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of home. Welcome.

1:02

Back Parts of the World. I'm Ben Rhodes

1:04

and Tommy is out today so we have

1:06

a very special guest host. A great friend

1:09

of mine and incredible journalist Ali. Velshi is

1:11

here with us and we welcome to parts

1:13

of the World You This is super exciting

1:15

for me to be on with you. Thank

1:18

you all it's funny because I'd go on

1:20

your show sometimes and and us on questions

1:22

and now we get to kind of turned

1:25

the tables are a little bit of it

1:27

as as you I'm sure Neuralgia Msnbc anchor

1:29

of Velshi. Importantly, he is

1:31

also the author of a new book,

1:33

Small acts of Courage A legacy of

1:35

endurance in the fight for democracy. Which.

1:38

Is. An. Extraordinary book

1:40

about an extraordinary family

1:42

story. That will get to

1:44

but raj want to congratulate you. On.

1:47

On writing, this is not your kind of

1:49

typical. Cable. The

1:51

host Memoir: This is like a

1:54

really compelling story. and

1:56

i knew a little bit about your family back are now

1:58

i will get into or later but a conrad You

2:00

must feel good about finishing that. I

2:02

am very very excited. You know books are like

2:04

renovations, right? Like I'm on one hand I'm excited

2:06

that today's the book launch but I'm also excited

2:08

that means there's no more no more book stuff

2:11

to do and when I Forgotten how much went

2:13

into that I that'll be when I start to

2:15

consider another book Just

2:17

you know put out books on a regular

2:19

basis. I'm not one of them. Well, this is a

2:21

good one Everybody should pick it up. But today first

2:23

we're gonna talk about the latest news out of Gaza

2:26

Including the kind of back

2:28

and forth on a potential ceasefire and

2:30

hostage deal the potential Rafa

2:33

invasion which could be happening at

2:36

least in some kind of motion as we

2:38

speak The US response

2:40

to those things including President Biden

2:42

making some comments today As

2:44

well as the recent decision by Israel

2:47

to shut down Al Jazeera, which is

2:49

one of Ali's former employers Then

2:51

we'll get into the latest out of

2:53

Russia Ukraine including President Putin's inauguration A

2:56

potential assassination plot that was

2:58

forled against President Zelensky Xi

3:01

Jinping is in Europe and the

3:03

story of him falling out of Canada Canada pressing

3:05

charges for the killing of a sick separatist on

3:07

its soil They

3:09

say by Indian intelligence. So a lot

3:11

to get into and then after We'll

3:15

talk about Ali's book and then I'm gonna

3:17

be joined by Nikko Kovac Who is a

3:19

good friend of mine a Slovenian activist leading

3:21

the fight to codify a woman's

3:23

right to abortion in Europe So a lot to

3:25

look forward to but Ali let's dig into the

3:28

latest out of Gaza Yeah, so

3:30

a lot is developing

3:32

the last 24 to 48 hours It's

3:35

Tuesday morning here in LA the latest

3:37

information that we have is that there is clearly

3:39

some type of Israeli military operation underway in Rafa

3:42

Although the IDF at this moment is

3:44

still calling it a more minor and targeted incursion,

3:47

but we see airstrikes We see even tank movements

3:49

in the Rafa We've

3:51

seen Obviously

3:53

Hamas rocket fire at the Karim

3:55

Shalom crossing one of the aid

3:57

crossings that also killed for Israel

4:00

soldiers a number of days ago. We've

4:02

seen the Israeli military send out evacuation orders

4:04

to about 100,000 civilians

4:06

in Rafa as they've

4:09

done before some of their other ground operations. So

4:11

there's a lot in motion and we're going to get to

4:13

Rafa and how consequential that would be. But

4:16

first, I want to get

4:18

into this back and forth about a ceasefire. So

4:20

on Monday, after days in which

4:23

both Israel and the United States were kind

4:25

of pinning the blame for lack of a

4:28

ceasefire deal on Hamas, Hamas

4:30

announced through their Telegram channels that

4:33

they had agreed to a ceasefire deal

4:35

that they had discussed with Egypt and

4:37

Qatar after a weekend of

4:39

reports in which it was

4:41

reported those talks had failed. Now,

4:44

Israel pretty immediately said

4:46

it had not agreed to the terms that Hamas agreed to.

4:49

Ali, you reported this via X,

4:52

which I still call Twitter. What

4:55

you reported is that Hamas had accepted a

4:57

three phase deal. One Israeli hostage

4:59

for 33 Palestinian prisoners based

5:02

on seniority of those

5:04

detained in Israeli prisons, stopping

5:06

military operations permanently, not

5:09

using the word ceasefire, but rather a permanent

5:11

halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza. And

5:14

then each phase of this deal encompasses

5:16

the return of Israeli hostages, starting with

5:19

the elderly, then women, sick and people,

5:21

and then finally soldiers. As

5:24

I hear this, essentially, the

5:26

differences are you

5:29

have somewhere about 33

5:31

Israeli hostages would be out in

5:33

this first phase. The real differences

5:35

seem to be about the duration of

5:38

this ceasefire. Is

5:40

it a temporary pause for 40 days

5:42

or is it something more lasting? And

5:44

maybe some haggling about the sequencing of

5:46

hostage releases versus Palestinian prisoner releases. But

5:48

Ali, what do you make of the current

5:51

state of play and on your

5:53

reporting and your analysis? Well,

5:55

it was some interesting stagecraft.

5:58

Hamas agreeing. to a

6:00

proposal that wasn't exactly the proposal that

6:04

they were given, but it wasn't completely invented

6:06

out of thin air. They were in discussions

6:08

with the Qataris and with the Egyptians about

6:11

this deal. And I think you're right that

6:13

around the edge, it seems like there's a

6:15

lot of detail in it. In fact, much

6:17

more than I posted on social media. These

6:20

kinds of things don't lend themselves to social

6:22

media because there's so much detail. There's

6:25

a lot of detail in it. So it strikes me that this

6:28

was sort of a hammered out general

6:30

understanding of how the process could

6:32

go. But there are both

6:35

semantic and real impediments

6:37

here. The semantic impediments are about an

6:39

end to the war, a cessation of

6:42

hostilities versus pauses. There

6:44

doesn't seem to be a world in

6:46

which Netanyahu and his hard right allies

6:48

in the government want

6:51

any system that doesn't allow

6:53

them to, in their opinion,

6:55

finish the war, which involves

6:58

getting rid entirely of Hamas. That's

7:00

a philosophical question that the United States

7:03

and Israel have been at odds with

7:05

since day one. And that is because

7:07

Hamas comes from a philosophy that has

7:09

existed for a long time, largely born

7:11

in the 1930s. It's the same philosophy

7:14

that gave birth to the Muslim

7:16

Brotherhood in Egypt that

7:18

is alive and well, even though illegal in

7:21

Egypt. So the US has

7:23

said from the beginning, your goal is wrong,

7:25

but it now seems that if Israel continues

7:28

to stipulate the wrong goal, it means no

7:30

deal will really be acceptable. Israel,

7:33

Netanyahu in particular, is understanding that

7:35

a deal that results in the

7:37

release of the hostages probably

7:40

puts him out of a job or largely

7:42

puts him out of, you know, puts him

7:44

in a situation where there'll be an election

7:46

at some point and his raison d'être is

7:49

not going to be as strong to be

7:51

there. I think Hamas leadership also gets that.

7:53

There may always be something that feels like

7:55

Hamas and that is Hamas ideology, but ultimately,

7:58

Israel knows how to take people out of the world.

8:00

And it's got a history of assassination and if these

8:02

guys make some kind of deal and go somewhere else

8:05

go live in Lebanon or Qatar Or Switzerland or wherever

8:07

they go live Israel will probably take them out as

8:10

well over time So I think everybody's

8:12

realizing that the endgame means the players

8:14

don't get to continue the sad part

8:16

is that the Israeli hostages

8:18

and their families remain and we

8:21

don't know how many are alive and And Palestinians

8:23

are being told to get into yet

8:25

smaller areas than they're already in to

8:28

protect from this attack in in Rafa I

8:30

mean it's ridiculous It was already one of

8:32

the most densely populated places in the world

8:35

now They got everybody that they could into

8:37

into Rafa and now they're squeezing them into

8:39

little places in Rafa And they're using the

8:41

attack on Rafa which started as you said

8:43

It's not really an attack But the pressure

8:45

on Rafa to put pressure on Hamas to

8:47

say accept the deal we actually gave you

8:49

so I think Everybody's working

8:52

overtime in this moment the Americans

8:54

are trying to tell Hamas You're not gonna

8:56

get a lot of offers like this and

8:58

they're insisting to Israel including by holding back

9:00

on a shipment of weaponry last week Which

9:02

is something we haven't seen before to say

9:04

we're serious about this So I'm

9:07

hoping I'm hoping at any point someone interrupts some

9:09

discussion somewhere that I'm having in the next day

9:11

or two and says There is something that looks

9:13

like a deal, but Hopeful

9:16

and optimistic are two different things. Yeah,

9:18

I Tend to completely agree

9:20

with that analysis I mean you have a

9:23

situation which if there is

9:25

a kind of long-term ceasefire

9:29

It's hard to see how there's not an election in Israel

9:31

that leads to Netanyahu's ouster if there

9:34

is a rough operation, you know There's

9:37

gonna be immense humanitarian suffering which we'll get to in

9:39

a second But also some of those Hamas

9:41

leaders will likely be killed But

9:43

Hamas itself won't be destroyed And

9:46

so we're at this kind of grim milestone where

9:48

all you can hope for is that some kind of deal can

9:51

at least allow for Hostage releases

9:53

and then the alleviation of

9:56

some of the suffering and Gaza from the delivery of aid

9:58

But I think people need to kind of get their

10:00

minds around what may be about to

10:03

happen in Rafa. So the Israeli war

10:05

cabinet has voted already unanimously to support

10:07

this offensive. What you have

10:09

is a situation where there's, you know, anywhere from 1.3 to

10:11

even 1.5 million people

10:14

sheltering in Rafa. I think, you

10:16

know, over 600,000 of whom are children. Right.

10:19

Which really speaks to the

10:22

immensity of the humanitarian catastrophe that we

10:24

could be facing. Israel's

10:26

begun to kind of increase the pace

10:29

of airstrikes. We've got these reports of

10:31

tanks rolling in. But

10:33

also the Rafa crossing is where aid

10:35

is generally gotten in. And so we're

10:37

going to play a couple clips here

10:39

about people who've been involved in the

10:41

humanitarian response to give a sense of

10:43

the situation on the ground from Yanti Seripto,

10:46

who's the CEO of Save the Children. We've

10:48

heard from on this podcast and Jonathan Fowler,

10:50

who's a spokesman for UNRWA based in East

10:52

Jerusalem. So we'll go to those clips now

10:55

and then we'll get your response

10:57

to it. The latest escalation in Gaza

11:00

is making the most difficult

11:02

humanitarian situation even worse.

11:04

And I didn't think I was going to say

11:06

that again and again and again over these last

11:08

six months. For weeks, we've been warning

11:11

that there is no feasible evacuation plan

11:13

for the 1.5 million people

11:16

who had fled to Rafa from

11:18

all over Gaza. For

11:21

Save the Children, a very compromised

11:23

humanitarian assistance operation has been made

11:25

even harder still. The Rafa

11:28

crossing and Karam Shalom are

11:30

closed as of Sunday.

11:32

That means no new fuel, no

11:34

new clean water, no

11:36

food is making its way into the

11:38

Gaza Strip. What that does to

11:41

children, to the food security

11:44

situation, to looming famine and

11:46

to hospitals, they have no fuel to run

11:48

their incubators. I don't need to spell out

11:51

for you. The issue with Rafa, of

11:53

course, is that it's the only way that

11:55

we've been able to get fuel into the

11:57

Gaza Strip. Now this is

11:59

hugely problematic. because fuel is essential

12:01

for the trucks that move aid around

12:04

the Gaza Strip. It's also essential for

12:06

the pumping stations that keep the water

12:08

clean and drinkable, the

12:11

pumping stations that get the sewage

12:14

out, public sanitation.

12:17

All these kind of operations fall apart in

12:19

the absence of fuel. Now as of

12:21

yesterday we only had one day of

12:23

fuel left so we're in the situation

12:25

where it's highly

12:28

likely. There's a huge risk in fact that

12:30

operations will simply grind to a halt

12:32

tomorrow absent any kind of fuel. We

12:35

simply don't have the reserves that are necessary.

12:38

So there you have it. It's both the

12:40

the consequence for the people in Rafa

12:44

who are potentially caught in the middle of this operation,

12:46

many of whom have already been displaced once, twice or

12:48

three times, but also the the

12:51

lack of the capacity to get aid

12:53

back in and famine-like conditions. Ali,

12:57

we keep warning about the dire circumstances

12:59

in Gaza but you've covered this

13:01

part of the world. What

13:04

do you think we could be looking at in

13:06

terms of the situation on the ground in Gaza if

13:09

this goes forward? And we'll get into the US response in a

13:11

second but just how do we think about

13:13

the scale of this? I'll give you a personal

13:15

example of the scale of this. I was in

13:17

Gaza in 2019. I

13:20

met a young woman who ran

13:22

a company in which they

13:24

designed little solar chargers but

13:26

they have different wattages

13:29

depending on what it is you're charging because

13:31

Gaza has never had good power, right? They

13:33

don't have normal electricity transmission. They have an

13:35

electrical plant that is driven by diesel fuel.

13:37

The diesel fuel comes in by

13:39

truck but it used to come in by pipe from

13:41

from Israel. So Gaza

13:44

at the best of times did not have power for

13:46

many many hours a day and people try and if

13:48

you get up too late you can't have a shower

13:50

you can't use your computer you can't use your Wi-Fi

13:52

so they had this business in which they

13:54

sold solar chargers. If she were

13:56

in America, Ben, you and I, I've actually talked to

13:58

her about her but you didn't... If you know

14:00

the story up she she's she's kind of

14:03

person who in New York's people be introducing

14:05

her she beginning financings you have a start

14:07

up as you doing Ted talks. All that

14:09

kind of stuff should be famous, it should

14:11

be rich. Her. House has gone.

14:14

Or. Families living in Brooklyn. And

14:16

last week they had a dinner in which

14:18

people could buy tickets at a Go Fund

14:20

me. To. Have to

14:22

help her family survive. This.

14:24

Was these were prosperous people who would have

14:27

been the kind of people who could have

14:29

taken part in a in a functional governments

14:31

who could have an elite or mean she's

14:33

a tenebrous could have in the minister of

14:35

Energy average you know, some or seniors and

14:38

there's nothing left. There's no house, there's no

14:40

business, there is no know family's all out

14:42

of Gaza so there's the brain drain. But

14:44

there's this idea that not only people squeezed

14:46

into fifty thousand people do a square mile

14:48

in in Rafah, which is much greater than

14:51

the concentration in in Gaza in general. For.

14:53

It they are. They are squeezed

14:56

in there without sanitation, getting disease,

14:58

without medical care, without heat, and

15:01

without without adequate calories. Fight.

15:03

This is just it's multiplying. It's not

15:05

just what it is and this is

15:07

a problem with tragedies. The get this

15:09

bad like Dar Force and like Yemen.

15:11

At some point you lose measure up.

15:14

And yeah, because he two thousand calories

15:16

a day. It's their reports of people

15:18

there are getting somewhere under five hundred

15:20

calories a day. and so we are

15:22

killing a population. So for all of

15:24

the really legitimate discussions that we are

15:26

having here and that we're having about

15:29

college campuses and that we're having about

15:31

the American role in this. We

15:33

have to remember that this isn't. A

15:36

man made. A situation that we've

15:38

got here that aside from being bad because

15:40

lots of people are going to die, just think

15:42

about the solution to this problem over the

15:44

long term. What we are doing to hurt. The.

15:47

Idea that there will be people who will. Ultimately,

15:50

Have to come together to make peace. With that, there

15:52

can be peace between Israel and Palestine when I'm moving

15:54

closer to that in the things that we've seen in

15:56

the last few weeks. Yeah, no, I remember you telling

15:58

me that her when I. Actually you're out

16:01

here in Aus and studio with

16:03

you and and and it speaks

16:05

to kind of that promise that

16:07

is just the have been suffocated

16:09

among Palestinians both by my Hamas

16:11

and and by Israel and Gaza

16:13

now. You if you

16:15

mentioned it does this kind of

16:17

exponential escalation in the Manchurian Challenge

16:19

in Gaza. We've talked before on

16:22

this podcast about both the fact

16:24

that. This

16:27

is the the most rapid kind of

16:29

man Sam and we seen in built

16:31

in human history to get population going

16:33

from not having any family conditions a

16:35

few months ago to to being in

16:37

a in in a in the precipice

16:39

of major famine today, and also the

16:42

reality that that is in violation of

16:44

international law. Centrally, there's an obligation, even

16:46

if you're fighting a war, to facilitate

16:48

the flow of humanitarian aid. And now

16:50

that's one of the reasons why the

16:52

U S has been so opposed to

16:55

a military operation. Rasa. And I

16:57

want to get to this question of of what

16:59

is this us do because I mean anybody who

17:01

listens to me as know and that me. I'd

17:03

been concerned for months about. A wise

17:06

us continue to provide offensive military

17:08

assistance to the Israeli governments of

17:10

were our willingness to to continue

17:12

to be to resolutions. I think

17:14

all of us have thought that

17:16

did this ruff operation is going

17:18

to present though some kind of

17:20

decision point for the by Mister

17:22

Smith's you mention is already been

17:24

a hold on some offensive weapons

17:26

including two thousand pound bombs A

17:28

Biden spoken Netanyahu as recently as

17:30

Monday reportedly are some against attack

17:32

in Rafah at the same time

17:34

Biden spoke today. On Holocaust

17:36

Remembrance say something. Very strong message

17:38

against the rise in anti semitism

17:40

does actually necessary in this country.

17:42

Are also spoke about the situation

17:44

and Hamas are am on a

17:46

play that quip and then ask

17:48

you about this the challenges of

17:51

us going for Dallas Civil War

17:53

by the Copper Biden to that

17:55

people are forgetting. Are

17:58

already forget. My.

18:01

Only sister oh some

18:04

asked for brutalize Israelis.

18:07

Through. Some os he took

18:09

institute is all hostages. I

18:12

have not forgotten or have you. And

18:15

we will not forget now. Look,

18:17

that's all. Absolute turn. That.

18:19

Into the exactly so sick consider going

18:21

to get there. Is it? It kind

18:24

of. It's also the message net to

18:26

now. Would want to hear from Us

18:28

President on the day that their tanks

18:30

rolling into Rafa rights. That to me

18:32

is you know the unavoidable reality Here

18:34

is it. And it ended. Sounds is

18:36

like Biden is trying to have it

18:38

both ways. He's trying to can deliver

18:41

this message that expresses his kind of

18:43

full solidarity with Israel. Full solidarity with

18:45

kind of bear piece of this narrative

18:47

of our of what happened on October

18:49

seventh. And yet the substance

18:51

of what's happening on the ground and Gaza

18:53

is exactly what Biden said he didn't want

18:56

to happen which is the ceasefire talk seem

18:58

to be unraveling. Hopefully that's not the case

19:00

of we both times dispatch guess there's something

19:02

the board or rather will have been spilled

19:05

out of a hat but I I would

19:07

love nothing more than for the be outdated

19:09

because that actuality but I'll be great. But

19:12

the question I have for you know how

19:14

do you at what point does and he

19:16

buys been trying to straddle this line of.

19:19

Rhetorical. Criticism of no no.

19:21

But. Not really having a real consequences

19:24

in essentially still. Taking.

19:26

These really perspective on what's happening

19:28

in Gaza. How does ruff? It

19:30

seems that I'll. Get.

19:32

Rid Of We're not. We're not talking about the

19:34

book just yet, but chapter for my book. Which

19:36

is not about this. The chapter title is a

19:38

splinter up your ass and that's what happens when

19:41

you from the fence for too long in the

19:43

and you don't come up with a salute. You

19:45

think your view figure you're balancing yourself. but you're

19:47

not. And that's the problem here because Biden Feals

19:49

a need to say those words and they are

19:51

important and people should. Muslims.

19:54

jews christians everybody should be fighting anti semitism there

19:56

plus the people who are anti semites are not

19:58

the friends of the rest of us First

20:00

of all, they're the same people who shoot up mosques

20:03

and synagogues. The battle

20:05

against growing anti-Semitism should

20:08

be something in which we are all

20:10

joined. There have been a lot of

20:12

people who have gone and muddled this

20:14

situation, though, can combine things, combine criticism

20:16

of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism,

20:18

which is an incorrect thing to do.

20:21

And to suggest that this thing, whatever

20:23

we're in, started on

20:26

October 7th, is just to

20:28

be contextually absent. That's

20:30

the problem. The problem is, yeah,

20:32

Hamas did a horrible, horrible thing

20:34

on October 7th, and we

20:36

need to figure out what justice looks like for

20:38

Hamas and the perpetrators who committed those

20:40

acts. But nothing started on

20:43

October 7th. We've been talking about

20:45

this on my little show for two years,

20:47

about the very specific things that are going

20:49

on in Israel that are damaging to the

20:51

Israeli government and damaging to the long-term likelihood

20:53

of there being peace between these two states.

20:57

Joe Biden, I don't know what he's trying

20:59

to do. I understood in the

21:01

first couple days, and you and I talked in the

21:03

first couple days after October 8th, when I was in

21:05

Israel, I understood what he was trying to do. He

21:08

was trying to put a hand on Israel's shoulder and

21:10

say, we'll stand with you. We've

21:12

gone through things like this in the past, and we've

21:14

made some bad judgments as a result of having gone

21:16

through things like this in the past. So

21:19

take some of our guidance on this and don't do

21:21

that. Not only was

21:23

Netanyahu not prepared to take that advice, but

21:26

it is not in Netanyahu's interest to take that advice, because

21:29

what Biden was saying is that America got itself into

21:31

some wars, and a lot of people died and spent

21:33

a lot of money, and then we handed over Afghanistan

21:35

back to the Taliban. And had we known that, would

21:37

we have thought about this differently on the front end?

21:39

Possibly. But that's not – Netanyahu's

21:42

political goals are entirely different than

21:44

America's goals were after 9-11, and

21:47

that's part of the problem. That Netanyahu

21:49

was in a very long battle for

21:51

his own political survival, and now this

21:53

is it. He is staring

21:55

down the barrel of his own political survival.

21:57

So his impetus to make a deal –

22:00

It's great when Hamas says things that are not

22:02

in line with what they need. When Hamas says

22:05

we're agreeing to a deal that was not the

22:07

one you actually put together, that plays right into

22:09

Netanyahu's hands. Because everything that Hamas

22:11

doesn't do to get a deal makes

22:13

Netanyahu say there's not going to be

22:15

a deal. He preempts the deals. Hamas

22:18

preempts the deals. Everybody's playing into

22:20

everybody's hands right now. And I do believe, actually,

22:22

that Blinken and Austin and

22:25

Biden are trying, trying

22:27

to get this thing back on, trying to get a deal. Not

22:30

only because the world needs it, because there need to

22:32

be, those hostages need to be freed, and people need

22:34

to stop dying. But Joe Biden's got

22:36

a political problem if he doesn't solve this

22:38

fairly soon, and then starts telling people that

22:40

I've got them on the road to a

22:42

two-state solution, or at least some kind of

22:44

sustainable peace in the area. So it's a

22:46

messy situation. Yeah. And, you know, I've really

22:49

tried to hear

22:51

different perspectives on this conflict. You

22:53

know, even in recent days

22:55

in Weeks Alley, like you, I've had a lot of people reach out to

22:57

me. And

22:59

say, you know, you've been really, you know, you

23:02

seem focused on Netanyahu. You've been

23:04

really hard on the Israeli government. And I understand

23:06

the perspective. You know, people say you have

23:08

to look at it from the perspective of

23:10

the Israeli people and how they're feeling post-October

23:12

7. I understand all of

23:14

that as

23:17

best I can. You know, the vulnerability people

23:19

feel, certainly the vulnerability that

23:21

people feel in this country around rising anti-Semitism.

23:25

I also just I can't ignore what I

23:28

see with my eyes, which is a government

23:31

that at every turn, whether

23:33

it's Netanyahu or the kind of even

23:35

further right settler factions that are represented

23:37

in the finance ministry and the national

23:39

security ministry, at every

23:41

turn, they have taken

23:44

the more extreme course of action, you know, whether

23:47

it was cutting off food and fuel and

23:49

water into Gaza, whether it's

23:51

been just continuing to carry out these

23:53

military operations over the objections

23:55

of the United States. They're they're leading ally

23:57

that is providing so much military assistance. You

24:00

know, you can't say that you

24:02

would like this government to be something

24:04

that it's not You know,

24:07

I feel like a lot of Americans who are sympathetic is

24:09

we're looking at this and kind of

24:11

keep hoping that More

24:13

recognizable Israeli government kind of

24:15

somehow emerges when in fact Yes

24:18

in part because it's Nanyau's political survival that

24:20

is at stake in the continuation of the

24:22

war and in part because there are some

24:24

very Extremist factions in this government that want

24:26

to push the envelope as far as they

24:28

can In terms of

24:30

destruction in Gaza and potential displacement Palestinians.

24:33

That's what we're seeing if

24:35

I see something different That would be great

24:38

But we're not seeing that yet now one

24:40

one other example of this recently was the

24:42

the shutting down of Al Jazeera So

24:45

this past Sunday the Israeli government shut down

24:47

as Al Jazeera's operations in Israel raided their

24:50

office in Jerusalem Seizing some

24:52

equipment net to now is called Al

24:55

Jazeera a court mouthpiece for Hamas

24:57

accused of anti-israel bias for years

25:00

And this was made possible. This wasn't just saying

25:02

then y'all did though There was a law passed

25:04

by the Knesset the Israeli Parliament

25:07

which gave Nanyau the authority to order

25:09

the temporary closure of foreign networks now

25:12

I'm not asking everybody to be you know Al

25:15

Jazeera fans here But the reality is there's not

25:17

a lot of reporting nobody's allowed in the Gaza

25:19

to begin with So the only reporting we get

25:21

is from Palestinians on the ground kind of be

25:23

a social media Israeli media which

25:25

is very good. But on this one,

25:28

you know, I Think

25:30

there's not been as willing to kind of

25:33

bring Some of the

25:35

imagery from Gaza into Israeli homes never

25:37

mind around the world Ali you worked

25:39

for Al Jazeera like what was your reaction to

25:42

seeing that? Take place and

25:44

how would you as someone who's kind

25:46

of? Looked at this from the

25:48

outside and also once been inside Al Jazeera. How

25:51

should people think about the consequence of doing this?

25:54

So there are a number of things here

25:56

that are complicated one is is the one

25:59

that you identify And that is foreign media

26:01

cannot get access to Gaza. Foreign media is never.

26:03

When I went in in 2019 and other times that

26:06

my colleagues have gone in, you can't go in

26:08

without the permission of the Israeli government, the cooperation

26:10

of the Israeli government. Now they know what I'm

26:12

going to report. They know how I report, but

26:15

they have to grant you permission to go in. Now

26:17

I was able to go in prior to the war

26:19

without an Israeli government

26:21

escort. But now foreign governments who go

26:24

into Gaza, foreign journalists going to Gaza,

26:26

go in under the auspices of the

26:28

IDF. They are basically embedded with the

26:30

IDF and their product has to be reviewed

26:33

by the Israeli

26:35

censors before they go out. So that's just an

26:37

important piece of information people should know. Foreign

26:40

journalists cannot generate content in Gaza

26:42

that can be shown without the

26:44

interference of the Israeli government, number

26:46

one. Number two, some of

26:48

the best reporting, meaning the most veteran

26:52

reporters, the finest equipment,

26:54

the most skilled camera operators,

26:56

the people who can go into the most

26:58

dangerous situations are in the news

27:02

organizations that exist inside of

27:04

Gaza staffed by Palestinians, the

27:07

most robust of which is Al Jazeera. So

27:10

whether you like Al Jazeera or what you think

27:12

it stands for, and there is a good debate

27:14

to be had about that. Al

27:16

Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. Qatar

27:18

is not a democracy. Most

27:22

Arab non-democracies don't like Al

27:24

Jazeera, but the people do. If

27:27

you remember when the blockade happened on

27:29

Qatar, the number one demand by Saudi Arabia

27:31

was the dismantling. There were 13 demands

27:33

and number one was the dismantling of

27:35

Al Jazeera because they don't want this

27:37

kind of stuff. They don't want the

27:39

two things that journalism does. Journalism

27:41

bears witness for people who cannot be

27:44

present to see what's going on and

27:46

then takes the bearing of that witness and holds power

27:48

to a town. And then

27:50

whatever one's political views of Al

27:52

Jazeera are, they do that. And

27:54

they do it to the extent that they

27:56

have Israelis on TV a lot, Israeli officials

27:58

on TV a lot. The or. Aljazeera

28:01

has been useful to the Israeli government for

28:03

a long time because they put their officials

28:05

on there and they feel that their way

28:08

of getting the message not just to Al

28:10

Jazeera English speaking audience, but Aljazeera as Arabic

28:12

speaking audience. And Aljazeera has never refused to

28:14

do that. So they have engaged in good

28:17

faith as a journalistic organizations in Israel, in

28:19

the Occupied Territories and in Gaza, Us. But

28:21

more importantly than what Al Jazeera has done

28:23

is that Israel likes to continue to remind

28:26

us that it is a democracy, even them.

28:28

What many people in Israel do not enjoy

28:30

democratic rights? But that the value of freedom

28:32

of the judiciary which many people are gonna have

28:34

to fight in the last a year and a

28:36

half, and freedom of the press. And

28:39

that ended. This. Weekend I have to

28:41

the other zeroes shut Shuddering means that

28:43

Israel is no longer committed to that.

28:45

Basically know I'll tell you story L

28:47

L E I was. I've never tell

28:49

this one for but I was That.

28:52

During. That time for your square protests need

28:54

to from two thousand and eleven and member, we

28:56

been his meetings in the situation room. And.

28:59

Are let's see our officials kept. Talking

29:02

about the fact that the Egyptian government.

29:04

Was. Confident that these protests would go away, Now

29:07

and. Me while I was

29:09

had Aljazeera on an office which had

29:11

no a scene from the. Protest.

29:14

And I kept saying hey if we

29:16

relied on a out what I'm watching

29:18

television guys are absurd. you're talking officials

29:20

I'm sick have many ways of getting

29:22

information but like the television screens I'm

29:24

looking at show people that are not

29:27

going home you know and and and

29:29

and opposite was useful and is broadcasting

29:31

what was happening rights and I told

29:33

the story on a panel of years

29:35

later in there is a former very

29:37

senior Israeli Intelligence official and afterwards he

29:39

came up to mean he said. You.

29:42

Know you you fell for of

29:44

Qatar, a Muslim brotherhood. Information.

29:47

Operation if you were getting information is not zero.

29:50

And I said i'm as like. It

29:52

was. It. Was footage.

29:55

Of people in a square. Precedent for

29:57

a number is ah, yes, and sometimes.

30:00

I get it. You don't like the agenda of the Qatar

30:02

government. You don't like but like it is

30:04

what it is, you know, you And

30:07

they're reporting the news. That's that's the part that

30:09

we have to remember There

30:11

are things about el jazeera. I didn't enjoy as an

30:13

employee, but we had a good arrangement. Don't phone me

30:15

and I won't phone you Um, I

30:18

I work for corporate media. I don't

30:20

I don't endorse. No, but nor does anybody ask me to

30:22

endorse the policies of All of my

30:25

bosses, but we do have to

30:27

understand that media has a role when you start

30:29

banning media as a whole For

30:31

things that are a bit not clear as

30:34

it is in israel It's a

30:36

bad road to go down. So one last thing before

30:38

we move on to other topics I want to play

30:40

one clip too, which is related to this which was

30:42

mitt romney and tony blinken Talking

30:44

about tick tock The

30:46

other day, we'll play that clip the way this

30:49

is played on on social media has

30:52

dominated the narrative and

30:55

You have a social media

30:57

ecosystem environment in which

31:00

context history Facts

31:04

get lost and

31:06

the emotion the impact of

31:09

images Dominates

31:13

and we can't we can't discount that but

31:16

I think it also Has

31:19

a very very very challenging effect on On

31:23

the narrative, you know a small parenthetical

31:26

point which is some wonder why there was such

31:28

overwhelming support For us to

31:30

shut down potentially tick tock or other entities

31:32

of that nature if you look at the

31:35

Postings on tick tock and the

31:37

number of mentions of palestinians relative

31:39

to other social media sites. It's

31:41

overwhelmingly so among tick tock Broadcasts

31:46

so you know kind of

31:48

saying the quiet part out loud there'll be That

31:52

Romney basically saying that they banned tick tock

31:54

because there's too much propulsive in content What

31:56

is your what's your response to just the way

31:58

much tick tock is? I mean,

32:01

there's other concerns, obviously, about Chinese

32:03

government ownership, but what's your reaction to

32:05

that? Where

32:09

I agree with Mitt Romney writ

32:11

large, and he's a guy I've

32:13

always wanted to agree with more, so I try and find things.

32:15

And now I think he just put his dog on the top

32:17

of the roof. He didn't actually. Where

32:21

I agree with him is in general,

32:23

social media has caused us to speak

32:25

and think quickly, right? To

32:27

have a reaction that's very fast and

32:29

change your icons into something.

32:31

And I would love if everybody had some

32:33

ability to put on social

32:36

media the idea that, wow, this thing has happened in the Middle

32:38

East. I don't really understand it well enough, so I'm going to

32:40

take some time out to learn about it. So

32:42

please don't ask me to profess anything until I

32:44

learn and offer me information if you

32:47

can help. TikTok has an

32:49

algorithm that makes it more

32:52

effective than Instagram and Facebook

32:54

and X. And

32:57

I get that if you're concerned about the

32:59

way in which stories get warped, then

33:02

TikTok is a greater concern. But that

33:04

concern has to be addressed by our

33:07

greater sophistication in figuring out how we

33:09

small our regulate social media. Because to

33:11

the extent that a democracy and we

33:13

are struggling in America depends on an

33:16

informed electorate, social media, in my

33:18

opinion, recently has not been helping to

33:20

inform that electorate. But when he went down that

33:22

road of it's pro-Palestinian or whatever the case is

33:24

and emotions get in the way of whatever, emotions

33:26

have always gotten in the way of

33:28

sober thinking. That is the way of the world.

33:32

I'm not sure we should discount the idea

33:34

that because there are a lot of people

33:36

on social media who are expressing solidarity with

33:38

or concern for the Palestinians, that either something's

33:40

wrong with the algorithm or something's wrong with

33:42

the people or something's wrong with

33:44

the way it goes. Yes, there are issues with

33:47

social media. Yes, some of them are exacerbated by

33:49

TikTok. And no, it's

33:51

very much like college campuses. At some point, maybe

33:53

they're actually protesting for something. Maybe you need to

33:55

stop discounting the fact that the system's all broken.

33:58

Maybe listen to what it is. folks on TikTok are

34:00

actually saying. Yeah,

34:03

that's very well said. And

34:05

frankly, the concern about

34:07

TikTok would be more credible if there was a

34:10

complementary effort to try to regulate the

34:12

way in which American social media platforms

34:14

have broken people's brains around the world.

34:17

It's not dangerous. It's a real thing. But you can't

34:19

make it dangerous just for the reasons you want it

34:21

to be dangerous, right? It's like the AI conversation. You're

34:23

really going to like some AI when it solves that

34:26

cancer that you haven't been able to solve for a

34:28

long time, but you're not going to like it when

34:30

it takes your job. So we have to have a

34:32

more holistic view of how we look at technology in

34:34

particular, but social media specifically.

34:37

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38:43

will shift gears here. Right

38:48

now, Chinese President Xi Jinping is

38:50

making his first visit to Europe in

38:52

five years. So since before COVID, this

38:54

is a big deal. And

38:57

he's going to an interesting

38:59

collection of countries, France,

39:02

Hungary, and Serbia. I think

39:04

we can say, Hungary, obviously, Orban has

39:06

been much more willing to look towards

39:08

China and Russia than

39:11

the United States. Serbia,

39:14

a huge trading partner for China.

39:16

Also, it's the 25th anniversary of

39:18

NATO bombing the Chinese embassy

39:21

in Belgrade. So Xi Jinping making a

39:23

point there, I think probably about China's

39:26

suspicions about NATO. But most

39:28

interesting to me is France, because it's not

39:30

surprising why Xi would go to Hungary and

39:32

Serbia. What's interesting about this is

39:34

that, at the same time that

39:36

you've had Europe kind of wrestling with

39:39

how much to go along with America's China policy, and

39:42

you've had China wanting to, I think, peel

39:44

off the Europeans from the United States, Emmanuel

39:46

Macron has become more outspoken and gave a

39:49

big interview in The Economist this week about

39:51

the need for Europe to kind of chart

39:53

its own course on military spending on Russia,

39:55

on technology. Al,

39:58

you're as smart as anyone I know. Everybody

40:00

knows you for covering American politics now and the issues

40:02

we've been talking about, but you were really good

40:05

on global economy, on markets. And

40:07

obviously this is a huge issue, this

40:10

question of how

40:13

does it of France or how does the Europe engage China?

40:15

What do you think Xi Jinping is trying to accomplish? What

40:17

do you think Emmanuel Macron is trying to accomplish? What

40:21

should be the view from the United States

40:23

as we watch this kind of mutual charm

40:25

offensive between Xi and Macron? Well,

40:28

of the old guard of OECD

40:30

slash NATO leaders, Macron is that

40:32

guy now, right? I mean, Justin

40:36

Trudeau still exists, but

40:38

fundamentally, most of those

40:40

leaders are gone. And

40:42

so there are meaningful discussions going on

40:44

in Europe right now, particularly out of

40:47

fear of Donald Trump winning the election

40:49

again, and a further weakening of NATO

40:51

and what happens to Ukraine if Donald

40:54

Trump comes into office. So I think there's a real

40:57

sense amongst the Europeans about what

40:59

are our ways forward economically and

41:01

militarily? What does NATO look like?

41:03

What do our alliances need to

41:06

look like? And Xi ends up

41:08

looking in the world like somebody

41:10

who is not, he's always been

41:13

able to distinguish himself from Kim

41:15

Jong-un. Xi is a

41:17

thoughtful man who sort of planned out his

41:19

future. And he's been able to distinguish himself

41:22

from Vladimir Putin. He's not going to

41:24

be reckless. So there were a lot of

41:26

people who thought in the early days of

41:28

the Ukraine war that perhaps Xi will take

41:30

that opportunity to go into Taiwan. And I

41:32

think he's looked at the world and he

41:34

said, whatever your view of Joe Biden and

41:36

now he's handled many things are, he got

41:38

the world aligned against Russia. China can't afford

41:40

that. The world can't afford it and

41:42

China can't afford it, right? The world can afford to be

41:44

at war with Russia. Russia doesn't sell us much that we

41:46

need and we don't, you know,

41:49

that trade relationship is not all that

41:51

important other than oil. That's

41:53

not the case with China. So Xi has

41:55

to have a very sophisticated view. And if

41:57

the Europeans are being forced to think about

42:00

about peeling away from the United States

42:02

because they might get forced to by

42:05

a second Trump administration, it

42:08

sort of behooves him to be in France and

42:10

it behooves France to talk to him. I

42:13

kind of get it. I don't

42:15

know what the world order is going to look like

42:17

if Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United

42:19

States. So I need to start shoring up my other

42:23

options. And I think that's what

42:25

that is. That's another option conversation

42:27

about trade, about energy and

42:30

about military stuff. If you

42:32

don't have the United States by your side all the

42:34

time, if you cannot trust that they will stand by

42:36

your side and you're Europe, you need options. Kind

42:39

of weird in 2024 that China

42:41

might be that option but it's popped its head

42:43

up a lot in the last 15 years. When

42:46

Greece had its debt problems, China was

42:48

there in a second. China shows up

42:50

very fast when someone is having doubts

42:52

about what their economic future is going

42:54

to look like. And they will alleviate

42:56

it by building new ports and doing

42:58

all sorts of things. So China

43:00

is super sophisticated. And I think that is one

43:02

of those things that we've got to understand. We

43:05

like to see the world as black and white.

43:07

You can't with China. China is both ally

43:10

and adversary at the same time. Yeah, I think

43:12

that's well said. And we should note, Hungary and

43:14

Serbia also a part of the Belt Road Initiative,

43:17

the Chinese led initiative. I'm

43:20

sure one of the things that Macron is going to

43:22

be talking about is Ukraine and trying probably

43:25

futilely to get China to reduce its support

43:27

for Russia. As we're

43:30

talking today, there's a number of developments which I

43:32

think kind of speak to Russian

43:34

confidence in the war in Ukraine. So

43:37

Putin is being inaugurated for his fifth term

43:39

as president in a shocking election

43:41

result that he won that election. In

43:44

his speech, which comes shortly before victory day

43:46

in Russia, the commemoration of the victory in

43:48

World War II, once

43:51

again, talked about Western aggression and attempts

43:53

to contain Russia. And again, as

43:55

I said, in a couple of days, he'll be marking the

43:57

Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany as a part of

43:59

the war. part of this whole

44:01

pageantry. The Washington Post

44:04

recently had a good report about a

44:06

month-long exhibit that is taking place in

44:08

Moscow displaying military equipment that they've

44:10

captured from the West in the war in

44:13

Ukraine. So a bit

44:15

of a sign of some maybe premature

44:17

triumphalism. And there

44:19

has also been reports in

44:22

the last day or so about a

44:24

potential assassination plot where two colonels in

44:27

the Ukrainian military were arrested for their

44:29

alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate

44:32

President Zelensky of Ukraine, the New York

44:34

Times report on this, which included trying

44:36

to recruit people close to his security detail

44:38

so they could kidnap and eventually kill Zelensky.

44:40

So we have to obviously pull the thread

44:42

on these allegations. To

44:44

me, the kind of common thread of all

44:46

this, Ali, is that Putin feels that he's

44:49

in pretty good position, right? He's kind of

44:51

on the offensive in Ukraine, he's displaying war

44:53

trophies. Maybe he's trying

44:55

fanciful plots to once

44:58

again decapitate the Ukrainian government. You've

45:00

reported on the ground in Ukraine very

45:03

powerfully, so you've watched this work closely.

45:05

You've seen the momentum ebb and flow.

45:08

I mean, part of me kind of thinks maybe the Russians are

45:11

now the overconfident. The Ukrainians were a little overconfident a

45:13

year ago. Maybe it's the Russians today. What's your kind

45:15

of sense of the mood music you're seeing out of

45:17

Moscow? Well, let's put

45:20

a few more data points on that. Last year was

45:22

a really bad year for Vladimir Putin. Yeah. Right? It

45:24

was a really bad year. The

45:26

Pragotian stuff, the

45:29

facts on the ground in Ukraine is while

45:32

we describe it as being a relative stalemate

45:35

on land, it's not on water. The

45:38

Black Sea Fleet is mostly on the east end

45:40

of the Black Sea. The

45:43

Russians don't control that. And they still don't

45:45

have air superiority over Ukraine, which is kind

45:47

of amazing. Now, the Ukrainians still don't have, they're

45:50

not flying the planes that they've

45:52

been promised. They're not up in

45:55

the air. But I Remember when the first

45:57

hypersonic missiles went into Ukraine, and we weren't

45:59

sure. That the that are are are patriot

46:01

missiles could could intercept them. And. A

46:04

good. With remarkable accuracy. Now they've

46:06

got a lot of tricks. they they can

46:08

sense lots and lots of drones to confuse

46:10

the missiles. You end up spending a not

46:12

millions of dollars to intercept a twenty or

46:14

forty thousand dollar drone so you know Russia's

46:17

not done and Russia's gotta run behind it's

46:19

I help him get up out we get

46:21

out and it's not there were China is

46:23

on this went China decides to really put

46:25

it's it's thumb on the scales in favor

46:27

Russia in that war. Things can change. That

46:30

said, They're. Also trying to recruit

46:32

women into the military. Not because they feel

46:34

they want to more eco military, it's because

46:36

they're running out of people so I don't

46:39

know. I don't I think Potent does this.

46:41

He's able to. He knows what works and

46:43

what doesn't work. so what doesn't work as

46:45

a nuclear saber rattling. even the nuclear people

46:47

don't care anymore. They say that he just

46:50

talking about nonsense and he he does need

46:52

to the shore up things at home. He

46:54

won the selection. ah no va me is

46:56

dead Vladimir car more that is in jail.

46:58

Just won a Pulitzer prize or two days.

47:01

Ago for some of his writings of

47:03

he needs to shore things up at

47:05

home or and I think the you

47:07

we've heard from them firms Alinsky that

47:09

people were getting tired in Ukraine. this

47:11

is hard. It's hard to fight this

47:13

war we hear about. of the things

47:15

we hear about what you don't hear

47:17

about is that civilians continued die people

47:19

or maimed people have lost body parts

47:21

of the the They think toward a

47:23

future that involves Ukraine in Nato. But

47:26

it's. Moving very slowly and all Vladimir

47:28

Putin has to do. Is. Wait

47:30

until. Gone. From gets elected. If

47:32

he thinks Donald Trump's gonna get elected because

47:35

the pressure on him dies that there will

47:37

not be M Zoc, just Nato. It's a

47:39

fifty nations consortium that is working to defend

47:41

Ukraine. Donald Trump's I can be interested in

47:43

that. Lloyd Austin has been holding that together.

47:45

they will be a Lloyd Austin. Yeah so

47:48

I think at the moment lot of your

47:50

boot and try to look really strong. try

47:52

to keep spirits up in his country. Nice

47:54

try to keep this war going at the

47:56

lowest possible level for the next several months

47:58

to see how things were. the out with

48:00

Donald Trump. Because if Donald Trump does does,

48:03

when. You. Could

48:05

see the end of that war and

48:07

not a good yeah. Well, time is

48:09

kind of not working for anybody this

48:11

point, but better I wouldn't Probably feels

48:13

like it's he's gotta least some chips

48:16

and on our election Will one more

48:18

thing before we get to your buck.

48:20

and another assassination of sorts in another

48:22

sort of autocracy of sorts. We saw

48:24

this in the Podcast, but Canadian Police

48:27

have now arrested three suspects You believe

48:29

that ties to the Indian government's efforts

48:31

to murder. Successful efforts to murder six

48:33

separate, separate, a sweeter. Hardest

48:35

thing is our last June and Vancouver

48:37

India has accused New Job terrorism but

48:40

denied involvement in his death. So this

48:42

is kind of moving to the legal

48:44

process. Yeah and this we will get

48:47

this country. This paint your per gallon

48:49

you have your you have a a

48:51

history. Obviously in your family

48:53

back into India into good Rod actually

48:55

the state where Modi comes from. What?

48:58

What's the like to watch this get your

49:01

you dare you grew up in Canada issue

49:03

of Indian Heritage, so you kind of encompass

49:05

both identities. Yeah it's

49:07

a very strange as a very strong yeah. So what's

49:09

it like this for you to watch this? It. As

49:12

a Canadian and an Indian and some

49:14

respects. A. Main take away here

49:16

is that Canada has decided to stand

49:18

up to Modi and Modi is not

49:21

liking that at all. and there's a

49:23

massive Indian diaspora us in Canada which

49:25

my family's a parts of which the

49:27

sick population by the weights. Were. One

49:29

of the earliest, most most Indians. Came.

49:32

to canada the way my family did you

49:34

what's from he went summer from india to

49:36

africa org or the west indies and then

49:38

you moved your way up into canada us

49:40

that six came as part of the group

49:42

that included the chinese and japanese to build

49:44

build the railways on the western united states

49:46

and western kansas live in her earlier and

49:49

longer to the point that if you go

49:51

to british columbia which is where the majority

49:53

the population or at least or population centers

49:55

are abdul see six in a not just

49:57

in service jobs but in government of as

49:59

premier's as senior government ministers and things

50:01

like that. And one of the things I write

50:03

about in my book is when you're Indian diaspora,

50:06

once you're out there, some of the fights that

50:08

go on at home don't seem as clear because

50:10

you're kind of brown people in this larger white

50:12

people mass. But there have

50:14

been tensions between some

50:16

groups of Sikhs who are still seeking independence

50:20

and separate land in

50:22

India and the Indian government. That

50:24

is not reflective of the majority of Hindus

50:26

and Sikhs, but you've got an Indian government

50:28

that is becoming more ultra-nationalist

50:30

Hindu to the exclusion of both

50:32

Sikhs and Muslims. And

50:35

you've got this intrigue that, by the way,

50:37

is also going on in the United States. And there

50:39

is, as you know, we have great difficulty in, Modi

50:43

is one of those guys we have great

50:45

difficulty with. There are things we should be

50:47

telling him about democracy, about Russia, about things

50:49

that he should be doing. And

50:51

we know, we hold state dinners for him in

50:53

the United States. So that's the contrast you're seeing,

50:56

that we are still holding the equivalent of state

50:58

dinners for Narendra Modi. And

51:00

Canada has decided that they are going

51:02

to charge people and make this

51:04

seem like it was a crime that was fostered

51:06

by the government of India. So all

51:09

sorts of problems all over the place. This is

51:11

a major, major diplomatic issue. Some

51:13

in Canada say that Trudeau should not have stepped

51:16

into this. But there

51:18

are pressures to say justice is

51:20

justice and we're not letting other people come

51:23

onto our land and undertake

51:25

assassination. So I don't

51:27

know how this one's gonna unfold, but it's

51:29

a tricky one. Yeah, well, I applaud Trudeau

51:31

for just playing it straight. Sometimes

51:34

the facts are facts and you gotta let them speak

51:36

for themselves. That's how he's saying it. Now, look, let's

51:38

get into your book here directly. So

51:41

it's an incredible story. The

51:43

book is your family's journey from

51:45

India to South Africa, during

51:49

apartheid, up to Kenya, then

51:52

to Canada. And then finally, your journey

51:54

to America. So it's really this kind

51:56

of century long journey that

51:58

shaped your personal life. and professional

52:01

identity. And I

52:03

actually love, you know, it brings in all

52:05

these different elements of history, right? Because it brings in

52:07

the, you know, Gandhi's time in

52:09

South Africa, it brings in, you

52:12

know, ed means evacuation of South,

52:14

expulsion of South Asians from Uganda,

52:17

you know, Kenya, diversification

52:20

of Canada, we'll get, we'll get to a

52:22

few of these things. I want to start with Gandhi.

52:26

Gandhi's time in South Africa is so interesting

52:28

and often little understood and

52:30

interacted with your family. And

52:33

I just wanted to ask you to tell the

52:35

story about Gandhi literally carrying

52:37

your young grandfather on his shoulders. And

52:42

the impact that Gandhi had on not

52:44

just your grandfather, but your whole kind

52:46

of family ethos and mentality. So

52:49

my great grandfather and Gandhi were both

52:51

Gujarati's, but they didn't know each other

52:53

in South Africa. But because they were Gujarati's

52:55

and Gandhi was a lawyer, my great

52:58

grandfather was a small businessman, they both

53:00

needed a bookkeeper. And they shared a

53:02

Gujarati bookkeeper who then introduced them and

53:04

they became friends. Gandhi lived in Johannesburg.

53:07

My great grandfather lived in Pretoria. And in

53:09

Gandhi's agitation of the government, he had to have

53:11

frequent meetings with government officials. So he would

53:13

come to Pretoria to stay with my great

53:15

grandfather, who had a what was called a dray.

53:18

It was a horse drawn cart, not

53:20

the kind for fancy driving around, but for moving

53:23

goods. But he would give Gandhi the use of

53:25

this dray to go to his government meetings. Anyway,

53:28

my great grandfather wasn't particularly political.

53:30

Like many Indian business people in the diaspora,

53:32

their view was, let's not get involved in

53:34

politics and rock the boat. We're doing okay

53:37

here, sending some money home. Let's leave it

53:39

at that. Gandhi wanted everybody involved in the

53:41

struggle. And so he says to

53:43

my great grandfather one day, may I

53:45

take your son, who was seven years old

53:47

at the time, to my school? And

53:49

school, by the way, I say very loosely, it's an ashram.

53:52

It was a commune. And the point

53:54

was, he wanted to toughen people up, generally

53:56

speaking Indians. He wanted them toughened up for

53:58

the ability to fight a apartheid and

54:00

faced the consequences of fighting apartheid which typically meant

54:03

going to jail So my

54:05

great-grandfather looks at Gandhi and figures out

54:08

he's got a way out of this. He says we are

54:10

Muslims You're a Hindu how

54:12

can my son how can I send my son? It

54:14

is formative years to to go to live with you

54:16

and and learn your ways and he said I will

54:18

learn your religion To teach it to him. So he

54:20

did so my grandfather at the

54:23

age of seven became Gandhi's youngest student on

54:25

this ashram where they They had

54:27

two blankets you slept on one because it was hard

54:29

floors and you had one on top of you no

54:31

hot water No meat you grew

54:33

everything that you you ate and

54:35

the point was to be hardened so that

54:37

you would become you could break laws Break

54:39

break apartheid laws and go to jail because

54:41

if you grow up with that kind of a Spartan existence

54:44

Jail doesn't trouble you and

54:46

that's how but they would they couldn't

54:48

take public transit They had to walk everywhere and

54:51

my grandfather being the youngest would sometimes get tired

54:53

on these 20 mile walks so Gandhi would put

54:55

him on his shoulders and And

54:57

and take him to you know Get the provisions

54:59

that the farm needed and things like that and

55:01

that you know that lasted three years Gandhi left

55:04

South Africa interestingly enough thinking he had failed

55:06

Yeah, and my grandfather took

55:08

the lessons that he learned and made it

55:11

part of the family ethos as the family

55:13

businesses Prospered over the years and

55:15

they sort of funneled money from the businesses

55:17

and did things within the business that allowed

55:19

them to fight Apartheid in their small ways.

55:21

Yeah, because nobody was trying to overthrow the

55:23

whole government They were all even Gandhi was

55:25

trying to get like Martin Luther King

55:28

trying to get particular laws Overthrown

55:30

and particular things done but that has

55:32

infused my family's view not just of

55:34

social justice and of liberty and equality

55:37

But also a pluralism right my grandfather was

55:39

taught his own religion by a Hindu who

55:42

had studied Jewish scriptures

55:44

and Christian scriptures and Hindu scriptures and Muslim

55:46

scriptures So we grew up in this world

55:48

that said those are not differences that are

55:50

important to us Those are just elements

55:53

of pluralism that make us more interesting to one

55:55

another. Yeah. Well, then you talk

55:57

about, you know being in

55:59

Canada growing up. And

56:02

it sounds like, you know,

56:04

this very diverse

56:06

pluralistic environment in your household too,

56:08

you know, taking in refugees

56:11

and I mean, how did

56:13

you, you're obviously in a

56:16

minority population, in some respects in a

56:18

diaspora population in a place

56:20

like Toronto. And at the same time, it feels

56:22

like there was a really concerted effort

56:24

to kind of infuse your household

56:26

with a sense of both an obligation

56:29

and commitment to pluralism. And

56:31

then ultimately, then that evolves into a

56:33

commitment to public service. But just

56:35

how did those early years shape you? I

56:37

mean, what was it like to revisit that in your writing and

56:40

what did it imprint on you? Well,

56:43

it was real. It's not one of those things.

56:45

You know, when you write a book about your

56:47

own history, your family's history, you color some

56:49

things in a little bit, right? To make them

56:52

stand out. But that part didn't need coloring in.

56:54

That was clear to me as a kid. It

56:57

was clear to me, we were a little different from the sort

56:59

of waspy neighbors that we had,

57:01

who were all fantastic, just weren't like us,

57:03

they went to different places and did different

57:06

things. But it was clear that

57:08

my family was different otherwise. And the difference was driven

57:10

by the fact that my father, my mother and my

57:12

sister were all born in places in

57:14

which they could not participate in politics by virtue of

57:16

the color of their skin, they could not vote. And

57:19

so they were so determined to A, not

57:21

only get involved in politics, so they show

57:23

up in Canada and they attend meetings of

57:25

all three major political parties to

57:27

try and figure out what their comfort. They didn't go

57:29

in on the basis of ideology. They wanted to

57:32

go and say, what does this feel like? How

57:34

do they think of us? How

57:36

might we participate? But mostly

57:38

my parents never wanted to live

57:40

in a world again where people

57:42

are separated or judged by the

57:44

color of their skin or their

57:46

ethnicity or their race. They wanted

57:48

to mix. They wanted our house

57:50

to be a place where everybody

57:52

met with everybody. In the smallest

57:54

scale, I mean, we were low

57:56

income immigrants. It wasn't like we were having diplomatic

57:59

parties. But it's as if we

58:01

were. We had all sorts coming through

58:03

the house. Finally, 10 years into this adventure in Canada, my

58:05

dad says he wants to run for office. Yeah, I was

58:07

going to ask you, I mean, what's that like to have

58:09

your dad run for office? I

58:11

was sitting on the floor. I remember the living room, probably, it

58:14

was a small room. And I was sitting on the floor, and

58:16

he told everybody this. And they were all good people. I

58:18

mean, he gathered the sort of smartest people

58:20

he knew, and they said, you're never going

58:23

to win, you can't win. He

58:25

said, well, we won't know, will we, until we try? He

58:29

said, we know we don't win, but we don't try. So how

58:31

would we know that we can't win if we did try? And

58:34

he wanted to. And his whole point was that back home,

58:36

they would have jailed me for this. You

58:38

can't, this would have been a subversive meeting. Somebody

58:40

in that room would have been a snitch, and the

58:42

special branch of the police would be on top of

58:44

you, and you'd be arrested for being a communist sympathizer.

58:47

That's how it worked in South Africa. In

58:49

Canada, he's saying, why don't we try it and

58:51

see if it works? So I'm 11 years old,

58:53

I'm game, right? Fantastic. You're like, this is cool.

58:55

Let's do it. We get

58:57

all the way to the end of the election. It's

59:00

election night. My dad wants to change. He's been in

59:02

the same sort of outfit all day, wants to change

59:04

the suit for election night. So I zip home with

59:06

him, and we get in the car. It's

59:08

eight o'clock. Polls close. And we

59:11

weren't really worried about that, because how can the, you know, how

59:14

the results are going to be known at eight o'clock. But it's

59:16

eight o'clock. We're about 10 minutes from the campaign

59:18

office, turn on the radio, says,

59:20

polls are closed, too early to tell what the

59:22

results are, except in this one constituency that

59:24

my dad ran in. They

59:27

were able to declare at 30

59:29

seconds after the hour that the incumbent had been

59:31

elected. My father was defeated, because it was that

59:33

obvious. I didn't know any about polling and advanced

59:36

polling and exit polling. I didn't know anything about

59:38

this stuff. So with shock, I look at

59:40

my dad. I said, I can't believe we lost. He said, of

59:42

course we lost. I said,

59:44

why do we do this if we're going to lose? He said, we did it because we

59:46

could, because tomorrow life goes on. Nobody

59:49

gets arrested. I put

59:51

my ideology out there for people to vote for.

59:53

They voted for the other guy. It's

59:55

all good. Walks into the campaign office. Everybody

59:57

claps for him. I'm thinking, what are you people clapping about? goes

1:00:01

in the back, calls his opponent, the

1:00:03

concession speech, the concession phone call takes about

1:00:05

a minute. And that's the end of it. Yeah.

1:00:07

And that's the end of it. And the funny part

1:00:09

is that my father ran again and won. And that's

1:00:12

not the interesting part of the story. The interesting

1:00:14

part is I learned more about how he

1:00:16

about politics from how he lost. Yeah. That

1:00:19

how he won. Well, and this journey kind

1:00:21

of continues, right? So we've from India to

1:00:23

South Africa, then up to Kenya to Canada

1:00:26

into politics. And then, you know, your

1:00:28

journey, you know, towards the end of

1:00:30

the book, you talk about your

1:00:32

journey to kind of becoming American, which

1:00:35

is traces this kind of crazy period of

1:00:37

history that I've been in public life, right? You

1:00:39

drive your motorcycle in Manhattan shortly after 9

1:00:44

11. And you've kind of lived this two decades,

1:00:46

becoming a journalist to, you know, famously

1:00:50

reporting on the George Floyd protests and getting shot in the

1:00:52

leg with a rubber bullet. I mean, how

1:00:55

did you in reflecting on this in the book,

1:00:58

how did you digest the highs and lows

1:01:01

of your your journey to

1:01:03

to American this during this

1:01:05

very crazy period in history? Well,

1:01:08

it corresponds to me realizing that I

1:01:11

grew up with a certain privilege my

1:01:13

family didn't have, right? They had a

1:01:15

drive in them that was about the

1:01:17

fact that something was in equal, they

1:01:19

were born into inequality. I

1:01:21

wasn't really I was born into post

1:01:24

independence Kenya, which in theory was

1:01:27

a free society of free democracy and new democracy. And then

1:01:29

I grew up in Canada, which is a free

1:01:33

democracy and vibrant democracy. And until

1:01:36

George Floyd, I didn't

1:01:39

realize the degree to which our

1:01:42

citizenship comes with a series of obligations, not just

1:01:44

rights. The reason I wasn't interested in taking on

1:01:46

American citizenship is because I didn't need any more

1:01:48

rights, right? I've got Canadian citizenship, I've got all

1:01:50

these passports. What more do I possibly need out

1:01:53

of this thing? It's not about what you need.

1:01:56

It's about what it is you do to make

1:01:58

this thing feel like a more fair thing. society.

1:02:00

My father got involved in politics, as did

1:02:02

my mother after that, and my sister, all

1:02:05

of them got involved in electoral politics because

1:02:07

they felt that they owed an obligation to

1:02:09

the place that finally gave them a home

1:02:11

in which they were welcomed. And now I'm

1:02:13

realizing that we all have to do that.

1:02:15

We don't all have to run for office,

1:02:18

far from it. But if we

1:02:20

can look at the society and say

1:02:22

some things are unequal, like for instance

1:02:24

today, reproductive rights are unequal in America,

1:02:27

I'm not enjoying my full democracy if

1:02:29

everybody else around me is not. And

1:02:31

I go back to South Africa and I think to myself for the 5%

1:02:34

of people who voted in South Africa all throughout

1:02:36

apartheid, they had a wonderful democracy.

1:02:39

Democracy worked for them. They got to pick their

1:02:41

prime minister every four years. It was fantastic. But

1:02:43

we can't look at it that way. We've got

1:02:45

to look at it and say until it's all

1:02:47

fair, it's not fair. And that

1:02:49

was what woke me up. Covering

1:02:52

George Floyd and many other things since then have

1:02:54

woken me up the idea that I can't just

1:02:56

pretend to be a journalist in a completely fixed

1:02:58

and fair democracy. I have to remember that there

1:03:00

is work to be done. And maybe there will

1:03:02

always be work to be done, Ben. This may

1:03:04

not be a problem. It may just

1:03:06

be the nature of the beast, that there's always work

1:03:09

to be done to keep bad impulses at bay. We

1:03:11

see it in Hungary, we see it in Turkey, we

1:03:13

see it in India, we see it in Russia. There

1:03:15

are bad impulses that have to be kept at bay

1:03:17

and it's our job as citizens to do that. Well,

1:03:20

I want to ask you one last

1:03:22

thing. At the end of this book,

1:03:24

you describe going to Tolstoy

1:03:28

Farm, this place

1:03:30

in South Africa that is so central to

1:03:33

your family's history with Gandhi and

1:03:36

not just going there, but retracing the footsteps

1:03:38

that Gandhi used to take. The question I

1:03:40

wanted to ask you about this is, you're

1:03:43

in the churn, right? I pop up on your shows

1:03:47

now and then and you're

1:03:49

not just hosting Velshi, you're

1:03:51

omnipresent, you're popping up on MSNBC and other

1:03:54

countries, you're in the middle of politics, you're

1:03:56

in the middle of all these

1:03:58

world events. And I'm just curious. Both

1:04:00

the experience of writing a book, as you said,

1:04:02

can be laborious. I'm on my third now. But

1:04:05

I was curious, what was it like to just

1:04:07

take a pause and take that trip to South

1:04:09

Africa and retrace those footsteps

1:04:11

and kind of stand in this place, you

1:04:14

know, so far away from Washington, D.C., or

1:04:16

all these other places? What

1:04:19

was that like for you to kind of step out of

1:04:21

your life and step back into your family's history that way?

1:04:23

It was amazing to me, not only because

1:04:25

if you, maybe we'll go one day,

1:04:28

you can stand where my grandfather stood on

1:04:30

that farm, and you can see Johannesburg,

1:04:32

and you can see nothing in between. In other words,

1:04:35

it's what he would have seen. There is stuff in

1:04:37

between. It's just the way the land curves.

1:04:39

You see none of the development. So you almost

1:04:41

are looking at what my grandfather may have seen

1:04:43

100 years ago. The difference is what

1:04:45

you see in Johannesburg now are buildings, but what he

1:04:47

saw would have been in smokestacks. He would have seen

1:04:50

the idea that there was a city there. So it

1:04:52

was amazing to actually look back. Because I was trying

1:04:54

to say, what did my young grandfather think about

1:04:56

the world? It was separated from his family. What

1:04:59

was he learning? Was he thinking he was going to change

1:05:02

the world? And that's sort of my point that you

1:05:05

never know you're going to change the world. Something I write about in the

1:05:07

book is my grandfather died at the age of 58.

1:05:10

He thought he had failed too. Right? He

1:05:12

thought it was over. He thought it hadn't worked. He

1:05:14

didn't know his children would get to Canada. He didn't

1:05:17

know his son would get elected to office. He didn't

1:05:19

know his daughter-in-law would be a candidate

1:05:21

for office. He didn't know his granddaughter

1:05:24

would be a multi-endorsed

1:05:26

candidate for office. I mean, my sister didn't

1:05:28

win her election, but certainly should have. He

1:05:31

didn't know I'd be me. So the point

1:05:34

is these small acts of courage, these things

1:05:36

you do, they don't have to bear fruit

1:05:38

for you immediately. You don't have

1:05:40

to sit in the shade of the tree that

1:05:42

you planted. Someone will.

1:05:44

And that's largely what that message meant

1:05:46

to me. As I retraced his steps,

1:05:48

I realized that Gandhi and my grandfather

1:05:50

and others had worked so hard to

1:05:52

change a world that they never saw

1:05:55

change the way they wanted it to. And

1:05:58

yet the world did change. And

1:06:00

so today I think about the same thing. I

1:06:02

think it looks it looks hard out there It

1:06:04

looks daunting but this world to can change it

1:06:06

can change in the right way and it can

1:06:08

change because of little things you do That you

1:06:10

don't even realize the impact of Well,

1:06:13

look, I I really want to thank

1:06:15

you. Ali Velshi for joining us today You know, I'm

1:06:18

just gonna take the moment to say, you know, I

1:06:20

interacted a lot of people in media and politics I

1:06:23

there's very very few people very

1:06:25

shortlist to have the combination of Intelligence

1:06:28

integrity and kind of a

1:06:31

values compass That it

1:06:33

infuses everything you do frankly from like a

1:06:35

segment on TV to this book you wrote

1:06:38

I really encourage people to pick it up small

1:06:40

acts of courage. I think you got a taste

1:06:43

of Both the incredible

1:06:45

stories and the powerful message in it. So

1:06:47

thanks so much for joining us today and

1:06:49

look forward to you know being

1:06:52

interviewed by you Coming

1:06:54

I am sure you and I will have

1:06:56

opportunity very soon Talking and

1:06:58

I'm always deeply appreciative of your willingness to

1:07:00

do that and to get into tough conversations

1:07:02

because that's the only way we're getting Absolutely.

1:07:04

Well the last time actually I remember I

1:07:06

was on after enough Tally Bennett. We've made

1:07:09

for an interesting one two punch Well

1:07:12

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1:09:36

so obviously for the last several years women's

1:09:38

reproductive rights have been under attack here in

1:09:41

the United States. It will be a huge

1:09:43

issue in this election in the United States,

1:09:45

but it's not just an issue here. It's

1:09:48

also an issue around the world, including in Europe.

1:09:51

I'm really, really happy to welcome to Paz

1:09:54

Save the World my friend Nikko Kovac, who

1:09:56

is a Slovenian activist and director of the

1:09:58

Research Institute of March 18. about

1:10:01

her campaign to protect abortion access across

1:10:03

Europe. So Nika, thanks so much for

1:10:05

joining us from Slovenia. Yes,

1:10:07

hey. So you are one of the

1:10:09

leaders of a campaign called My Voice, My

1:10:11

Choice, and so let's just start by

1:10:14

asking you what is the

1:10:16

campaign about? What are you trying to accomplish

1:10:19

in the upcoming European parliamentary elections in June?

1:10:22

Yeah, so basically the state of

1:10:24

abortion in Europe is also urgent.

1:10:27

In Poland, women still die in

1:10:29

hospitals, in Malta. If you do

1:10:31

an abortion, you go for three

1:10:34

years to prison. In Austria, abortion

1:10:36

is part of panel codes, so

1:10:38

doctors need to learn it on

1:10:40

papayas, and 20 million women

1:10:43

doesn't have the access to abortion. And

1:10:46

in one moment we started to think

1:10:48

when we saw what happened with you

1:10:50

guys in the US, that we need

1:10:52

to protect abortion on European level.

1:10:55

And because politicians and bureaucrats

1:10:57

don't do this, we decided

1:10:59

to take things in our

1:11:01

own hands. So we proposed

1:11:03

an European citizen initiative, which

1:11:05

is basically establishing a mechanism

1:11:08

which is allowing women to

1:11:10

go to countries where abortion

1:11:12

is legal and do it there on

1:11:14

the cost of European Union. We need

1:11:17

to collect 1 million signatures. We are

1:11:19

doing it for 10 days. We have

1:11:21

140,000 of them. It's the fastest growing

1:11:26

initiative, and our plan is to

1:11:28

do this till European elections. And

1:11:32

we saw some success in

1:11:34

France, in codifying abortion rights.

1:11:37

I mean, what would success look

1:11:39

like for your campaign? Getting those

1:11:42

million signatures, and what

1:11:44

kind of momentum are you trying to generate? Yeah, so

1:11:46

basically the first moment is yes,

1:11:48

to collect the signatures. We keep

1:11:50

saying that in every European country

1:11:52

the support for abortion is more

1:11:55

than 60%. And the second fact,

1:11:58

which is connected with with our

1:12:00

campaign is that we are also inviting

1:12:02

people to go and to vote on

1:12:05

European elections. Because about

1:12:07

our initiative, the next European Parliament

1:12:09

will be deciding, and there is

1:12:11

a huge threat of far-right. And

1:12:13

we are saying to the people,

1:12:15

like, these elections are also about

1:12:18

reproductive rights. So please vote for

1:12:20

the candidates who are supporting our

1:12:22

initiative, and success for us would

1:12:24

be double. So firstly, to

1:12:26

collect the signatures, and secondly,

1:12:28

to elect politicians who will

1:12:31

actually support the initiative, and

1:12:33

who will allow that Europe

1:12:36

changes their approach

1:12:38

to the abortion. And

1:12:40

so in the US, obviously, this is a

1:12:42

very partisan issue. We

1:12:45

see the rise of a number of

1:12:47

far-right parties across Europe. As

1:12:49

you're heading into the European parliamentary elections, I

1:12:51

think there's been some concerns that the far-right

1:12:54

might make gains. How

1:12:58

political is the issue of abortion in Europe?

1:13:00

Do you see these far-right parties as threatening

1:13:02

reproductive health? Is this

1:13:05

a voting issue for the

1:13:07

far-right, as well as people on the progressive side

1:13:09

of politics? There is a

1:13:11

huge support to abortion in the

1:13:13

European society. So often far-right parties

1:13:16

actually lie that they are supporting

1:13:18

abortion, or they're quiet till they

1:13:20

come into the power. We

1:13:22

all know Georgia Meloni and what

1:13:24

she's doing now. Like last week,

1:13:26

she decided that she will basically

1:13:29

allow anti-abortion activists to enter the

1:13:31

clinics where abortions are happening. In

1:13:33

Italy, 63% of

1:13:36

doctors already is not performing abortions.

1:13:38

Now it will be even worse.

1:13:40

So basically, the far-right is

1:13:43

attacking the bodies of women. Basically

1:13:46

the far-right is using abortion as their

1:13:48

momentum, but not out loud. And

1:13:51

What we want to do with this campaign

1:13:53

is to show that this is a political

1:13:55

issue, and basically to show that people don't

1:13:57

want to vote for that kind of thing.

1:14:00

See that happening now in Italy or

1:14:02

in Poland or in math us and

1:14:04

we hope that we will achieve this.

1:14:06

but what we seeing is like by

1:14:09

the amount of volunteers people for joining

1:14:11

the complaints that this is basically a

1:14:13

common lead you into Europe that protecting

1:14:16

abortion rights is something that we spend

1:14:18

for it and it's people will be

1:14:20

voting against quality. Since were affected

1:14:22

this. And you think that

1:14:24

exists in the Us? I think you're of the

1:14:26

abortion issue. Or unfortunately, because

1:14:29

of what happened with save overturning

1:14:31

of Roe versus Wade, you saw

1:14:33

more and more women and young

1:14:35

people voting immobilizing around this issue

1:14:37

it seemed like in Poland, for

1:14:40

instance, Women: Were pretty important

1:14:42

to the election victory. Surprising like

1:14:44

to a victory of of the

1:14:46

opposition Their: did you do feel

1:14:48

like this is an issue that

1:14:50

might help swing. Elections more

1:14:53

broadly in Europe. If

1:14:55

people feel like their rights are on the ballot

1:14:57

in the way that we senior in the U

1:14:59

S. S like abortion was the

1:15:02

main topic before though to

1:15:04

select since policy meant. To

1:15:07

be eating Silversun insight into

1:15:09

the same. Still authoritarian governments

1:15:11

in Poland and. One

1:15:13

of the first promises says the. Newly

1:15:15

elected politicians was to legalize abortion.

1:15:17

This thing still be that happens

1:15:20

of people are serious, they're still

1:15:22

awaiting that someone will die in

1:15:24

Polish hospital. So they're saying like

1:15:27

now we need to take again

1:15:29

things into our. Own hands, forced

1:15:31

to put. Buttons.

1:15:36

on the european level and and

1:15:38

for example france which is a

1:15:40

totally different stories they just put

1:15:42

the worsening that institutions again the

1:15:44

ceiling between the people is the

1:15:46

same sake we did it like

1:15:48

it's something that we are super

1:15:50

proud of on it but now

1:15:52

let's force you're up to do

1:15:54

the same some and people also

1:15:56

understands that their responsibilities or so

1:15:58

to watch out who

1:16:01

we will elect. And if I joke a

1:16:03

little bit, like we don't want to become

1:16:05

US in Europe in a sense of like

1:16:07

what happened to you and how you lost

1:16:09

your rights. Well, that's, you

1:16:11

know, I mean, you don't want to become us,

1:16:13

trust me, if it involves Donald Trump or overturning

1:16:15

rights. All right, I got to

1:16:17

ask you a couple more things. You know,

1:16:19

I've known you for years, few years

1:16:21

now. What people don't know

1:16:23

is you're also like, basically, like

1:16:26

the addition of being

1:16:28

an extraordinary person critical

1:16:30

to some of the recent successes in

1:16:32

Slovenia. My question for you

1:16:35

is, what can the world learn from Slovenia when

1:16:37

it comes to democracy? Yes,

1:16:39

Slovenia is a two million country.

1:16:41

We have two famous people in

1:16:43

Slovenia. One is Melania Trump and

1:16:45

the other is Luca Doncic from

1:16:48

basketball. But I hope that people

1:16:50

would know our country by defeating

1:16:52

the authoritarian leader that we had,

1:16:54

the Anas Jansa. Civil society led

1:16:56

the fight. We went on the

1:16:58

street and we did referendums with

1:17:01

a really positive content. We said

1:17:03

we don't want to be angry.

1:17:06

We want to show people what is the

1:17:08

reason for tomorrow. And we

1:17:11

did like bracelets, friendship

1:17:13

bracelets before Taylor Swift. We were

1:17:15

having concerts. We were having a

1:17:17

lot of fun, but also being

1:17:20

really clear about what is like

1:17:22

our political demand, which is like

1:17:24

social state, free

1:17:26

school system, free health system, and

1:17:29

also like politicians who are not attacking

1:17:32

you. We managed to change the government.

1:17:35

And right now I have a feeling that

1:17:37

we are in this period of like

1:17:39

transition, where you can still

1:17:41

see authoritarians being super alive

1:17:43

in the institution, but

1:17:46

center being closed in a sense of like

1:17:48

not having like its own agenda and knowing

1:17:51

that they need to be here for the

1:17:53

people. And I Always say

1:17:55

that Slovenia taught me that people are not

1:17:57

stupid, that they will vote for the people.

1:18:00

The leader who will actually delivery

1:18:02

for will actually do stuff and

1:18:04

they have that Slovenian governments is

1:18:06

becoming aware of this because select

1:18:08

censoring two years and those guys

1:18:10

keep coming back so I don't

1:18:12

want to science again in two

1:18:14

years. Now. Was people conceive Be

1:18:16

brought a lot of joy and an

1:18:18

enthusiasm in energy to these campaigns. You

1:18:20

and I were both in Stockholm. Ah

1:18:23

for a conference. I.

1:18:25

Well remember about that among

1:18:27

be incredibly born. Common Thread

1:18:29

is an. Idle.

1:18:32

Time. To kill and I went to some

1:18:34

yeah museum with like pretty. Austere,

1:18:37

Are from the know the Viking

1:18:39

days. You want to the other

1:18:41

museum. Would. You recommend that I

1:18:43

as I felt like I missed out

1:18:45

have museum. Is great You can dance

1:18:47

and sing the barracks and like Glenn

1:18:49

think we take it seems like to

1:18:51

order. The people around me is that

1:18:54

like the sides it we are leading

1:18:56

is like the terrible sight. I think

1:18:58

that we lose all the time we

1:19:00

do stupid mistakes we try with campaigns

1:19:02

that some of them together we have

1:19:04

the super hard to let sunnier in

1:19:06

front of us were I think lose

1:19:08

ten mostly lose but like wanting this

1:19:10

we says his two cents in sight

1:19:12

and have fun. So am I Saw

1:19:14

that Lakeside for democracy it's become. More

1:19:16

of son so that more people lived.

1:19:18

Sinus not like the deed, Slightly earth.

1:19:21

Is his us? Well how can people join so like

1:19:23

that then this That last question is like where if

1:19:25

people wanna get involved with they want to sign. On

1:19:28

to your campaign. What's the best

1:19:30

way for them to do that? Next So

1:19:32

we're really best friends. We want

1:19:34

every single person who is listening

1:19:37

designer since help us we seven

1:19:39

instagram page which reaches my. Voice

1:19:41

made size of. Let's. Face it

1:19:43

we need volunteers but also his

1:19:45

people just sarah disease the science

1:19:47

the city's would be great and

1:19:49

the remind your friends the world

1:19:51

on European elections against far right,

1:19:53

against the assess it seem both

1:19:55

seen The European Union's is something

1:19:57

that it's a good beginning. Okay,

1:20:00

so everybody should check out My Voice, My

1:20:02

Choice on Instagram, on social

1:20:04

media. We have a bunch of listeners

1:20:06

in Europe. You should sign up.

1:20:09

Support in every way you can. Nika, we

1:20:11

wish Slovenia the best of luck with Luka

1:20:14

Doncic starting his series tonight. I know we've

1:20:16

got a Eurovision competition tonight. There's

1:20:18

a lot going on for Slovenia right now,

1:20:20

and we really thank you for your work and

1:20:23

for joining us here. Yeah, thank you, Ben, for having

1:20:25

me. Okay,

1:20:30

so you already know the stakes of the 2024 election

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