Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 327: Hague Invasion Pact (w/ special guest Lily Lynch)

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

This week we're joined by writer Lily Lynch (@lilyslynch) to talk about the end of humanitarianism, how and why the liberal international order was established in the 90s, and how the realists were right about Ukraine. You can find her writing here: https://www.newstatesman.com/author/lilylynch and here: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/search?query%5Bauthor%5D=Lily+Lynch You can support us on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Thank you for watching! all right welcome to the show this week true billy fam uh we have a very special guest on we're joined by lily lynch who is uh phoning in from belgrade right Serbia yes Belgrade Serbia before before we got on Aaron we were just talking about the similarities perhaps here's what here's the thing Lily here's where I was like maybe Serbia is like East Kentucky a little bit I saw I saw this video I saw this video of these two guys trying to they built a ramp on top of one building and they were trying to jump it onto the roof of another building and i was like dude all right this is east kentucky these are heel there's a lot of that kind of stuff like uh is it was like parkour is that what that's called is it or just like

it's not even that it's not even just like crazy stunts i think it was like yeah it was like parkour is that what that's called is it or just like it's not even that it's not even just like crazy stunts i think it was like yeah it's like if it's not called parkour it should i thought parkour was the thing where you like run and you do crazy stuff well i mean it's parkour now but they've just upgraded it with vehicles okay right they're definitely spiritually connected like i feel like the balkans and just the entire balkan region in connected. I feel like the Balkans and just the entire Balkan region in the south really feel spiritually connected. Serbs have this habit of claiming that anybody cool was actually Serbian. And anytime there's a good country singer, they're like, he was actually a Serb, really.

Like Johnny Cash. It's like, oh my god. That is 100% a Southern thing. Definitely. Yeah, okay. But it's also like, I was telling a friend the other day, I was like, man, like East Kentucky,

like you won't get a good haircut. You're not going to get your suit tailored, but your car will always run. Like everyone's a mechanic and like everyone's a genius when it comes to cars. It's like, you know, it's like you know it's like at least yeah there's some like old yugos on the street that have been around like god only knows how long up there like sound like like sound like lawnmowers yeah you know like everyone is a secret

mechanic you know right right if your car break i don't know how many times my car's broken down and people like flock to it they're like all, let's figure out what's going on here. It's very useful. Very cool. Well, and that's the thing. So like, you know, again, a second ago, you were talking about like media representations of regions and areas that like get like very popularized in like mainstream consciousness and like if you live there you're like well i mean there's some truth to that and stuff my so like you know we were talking about like a ken burns and civil war documentary but like the the reverse example of

this for for where you live is like i have read and watched all like the most boilerplate like surface like the rebecca west book obviously sure sure like it's like that's actually impressive that's impressive that you like read that it's a long book let's let's just say i've read like 70 of them 75 good work so like that's more than like i'm sure, 95% of Balkan experts. Because it's such a long book. I mean, it's very interesting. I think that she's a kind of idiosyncratic personality and was here at a strange time in history.

But I know what you mean. Yeah, you've consumed the mainstream. And that's probably what i've consumed about the south you know and i would love to be challenged in my like with my like you know ken burns level like civil war documentary from the 90s like knowledge well but yeah like well the rebecca west thing is like yeah like she is a great writer. That's why I like to read it. Cause she's a great writer. Um,

incredible. And, uh, Hitchens did the intro to that though. And I, you know, like that'll come back up later once I, you know,

I, I wanted to bring up Hitchens in a minute, but, um, the other thing that I have watched and, um, you know, about like Serbia and like, well, first of all, I watched this movie, Coriolanus the other thing that I have watched and, um, you know, about like Serbia and like,

well, first of all, I watched this movie, Coriolanus the other night, which is filmed in Belgrade. Actually. I haven't seen this. Was it,

was it a recent movie? It's like 12 years ago. It was, um, Joseph finds and, uh, Oh my God. They gave him,

they gave him the Serbian citizenship. The Serbian government gave him a passport. For the movie? Yes, for filming in Belgrade. Sorry to interrupt you. And the sort of, I would call him kind of a dictator here in Serbia. He has used clips of Ralph Fiennes and Harry Potter in his election campaign last month. Oh my god, no, no.

Harry Potterfication of global politics everywhere. Exactly. It's not just America. It's also here. It's also in Serbia. It's usually a liberal thing, but he's a right-wing populist. The Vucic, is that his name? Vucic, mm-hmm The Vucic, is that his name? Vucic. Mm-hmm. Vucic.

The crazy thing I learned about him is that he, like, aired one of his opponent's sex tapes on, like, morning TV or something. What the fuck? Yes. Yes. So basically his house, I know this guy, he's like a friend of mine, his house was broken into. It was like a break-in and one of his laptops was stolen.

And then that was like a year ago and then last month just a couple weeks uh ahead of the campaign this guy's a he's kind of a green left uh politician uh obviously opposition and enemy of luchich um he played there was a sex tape on this on this laptop and the government played it on pro-government morning television, morning TV, like this very graphic sex tape, like private recording. So if you're getting ready for work and your kids are getting ready for school and it's just airing in the morning while you're drinking your coffee, Jesus. No low is too low. That's right. It's just total trash. Like, yeah, it's unbelievable they do stuff like that. But that kind of gives you insight into how the media is used sort of for his own, to settle his own scores and to kind of attack his own enemies.

Yeah. Very odd place, yeah. Incredible. Coriolanus was a Shakespearean. It was a Shakespeare play. But Fiennes adapted it for like a modern Balkans context and it's actually not a bad

movie I think it's actually pretty good because it does like the Romeo Juliet thing with you know the Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he retains all the original dialogue and stuff and like it works I think it's he just updates it yeah yeah I kind of liked it too yeah so I should of liked it too and yeah um

so i should check that out i feel bad like boycotting it because it's been used for like political because like rey fides however you pronounce his name um he's been used like by the serbian government but i should not let this uh deter me from watching the movie i'll give it a chance you should watch it. For sure. And then finally, the other thing is the four-hour BBC documentary Death of Yugoslavia. I think it's pretty good.

Yeah, it is. I think it's pretty decent. It's very good. Yeah. One of the filmmakers, like, married a guy who had the same name as, like, a war criminal. Yeah, it happens, I guess. Yeah um was it laura silber she made

the film and i think yeah she's i think she married a serbian guy his name is something that's right duchamp i don't know his last name but um but yeah i actually think that that's quite a decent film um they did quite a good job yeah yeah i should refresh and watch it again now but yeah i thought it was good i'm sure there's a lot of uh bbc has a lot of archival footage as well right that's in that documentary that's pretty good interesting yeah there is incredible archival footage in that documentary um yeah yeah it's very fascinating that war being you know one of the first that was really televised um right so yeah very very interesting well um that's like a good maybe that's a good way to segue into what i wanted to talk about today um because we wanted

to have you on to discuss some of your recent writing specifically so you write for the new statesman and the new left review and um you know i've been reading a lot of your recent stuff and um especially since because you know you were writing a lot more about ukraine like in the fall and uh you know we've we've talked a lot more about Ukraine, like in the fall. And, you know, we've, we've talked a lot about Ukraine on the show. Obviously, we haven't really talked about it at all in the last three months. Yeah, understandably. Like, you know, it's really wild. Like, you know, Aaron can attest to this, like, it was kind of one of our hobby horses. And then mostly because like, in my small town in East Kentucky, like,

even the mayor was putting up ukrainian flags around town like you know what i mean yeah i know i went home for like eight months last uh last year and it was like ukraine flags and like all the neighbors like lawns and i don't know like it was so weird it was so weird and of course i, not the same with Palestine. I just thought it was interesting that I saw that the New York Post, apparently they had a Ukrainian flag on their masthead, I guess. Oh, they took it down. I think, yeah, they took it down once Palestine and Israel, once that conflict arose.

I mean, we've all kind of of it's understandable to a certain extent yeah yeah well um it it just reminds me of that um sorry tension just reminds me of that meme with um with the guy walking with the girl with the uh yeah with the red with the dress and there's that girl with the red dress and he turns back to look at her you know what i mean just sort of the the vagaries of the liberal order when it comes to international conflicts and what i mean you talk about in your piece and this kind of selective you know right selectivity humanitarianism right um well let's stick a pin in that i want to talk about ukraine um in a second but like what i really wanted to talk about like so you you wrote something in the new statesman about yeah like the title says like the death of humanitarianism

and i and like your article really gets at this really bizarre phenomenon uh that you know might sound kind of obvious but like when you spelled out the way that you do i'd never really like considered it this way before but like you have the u.s giving both bombs to israel and also claiming to give humanitarian aid to gazans so it's like i think as you say it's almost like providing the weapon to create the wound and then providing the band-aid for it so it's like it's almost like vertical and vertical integration of genocide and humanitarianism it's very creepy and kafka-esque almost it is i think it's the future too i mean it's like it's very creepy and kafka-esque almost it is i think it's the future too i mean it's like it's kind of terrifying like this idea that i was talking about

about it with my editor about the humanitarianism being used to justify ethnic cleansing and genocide like in the future like because okay we're keeping the population alive or we're giving them food or we're giving them water or shelter so does that justify these you know these this genocide you know or like or at least um mitigate like our responsibility somehow it's very very gross and potentially very scary yeah well it seems like the the Iraq war was kind of maybe the first like test case for this but like with Iraq they tried to make it seems like the the Iraq war was kind of maybe the first like test case for this but like with Iraq they tried to make it seem like it still had these very lofty ideas right it's like we're gonna do interventionism but like you know obviously like we starved them

through sanctions then we invaded and then we gave them like democracy and um so it's like you know still in this realm of like these very lofty ideas that were kind of indicative of that moment in like 90s early aughts you know idealistic unipolarity and everything but now it's like this very degraded version of it right it's like there's not even any pretense to any larger ideals like no one's even invoking any kind of like universal principles or anything it's all just like blatant. It's vulgar. It's really incredible.

Power. Power politics. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think I had mentioned that we mentioned it in the last episode, but it's also sort of there's not even anymore the appearance of, you know, pretense or any moral sort of fortitude. You know, it's just now it's just like mask off, you know, pretense or any moral sort of fortitude. You know, it's just now, it's just like mask off, you know.

It's Biden saying things that, I mean, have just been the most disgusting, grossest, most evil things I've ever heard in any president or even any of his officials, like Anthony Blinken or Josh Kirby. It's just, I mean, yeah, it's completely just mask off. Yeah, yeah. And I'm kind of glad in a way that it happened under the democrats because you got to see i feel that in a way if if this would have happened in our under a republican

administration that like the democrats would have you maybe profaned outrage and yeah they would have pursued a more kind of um a different policy but now we're seeing the true um uh face like yeah mask off yeah yeah yeah yeah that's actually a great point because you're right like if it was a republican then all the liberals would line up and say like oh this is just a natural extension of like trumpism either conservative or neoconservative politics right um right but like as you point out in the piece like you it's fat it's very fascinating because not only did i read this piece but i like read your like deep dive on like the new serbia um for the new left review it's fascinating because like you know obviously fast serbia's fascinating um yeah but like it's really crazy

because like with serbia and like with the balkans wars in general like you can really dial in on this moment of like high liberal order idealism in the in the 90s and um so like your your article for the new statesman like opens up with like kosovo right like april 1999 and like the new york times is declaring it like a template for the new millennium um you link that bernard kushner op-ed which i read and it's fucking insane you have to remember this guy was like an anti-colonialist like he was like a communist student protester in paris in 1968 and he was very radical uh and this is him in middle age, you know, it's like kind of a cautionary tale that he,

he, yeah, he's become very kind of pro-imperialist, but using the rhetoric of human rights, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said you read the entire op-ed. I read the op-ed, yeah. And it's fascinating. And I brought up Hitchens a minute ago because Hitchens had the exact same trajectory.

He was like a Trotskyist, like socialist in the 60s, early 70s. And by the early 2000s, he's come to also embrace this like militarized version. Neocon. He's become a neocon, right. And there is a through line there as you point out in the article it's like this melding together of like activist sensitivities of the 60s and this like in like these higher ideals of like humanitarian universalism and everything else

so it's like he invokes the thing that like hitchens would always invoke which is that like cultural relativism and like female genital mutilation in Africa is pretense for invasion and war and that kind of stuff, you know? It's almost like liberalism's kind of moral precepts have sort of colonized like these people's thinking, you know? I mean, I don't know. I just see this pattern where you have older radicals. They either turn out to be total cranks or remain to be awesome until 08.

And I just don't understand what that is, whether it's like this sort of acquiescence, you know, to there is no alternative and this is the way the world is. Or, I mean, I don't know. Or, I mean, they're just getting funded or paid by somebody to say this stuff. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do wonder about that i think there was a whole generation of people who kind of participated in like the student protests

in 68 i've written about the german green party as a sort of great example of this not to get too far off track but they used to be a real anti-war party and and and you know protest against like the stationing of like u.s missiles in europe and um you know had a you did you know stand at least at least give like rhetorical support for decolonization and then you know today they're kind of the most like neoliberal hawkish pro-war they're almost like out hawking biden on Biden sometimes on arms. It's this sort of... It was an interesting trajectory. So the people, the new left of 1968, which was kind of the Green Party

is kind of comprised of those people. They were founded by those people. Today, now kind of turning into these hawkish militants. Of course course they invoke like feminism and like like you know um human rights but it sort of is like a mask for sort of more like naked aggression i think in a way yeah well the bernard kushner op-ed has like these very bold statements which is like a country will never again invade another sovereign country and it's like literally three really bold things to say in what year is this 99 yeah that's like that's like

that's like the new york times say that like you know a man will never fly in the air guy like unless it's a thousand years and the wright brothers accomplished that and like you know and like less than a decade you know it's really crumbled pretty fast so it's like i mean the the the hubris of like this unipolar moment like immediately after the cold war when there was you know this when russia was in tatters and like china was no not you know the power that it is today they just really uh were there it was like a really avant-garde thinking though you can see that activist thinking there. Yeah. But let's just harness the tools and power of, you know,

I don't know, the United States military. Yeah. And NATO. And, you know, use it to kind of, the thing is, I'm sure that there were a lot of people who are true believers and well-meaning. But I do think that within that, there were also people who realized that they could just, that they could use these concepts as a cover for, you know, pursuing whatever U.S. militarism around the world.

So, yeah. Yeah. It's like they were high on their own supplies. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like they're dizzy. Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly right. They're frenzied is what it is. Yeah, and that's really what's so fascinating. Your article charged this almost like, I think you used the word Kafkaesque earlier, Aaron,

but it really is this almost Kafkaesque trajectory from high idealism about humanitarian intervention to this very cynical embrace of just humanitarian pauses we've gone in 20 years from humanitarian intervention to humanitarian pauses you know what i'm saying it's very strange i mean we we we went from humanitarian pauses to god i'm forgetting what was the second term that they started using they started using another term after humanitarian pauses. Instead, they wouldn't say ceasefire, but I remember Bernie saying that as well. And that was just within a couple of weeks. Right.

Yeah. Right. I wish I could remember the term. I can't remember it. But I mean, like, it's like every term that they throw at the wall just kind of evaporates, you know, immediately because it's meaningless, you know? Yeah. Well, and I guess like that's the thing.

Like I wanted to, again, I wanted to dial into this moment of the late 90s, right? In the early 2000s. As you call it, a unipolar moment. What was it about this moment that imbued these people with these very, like I said, these grandiose, almost sort of dizzying ideals for remaking the world? What was the context in which they were developing these ideas? Well, as we've already discussed, I think part of it was this post Cold War,

they're feeling very triumphant, like victors, you know, and they decided that, you know, that they could go further, that we could, that now the US didn't really have any predators in the world and it could kind of do whatever it wanted to. I think there was also sort of a millennial sense of like, okay, the year 2000 is here. The internet then was just kind of becoming adopted. And so there was this idea that like, you know, the world was going to be more globalized, kind of borders were going to be dissolved, sovereignty would be dissolved. And if you remember in 99, there were also these mass anti-globalization protests

in Seattle against the WTO, which was another kind of supranational organization that was kind of going to be the arbiter of international economic relations, which many countries in the global South really saw as a kind of a neoliberal tool of the west. And so there was kind of a lot converging. And of course, it's weird to think now, but you had CNN really broadcasting images of atrocities perpetrated here in this region into people's living rooms, I think to a degree that you'd never had with any other war. I mean, we did see some in Vietnam. And of course, there was a sort of, when Americans were dying,

and when there were images of like American soldiers dying, that obviously kind of was a, it fueled part of the anti-war, it fueled the anti-war movement. So, but watching other people part of the anti-war, it fueled the anti-war movement. So, but watching other people, uh, dying, I think this was really the, um, really new. And so I think it was a combination of things that sort of sense the future is here. What kind of world do we want to live in in the 21st century? Um, the U S is kind of alone as the global superpower. Um, and just sort of how can we put these ideals from the 60s into sort of a, you know, military context or like how can we use these ideals for good? And yeah, and again, technology, internet.

Yeah, it's a very interesting kind of convergence. I mean, you could really um yeah yeah it's really really fascinating i think that i think the um the sort of i want to say the weaponization of the 24-hour news cycle you know because you were right in vietnam you know at that point and i also think of this is i don't want to get too off topic but i think of martin luther king's march on edmund edmund pettus bridge and how many white liberals had seen black organizers marching, marchers getting their asses beat by the cops. And how much that was sort of the fulcrum by which the liberals and Democrats sort of twisted and said, hey, we were in support of the civil rights movement. Right. I'm willing to go at least meet some of these demands.

And sort of you talk about in the piece sort of how cnn was only one-sidedly showing you these atrocities and i don't want to get too far ahead but how now with social media and the tiktok outrage and what we're seeing the fact that this access to information or at least the information we're seeing has become the access has become more horizontal more right you know what i mean where now we're not only seeing atrocities committed by Israel that Palestinians are showing, but we're also seeing groups like Hamas show their own. We're also seeing IDF soldiers. I just cannot get past this.

It's incredible. Just IDF soldiers doing skits. I mean, I can't not mention this, but Jesus Christ, man. I can't not mention this but Jesus Christ man like they were trying to rig a building to detonate it and ostensibly do one of their dumb fucking skits and before it and then just wound up I think like an out costume fighter wound up like finding them and shoot in like shooting a thermobaric missile and it just blew the whole thing up sorry i'm sorry that's funny as hell man it's it's just some like three stooges shit man like i don't know it's just insane well and then what was so i guess what was so there's like yeah okay so it's like yes like you know fuck these assholes because like you know that is something that's incredibly new right like i have i have been online since i have been like 12 years old right like i'm 36 now

but it's like most of my life i've been online and it's like i've never seen like war crimes like as like a spectacle in this way it's really fucking it's insane it's it's not even as if it's almost as if like i don't know because we all know that it's a spectacle as if it's almost as if like, I don't know, because we all know that it's a spectacle. Right. But it's like they know that we know and they don't care that we know. And that's the point that it's a spectacle. And what adds another dimension of surreality to it. And we got at this on our premium episode from this past weekend. But I just watched another video of them grilling one of

these state department spokesmen and it's just it's just like what was something that all the reporters it really generally feels like these reporters are about to like revolt against these fucking state department spokesmen because it's like they keep pressing on them like you've seen these videos. They make jokes about blowing up city blocks. Like, how do you account for that? And like all they say now, like they don't do anything anymore except say we're raising the concerns. Those are private conversations. We won't tell you about the private conversations. But there's not been a meaningful increase in the number of trucks or in the flow of aid that's been getting in since October. This is a process that we will continue

to work towards. For how long? As long as this conflict is happening, the delivery of humanitarian aid and doing so at a greater rate, at a higher clip, and increasing how much is going into Gaza will continue to be a priority. What about on the other issues, on the civilian infrastructure, the civilian casualties? Does it not feel to the U.S. like it is pushing on a closed door when it comes to rhetoric that it's employing? We have been direct in our conversations with the government of Israel. When we have seen instances of actions that we believe are contradictory to the principles that we believe the region should be abiding by or are contradictory to the very clear principles the secretary laid out in Tokyo in the fall, specifically when we see things like efforts

around a buffer zone or when we see efforts around the destruction of civilian infrastructure. around a buffer zone or when we see efforts around the destruction of civilian infrastructure. We have raised those things publicly from up here, but we also have raised those privately in the around-the-clock active conversations that we continue to have with our Israeli interlocutors, and we'll continue to do so. Let me ask it this way. Is the U.S. considering anything other than conversation as a tool to affect change in Israeli in Israel's behavior in this country? I have no new policy or new assessment to offer but we'll continue to have our conversations with the Israeli government and we'll continue to work at this. And it's like it's just created this very strange disjuncture right it's like you say Lily it's like it was a lot of

this was based on this idea that like oh all information will be out there and transparent you'll be able to see all of it and therefore that will then allow you to pressure people in power and say look this is the information this is what's going on make x y and z changes we now have a extreme you know push in one direction where we see everything but there's no corresponding change in the other direction i don't know it's just right it is i kind of can't believe that they didn't envision that the internet wouldn't would like someday shed light on crimes in which we were you know the west was complicit they how did they think they could only use it, you know,

to lift the curtain on what its enemies, what our enemies are doing, you know? It's so bizarre that they couldn't see. Maybe it's hindsight is 20-20. Maybe I'm just thinking I'm too clever. I think it's like what it is is that they couldn't even conceive that Americans would be doing this. But part of this is the framework of it.

And, you know, you talk about like the International Criminal Court and stuff. Part of the framework is that like only people that are brown or black commit war crimes and engage in these very nasty, barbaric, backwards ideas like ethno-nationalism. Like that's part of the whole idea you know absolutely which which i have to say is absurd given obviously what we all know here and what everybody knows including my family back in jamaica that they were not the perpetrators of right no nationalism you know what i mean it's just i mean it's it's just i think what's insane is that they didn't suspect that the internet and access to information would, like you said, Lily, reveal crimes. They thought that they could only use it to, you know, they could control it. But now it's like meaning.

We talked about the show a lot. Meaning has become reversed, right? Yeah. And flipped, you know? a lot meaning has become reversed right yeah flipped you know so despite the fact that they are being challenged with these contradictory images that we're seeing it's almost as if they shut down you know like i'm almost like i've talked about like them almost looking like they're gonna have an aneurysm or how anyone hasn't stroked out had an aneurysm yet because i just don't understand how you can't you know i mean how you can't reconcile or like reconcile these

contradictions and continue to lie to people. I don't know. It's just – It's absolutely shocking. If you think of it, going back to 1999 and comparing it to today, the idea that the U.S. would kind of be the sole arbiter of human rights and the sole kind of the custodian of human rights internationally. like kind of the custodian of human rights internationally like it's it's you know and i it just it just we've we what what world have we kind of entered into no i think that like that's a great point and it's you know gets into like so like if we're detailing some of these features of like what we term like this sort of high moment of unipolarity if we're like looking

at some of the core features of that one of which is this like you know very idealistic invocation of of humanitarianism and and and more than that just like what is to to me one of the most idealistic ideas in human history the humanitarian intervention right that like as you point out in your article started out as this very idealistic thing and then 20 30 years later we see the consequences of that where we're having it we're having wars waged in the name of humanitarianism and seeing with our very own eyes and then the united states trying to play both sides of that but like another feature of this moment that you're talking about is the establishment of kind of like international criminal justice system to like prosecute human rights abuses and stuff. of these institutions and doctrines? Like you talk about like the International Criminal Court responsibility to protect like these things, like what, what were some of these institutions and

ideas in and what were they created to respond to, like specifically? Yeah, so the, the International Criminal Court was established. So before the establishment of the International Criminal Court, you had the establishment of two ad hoc tribunals to try to violate war crimes. The first was in 1993, the International Tribunal that would prosecute crimes in former Yugoslavia. prosecute crimes in former Yugoslavia. And then a couple years later, you had the ad hoc court established to prosecute genocide in Rwanda. And then in 98, you had the establishment

of the International Criminal Court, which is the permanent court. The other two are just kind of the ad hoc. So it's very interesting. From the beginning, it was very controversial with much of the global south because it was seen as sort of a white man's court. You know, I have a friend here says, like, you know, international justice is for Africans and Yugoslavs. You know, it's not really for like, you know, the West. And you can see even just like the United States is not party to the convention that the International Criminal Court

doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. And actually, I don't know if you, I think I read about this in the article. There's something under Bush, we passed something called the Hague Invasion Act. So in the event that any American citizen is ever held accountable for crimes in The Hague,

would the U.S. can like militarily invade the Netherlands? I just have to say that, not to interject too much, but I heard that before, but, you know, just something that you just don't remember. One of the many things about this country or about the way this world works that you kind of just stalk into the back of your brain because it's just kind of really horrifying to think about.

Like, if you play that scenario out, and I just think it's really morbidly funny and terrifying in a Bush era, especially the United States invading the Netherlands. Like, it's just, we live in a, to continue, sorry, we live in a bizarre world is what it is. That's really it.

It's unimaginable. Yes yes i totally understand why you like why i kind of have to like push it to the back of my mind too because it's so absurd that it just kind of like if it's like constantly on my mind i'll kind of go crazy um not be able to deal um but yeah like it so okay the u.s is not uh does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Israel doesn't. Israel tried to get them to, like, didn't they try to get them, like, defunded? Right. It's vulnerable to lobbying.

So Israel was lobbying actual member states, telling them to pull their funding for the International Criminal Court when it was suggested that the International Criminal Court would look into crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians. Yeah, they were like, God, we've got to snip this in the book. So wait, wait, wait. Are there no—I mean, obviously not, but—and I mean, I can't even ask how are there not. But I think it would make sense that you would have protections that would prevent lobbying, right, of the Internet. I mean, we don't—we don't have that have that american politics but you would assume that an international court those protections would be in place but i mean who created that court right you know yeah you would think but like i i i don't know i it it's unfortunate it's like you know still the best

justice that money can buy you know it's there's still so much money in the system. And like, well, it's no, I mean, I think it's kind of obvious that wealthy Western countries have been able to, you know, evade consequences or accountability for so long, in part because they probably can like throw money around. At least that's the perception, I think, in a lot of countries of the global south, which is why this court case, you know, this is a different court, the International Criminal Court of Justice, where South Africa has brought this case against Israel. That's why this is kind of so, you know, revolutionary. But also, I think it's important to note that this court where South Africa has brought this case against Israel was founded in 1945.

So it was founded right after the World War II. And it was both the Soviet Union and the United States supported this creation. So in a way, the 90s and the ICC were an attempt to kind of override this sort of charter international system that kind of had buy-in, a little bit more buy-in. I would say that it still is a court that is highly imperfect and plagued with inequality, inequalities especially between the global south and the West and the global North. But there is something to the fact that I think that this court did was not, came out of the ashes of World War II and the recognition that we really don't want anything, any horrors to happen again. So I think that that's, that's significant. Whereas,

again, yeah, the ICC is more of a creation of the unipolar moment after the Cold War. Well, yeah, it seems like the culmination of probably what the United States liberal order wanted throughout the 20th century. I think that it, there was a recognition that i think someone even said it like i was again reading real dilettante hours but reading the wikipedia page for the international criminal court and someone said that like it would be impossible to make while the soviet union still existed um right right and uh but it's interesting that like in the 90s you get these once again to return to these what we were talking about earlier. And I'm showing my age here a little bit.

But like, I mean, I remember in high school, like these, you know, obviously like the letter writing campaigns and stuff like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, like these moments of like high humanitarianism. And like you point out here, like this idea of like responsibility to protect. None of these things have been invoked during all the things going on right now, like Sudan and Gaza. Like they're almost like relics of a bygone era. We still use them, maybe perhaps the legal frameworks around them,

but they're not really invoked in the court of public opinion anymore. They're not invoked even by the press or anything. The principle of responsibility to protect is another, yeah, absolutely another relic of a sort of unipolar 90s. I mean, it was never like a binding law. It was a principle that was really born out of the idea that there should never be a Bosnia or

Rwanda on the international community's watch ever again. And although the UN did kind of adopt it in 2005 as sort of a non-binding principle through which international relations would be governed, It would supposedly constrain states. And it permitted, you know, military action in the event that a state was not protecting its own citizens from genocide or perpetrating a genocide against its own citizens and other war crimes. So that was 2005. And it was invoked in 2011 in Libya. And unfortunately, the NATO intervention in Libya was kind of a disaster.

It really massively exacerbated what was happening. And you saw the emergence of slave markets there. gets there. There's a range of opinions that people have about how disastrous the NATO intervention was, but I think by any judgment, it was horrifying. Libya today is basically a failed state. I think what happened after that is people realized that, you know, does this, what did the so-called humanitarian interventions even quote unquote work? And that was kind of the death of responsibility to protect. A couple of years later, I think the United States attempted to rally support for, you know, tried to invoke responsibility to protect our humanitarian intervention in the context of Syria. And then at that point, Russia and China realized, okay, this is being used as a

tool of like US whatever, especially because of the kind of grisly death that Gaddafi kind of, it was, and Hillary Clinton said, like, we came, we saw, he died. Right. A very kind of grotesque way of putting it. So I think then it was really kind of arguably died then. But then it was, I think at the same time, it's just there's a different level now. Because we've seen subsequent ethnic cleansings even in um of armenians just like a couple of months before the war in gaza started i mean sudan the largest like displacement of people i mean the end in gaza just like

culmination of this um so just nothing no invocations of responsibility to protect but what you do see which is fascinating is the west enemy is now using this language um yeah to sort of uh and and that it's it's it's really fascinating because we think of it as being cynical that i would imagine that that's exactly kind of how they see you know the global north's invocations of it as they see it as also cynical um so yeah it's very interesting ideological blowback it's something that um it's something that you see constantly i think within like um you know in uh in movements in liberation movements across the global south right or even in america right and you know in black communities it's like you provide these liberal rights right yeah and you say that all men are created equal then you say

that every you know the state is sovereign and say all these things and then people of color you know and colonized people look at that and they say okay then i'm going to actually fulfill that you know right and then you know the west and the north goes like wait wait wait not we didn't mean that way you know like i can't remember i can't remember you could cut this out turners because i might i don't remember what president obviously i'm really bad with dates but it reminds me of ho chi minh you know going to god who was it man was it fdr i think right to ask them to stop eisenhower eyes and i might i forgot who it was but it was asking them to stop you know um the continued colonization right he was a huge

fan of george washington and the declaration yeah he was like i believe in all these precepts like liberal democracy this is what i want my country yeah and they were like nah dude what the fuck are you talking about yeah get out of here with that shit so it's like i just it's just chickens coming home to roost right you can't provide people and say all these things and expect that they're not going to call your bluff well yeah and i think that the thing is is like if we're charting the trajectory of how this fell apart i i guess i shouldn't be too premature because it hasn't fallen apart yet it is obviously like i said it's degrading it is falling apart but i think that charting the trajectory of how it has developed i think the the role of russia here is like something

and kind of trying to tie this into what's going on with ukraine like as you point out in the article like russia was really burned by the 2011 intervention in libya like didn't they i think they voted against it at the u.n security council and and i think that wasn't even the first time like i i could be getting this history entirely wrong but i think that in the 90s didn't they also disagree with kosovo intervention like didn't they also i think that the kosovo intervention? Like, didn't they also? I think that the Kosovo intervention by the US and NATO was kind of a huge turning point in Russia-US relations

to an extent that, like, Americans don't fully comprehend. I think that it really started there, this rift, you know. There were mass protests in Russia, and there's always kind of some like lingering anti-American sentiment in Russia after the Cold War, you know, that never went away. But what the change was that who was protesting, you know, it used to be sort of like maybe

diehard, you know, Soviet nostalgic people. And now it was like students, people who were sort of more moderate, quote-unquote moderate, not just nationalists. So you have these mass protests. And similarly, China also, I don't know if you heard this, I don't think I've written about it anywhere, but the only target of that entire intervention in Yugoslavia in 99 that was selected by the CIA was the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And we hit the Chinese embassy, several people died, including some Chinese journalists. They have never forgotten that. There were mass protests, I think that even like in one Chinese city the the consulate was stormed i mean

it was really huge and actually i was there the i had a tour of the cultural center recently and um on the site of the where this embassy was and they have a memorial that in chinese tourists come like that i was there it was like crowded with like you know um young kind of um cool looking kids like putting flowers it's like a pilgrimage site yeah like they have never forgotten it so yeah absolutely this is like like this um 99 and and the 90s in general um was definitely a point of like divert a point of like rupture Russia and the United States. And of course, then the war on terror, there was more collaboration briefly. And so there was a thinking that there could be kind of,

that Russia and the United States could work together because Russia would talk about how it had a so-called terrorism problem in Chechnya. But then that moment passed. And then 2008 would be another big moment of rupture when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Russia saw this as a violation of Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty. And so China and Russia together have really pushed this idea of like sovereignty, territorial integrity, possibly cynically, you know, Russia obviously violated the Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial

integrity, but they have kind of pushed this. And I think that much of the global South has also kind of been using this language of sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in foreign affairs of states so um so yeah this was you're absolutely right that this was like a huge deal in 2011 i think kind of pushed it to an entirely new level because they basically saw a nato intervention to destroy a state and you know the death of a of a, you know, so that I think in a way maybe frightened them in some way. So Russia, yeah, at that point, it was actually in 2011 at the UN Security Council, China and Russia are permanent members. They both abstained from voting, which permitted the kind of gave partial authorization for the campaign to go through. But later on Syria, Russia exercised its veto power,

of course. So absolutely, this is a huge point of divergence and really important, I think, that people don't fully comprehend this sort of how much these cracks were already showing as far back as the 90s and how much these kind of like avant-garde humanitarian interventions really kind of upset countries that had, you know, make great power aspirations for themselves. great power aspirations for themselves. No, it's just a general point I want to make, but, um, you know, just kind of bookend what you're saying,

Lily, but it seems like what we're seeing now almost in, well, maybe it felt like slow motion, but now it feels like accelerated in the past few months, but this realignment, you know, and this reckoning,

right. Of like this post-colonial history. And you're seeing like, and it's kind of like i don't know it's on one on the one hand it is a bit inspiring when you think you see like bolivia withdraw um diplomatic relations with israel but then it's sort of this kind of i don't know foreboding reshuffling right and kind of preview for the rest of the 21st century and we don't know we're not aware right now who is going to have the monopoly on power and violence

when we're dealing with the adverse effects of climate change. And, you know, whether it's people, you know, it's just all of this is just, I don't know, it's just foreboding and ominous, you know? Yeah, it's just like an uncertain period. And I can't help but feel also inspired by seeing like countries of the global south adopting a more assertive position in the world and saying you know and you know taking

countries like israel to the the international court of justice um and you know really making good on these this idea like we are independent actors and we're not going to be like just the subjects of his or like of our uh your policies um but yeah it is interesting and we're in this kind of murky area era of like the emergence of the multipolar world um where you see extensive sort of links the global south is now um uh getting uh involved with China on a level that's quite like remarkable because China has emphasized as an alternative to the liberal order that we've kind of propagated a sort of model based on respect for sovereignty, which supposedly, for sovereignty, which supposedly, some people might say that it's cynical and not true,

but they emphasize this language. We respect sovereignty. We're not going to tell you that you need to have certain sort of like human rights standards. We're just like an economic partner. They call it South-South cooperation. So they're saying we're, and I was at the non-aligned summit, which is like, it never gets covered in the Western media. But it's kind of a very inspiring Cold War movement or like institution of countries that didn't want to align with either the NATO or the Soviet Union. They live in countries emerging from colonialism. And it's the second largest grouping of countries in the world after the United Nations. And it's the second largest grouping of countries in the world after the United Nations. And their first summit was here in Belgrade, actually, because Yugoslavia had very strong ties with countries emerging from colonialism.

They wanted to chart a third way, Tito, precisely. So, yeah, I was, yeah, you see this. I remember the Chinese foreign minister was saying something like, we will always see ourselves as like a developing country so we are one of you no we're not trying to be above you so that that's the kind of length they're kind of seeing the criticisms the west of the west and these um uh in the global south and they're of, you know, adopting the contrary point, which is like, you know, we don't, we won't, we're here as like a peer. We're not looking to sort of tell you that you're like, you know, doing something wrong so that we can like invade you or something like that. So it's interesting that we, you know, we don't know yet what that world is going to look like. But yeah, it's a very completely murky, strange time, for sure.

Because with the US, you know, kind of consolidating power over Europe, that has kind of almost grown since the invasion of Ukraine. You see NATO enlargement in like two Scandinavian countries and then in Sweden and Finland. And NATO, of course, is like, you know, the military and political arm of the United States in Europe, in the Euro-Atlantic space. So yeah, you see this kind of shrinking, but consolidation of power over Europe

and by the US. But then the rest of the world really kind of up, it's really a moment where a lot of things are up for grabs. And the moral credibility of the United States, I don't, it is now completely gone. I'm sure for many of the countries in the global South, they would say it was never, you know, we didn't, he never had it.

But I think that the difference now is that we are, those of us watching, you know, from is that we are what those of us watching you know from the US those of us we've now people at home can see it too which is like I don't know what the implications of that are I'm always astonished at the degree to which the I mean the conservatives always say this, Benghazi's not going away. But they mean that because they... Benghazi. I forgot about that.

They mean that in a different way. But what we did to Libya is really astonishing. I mean, it was like the fifth largest economy in Africa, right? It was like, you know, and not only was it just completely dismantled and you're right like turned into a failed state but like the spectacular manner in which gaddafi was ousted and then literally murdered in front i mean like i still remember that horrifying i remember that yeah i remember that shit was on the almost the front page i think of the fucking daily news man it was just really it was really it was really bizarre and jarring and

like what the yeah it was jarring it was yeah well and then and then also right like hillary clinton just like dancing on his grave it's just yeah i don't know um but uh this kind of gets at something that like you pointed out in another article you wrote for the new statesman um you were talking about ukraine and the art the title of that article is The Realists Were Right. And well, first of all, I had listened to you on something else at another podcast. Maybe it was American Prestige. And you're talking about like the blowback you got from or not blowback, but like backlash. Yeah, we'll be up to it, too.

But like the backlash you got to that article and like how pissed people were and um i think you wrote this article right around october 7th and so like i'm really wondering now like if you wrote the same article now obviously there's this like those nafo morons who like oh my god still be in your mentions yelling at you but like i really wonder if you would get the same amount of backlash now as you did in october right it's absolutely not i mean now the head of so maybe like two months after i wrote that article the uh the head of the ukrainian armed forces said basically the same thing that i wrote in my article like he said that you know this is a stalemate and you know we don't really have a path to victory unless we are furnished with more supplies.

So it was just the timing. I think that it was – there was – the way that the Ukraine war has – kind of the information war has gone, and the sort of disconnection – the disconnect from reality of what was happening um has just been like kind of a cavernous i mean i i and i if you tried to kind of inject any sort of reality or you know kind of more slightly more pessimistic or realistic i just don't not even pessimistic realistic thinking realistic you would be immediately attacked and and called like a genocide enabler and um you know a putinist and uh really really it was very ugly it's been a really ugly kind of propaganda war um and of course now now everything is quite different because uh it's been you know i think even people who are quite, you know,

hawkish on Ukraine and maximal want, you know, kind of Ukraine to meet its maximalist aspirations, like get all of its territory back, which a lot of people say is unrealistic at this point. which a lot of people say is unrealistic at this point um even those people would now say yeah like that article has stood up really well i've had a couple of people even come up to me because the article um i don't know it was the newsmaiden was very nice and they said it was like one of their best articles of like you know to the 2023 and like so a lot of people who kind of not a lot but a couple people who like were didn't wouldn't didn't really like the article then And like, so a lot of people who kind of, not a lot, but a couple of people who like were, didn't, wouldn't, didn't really like the article then said like, Hey, your article like stood, you know, it held up pretty well. And like, you know, congratulations for that, for getting it. But yeah, it was, I've never experienced any kind of like campaign,

like hate campaign like that. Um, for any other topic i mean i cover the balkans which is like very very it's kind of like a famous balkan twitter it's like its own beast but um but ukraine was just it's a different it's it's it's more hard it's hardcore absolutely insane well why can we not ask questions i know i'm gonna get i'm gonna get too off topic but why do you why do you think that is what do you what do you think it is about? And I'm seeing this similarly. I mean, we've seen this similarly with, with Gaza, right? With Israel, people that I have seen posts before that I either followed or liked, or

even one or two people in my personal life, like acquaintances, not really close friends. And it's like, there's just like the switch is flipped where they just suddenly become like like truly rabid yeah and genocide airs you know and i just don't and ukraine was the first time where i was kind of like and i guess you could even i can't i mean i yeah i can't think of a time before that where it was so it was where it was like it was in a position where i felt like that i was being like attacked for having a rock opinions that weren't beyond the pale or that weren't you know what i mean or that weren't very radical or fringe what what do you think like lends to that sort of like like like rabidity and division you know and divisiveness i guess i mean i think part of this is social media i mean this is like not particularly like

insightful or anything like it's been said a lot but but, you know, it lends itself to a certain kind of, um, you know, you, you don't have the constraints you would have maybe in person, but, um, but yeah, there, and all this, there's just something about war that I think for a lot of people now, this is like getting kind of like woo or whatever, but like, I feel that some people kind of like, you know, have their own, they're, they're, there's something that's not that, that, uh, they're seen in the war. That's not about the's something that's not, that they're seeing in the war that's not about the war. It's about something that they are kind of, the way that the war is articulating

their own kind of preferences. It's almost reifying something. It's reification. I mean, I think the reason for Ukraine especially because, like, it's almost like the United States is just waning imperial power. Well, yes. And then Putin, you know what I mean?

And now it's like, oh, no, we can't possibly be losing our place in the war. you know what i mean and now it's like oh no we are we can't possibly be losing our place you know what i mean yeah and it's almost as if it's like i've said this before i've repeated myself it's almost like this libidinal economy of being reborn in the blood of oppressed people or re re reinforcing american status on the world. And if somebody who lives in some suburbs can't feel that sort of reification who's thousands of miles away from this thing, then they lose their fucking mind. Yeah.

Well, and it's even more degraded, though, because in light of the conversation we've just had, and like I said, marking this kind of trajectory from the late 90s to early 2000s like latching on to ukraine as this almost symbol or totem for the either uh reification of the old world order or like a creation of a new one latching onto this specific struggle is a very bizarre one and um partially frankly loser shit if i can say partially because we created the conditions that led to it in the first place ostracizing russia and built almost like we've

remarked before it's like building ukraine up like you've got this bro do it you can beat them bro let's do it like that kind of shit but like as you point out as in the article i think this is a great point lily i think that like and maybe this is a good point to kind of wind down on like as you point out as in the article i think this is a great point lily i think that like and maybe this is a good point to kind of wind down on but as you point out in the article if ukraine is a symbol or a totem for anything like really what it was was meant to like galvanize atlanticism right it was trying to galvanize nato like you even point out that macron had said at one point like like NATO is brain dead so it is almost like years before and then you

born Ukraine brought it back to life yeah it's almost this necrotic relic this vestige right and that's that that you have to like apply like the clear and now it's like I don't know how many times we've made that comparison or like invoke that image

on this show this almost kind of like necromancy that the west thinks it can do where like the same thing with the soviet union right like we've slain the beast and now we're gonna raise it from the dead into this new creation of our own but then it you know then they by their own like policies and contradictions can't keep it under control put people in power that they can't control and then become their own undoing. And it's the same thing with Ukraine. And it's like only a fucking matter of time, right, before, I mean, I don't know. It's just like if you really think about it too long, it really is depressing

because like just thinking about like the rhetoric and like the hype we've put into Ukraine and like egged them on and like they're never've put into ukraine and like egged them on and like like they're never going to trust us again obviously like just obviously creating all kinds of seeds for bad you know actors to arise in that void but jesus you're a ghost totally sorry lily go ahead no no no i was just gonna say like you're completely right about the politics and disappointment and like the god only knows what's gonna come out of that yeah yeah i was gonna say like you're completely right about the politics and disappointment and like the god only knows what's gonna come out of that yeah yeah i was gonna say man it might be a pithy statement but the thing about ghosts man is that like you know you can't control them man no it's like they

haunt you you know i mean it's like they haunt you you can't you can't like use this i mean i i don't know it's like it's a it's a phrase that um that i've since i that since I've learned it, a term, a hauntology, you know, and how much the West is haunted not by the disappearance, not by the specter of communism, but by its disappearance, you know. Well, in that sense, this is fascinating because I hadn't really put it together in this way before, but

in that sense, like Ukraine would be the cause celeb of these sort of humanitarian interventionists like liberal order of the like the late 90s early 2000s israel which is a straight up ethno state like they don't even they mince no words they have no pretensions to any liberal universal ideas it's almost it's all just straightforward like this is a racial ethno state like you would think that like these would be two opposing poles on this larger

spectrum of like a new international order or of something that would invigorate like nato and atlanticism and you see it on full display when they um both overlook like when when they say like it's bad for russia to bomb hospitals and cut off aid and food supply but it's good for israel to do it it's almost like they're just hospitals and cut off aid and food supply, but it's good for Israel to do it. It's almost like they're just saying that, like, we're giving up on the liberal universal idea of this, of Atlanticism. We're now embracing the ethno-nationalist right-wing version of it. Right, right. That's why it's so, like, it's so odd.

It's so odd. And I have to say, watching it from Serbia is so odd because we all know this country almost more than any other knows the dangers inherent to extreme ethno-nationalism and this region knows it. So it's so odd to see it sort of stoked by the U.S., which to the degree that it is being stoked and supported in Israel. And there's this idea that like of exceptionalism that we're trying to kind of hold on to from the unipolar moment. But I don't know if it's tenable in the multipolar world.

And we're going to see, I think actually tomorrow, we're going to see what the ICJ says about whether or not they will order like basically a ceasefire. And because it's compelling, the case is compelling enough. And that's going to be huge. And I think that actually the West kind of can't win either way. West kind of can't win either way, either. If the ICJ says like, you know, this is like a genocide, right? You know, we need to like, the case is going to take several years to be like cited upon, but we're going to hear, I think tomorrow or the day after, whether or not these like extraordinary measures will be invoked to kind of stop the war um and you know if the west if if if the court rules in favor of south africa and says like you know the then then every

western country is implicated you know we are accomplices but if it doesn't if the court rules against south africa and says like you know we don't need to like, you know, order a ceasefire, then the entire artifice, like, or the international law itself will have no credibility in the eyes of like, not only the global South, but a lot of us watching.

Yeah. And like, what do we do with that? I mean, like, what does that mean? It's almost like a no man's land, almost. Yeah, totally that i mean like what does that mean it's almost like a no man's land almost yeah yeah totally totally and what does that mean for like everybody who was you know for all the previous uh cases that came before this court this is basically an apartheid now it's an apartheid court with one sort of justice for for the global north and one for the global south it just like terrified we're so it's

it's i don't know it's a kind of a lose-lose for the west yeah yeah yeah and lily i know we were we're um winding down but um you know you have this other other article that terence had sent me um which i think the title was um was really good it was a conjuring trick and um you talk about how european countries are dealing with these contradictions by, and we see it reflected, of course, the source, right, is the Biden administration, which we started to show off this. On the one hand, can talk about either providing humanitarian aid or pressuring Israel to stem civilian casualties while also giving the weapons, right?

And how we have almost this schizophrenic sort of response right even from governments in europe that that just in one i'd say one thing and then say the other thing it's just like how do you reconcile those contradictions you know even the ones that you would think support like ireland like you pointed out like there's reports that the way it was like shannon air base in in dublin is like that's where they're funneling arms to Israel through. I mean, it's really astonishing. all of the countries that have kind of seemed more reasonable, Ireland, Spain, those are the two big ones, Belgium as well, have all in some ways also been very complicit and very happy to further the war effort or sort of keep down the more sort of stronger critics in their own kind of government who are openly saying this is a genocide, you know?

So, yeah, it's been this real sort of, it's in a way mirrored our own response, but in a kind of, if you look at like Europe as a kind of whole. But yeah, yeah, it's very odd. Well, I think that's a good place to end on. And I think that if you look at it this way, obviously their mixed response is very emblematic of the breakdown of this liberal order.

They don't really have any vision for the future. They realize that their past ideologies and doctrines are kind of decrepit. And they kind of try to conjure a way forward out of it, but what it winds up being is a trick it's not an actual uh it's not an actual act of necromancy or magic it is just a trick that it almost seems like a placeholder for the inevitable it's a place precisely and but like as you said if there's any hope it does lie in the fact that perhaps the global south is

able to use some of these international frameworks and mechanisms to bear pressure on the global north here so um i think that's a good place to leave it um lily thank you so much for coming on the show uh sorry we can't thank you for having me no no thank you for talking to us at all because i mean for uh for the past month we've been the past few months we've been talking about this it's uh it's it's good to have somebody on it's very helpful and like i said right like aaron and i probably me even more than aaron i'm extremely parochial individual never even you're not what are you talking about you know everything like you just had like a very interesting conversation like what do you like you know more than people here about this country like the regions like stop it we make it we make a joke here where

we call ourselves the tardy boys which is sort of a reflection on sort of like a late our master yeah it's also we're a little late um you know uh what is it what's that term um master of done you know you're right yeah yeah yeah i feel the same way yeah joke uh jack of all trades master of none yeah yeah but that's cool yeah well li, if people want to read more of your stuff, if they want to follow you on social media, where can they find you? I usually write for the New Statesman and New Left Review.

I'm hopefully launching a sub stack in the next week or two. You can also follow me on, I hate calling it X, but Lily S. Lynch. So you can follow me there. Awesome. And I'm on Instagram, but that doesn't matter. It does matter.

It does matter if you're an NK answer. I'm not. All right. Well, thank you so much, Lily. Please go check out Lily's work. And you can also go check out our premium episodes at Patreon. You know where to find us. It's in the show notes.

So please go support us there. Until next time, Lily. We'll see you then. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. I'll see y'all later. Ciao. សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� Thank you.