But like this guy is way outside the rule book. Or I think, yeah, getting with the Europeans and being like, okay, what are the things that really hit directly. And then you start looking at like that pipeline through Germany, right? But because it just feels like we're playing, you know, we have the old playbook of like sanctions and statements and which are important and, you know, can't have a deterrent effect. But he has to see a level of escalation that is a risk to him that goes beyond stuff that he's

learned to live with, you know? Yeah, he does not seem to, doesn't seem all that deterred. Yeah. I mean, you know, he is. I mean, like, you know, this, it's always hard to kind of judge what he hasn't done that he could. I mean, because presumably they had the military wherewithal to just, like, conquer Ukraine and, and try to annex it. Right, right. And he didn't do that. That may be because he thought there'd be like, you know, an insurgency or something, but it may also just be because sanctions reached a point that he's like, okay, I can go this far, but I won't go farther. You know, so it's always hard to judge when he's backing down because he's always pushing a little bit.

But, you know, this is just, it is like it's just a guy that doesn't recognize the rulebook. And so it's like you're playing a game of international politics where there were these agreed upon rules. And suddenly one player decided that none of the rules apply anymore. And you're still kind of operating in it, you know, and that makes it difficult. Yeah. And unlike here, every time he invade something, it gives him a little political bump. Yeah. I'm sure he likes it.

It's good. Speaking of hard to deter people, let's talk about China. So on Monday, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked on a video conference for three hours. Sounds absolutely brutal. This was their third conversation since Biden took office. All of them have been remote, I believe, because of COVID. The White House said that the two leaders discussed Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, human rights, climate change, and Taiwan. Clearly, there was an effort around this, you know, civets, this video call to calm some of the rhetoric that we saw coming out of earlier meetings between Biden's team and Chinese officials.

that were insanely caustic. Biden also reaffirmed that there was no change to U.S. policy when it comes to Taiwan. He raised some eyebrows during a recent CNN town hall when he said, yes, the U.S. would come to Taiwan's defense if attacked by China. Normally the U.S. is ambiguous in that answer. We give Taiwan weapons and arm them in other ways, but you don't say that there would be a military response. The Biden-Shee conversation comes a few days after China surprised the COP26 Climate Summit attendees by saying they would do more to reduce climate emissions, including more energy, stopping deforestation, curbing methane emissions. Of course, that announcement is tempered by the reality that Chinese coal production is near an all-time high. So, Ben, I think it's worth

sort of like think about what was new and notable out of that meeting. And then also more broadly, just stepping back and making sure leaders get that Xi Jinping recently has become one of the most powerful leaders in Chinese history. The list is basically Xi, Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping. Mao was the founding father of modern China. Deng Xiaoping, He's kind of cleaned up his masks after he left after the Cultural Revolution, when he pushed for the economic reforms that were key to China, becoming the economic powerhouse that it is today. And now she is literally rewriting Chinese history to put himself in their company in that pantheon.

So that's the context of this meeting. Ben, anything jump out to you from this conversation, the White House readouts around it, the climate announcement, like anything between the U.S. and China? Well, first of all, I think where you ended is really important. Like, they just went through their process. I guess it's like, it's kind of like an election. Except it's not. But I've got to revalidating Xi Jinping's rule.

And in so doing, they basically, you know, entrenched and elevated everything that he's doing. So, yes, at the top line is, like, he's now in the pantheon with Mao and Deng Xiaping. And he's updated Marxist thought for the 21st century. But within that, what that means is that all these moves, like much more. state control over the economy and the tech sector, much more assertive in the foreign policy space, much more kind of nationalist. Like this is, they've all agreed this is the direction. Like this is working.

We want to do more of this, you know. And he's very strong in that system. If there were any remaining, you know, power bases or critics, like he is. They might be in jail by now. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the guy who's feeling very powerful right now, right? and feeling like he's going to be there after Joe Biden's gone, whenever that is, you know.

And that's a difficult place to be. I think in terms of if you listen in between the Tileys, and, man, that must have been a deadly through our Zoom because with the Chinese, it's not a conversation. It's just like you're reading talking points to each other, sort of like reading talking points on a Zoom. You know, I'm just imagining being on there and like trying to scroll through the boxes. It's just. But, you know, the only thing. that kind of really stuck out is like this effort to stress that they're trying to kind of put

a floor underneath things. They're not actually trying to solve things. It's like we basically agree we have to talk to each other more so that we don't end up in a war over Taiwan or, you know. Yeah, the way that's called it managing the competition. Yeah. They didn't want to say like calming things down. They weren't managing competition. Sure. And because usually what happens out of these things is there's like a joint statement that agrees to work together in a bunch of stuff. and maybe highlights the one area where you had a breakthrough, like on climate or something. And then there's these working groups that are tasked to meet. We used to have something called like the strategic and economic dialogue.

Oh, yeah. But it was a big deal. Like people came and met on all these issues. None of that. It was just like a Zoom, competitive readouts, like no breakthroughs, but we don't end up in a war. But that's good. I mean, I'd rather that happen. It's good that that happened.

But it does feel like they're just far apart. On the climate thing, I think Kerry, you know, when I was there and I saw him, like, he had been meeting with them to like three in the morning. Like he was, I think he really just wanted to have them part of what happened in Glasgow. So it didn't feel like they were totally on the sidelines. And so they, you know, they signed up to some wording. They agreed to do some stuff on like methane. And but like, the problem is they're still building coal plants, you know? And so it's like they've said good things about where they're.

want to end up in like 2030 and the pivot they're making away from this stuff. But every year that they continue to contribute to the escalation of the problem is obviously a big problem. And I guess the last thing I'd say is that the Biden team is clearly like preparing and not wanting to have this appear too positive. You know, they're settling in for this to be the defining issue of their foreign policy, this competition of China. And we talked about the G20 in the resolution of the tariff issue with the Europeans. That's in part about like, let's clear the decks of the Europeans so we can go into this together with the Chinese.

Like, you just have a sense that this is the space we're going to be watching with Taiwan and trade and tech is like the human rights is like the key, I don't want to say battlegrounds, but areas of contention. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And, you know, whether the Chinese know it or not, I mean, Joe Biden's probably a lot less hawkish than all the alternatives for them. So, you know, they might want to make this work. Yeah. That's it. You know, it's a good point. And I think that they were slow to understand the extent to which, you know, they, all of American politics has kind of moved to some version of a position that is very

concerned about China. Yeah. Yeah. Here's an issue to add to your tickler file, Ben. Just wanted to keep an eye on, which is the likelihood of future election fraud claims in Brazil by President Bolsonaro, and the way those claims are being helped by Trump's sycophants in the U.S. The New York Times had a long, interesting piece about this over the weekend. It's worth reading it in full. But the gist is that Bolsonaro is already questioning the legitimacy of next year's presidential election, one where he faces will likely face a tough opponent, former president, Lula de Silva. Right-wing assholes like Donald Trump Jr., and Steve Bannon are repeating.

these election fraud claims already, including at the CPAC Brazil, again, another great American export. And didn't the Debbie Dad guy go down there? What's his name? Which you got to narrow that down. Oh, yeah, Jason Miller. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which Debbie Dad. Bolsonaro was also importing, you know, basically right-wing infrastructure. It's the best way to describe it. So Project Veritas, the guys who who like infiltrate, quote-unquote, liberal groups, said they're expanding to Brazil. And then Bolsonaro welcome Jason Miller because he's welcoming in all these right-wing, bad. social media sites like parlor and getter because he knows getter makes me laugh at because he knows that they can't be pressured to take down his lives the way that facebook and twitter can so lots

of interesting details in this story like the fact that balsanaro's son did a presentation at that uh insane voter fraud conference that the my pillow guy put on in south dakota bolsonaro's son was also uh in dc on the day of the january 6 attacks which is weird so say the least yeah say Luis. But, you know, this presidential election is massively consequential for Brazil, for the region, for the world. Like, if you care about the Amazon, you probably don't want Bolsonaro to be reelected. But this nexus, I think, of right-wing Trump aides and right-wing leaders like Bolsonaro and Victor Orban is something we obsess about and worth watching. It's a real problem. And because there's like a gravy train for these guys, but they're just out there spreading these tactics of

massive disinformation, gaslighting, norm-breaking, you know, narratives about election. theft. And you know those guys, it's going to be like a revolving door down there between now and the election. Because at minimum for them, it's a grift. And at maximum, they help somebody steal an election or throw a country into chaos. So it's a big challenge. Bolsonaro is like the closest thing you get to like someone just like fully approximating and embracing Trumpism, you know. And the stakes for a lula victory down there are enormous because it's the future of democracy in South America. It's the future of the planet. the Amazon is destroyed.

So stakes can be higher, so, you know, it can feel comical. The other thing is that there's like this crop of next-gen, you know, it's like the Nanyahu kid and the Bolsonaro kid and Don Jr. And the Duterte daughter and all that, you know. There's some real shitty presidential kids out there. Yeah. I mean, you know, what happened to just, I don't know. I mean, Sasha Malir pretty cool.

Yeah, then there's just normal kids. They just have go live your life. They're not trying to like swing elections. and exporting nationalism. Seriously. Selling spyware for dad to the UAE. Like, what is going to go get a hobby.

And that's the one thing, the Veritas thing, you know, that had like the Eric Prince Nexus, I think. Like that's some creepy shit. Like it's easy to laugh at it. But they actually know what they're doing

and they're funded. You know, like they have money from God knows where. They have technology. They know how to create a conspiracy theory and spread it. They know how to get in Brazil last time they got on these WhatsApp groups.

You know, so it gets beyond even Facebook like. Yep, and Telegram too, yeah. Facebook adjacent there. So it's one of these things that you can laugh at because it is funny what a bunch of fucking assholes these guys are. But then like you realize it's actually also very serious. Yeah. And look, I listen to enough Steve Bannon to know that it's deliberate.

I mean, they talk about their kind of plan and sort of like the domino of nationalist leaders that they're trying to support. As an avid listener of the pod, which countries does he bring up the most? There's a lot of Orban. I think they talk about Poland fairly regularly. They're big Bolsonaro fans. So, you know, it's ones you'd expect. There's some summit coming up in Europe between like Salvini and Orban and the Poles.

It just has all the makings of being a terrible thing. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully Richard Spencer will speak. And I'm probably like, you know, like a banon, that took, what Glasgow was to me, like Bannon could do that. I'm here with a young stormtrooper. And I'll be following that up with an interview with Victor Orban.

You'll dial in from prison. Yeah, it'll be great. at him and Netanyahu's kid. So we've done a lot of bad news, Ben. There's some good news. So Danny Fenster, an American journalist who had been held hostage by the coup leaders in Myanmar since May was finally released on Monday and allowed to leave the country and come home with the United States.

So Danny Fenster's release came after a humanitarian visit by former governor and diplomat Bill Richardson. It was a bit of a surprise since Fencer had just been sentenced to 11 years in prison by the Burmese government. And initially, human rights groups like Human Rights Watch, were furious. about Bill Richardson's visit because they said it gave the government, the military junta, legitimacy, a propaganda win. And initially, Richardson said that he hadn't raised Spencer's case and was instead focused

on delivering, like, vaccines and getting someone from his foundation out of prison instead. The broader context here is that Burma's military staged this coup back in February. There have been huge protests. There's been a massive general strike, a brutal military crackdown, over 1,000 people killed by the government. Richardson has a history of going on these specific humanitarian missions, including to Burma, starting back in 1994. So Ben, unequivocally good news here for Danny Fenster and his family.

Did you have the same, like, total whiplash that I did? Like initially, people were like shitting all over Richardson and the press attacking him for going to Burma, saying he didn't raise Fenster's case. Then all of a sudden he's out. Do you have any idea what happened? Yeah, I mean, I, first of all, it's great news that Danny Fenster's out and his family's done a great job keeping his case front and center. The whole thing had a really retro feel to me, Tommy, including like Bill Richardson's involvement. I mean, like, just, I mean,

I'm glad this worked, but like, it's not like Bill, if the Burmese, junta's intel is that, like, Bill Richardson's like, like a big player. He's the guy. He's doubt. Yeah, yeah. But I, because here's the thing that's kind of sad about it, though. Like, is this is the, this is the old feeling of like this is this weird military junta hermit kingdom that is totally walled off and periodically people like bill richardson fly there and and one prisoner's released you know and and and the problem with that is that so so in terms of what happened i think you know a lot of governments are probably spending a lot of time raising this case and they do the sentence but they like having high profile media visits like bill richardson so they kind of use that to

address an issue that they were probably already trying to figure out some way to address. And I saw that prison sentence. I thought, there's no way they're going to keep this guy in prison for this long. It's always something that they trade away for something. It's usually some visit that is seen as legitimizing them. And so the problem with this routine is all the governments are spending all their time on like a case like this and not on like the underlying problems of what is happening there, you know, like the mass repression, et cetera. So, So to me, it just feels like this is the Burmese military kind of returning to the tried and true, really kind of North Korean playbook of being mysterious and closed off and unpredictable,

but rewarding shows of legitimacy, you know. And so it's an unalloyed good that Danny Fentzer's out and coming home. But underneath that, it just seems like that means they're just returning to the old playbook, you know. Yeah, it gave me very North Korea vibes. It reminded me of when Bill Clinton went to. North Korea for President Obama to get back a journalist who had been taken hostage. Yeah, and it was kind of like, that was great that she was released, but like nothing changed. You know, like it's just this kind of game that they play that tragically has like, you know,

people's lives in the middle of it. Yeah, people like Jason resigned. You know, there's more governments taking journalists hostage and individuals hostage than I think any terrorist group these days. Ben, I have a new thing for us all to worry about all the listeners today. New anxiety just dropped. space debris. So on Monday, Russia reportedly tested an anti-satellite missile that blew up whatever

a target was, it was one of their own satellites, I believe, and scattered hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris into space. 1,500 of them are big enough to track somehow. And I guess it was so concerning that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to take shelter for two hours as a precaution. Two of those four astronauts are Russian, by the way. This, again, like the this was the Russian military blowing up one of their own satellites was on an American satellite blowing up, but not cool. And the Russian response is basically, you know, chillax, leave us alone.

We're going to do what we want. The U.S. Space Command says the debris will remain in orbit for years, potentially decades imposed risk to all space travelers. So great. Super fun. Yeah. If you ever read like about the amount of space junk up there, it's a little concerning. Does seem like there's a lot. It feels like someone needs to figure out

to clean that up. The only angle I take of them. Yeah. Yeah. Does it just burn up one that goes in? Can't you pull into orbits or torches? I think most of it just burns up in the atmosphere, but maybe you need like a mini black hole up there.

I don't know. Ooh. I think that one of the problems here, though, is you might hear this and be like, what the fuck are the Russians doing up there with these weapons? One of the reasons why there's not better rules governing what weapons you mess around with in space is that the United States has spent decades blocking that

because we have this fetish for missile defense. So we have no, you know, high horse to get on here. Thank you, Reagan. Yeah, I mean, or just this kind of weird, yeah, this weird, like, mythology that we can construct space-based missile defense that is like an iron dome over the entire United States. You know, that is part of the reason, not the only reason. Russians are obviously not been good actors at all in recent years, that there's not really a lot of norms and agreements and arms control governing.

like what you do in space. Yeah, well, those monsters launched that poor fucking dog up there back in the day. Yeah, I know. Russia. Where was Space Force? I was sleeping the switch here. So my kid, you know, was really in the space. And I was reading her this book about like the history of space and stuff.

And so it starts with like, you know, here the rockets have taken people in the space, but it starts with like the dog. And so I'm telling my daughter about this. And she said, what happened to the dog? Tough. these are the kind of tough conversation where do you go with that one heaven you know

heaven's always like a safe vacation yeah yeah yeah that's tough okay well now that we covered dead dogs here's some crazy reports Ben for you about the last gasps of the Trump administration from John Carl's book is that a fun way to close

yeah after which I might have a few words about John Carl good okay good so okay there's three little distinct pieces. We can take them one at time. The book says that after the election, you know, they're doing the whole stop-the-steal movement. Mike Flynn, former head of intelligence, former national security advisor for military intelligence head, former national security advisor for Donald Trump, now on the outside. Apparently he called the Pentagon, he called a guy named Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who's been discussed on this show. Caspetelagos. Yes. And he told

Ezra to fly back to the U.S. from some Middle East trip he had been taking and I guess prepare the military to seize the ballots and try to overturn the election. And I guess, you know, Ezra Cohen-Watnik, according to this John Carl book, pushed back, said the election was over, said, you know, Flynn sounded manic. And Flynn apparently screamed at him, don't be a quitter and went nuts and they've never spoken again. So military coup was attempted. It's always sad when relationships like that sever over things like your incapacity to implement the military coup on behalf of a complete, in utter fucking lunatic who was somehow a three-star general and national security advisor and then pardoned by the president of the United States.

Yeah. I like how Ezra Kodewan was like, oh, he didn't sound like the man I knew. Like, what? He's been a lunatic for years. The guy's been completely insane for years and was taken far too seriously. I mean, like part of what's so challenging about this too is that like life in general has basically been a massive troll of people with our politics for the last recent years. So there'll be things like, you know, you'll start saying.

And I think we talked at the time on this podcast in December, hey, we're hearing some bad shit about what Cash Patel and Cruz doing over at DoD. And like this feels like a coup. And people are like, don't be hysterical. Yes. You know. And now it's like we would like the United States military to seize the ballots to overthrow the government to install somebody. It's like at what point does that just become a coup? Yeah.

Hey, Ross Douth. Why don't we get to call that a coup? It's like, when is something a lie? When is someone a racist? When is it a fucking coup? Like, at this point, like, we will be debating whether to talk about fascism in this country from a concentration camp run by Cash Patel and Mike Flynn. The Venn diagram of this description and coup is just a circle.

Yeah. We'll all be in the camps and Playbook will be owning us and saying the hysterical libs say that because the food isn't good at the camp, that, you know, anyway, I just... It gets crazier. Here's another one for you. The book also reports that Sidney Powell called the same guy, Ezra Cohen-Watnik, and told him that then CIA director...

Gee, I wonder who the source for this was. I know. Gina Haspel, the CIA director. Sidney Powell said that she had been taken custody in Germany in that the DOD needed to launch a special operations mission to go get her. Powell thought that Gina Haspel was injured while trying to seize a computer server because 60-year-old CIA directors often personally go on like mission impossible type missions to seize a server. But this was in Powell's mind part of a conspiracy to overturn the election.

Gina Haspel was part of it. And Powell wanted DOD to get the server and then force her to confess. Does that make you feel good? And this is someone who had like the ear of the president of the United States. It was in the Oval Office. In the Oval Office on a regular basis. For martial law. I mean like how like people next time.

like, God forbid, you know, like, I hope there's not next time. Could people just, instead of talking to John Carl or writing anonymous op-eds, could you just tell us when this is happening? Yeah, be useful in real time. Could somebody, because clearly a lot of people are interacting with this kind of information. Could you please just walk out and say, hey, the president's lawyer thinks that the CIA directors kidnapped in Germany has something to do with the fucking election? Maybe someone should look into that.

This last one, I think. I'm going to ask you a question. Please. What is more concerning to you, that people who actually believe these consequences? conspiracy theories or people who like because what you're seeing with cindy pal on the my pillow guys they seem to like believe them or the people that like are so cynical like bannon probably that he's just manipulated him like who is scarier to you you know i think the scare well that's a really as a bannon as a bannon aficionado yeah i think banon knows that trump is he knows shameless idiot

you know and he'll just use what of their mouthpieces available to him i think trump genuinely talks himself into believing these conspiracy theories I think the thing that makes me the most unsettled is the way that reality just sort of like acquiesces around him in the form of the Republican Party. So, and here's why that's so scary, because Donald Trump could be present again. It's probably like a 50% chance, right? People who believe conspiracy theories and talk them into them, like act on those beliefs. Oh, yeah. All the time.

So actually, I used to think it was scarier when people were so cynical that they just manipulated them. But, like, actually now I'm flipping because these people are fucking batched crazy. Yeah, and what you need to know about the rhetoric, you know, on the sort of the Bannon podcasts or all these white nationalist groups is it's all apocalyptic. It's all end of days. It's all existential. Like we kill them or they kill us kind of vibe. And of course someone's going to act on that. You got me listening to that. That's some, you know, that's a good rabbit hole, man. It's dark. And because I used to always say to be, and I used to go to the websites. I used to go to like Breitbart all time and stuff. Just check that out, you know. And what you want to tell people is like all these libs, you know, were like, oh, Fox is so bad. It's like Fox is like soft gateway drug, man. Yes, it gets real words. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Fox is an edible after school one day. And then all of a sudden you're like, you're doing heroin, man. Yes. This is the last one that really freaked me out. So the final guy, the acting secretary of defense at the very end of the Trump administration,

Christopher Miller said that his strategy to dissuade Trump from attacking Iran was to act like, quote, a fucking madman and like push really, hard walking through all the grisly details of what a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would entail and that his whole like galaxy brain strategy was to be so hawkish in these meetings that it was reverse psychology and it made Trump chill out in response. How do you feel about that? Pitching Donald Trump crazy military action against Iran in an

effort to dissuade him. I mean like what like you know, Tom, you know, Tom, So close. We're so close to just complete and utter, like, the whole thing falling apart. But the other, so there's like the meta concern of like we were that close and we are like on a roller coaster. You know, the roller coaster's going up and it's doing, you know, it's just like climbing up and you know what's coming. Like kind of feels like that's where we are in American politics right now. Like the midterms and then Trump running again and like and like you know that that this.

the other side of the roller coasters is going to be much worse than last time because we're going to start from there. We're not starting at the beginning with like the committee to save America and all the stuff. We're starting at the end with the crazy people

will be there at the beginning next time. The other thing is the personal grievance piece which I have to come to here. Please. Is it like we spend like years painfully negotiating this intricate nuclear deal to roll back their nuclear program that they just go and vomit on

and say we gave them $150 billion and like we are accountable to the smallest detail. You know, like, every political reporter is an expert on centrifuge technology. And these guys, this is their Iran policy. And, like, received far less scrutiny than our Iran policy.

Like, like, the mainstream media, like, gave us a fucking colonoscopy every day for the last year and a half of the Obama administration after we conclude the Iran nuclear deal in a way that they never, once scrutinized the complete lunatic fringe policymaking that continues to be the policy and approach of the Republican Party such that to avoid the logic of their own policy, which is regarding the war with Iran, we have to act like Dr. Strangelove?

That was it. All right, man. I mean, I give up. What's the point? Why did I work? Why did I go to work for, like, some days you're just like, what was that about? No, I had a good time. I did have a good time.

Last thing for you, Ben. I want to close with some audio that I want you to hear and then just react to and see if you agree. I'm going to ask those same lecturing politicians and media members a question now. When do we deploy troops to Australia? When do we invade Australia and free and oppressed people who are suffering under a totalitarian regime? When do we spend trillions of dollars to spread democracy in Australia? So, Ben, that was noted military strategist. Candice Owens. She is talking about the fact that parts of Australia have been in lockdown because

of COVID on again, off again for a long time. Do you think it follows logically or is appropriate for the U.S. military to invade? I just don't know why it's taken so long to reach the point. I mean, part of what you're seeing here is this kind of complete globalization of stupid, where the kind of far-right conspiracy theory that leads to people. thinking it's cool to like walk into a supermarket or an airplane and like punch a flight attend in the face because they're oppressed by mask mandates or vaccine requirements. That's happening in Australia now. And there are these really intense protests.

What a coincidence in a country where Rupert Murdoch has broken the media and you have like a right wing ecosystem there. But so Candace Owens is probably in like dramatic, you know, weird media echo chambers of people that feel like freedom itself is being extinguished by these mandates. And, you know, logically, it would follow that you would want to launch a multi-trillion-dollar amphibious invasion of Australia to bring it to heal, which, you know, you'll recall, we talked on this show about our sunbathers, you know, nude sunbathers who needed to go into the woods and be rescued by helicopters. And we could never determine precisely what substance or reason was behind that. Yeah, we assumed the mushrooms. Maybe they were a little ahead of things.

Maybe there's a school of thought that mushrooms kind of open. up your mind to premonition, that may be the case here. They're the Australian Cassandra. They were sounding the alarm on the U.S. military invasion. Maybe that's what the Ocus is. We're not transferring, we're not giving them nuclear subs. We're sending them over there to do some business. You, I mean, you may have cracked. Do we just galaxy brain this? I think we just galaxy brings shit out of this. I think we learned something today. Well, thank you. Thank you, Candace, for your thoughtful military leadership. A conspiracy there's out there if you want to really dissect the Ocus acronym to find the code for when the invasion is going to happen, it may be embedded

within the structure of those letters. Or just listen to Al Jazeera backwards. Yeah. That'll do it too. Before we conclude, did you want to riff on John Carl's book? I mean, I probably shouldn't do this, but I know. I mean, I will point out, okay, so John Carl, you and I worked with him a lot, engaged in a lot, was always, let's just say, well,

sourced in the Republican Party, right? Like, you know, that was more where he was getting his stuff from. And like an incredibly credulous Benghazi reporter. I mean, really kept that in the briefing room day after day. And what happened to me is an email was leaked to him in which I basically intervened in the critical time after the attack to tell the government to side with the State Department and Hillary. version of what happened. And this email came out and it caused a fucking shitstorm. And I got canceled like nine million times.

I had a Fox News camera crew outside my house, like following me to my dry cleaning like a criminal. And then I went back and I found the actual email. And I didn't say that at all. The actual email said actually we have to take every agency's concerns into account, blah, blah, blah, blah. very boring email. Had it physically been altered when it was handed to him?

It had physically been altered by the Republican staff, right? No apology, no acknowledgement really of error. How do you fuck something up that badly and not acknowledge it and not apologize? He said that his sources, and there's a reason I'm doing this, because I get along fine, John Carl, I've done. Yeah, but accountability goes both ways. Well, my point is this, though, is it because he said that, well, my sources were going off of notes that they'd taken and reading emails and this, you know, blah, blah, blah.

That doesn't matter. But the point I'm making is a lot of these reporters were there. Like, this didn't start in 2016. The Benghazi stuff, like the same, he's reporting on conspiracy theories, the same people. Ezra Cohen, Watnik, Michael Flynn. I'm sure were sources back in the day. Oh, absolutely. They're all like devonous people.

Here's some Benghazi's juice to keep that story juiced, right? And I just hope that there's some reflection that that none of that is on the level, you know, that that the godfather of whatever, you know, of stop the steel was Benghazi. It just, it was. And so obviously I have a personal perspective on this, but it's not even to single out John Carl. it's just like the whole reporting on this kind of treats these as these like novel conspiracy theories that pop up when in fact the infrastructure of deploying conspiracy theories backed by Republican elected officials disseminated on a mass scale by Republican social media leaning platforms has been there since it was being fed to people in 2012, 13, 14, 15 when it was Benghazi or Hillary's server.

And I just, I wish. somebody would acknowledge that and write that book, you know, that like, here's the history of how they built this machinery that we, too often in the mainstream media, allowed ourselves to validate because when they start raising that in the briefing room, you know, you remember from Nagazi, it gives the appearance that this thing is more legit than it is. Yeah, absolutely. Or like, you know, you saw it this week with, you know, some right-wing media outlet made up the fact that Kamala Harris was doing a French accent.

just completely made up at a whole cloth, but it got reported out or tweeted out by like the Bloomberg reporter at the White House. I mean, look, I like John Carl. I think he's a dogged reporter. I was happy that he was in that briefing room for four years during the Trump administration. But if you fuck up something that badly,

like he did with you, like you should correct it, you should owe someone an apology, and you should do it publicly. And it's just that's the least he could do. Well, and not just, again, because I like John Carl, and I've talked to him since. It's bigger than him.

It's just this point that, like, they have to step back from they report on the Trump stuff and they think it's hard on the Trump stuff but because they're not stepping back and giving this full picture they're actually not conveying the severity of the danger to democracy

okay when we come back we will have my conversation with Nimma Elbegir from CNN we're going to talk about Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria so stick around for that. I am so thrilled to welcome back to the show CNN's senior international correspondent

Nimma al-Baghir. Nima, thank you for coming back on the pod. Thank you so much for having me again. So I know you literally just hosted a panel conversation about this topic, Ethiopia, with Senator Chris Coons and Senator Tom Tillis, this bipartisan group. So that's exciting. And I'd love to get into that a little bit in a minute. But I'm grateful that you came on today because we're like a year into this civil war in Ethiopia. It is becoming catastrophic. And I feel like almost no one is talking about it. And it's kind of making me lose my mind. So just to give listeners a bit of background on what's happening. So the Ethiopian government, at times with support from Eritrea, has been fighting against the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF since about November of 2020. The thing to

know about the TPLF, they used to be in charge. They were in charge for like 30 years until there were a bunch of protests that pushed them out in 2018. And then Abiy Ahmed, who's now the prime minister, came to power. So just to speed it up a bit, the fighting has ebden flowed since November of last year. There's been reports of atrocities and war crimes on both sides. At times it seemed like the Ethiopian government was going to win in a route, but the TPLF has managed to launch this counteroffensive. And the latest reports are that TPLF-led forces are marching towards Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a country of 115, 120 million people.

So, sorry for the long windup, but just to pause there, anything I left out and just given how hard it is to get accurate information out of Ethiopia, I mean, what do we actually know about this potential counteroffensive hitting the capital of? Ethiopia? Well, the counter-offensive is really interesting because it's the result of an alliance between the Tigrayans who are the minority ethnic group, so are the smallest in number, and the Aromo, who are one of the largest, if not the largest ethnic group. And why this is important is because of a lot of the land that the Aromo claim and is part of the Aromo nation is around Addis. So when we think about these combined forces marching towards the capital,

they don't literally have to march towards the capital. They now have allies and close comrades in arms in that territory, very close on the outskirts of Tigray. And what I found really interesting is when we reached out to ask questions about that, the TPLF were very keen to downplay that narrative, that they are in essence on the outskirts of the capital, right? Because the people they are allied with control a lot of that territory. They didn't really want to talk about that. And I think it's because what they're hoping is that if they downplay what an upper hand they have militarily, the Ethiopian government knows that they have that upper hand currently,

that the US will still allow for some kind of negotiating mediation process that doesn't do too much damage to the TPLF and the forces around them. I think it's important to say that luckily for the world and for those who care about what's happening in Ethiopia, the TPLF and those allied with them continue to say that they want to mediate. Now, of course, saying you want mediation and negotiation is very different from whatever provisos you put on mediation and negotiation. So I think that's one very important point, is that we now have this alliance that has really tipped the balance of power in this.

And that's why you've seen a renewed call for civilians to arm themselves the horrifying imagery of vigilante groups in high-vis vests, pointing out ethnic, Greans to be picked up by authorities in what the UN has called, and the UN Human Rights Commission has often been slow to come out and censure the Ethiopans. But the UN has called this mass arbitrary, ethnically motivated arrests. They think it's over a thousand just in Addis alone. The other key issue is the use of food as a weapon of war, which we've spoken about before. And I think really is where it is very difficult to equivocate. You know, there's a lot said about who started this.

Well, the TPLF attacked the Northern Command, the Ethiopian Army's Northern Command first. They say it was an action they needed to take before they were attacked. It's very important not to fall into moral equivalence at the end of the day. Both sides have been accused credibly of war crimes. But what we know is that one side, the Ethiopian government are absolutely blockading from a humanitarian perspective to gray. And the scary thing is that we have no idea of the numbers of people who are dying and could die. A rough estimate is over 400,000 in starvation, 2 million on the precipice of starvation.

But nobody knows. Nobody's being allowed in. The Ethiopian government is obstructing, data gathering. they're not releasing the data they have. And that's kind of for me the crux of this issue. Who is using starvation as a weapon of war? And have been doing it for months, I believe, right? I mean, I saw that on Monday the United Nations said they would allocate $40 million in aid for Ethiopia. That seems like, I don't know, a drop in the bucket. I don't know if you could get that aid to people, but what's your sense of how far that might go?

Well, every day you need something like 140-something trucks coming. into Tigray because the resources in Tigray have been depleted. So you're already talking about a very expensive operation because the obstruction, the blockade means that there is no fuel, there is no ability to transfer cash into Tigray. So aid agencies need to get the Ethiopian government's permission and their access to fuel and their permission to take in cash. So it makes everything exponentially more expensive. So 40 million doesn't feel. like a lot in that context. But in any context, 40 million that you have no permission or approval to utilize. And we keep hearing the same things. The Ethiopian government has promised the

UN that they will allow access. And those things keep not happening. And I think that's the bit that is so horrifying to people. And I actually, I raise this in the conversation with Senator Tillis and Senator Coons. I was like, we can talk about what a difficult position this is for the US. They are seeking to be a credible mediator between the two sides. And that means having to continuously say we are not biased here. Both sides are guilty, right, to maintain that credibility with both parties. But tonight, when we go to sleep, there are people who are going to go to sleep hungry and potentially not wake up. And that reality has persisted since July, since the summer. And we're now in November. And I asked Senator Coons, at what point does the administration

have to make the hard decision that they will have to give away a little bit of their ability to mediate and negotiate in return for threatening and sanctioning in order to save lives now? Yeah. Interestingly, Chris Coons is very close to Joe Biden. I believe he flew to Addis to pass a message from Biden along to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed several months ago. So we someone who's very much a key player in this whole conversation. I mean, you talk, you brought up the Biden administration. They, they have taken this series of steps to push for a ceasefire. Most of their leverage, I think, in their mind to date has been, okay, let's pressure the Ethiopian government. Let's pressure the Eritrean government. So Biden pushed to get Ethiopia on the agenda at the G7.

They've rolled out some sanctions. They've prepared for more sanctions. They've taken, recently taken steps that might cut off Ethiopia's access to. to some important trade benefits. Tony Blank in the Secretary of State just left on a five-day trip to Africa that I believe starts in Kenya where this topic will be the focus. Are there more steps, I mean, you sort of hinted at it. Are there more steps that experts think Biden needs to take now and then just to make this more complicated? Like, what leverage does the U.S. have or the international community have to pressure the TPLF or these other, you know, factions that they're aligned with? Yeah. Well, I think one key issue is that the Ethiopians, for them, their relationship with the U.S. is all important.

And they consistently say, we have a great partnership and a great relationship with the U.S. So how much can you tip your hand in that? I think you have to look to whether the other side of that relationship has been a credible partner. And I raised this with Sena Sukhumans. I said, it took you traveling as President Biden's emissary to get the Ethiopian's to admit that they were allied with the Eritreans. They had denied that for months. You went in March, or he actually predated his conversations with Prime Minister Abe. He said that he actually reached out to Prime Minister Abbe at the end of last year and asked him whether this was going to end in the way that Prime Minister Abbe hoped it would,

that there would be a military resolution to their problems with the TPLF. And he said, Prime Minister Abbe promised him there would be. We know how that turned out. But I said, you went in March. You were given promises and commitments. You then publicly in April acknowledged your disappointment. You publicly make that statement that those commitments had not been met. We are now in November.

At what point are there consequences to Ethiopia for misleading the international community? In November, the human rights investigation, the joint investigation between the UN and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which is state-appointed, released its findings. They were not allowed to go to many of the places where we, know massacres have happened, where we have reported on massacres like Mariam Dengalat or Mahabaradega or even some of the recent detention sites in Hamara, they weren't able to go back. So really, you have to ask yourself, what benefit are we gaining other than to give Prime Minister Abbe Ahmed a modesty veil? He gets to say that he is still engaging with the international community.

And at what point does that become too costly to the international community in terms of lives loss? David Simon, who runs the Yale Genocide Studies program, had a really interesting point. And he said that there are parallels in terms of the onward march that happened in Rwanda towards genocide with regards to a UN Security Council member at that point. In the Rwanda context, it was France, obstructing any kind of serious movement or sanction or even designating Rwanda genocide. In the Ethiopian context, you have Russia and China. But he also said the other really scary context is Yugoslavia.

And the idea that you could have that balkanization in the Horn of Africa should be terrifying to everyone, especially given what's happening in Sudan right now. And I guess maybe I am a little emotional when I speak about this because that's the question we keep being asked by victims and their family members, when are we going to hear anything other than concern from the US? Because even the sanctions that we've spoken about, they sanctioned the aritreids twice now. They have really intentionally not sanctioned Ethiopia to maintain that kind of ace

in their pocket. They eventually, after we reported on it twice, started the clock on the revocation of the market access through Agoa, but we have reached out to the State Department to consistently ask when we should expect we, the press, the world should expect some kind of response on the, on whether the question of whether or not they believe that what is happening in Ethiopia is genocide, their genocide designation. That's been since June, we've been told to expect it soon. There is clearly a continuous effort by the by the by. an administration to maintain the ability to mediate. But given what we have just come out of in terms of four years of isolationism and President Trump and the loss of this sense of U.S.

moral leadership, can the U.S. afford stepping back from the moral question? I mean, I want to ask you this question from a geopolitical perspective, can the U.S. afford to be seen to have lost the moral high ground on this? No, I mean, I think the answer is no. It should be no. And I think in the context of your last answer, you sort of touched on two of the nightmare scenarios that I keep hearing. One is comparisons to the 1994 Rwandan genocide where 800,000 people were mass occurred. The other is, you know, and this speaks to the complexity of it, which is, you know, some writers have speculated that the TPLF's ultimate goal, because they are this smaller group of people within a big country, would be to take

at us the capital and basically break the country up and push all these smaller ethnic regions to secede and balkanize the country, which would lead to mass migration, potential ethnic conflict. I mean, it sounds horrific. And I guess what I'm struggling with is if that's the goal of the TPLF, where the pressure is, I just, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think everybody I've spoken to you would say to you, welcome to the club. I mean, even Senator Tillis and Senator, Senator, I mean, Senator Tillis, interestingly, as the Republican in the Senate Human Rights Caucus, was pretty blunt that he feels that there should be sanctions on the Prime Minister, that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, given the relationship

and the mutual economic benefits that come from that relationship, should feel the pain personally if that saves lives. Senator Coons was a bit more, I don't want to say reticent, because I think that's doing him a disservice. But I think he was a little bit more kind of realpolitik with perhaps his understanding of what the conversations are currently inside the Biden administration. But I do think that you have the potential for those two nightmare scenarios in Ethiopia.

Because similarly to Rwanda, you have the kind of the communities living side by side and intermingled inside Addis, which is very similar to what happened in Rwanda. But then similar to what happened in the Balkans, you have the separate ethnic regions that are distinct. So you have the potential for ethnic minorities in those regions, whether the Amhara in Tigray and Aramia regions now, or vice versa,

them being targeted. And we've seen that with the reports of retaliation. So you basically have both nightmare scenarios. And you have the explosions today in Uganda and these concerns that ISIS was responsible. You have what's happening in some. and the potential for a terror footprint there. You have Sudan. I don't envy the person who has to make the decision.

I just believe that the biggest risk the US is currently taking is the loss of political capital with the Tigrayan leadership. Because lest we forget, the Tigrayans withdrew from the towns and cities, I think calculating that it would allow them to say to the international community, well, we stepped back and we waited to see what would play out and we wouldn't allow our civilians to be caught in conflict, but our civilians were targeted anyway. So after seven months of inaction at that point from the global community,

we stepped back in and we retook Maqale. I think it was in a space of less than a week. So I think that's the worry is if the TPLF continues to feel that the global community leaves them no option other than a military solution, then you could potentially see fighting in the streets of Addis. Yeah. And I think the sort of lesson from history is that once conflicts reach a sort of ethnic, religious, sectarian flavor, whether it's in, you know, in Ethiopia or Northern Ireland or Pakistan, it's very hard to unring that bell and sort of get that back under control. So I do think it speaks to the need to move quickly.

You mentioned this sort of broader regional context. I mean, neighboring Sudan has been dealing with a military coup since late October. There have been these massive protests. there have been government crackdowns. Do you have a sense of what the latest is on the ground and you hope of a peaceful resolution? And are these refugee flows making that more challenging sort of out of Ethiopia into Sudan and South Sudan?

Obviously, the burden of the refugee flows has had an impact, especially on the east of Sudan. And it's had an impact economically, which I think the heartbreaking part, which we've discussed before, is that Sudanese continue to host to gray in refugees. There is a sense that the Sudanese have stepped in where the UNHCR and other UN agencies have failed to step in, but that burden has been felt and has been destabilizing.

What we're hearing really worryingly is that there has been a mass crackdown, targeting of journalists, armed men picking up journalists from the street. One editor of a very prominent Sudanese newspaper, a Sudanese newspaper, Sudani, was chased down by armed men, and they tried to get him to sign an affidavit saying, and this is interesting, the language they use was interesting, that he wouldn't bring the military into ill repute, which under al-Bashir carried a death sentence.

So it's effectively seditioned. So all of this old language is coming back in. I'm really worried about tomorrow Wednesday, which is there's going to be a mass demonstration planned because the protesters are very committed to crossing the bridges and trying to meet in front of the Republican palace in the center of Hortem. And the military is just as committed

to obstructing those bridges. So I think the world really needs to be watching closely because the sense I'm getting is that from speaking to when we can with the internet cutoff and the phone network limited, speaking to friends and family and Sudan, the sense we're getting is that the generals think if they can only quash the civilian protest movement,

then they can force the world to accomplish, acknowledge them. And it will be business as usual. The worry that people have is that there is a real sense that protesters are unrelenting, that they will not even accept one of the mediation, one of the negotiations that was that was floated by the US Horn of Africa envoy, Jeff Feltman, which is that you go back to the status quo, the military as a partner in this, and they have started their own version of the Myanmar three finger salute. which is no to appeasement of the military, no to negotiations,

and no to the military. Because they feel that last time the world forced them to accept the military as just, you know, whether they like it or not, this is a fact of life. And look what the military did. You know, one friend was telling me, we told everyone that the military would do this. It's the crocodile and the frog.

I can never remember this story, but it's the scorpion sitting on the snout of the crocodile. It's exactly the same. And people now, when you speak to them, they say, well, one friend said to me, I'm not, my blood is not more valuable than the blood that's already been spilt, which is, again, it goes back to this sense that the U.S. does not have the moral, the moral high ground. It does not have the ability to enforce a moral status quo on the world. And because of that, these kids, and a lot of them are very young, believe that their only option is to resist and to stay out on those streets. Yeah.

And the truth is they're probably right. I mean, you know, the lesson of Egypt are a lot of places that brutality from the military can be overwhelming. And, you know, eventually the world kind of accepts the status quo. Look at Syria right now. I know you have to do your actual job, which is CNN in like one minute. But last question, in October of 2020, you reported on this incident in Nigeria where military forces open fire on these peaceful protesters in Lagos killed several wounded, several others. Then they blocked the ambulances from treating the wounded, just a horrifying thing to do.

Initially, the government said your report was fake news. It sounds like they're changing their tune lately. Yes. Can you tell us the latest thing? Yes. It's interesting, given what we're discussing now, that they're. There are so many parallels to the Ethiopia context. Very organized pro-government presence online campaigning and smearing.

And calling us fake news, the government tried to bring suit against us and to censure CNN. And now the panel of inquiry has ended up using our investigation. They cited our finding something like 37 times, which is, you know, it's lovely. Yeah. Because so many people, and on one level it's lovely on another level, I guess it's a little heartbreaking because so many people, exactly the same as we're seeing integrate, risk their lives to circumnavigate an information blockade and to circumnavigate the government narrative. The military officers went so far as to attempt to forensically clean the scene.

They gathered bullets. They tried to clean blood. One witness who actually we didn't speak to, but gave evidence to the inquiry, described just the most awful situation where she was shot and they thought they'd killed her. So they swept her up along with the other bodies that they were disposing of,

put her in the back of a van. And while they were gathering more bodies, she both, and I'm in awe of this woman, she both had the composure to count how many bodies were in that van with her. 11 in total and escape. And so a little part of me feels like we have validated the instinct that people have, not just to speak to us, but to get their story out. And I think that's, the Nigerian government has not offered us an apology.

Although the commission said that they should offer an apology to everybody caught up in Lecky. I'm not saying I was caught up in Lecky, but there's a tiny part of me that slightly wants to push for an apology. We're not going to get it. You know, the troublemaker. But, you know, I think for me, it just, it verifies that what we do matters, even when maybe the world leaders don't want to do their job. I mean, you don't have to do this. You had a perfectly wonderful day job in the Obama administration.

And then you guys set up Pod Save America. Like, I just, I'm a massive, cheesy believer in the power of journalism and the media. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to, for one second, let you compare me reading underwear ads in LA studio to the reporting you did on, you know, in Sudan, in Nigeria, everywhere else. But yeah, it's an enormous validation of the work you do. And so thank you for everything you do for CNN for coming on the show at like midnight, 1am, London time, whatever it is right now. Because, you know, very few people are covering this. It's increasingly hard and expensive to get to places and it's dangerous. But thank God you do what you do. So we really appreciate it. No, thank you guys so much. Thanks again in Nima for doing the show. Thanks again to the people of Australia for... Solidarity, guys.

Solidarity, yeah, we got your back. We got your back. I mean, I don't know how many divisions Candice Owens. I guess if Trump wins, though, she could be Secretary of Defense. Yeah, she probably has the Daily Wires full backing their militia force so they can send over there. Yeah. We'll see. Anyway, that's all we got for today.

Talk to guys this week. See. 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.