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Aug. 18, 2021 - Viva & Barnes

02:02:11

Sidebar with The Duran! Viva & Barnes LIVE!

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Time	Text
	Live on time.
	It may look like I'm in a bunker, because I might be in a bunker.
	I'm at a cottage, so I can't...
	I don't have the fancy studio, but I've got a quiet room, so hopefully this is not going to get interrupted by any one of...
	I last counted nine children.
	But the wonderful thing about these streams is they can be done from anywhere, and so long as I have my computer, my mic, Internet connection, a cell reception, because I'm tethering off my phone again.
	We should be good.
	How is the audio?
	And how is everything going?
	Let's see, we got F, hello, looks like a sauna.
	Yes, that is a bunk bed behind me, so that gives you an idea as to where we are.
	Is that a sauna with a bunk bed?
	No, just a room with that wood that looks like sauna wood.
	Okay, good.
	Sound should be good.
	It's actually pretty insulated.
	And I notice we have Triumph.
	951-000.
	A new member.
	You know, I don't actually...
	First of all, Triumph.
	Welcome to the channel.
	Welcome to the membership.
	Membership is a way to support the channel.
	You can support us through Locals if you also want to.
	Members, Locals, Patreon, Subscribestar all get sneak peeks of the vlogs so they can get chat comments in the comment section before it goes live.
	It's one of the minimal perks we can do.
	Locals is where we really have...
	Some big perks.
	And that's it.
	Let's see what we've got here.
	Hi, I'm in Florida.
	Hi from Florida.
	No, Florida's looking mighty nice these days, people.
	I tell you what.
	Viva from Norway.
	No, I wish.
	We're just outside of Montreal.
	So, today's going to be a good one.
	We got the Duran on.
	And I'm going to mess up their last names.
	We got Alexander and Alex Christoforu.
	And, oh, I wrote it down.
	It was the Alexes from the Duran, which is...
	Very good, very insightful, and I would say PG, political insight, political commentary.
	And we didn't get too far into the Afghan debacle, for lack of a better word, on Sunday during the live stream, but we're going to get into it now in much greater detail when we get our guest and Robert in the house.
	Let me just see what's going on here.
	Okay, Tim Pool just released a video.
	That's not what we're looking for.
	But while they emerge and the guests arrive and Robert arrives, let's do the standard disclaimers, although it shouldn't be much of a problem today.
	First of all, time is off today.
	Off for some, but good for others, because now our subs overseas can tune in, which I'm sure they appreciate.
	So this was a 1 o 'clock and not a 7 o 'clock stream.
	Standard disclaimers, super chats.
	If I don't get to them and you're going to be miffed, don't give the super chats.
	I don't like people feeling miffed, rooked, shilled, grifted.
	It's to support the channel and we greatly appreciate it.
	YouTube takes 30% of Super Chats.
	I think they take 30% of memberships as well.
	Not 100% certain on that.
	So if you don't like that, you can support us on Locals.
	Locals takes 10% and then there's the processing fees, but that's on our end.
	Okay, what else?
	No legal advice.
	No medical advice.
	And that's it.
	Now I'm going to bring in some chats, bring in some comments before we get this stream started.
	Triumphs has been a member and a viewer of your channel for a while and the Duran for years.
	Love it.
	From Long Island, New York.
	Long Island?
	Last time I was in New York was the month before the pandemic broke.
	February 2020.
	And my, has the world definitely changed?
	Let's see what else we got.
	Let's bring up some chats here.
	Why are you bothering with politics on my day off?
	Just kidding, Zents.
	This is not going to be politics.
	This is going to be political analysis.
	I mean...
	The big story of the week, and it's a shocking one.
	It's shocking.
	You know, I don't want to be the guy who would find fault in the current administration, regardless of what they had done.
	But it looks like it couldn't have gone any worse, and blame has to go somewhere.
	I read a report that said there were up, nobody knows, but anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people, Americans.
	Still left in Afghanistan with no way to get out now.
	I don't know if that number is accurate, but the fact that most people are agreeing that it's 5,000 to 10,000, now in Afghanistan, seeing the videos of Air Force planes with Afghan civilians trying to leave, holding onto the wheels, some of them holding onto the plane as it takes off.
	I mean, it's a debacle through and through.
	And it brings up the old questions, you know, whether or not anyone should have ever been there in the first place, but like I tweeted an undumbed tweet on Twitter, if anybody follows me there, the Viva Fry, the argument that we should never have been there in the first place is not a rebuttal to the argument we should not have left in a hasty manner, abandoning assets, people, military resources, to the...
	People that we had been fighting for 20 years.
	You basically achieved nothing and actually just gifted them a military that they would have never had in the first place.
	The only people that really benefit from this are the industrial military complex, to use the term.
	So that's it.
	I don't want to be a naysayer, just pick on the Biden administration, but it's quite clear that it's an abhorrent debacle and what to make of it.
	Okay, let's see what we got here.
	Just watch Rebel News Trudeau video.
	I can't believe how people are justifying vaccine passports and are okay with Trudeau spending a trillion dollars.
	So, interesting segue.
	We can talk about this until our guests get here.
	So I just went door-to-door to get my signatures, my 100 signatures, so that my name will appear on the ballot for the People's Party of Canada on the election day, September 20th.
	Justin Trudeau just called the election.
	I went door-to-door.
	I discussed with people.
	People who, I don't doubt them, are doctors, people who are working in healthcare.
	People who support the vaccine passport, support compelled vaccination of age 12 to 17, think that everyone should be vaccinated, support the idea of depriving citizens of privileges or what I think are rights to compel vaccines.
	People support this.
	People support this under these circumstances.
	We're not talking about the hypothetical measles or smallpox.
	Vaccines and those vaccines, FDA approved, years of efficacy, safety.
	These circumstances, people support this.
	And I can only assess it to being whipped into a state of absolute fear where you are now firmly convinced because of the media and because of the government that this is the only way out.
	If we just do this, we'll get out of this.
	And I've talked to a lot of people who genuinely believe it.
	And it's...
	I mean, I don't know how you get away from this because this can go very ugly places if people actually believe you should be locking up or depriving citizens of rights if they don't get fully vaccinated as young as 12 to 17. But it's going to take a public discourse so that people maybe back away from the fear and say maybe this is not entirely logical, maybe this is not entirely science-based, and maybe this is not entirely justifiable under these set of circumstances.
	Does Roberts know any employment attorneys in Tennessee who can help with an employer vaccine mandate?
	I don't know.
	I would suggest ask the question in our community, in locals, and you'll probably get a response.
	But I'll ask Robert when he gets here.
	Wood paneling bunk beds, are you in a bunker?
	Wood paneling would probably be a mistake for a bunker.
	But no, I'm in a cottage and I'm in a quiet room, so I'm just going to appreciate.
	The sound of silence.
	Hit the like button.
	Okay, let's see what we got here.
	I see the fear of peddling.
	The fear of peddling has been insane and far too smart people are completely wrapped up in it.
	It is mind-blowing.
	As I was going door-to-door, and I'm not sharing this anecdote to mock or ostracize because, like I said in a video I just published today, at the end of the day, these are people I want to represent and these are the electorate I have to listen to.
	When I went door-to-door, I was outside.
	On two occasions, and someone asked me to put on a mask when we were both outside, and we were nowhere near two meters from each other.
	And you realize that there's no logic to that.
	There's no logic to that.
	There's no science to that.
	It is pure terror.
	It is someone who's living in such fear for such a period of time.
	All they hear on the radio, all they hear on the news, day in, day out, this mortal existential threat.
	And if someone's not wearing a face mask, even if they are outdoors on a sunny day, literally five meters from you, it's an existential threat to even contemplate inhaling if the wind blows the wrong direction, particular matter that comes out of their mouth.
	And a part of me feels genuinely bad.
	And the other part of me says, how do you reach these people?
	And how do you walk them back from where they are?
	Because they're...
	Some of them are so far into the depths of fear and panic.
	Rational thought and rational discourse has gone out the window, and the question is, what do you do?
	All right, I see someone in the house, I guess.
	I'm going to bring up a couple more chats, then we're going to bring them.
	Does you have any forms or prepared statements that challenge the legality of the Philadelphia mask mandate?
	Another question, you know what, we have to pin that comment to the locals board.
	There is a template floating around.
	Not mine, because I'm a Canadian lawyer.
	I have no knowledge of any of this.
	And I'm actually so neurotic, I would even be reluctant to share any template.
	Check the locals community.
	Check in the chat.
	People can help you out there.
	Let's do this.
	Hold on.
	No, that's not what I want to say.
	I wanted to see.
	Fear is the ultimate control to hold power.
	I'm seeing it in real time.
	I'm seeing rational, logical people who have been...
	Browbeated is not the word.
	They've just been crushed by...
	18 months of pure fear-mongering at every step of the way.
	Billboards on the street.
	The neon lights.
	They say, COVID-19, be safe.
	Our premier going to Twitter, be safe.
	Be safe.
	Be safe.
	My grandmother used to say that to me all the time.
	Take care, she used to say.
	Not be safe.
	Take care.
	And it was reflexive.
	She didn't even recognize when she was saying it.
	But it's the most...
	It was a fun thing.
	It showed that she loved us.
	Yes.
	But this be safe.
	Be careful.
	Wash your hands.
	It is just...
	It's Vegas-like stimulation of the fear senses.
	That's what it's like.
	That's good.
	Vegas-like stimulation of the fear senses.
	After 18 months of propaganda, what's weird is not that people are willing to go along with it.
	It's weird.
	What's weird is that we don't want to against all the opposition.
	There's a lot of pressure from people not to contest.
	There's a lot of pressure that if you even question any of this, you're a nutcase.
	And with that said, I'm going to bring in Alexander, who is in the house.
	Let me see who else is going on here.
	Alright, bring him in.
	I see Barnes is coming too.
	Look at the timing here.
	Alexander, how you doing?
	I'm doing very well.
	Delighted to be with you.
	I'm sorry if we were a bit late from London, but here we are.
	Delighted to be here.
	Don't worry about it at all.
	Usually I go 15 minutes to do the intro anyhow because YouTube is somewhat slow with notifications, but you're from the UK right now, right?
	I am indeed.
	I am in London, a city which I'm glad to say is not quite under the same sort of lockdown that it was only a short time ago.
	Things are still far from normal here, and we'll have much to discuss.
	We're going to get into it.
	Beautiful day in London, and delighted to be with you as well.
	Fantastic.
	And it's great meeting people who you've been listening to.
	I've gotten to you only more recently because of Barnes, but better late than never, and it's always fun to put the face to the voice.
	Robert, how are you doing?
	Good, good.
	Look at this.
	It's a party, and now Alex is in the house.
	Okay, we're going to go like this and see what the layout...
	We've never done four before that I can think of on this show.
	Let's do a little mic check and see whose audio, everybody's audio is good.
	Alexander, go for it.
	Well, I hope that mine is good because I can hear everybody clearly and I'm delighted to be on this show and we're going to have an absolutely phenomenal discussion, I can tell.
	Alex, how are you doing?
	I am doing great.
	I apologize to everybody and I apologize to you, Alexander.
	I messed up the time zones.
	So that's why we're a little late, but I apologize to everybody.
	I messed up.
	Nothing to apologize for.
	I habitually do a 10 to 15 minute intro just to do the disclaimers, let the crowd come in.
	Robert's in the house.
	Okay, so look, I think a lot of our crowd knows who you guys are, and I don't know who's going to field it.
	Before I delve into your childhoods, which we may or may not do today, explain either of you, both of you, who are you, elevator pitch, what have you done, when did you get started, and how did you get to be where you are now?
	Alexander?
	Well, let me start.
	I'm from Greece.
	I come from a family in Greece which was very heavily involved in...
	Politics there.
	My aunt, my grandfather, my grandfather, my uncle, they've all been in politics in one form or another in different sides.
	I find myself in London in the 60s.
	I've lived there ever since.
	I was educated here, thus my accent, which, as you notice, is not Greek at all.
	And then I practiced for a while as a lawyer here.
	I became duty solicitor at the Royal Court of Justice.
	I left.
	I joined up with Alex, we set up the Durand together, and here I am.
	So I've had that rather interesting and complicated history, living in many different countries, up and down Europe at different times, but basically permanently in Britain as my home since the 60s.
	And Alex, how about you?
	Yeah, look, we started the Duran.
	We actually met up the first time in Moscow, I believe, is when we first met face-to-face.
	And we were involved in different projects.
	And we met in Moscow.
	And I believe about six months later, we ended up starting the Duran, which was actually in 2017.
	We just had a website.
	It was just a publication.
	And we were just writing articles.
	We were just going through the grind of having a news blog, writing articles.
	And we ended up, I was living in Moscow at the time, kind of going back and forth from Moscow to Cyprus and Moscow to Greece.
	And then I moved permanently back to Cyprus.
	And we were about a month away from closing our business, our web publication, because...
	I mean, you know, I don't know if you guys know about websites and blogs.
	I mean, it's just not that much money to keep a business going in that.
	You know, we weren't a huge website.
	We weren't small, but we just weren't big.
	We didn't break through.
	And we decided to do the YouTube thing, and it worked out.
	And here we are today.
	It's amazing.
	I always go back to the first videos to see how the quality has improved, how the format has been tailored over the years.
	And it's an amazing transition, but you guys got a system.
	For those who don't know, what do you do on the Duran?
	Well, we cover international news.
	We used to do a lot of news on the United States, but of course YouTube isn't so keen on that.
	But we are hoping to do more about that on Locals.
	We have a particular view of American politics, which let's just say is not entirely the one that the powers that be at the moment want us to have.
	But anyway, we did that.
	We covered American politics.
	We cover international news.
	We then set up our own separate channels.
	I tend to look at international relations, you know, the big geopolitical game.
	My background has, you know, educated me to a certain extent on international politics and foreign policy and that sort of thing.
	So I tend to do that and, of course, bringing my own...
	Set of skills to it, if you like.
	What I like to do is I like to read what governments themselves say and actually base it on it.
	And I take the assumption, I always make the assumption, that no government is ever telling the truth, because that is the assumption you should always follow in...
	Looking at foreign policy as everything else.
	So I do a mostly foreign policy channel.
	We're going to do, I'm sure now, you know, that we do things on locals and those other places.
	We're going to grow back to the United States and we're going to look at this again, the politics there.
	Still the most important country, actually, despite what people say.
	It's where a lot of the real important things happen.
	Yeah, I just want to add to that that we're...
	We're pretty much, we try to be as real politic as possible.
	Obviously, we're humans and we have our biases, but we try to look at the situations as best we can and try to be as real politic when we're looking at geopolitics in general.
	And it's worked out for us.
	But sometimes, as you guys know, when you take a real politic position on certain matters, well, some people don't like to hear certain things.
	Sometimes a lot of emotions get involved.
	But look, you know, Real politic is real politic, and the way the world is, it is what it is.
	Sometimes it doesn't work out the way we hope things work out.
	Sometimes we talk about news that is unjust, that's not righteous, that is unfair.
	But this is how things work.
	This is how things work in the world, and we try to break it down as best we can and as honest as we can.
	In other words, for example, if you're in a situation like, say, you're the president of the United States and somebody comes to you and tells you that the Afghan army is really strong and can't wait to fight the Taliban and that they're all ready and that the government is good and not just a bunch of corrupt gripsters from the World Bank, but the Afghan people love the Afghan president and can't wait to...
	That maybe you need a realpolitik analysis of what might actually likely happen lest you get...
	Maybe the most publicly humiliating event.
	I mean, it's worse than Saigon in my view.
	Maybe worse than the Iranian hostage crisis.
	But what are you guys' thoughts on how badly Biden's team misread what was going to happen in Afghanistan?
	Because at least that part seems clear at this juncture.
	Well, I think it's a classic case of the leaders in Washington, the people around Biden, Biden himself, listening to what they wanted to hear.
	They wanted to believe that they were fully in control of the situation.
	They wanted to believe that they could carry out an orderly exit, that the government would survive in a decent interval, that they'd be able to negotiate some kind of transition that would work out well for them, that there wouldn't be these terrible scenes that we see.
	That the whole thing wouldn't collapse.
	That is very common.
	And, of course, the other thing is, if you are in a big organisation, and this is any organisation, but, of course, a government is the most extreme case, and if you are very much supported by the people within that government, which this administration has been, this president has been, the very strong temptation is to fix the advice that's been given.
	To the president around the kind of things the president might be wanting to hear.
	And unless you are a tough-minded, strong-willed, intelligent political leader, if you're a...
	President who has a critical, you know, view of the world.
	You are the sort of person who will believe that.
	The point is, you've got to go out there as the president.
	You've got to ask the questions.
	You've got to talk to the people.
	You've got to consult.
	You've got to be critical.
	You've got to be skeptical.
	You've got to be beyond what people tell you.
	And, of course, he didn't.
	He did what he was...
	He heard, he believed what he was told, he just aimlessly and without much understanding led himself into the disaster that he's in.
	I've seen it happen in so many organisations, I'm sure we all have, that the person supposedly in charge is blinded by his own beliefs and by the things he's told by the people around him.
	And that's exactly what's happened here.
	Well, actually, let's go back.
	We'll back it up straight to the beginning.
	I mean, we were in Afghanistan strictly as a response to 9 /11.
	This is to be distinguished from Iraq, which had a hybrid justification.
	Afghanistan was 9 /11 occurs, go after the Taliban, go to Afghanistan where this all allegedly was plotted, the Taliban responsible for.
	How does it go from that to 20 years later?
	Well, I think you have to start with what actually happened in 2001.
	Because, of course, there was what the US was wanting to do in Afghanistan.
	And I think you're probably summed it exactly right.
	I think they did want to go in.
	They wanted to clean up Al-Qaeda.
	They wanted to come after Osama.
	But then somebody else came along.
	And that person, as I so well remember, was Tony Blair.
	And Tony Blair insisted on joining the show because he always wanted to join it.
	Every kind of show like that.
	And he made this extraordinary speech, which I also remember very much at the Labour Party conference, in which he said, The future.
	I can remember those words like yesterday.
	You know that all the pieces are in play.
	They're going to fall and this is our chance to put them.
	And he brought up many of the things that you hear today.
	Things about the role of women.
	Things about spreading democracy and human rights.
	His perception of democracy and human rights to Afghanistan.
	And of course lots of people in Britain.
	We're, you know, caught up in this.
	And unfortunately, a lot of people in the United States got blinded by it too.
	And very early on, and I think this happened much sooner than many people realise, actually, you got this sort of idea that was coming very much from him, and it's really worthwhile.
	Reading that speech that he gave, or he's finding recordings of it and seeing it, you can see there the origins, the seeds of the disaster, because he knew nothing about Afghanistan.
	He wasn't interested in the history of the country.
	He had no understanding of the kind of place it was.
	He wasn't interested in these things, but he did want...
	To become the person who would change the present, and he wanted to bring the United States and use the power of the United States to do so in accordance with his own beliefs, ideologies, outlook, and ideas.
	Yeah, Alex, can you speak to, I think, one of the most sometimes misunderstood notions out there is that the only sort of colonial, imperial mindset Is on the neocon side.
	And that in reality, the neocons and neoliberalism are very close together.
	And generally on the international stage since the 1960s, neoliberalism has been the dominant ideology that has influenced a lot of these, we're going to remake some, especially because Afghanistan was perceived as so quote-unquote backwards in the Western mind.
	That they thought this would be a great opportunity to show what we could do, to show the power of American ideas and Western ideas and British ideas and European ideas and modern ideas and all of these things.
	We spent, just on the American side, 20 years, thousands of Americans dead or wounded, and about a trillion dollars, conservatively.
	That's not even counting.
	Some other things that went on.
	To understanding that both the neoconservative and neoliberal mindset is critical to giving a realpolitik understanding of what our Western leaders are really thinking.
	Yeah, I mean, the U.S. does, with neoliberalism, does an interesting kind of thing when they nation-build.
	And I just want to get to what Alexander was saying about Tony Blair, because I think it plays into what you're asking, Robert.
	Tony Blair, to me, he revved the whole thing up, but for people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, all these nasty neocon guys that were in the Bush administration that wanted to plunder and pillage Afghanistan.
	They wanted that war.
	To me, Tony Blair, I remember, he added a bit of English class to the whole effort to go to war with Afghanistan.
	And so while Tony Blair provided a lot of the seeds of the nation building, he also helped these neocons sell it to the American people.
	There's no doubt about it.
	And the fact that the UK was involved, it definitely helped the Rumsfelds and the Cheneys and all these guys really ramp up the war in Afghanistan.
	And it went from a one year thing of going after bin Laden, supposedly going after bin Laden, to being what we see today, this 19 year war.
	And Obama has a different take on this.
	Obama...
	And Samantha Power, remember humanitarian wars, humanitarian intervention, that's her term, right?
	They provide the neoliberal nation-building model.
	So we'll move away from the rough neocon model, which is just, we're just going to go in there, you're either with us or you're against us.
	We're going to go to Afghanistan.
	We're going to hunt Bin Laden down, right?
	And then we're going to stay and we're going to make the country into a democracy.
	That was their thing.
	Make it into a democracy, right?
	The United States is exceptional.
	It's what Reagan said.
	It's that light on the hill, that beacon on the hill.
	That's what we're going to make Afghanistan.
	But in comes Samantha Power.
	In comes Obama.
	And now we've got a neoliberal experiment.
	Not only is it about democracy, now it's an ideology.
	We're going to make them into a liberal democracy.
	We are going to open up universities that teach gender studies.
	We're going to put women in the parliament and we're going to put a quota of how many women need to be in the parliament.
	We're going to turn Afghanistan into a neoliberal democracy like we have in the West.
	Now that's the plan.
	Humanitarian wars, humanitarian intervention.
	We're going to bomb the crap out of them.
	We're going to pillage them.
	We're going to do all these things to them because it's the humane thing to do.
	We're going to do it for human rights reasons now.
	It's not about democracy.
	It's not about going after Bin Laden.
	Now under Obama, everything changes and it becomes this human rights deal.
	And there you have eight years.
	You have eight years of Obama.
	So 20 years, boom.
	Automatically, you've cut those 20 years to now 10 years.
	And then, of course, it just keeps on going.
	I mean, that's exactly how this all went down.
	It started from the neocon and it moved to the neoliberal.
	It is amazing for anyone who has a memory and who read the articles before they got memory hold.
	It was always a discussion of nation building back in, let's say, the mid-2010s.
	I remember reading things about the types of gender studies and things along those lines that they were talking about in Afghanistan, never fully appreciating.
	Never conceptualizing that you have what is an occupying force in a foreign country trying to create these values in the hope that they last.
	And it's a, I guess, in the most ideal sense, it's a praiseworthy venture.
	It's a praiseworthy project if it has any chance of succeeding and if you have any moral authority to do it in the first place.
	But then to hear it go from it was never about that whatsoever, then what the heck was the last 20 years?
	Well, exactly.
	Can I just say, there is a difference between neocons and neoliberals.
	Neocons believe that the United States has this power to move around, to go around the world, pursuing its interests, and it's not really going to be constrained in any way.
	Humanitarian interventionists think that the United States has an obligation, a moral obligation, to intervene in places.
	And it's important to remember that the big debacles that we've seen, the wars that really took off, places like Vietnam, and in some ways this twist of Afghanistan, the kind of people who really start bringing all these ideas in.
	Come very much from the left.
	Rumsfeld didn't want to stay in Afghanistan.
	He wanted to go in.
	He wanted to smash it up.
	He wanted to change it.
	He wanted to go out.
	John Bolton has said, and I believe him, he said, I wanted to go into Iraq.
	As far as I was concerned, Saddam Hussein was a challenge to the United States, but I certainly didn't want a nation built there.
	That wasn't what I was about.
	I mean, I think he was wrong to go in to Iraq.
	I thought...
	At the time that Afghanistan was also wrong, but it's the combination of the two, the neoliberals and the neocons together, that have proved so deadly in this case, even though, in my opinion, both are wrong anyway.
	The other thing that this case, Afghanistan, is about, because it's a test case for so many things, about the failure to have realpolitik understanding of what was going on.
	Neocons pretended it was one thing.
	Neoliberals pretended it was one thing.
	The only guy who had a clear-eyed view, in my view, was Trump.
	And they kept him from getting out of there as long as possible.
	Now, he did make clear yesterday what a lot of us suspected his negotiation tactics were with the Taliban, which was, you know, my view was, I just told him, if you make things look bad, I'm just going to bomb your family's village.
	And then the next family's village.
	And here's your, I know where your home is.
	You know, very Trumpish.
	He played off that very successfully, particularly in a world where, in a warrior culture, that respects that, whereas we're never going to respect Biden.
	But if we go further back, the other thing this is is another example of blowback.
	Another example of what happens when we have so many intelligence operatives and state departments and diplomacy corps that don't think past a year or two years, that they don't think 10 years, 20 years, 30 years in the future, because the Taliban is substantially a part of our own creation.
	The idea was, you know, I mean, we helped recruit.
	In fact, we deliberately recruited the craziest people in the world because that's who we thought would be the most dedicated to taking out the Soviets.
	And part of this was kind of in response to the Iranian revolution and the problem Saudi Arabia was having internally in 1979 was a dramatic year in the Middle East.
	And let's unleash...
	And the problems we have in Pakistan.
	And so it's kind of let's blow off steam from Pakistan by shifting it over to Afghanistan.
	But the long and short of it, for whatever reason, the ultimate outcome was we helped create the Muhadine, which birthed a substance, which ended up sort of merging with tribal culture and creating the Taliban.
	But it's like nobody sat there in 1979, 1980 thinking.
	Maybe helping create Sunni-style terrorism or Islamic fascism isn't necessarily the best idea in the world because it might backfire down the road.
	Instead, it was, man, this will make the Soviets' lives miserable, so let's have right at it.
	So, Alex, how much is...
	I think we'll keep going.
	We'll do the squares thing.
	We'll go around like this.
	That works for everybody.
	How much is the other part of the untold story with Afghanistan blowback in intelligence operatives?
	The American CIA hasn't thought, sometimes past a year or two.
	We could list about 50 examples of blowback over the last half century, but maybe one of the worst of them.
	Was unleashing, encouraging, inciting, training, equipping, arming Osama bin Laden as part of the Muhadine and what's happened in Afghanistan.
	And we're really seeing in part the consequence of a mistake made almost 50 years ago, back in 1979, 1980.
	Do you guys remember the movie Rambo 3?
	Yes.
	Remember that movie?
	Where Rambo was working with the Mujahideen?
	Yes.
	And then at the end of the movie...
	They have, like, you know, at the end of the movie, they say to the brave fighters in Afghanistan who are fighting for freedom against the Soviets, the Mujahideen.
	I mean, that was, that says it all.
	I mean, those were the people that the U.S. was working with, and they were training, period.
	So, I mean, it's, you know, the whole thing is such a fiasco.
	It really is.
	And the intelligence agencies.
	Have they been right on anything?
	And we did a show on this with Alexander, which will go up in about a day or two.
	We talked about the intelligence agencies.
	And I'm trying to wonder, are they doing this on purpose?
	Are they being wrong on purpose?
	Or is this just incompetence at a gigantic level?
	Because you go back, you mentioned Iraq, Iraq WMDs.
	We can talk about Syria.
	And the chemical weapons in Syria.
	We can talk about Trump and Russiagate and Ukrainegate.
	And we can talk about January 6th.
	Talk about all these things.
	They are never right about anything.
	Libya, they're never right about anything.
	And now you have Afghanistan, which is 20 years of lies.
	Every year they were saying everything's going great.
	Nation building.
	We got women in parliament.
	This is an equitable society.
	We got equity everywhere and freedom and democracy.
	All is well.
	And this is what we heard year after year after year.
	And now, 20 years later, everyone is kind of sitting there scratching their heads going, how did this blow up so fast?
	Well, it wasn't really so fast.
	I mean, this has been 20 years in the making, but it's been 20 years of lives for the intelligence agencies.
	I just don't know if this is incompetent at a gigantic level because they can see all our text messages.
	They can read everything that we say.
	They've got us all in a folder.
	They know everybody, what they're doing.
	They're plugged into big tech.
	They're plugged into Facebook.
	They're plugged into Google.
	They know everything about us.
	But when it comes to getting it right on the big things, on the big geopolitical things, they're always wrong, it seems, unless they're doing this on purpose.
	There's a concept called fractal wrongness.
	Like, no matter what you do, it's the wrong thing to do at that particular time.
	I won't say we're there yet, but it does come to mind.
	But now, I don't know, maybe Robert might be the best one to field this.
	In the chat, a lot of people are talking about the poppy fields, the heroin coming out of Afghanistan, CIA protecting that.
	For someone like me, who doesn't fully understand exactly what is being alluded to or suggested, what is the story?
	What's the CIA's involvement with any poppy fields or the heroin trade out of Afghanistan?
	I'll let Alexander go first, because we'll keep the...
	Well, I'm going to say this.
	About the poppy fields and the drugs, I'm not sure what the role of the CIA is.
	There's been documented that they were heavily involved in the drugs trade in Southeast Asia during the 60s, and possibly they were involved in other things too.
	But what I'm going to say is this.
	One thing was absolutely clear to me from a very early stage, back in the 1980s, Terrible people we're talking about, the so-called Mujahideen, were heavily involved in the drugs trade.
	I can remember in London, I was in London in 1981, and suddenly we had this flood of heroin coming.
	Nobody ever said from where, but it was clearly from Afghanistan.
	And it went...
	From the universities and, you know, the people, the intellectuals, the bohemians, those sort of people.
	And it started to spread to the mass population.
	And it was an absolute social disaster.
	This is in the early 1980s.
	And it was obviously linked to the war in Afghanistan, which at that time we were supporting.
	And it was obvious also that it was connected to the people.
	We were supporting.
	And no one would say that.
	You never heard it discussed on television, in the newspapers, at any level at all.
	And in those days, I wasn't obviously somebody with my own channel, but I did ask a few people that I knew who might know, why is that?
	And of course, they all agreed to me.
	They all admitted to me at that time.
	Well, it's because of the war and we have to support the war.
	And then you'd ask, why are we supporting this war?
	Well, because we are in this great global confrontation with the Soviets and my enemy's enemy is my friend.
	That was very much the attitude.
	So already in the early 1980s, I could see.
	How the problems were stacking up.
	They were stacking up with the drugs.
	They were stacking up with the kind of people we were involved in at that time.
	And the big question was why?
	Why was Afghanistan so important to us then that we had to accept this social disaster that was working out?
	In our own cities, on our own housing estates, amongst our own people, that we would support it.
	And if it is indeed the case that agencies of the CIA, like the CIA, were involved, then I'm going to say this, that was absolutely shocking, totally wrong, and is another reason why we should treat our intelligence agencies, who must have been at the very least...
	Fully aware of what was going on with the greatest distrust and act out to reform and change them.
	Yeah, I mean, for those who don't know, opium is the number one export from Afghanistan.
	It is, in fact, functions as their currency.
	There was a good breakdown on part of this issue on Alison Morrow's show, her husband and another gentleman who are long-standing vets that have been in and out of Afghanistan.
	Everybody I know who went there gave fascinating stories.
	Because one of the other stories of this, which we'll bridge into next after another discussion on the CIA aspect and the drug aspect, is the degree to which the Western world, especially Americans, but I think Brits and Europeans as well.
	I mean, Politico wrote a piece saying, all the European leaders thought Biden was a foreign policy expert until now.
	Where did they get that idea?
	Who in the world thought that?
	That is sad.
	I mean, that's Justin Trudeau level pitifulness.
	But that sort of broader context is the media, the ordinary person is completely in the dark.
	Like most Americans were truly, utterly shocked at what they were witnessing.
	But that's because they've been lied to for 20 years.
	And there's many Americans who are now just coming around to the reality, oh, we've been lied to for 20 years.
	Everything we did there was useless.
	All the money we did there is now in the pockets of the Taliban.
	The Taliban has our helicopters, has our guns, has our weapons.
	Now, that may not really be the first time that's happened, but that's another story.
	But to have it on this scale, and then to have people falling off of planes, you know, hundreds of feet in the sky, I mean, this is the kind of visual imagery that nobody will ever forget.
	And it's a shock because the American media keeps everybody in the dark.
	They keep people in the dark about what's really going on on the ground in Afghanistan, just like the intelligence agencies do.
	I mean, there was one guy who had a good Twitter thread who was in sort of the military bureaucracy.
	He said, it's real simple.
	They want you to have a certain answer at the top, so that's the answer you give them.
	Because if you give them any other answer, you're out.
	I mean, there are two good movies, one with Brad Pitt featuring how...
	The insanity of the self-delusion that generals would engage in.
	All you've got to see is General Milley, Miley, how you pronounce his name.
	I mean, critical race theory, reading about white rage.
	I mean, these are people that really also convinced themselves that the gender studies degrees was going to revolutionize Afghanistan in a country where 99% believe in Sharia law.
	I mean, it's the highest where 40% support suicide bombings.
	I mean, like by every metric of hardcore Islamic...
	Islamofascist ideals, Afghanistan, its population, at least to the degree that the polling is accurate, was off the charts.
	But in terms of the CIA drug components, you can go all the way back.
	The degree of drug consumption and overdose problems in the United States closely tracks where we're involved in the world at that time.
	Al Prophet has a bunch of documentaries on this, and you can just track the statistical data.
	So, I mean, to what Alexander was talking about, famously, infamously, Air America, where we were doing it.
	Eric Hundley had a great interview with Michael Levine, one of the most famous DEA and federal law enforcement officers in the history of the country.
	Who ended up resigning because he kept running into the CIA interfering with his drug investigations because they were their CIA sources or allies or places.
	And he ran into, you know, even to the point where he's in Argentina in the late 1970s.
	And there's Nazi Klaus Barbie working with the CIA to help the Bolivians develop the coca trade before Colombia took off.
	But so there's a long, that's like 20 hush-hush episodes at vivabarneslaw.locals.com where we can go into story after story after story about this.
	But I think one part of the story is definitely the degree to which we may, and the reason for intelligence agencies love it.
	Is because it's a source of alternative currency, number one.
	Number two, it's the kind of people they want to do business with around the world.
	Who can smuggle information in and out?
	Who can smuggle people in and out?
	Who can smuggle arms in and out?
	Who is good at infiltrating police forces and military operations?
	Drug dealers!
	Criminals!
	I mean, we've been doing this since we let Lucky Luciano walk out of New York State Prison to help us go back into Sicily and Italy.
	And people like Hoover and people like Dulles and the others thought, hey, man, this works really well.
	And they're just not bothered by drug problems.
	You know, that's for Nixon and Reagan and Trump and politicians to yip about.
	That's not their concern.
	They see it as a useful means of currency, a useful means of information, a useful means of having your own private army anywhere, anyplace in the world.
	And so that part is really no surprise at all.
	And there's also practical sides of it.
	You talk to soldiers that are on the ground, they're like, it's a lot of small farmers that this is their only cash crop.
	So he's like, okay, if we go and burn and destroy it, all we're doing is wiping that person's ability to make a living.
	Like they're saying the economy, that's where Afghanistan was never going to change over 10 or 20 years.
	No, I mean, the British learned that after they tried to be there.
	The Soviets learned that after they tried to be there.
	Heck, even Alexander the Great couldn't last there.
	So, I mean, it's just not, it's like going into East Tennessee mountains or the Scottish Highlands.
	You know, good luck.
	Sooner or later, they're going to bounce back.
	But, Alex, talking about, like, a lot of what you guys do is just bring information that is almost never covered in the institutional press.
	Whether it's Russian weapons development systems, whether it was China and Russia, China cutting a deal with the Taliban in advance, which is half the reason why all of this went down the way it went down.
	But the American press and the Western press completely suppressing this.
	Unless it's on the CIA fact sheet for distribution for the day, Jake Tapper sure ain't going to be talking about it.
	So can you talk about how much media bias and media corruption is a large part of the reason most people were utterly shocked at what happened in Afghanistan, whereas people on the ground said this was going to happen?
	Yeah, they just simply didn't talk about it.
	It's that simple.
	And they do this all the time as well.
	We all know this.
	Everyone that's watching this channel, watching this live stream, they know what the media does.
	And they suppressed Afghanistan, once again, for 20 years.
	They did not talk about it.
	Going back to what we're talking about with the drugs and the opium, you know, in the 90s, Clinton bombed the hell out of Yugoslavia and Serbia.
	And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of research and a lot of investigative journalists that believe that Clinton was actually setting up the supply chains.
	Back then, to get the drugs from Afghanistan to the United States and to Arkansas.
	And what he was doing is he was setting up the Kosovo base in the heart of Europe.
	They would later go into Afghanistan and take Afghanistan and get the drugs from Afghanistan into the heart of Europe.
	They would use that to funnel the drugs throughout Europe.
	And then they would continue onwards to the U.S. all the way to Arkansas.
	And they would take the drugs from Arkansas and then funnel them into the United States.
	And that was the supply chain that was being set up.
	You know, the journalists could really dig into so many stories as to what's going on.
	But for God's sakes, they didn't even dig into Iraq WMDs, which was the thing that started all of this.
	The biggest lie.
	And, you know, we look at WMDs now and we all know that was just one big farce, a complete lie.
	But back then, everyone believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
	Weapons of mass destruction.
	WMDs.
	I mean, the marketing, everything about it, this is written by scriptwriters.
	These are Hollywood people that are creating this fiction.
	But you had journalists, you had people like even Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson have said that back then they believed that Saddam had Iraq, WMD.
	So they've been doing this for a long time.
	They twist everything.
	They suppress everything.
	Me and Alexander, we just try to cut through a lot of the BS.
	You know, I think you're going to be hard-pressed to find as good an analyst as Alexander.
	He's got the legal mind, and he can parse the words to cut through the bullshit that they're trying to throw at us.
	Because when you read the stuff that they're reporting, and Alexander can back me up on this, they do say the truth in media in their articles, and they do say the truth in their reporting, but you have to really dig deep.
	And cut through the BS.
	And we're living it right now, guys.
	We're living it with the COVID, with the pandemic, the lockdowns.
	We're living it.
	We lived it through the elections, which we can't really talk about on YouTube anymore.
	Before we were not allowed to speak about it, just broke down a New York Times article where, yeah, effectively, Alex, they mention the truth in it, but they literally frame it in a way where you would think the exact opposite unless you read through and read through properly.
	But one thing I noticed in the comments, people were talking about the WNDs.
	And I remember what I said at the time.
	I was 2001, so I was 21, 22 years old.
	And in retrospect, beyond ignorant.
	But I do remember in the first days of the war, Iraq started lobbying Scud missiles at Israel.
	And the justification at the time, Scud missiles they were not allowed to have under whatever international law they were alleged to have breached at the time.
	Therefore, the Scud missiles were the WMDs.
	Now, when we use the term WMDs, what did it mean at the time, and what does it mean now?
	I mean, what does it include in WMDs?
	Does it include any weapon or specific types?
	Weapons of mass destruction.
	I remember Hans Blitz was in Alexander, the sweet chemical guy that went to Iraq to look for WMDs, and he found nothing.
	But weapons of mass destruction.
	You know, what can you say?
	Are they nukes?
	Is it the COF itself?
	Is it the Wuhan labs?
	What do you mean by weapons of mass destruction?
	You get the same with Saddam's chemical weapons.
	You know, you got the same with Trump is a Putin puppet.
	I mean, this stuff is getting to the point of absolutely stupid, where you sit back and you say, Trump is a Putin puppet.
	But they say it a hundred times.
	People believe them.
	And there you go.
	You have one impeachment, two impeachments, all these things.
	Anyway, Alex, you may want to comment on that.
	It was Hans Blitz.
	It was Hans Blitz.
	What I just wanted to say was, I mean, I do think that obviously the media has been going, you know, they keep off stories, important stories.
	They don't do investigations.
	But in the last couple of years, they have completely left all connection with reality.
	Because one of the most...
	Ludicrous things, one of the most exhausting things to do was to try to unpick Russiagate.
	Russiagate was the most grotesque story, the most nonsensical nonsense ever put together.
	That Donald Trump won the election because of Russia and was in some collusion with Russia.
	I mean...
	It was absurd that anybody believed that.
	And Alex was really far too kind in what he said about my being an analyst.
	I can remember all this.
	Exhausting!
	Things that we, programs we used to do, going through every Russiagate story, unpicking it, and then another utterly absurd story would come along to take its place.
	And there are still people, far too many people, who continue to report this kind of nonsense.
	Well, you don't find WMT, you change the meaning of WMD.
	It's what is happening today.
	With language.
	Words, you change their meaning when they no longer mean what you want them to.
	So you say WMD.
	It was very clear what WMD used to be.
	It used to be weapons that were classified, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, weapons of mass destruction.
	And suddenly they become SCUD missiles because you haven't found them.
	And now they're going to be something else.
	Whatever it is that you want to say, you just change.
	You change the meaning of the word.
	You tweak it so that you can justify whatever it is you're doing.
	But, you know, we are in a very weird place at the moment because there are lies of omission and lies of silence, and then that's an important type of lie.
	And, you know, Alex talked about some of them, about, you know, not saying who is flooding the world with drugs if they're coming from Afghanistan Big war.
	That's a big lie of omission.
	But I think we've now got to a situation where we are actually seeing positive lies appearing in the media, going unchallenged, becoming the orthodoxies, spread everywhere and imposed on us and with people who don't.
	Accept those lies, try to argue and push back on them, finding themselves under real pressure.
	And that, I think, is something new.
	And that's, I think, something that's really developed in the way that it has over the last five, six years.
	Speaking of which, I mean, one of the things that you guys do very well, you have a lot of incisive insight that's based on understanding of context, historical knowledge, diversity of sources, but is also at the Duran is curating content and stories that you're just not going to get anywhere else.
	And so, for example, when I was going through you guys' stuff, when you were breaking down what was happening with China and Russia and Afghanistan, going back over months.
	I could not only see this coming, but understood what the Taliban's mindset was and everything.
	And it seemed like the only people who somehow pretended they didn't know or didn't know was, you know, the president who, you know, gets lost around the White House.
	So no shock there.
	You know, security has to direct him.
	No other door, other door.
	The, you know, I mean, it's just a...
	Sad joke.
	The most powerful country in the world has the decline of Roman Empire type leaders.
	At least he's not Caligula, I guess.
	But can you break down what the significance of what China in particular, because particularly in the States, you have a lot of division of China.
	A lot of people have legitimate, in my view, political concerns over China, but sometimes that filters their perspective, so they're not always getting an objective perspective.
	Like they think, oh, China's just expansionistic in terms of communist ideology.
	But when you look at China's foreign policy, that isn't really what they've been doing.
	It's something else.
	So for a lot of people, they're like, China, Afghanistan?
	They thought that didn't make sense.
	Given the issue with the Uyghurs and the Uyghurs previously being trained and some of them being trained in Afghanistan and having some ties.
	Can you describe what was the deal with, Alex, what was the deal, if we keep the squares going, but what was the deal with China, deal with Afghanistan, and what is their motivation, and is the Taliban likely to play along?
	Well, we'll go with the squares, but I can see Alexander's itching to answer this, and he's been really digging into the China stories really well.
	I mean, he's been pretty much reading the Global Times on a daily basis, so I think he's got a good understanding as to how the Chinese are thinking.
	I mean, the Global Times, for people that are wondering, I mean, that is...
	That's the Chinese government.
	That's their mouthpiece.
	So if you read the Global Times and parse through it, you get a very good understanding as to what the Chinese are thinking.
	In the same way, if you want to see what the Russians are thinking, they have a very good Kremlin website as well.
	Once again, you have to parse a lot of the words and you have to kind of think about what they're saying.
	But you do get a clear understanding as to what the Kremlin is looking to do.
	So, Alexander, I know you want to answer this because you've done a lot of videos on China and Afghanistan.
	Absolutely.
	And bear in mind something.
	Thanks, Alex.
	I just wanted to say this.
	The Chinese and the Russians have been talking directly to the Taliban.
	And they've been inviting the Taliban to their respective countries.
	So they received Taliban delegations in Moscow and in Tianjin.
	The time when Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State of the United States, was in China.
	She met the Chinese officials in Tianjin, but she didn't negotiate with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi because Wang Yi was actually negotiating at that very same time with the Taliban.
	He prioritised talking to the Taliban over talking to Wendy Sherman.
	Deputy Secretary of State of the United States.
	It's an extraordinary fact.
	And by the way, if you look at the State Department readout of Wendy Sherman's trip to China, it gives the impression that she was negotiating with Wang Yi when she was actually talking to other people and Wang Yi was talking to the Taliban instead.
	What do the Chinese want in...
	They don't want to send their troops there.
	They've seen what's happened to the Soviets.
	They've seen what's happened to the United States.
	They realise it will be a disaster for them.
	They don't want the Taliban to become a launch base for jihadi terrorist groups that might spread into Western China, that might affect the situation in Xinjiang province, in all of those places.
	They also have...
	Undoubtedly, a strategy of trying to develop and integrate what's really increasingly called Eurasia, which is to say this complex of countries, China, Russia, the Central Asian states, possibly very soon Iran too.
	Or they want to integrate it into a big economic bloc that will give them strategic depth as they face off against the United States.
	So what are they saying to the Taliban?
	They say, look, you take over in Afghanistan.
	You establish your government there.
	We're not bothered with that.
	We're not into human rights rhetoric.
	We are not into trying to...
	To promote democracy or establish a particular political system or ideology in your country.
	But you're going to do a number of things.
	You're not going to allow Afghanistan to become a launchpad for groups that might infiltrate into Xinjiang or Western China or get involved in Central Asia.
	You're also not going to have US bases and you're going to...
	Talk to the other communities in Afghanistan so that you can form a government which is going to be stable and which we can work with.
	And in return, we will send money there.
	Not in the way the US did.
	We're not going to just pour money in.
	We're going to build roads.
	And pipelines and railways.
	And we're going to integrate you into this greater Eurasia, which you'll be part of.
	And you'll be more stable that way.
	And you'll become part of our strategic hinterland.
	And in return, you'll be a stable government in secure hold of control over your own country.
	Now, I'm not saying this is going to work.
	Robert...
	Very accurately describe the kind of people that many of the Taliban are.
	Islamofascists, headbangers, people with extreme views.
	Maybe they can't be assimilated or worked with in that sort of way.
	But that's what the Chinese are trying to do.
	And they're talking directly to the Taliban about it.
	They've kept their embassy in...
	Kabul, they haven't tried to evacuate it.
	They're not at the airport.
	They're not doing anything of that kind.
	They're actually negotiating with the Taliban now, and they're trying to cut deals.
	In other words, they're trying to buy Afghanistan, because that's ultimately what China is all about.
	Well, so a lot of people in the chat were saying minerals, opioids, and emeralds.
	I know the opium, I mean, I...
	I don't know what's China going to do.
	I don't know how the drug trade actually works, but I don't know if China's interested in the opium coming out of Afghanistan.
	Natural resources are minerals out of Afghanistan?
	Absolutely.
	Copper as well.
	They apparently want to reopen one of the big copper mines there.
	And they want to also develop railway links that will connect through Western China to places like the Pakistan coast.
	They want to integrate it into the system and into Iran too.
	So that's their idea.
	Achieve strategic depth.
	And as far as opium is concerned...
	Sell what you like?
	Export it to the West, if you please.
	Just don't send it to China.
	If you don't mess with us, we will deal with you.
	Chinese are totally pragmatic, hard-headed, realistic about this.
	It's a play that might not work.
	The Chinese admit that it might not work, but it's a practical approach, a realistic approach.
	It's not the kind of approach that the West has followed.
	I would add, by the way, Robert made some very astute points about the kind of things Trump was saying to the Taliban.
	You know, if you start messing around, you know, we'll bomb the hell out of you.
	He also wanted to talk to them directly.
	He even wanted to meet with them in the United States.
	But, of course, The powers that be absolutely sabotaged it.
	So he wanted to do a deal.
	He wasn't allowed to do a deal.
	The Chinese are trying to strike that deal now, and it'll be done entirely on their terms and in their favour.
	Yeah, and what's interesting is the deal you described that China's cutting is the one that Trump was talking about cutting, effectively.
	Because Trump's whole thing is, as long as no Americans die, and our American friends, if you touch us, we'll just nuke your country.
	We don't care.
	I mean, basically, that was Trump's approach.
	And he was perceived as crazy enough for that to be credible.
	But his goal was to keep it within the, at least at some level, as a Western ally, more than a China-Russia ally because of its resources.
	Because that's one thing that Trump was refreshingly honest.
	He was like, just take the oil, take the minerals, take whatever they got there.
	You know, I mean, he was no, there was no bashfulness there.
	It was, you know, the like people on the left that were critics of Trump, Max Blumenthal, et cetera, at least acknowledge the honesty, the value of honesty in that respect.
	But.
	Because I assume Russia's objective is not as opportunistic as China's is and maybe a little bit more defensive in that they don't want...
	Afghanistan used as a staging ground because Russia itself has had to deal with a lot of Islamic-related terrorism.
	What do you think Russia's goal is and how has Russia's negotiations with the Taliban gone?
	Yeah, I mean, they did exactly the same.
	They received a Taliban delegation in Moscow.
	They're actually also keeping their embassy in Kabul open.
	They're negotiating directly with the Taliban.
	And, of course, they don't have the resources that the Chinese do, nowhere close.
	They are absolutely much more defensive.
	They fought a war against jihadi fighters, terrorists, they would call them, in the Caucasus.
	It was a very long war.
	It led to apartment buildings in Russia being bombed, and those were bombed by those people.
	I know there's a sort of theory that it was Putin himself who planted those bombs.
	That's absolute nonsense by.
	They don't want to see that.
	They don't want to see Afghanistan becoming a launchpad for people like that.
	They're infiltrating through Central Asia into Russia, and they absolutely do not want to see the Central Asian states, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and all the rest, destabilized.
	Not just because these countries are strategic allies of Russia, which they are, but also because if those countries are destabilized, there will first of all be massive refugee flows into Russia, and the Russians do not.
	Have any time for refugee flows.
	They're not like Merkel in Germany.
	They don't throw the doors open.
	They don't want to see that.
	And they don't want to see...
	Also, Central Asia become unstable and start to infect, with that kind of ideology, the 20% of the Russian population, which is not Slav, it's actually Muslim.
	It's people like the Chechens, people like the Tatars in Central Russia, all of those.
	So that's the Russian priority.
	That's the big Russian concern.
	Now, it dovetails.
	With what the Chinese are doing.
	And the Chinese and the Russians are talking to each other all the time.
	There was another conversation just the other day.
	Blinken telephones and speaks to both the Chinese and the Russian foreign ministers directly after he calls them.
	What do they do?
	They talk to each other.
	So they coordinate because there's some degree...
	Well, not to some degree.
	There's a great deal of overlap.
	Between what their objectives are.
	But of course the Russians are less ambitious than the Chinese.
	The Chinese want to establish this big strategic heartland behind them where they can draw in natural resources.
	They don't want to.
	They won't need to send them through the Pacific where the United States could, in theory at least, obstruct and.
	Yeah, Kardirov actually came out with a statement.
	Kardirov is the guy that's running Chechnya.
	And he actually came out with a statement and he railed against the United States.
	He said that the United States was lying to the Muslim people with regards to Afghanistan.
	So he's already come out.
	Alexander's right.
	The Russians value stability.
	And a lot of people forget Russia is so massive.
	They forget that places like Syria and places like Afghanistan, all these places, you know, from Syria, it's what?
	A couple of days' drive.
	Yeah.
	People forget that these places are not that remote from Russia, so it's not that hard for instability to migrate over from these places to Russia.
	So Russia wants the stability in the Caucasus.
	I mean, let's not forget, we just had a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Russia inserted itself.
	And what did they get?
	They got troops in the Caucasus.
	They finally got troops in the Caucasus.
	That was a big deal for them.
	I think, I forget, it's the guy who wrote the book about the Arabist mindset, which I want to get into down the road, but who said that he believed that Russia would always be obsessed with geography because of its massive borders and its histories of being invaded.
	And that consequently, they would always be paranoid about risks around the borders.
	And because there's so much, I mean, it's why they're concerned with NATO's, NATO's constant encroachment trying to get close to the border, that part of the perception as to why Stalin was so expansionistic post-World War II was because he just wanted that the Russians won border boundaries.
	They wanted a big, nice buffer zone between them and Germany coming back in again.
	Or anyone else coming back in.
	Or as they saw then, the Cold War beginning.
	So that would make sense in terms of Russia being obsessed with its boundaries.
	The other neighboring country that concerns, that I would see as a hot spot wherever I was in the world.
	In terms of Afghanistan, is whether it spreads to Pakistan.
	The history of the ties there, people were surprised at the Pakistanis saying favorable things about the Taliban because we bribed the Pakistanis every other day to please, please don't let those nukes get in the wrong hands.
	Those kind of things.
	Because they actually are a nuclear-armed country that does have a strong sub-population, minority population, but that's Taliban sympathetic.
	I mean, there's a reason why Osama bin Laden was hanging out in the general suburb.
	That's where that suburb was.
	General here, general here, general here, in between Osama bin Laden.
	Probably not a coincidence.
	We can reasonably speculate.
	But what do you think about how is Pakistan going to respond to this?
	And what is the rest of the world doing to monitor that?
	The Taliban doesn't spread into Pakistan and destabilize it further.
	Well, I think this is a really big story, actually, because Pakistan is not a stable country.
	It's not inherently a stable country.
	And, of course, it's also a nuclear power.
	And this is one of the things, going back to the earlier comments about, you know, we were backing the Mujahideen in the 1980s, the war in Afghanistan, without understanding really what we were doing or the sort of people we were involved with.
	We're involving ourselves in and setting ourselves up for a future disaster there.
	That's also the time when Pakistan developed and acquired nuclear weapons and we looked the other way.
	We allowed it to happen because at that time it was essential to keep friendly with Pakistan because without Pakistan's help...
	This war against the Soviets just couldn't happen because Pakistan was the base.
	Now, of course, the Pakistanis have been involved in this long deal with India, and people who come from there tell me that for the Pakistani leadership, this is very much an overriding obsession.
	This conflict with India, the issues of Kashmir.
	The sense of resentment that's left over from the former Indo-Pakistani wars, which the big one in the early 1970s, Pakistan, lost.
	And one effect is that Pakistan itself has tried to use Islamist ideologies and Islamist fighters as part of its toolkit with which it confronts India in places like Kashmir and in other places.
	But the result has been that it has radicalised large parts of its own population.
	And, of course, the game it played in Afghanistan, where it tried to basically gain an ascendancy in Afghanistan in order to give itself strategic depth against India by backing first the Mujahideen in the 80s and then the Taliban in the 90s.
	Many people say, and I believe this is true, that...
	Pakistan played an absolutely key organizing role in setting up the Taliban.
	What that has done is that it has radicalized large parts of Pakistan's own population.
	So you now have this continuum.
	You have this country, which is a nuclear power, a very big country, a country with a relatively advanced industrial base, and it's far from stable.
	And its population has become increasingly hostile to the West, so I understand, and which, to be straightforward about it, I don't think our leaders are monitoring very closely.
	I certainly don't think that Biden gets up and asks his people what's going on in Pakistan at the moment, which arguably he should, because there's a big crisis there.
	If things go radically wrong in Pakistan, which they could do, given that people in Pakistan, those radicalized people, have seen a jihadi movement in Afghanistan defeat the United States, that's the way it will be seen there.
	After jihadism in Afghanistan defeated the Soviet Union, they will be saying, if we defeated the United States in Afghanistan.
	And the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
	Well, what's the Pakistani army compared to that?
	Maybe if we make a push, we can achieve the same kind of system in Pakistan, which is consistent with our beliefs that we have in Afghanistan now.
	And of course, with a situation where there's nuclear weapons and all those things, that could create a crisis, which frankly will make all other crises look small.
	Well, here's a question.
	I guess we'll go counterclockwise now and we'll go down to Alex for this one.
	It's a two-part question.
	First part is, let's just say the number is 10,000 American citizens that are still left in Afghanistan.
	Is there the risk of seeing bad stuff happen to those who are left behind?
	And I guess the second question for both of you and Robert as well is, it's easy to criticize.
	What would have been the right way for Biden to get out given the timeline that was initially set by Trump?
	Versus, you know, how it was actually carried out.
	So, two-part question.
	First part.
	Alex, what do you think?
	10,000.
	I've heard 80,000.
	I don't know which it is.
	We don't know.
	I think you start there.
	How is it that the United States does not know how many citizens are in Afghanistan?
	I mean, this is, it's hard to imagine, but you don't know.
	And, you know, I start to think to myself, on July 2nd, the United States abandoned.
	The Bagram Airfield, overnight, in the middle of the night, they abandoned the airfield.
	Wouldn't it be logical?
	Wouldn't it just be common sense to say, you know what, if we are going to stick to this August 31st or September 11th timeline that we've placed, this new timeline, wouldn't it be smart to hold on to the air bases because we're going to probably need those?
	To evacuate our citizens or to evacuate whoever we need to evacuate?
	Why did they abandon the Bagram airfield on July 2nd?
	And me and Alexandra were talking about this.
	That was a red flag for us.
	We said, something's not right here.
	And they did it in a way which was so sneaky.
	A thief in the night.
	In the middle of the night, they just left everything.
	And they left everything there.
	Even the Afghan army officials were like, what the hell is going on?
	They couldn't believe it.
	Something is not right.
	But you have 10,000 people, maybe.
	Maybe it's 30,000.
	Maybe it's 80,000.
	Who's going to process these people?
	Who's going to get these people on a plane?
	Germany can't even land their planes in Kabul.
	They're having trouble landing their planes.
	Who's going to do all this?
	Who are these people?
	Who's going to process them?
	Where are they going to go?
	Who's going to find them?
	I mean, if you have even a hostage situation of five people, It's going to be a catastrophe for the United States.
	Even if they grab five people, one person, and it's an international incident, you have at a minimum 10,000 and maybe many, many more.
	This is an absolute disaster.
	How does the United States, the most powerful country in the world, not know how many citizens are living and working in Afghanistan?
	And why the hell?
	Did they not keep every single airfield they have in that country operational?
	This is common sense stuff.
	I'm not a military guy.
	I'm not a military strategist, but this is like kindergarten stuff.
	Why did they leave that airfield?
	What is going on here?
	I'm a little more cynical on stuff, but this has me thinking something is not right.
	And that's where I'll leave it.
	It's just...
	Some really bizarre stuff is happening.
	And we're just at the beginning.
	We are just at the beginning.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that keeping the counterclockwise rotation going, I like that.
	This is fun.
	But two things.
	One, in terms of what the difference, the way I compare it is how would Trump and how was Trump planning to exit versus Biden?
	And I think Trump had the right approach.
	I mean, Trump's approach was to try to get a China-type deal, not as generous as what the China deal was because of the history, but something analogous to it that basically said, as long as you leave Americans alone, as long as you don't cause massive public embarrassment, you can have functional control over your country.
	And we'll work together on economic-related issues and basically to avoid any of these ramifications and implications.
	And then to plan to leave in May rather than the summer, leave under a certain structured schedule with the proper order is destroy secrets first, get your citizens and protected individuals out second, get your weapons and other things out third, and then your soldiers leave.
	Biden did it in reverse order.
	And so, of course, it was going to be a disaster.
	So that's part of that question.
	But as to the bigger question, as to why are there so many Americans still there?
	Why was there no plan to get them out beforehand?
	Why do we not know how many we have?
	And why were things like air bases just abandoned overnight, leaving weapons systems behind and leaving what part of the Afghan army was willing to fight completely without air support or sufficient air support to be able to sustain themselves against the Taliban?
	If the U.S. military couldn't beat the Taliban and the Soviet army couldn't beat the Taliban, why did anybody think the Afghan army was going to beat the Taliban?
	But it goes to a deeper issue, which is that this has been a 20-year grift.
	So that, you know, this has been two decades of a lot of the people that were really involved in the money side of this equation and in lying up the food chain and lying down the food chain as appropriate or needed were grifters.
	That this was an opportunity to take a lot of money and to get a lot of money.
	And this has been hinted at shows even like, you know, a homeland or something like that.
	They'll suggest that, you know, and that's a way for intelligence or ex-intelligence operators who leave to tell you the real story but disguise it as fiction.
	You know, like John Grisham's, you know, Russia House or Constant Gardner.
	They're all disguised near truths that are written as fiction.
	Like you guys talk about Russiagate.
	If you, you know, you read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana or you read...
	John Le Corre's Taylor of Panama, you could see Christopher Steele coming 10 miles away.
	And both of them got that knowledge, including Graham Greene, from watching spies in Europe, the English spies, I think he was in an African country during, I think it was World War I, and saw that the whole thing was just to BS all the time.
	And that's what got you promotions, and that's what got you extra gigs and extra cash, and there was just one big grift.
	And that the whole intelligence agencies at some level are just built in that way.
	And that's what, you know, Pierce Brosnan plays him great, that character in Taylor Panama.
	That is just one big, how can I get 10 million bucks out of this?
	And convince people that they're, you know, that famous, the fake general.
	The guy who's playing the general saying, you know, there's a star missing on our flag, boys.
	Let's take back Panama.
	Based on exaggerated stories with little kernels of truth to them.
	And I mean, Christopher Steele's a perfect example of this.
	I mean, stories that you guys could debunk in a day.
	The high-ranking Justice Department, CIA, NSA, FBI all believed in.
	Stories that you had to have any degree of common sense, any degree of disciplined logic and empirical analysis.
	You could know that Trump, the germaphobe, wasn't having anybody doing anything like that on any bed anywhere.
	That Trump, the paranoid guy, wasn't going to be hanging out with any kind of hookers in a hotel in Russia.
	I mean, this was all projection.
	I mean, that's somebody's...
	That's somebody's own imagination.
	A lot of these people in power, D.C., you know, you're blinking types.
	That, I could see blinking, you know, somebody tying them up and beating them and whatnot.
	But that ain't Trump.
	But in that same vein, in terms of what's taking...
	I believe that what a lot of this reflects is a massive disparity between the Arabist mindset, the imagination of the Biden crew, that really...
	And that Blinken, I believe, and a lot of these guys...
	I tried to explain to people back when Obama was doing his Arab Spring.
	Everything about this said disaster, disaster, disaster, written all over it.
	Those weren't just democracy protesters out there.
	That was Muslim Brotherhood out there, and that's probably not going to end well.
	It didn't, ultimately.
	Even Tunisia ultimately collapsed.
	Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood who seized power.
	That didn't turn out...
	Libya, of course, has been an ongoing disaster.
	Syria, an ongoing disaster.
	And now Afghanistan, their last sort of Arabist experiment in neoliberal democracy, bringing women's freedom to the Islamic fundamentalist world, has finally fallen apart and collapsed.
	I mean, one of the memes became that vice interviewer, that vice reporter, sitting there.
	Asking the Taliban, you know, what do you think about women participating in parliament and women voting?
	And they just break down laughing.
	They're like, you got to turn off the tape.
	You got to turn this to do fun.
	I mean, not understanding these things.
	It's like, what world do these people live in?
	And this is part of...
	Part of the other Afghanistan story, aside from the old Arabist influence, which has been under discussed in the United States, and it goes all the way back to Kermit Roosevelt.
	These are people, I blame the Brits because they all read about Lawrence of Arabia and all these kids in these upper middle class little, you know, the Andovers and the Exeters.
	They're like, oh, I'm going to be like Lawrence of Arabia and me in the Arab world to bring this wonderful sort of Persian style peace and liberation.
	And that was clearly part of the infatuation that they had built some version of a functioning democracy with a real independently trained military with a disciplined police force.
	I mean, the Afghani president knew what the score was.
	He was like, I'm out of here.
	Put the cash in the plane.
	We're out like Batista Havana, 1959.
	I mean, he's hanging out in Switzerland right now with some hashish that he brought back from Afghanistan.
	But the State Department, high-ranking CIA people, would have...
	Project their own delusions of this old Arabist influence that's very strong in those centers of institutional power in America.
	And that that could explain a substantial part of it, but in terms of the disconnect.
	But I think on the ground, this was massive grift.
	I mean, the stories are now coming out.
	I mean, even the Washington Post ran it.
	And I assume it's intel operatives on the ground who are pissed off that their analysis wasn't relayed or relied upon or utilized for the Post to be the one to be running the story.
	But basically how they knew for months, the Afghani government, all these people, the Afghani military, the Afghani police, were in negotiations with the Taliban, and it was, what will you give us?
	And I think in a lot of cases, they were deliberately leaving places unprotected and unguarded.
	It's basically a deal.
	You can get these weapons if you do this.
	You can get this here if you do this.
	Because that's what it was for 20 years.
	We weren't putting true believer people in positions of power.
	We promoted grifters throughout the Afghanistan.
	Whoever was the best grifter got promoted in Afghanistan.
	When you have a guy that used to work at the World Bank as the president at Afghanistan, I mean, that's a crock.
	And the whole countryside, and I'll give a credit, there was an MSNBC reporter who the guy said, whoa, such a shock, this fell so fast.
	And this was a guy who had been back and forth to Afghanistan frequently who was clearly still agitated about COVID travel restrictions because he did like a random two-minute rant on it.
	But he says everybody knew this was going to happen because this is a totally corrupt regime.
	They weren't going to fight for anything.
	They were going to see what was the one last grift they could get.
	And the Arabist lies that were being told in the White House and at the State Department, at the CIA, allowed them to do one last great grift.
	And I think at least that's a big part of the story.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, Robert's covered so much ground.
	Just to say, first of all, nobody does grift like the British.
	That is something you've got to always remember.
	And nobody does smooth talk like the British do.
	Produce a person with a nice haircut, a Savile Row suit, a nice Oxford accent, public school, Christopher Steele, in other words.
	And it's amazing how many people around the world fall for this.
	It's quite astonishing that the British, in their school system, I'm talking now about the private school system, which, like everything else in Britain, we...
	We call it the public schools, but they're really private schools.
	It's all very confusing.
	But, I mean, the school system is all based on teaching people to be like that, to be extraordinarily articulate and to appear to be really very well informed.
	And, in fact, most of what you hear and people say is just bullshit.
	I mean, it's absolute nonsense.
	The British are...
	Geniuses at it.
	And what Robert was talking about, the British being the original Arabists, it's absolutely true.
	The amount of British people, you know, the upper classes who were involved in the Arab world and who connected themselves with, you know, the leading people in the Arab world.
	Kim Philby, you know Kim Philby, the Soviet spy his father was Heavily involved.
	He was one of the chief advisors, for example, of the Saudis.
	Anthony Eden, our foreign minister, who was Churchill's foreign minister, who then became our prime minister at the time of Suez.
	He could speak perfect Arabic.
	He knew all Persian poetry.
	He knew all of these things.
	And, of course, they were all very connected with the, if you like, the aristocracy, the oligarchy of the people who ran the Middle East, because the British were the big...
	Power in the Middle East from the end of the 19th century right up until the 1950s when they passed the baton on to the United States.
	And they basically set up the structures and the ways of working and the patterns of thinking in the Middle East.
	And then, of course, what you get on top of all of that is the British, they're gone.
	They still have this big influence on the US.
	It always, by the way, amazes me how much influence the British have over the US.
	I've never understood it, why the US, why so many people in the US still look to the British for so many things.
	But anyway, once the British are gone, you also, because the US has to do things for a moral reason, the British don't really care that much about that, or at least they didn't when they were the Empire.
	It also has to have the democracies and all of those things.
	Along comes the Arab Spring, and you believe it because you're attracted to the Middle East, you're attracted to the Arab world because you've got the British Orientalist mindset, and you have the pattern of democracy and human rights and freedom as well.
	And, of course, it's a complete disaster because it doesn't work like that.
	The Middle East isn't like that at all.
	Anyway.
	Coming back to the original question, do those Americans who are still in Afghanistan, are they facing risks?
	Do they still face retribution?
	Absolutely.
	They are in exceptional danger.
	And it is an unbelievable dereliction of duty by the administration that those people have been left in that dangerous situation that they are in.
	What should have been done?
	Exactly as Robert said, the actual way forward was to do the sort of things that Donald Trump was thinking about doing it.
	But it's even worse in some ways than what Robert was saying, because what the Biden administration did is they came in, they said, without discussing it with anybody, that we're going to scrap Donald Trump's deadline, the date that he was going to...
	Pull the troops, end the war, start pulling people out of Afghanistan, which is going to be May.
	So the Taliban at that point say, well, we are not anymore bound by whatever agreements we reached.
	And then they went ahead and then they announced all by themselves.
	Unilaterally, without talking to anybody, without discussing anything, without negotiating, without making any transitional arrangements, without doing any of the things that Alex and Robert were saying, you know, setting up the bases.
	Destroying the documents, getting the people out, getting the material out.
	Without doing any of those things, they suddenly announced, well, we're going to pull out after all.
	We're going to pull out by the 11th of September, when presumably we're going to hold a great victorious parade.
	A greater guarantee of disaster, it's impossible to imagine.
	And the idea of doing it on September 11th is shocking on its face.
	I don't know what that's supposed to celebrate.
	Sorry, Robert, go ahead.
	I had two questions I want to read from the chat.
	Yeah, just one addendum.
	The reason why there's all these people that are there that they claim not to know how many is almost guaranteed they're off-the-book operatives.
	So the government does know how many are there, but there are people that are...
	Not supposed to be there, or not officially there, or not identified as being there, is my strong suspicion.
	And for them not to make sure that operatives...
	Our government had sent in, directly or indirectly, you know, I'm sure they're on NGO list or Merck list or whatever, but that's why they were really there.
	Now, maybe they're CIA operatives helping the opium trade or whatnot.
	You know, whatever their reason is, they're there because our government at some level requested it.
	And for us not to get them out first is just a humiliating embarrassment.
	Now, it may reflect that the fact they wanted to pretend that they not acknowledged that they were there and they wanted to believe.
	That, hey, this is going to be a wonderful, peaceful, democratic transition in the Taliban.
	I mean, you actually had U.S. government people and other media people saying Taliban won't do anything bad.
	They know the world's watching and they care about the approach for women and so forth.
	And it's like, what world have you lived in for the last 50 years?
	Amazing.
	So hold on.
	Greg asked a question.
	I'm not sure I understand it.
	What are your opinions on Biden pulling out of the region when they have shown resistance against populations' will and against MIC pressure?
	On the cathedral to remain, is it possible they are looking to bolster presence in South China Sea, Taiwan, Japan, Ukraine?
	Any thoughts on intel that this region will heat up and they don't want to fight on multiple fronts?
	MIC is what?
	Military, industrial, complex, I think.
	But I mean, you go back to what Biden said in his speech just the other day that, you know, the Russians and the Chinese supposedly want the United States to stay in Afghanistan because this exhausts American resources and the United States ought to be using all those resources to take on its adversaries.
	And that's what the real plan was.
	I think that may have been some element of it.
	But if that was the plan, if the idea was that you'd Well, the way they've done it has been such a complete and utter disaster that it has now undermined the possibility of that plan working because there's a high probability that after this shambles, we're going to see a resumption of jihadi.
	Activism right across the Middle East, not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, which we were talking about, right across the Arab world also.
	And then, of course, the United States will have its hands even more full than it did before and will have even less time than it did before to focus on the South China Sea and on the Pacific and all of those things.
	So that was the plan.
	The President of the United States, in his great broadcast to the American people, said that was the plan, I mean, in so many words.
	Well, the incompetence with which it's been executed has undermined it and may make it far more difficult to work out.
	I mean, this is going to be the most visually visceral, devastating impression of American power and use of power.
	Maybe ever.
	Because those images of those people falling off that plane and trying to track will never be forgot.
	It's more dramatic than the embassy in Iran.
	In my view, it's more devastating than the fall of Saigon.
	I mean, that image stayed with us to this day.
	I mean, that's over 50 years ago.
	Half a century and half a decade ago.
	And people still remember.
	And I guess they didn't even think about the visuals on this.
	They even used some of the same helicopters to leave the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
	By the way, you guys' point is an excellent one on shutting down the Air Force Base.
	It's the number one criticism I've heard from every military vet that's connected to Afghanistan.
	They said that made no sense at all.
	They said that would be the place to do an evacuation.
	Merely maintaining our presence there would have kept the Taliban out of Kabul.
	And that should have been the last place shut down, not the first place shut down.
	And it just showed...
	I mean, there's three possible explanations.
	One is military incompetence, which you can't understate when you look at people like Milley and these kind of guys.
	Our Joint Chiefs are a joke.
	I mean, they're still every day looking for those...
	Where are those Trump supporters who are trying to overthrow the government?
	That's what they're busy doing.
	And so you can't underestimate that.
	But you can't underestimate malfeasance.
	There may have been corrupt grifters looking for one last cash grab.
	But also you can't underestimate the Arabist mindset.
	That they convinced themselves that none of this was going to happen.
	And so that there was no risk.
	And that they would prove there was no risk by leaving the Air Force base first rather than last.
	But yeah, I mean, it's a...
	It's an unmistakable debacle.
	And Biden's excuse that this helped...
	I mean, first of all, there's a reason why both Russia and China obsess over Central Asia.
	Us losing power in Central Asia, us being humiliated in Central Asia, us being out of Central Asia, there's no version of that that makes us stronger against Russia or China, even if you believed in the agenda of trying to be both anti-Russian and anti-Chinese, which by itself might be ill-advised.
	Even Nixon figured that out.
	But so, I mean, on that side of the equation, but also just that this was a total debacle.
	Can I just quickly say the Chinese are crowing.
	They are loving this.
	The Russians are different because the Russians are nervous because they've had to fight jihadism, both in Afghanistan and in their own country.
	But the Chinese love it.
	If you go to their media to see what they're saying, they're absolutely reveling at this moment in time in the humiliation and defeat of the United States.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, you go, Robert.
	I have another question after.
	Okay, yeah.
	The other issue I definitely wanted to cover is the, are we going to have a refugee explosion?
	Because there was already talk, because you're talking about neoliberalism, everything's always for the four freedoms, for America and apple pie, and for women.
	That's why Democrats, if you're against war, never vote for a Democrat.
	I remember telling somebody this 20 years ago.
	When a Republican goes to war, you don't trust their reasons at all.
	You know it's crass and crude and probably about money and power.
	But when a Democrat goes to war, it's for the women and the children and the refugees and the weak and the vulnerable, and they get away with it.
	That's why...
	To quote Bob Dole, 1976 vice presidential debate, he could count up all the dead from the Democrat wars.
	And that was an old East Kansas statement back when Republicans, well, when Republicans had returned to it, were very anti-war.
	I mean, the isolationism was a Republican movement in the first part of the 20th century.
	Aside from Teddy Roosevelt, who was a little bit hit or miss on that.
	Also read too much of Lawrence Arabia.
	Of that mindset growing up, military adventurism.
	But what is the risk both for Europe and the United States?
	Because we're already talking about bringing in 30,000, 40,000 Afghanis.
	Apparently the UK, I guess, according to Paul Joseph Watson, had a video yesterday on this.
	He said that the UK is going to let anybody in even without a passport.
	And he started going through the long history of what happened the last time a bunch of Libyan and Syrian refugees flowed into Europe.
	It led to a massive disaster.
	Even Macron is nervous because he realizes with an upcoming French election what the consequences of this might be.
	I think from one standpoint, if I'm Orban, if I'm Le Pen, I almost want Europe to allow a massive refugee wave because it's probably going to guarantee, give me Le Pen a better chance at winning.
	Highlights her number one issue.
	Orban, it probably salvages him because part of how he came to power and sustained it was the Hungarians had no interest.
	For a lot of reasons.
	You go back into Hungary's history.
	There's a lot of reasons why they're not for, especially Islamic invaders.
	They've had some bad history in that regard.
	But what do you think the risk of a refugee explosion in Europe is?
	What do you think the risk of a massive coming to the United States is?
	Or is that all overblown?
	There are some people that think, I mean, Afghanistan's basically been in a civil war for more than 40 years, since 1979.
	It continued through the 90s, even after the Soviets left, and then now it's us.
	If they have peace, maybe there'll be less refugees, though it's a dirt-poor country, and most refugees were economic that fled Libya and Syria.
	That's why there's so many young men more than women and children.
	What are your guys' thoughts on that?
	I think it's baked...
	Go ahead, Alexander.
	No, no, go first.
	I think it's baked in the cake, Robert.
	I think they're going to come, and I'll say a couple of things there.
	Number one, Boris already announced that the UK is going to take 5,000 right away.
	And then they're going to ramp it up.
	So he's already made those announcements.
	Afghan refugees.
	You know, it's interesting the way they position it, that Afghan refugees are going to come to Europe or the U.S. Let me say a couple of things about that.
	You know, with the whole Syria, the Syria civil war, as they called it, and the fact that you had Syrian refugees that were flooding into Europe.
	I've seen these refugees.
	I see them every day in Greece.
	I've seen them every day in Cyprus.
	10% may be Syrian.
	5% maybe?
	I would say 90% of these quote-unquote refugees are from a dozen other countries.
	And Erdogan would say the same thing, the guy that's holding a lot of these refugees.
	These aren't people from Syria, the bulk of them.
	These are people from everywhere else.
	And they're flooding them into Europe.
	And we don't know who they are.
	We don't know what they're about.
	But they're here.
	And they're with us.
	And like I said, I see them every day.
	There is nothing Syrian about them.
	So I think you're going to see a lot of the same things with Afghanistan.
	They're going to position it as Afghanistan refugees.
	They're going to need asylum.
	They're going to need our help.
	Let's give them safe haven in Europe.
	Let's bring them to the United States.
	Yeah, there'll be a certain element of these people that will be from Afghanistan.
	But I imagine a bulk of them will be from God knows where.
	And I think you're going to have a lot of problems.
	It's baking the cake.
	What I'm worried about with all of this...
	Is you already have the United States waging a domestic war on terror.
	They're already waging a war within on their own people.
	You have Australia, which is in some sort of bizarre dystopian lockdown.
	You have New Zealand lockdown over one case.
	You have snap elections in Canada on the 20th.
	is looking to get full power, a mandate in Canada.
	You have all these moving pieces all of a sudden hitting us right now, and you have what happened in Afghanistan as well.
	I'm worried that what we're going to get, maybe we won't, maybe we won't.
	I'm worried we're going to get more lockdowns, more restrictions, more passports.
	We're going to get some countries saying we have a mandate to pass all of this stuff.
	The people have voted for this stuff.
	And then we're going to get a domestic.
	War on terror.
	What's happening in the US, I think that's just going to spread to other 5i nations.
	And then we're going to get an incident, a foreign terrorist incident happening somewhere.
	And then you're going to have a foreign war against terrorism, more surveillance, more restrictions, more authoritarianism.
	Let's not forget what they did to us after 9-11 with Iraq WMDs, the Patriot Acts, the scanners at the airport.
	Taking away our rights.
	I think we're going to get all of that and more.
	And it's just going to be a complete nightmare.
	I mean, I really see a big, rapid push towards massive authoritarianism and massive surveillance.
	And I see everything that's happening now, all these pieces seem to be falling into place for these things to happen.
	And yeah, I think we're going to get terrorists in Europe.
	I think we're going to get terrorists flooding into the United States.
	And I think we're going to have problems.
	Big problems.
	Stephen Colbert hinted at it just last night in one of his monologues.
	He says, why should we worry about the Taliban when we have our own domestic terrorists?
	And he put a picture of the January 6th insurrection.
	Colbert is the worst because it's not comedy and it's beyond propaganda and it's actually hateful.
	But he's hinting at it.
	That was my point.
	When I saw that, I said it seems that he's hinting at what's about to come.
	Maybe I'm paranoid.
	Maybe I'm cynical.
	It'll save me one of the questions in the super chat, which was from...
	It was, what can we do to remain optimistic?
	I think you gave us part of the answer there.
	You're not optimistic.
	I'm optimistic that Trudeau's not going to get a majority government on September 20th.
	I mean, I would bet money on it, but I will actually defer to Roberts' political gambling expertise.
	I remember the Syrian refugee crisis throughout Europe.
	It feels so long ago now.
	It's almost like not even in people's collective memories.
	We'll see if we get there now, but I don't know what Trudeau's talking about in terms of refugees from Afghanistan.
	I see what they're talking about in other countries.
	We'll see when it happens.
	Everyone still has 3 million people in Turkey.
	Let's not forget about that.
	They're still sitting there.
	Well, that's been Erdogan's leverage now for half a decade.
	I mean, I was shocked to hear the same British government that's talking about having a vaccine passport to go to a football match is saying, you don't even need a passport.
	And going to Alex's point, you don't even need a passport.
	We'll just label you Afghan refugee and you can come right in.
	And it's like, how do we even know?
	That they're even from Afghanistan.
	Because for people, what Alex is talking about, basically under the guise of war refugees, a bunch of economic migrants came in from all around the world.
	And amongst them were political terrorists within that group.
	Paul Watson and other crime.
	I mean, the other thing is, if we couldn't change Afghanistan in 20 years under the power of the boot and the offer of dollars...
	Why do we think Afghanis coming to the West is going to allow them to easily assimilate?
	Because, I mean, at least the last wave, you know, asked the women that took the unfortunate train ride in Cologne on New Year's Eve and at the plaza.
	That didn't turn out so good because they had a different definition of consensual activity.
	Like what's happening in the Taliban right now, where 13- and 14-year-old girls are being married off at the threat of a gun.
	So what are your thoughts on this?
	What may be some of the political blowback if they actually do this?
	Well, can I say, first of all, I mean, when I heard about this, about the fact that, you know, we are opening our doors and the pressure is to open our doors even more.
	Well, I mean, immediately I said this is going to end very, very badly.
	There are political dimensions to this.
	There are electoral dimensions, which I think many people outside Britain are not aware of.
	But the point is that just as people, you know, People, you know, Latino people, people from Latin America who come into the United States tend to vote Democrat.
	People from the Muslim world, from Central Asia, from Afghanistan, from Syria, from Pakistan, who come to Britain tend to vote Labour.
	In fact, not just tend to vote, they overwhelmingly vote Labour.
	And, of course, you, unsurprisingly, the Labour Party...
	Wants them to come because that, of course, increases its voting totals.
	In some places, like there was a by-election recently.
	This is, you know, an election that takes place between general elections in a place called Batley and Spen.
	The Labour candidate won, basically because there are a lot of Muslim people in that particular place, and they tend to vote Labour.
	In fact, they overwhelmingly vote Labour.
	So there is that electoral dimension which the Labour Party, of course, is pushing for.
	But what this all shows, Steve, ultimately, is, again, the incredible disconnect that exists in Britain.
	Between the British political class, which is now very centred in Westminster, and in London.
	It's become very isolated from sentiment across the rest of Britain.
	And already you've seen the...
	The effect of that with Brexit, which the entire British political class were horrified with.
	They didn't expect it.
	They didn't see it coming.
	They saw it as a sort of rebellion against them.
	And, of course, Brexit was very partly driven by a feeling that many British people had, especially in England, that Britain had lost control of its borders.
	The slogan that was used during Brexit, the one that really caught fire, was take back control.
	Take back control of your money.
	Take back control of your borders.
	We're going to start seeing a mass flood of people from Central Asia and wherever coming into Britain now.
	You can be absolutely sure that that is going to reignite things in Britain in a massive way.
	And that will open up.
	The situation for further shocks to hit the British political class.
	At the moment, in Westminster, they are very much in control because all the various parties basically share to a great extent many of these beliefs.
	And as I said, the Labour Party has a particular incentive to think in this way.
	But absolutely, outside London, you'd start to see...
	You know, a revived Brexit party, which is, you know, the party that drove Brexit.
	It would come back with a vengeance.
	That's...
	A real possibility in Britain, and I think a lot of people in London, in Westminster, in our political system don't understand it.
	What is the chance of a refugee flood from Central Asia, from Afghanistan?
	It is very high indeed.
	I'm not quite sure I'd go quite as far as Alex does by saying it's baked in the cake, because it does depend to some extent on how stabilised the situation in Afghanistan becomes.
	If I was to say that it was highly probable, I think that would be a realistic assessment.
	What will happen if these people come to Europe?
	There will be a reaction.
	Of course there will, just as there would be in Britain if they came here.
	There would be a very, very strong political reaction.
	Last time this happened, we saw a major swing to the right in Germany.
	That was what caused the AfD party to take off there.
	We would see further swings in France, definitely, in Italy too, probably in Spain, certainly in Eastern Europe, where, of course, they have no tolerance for this kind of thing either.
	So, I mean, you know, we'd see...
	Orban and the Law and Justice Party in Poland strengthen.
	We would see a major crisis within the European Union also, because the European Union has a very, very complicated policies about borders, and it doesn't like to see movements of people who manage to get into the European area.
	Very difficult to see how this could end well.
	And of course, last time we saw this mass movement of people, it did bring all kinds of terrorist problems in their midst because all sorts of people who hold those beliefs came into the European societies also.
	We have a perception in Europe...
	At least in Britain, which may be untrue, that the United States is to some extent or to a great extent insulated from this sort of thing because you are protected by the fact that you have the great oceans that, you know, you can't just walk across.
	So maybe that will provide people in the United States and in Canada with some kind of protection from it.
	But in Europe, we would be absolutely the magnet to which all these people would come.
	Well, I've got to tell you one thing.
	I was just Googling it while you were talking, Alexander.
	Trudeau, this is according to Global News, Canada will accept as many Afghan refugees as possible.
	And the ultimate irony is that on this Global News article, the ad that just ran before the article was Trudeau's Liberal government for re-election, running ads on Global News.
	Okay, so look, we will see.
	I mean, I would have to say that I presume they're going to have to remedy, rectify the issue of the outstanding American citizens before one plane of refugees comes.
	But like people in the chat are saying, the media is setting up the narrative and past is prologue.
	We can see where that's going to go in terms of policy.
	Alex, you looked like you had something to say about two seconds ago.
	No, I mean, I agree with what you're saying with Trudeau, and they're already prepping us.
	I really believe they're already prepping us.
	I mean, you know, you Googled it right away, and there it was.
	And you can already see the narrative that the media is building, right?
	Pelosi tweets, you know, the Taliban, you know, better treat women and girls well, right?
	And you start seeing the media talking about it.
	You know, women and girls are going to be in trouble under the Taliban, and some people are going to be in trouble.
	Yes, but they're already trying to drive the sympathy of the situation to what's going on in Afghanistan to get the people on their side so that they could say, yes, okay, yeah, bring 5,000, bring 10,000, bring 50,000, bring 100,000.
	That's the way they're pushing us.
	And it's going to happen.
	And, you know, I say this as someone who's living in a country that had nothing to do with Syria.
	Had nothing to do with Afghanistan.
	As Greeks, we actually get along very well with Europeans and with Arabs and with Syrians.
	We're very unique like that.
	We get along with all our neighbors, with Arabs, with Israel, with the Europeans.
	We have very good relations, all except the Turks.
	That's a different story.
	But for us, we didn't, you know, the Greeks sit there and we say we didn't do anything to...
	To cause this refugee crisis, but here we are, and we're having to house tens of thousands of refugees.
	And once again, we don't know who these people are.
	Things have changed in our society.
	It's not as common to be walking around at night at 3 in the morning, where I remember 10, 15 years ago, yeah, you could walk 3, 4 in the morning, no problem.
	There were no issues.
	We never had bad neighborhoods.
	Now we kind of do.
	I mean, we kind of have no-go zones, which is very odd for a society like ours.
	Very odd.
	So I think they're already leading us to it.
	I mean, I'm looking at how the media is moving things and how they're phrasing things, and it's making me nervous.
	Well, especially if you have both at risk, like the source of migration issue.
	Like some people think, well, Afghanistan will stabilize.
	Then there was some chats to that effect.
	The issue is, First of all, the Taliban, it may be in their political interest that people they don't want or don't like just leave the country.
	And so it's not clear that, I mean, like right now there are certain degrees that they're not interfering with massive departure because it may be the case they would rather have some of their adversaries be gone.
	I mean, they believe more in ideological control than they do in having the biggest population under their political regimen.
	So you have that aspect.
	The other aspect that's driving the migration is, as you know, a lot of them may not come from Afghanistan, but pretend they are.
	And once you have the UK and other people saying no passport required, no citizenship proof required, well, I mean, just show up and say, I'm from Afghanistan, and boom, all of a sudden you're there, and that's going to lead as it has.
	Every prior instance of recent vintage, as Alex notes, people just flood in from everywhere.
	And most of these are economic migrants.
	I mean, while the focus will be on women and children, they made the point of some of these planes coming out of Afghanistan, some of them have almost all men.
	There's almost no women.
	We're seeing the same thing all over again.
	They're coming for better jobs.
	I mean, Paul Watson made the point, and I think someone else also made the point that like South Africa is willing.
	I mean, not South Africa.
	Saudi Arabia is willing to welcome refugees from Afghanistan.
	However, they they basically put you up in a tent city and give you minimal resources.
	And when people that have been filtering through the last wave of refugees, you know, ask, would you rather go to a Muslim country?
	We want to go to Germany and the UK because that's where you get the best benefits.
	I mean, you're getting free housing, better, usually for most of these people, an improvement.
	Afghanistan's one of the poorest countries in the world.
	The Taliban themselves were pointing that out yesterday.
	They're like, sure, tons of people want to leave.
	Our country's real poor.
	You know, they weren't hiding it.
	So when you have massive motivation for economic migration, almost no meaningful border control, so who knows where they're coming from?
	And it might be in the political self-interest or economic self-interest of Afghanistan to have a large number of refugees.
	And then you combine that with what Alexander talks about, the political motivation, that all the liberal regimes think these are importing votes and vote, importing vote after vote.
	And it plays into the...
	Virtue signaling, self-justification, moral self-righteousness, like Victorian England style, of these populations.
	I am better because I have brought in the Afghan refugee.
	I have brought that mindset, even if they're not necessarily a refugee.
	And then Paul Watson went through a lot of those examples.
	People said, you know, refugees welcome, and then they end up committing crime or beating, you know, because you have not only a cultural disconnect, Some of this is going to be Muriel Boat kind of refugees.
	If you're Afghanistan and you're the Taliban, why not dump your criminals that are not on ideological board into the West?
	Why not?
	That's what Fidel did.
	He said, empty the asylums.
	Empty the prisons.
	We're sending them all to Miami.
	Good luck.
	And that's how you get Scarface.
	So I think it's going to be a problem.
	I think it's going to be an explosive problem.
	I think the only thing the elites either should be aware of now or making a big mistake, tactical mistake, the last time this happened, it unleashed Orban.
	It unleashed populism throughout Europe.
	It unleashed Le Pen.
	It helped birth Brexit.
	And I think they'll be making and in the U.S. doing it just in terms of the immigration issues we had here and just much smaller scale people coming in led to Trump.
	They're going to lead to double that if they try to redo what they did in 2015 by using the Afghan Taliban takeover as the pretext for another massive wave of economically risky and socially dangerous migration.
	All right, now with that said, I think we should wind it down because we're nearing two hours, but I had one question on Super Chat that I have to ask because I am curious myself.
	This is from 63Rambler.
	What does the name Duran mean and what's the story of the two-headed eagle on your logo?
	Well, I don't know the answer to the first question.
	Because when I actually joined the Duran, which is, I mean, Alex was just a little bit ahead of me.
	That name had already been adopted.
	And I've asked Alex this question myself many, many times.
	And of course, it's a mystery.
	So over to Alex.
	I've kept that a mystery to myself, actually, which is interesting.
	I will say this.
	I was going through the names that I was thinking about as we were setting the company up.
	I did want a domain name that was a.com and that was easy to remember and didn't actually pigeonhole us one way or another.
	We weren't going to be called USA Today or Russia Today or something like that.
	We didn't want to get pigeonholed into a certain region.
	We're an ideology.
	So I was looking for something that's very neutral.
	Very neutral and was available.
	And easy to remember.
	And it was available.
	And I remember I was driving in my car and it was available.
	And I stopped and I bought it on my mobile right then and there.
	The domain name.
	The two-headed eagle is actually, as we decided to sell merchandise, we wanted to create a logo.
	That was one Greek.
	A lot of people think it's globalist or it's Russian.
	It's actually Greek.
	It's very Byzantine, but it's very Greek.
	When you walk around Greece, you'll see that symbol.
	There you go, the two-headed eagle.
	But it also gives the impression of you're looking east, you're looking west.
	You're looking around at your surroundings.
	You're aware of what's going on.
	That's why we like the imagery of just kind of looking both ways and being alert as to what's going on in the world.
	But really, the symbol itself, for me, was something that I see every day as I walk around the city here.
	It's very common for me to see buildings with that two-headed eagle.
	And you see it in Russia as well and other countries that had a Byzantine influence.
	The eagle is my dad's favorite animal.
	It's the most powerful bird, the symbol of American freedom.
	It's a good animal.
	It's a good logo.
	Gentlemen, this was an amazing stream.
	We touched on one subject thoroughly.
	Let's do this more often and touch on other subjects.
	I think the chat loved it.
	We all stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes afterwards.
	It was phenomenal.
	Everyone in the chat, thank you for being here.
	Where can everybody find you guys?
	Oh, Jesus.
	Good one.
	Yes.
	TheDuran.Locals.com.
	Obviously, our YouTube channel.
	And we are also on Super U, Rumble, Bitch Shoot, and Odyssey.
	All right.
	And Super U is another alternative, which if people don't know about it, Rebel News is on it as well.
	The problem is it's sort of like Locals in terms of structure.
	We can't be everywhere, but Super U is another great alternative.
	Everyone should check it out.
	You guys are not on Twitter, eh?
	No, we...
	Actually, I X'd out Twitter and Facebook.
	I think we still have...
	Our page may still be up on Facebook.
	I'm not sure if I deleted that, but we stopped posting on Facebook like a year, year and a half ago.
	Twitter, I completely just nuked.
	I didn't get kicked off.
	I deleted all of it.
	Everyone, check them out.
	The Duran locals.
	Duran Super U. Everywhere else.
	Gentlemen, thank you very much.
	It was phenomenal.
	Everyone in the chat, thank you very much.
	Everyone, enjoy your weekend.
	Robert and I will see you all Sunday night.

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