TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* The Deloitte Jihad Float

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Move over Deloitte Pride Float - there’s a new brand of liberalism in town! Ahmed al-Sharaa, erstwhile leader of HTS, now promoting Syria as a global investment destination, sits down with his old sporting rival David Petraeus. What’s six years of imprisonment between friends? Also, we talk about the recognition of Palestine and who “gets” to be a state, the circular financing driving useless AI valuations to new highs, and Starmer’s “fightback” against Farage. Get the whole episode on Patreon here! MILO ALERT Check out Milo’s tour dates here: Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist) https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows

And there's a parallel event, right, that's happening right now, another state in the region that is being recognized as, like, a legitimate member of the international community. And that is, of course, Syria. And you can know that because, and I'm, this is an event description from something called the Concordia Summit called a conversation with his excellency, Ahmed al-Shara, previously known as Jolani, president of the Syrian Arab Republic. And let me just see, I haven't read this yet. representing the first Syrian presidential address since 67, this unprecedented fireside discussion between Ahmed al-Shara and a guy called David Petraeus. Yeah, weirdly, if you go back a bit in the archives,

you can find in the rewards for justice program. They used to offer $10 million for David Petraeus, dead or alive. Yeah, no. I don't know if you saw there was this interview with Tom Barrack, the, like, U.S. Special Envoy, where he kind of laid out the closest things you're going to get to a kind of Trumpist vision of Middle East policy. which is, uh, it's, um, you know, homo hominy lupus, right?

Like the, uh, it's war of all against all. Uh, it's, it's always a zero sum game. Uh, alliances are only ever exploitative. And that's real politic. And then very, very amusingly, he said that Arabs don't have a word for submission. And therefore you could own, it would only ever be war forever. And so, yeah, it, I guess somewhere in the midst of that kind of real politic, you get to see beautiful moments of healing, like David Petraeus, getting on stage and saying,

Salam al-aikum, Saeed Raeis, to the new president of Syria. A guy, he locked up in Iraq when he was working, when he was, like, fighting for Al-Qaeda. Yeah, this is like, look, Trump, we have no idea how right Trump was when he said, a time of healing, a time of whatever. That's basically the episode for it, yeah. Yeah, this is a time of healing, a time of whatever. Jolani and Petraeus the jihadi lays down with the general Not even one but two Extremely bloody

Senseless cynical Stupid Wars At the end of which turns out to be One lucky winner gets to like Be on a stage being like The path to conflict is made of like

Rocks or whatever But the path to peace Is made of harder rocks And that's why it's more difficult It's like great Thank you for the insight That's very fun That's 10% more vapid than what

Shara actually said. He said, My mission in Syria is much more difficult than yours was in Iraq. Again, against me. Because I did that. Yeah. Yeah, number one, my bad. We faced massive destruction over the past years, but we're focusing

on economic development and building capabilities. Ministers are chosen from the community of business leaders and international experts who understand both the global and national economy. It's so funny that he's a technocrat now. It's like he didn't even shave the beard off, dude.

Yeah. But he was going to be a... He was being, like, growing up to be a technocrat. Like, that's what he wanted to be. He was born to do the spreadsheets, forced to ride around in the highlux. Like, it was... This is all he ever wanted.

I mean, the only thing now, the real kind of detourneumont is now, uh, in a few years, like American civil society collapses into American A24 Marvel's Civil War II. And you see Petraeus in the back of the high looks. And ultimately, at the end of this, you know, in like 10 years time at another UN General Assembly, you get an older, wiser Jolani being like, so, how was it for you? I was riding the high looks?

And also, it's like, imagine also you're like one of the, I don't know, like Uzbek foreign fighters that just like went to go like ride the high lugs with him. And you're like, wait a minute, why is he at the Concordia Summit talking about deregulating labor markets with Petraeus? It's like, yeah, why we did all of this shit and we overthrew Assad in order to, I guess, get like a slightly better deal for a French concrete company. Also, the other thing about Syria that's driving me insane is that we're talking about Syria being kind of like welcome back into the community of nations with open arms. Not exclusively, right, because one of its neighbors is pursuing a policy of Syria has to demilitarize in like thirds, like a, I don't know, like a Viennese. or something, like a Neapolitan ice cream, right? And it's not allowed to do anything. And also, we're going to take a bunch of its land and, like, just kind of forcibly

surveil a bunch of it. And that's Israel. And so you're in this difficult situation. And in particular, Jilani, sorry, I don't mean to dead name the guy, Al-Sharah, is in this difficult position where he's like, yeah, you know, I want to make kind of a pragmatic deal with Israel. And it's like, look at all the last guys who tried to make a pragmatic deal with Israel. They've killed all of them.

Yeah. Oh, God. But like, the funny thing is, because now the U.S. is on everybody's side, just being like, make nice. You must make nice. Now, like, they're like, look, we're not going to sign the Abraham Accords while they're bobbing us. But I'm going to, I'm going to buy Tom Barrack, a copy of Polly Secure. Because I think it will really help him, you know? Yeah, like, he's, and even now, he's like, we're making an ongoing security deal with, Israel. Your name was Jolani after the Golan Heights. It's like I am making a security deal with the rabid dog. I am holding by the leash two inches away from my femoral artery. Yeah, that's like, that's like a guy called like Bobby North Tower making a security deal with the Taliban on September 12th. I think which for all we know kind of did also happen.

Yeah, probably did happen. Because we're trying to do that. Trump's trying to talk to the Taliban about getting Bergram back. And it's like, you tortured most of them in there. Yeah. But he's because he just thinks that all of them are going to be like Jolani. And because what you really have to offer, I think what Jolani sort of saw, like reading articles about him, he's a fascinating character because he's just so, he's such a chameleon,

where it's like, oh, what happened is this guy saw that there was a very narrow winding path to him being able to have one of those. 120 foot stories up apartments in the south of Central Park and he walked it perfectly and they're hoping that the Taliban are going to be the same

they're going to be like look guys all I'm saying is if you let Talas build your train infrastructure then you all can have apartments in Paris you don't have apartments in Paris pretty good hard to argue

I'm just I'm just kind of doing a you know the China doing a kind of like agent Smith thing where it's like very difficult to to financialize Afghanistan or Syria in that way, when you have no economy, President Trump. Yeah. But what use is an international investment treaty

if you weren't able to invest? So the other thing is on the sidelines of that, this is, I think, the really more meaningful meeting, because the meeting with Petraeus was just then, it was almost like a symbolic embrace, right? Yeah. I think it was important that it was Petraeus to be like the no hard feelings.

Like, it's like the, like, the mafia sit down where they, like, do a kiss in the cheek at the end. Like, it was for sure. Like, look, look at us. Who would have guessed, you know? Yeah. You and me? Oh, okay. All right.

Put a pin in this. Seth Rogan, he already has the beard. Let's do another, like, we could do like a Seth Rogan buddy movie. Come on. That'd be fun. Oh, God. All right. So, Paul Rudd plays General Petraeus.

No, so I think the more important meeting was when he convened a group of business leaders investors represent. This was in the Syrian news agency, the suppressed release in the Syrian Arab news agency. Ahmed al-Shara convened a group of business leaders, investors, and representatives from major American and international companies during a roundtable session hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And it's like, you basically say, all right, Syria, come on in. Asset strip us. Let's go. Yeah. And so it's like, the article kept it very vague, but it's like, oh, the discussion focused on exploring investment opportunities in Syria and highlighting the company's promising economic potential. And it's like, No, that's, what you're really saying is Syria, a very heavily unionized, very big public sector.

We're going to get rid of all of that. And Circo can come in and basically Britify Syria. Great. Yeah. Again, as with any time it comes up, I think it is fair to ask, haven't the Syrian people suffered enough? And once again, everyone who actually has a sort of say and deciding an answer to that question goes, no. No. Maybe, well, maybe the Syrian people would like six different types of, like, parking apps.

but you have to use in order to, like, you know, use any type of service or, yeah, or, like, bins are all kind of collected whenever and, you know. I think at this point, you just want people to stop dropping, like, you know, sort of chlorine gas on your house. And, well, you do have to say he has delivered that much, but if then the problem is, like,

okay, I'm not getting, like, chlorine gas dropped on my house anymore, but also I can't afford to live there. Yeah. I'm not getting, it doesn't be, nothing, being dropped in my house, but it does seem that Blackstone now owns it. Yeah. Which is a bit of a bit worrying. Look, here's the thing. This is also how you know that Jalani is one million times as smart as MBS because he's not being like, oh, we're going to make Syrian neon. He's like, no, no, no, I'm not going to fall for glasses guy antics. We're just going to deregulate the banks

and crush the unions in that and I get, I get to live south of Central Park. It's interesting as well that like, unlike MBS, there's no question of like kind of social liberalism. Right. Like everyone kind of tacitly understands, hey, this guy is an HTS, right? But he was HTS. And unlike MBS, unlike Saudi Arabia, no one's like, okay, well, beyond a sort of bare minimum of like no kind of like ethnic cleansing that we can see and have to care about. We don't we don't care what happens to like kind of women in Syria. We don't care what happens to like minorities in Syria. Just just give us the fucking like cement plants and stuff.