Behind the Bastards - Part Four: Kissinger

March 24, 2022 - Behind the Bastards

01:23:50

Part Four: Kissinger

# yahya khan us foreign policy sheikh mujibur rahman archer blood bangladesh genocide blood telegram cold war geopolitics general yahya khan george harrison henry kissinger mao zedong nicolae ceaușescu operation marco polo operation searchlight richard nixon

Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon prioritized strategic interests over human rights during the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, supporting Yahya Khan's atrocities to secure a China meeting. Despite Archer Blood's "Blood Telegram" condemning mass rapes and deaths, the administration threatened India with aid cutoffs, dismissed relief efforts, and fired dissenters. While Kissinger negotiated Operation Marco Polo to restore U.S.-China relations, replacing Taiwan in the UN, the U.S. ignored over 3 million potential deaths. Ultimately, this episode reveals how geopolitical maneuvering facilitated ethnic cleansing, exposing deep hypocrisy in American foreign policy. [Automatically generated summary]
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	Man!
	Yeah!
	Yeah!
Dangerous State of Affairs 00:13:27
	Yeah.
	Oh, how we all, this is behind the dollop.
	Bastards, dollop the bastards.
	This is those best, those dollop bastards.
	So, I don't know.
	What do you guys think?
	Out of all of the characters y'all have covered, who do you think Kissinger gets along with best?
	Oh my God.
	Better.
	I mean, that's a tough one.
	That judge in Texas with the bear.
	I mean, judge in Texas with the bear he definitely gets along with.
	There's definitely guys like, you know, the guys who did the filibustering, Walker, and those guys who just love to just take over other countries.
	Yeah.
	Kill many people.
	There's not, we've never experienced this level of casualty.
	No.
	Yeah, we haven't.
	This is the first time.
	This is, I mean, you know, like there are evil, it's, it's the spray of your evil that is so remarkable about this.
	The ability to have your finger on this button with this level of darkness is, I don't know, it's a little, you know, I wouldn't say it's, you know, again, I mean, we've covered evil motherfuckers, but I don't think they've been able to scatter shot in the way that, you know, Kissinger's a rare talent at a rare time on a rare team.
	I would put Jan Peter Zun Cohen, who was the East, the Dutch colony guy, the East India Dutch colony guy.
	Right.
	He did a lot of fucking killing.
	Yeah.
	And he definitely had the same sort of attitude.
	Very casual about killing people.
	Yeah.
	The killing because we're white Americans.
	Yeah.
	Or just white people just, you know, for land has been, it's a theme.
	Andrew Jackson, I would put up there with Jackson.
	He's, he's, he's at that level of like monstrous national leader who believes in a fucked up thing.
	Like in terms of his death toll, Andrew Jackson and his in his white supremacy, Hitler and his Hitler stuff, you know, Mao and some of the weird things he believed about crop rotation or like whatnot.
	He's at that level of like death toll, but he doesn't believe in anything.
	Like he's not trying to do a thing.
	He's not like, he's not like attempting someone.
	He's not adoption of society.
	There's nothing.
	I guess that's the weirdest part of him because this sort of death count usually comes out of ideology.
	Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at.
	Yeah.
	Imagine if his childhood affected him, what he would do.
	Yeah.
	That might have an impact, right?
	Imagine if that had actually impacted him in any way.
	Yeah.
	And it, yeah, that's the, that's the, it's so fucked up that like it's fucking crazy.
	Again, we keep getting back to like Walter from the Big Lebowski logic, but like at least those other war criminals had an ethos.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Henry Kissinger, baby.
	You could negotiate or talk down or at least there would be like an angle.
	At least like, oh, you are a you are a person, like not to morally compare him negatively to Hitler, because for the record, folks, Hitler's worse, you know, than basically any, yeah.
	But there's at least you can grasp onto a level of understanding with Hitler because it's like, well, I believe in things and I even believe in things that like I think it would be okay to like use violence in order to, because of those things that I believe.
	I think there are situations that justify violence and those are based on things that I believe about morality.
	And Hitler had things that he believed about morality that he felt justified violence.
	And so you can grapple at least with what must have been going on in the man's head when he did some of the terrible things he did.
	I cannot get into the head of a man who is willing to do this to keep a gig.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	It's for a gig.
	Yeah, it's for a gig that he didn't even need.
	He didn't even need this job.
	No, he's he's almost as bad as Dr. Phil.
	Yeah.
	I mean, yes, that's a little bit hyperbolic, Dave.
	I don't think that's hyperbole.
	Dr. Phillian levels of evil.
	And it's also just the dumb, the idea that 60 Minutes was like, take the keys, Hank.
	Have the keys, Hank.
	There you go.
	Yeah.
	You know, buddy.
	Yeah, just the new normalization.
	It's like.
	Now, yeah.
	When it comes to the folks who will defend Henry Kissinger or even call him a great statesman, and those folks do exist.
	I have read some of their books.
	When you get to those people, there are generally a couple of achievements that they will trumpet.
	It's like, well, you have to give him, you know, these things, right?
	Oh, God.
	And they sound impressive on paper.
	In 1973, he and North Vietnam's Lee Duc Tho won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the negotiations that became the Paris Peace Accords, right?
	Winning a Nobel Prize for stopping the Vietnam War, impressive sounding on paper if you don't think about the fact that he extended the Vietnam War.
	Like I helped to, you know, was a part of that.
	He did negotiate the first strategic arms limitation treaty and anti-ballistic missile treaty with the Soviet Union.
	Those are good things.
	Yeah, but he's the whole thing is he loves he would be like nukes are great.
	It's like congratulating Sully Sullenberger if he threw the geese into the if he had been breeding geese in that exact area.
	And he was making bang noises to scare him into the plane when he landed on the Hudson.
	Yeah, they're like, wow, what an amazing achievement.
	Yeah.
	And yeah, it's one of those things, like, yeah, he got and part of like the arms reductions that he secured with the Soviet Union are less impressive than they sound.
	I was just talking in the last episode about that documentary, Command and Control.
	And one of the points it makes is that like these Atlas II missiles, which nearly killed half of the people on the East Coast through radioactive fallout, were obsolete and not effective and recognized as not being useful.
	But they were kept in the arsenal, not because we needed them, but because we were going to have a treaty with the Soviets soon and we wanted to have something we could give up that wouldn't actually cost us anything.
	Oh my God.
	Like that, like it's that kind of shit.
	Like that's all of the fucking yeah.
	He fucking got rid of spent fuel rods.
	Basically, yeah, yeah, and he does this.
	He helps negotiate reductions in nuclear arms after pushing the missile gap myth for the JFK administration, right?
	He did help pass an international convention against biological weapons, which is cool if you don't think too much about the defoliance that he ordered spread out across Southeast Asia.
	Jesus Christ.
	We need to stop people like Henry Kissinger.
	We have to stop.
	I must be stopped.
	They must stop me.
	This is the only way to appease me.
	He had a role in the Helsinki Final Act, Article 10, which committed nations on both sides of the Cold War to, quote, respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief, for all without distinction to race.
	Yeah.
	Uh-huh.
	He's literally the guy who's in a room and he's like, we should kill everyone.
	And then he walks out and comes back in another door and goes, killing is bad.
	The killing must stop.
	It's like when OJ must deal with me.
	OJ was like, I'm going to find the real killer.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	We got to find this guy.
	He's still out there.
	Henry Kissinger doesn't go to DC anymore because he might run into the man who ordered the carpet bombing of Lao.
	That would be awkward.
	We are all trying to find a guy who did this.
	We're not going to leave till we find out which son of a bitch is behind this.
	Now, there is, however, one huge titanic achievement that even the most hardened critics have to give Kissinger.
	He restored diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
	Now, this is a huge deal, no matter how you slice it.
	For a brief primer, China had them a big old civil war between the communists who won and the nationalists, who we backed, who were called like, you know, Democrats, Republicans, whatever, like called Democratic forces.
	They had them a dictator, as it always is.
	He was a dude named Chiang Kai-shek.
	And yeah, Mao wins in 1949.
	Chiang Kai-shek and his forces take all the gold they can carry and they flee to Taiwan.
	And for the next 30 years, the United States refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Chinese state and deal with it directly.
	In one of the most unhinged decisions in the history of U.S. foreign policy, decades of presidents pretend Taiwan is the real China.
	Like Taiwan has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council that is China's seat.
	But Taiwan is, you can look on a map itty bitty.
	It's quite small.
	It is somewhat smaller than actual China.
	It's like what we're doing.
	It's like what we're doing with Venezuela.
	No, it's like, yeah, that guy is the president.
	No, he's not.
	Yeah, right.
	Yeah.
	And it's one of those things, like, you don't have to be a fan of Mao to recognize this as stupid.
	Like, Mao is in head of a government that is basically a whole continent, and you're just pretending he's not.
	And that's nuts.
	The emperor has no land.
	Yeah, it's craziness.
	It's stupid.
	Yeah.
	And in fairness, again, because we're about to talk about like Kissinger had nothing to do with this, right?
	Kissinger is not why we refuse to recognize the existence of the Chinese government.
	This is a dumb thing that when he comes into power, he and Nixon are both very astutely recognized as a dumb thing, and they don't want this to continue.
	And it is, it is hard to overstate how dangerous this state of affairs is.
	For one reason, after Stalin dies in 1953, relations between the USSR and Mao's China steadily decline.
	In 1964, the year China conducts their first successful nuclear tests, diplomatic relations break down between both communist nations.
	So now you have three massive empires, all of whom are armed with nukes, none of whom are directly talking to each other.
	Like this is a bad situation.
	And Kissinger does recognize how dangerous the status quo is.
	Now, in 1969, China and the Soviet Union have a series of border skirmishes.
	Their soldiers are shooting at each other.
	Moscow threatens to start dropping nukes.
	And for a time, the Chinese government conducts its affairs from underground bunkers.
	So again, very reasonable that Nixon and Kissinger are like, well, we should probably have some way to fucking call these people on the goddamn phone, right?
	Like this seems bad.
	Let's just get a phone.
	Let's get a fucking phone.
	You would think it would be that simple, Dave, but we're going to talk for about an hour and 10 minutes about how it's not.
	So by the time 1971 comes around, Nixon and Kissinger were also both looking for a major diplomatic coup that could distract from the fact that they hadn't quite managed to end that whole Vietnam War thing and had in fact made it all very much worse.
	There's also some rational self-interest in here.
	You know, whatever else you can say about them, I don't think either of these men want to die and they recognize like, well, this could cause a nuclear war that ends all life on Earth, including us.
	We should probably deal with this.
	Yeah.
	They finally realize that life has purpose once it's there.
	Yeah.
	It's also one of those, this is getting a little off topic, but like people talk about, you will see at least on the right, people say like, well, you know, if the nationalists had won the Chinese Civil War, a lot less people would have died.
	And it's like, well, the specific things Mao did that killed a lot of people wouldn't have been done.
	But if Chiang Kai-shek is in charge of China, and like while China is communist, they almost get in a nuclear fight with the USSR.
	Do you think right-wing Chiang Kai-shek-led China is less likely to have a nuclear fight with the Soviet Union?
	What would the hard-nosed version be?
	Yeah, what is it like if they're not on the same ideological side?
	Yeah, people don't talk a lot about the fact that the USSR and communist China nearly nearly nuked each other just while agreeing on the USSR.
	And also Mao killed landlords.
	So are those people well, fair.
	Yeah.
	Some of them were landlords.
	It's not the landlords we're complaining about.
	It's the, you know, the people who didn't have grain.
	But that's a story for a completely different set of days.
	At this point in time, you've got two countries that should, three countries that should all be talking on the basis that they all individually have the ability to end all life on earth.
	And they're not.
	And Kissinger is like, you know what?
	I can get in here.
	You know, I can make this work.
	I can make this work.
	And also, it'll help us win an election.
	So it just so happens that 1971 is also a time in which China is willing to sit down with the United States.
	Mao wants U.S. help negotiating with the Soviets, which is very strange.
	And like the does not make a whole lot of yeah, I can't talk to these guys.
	I can't talk to these guys.
	I need to talk to these guys.
	Nixon, you love communists.
	Get in here.
	You know, it's just the you've got like the way the Cold War is portrayed from the thousand-yard view to people like watching the propaganda of whatever state.
	And then you've got like Mao being like, hey, Nixon, I need your help to deal with these Soviets.
	I need a rational partner.
	And Nixon being like, You're drunk.
	You know who's going to get me, cinch me Richard Milhouse Nixon, the election in 72.
Cold War Propaganda 00:12:23
	Mousy Dunk.
	That's so crazy.
	It is weird.
	Politics in this world.
	It's almost like there's only three people in the world.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	So this is, you know, Nixon, yeah, Nixon's very much down to talk with China, but it is not that simple because since the diplomatic situation has been dumb for so very long, there aren't like U.S. diplomats in China that we can like send a message through, right?
	Like you literally don't have those ties.
	So the U.S. does have ways of communicating with the Chinese government.
	They're through back channels, though, because you can't admit publicly that you're doing it because Taiwan is your ally and Taiwan doesn't want to acknowledge that the Chinese government is legitimate government.
	Very dumb.
	One of the back channels is through the leader of communist Romania, Nikolai Chachescu.
	Oh, boy.
	And the other guy.
	Oh, Nikolai is not the bad guy of this story.
	I mean, when Chechescu is your hero, things are not good.
	Not your hero, but let's call him a benign force in this specific instance.
	When did you straighten me?
	Yeah.
	The other is through the military dictator of Pakistan, General Adha Mohammad Yahya Khan.
	Now, we should probably talk a little bit of history here.
	In 1947, the British gave up ruling over the Indian subcontinent, finally.
	As a rule, whenever colonial powers leave their former possessions, they attempted to set up states based on their pre-existing alliances and racial biases.
	This is why we have, for example, the entire modern map of the Middle East.
	In this case of the Indian subcontinent, what had once been a colony was split into India and Pakistan.
	India is obviously Hindu majority, and Pakistan is a Muslim-majority nation.
	Now, if you know your English colonialists, you know they're not very good at maps.
	So the Brits divvying up the subcontinent decide that Pakistan should include two huge chunks of land separated by more than a thousand miles of India.
	West Pakistan is the Pakistan we know and love today, right?
	Classic Pakistan.
	Right.
	Like the, yeah.
	East Pakistan is like the new coke of Pakistan, except for now it's Bangladesh, right?
	But at the time, Bangladesh is East Pakistan.
	And there's just like a whole fuckload of India in between the two, which is there's like a line that Pakistani people will say at the time that like East and West Pakistan are only united by religion, the English language, and Pakistan Airlines.
	And by far, Pakistan Airlines is the strongest of the three.
	Cool of England, once again.
	I mean, just really.
	Great plan, guys.
	Yeah, really.
	What do you say?
	We put a blindfold on and then tried to pin the tail on this drunken.
	And the fact that Indian partition that England partitions India at all is a humanitarian crisis on an incomprehensible scale.
	As many as 2 million people died, often as the result of horrific racial or religious violence.
	And Henry Kissinger's hearing that, like, hold on, I'm getting hard.
	I can do better.
	That's nothing, baby.
	I can beat those rookie numbers.
	Where do I send?
	Congratulations, Coke.
	10 to 20 million are displaced.
	But even though East and West Pakistan are supposed to be united by faith, there's like massive ethnic divides, right?
	Like they're not, the fact that they're all ostensibly Muslim does not mean anything because like they're completely different parts of the world with completely different chunks of history, right?
	And at least America learns this lesson.
	Yes, thankfully.
	We get this right.
	You know, by the time we get into Pakistan, we're done with the stupid stuff.
	We're faking the vaccine drive in order to steal people's blood.
	That's right.
	The good guy, eh?
	Yeah, the good guys are back.
	I know how to fix this.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, here's the Smithsonian magazine kind of laying out the relationship between East and West Pakistan by the time Kissinger and Nixon take office.
	With most of the ruling elite having immigrated westward from India, West Pakistan was chosen as the nation's political center.
	Between 1947 and 1970, East Pakistan had only 25% of the country's industrial investments and 30% of its imports, despite producing 59% of the country's exports.
	West Pakistani elites saw their Eastern countrymen as culturally and ethnically inferior, and an attempt to make Urdu the national language, less than 10% of the population of East Pakistan had a working knowledge of Urdu, was seen as further proof that East Pakistan's interests would be ignored by the government.
	Making matters worse, the powerful Bola cyclone hit East Bangladesh in November of 1970, killing 300,000 people.
	Despite having more resources at their disposal, West Pakistan offered a sluggish response to the disaster.
	As French journalist Paul Dreyfus said of the situation, over the years, West Pakistan behaved like a poorly raised, egotistical guest, devouring the best dishes and leaving nothing but scraps and leftovers for East Pakistan.
	Well, it's not cool.
	It's not great.
	It's not great.
	And Pakistan's military is what's in charge, right?
	It's a military dictatorship.
	They run everything, and they are hyper-focused on India, who is their primary geopolitical rival.
	In 1965, Pakistan attempts to invade Kashmir, sparking a vicious conflict.
	And I'm not giving you the whole detail of the conflict between India and Pakistan.
	Please don't take this as me throwing all of the blame on one side or the other.
	This is just like the barest cliffs notes because we have a lot to cover in this episode.
	And the U.S., it's worth noting, had been selling arms to both countries in 1960.
	What?
	Yeah, I know.
	Very disappointing.
	America?
	Yeah.
	Strange.
	Come on.
	Oh, gosh, our history is so different.
	LBJ's administration was forced by public outcry as a result of this to issue an arms embargo on both nations.
	Pakistan saw the embargo as unfairly harming them.
	And as a result, there was bad blood among the high command towards the Democratic Johnson administration.
	By the time Kissinger and Nixon are in the White House, the president of Pakistan is, again, this guy Yahya Khan.
	We'll just call him Yahya because it's fun to say.
	Yeah, he took power in March of 1969 by forcing out another general and instituting martial law.
	Kissinger once wrote of him, Yahya is tough, direct, and with a good sense of humor.
	He talks in a very clipped way, is a splendid product of Sandhurst, and affects a sort of social naivete, but is probably much more complicated than this.
	Now, Sandhurst is like the British Royal Military Academy.
	It's like, broadly speaking, British West Point.
	Yahya affected an English air.
	He carried like a swagger stick.
	He dresses like he's a British officer.
	He acts like he's a British officer, right?
	He is also a raging alcoholic.
	One Pakistani politician noted, he starts with cognac for breakfast and continues drinking throughout the day, night often finding him in a sodden state.
	Nice.
	So he's always a drunk dude who always carries a stick for hitting horses.
	It's very conwacking.
	I mean, Churchill drank a fuck ton, too, right?
	Yeah, I mean, yes, absolutely.
	JFK was on meth for a decent chunk of his early presidency.
	Oh, wow.
	So great.
	When we point out that a guy like Yahya is drunk, it is not to contrast him with Western leaders who are not.
	Yeah, why don't you just point out drunk?
	I think, what's his name?
	The guy who came after Nixon, but not right after.
	Carter, probably pretty sober in the White House.
	Yeah, but his brother was making Billy's making Billy's like, I'll tell you what, I'll drink for Jim and no problem.
	Oh, Billy, Billy Carter should have been the president.
	Then we would have gotten some shit done.
	Honestly, wouldn't have been good.
	I'm fine with that.
	I'm fine with that different trajectory.
	Let's see what how bad could it be?
	Fuck it.
	Let's dance.
	In 1970, Yahya decides to hold an election, which is meant to be more for show than anything else, right?
	It's this thing you do because he's Pakistan is definitely India is a neutral country.
	They're not on the side of the Soviet Union or the U.S. and the stupid Cold War thing.
	They're very intelligently like, well, what does it benefit us to pick one side?
	Like, fuck that stuff.
	But they also, because India's got much more of a socialist, especially early on, is much more of a socialist government.
	There's a lot of distrust from them in the United States.
	And Pakistan really leans on that to be buddy-buddy with the United States more.
	And one of the ways, as part of like his attempts to get closer and closer to the U.S., because he wants arms, like everybody who gets buddy-buddy with the U.S., Yahya decides to hold an election because we love seeing people have elections.
	We don't really care how they go, but we like seeing them, you know?
	Yeah, right.
	It's sport.
	It's sport.
	Yeah.
	So he's allowed, he has this election, and his plan is to like basically rig it so that it doesn't mean anything.
	It doesn't take any power away from the military.
	But Yahya's not good at anything.
	This is an important thing to know.
	He's really bad at everything he does.
	Do you think that breakfast cognac had anything to do with this problem?
	It might have had an information.
	Okay, just a question.
	So this election gets out of his hands immediately.
	East Pakistan is much larger than West Pakistan.
	And while West Pakistan's votes are split between parties, like there's a bunch of different conflicting political parties, nearly everyone in East Pakistan gets in line behind the same party, the Awami League.
	Their big thing is they want autonomy from West Pakistan, you know, and they're very angry at like the fact that they're getting fucked over by the West.
	So the West, which is doing the fucking over, has a bunch of minor shit they're quabbling over.
	The East is just united behind let's stop getting fucked over.
	And as a result, they get a shitload of people elected in this massive block.
	And they come to, it's enough that they will completely dominate electoral, like the parliament of Pakistan because of like how well this election goes for them.
	Yahya does not like this.
	And rather than allowing the newly elected assembly to sit, he cancels their first meeting and declares martial law.
	Nice.
	Yeah.
	Riots follow.
	The leader of the Awami League, a guy named Sheikh Mujbur Rahman, I apologize for what is surely a mispronunciation, declared a civil disobedience movement.
	It was into this volatile situation that Henry Kissinger stepped in the spring of 1971.
	Oh, God.
	Now, he and Nixon had pretty good relations with West Pakistan's government, which is at this point, you know, just Yahya.
	They were loath to trust India since it was non-aligned.
	Nixon also was very racist and hated the fact that India's democracy was popular among Americans, while the country maintained close ties with the USSR.
	He once told Yahya, quote, there is a psychosis in this country about India.
	Now, a big part of Nixon's hatred of India is that it's led by a woman, Indira Gandhi.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, yeah, we'll be talking more about that in a second.
	Yahya, on the other hand, is one of the few people on planet Earth that Richard Nixon comes to consider as a friend.
	One of Nixon's assistants.
	They're both drunk assholes.
	They don't remember the friendship, but God was important to the two.
	One of Kissinger's aides later said of the situation, they liked him.
	He was a soldier.
	He had style.
	He was kind of a jaunty guy.
	This aide, Hotchkinson, admits that Yahya was not very smart, but says that for Nixon and Kissinger, he was a man's man.
	He wasn't some woman running a country.
	Right.
	It sounds like they're talking about.
	This is what people talk about.
	Yeltsin.
	Yeah, right.
	He's a man's man as he sees the Secret Service is tracking him down drunk in the middle of DC.
	Yeah.
	That was Yeltsin, right?
	Who like escaped?
	Yeah, well, Yeltsin, who like was passed out on the plane.
	I forget he was supposed to meet, and he was like passed out on the plane, and they were like, Boris, Boris.
	And he's like, go fuck yourself.
	No notes, Boris.
	None.
	Look, if we had kept every world leader after that point to the standards of drunkenness that Yeltsin set, we wouldn't be having this war right now.
	I'll tell you that much.
	No.
	We might have had other wars.
	Well, Nixon would wake up in the middle of the night, too, and he'd be like, drop the nuke, you know?
	And they'd be like, buddy.
	Like the next day, be like, I don't remember what I said.
	They're like, thank God.
	Yeah, we need to institute a mandatory drink minimum for all elected leaders in this country.
	George W. Bush, sobriety did not help.
	If you can't force term limits, you can force liver cancer.
	Yes.
	We can brute force our way into getting him out of office after a year or two.
	Hey, you know who else can force liver cancer?
	Oh, well, we are sponsored by Stolich Naya Vodka, which is now illegal in several states for reasons.
	It's difficult to explain.
Mandatory Drink Minimums 00:04:36
	I've never heard about TV.
	It's remarkable.
	It's like, it's just.
	How are we so dumb?
	How are we so dumb?
	It's amazing that in this like deeply ugly and complicated situation where large numbers of people are suffering, Americans recognize that the right thing to do is destroy bottles of vodka not domestically if the country's involved in the conflict.
	They're taking Finnish vodka and just throwing it into the streets.
	That'll teach you, Routine.
	Oh, great country.
	Here's some other ads.
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	Oh my God, this is the same man.
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	On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
	I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
	Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
	Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
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	Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
	You related to the Phantom at that point.
	Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
	That's so funny.
	Shari, stay with me each night, each morning.
	Say you love me.
	You know I.
	So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
	This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
	I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
	From power to parenthood.
	Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
	This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
	From addiction to acceleration.
	The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
	You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
	And it's a multiplayer game.
	What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
	Find out a mostly human.
	My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
	Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
	What's up, everyone?
	I'm Ego Moda.
	My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
	My dad gave me the best advice ever.
	I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
	I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
	I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
	He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
	Yeah.
	He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
	And he's like, just give it a shot.
	He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
	If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
	It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Handling Ceaușescu 00:15:17
	Yeah, it would not be.
	Right, it wouldn't be that.
	There's a lot of luck.
	Yeah.
	Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	Oh, we're back.
	Man.
	Man.
	That's a good sign.
	So this is not a Nixon mini-series, but in order to talk about the friendship, the deep and abiding love that the two men had, there is an incredible paragraph from the book The Blood Telegram by Gary Bass that I'm going to read now.
	Despite all his global FaceTime, Nixon was a solitary, awkward, reclusive man.
	Kissinger, who could not bring himself to say that he was fond of the president, once famously asked, can you imagine what this man would have been had somebody loved him?
	Oh my God.
	And that's coming from Kissinger.
	That's coming from Kissinger.
	That's the saddest thing I can imagine.
	Henry Kissinger being like, nobody really loves.
	If only someone had loved this man.
	Can you imagine?
	Nixon's only true friend was Bebe Rebozo, a Florida banker.
	He said, it doesn't come natural to me to be a buddy-buddy boy.
	Even H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, worried that the boss was too much in his own head and once tried to find the president a friend, tracking down an oil man whom Nixon had reportedly liked in his Los Angeles days and installing him in a bogus White House chair.
	Okay, by the way, listen.
	Listen, listen, listen.
	The movie needs to be written.
	It's like driving Miss Daisy, but with a body count.
	Yeah, it's I love you.
	Yeah, it's I love you, man with war crimes.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so I'm.
	James Franco is someone in this movie.
	So I'm going to work in the White House, but I can't act like I'm there to meet him, even though my whole thing is.
	That's right.
	So I'm just going to, so, so whether, so I have to like try to get in just with him.
	Just drink with him and eat pineapple and whatever he wants to do, just do it.
	He's going to want to put weird things in pineapple.
	He's going to get really drunk and cry on your shoulder.
	He's going to bomb several Southeast Asian people.
	Are you guys talking about?
	Sorry, I'm going to depart.
	Nothing, buddy.
	Okay.
	Who's this fella?
	Oh, I like the look of your face.
	Oh, come on.
	My name is Bobby, and I'm sorry.
	My pineapple and for lunch, I have pineapple and cottage cheese every day, and it just got out of my best meal is absolutely the best lunch.
	Oh, you listed too?
	That's all I eat.
	Well, yeah.
	In between just guzzling vodka, that's generally what I have.
	Am I on candid camera or something?
	You guys fucking around.
	What are you talking about?
	I mean, my heart is hit.
	I feel them.
	I need to lay down.
	I'm sorry.
	Oh, God.
	You're great.
	You're my favorite president, and I just want to say thank you for killing so many people.
	If you're H.R. Haldeman, right?
	How do you recognize that you are trying to make play dates for a man bombing illegally multiple nations and not go democracy and all politics is a sham.
	I must go down in flames to take everyone out around me because that is the only justice that can be achieved.
	Like Nixon belongs in the bubble that the good witch and the wizard of Oz lives in.
	Yeah.
	Like he's on that level of, it's like at some point you have to wake up and be like, okay, look, these guys are bombing the shit out of countries.
	And my goal is to find the president a buddy.
	Yeah, I have to get him a friend.
	I'm trying to get him a friend.
	He might do something crazy if he doesn't have anything.
	He might become unhinged with a little worry.
	Oh, God.
	What a crazy.
	I just, it's just, it's just like you have a president who doesn't have a friend.
	Like, that's what we're really talking about.
	He's a president who doesn't have a friend.
	And that's a big part of why, when it comes to deciding who should be the U.S. intermediary to talk with Mao, Yaya wins out over Ceaușescu.
	Oh, my God.
	Because Nixon likes Yaya.
	You know, that's a big part of it.
	Not the whole reason, but that's a big part of it.
	Now, and again, let's just remind everybody, Tchai Chesky was great, so I can't believe that.
	Flawless, flawless man.
	Also, by the way, great death.
	If we are going to talk about it, pretty good punishing death.
	A lot more.
	I'll go so far as to say most of the people we name in these episodes could have handled a Ceaușescu.
	Absolutely.
	It wouldn't have been a bad way for him to go out.
	So when it comes time to decide.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, they go with Ya Ya.
	Now, by 1971, again, spring of 71 is when all of this political stuff with East Pakistan is coming to a head.
	These protests are happening.
	You know, things are on the brink there of kind of like a civil conflict.
	Kissinger has been the center of U.S. policy for three years at this point, right?
	U.S. foreign policy.
	And folks in D.C. by 71 are amazed at the degree to which he has centralized power.
	His junior Southeast Asia aide, Sam Hoskinson, recalled, the power was there.
	He was gathering it up.
	You felt like you were at the political center of the universe.
	He and the president, that was where the decisions were made.
	What a sounds like a democracy to me, baby.
	And you know what?
	Instead of getting away from that, let's just replicate it forever.
	Yeah, let's just do versions of this forever, but with people who are, well, not, yeah, let's just do versions of this forever.
	I'm not even going to try to quantify it.
	Yeah.
	At age 48, Kissinger was new enough to power that he was noted at the time as being extremely jealous of anyone who might be seen as a rival.
	He focused obsessively on pleasing Nixon.
	Henry himself had no particular biases against India or Indian politicians, at least not compared to Nixon.
	But when he saw how racist his boss was, he knuckled down and found his inner bigot.
	He was successful enough that Nixon said of him, Henry is my least pathological pro-India lover around here.
	God.
	Good work, Henry.
	You did it, buddy.
	You won.
	You won the worst thing.
	In late 1970, Kissinger and Yahya began to make plans for a brokered secret meeting between the United States and China.
	As a thank you for his help, in October of 1970, Yahya got to visit the White House in person, where Nixon agreed to sell weapons to his country again.
	Now, this is illegal because there's an arms embargo, which does not get lifted, but they decide we'll just do it.
	It'll be a limited violation of the I believe that there was a loophole for BFFs.
	Yeah, there's BFF.
	He got drunk with me.
	Quote from the Blood Telegram.
	Yahya got a reward for his efforts in late October 1970 when he met Nixon in the Oval Office at the White House.
	In their last meeting before the crisis erupted, Nixon began to sell weapons to Yahya again.
	And what was officially billed is a one-time exception to the U.S. arms embargo imposed on both India and Pakistan in 1965.
	It was the kind of exception that demolishes the rule.
	That embargo had already been eroding under Johnson, but now Yahya secured a moderately big haul, a harbinger of much larger ones likely to come.
	The promised weapons included six F-104 fighter planes, seven B-57 bombers, and 300 armored personnel carriers.
	You want to guess what's going to be done with the weapons we send him?
	Nothing?
	Yep, that's right.
	I'm like, episode's done.
	All right.
	We all had fun.
	In March of 1971, Mujibur, who is the, he's like the guy, the East Pakistani political leader, right, who runs this party that wins the elections.
	He meets with Yahya in Dhaka, which is the capital of East Pakistan, in an attempt to reach an agreement over the elections Yahya had just decided to ignore.
	At first, it was.
	It felt like an agreement was already got electoral with the voters.
	Yeah.
	So at first, Yahya's like, hey, we settled things.
	Great.
	And then the very next day, he has Mujibur arrested and sends 60,000 soldiers into East Pakistan.
	Now, actually, I say Sinzen.
	These guys had been slowly infiltrating the country for weeks by air because you have to like fly them in, right?
	They can't just drive anywhere because there's India in between the two.
	They embarked on an operation called Searchlight.
	And I'm going to quote now from an article in the New Yorker.
	Firing squads spread out across East Pakistan, sometimes assisted by local collaborators from Islamist groups that had been humiliated in the elections.
	In the countryside, where the armed resistance was strongest, the Pakistani military burned and strafed villages, killing thousands and turning many more into refugees.
	Hindus, who composed more than 10% of the population, were targeted.
	Their un-Muslimness ascertained by a quick inspection underneath their clothing.
	Tens of thousands of women were raped in a campaign of terror.
	Bengalis also murdered and raped Urdu-speaking Muslims whom they suspected of being fifth columnists for West Pakistan.
	Archer Blood, the U.S. Consul General in Dhaka, among others, reported the slaughter of professors and students at Dhaka University, an attempt to silence the intellectual class who had eloquently articulated Bengali grievances.
	So, Archer Blood is interested.
	And the Blood Telegram really goes into detail about this guy.
	One of the very few cases of a powerful State Department official with some power who's like a genuinely good person.
	Blood works all over for the State Department's.
	He's an evil name.
	He does have the worst ways.
	Sounds like he should be doing things.
	Yeah.
	Sounds like you should shoot fire arrows.
	He has opportunities to be in what are considered more prestigious postings, including Greece, but he doesn't want to be in Greece because it's a CIA-backed dictatorship at this point.
	And Bengal, you know, what becomes Bangladesh is like, he feels like I can do something there, right?
	It's this place that has a lot of legitimate problems, but also there's this like burgeoning democratic movement and people are like taking.
	And he's renowned in the area for like being incredibly social with Bengalis.
	You know, like his kids make friends with local children who live around.
	They invite them into their home and have slumber parties.
	Like he's just like a nice person.
	Right.
	And you're not going to rise to who wants that guy.
	Blood sends a telegram to Nixon and Kissinger.
	You know, Dave, when we tweeted about this, you asked, will there be blood?
	And I said there was going to be a blood telegram.
	This is what that is.
	In the Blood Telegram, Archer Blood attacks the Nixon administration for their deafening silence towards the violence in Bangladesh and moral bankruptcy in the face of what he termed a genocide.
	And this gets signed by every diplomatic official who's in Uzindhaka.
	This enrages Nixon.
	And Kissinger soothed his boss by saying, that consul and DACA doesn't have the strongest nerves.
	Basically, like, oh, he's just getting scared by a little massacre of all of the students and professors at the university.
	This guy, huh?
	Don't worry, Dave.
	I cannot believe his last name is Blood.
	Let me rub your broken spine.
	Really would work better for my last name, you know?
	Why?
	My last name is about kissing, and he has blood.
	He's the kissing guy.
	He's kissing.
	I'm bloody.
	The use, Kissinger added, and this is him now talking about what Yahya is doing in East Pakistan: quote, the use of power against seeming odds pays off.
	He's very impressed by the fact that Yahya gains control of East Pakistan with just a few thousand soldiers, you know?
	He's really impressed.
	So there's a bunch of people get angry.
	You know, one of the big people who's most vociferous in the U.S. government against what's happening in East Pakistan is Ted Kennedy.
	He is like a really like takes this on as like a banner crusade.
	So, you know, once again, people get very angry at the administration for what's going on.
	Nixon tells Kissinger, quote, the people who bitch about Vietnam bitch about it because we intervened in what they say is a civil war.
	Now, some of the same bastards want us to intervene here, both civil wars.
	He's being like, see how inconsistent they are?
	Yeah.
	Pick what you pick.
	What do you want?
	Do you think selling arms to one side in a civil war might be intervening?
	Is it possible?
	They want to count our thumb on the scale.
	We're not going to do that.
	We haven't taught them.
	We're not going to do that.
	Oh, Yah needs how many more missiles?
	Oh, sure.
	We'll give us some missiles.
	Absolutely.
	So Kissinger writes up a policy paper in which he urges the U.S. to, quote, make a serious effort to help Yahya end the war he'd started.
	And again, this isn't even really a civil war.
	East Pakistan isn't like mobilizing a vast army to fight for their independence.
	They like voted, and then Yahya sent soldiers to kill them all.
	Civil war.
	It does.
	There start to be guerrillas, and like the Indian government starts sending weapons into guerrilla fighters in East Pakistan.
	But the massacres start first.
	Well, and again, I mean, like, to what you're saying, he held an election.
	I mean, this would be like if David Cameron just had tanks the day after Brexit.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, God.
	That's not a bad idea.
	That's not good.
	I would have, I mean, marginally better, I guess.
	Britain somehow colonizes the EU.
	Oh, my God.
	Britain finally colonizes itself.
	I say there.
	You work for us.
	Well, we already bloody work for you.
	There you dare.
	Now you do.
	No, we already did.
	We're British.
	You work for the British now.
	Oh, yeah.
	And because of their Sandhurst educations, Gareth, your same fake accent can work for Yah.
	Lovely.
	Tis I. Yaya.
	So.
	Cognac on the mind, I think.
	Nixon responds to Kissinger's policy paper with a handwritten note that he adds to the paper saying, Don't squeeze Yahya at this time.
	Do you want to kiss him?
	Which is good advice under normal circumstances.
	In May, India.
	Pass this to Richard.
	And this is, you know, India, there's a degree of legitimate concern among Indian people for like the humanitarian crisis.
	There's also politically, there's tons of refugees, right?
	And so there's also this like very blunt political, like, well, we can't let this be happening because refugees are a political problem for us, right?
	There's states, you know, nations don't make decisions ever because it's the right thing or the wrong thing to do.
	But India is broadly speaking on the right side of this one.
	I think that's fair to say.
	So because they're watching what's happening, India starts massing troops on the border of East Pakistan in order to potentially intervene.
	But they don't do anything yet.
	Nixon tells Kissinger to cut off economic aid to India if they intervene in this genocide.
	And Kissinger responds, quote, the last thing we can afford to do now is to have the Pakistani government overthrown, given the other things that we are doing.
	This is a clear reference to their plans to meet with China, right?
	He's very directly saying the reason we can't let anything happen to Yahya's government, even though they're carrying out a genocide, is because we need him to get to China.
	Now, Kissinger follows this up with a sop to Nixon's racism, calling Indians, quote, the most aggressive goddamn people around there.
	Again, I mean, it's obviously like the projection is obviously insane.
	Nixon responds by telling Kissinger that what India needs is a mass famine.
Kissinger as Lube 00:10:33
	Kissinger does not.
	Jesus Christ.
	Kissinger does not disagree.
	And he follows up by saying India has no right to invade another country, quote, no matter what Pakistan does in its territory.
	I'm going to take a five.
	You guys can keep going.
	I'm going to take a five.
	You guys keep going now.
	That's fine.
	I'm going to go outside.
	I got a hang through a wall.
	Real concerned about national sovereignty.
	Can you imagine someone doing something like that?
	Yeah.
	We can discuss, given the history of the United States as a whole, who gets to fairly complain about violations of national sovereignty, but definitely not Henry Kissinger.
	Yeah, like certainly not this guy, right?
	It's like the fucking dudes from the Bush administration yelling at like what Russia's doing in Ukraine.
	Not that the Russian actions in Ukraine.
	No, it is like, no, not you.
	Not you.
	Not you.
	There's a lot of people we don't want to hear from.
	You're absolutely not you.
	So Kissinger assures his boss, besides the killing has stopped.
	So it's fine.
	It had not, as a headset.
	It had not.
	It has not.
	In April of 1970, Mon, which is, by the way, Archer Blood, the State Department official who does everything possible to get the U.S. to act, Kissinger and Nixon fire him.
	Get him immediately out of there.
	You got to get that guy out of there, right?
	Yeah, this guy sounds like that guy out of there.
	He's terrible.
	He doesn't know what he's talking about.
	Yeah.
	Now, in April of 1971, the same month as the Blood Telegram, Nixon receives his official invitation from the Chinese government.
	And again, it's a secret invitation, right?
	You know, everything's because they don't know that it's going to like work.
	You can't just have Nixon go to China first.
	You have to send someone ahead of time to handle early negotiations and whatnot.
	Like it's a whole process.
	Yeah, it's a pre-China.
	Yeah, it's a pre-China.
	Yeah, you got to lube up your China before you get that dick.
	Yeah, before you get that dick in there, actually.
	That's right.
	Here I come.
	Nixon, gleeful, tells Kissinger to go.
	Kissinger is the lube in this situation.
	Tells Kissinger to go in secretly and handle these early negotiations.
	He claims that this visit to China they're planning will be, quote, a great watershed in history, perhaps clearly the greatest since World War II.
	And that's what Nixon says.
	Kissinger, being a kiss ass, responds by saying, no, no, it'll be the greatest since the Civil War.
	I mean, my God, the idea that you're following that up with, no, no, better.
	Better than World War II.
	Yeah.
	So July came and Kissinger set off for Southeast Asia on what was billed as a diplomatic tour of the region, but obviously is in reality a secret diplomatic mission codenamed, oh boy, Operation Marco Polo.
	Oh, for fuck's sake.
	Fuck's sake.
	I mean, at least just get a better marketing person in the White House.
	It's like, Nixon, Nixon, listen to me.
	Marco Polo.
	Push out of water.
	Marco.
	So Nixon visits India and then he flies to West Pakistan.
	And shortly after landing, he's a distance.
	He's drinking he and Yaya.
	Wait, what?
	Oh, my God.
	Yeah, he fakes the stomach bug.
	Oh, I thought you were tending to get his stomach pumped.
	No, no, no.
	So he's like, tell everybody I'm shitting.
	Yeah, tell everyone I'm pooping with myself.
	We got a good excuse.
	Tell them I'm on the toilet shitting my brains out.
	So he cancels, Kissinger cancels a couple of days of planned meetings.
	And then while he's supposed to be sick, he boards in secret a special plane and flies from Islamabad to Beijing.
	Now, I'm going to quote from a write-up in the Daily Star, which was an Indian newspaper that summarizes what happens next.
	During Kissinger's China visit, both sides discussed a variety of issues.
	Kissinger found Zhao and Lai, who had studied in France and Germany from 1920 to 1923, to be a very articulate person who could converse even in German, Kissinger's mother tongue, with ease.
	Both leaders agreed on recognizing Communist China as the only China and allotting a permanent seat in the UN Security Council to Beijing instead of Taiwan.
	The situation in the Indian subcontinent was discussed in detail, on which they had similar views, with both expressing their unwavering support to Pakistan.
	Zhao briefed Kissinger about the Indo-Chinese border skirmishes and blamed India for provocations.
	Both leaders had complete convergence of views on Yaya's stand on the Bangladesh issue.
	Kissinger flew back to Paris and reached Washington on July 13th.
	So.
	Okay.
	Good.
	I mean, again, like, yes, they should be talking.
	Yes, this is fine.
	Yes, if you're going to have a security council, Beijing should probably sit on it rather than fucking Taiwan.
	Also, it's just a shame that it needs to come from mainly alcoholics.
	Yeah.
	Like that in order to make the right decisions, it needs to come on the back of genocides and blackouts.
	Yeah.
	And like, I feel like probably if the Nixon administration had just like announced publicly through like the global media, we were wrong, the United States, and our policy towards Taiwan, and we want to recognize China and establish relationships with them and put them on the U. If they just like said that in like a news thing, probably China would have been like, oh, okay, this all could have happened.
	But that also would have looked weak by the standards of like politics, right?
	It would have looked like begging.
	And so they're not going to do that.
	They're going to do this instead because it looks like for the base who, you know, just wanted Vietnamese and Kimbuni people to be fucking massacred so they'd feel better.
	Like, yeah, it's the base we're talking about.
	The base wanted blood and they fired him.
	That's right.
	So when he got back to DC and sat down with his boss, Kissinger excitedly relayed the story of the cloak and dagger exercise.
	He's very excited that he got to deal with James Bond.
	He tells Kissinger, or Kissinger tells Nixon, quote, Ya Ya hasn't had such fun since the last Hindu massacre.
	Oh my fucking God!
	What in the fuck?
	You need to just like bring in another.
	I mean, blood would have been a good person, but there just needs to be a regular person.
	It's like, hey, I'm sorry.
	We can't talk like that.
	You guys keep getting really comfy with this language.
	It's really not okay.
	Yeah.
	Nobody says a goddamn.
	There has to be like some motherfucker cleaning up Nixon's like puke in the corner while there's a janitor who just like quietly shakes his head every time to camera.
	Yeah, they've got a gym in there.
	Yeah, right.
	The bartender, the knowing bartender.
	Just imagine that coming out of your mouth.
	Yeah, you can't, it's not a joke when you say that, wow, there's a genocide going on here.
	He hasn't had that much fun since a genocide, so that says a lot about us.
	It's just you celebrating a guy killing people.
	You realize how cool you got to be to him?
	I mean, look, I don't have a friend, but if I did.
	So on July 15th, 1971, Richard Nixon addressed the United States and told everyone that Henry Kissinger had just conducted a secret mission, which had concluded with an agreement for Nixon to travel to Beijing and negotiate.
	By this point, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians were dead, and more than a million had been made refugees.
	India was edging closer and closer to war over the whole matter, and it was the considered opinion of the defense establishment that they would win fairly easily.
	India had started arming Bengali guerrilla fighters at this point, and during one meeting on the matter, Nixon described Indians as, quote, a slippery, treacherous people who would like nothing better than to use this tragedy to destroy Pakistan.
	Oh, so fucked.
	I mean, you can't even talk about it.
	I mean, it's like, you can't even say shit anymore.
	Yeah, it's just, it's just insane nonsense.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's just so crazy how this, you know, this is imperialism, colonialist language.
	It's just never faded.
	No.
	No.
	There's just always guys in power.
	They've been talking like this since the fucking 1500s.
	It's never stopped.
	It's the, I mean, this guy's not, you couldn't really call him in power, but it's that fucking journalist for whoever talking about like Ukraine and like, this is the first war between civilized nations.
	It's like, what the fuck, dude?
	You know, it's quite different to see people who are white and European do it.
	That feels quite different.
	And the way he's carefully, that journalist you're talking about, the way he's carefully picking his language, and he's like, you're like, wait, this is your thoughtful version?
	This is your delicate statement?
	He cut the slurs out, you know?
	Yeah, he was like, gotta be careful here.
	I'm gonna say some dirty words.
	Because Nixon, they absolutely say some slurs.
	Yeah, oh, yeah.
	So the outcry domestically and internationally reaches a fever pitch at this point, kind of late summer 1971.
	And in August, the escalating crisis pushes India to sign a formal treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
	Anti-communists, Nixon included, considered this a disaster and as good as an end to India's neutrality.
	But condemning Yahya or stopping the sale of U.S. weapons to a country committing genocide was not considered an option.
	Yahya had to be kept in power until the China trip was conclusively locked down.
	Jesus Christ.
	I'm going to quote again from the Blood Telegram.
	A while after Kissinger returned from Beijing, he said, we cannot turn on Pakistan, and I think it would have disastrous consequences with China that after they gave us an airport, we massacre them.
	In this case, for Kissinger, massacre meant putting pressure on a government, not the actual massacres.
	I mean, they've done so many massacres that massacres aren't massacres anymore.
	Yeah.
	This is the only thing Henry Kissinger ever described as a massacre is people being mean to Nixon's drunk genocide.
	Nixon, meanwhile, was committing a genocide.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, that's good.
	That's good.
	You know what?
	Somebody make a Nixon-themed gin cocktail.
	The genocide.
	It should be red in color.
	Pineapple.
	Cherries.
	A little bit of your own puke from the first sip.
	So also in August, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar organized a benefit concert in New York supporting relief efforts in Bangladesh.
	Nixon brushed this off to Kissinger, saying, quote, Biafra stirred up a few Catholics, but you know, I think Biafra stirred people up more than Pakistan, because Pakistan, they're just a bunch of goddamn brown Muslims.
	Oh, for fuck's sake.
	Fucking Christ.
	Yeah.
	Well yeah, but we need to bomb the Beatles.
Brown Muslims and Catholics 00:04:23
	Yeah, I'm being recorded.
	We've got to record the Beatles.
	We have to kill the Beatles.
	The only one we could keep is Ringo.
	He seems like we could maybe shift him.
	Yeah.
	There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
	Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
	You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
	And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
	We always say, trust your girlfriends.
	I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
	Oh my God, this is the same man.
	A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
	I felt like I got hit by a truck.
	I thought, how could this happen to me?
	The cops didn't seem to care.
	So they take matters into their own hands.
	I said, oh, hell no.
	I vowed I will be his last target.
	He's going to get what he deserves.
	Listen to the girlfriends.
	Trust me, babe.
	On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
	I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
	Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
	Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
	And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
	Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
	You related to the Phantom at that point.
	Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
	That's so funny.
	Share each day with me each night, each morning.
	Say you love me.
	You know I.
	So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
	This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
	I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
	From power to parenthood.
	Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
	This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
	From addiction to acceleration.
	The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
	You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
	And it's a multiplayer game.
	What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
	Find out on Mostly Human.
	My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
	Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
	What's up, everyone?
	I'm Ego Mode.
	My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
	It's Will Farrell.
	My dad gave me the best advice ever.
	I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
	I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
	I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
	He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
	Yeah.
	He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
	And he's like, just give it a shot.
	He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
	If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
	It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
	Yeah, it would not be.
	Right, it wouldn't be that.
	There's a lot of luck.
	Yeah.
	Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Political Fuckery 00:15:30
	We're back.
	Again, I mean, it's like you would expect, and again, I mean, or at least in my head, at some point, you would expect someone to just be like, guys, what the fuck?
	Even if it didn't really change anything, it would at least change the casual language and racism that is just kind of tossed around.
	Or someone would be like, hey, you shouldn't be recording all this.
	Yeah.
	Oh, boy, you shouldn't be recording all this, Dick.
	Hey, I'm going to hit the map.
	That's why we have all this to take.
	I'm going to hit stop on this.
	Yeah.
	I'm going to infiltrate the Nixon administration.
	Yeah, Nixon did.
	Nixon was like, I think we got a mole and it might be drunk me.
	I think the Black Operation recording us.
	We need to fight a war on Knight Nixon.
	On October 25th, 1971, the People's Republic of China was admitted to the UN as a permanent member of the Security Council.
	Again, their seat had been occupied for Taiwan by years.
	Taiwan gets like let out very unceremoniously.
	China gets put in place.
	The People's Republic of China's representative celebrates with a vocal attack on, quote, American imperialists and their running dogs.
	But nobody took this seriously.
	It was generally referred to as firing by empty cannons.
	You know, you're China, you got to throw out your attack on the U.S.
	But like, you know, everybody's getting along at this moment.
	Right.
	By November of, again, when we just talked about the guy who built that giant mountain-sized cannon for Saddam, like not long after this, the CIA is like illegally helping that arms designer subvert international treaties to sell cannons to China because China's, you know, not on good terms with the USSR.
	It's all just like brinksmanship, political fuckery.
	That doesn't match up with some of the history in this country.
	That's strange.
	So, yeah, by November of 1971, more than 10 million people had been made refugees by the violence in Bangladesh.
	Jeffrey Davis, a doctor who was brought into the country by the UN later to perform late-term abortions on rape victims.
	Again, this is like, so part of what happens is the systemic mass rape by Pakistani soldiers, Bangladeshi women.
	The UN brings a doctor in afterwards to like perform these abortions on these rape victims.
	The estimate before this doctor comes in is that between 200 and 400,000 Bengali women had been raped.
	And Jeffrey Davis says, oh, it's way more than that.
	Oh, my God.
	It's much more than that.
	The CIA estimates 200,000 civilians are murdered in this period.
	Given where the U.S. stands on this issue, you might not want to trust the CIA's numbers.
	Now, the Soviet newspaper Pravda estimates some 3 million dead, which is also likely not entirely accurate, but is probably closer than the CIA's numbers.
	Credible low estimates of the death toll are over half a million.
	It is very likely that between one and two million Bengalis were murdered.
	One and a half million is often what you will hear.
	Probably pretty fair.
	Although any kind of exact count is obviously impossible.
	But this is a genocide on a Titanic scale, you know?
	In December, West Pakistan declared war on India.
	Remember, Yahya's not good at things.
	So.
	I mean, I mean, he's again, breakfast cognac will do you some crazy shit.
	So their man declares war.
	Again, Yahya declares war.
	That's right.
	We're going to attack you, you bloody fools.
	You mess with the wrong Yahya.
	Nixon and Kissinger blame this on Indira Gandhi.
	I'll tell you, this is why you can't have a woman in India.
	She's simply just asking to be attacked.
	Nixon tells Henry that it makes your heart sick to see Pakistan be done so by the Indians.
	And after we have warned God, the good guy.
	After we've warned the bitch.
	Oh, sorry, I cut you off.
	Yeah.
	And after we have warned the bitch.
	I mean, again, it's like you're not in a tavern.
	This is the fucking White House.
	Should we put that in an official press statement?
	Probably not, Richard.
	Let's talk about that in the morning.
	Oh, let's call her a whore then.
	Let's just.
	Yahya proved to be as bad at war as he was good at being friends with Dick Nixon.
	The Indian military curb stomps Pakistan.
	I cannot exaggerate the degree to which these guys get their asses handed to them.
	Within a week, it is clear that not only is West Pakistan going to lose the war, but Pakistan might not survive as a country as a result of how badly they're being beaten.
	Yahya is not good at anything.
	I want to quote now from a write-up by an Indian veteran of drinking.
	He's really pretty good at drinking.
	What do you mean I started war with India?
	That was days ago.
	I said, I'm sorry.
	I can do it.
	Probably my worst knockout.
	So I want to quote now from a write-up by an Indian veteran of the conflict for Indy TV, which is another Indian news periodical.
	On December 8th, as Pakistani defenses in East Pakistan were falling before the onslaught of the joint command of the Indian Army and Bangladeshi Mukti Bahini, liberation warriors, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were busy plotting ways to change the tide of war or arrest it.
	Henry Kissinger, in a meeting with Richard Nixon and Attorney General Newton Mitchell, now declassified, said he has got a message for you to you from the Shah of Iran, which says he can send ammunition to a beleaguered Pakistan.
	He is doing it now.
	What is going on?
	You know who can help us here?
	The Shah of Iran.
	The level of war to stop war.
	Yeah.
	Who's another piece of shit we can bring in on this?
	The brilliant diplomat also revealed that Iran will send fighter planes to protect Jordan from Israel, while Jordan will send jets to Pakistan for the war effort against India.
	Honestly, what is like, it's how like an NFL trade works.
	Yeah, how could you have thought this would work?
	I mean, it's a drunk game of risk.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it is.
	He's just wasted playing risk.
	The U.S. National Security Advisor also expressed fear that India would attack West Pakistan in a major way after winning the war in the East.
	The Indian plan is now clear.
	This is Kissinger.
	They're going to move their forces from East Pakistan to the West.
	They will then smash the Pakistan land forces and air forces, annex the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir, and then call it off, warned Henry Kissinger.
	When this has happened, the centrifugal forces in West Pakistan would be liberated.
	Baluchistan and the Northwest frontier will celebrate.
	West Pakistan would become a sort of intricate Afghanistan.
	So this is Afghanistan.
	That's Henry's concern.
	So he insists this is enough of a disaster that the U.S. has to send the 7th Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in order to scare India.
	The 7th is headed by the USS Enterprise and is widely considered to be the most powerful naval force on earth.
	This prompts the Russians to send a fleet in as well.
	And the world gets to live through another period of are we going to have a nuclear war?
	Jesus Christ.
	Kissinger, because he's real good at calming people down, encourages China to intervene against India.
	And in Nixon's words, quote, scare those goddamn Indians to death.
	China's like, maybe we should go back to the Taiwan thing.
	We actually seem to be a little funny.
	They seem to be pretty good, actually.
	That was working a little better, I think, for you guys.
	Welcome aboard.
	Now you're in hell.
	In the end, Kissinger's plan failed.
	India does not take his bait, and in late December, Pakistan surrenders to India, East Pakistan, because of its own independent nation, Bangladesh.
	Yahya is forced out of office and placed under house arrest where he suffers a stroke.
	So that's the thing.
	I'm genius.
	I've got an idea for a comeback, boys.
	It's called the comeback cognac kid.
	Oh, you mean I can't leave?
	That'll be fine.
	So Kissinger claims this whole state of affairs, how this all resolves, is a victory for the Nixon administration.
	Clearly, he announces this by saying, congratulations, Mr. President.
	You saved West Pakistan.
	I did.
	What time?
	Was it last night?
	You saved West Pakistan.
	Amazing.
	I mean, who's the hero?
	I mean.
	Two months ago.
	Congratulations.
	You did it.
	Congratulations being said.
	Amazing.
	Now, two months after the end of the war, Nixon makes his big visit to China.
	The media eats it up.
	And suddenly Nixon's re-election campaign has something to hang their hats on beyond claims that peace in Vietnam is going to happen one of these days.
	We'll get it right.
	The detente with the Soviets is announced soon after, right?
	They do like their good thing.
	Obviously, it's good that this happens.
	Good things result from it.
	During a conversation later that year, Kissinger tells his boss, no one has yet understood what we did in India-Pakistan and how we saved the China option, which we need for the bloody Russians.
	Why should we give a damn about Bangladesh?
	Well, there you go.
	That says it all, right?
	Yeah.
	There it is.
	Nobody's congratulating us on how good of a job we did.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, in their opinion and their track record of foreign policy, it's all about egg breaking.
	Yeah.
	You know, for whatever version of omelette they insist they're serving.
	Yeah.
	And it's like, yeah, man, I agree.
	U.S., you know, Mao and fucking Kissinger or Mao and Nixon should have sat down and talked like all of these conversations should have been happening.
	Detente with Russia good.
	Feel like you didn't need to back a genocide to make that happen.
	I feel like that wasn't a necessary ingredient.
	It's easy to look back on a genocide and go, was this right or wrong?
	But when you're in the middle of a genocide, you're like, this seems pretty okay.
	I mean, I'm getting a which genocide are you on?
	How else can I talk to people?
	I'm having cognac with Yaya before flying to China.
	And keep in mind, I'm good here.
	I'm pretty much blackout drunk for all this.
	So they're pretty good for a guy who can't walk in a straight line.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, that's how Henry Kissinger made peace between the nuclear powers.
	Jesus fucking Christian.
	No asterisks on that one.
	I mean, it is the most chaotic, insane fucking nonsense.
	It's just crazy.
	No, I really, it is on a level where, I mean, it's been hard to process the whole time, but now it's like it's normalized.
	And you're seeing the version when they're sort of the training wheels have been taken off, how much they are actually doing and getting away with in way.
	Like, again, I mean, just to have an adult in the room.
	But I mean, they fire, you fire the adult, obviously.
	But it is on, it is, I mean, it just is absolutely fucking preposterous that this is not well known about, or even if it, even if it is well known, how the fuck Kissinger keeps showing up over and over again with all these people that people, that, that people are sycophants for in our, in our politics.
	No, I can never, I can never get over the fact that Hillary Clinton was campaigning with him.
	Yeah, and that people are like, oh, look who's back.
	Shady.
	One of the things that's so this doesn't really like mark on like the moral list of things that he did wrong, but I just find it so shameful that like again, you have all of these other people, like all of the folks we've talked about, like Yaya, like Nixon, who do horrible things, but are like also getting to like exercising power and like the big men and like, you know, the dudes that the like, I don't know, they're not like sycophants,
	whereas Henry is just sort of like sucking up to everyone around him in order to further war crimes, which again, it doesn't isn't doesn't rate disgusting on a moral level compared to everything else.
	It just is like, that's the guy he is.
	Yeah, he's just like a powerful guy.
	The power guy he is.
	He's just like, he is not, I mean, and also, and I don't mean to keep beating this drum, but they're drunk.
	Yeah, well, I don't think Kissinger is, but Nixon, for sure.
	That's what I mean.
	Yeah, and Yaya is, yeah.
	Yaya is, and Nixon is, and Kissinger is not.
	And he's still like, ah, that's a pretty good idea.
	Yeah.
	You know, it's be like, it would be like if you're around, like, like you're in a car ride to Florida with three drunk guys and they're just like, hey, what did we drink last night?
	And the one guy's like, I haven't drank, but let's go to Florida.
	Yeah.
	God, it's, man.
	And the blatant racism as far as like who you're willing to sacrifice.
	I mean, you know, as usual in this country where, yeah, you just, you really do not give a fuck.
	They really just literally do not care about anybody who's not right.
	They just don't fucking care.
	Why would they?
	I mean, if you're them, there's no referee in this game.
	So foul as much as you want.
	To fucking, to fucking, you know, grow up with the Nazis right there and watch the Holocaust and then Dave, to be able to do this.
	Dave's childhood is not affected.
	His childhood, he didn't, was not affected by this childhood.
	That's true.
	Sorry for I'm not going to be able to do that.
	No impact on it.
	Going back to that, but again, we've sort of knocked that domino down.
	That did not happen.
	Like it never occurred.
	It didn't happen.
	Clearly.
	You know, that's why, look, that's why he's fine with what's happening in Bangladesh.
	He knows it's not going to affect those kids, the ones who survive.
	Those who lived through history are doomed to repeat it.
	Because it was fine.
	Yeah.
	Because it was.
	It was completely fine.
	It was fine.
	Why?
	Because I said so.
	Yeah.
	Anyway.
	I just typed in Kissinger's name in to Google and the first thing that comes up is you.
	Pile of vomit.
	Oh, God.
	What did he say?
	Fucking hell.
	We don't need to settle the UK crisis, start at the end.
	I don't even want to know.
	Oh, that was 2014.
	What the fuck?
	Okay, okay.
	Still nonsense.
	Like, of course, yes, it would be great to start at the point where there's not a war, but that's not really helpful, Henry.
	Thanks, Henry.
	Yeah.
	Oh, thanks, buddy.
	Yeah, okay, whatever.
	He's on the same thing.
	Yeah.
	He's doing kissing.
	Like, it doesn't matter.
	Like, obviously, when you say, like, there's point things like the fucking nuclear disarmament, where like you can find moments in history where he's right.
	It doesn't matter if he's right or wrong about a specific issue because we see what he actually does, which is whatever it takes to keep himself close to power.
	Like, he doesn't believe anything to the extent that he's ever right or a part of something good, like arms reductions.
	It's because that's the thing that the people who he's sycophants to want to do.
	And it doesn't matter that he supported the opposite thing for years, like, because he doesn't care.
	Yeah, because it's a parasite just looking for a hook.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's the thing.
	Like, I don't give him credit for anything.
	Yeah.
	Well, like, it's funny.
	It's funny you say that because all these articles about what he said about Ukraine in 2014, so people are going back to like, he said, and you're like, yeah, no, that guy's a fucking war criminal.
	If only he'd thought to start at the end of the war.
	If only we'd thought of that, Henry.
	Great point, Henry.
	Solid.
	We're going to start a GoFundMe to get you bones.
	Yeah.
	Oh, God.
	I hope if he doesn't die immediately, obviously him dying immediately is my primary hope.
	But I hope if he doesn't die immediately, he lasts long enough to get sucked into one crypto scam.
	You know?
	Just one good cryptocurrency scam.
Buying a Piece of Skin 00:04:31
	Can we get that at least?
	I want him to start his own crypto called Hank Bank.
	Hank of America.
	I am noble blockchain.
	You could buy a piece of my skin.
	Each NFT represents an individual time Richard Nixon vomited into my lap.
	I've become an NFT.
	Oh, God.
	All right.
	Well, guys, I'm done again.
	Plug anything here.
	I mean, again, it's getting harder.
	All right.
	We are the dollop, and you could go to dollarpodcast.com for tour information.
	We will be all over Australia and America this summer.
	And then you can go to my website, which is GarethReynolds.com, for stand-up dates domestically and in Australia.
	And go to parasite.com, which is just pictures of Kissinger.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Go to his parasite.
	Go to his parasite.
	I have a novel.
	Just Google AK Press After the Revolution.
	It's for pre-order now.
	You can still get it signed.
	Every copy, I will spit on Henry Kissinger's grave once when he dies.
	So make me DIY.
	You're going to need IV.
	Robert's getting woozy, everybody.
	Hurry.
	Look, like all politicians, I won't entirely keep my promises.
	Some of that spit's going to be piss.
	You know?
	Some of it's going to be piss.
	Here we go.
	We're breaking it.
	Sab.
	Thought I knew you.
	Oh, God.
	Hi, everybody.
	Robert Evans here, and my novel After the Revolution is available for pre-order now from akpress.org.
	Now, if you go to akpress.org, you can find After the Revolution, just google akpress.org after the revolution.
	You'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book.
	And if you pre-order now from either these independent bookstores or from AK Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool.
	You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold.
	So please Google AK Press After the Revolution or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it.
	You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy.
	When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
	I vowed I will be his last target.
	He is not going to get away with this.
	He's going to get what he deserves.
	We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
	Listen to the girlfriends.
	Trust me, babe.
	On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
	This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
	I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
	An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
	My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
	Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
	Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
	Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
	You related to the Phantom at that point.
	Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
	That's so funny.
	Share each day with me each night, each morning.
	Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	What's up, everyone?
	I'm Ego Modem.
	My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
	My dad gave me the best advice ever.
	He goes, just give it a shot.
	But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
	If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
	It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
	Yeah, it would not be.
	Right, it wouldn't be that.
	There's a lot of life.
	Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	This is an iHeart Podcast.
	Guaranteed human.

Chapters

00:00:00 Trust Your Girlfriends
00:03:06 Dangerous State of Affairs
00:16:33 Cold War Propaganda
00:28:57 Mandatory Drink Minimums
00:33:34 Handling Ceaușescu
00:48:51 Kissinger as Lube
00:59:24 Brown Muslims and Catholics
01:03:48 Political Fuckery
01:19:19 Buying a Piece of Skin